‘Surrealist approaches have today diffused into art and advertising, but do they offer the practising poet more than useful improvisation, a way of getting the creative juices flowing? The difficulty centres on the subconscious. Many Surrealists, though speaking of the subconscious, actually meant the unconscious, and this entity does not exist. Certainly the brain's actions are largely hidden from us, and may well produce regularities that can be called schemas, archetypes, inter-cultural patterns of perception, but there is nothing corresponding to the id, ego and superego of Freud's or Lacan's formulation. Nonetheless, laboratory work has shown that the brain is marvelously retentive, and stores vastly more than we can easily recall. Moreover, it stores speech and perception as transcriptions of experience - i.e. not as language constructs, mental or otherwise, but as diverse guides for subsequent action. Some of these may be universal, as is suggested by occult and shamanistic practices, but most are surely individual. Dreams and trances are not always illuminating, therefore, and Surrealism is not a royal road to the subconscious, simply portraying it will not create art. That needs selection, and a shaping for emotive and aesthetic ends.’ Wikipedia
