ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis concerned itself with many of the same questions addressed by the occult revival: the nature of conscious experience, the hidden capacities of the unconscious and the limits of individual subjectivity. One of the stories most often told about the early history of psychoanalysis, for instance, concerns the rift that emerged between Sigmund Freud and his protege Carl Jung over the nature of the libido, the question of the collective unconscious and the problem of the occult. Occult periodicals, like their more mainstream counterparts, were largely resistant to the idea of psycho-sexual development and shocked by the implications of the Oedipus complex. When Freud delivered his paper on telepathy at Harz, psychoanalysis was undergoing a process of rapid institutional development. The Medico-Psychological Clinic ceased operations in the early 1920s, driven by internal disputes between those committed to its experimental treatments and those pushing for a stricter interpretation of Freudian doctrine.
