Freud and the Unconscious

"There are cases in which parts of a person's own body, even portions of his own mental life-his perceptions, thoughts and feelings-, appear alien to him and as not belonging to his ego; there are other cases in which he ascribes to the external world things that clearly originate in his own ego and that ought to be acknowledged by it" (13).

Freud places a lot of emphasis on the unconscious mind. He believes that the mind is composed of three parts: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is completely unconscious and holds repressed thoughts, the ego is only partly conscious and contains defense mechanisms and the ability to calculate, reason, and plan, and the super-ego is also only partly conscious and contains feelings of guilt (xxi). If the mind is really constructed in this way, the majority of the mind belongs to the unconscious. Freud describes in the quote above an application of the unconscious in man's life. I'm not sure if I agree with everything Freud has to say about the unconscious mind- I would hope that the majority of my thoughts are accessible for me to perceive and be aware of. However, I agree that sometimes man misjudges his own thoughts and feelings and attributes them to the wrong external forces. Even so, there is a clear difference between not knowing and misjudging.