Rhythms of the suggestive unconscious

Abstract

This paper explores a suggestive, virtual and non-psychological unconscious in relation to three important writers in the late nineteenth century: Freud, Henri Bergson and Frederick Myers. Reading psychoanalysis through the concept of lived duration in Bergson's work enables us to understand an immanent model of a non-psychological unconscious. This is also a virtual unconscious that is located within Frederick Myer's concepts of a subliminal self. The virtual and non-psychological unconscious is implicit in the way Freud thought about the primary processes and in how he understood the basis of the unconscious, as dreaming. This paper explores the implications of such an account for psychoanalysis, how it allows us to perceive the unconscious, as not just a psychological entity, but as an unknowable life force of history.In this paper I want to offer a reading of a virtual, non-psychological unconscious. Reading Freud's primary unconscious through Henri Bergson's ideas of virtual life, returns us to debates on suggestion and hypnotism and to the terrain of late nineteenth-century subliminal psychology. A psychology associated with Pierre Janet, Frederick Myers and William James. 1 Subliminal psychology and psychoanalysis arose at the same historical point and both movements were initially understood in relation to the phenomenon of hypnosis. 2 In contrast to Freud, Myers conceived of a transpersonal, rather than an individual unconscious; one that communicates through hypnosis and telepathy. The importance of Myers's work in terms of a history of telepathy has been recently re-evaluated by Roger Luckhurst. Whereas the psychological significance of Myers's theory of the r

Habit and Affect: Revitalizing a Forgotten History

“…Rather, the writings of Freud characterized as the ‘New Psychology’ (McDougall, 1927b: 39), the writings of William James and Darwinism provide the dialogic conditions for his articulations of character and conduct. I do not have the space to engage with the way in which Freud translated telepathy and suggestion within his formulations of transference (see Campbell, 2009; Chertok and Stengers, 1992), but what we can clearly see in this later account is a modification of his concepts of habit and instinct which take into account the increasing naturalization of the concept of will or inhibition (see Smith, 1992). This sits alongside his commitment to process ontologies (James and Bergson) rather than reifying the human mind as a thing or entity (McDougall, 1927b: 39).…”

Affect

“…Arguably, the 'data' are not the same kind as in an interview situation in the social sciences, even if the researcher may attend to bodily gestures and changes. The issue of transference brings this out, since it is supposed only to take place in a clinical situation or analytic scene (see Redman, 2009; see also Campbell, 2009, for an objection to this view). There are clearly questions that need to be asked of this method, which involves differential production of discourse and different methods for obtaining analysands' or clients' speech, as opposed to the respondent's answers or questions.…”

Telepathy and its vicissitudes: Freud, thought transference and the hidden lives of the (repressed and non-repressed) unconscious

“…Yet, unlike Myers, Freud remained ambivalent. Moreover, Freud's understanding of the unconscious must be distinguished from models of the non-conscious or subconscious to be found in late nineteenth-century Subliminal Psychology (see Keeley, 2001;Campbell, 2009;Blackman, 2010). A key difference lies in the notion of repression, which for Freud is dynamic and productive.…”

“…For Freud, acceding to telepathy meant acceding to Myer's theory of a secondary and subliminal consciousness which was the dominant understanding of the psychological non-conscious in the late nineteenth century (see Campbell, 2009). By accepting telepathy, he would automatically be buying into a psychology that marginalised him and which was in fact a psychology that Freud's meta-psychological papers on the unconscious were designed to overturn.…”