ABSTRACT
1 The unconscious
The unconscious is a vast subject which may need to be approached agnostically. It can be discerned via its manifestations, that is in dream imagery, parapraxes (known as Freudian slips), and noticing coincidences that have no other explanation. A helpful metaphor for the unconscious utilised by writer Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) in Steppenwolf (1972, pp.192–209) would be the way the theatre stage at any given instant… might be seen as encompassing everything – the cast waiting to come on, the backstage crew, the audience, the writer, and so on. A dream could be analysed using such an approach to interpret what the unconscious might be indicating. The chapter surveys the historical antecedents of the idea of the unconscious going back to the 17th century. Jung described the unconscious as encompassing “everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious” (1954, par.382).
