Consciousness
The first task of this book is awakening the reader to the basic facts of reality. Humans are experiencing consciousness which has internal and external aspects. On the inside of the brain, the mind experiences thoughts and emotions, motivations, desires, frustrations, opinions, etc. On the outside, the body perceives through sensory perception, and those signals are blended together into a synthetic experience of reality. This baseline helps Freud to help his readers understand the complexities of their own mind. Although the meat of this book is certainly the unconscious, that unconscious must be understood in contrast to waking consciousness.
The unconscious
The imagery of the unconscious accounts for the majority of this book, and it is the defining feature of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Unlike Jung, who believes in a collective unconscious and archetypal forces, Freud believes that the unconscious is a field of meta-physical urges and drives. Whereas Jung believed the desires of the unconscious were the manifestation of a fully maximized soul, or psyche, Freud's imagery is much more abstract. Freud's imagery of the unconscious is rooted in wish-fulfillment and repressed experiences.
Dreams and fantasy
The imagery of dreams and fantasy offer the first piece of this puzzle. To guide the reader into considerations on their own unconscious attitudes and experiences, Freud shows that the reader experiences contact with their unconscious rather frequently. On a boring day when the mind is launched in hypothetical speculations and daydreams, or during sleep when a person encounters the exotic and unpredictable dreamscape, then the reader encounters the depths of their mind.
Association and meaning
From there, the game is to decipher the impressions gleaned from the unconscious. This process involves a tactical, perhaps even technical imagery that Freud labels "association." To associate is to establish connections between one impression and another impression. The term "free association," is also interchangeable here. This is predicated on an understanding that dreams, fantasies, and deep emotions are in fact meaningful and understandable, though they are simultaneously profound and mysterious. Through this process, a person could hypothetically improve the quality of their life.
