Descartes using the method of doubt, tries to create a firm foundation for new sciences. This method should be based on something that is not susceptible to doubt. When Descartes applies the method of doubt, he doubts everything that are derived from senses. Descartes adopted the strategy of withholding his belief from anything that was not entirely certain and in dubitable. He decides that he cannot be deceived about his own existence, because if he did not exist, he would not be around to worry about it. If he did not exist, he would not be thinking; so if he is thinking, he must exist. This is the Cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am.” Thinking comes first, and for Descartes that is a real priority. “The mind is better known than the body”, and the cogito ergo sum makes Descartes believe, not just that he has proven his existence as a thinking substance, a mind, leaving the body as some foreign thing to worry about later. Descartes takes “I” as his first principle and thus “I think” is qualitatively different from our physical body. Thinking causes awareness and when we think we are conscious. Consciousness is very complete in itself for Descartes and it i

The essence for soul to Descartes, the attribute that makes a soul what is it, is thinking. “But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? Athing that doubts, understands, affrims, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.”(Descartes Medidation #2). Descartes’ main concern is the mind-body problem. He claimed that human beings are composites of two kinds of substances, mind and body. A mind is a conscious thinking being, that is, it understands, wills, senses, and imagines. A body is a being extended in length, width, and breadth. Minds are indivisible, whereas bodies are infinitely divisible. The “I” of the “I think, therefore I am” is the mind and can exist without being extended, so that it can in principle survive the death of the body. Descartes thought that mind and body interact. According to Freud, mind-body duality is not consistent. Some physical and somatic processes break our consciousness and not self-evident. Since the consciousness is broken, there are some gaps, which can be filled with psychoanalysis but of course not all of them.

In conclusion, as Descartes is trying to reach his first principle as “I think, I exist” with certainty, changes his method and says thinking makes me conscious. Challenging Freud points out that id, ego and superego with interactions of consciousness and unconsciousness, “I” cannot be a first principle for consciousness. Ego is made of id (nature) and superego (culture) and no one can shape oneself without them. Accordi

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