The psychoanalytic censor must be conscious of itself, hence in bad faith

Evidence

If we reject the language and the materialistic mythology of psychoanalysis, we perceive that the censor in order to apply its activity with discernment must know what it is repressing. In fact if we abandon all the metaphors representing the repression as the impact of blind forces, we are compelled to admit that the censor must choose and in order to choose must be aware of so doing. How could it happen otherwise that the censor allows lawful sexual impulses to pass through, that it permits needs (hunger, thirst, sleep) to be expressed in clear consciousness? And how are we to explain that it can relax its surveillance, that it can even be deceived by the disguises of the instinct? But it is not sufficient that it discern the condemned drives; it must also apprehend them as to be repressed, which implies in it at the very least an awareness of its activity. In a word, how could the censor discern the impulses needing to be repressed without being conscious of discerning them? How can we conceive of a knowledge which is ignorant of itself? To know is to know that one knows, said Alain. Let us say rather: All knowing is consciousness of knowing. Thus the resistance of the patient implies on the level of the censor an awareness of the thing repressed as such, a comprehension of the end toward which the questions of the psychoanalyst are leading, and an act of synthetic connection by which it compares the truth of the repressed complex to the psychoanalytic hypothesis which aims at it. These various operations in their turn imply that the censor is conscious (of) itself. But what type of self-consciousness can the censor have? It must be the consciousness (of) being conscious of the drive to be repressed, but precisely in order not be conscious of it. What does this mean if not that the censor is in bad faith? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 286

Categorization

• XREF: This is Sartre’s core argument that repression presupposes bad faith — the foundational move that sets up Beauvoir’s ethical reading of self-deception. Connects to any prior treatment of bad faith as a non-reflective self-consciousness. — connects to: The Freudian unconscious cannot explain bad faith because it fragments psychic unity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 289; Bad faith requires a conscious effort that simultaneously recognizes and denies an experience. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 289; The censor alone can recognize what it represses and resist the analyst’s approach

Broader Connections

• Bad faith requires a conscious effort that simultaneously recognizes and denies an experience. #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 289