Suggestions from the Unconscious: Freud, Hypnosis, and the Mind-Body Problem
Fulvio Marone
May 8, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429482816-21 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
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| Key points | Argues that medical knowledge was at once the transcendental limit and the condition of possibility of psychoanalysis, and that Freud reached the threshold of the psychical unconscious through rigorous neurological reasoning. Drawing on the late-nineteenth-century debate over hypnosis and Freud's writings around 1890, the author proposes that a precursor of the psychical unconscious first appeared in the guise of Charcotian neurology before gradually achieving autonomy. |
Abstract
The Freudian approach seems to depend on &s;the progress of neurological, psychological and pathological knowledge&s;. 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;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 &s;thing&s;: 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.