The Unconscious

A highly original first anthology on the cultural history of the unconscious that is destined to become definitive.

“Know thyself”—the injunction that was once inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo—became a touchstone for classical and modern philosophers before being embraced as the endgame of psychoanalysis by Freud and his followers. The conceptual baggage that Freud took on his armchair journey into the unconscious mind is well known—and so, too, is the more recent science on implicit memory, blindsight and automatic processing—but the history of the unconscious beyond the consulting room and laboratory has largely been overlooked.

From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, The Unconscious by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. It brings together a chorus of voices—including Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Mary Arnold-Forster, Swami Vivekananda, and Philip K. Dick, to name only some—to investigate the elusive psychology of memory and learning, instinct and imagination, creative breakthrough and mental breakdown.

Moving beyond the familiar psychoanalytic framework, the book draws on a rich seam of sources, including case studies, psychological experiments, pulp fiction, urban legend, and commercial hype. Approaching the unconscious as a product of both discovery and invention, the anthology underscores its importance as a perennial source of debate, a tantalizing mirror to our hidden selves, and a powerful master key that continues to influence contemporary thought.