It provided an explanation for why people often do things without being
able to explain why, and how we can know things without knowing how we
learned them, and a lot of other similar phenomena of not knowing our own
minds. I know *I* don't have full access at will to everything that's in
*my* mind, which I would be expected to if there were no concept of the
subconscious.
> My personal belief (not informed by hard study, just opinion) is that it
> enabled him to explain why so many young women were being sexually
> abused in their own homes in an environment of repression without coming
> out and saying, "these women were abused". Even if he wasn't doing this
> per se, freud's idea became a release valve for victorian sexuality.
>
> But that's a digression.
>
Both true enough.
Eva