[Field of consciousness and level of anticipation]

Man's main activity is to live his future, to shape it, to direct it and to constantly adapt it to circumstances. This phenomenon is "anticipation". As far as this perspective is adopted, the field of consciousness appears narrow but extremely changing. The unconscious does not exist in so far as a territory, a structure or an apparatus. Unconscious has not to be a substantive but only an adjective. Data of consciousness remain unconscious or subconscious during the main part of the time. Moreover, the subject may live his future at various levels, from a biologic one till transcendence and the data of consciousness much depend on this level. All pathologic states involve an impoverishment of the field of consciousness. This limitation is sometimes transitory, for example in psychomotor epilepsy and above all in various neuroses. The patient then undergoes a sudden "regressing dive", which may be very brief and remain unseen by observer. During the "dive", he can only anticipate rudimentary and maladjusted behaviours, neurotic symptoms. In conversion hysteria, the regression is more durable but partial. Psychotic limitation, the level of which is variable, remains as long as psychosis itself.