ABSTRACT
The Freudian approach seems to depend on 'the progress of neurological, psychological and pathological knowledge'. Hereby, medical knowledge is at once the transcendental limit of psychoanalysis, and also the condition of its possibility. Indeed, Freud arrived at the threshold of the psychical unconscious by the rigour of his neurological reasoning. The chapter aims to illustrate this thesis by drawing on the debate concerning hypnosis, which animated medical circles—especially in France—on the eve of the twentieth century. The elements of this debate, as well as Freud's position within it, the author have derived from a series of articles written by Freud in and around 1890. In between the lines of this and other publications was born a plausible precursor of what was to become the most remarkable Freudian 'thing': the psychical unconscious. In its inchoate form it took on the guise of Charcotian neurology, gradually achieving an autonomy which, in the current century, is widely recognised.
