The task of discussing the conceptualization of the psychical in psychoanalysis entails a search to determine the character and preconditions of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis is indeed the science of the unconscious, even though its field of investigation cannot be limited to the unconscious as a system in Freud's sense. How should one go about being able to say something about the unconscious? Hermeneutics stresses the importance of entering the hermeneutical circle in an appropriate way. And how is one to enter that circle appropriately in order to increase our understanding of the unconscious? We must avoid taking our point of departure from a constructed system, from science other than psychoanalysis. We must begin our investigation where the unconscious shows itself for us in the psychoanalytic process. And it is here that the question of consciousness comes in.

The psychoanalytic process begins with the analysand's conscious self-understanding and is driven forward with the assistance of conscious validations of interpretations of the unconscious. Our knowledge about the unconscious always takes place from the vantage point of consciousness, and in this sense we never reach the unconscious directly, but only through the means of metaphors (cf. Enckell 2002). In other words, one can say that the constitution of the unconscious takes place from the vantage point of consciousness, which is the reason why we must first understand what essentially characterizes consciousness in order to understand what the unconscious is.