r, transform the dynamic processes of the consciousness into fixed concepts and ideals (by which Lawrence usually means ideas). This comes about when the mind closes itself off, in an access of self-satisfaction, and is no longer "dynamically responsive to the promptings of the unconscious" (Hochman 133). As ideas are given precedence by the human will over the spontaneous impulses of the unconscious human beings reduce themselves to something more like machines than people. For modern humanity it is "against this automatism, this degradation from the spontaneous-vital reality into the mechanical-material reality [that] the human soul must struggle" (Psychoanalysis 248).
In developing his ideas Lawrence was never, as he freely admits, a scientist or a scholar and his approach to the description of the unconscious is not entirely consistent and is only fitfully systematic. Nor is it always grounded in a firm grasp of the scientific and philosophical principles to which he has occasion to refer, both directly and indirectly. In fact some portio
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