ABSTRACT
The Unconscious: a conceptual analysis was written in 1957, when I had just resigned the position of Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at Manchester University in order to become a member of the Leeds University Philosophy Department. At Manchester one of my duties had been to teach the psychology of religion. I had told the committee that interviewed me for the post in May 1951 that I had read some William James, a little Jung, and rather more Freud, but otherwise knew nothing about the psychology of religion. ‘No matter’, they replied. ‘If you begin work now, you should be able to teach it by October.’ And so I had a shock immersion in the literature, one result of which was to become deeply engaged with a number of psychoanalytic writers and not only Freud, but also, among others, Marjorie Brierley and W. R. D. Fairbairn, albeit in a largely unsystematic way.
