The preconscious includes latent thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that can become conscious. For Freud, a key goal of psychoanalysis is to move unconscious components of the psyche—especially those that cause psychic pain—into the preconscious mind, where they can be made conscious by affixing language to them.

The conscious mind consists of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and ideas of which we are aware. These often derive often immediate sense-perceptions such as sight, smell, and touch. In The Ego and the Id, Freud argues that the goal of psychoanalysis is to make unconscious mental phenomena available to consciousness.

Adjacent to the unconscious, the id is the site of impulses like the death instinct. It is in tension with the ego, which seeks to reign in or adapt aspects of these impulses.

The ego is the site of consciousness and comprises the set of thoughts that constitute the sense of self. It seeks both to restrain and to satisfy the id, receiving expectations about the rules with which to govern the id via the super-ego.

The super-ego is the ideal state to which the ego aspires. It is developed through childhood identification with the parents and it is reinforced through the received moral expectations of family and society reinforced through institutions like religion, education, and law. Freud argues that aspects of the super-ego are phylogenetic, meaning that “residue” or lingering aspects of these moral expectations are passed from generation to generation.

A discharge of libidinal energetic tension into a relationship, person, or object. For instance, Freud argues that within the Oedipus Complex, young boys relate to their mothers as an object-cathexis, meaning that their libidinal energy is released through relationship with their mother.

Through the process of identification, the subject is unconsciously merged with an object, as when a young boy identifies with his father. In this process, the ego takes on aspects of the love-object, such as the father.

The exchange of psychical energy within the psyche, between the id, ego, and super-ego. For instance, the Oedipus Complex describes an economy of libidinal exchange.

The Oedipus complex is Freud’s theory about the fundamental development of the psyche. Based on Sophocles’s ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, the theory posits that as an infant, the child develops an erotic attachment to the mother. He then identifies with the father who shares this erotic attachment. As the child matures, he comes to see his father as a rival for his mother’s affections. This creates a feeling of ambivalence, a mixture of love and hatred, toward the father.

More commonly known as the life drive, the life instinct is the libidinal impulse toward procreation, unification, and life affirmation. The life instinct is the primary drive in the psyche.

More commonly known as the death drive or Thanatos, the death instinct is the impulse toward inanimacy and death. This drive can be directed inward, toward self-destruction, or outward, in the form of aggression.