The Unconscious Before Freud

230 Pages·1962·9.291 MB·English

by  Lancelot Law Whyte

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BLEDAY ANCHOR BOOK
THE
Unconscious
! ~
BEFORE FREUD
LANCELOT LAW WHYTE
I!i;:_
Anchor Books
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
1962
THE
Unconscious
BEFORE FREUD
LANCELOT LAw WHYTE has written and lectured
extensively on his principal interests, the history
of ideas and the fundamentals of exact science.
He has published several volumes of criticism
and scientific philosophy, including Next De
velopment in Man and Accent on Form.
© 1960 by Basic Books. Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Anchor edition, 1962, by arrangement
with Basic Books, Inc.
No one can take from us the foy of the first
becoming aware of something, the so-called dis
covery. But if we also demand the honoT, it can be
utterly spoiled for us, for we are usually not the
first.
What does discovery mean, and who can say
that he has discovered this or that? After all it's
pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it's simply
unconscious conceit, not to admit frankly that one
is a plagiarist.
GOETHE
PREFACE
The origins of this work lie back in the years after the first
World War, when psychoanalysis was a novelty and I in
nocently imagined that Freud had just discovered the un
conscious mind. None of my teachers had explained to me
that major achievements are usually the culmination of a
cultural process extending over centuries.
So when I found that Nietzsche had expressed several of
the insights of Freud's doctrine twenty or more years before
him, I was greatly excited and could not understand why
neither Freud nor his interpreters had mentioned this sig
nificant fact. For such anticipations showed that the un
conscious mind was not just an invention of Freud's, but a
step in the discovery of objective truth, a necessary way of
interpreting the facts found indep~ndently by very different
minds: an intuitive philosopher and a clinical scientist.
This excitement has survived more than thirty years and
another World War, though my notes on those whom I
then regarded as Freud's predecessors have frequently been
lost. But my perspective has changed. It is now the state
of European thought during the two hundred years before
Freud that interests me. Moreover the early thinkers are not
"predecessors" who "anticipated" Freud. They, and Freud,
and countless others are participants in a tradition which
is being slowly enriched. They did not "lead to Freud," for
some of them knew much that Freud, rightly for his own
purposes, preferred not to emphasize. Hence one way of im
proving current ideas is to recall what was thought and said
in earlier times. The aim is not to project our ideas into
the past, or to dazzle ourselves with the prescience of early
x PREFACE
thinkers as wise as we are, but to recognize where they knew
more.
Thus what began as an interest in the "history of the idea
of the unconscious before Freud" has become a study in the
development of human awareness and of ideas: how the
European individual first became intensely aware of his
own faculty of consciousness, and then balanced this by also
becoming aware by inference of much in his own mental
processes of which he is not directly conscious. Freud is not
final; he is the most influential figure in a succession of
thinkers, all recognizing aspects of the truth. And Freud
himself may be the anticipator of a more balanced doctrine
that still lies out of sight.
, The continuity of the tradition of human thought and
the productive imagination of individuals are inseparable
features of a single story. The individuals and the tradition
mold each other. Thus Freud's greatness implies that he
can only be adequately interpreted against several centuries
of European thought.
When Volume I of Ernest Jones's biography of Freud
appeared in 1953, and I found that he explained Freud's
theory of the mind, not in the context of the development
of European thought but in terms of academic and clinical
psychology over the preceding fifty years, I was shocked into
action. As a start I gave a brief surveyl of "the unconscious
before Freud" on the Third Programme of the B.B.C., call
ing attention to the ideas of Schelling, Carus, Schopen
hauer, von Hartmann, and others.
At first I hesitated to attempt a more extensive study,
regarding this as a task for a professional psychologist, phi
losopher, or historian. Then gradually, as the result of the
response of audiences in Great Britian and the United
States, I came to realize that my interest in the matter was
partly due to II conviction, until then barely conscious, that
historical understanding can throw light on current prob
lems. Thus a study of the idea of the unconscious over the
two hundred years before Freud can, I believe, throw some
PREFACE xi
light on the limitations of contemporary ideas. This may be
called therapeutic history: history revealing where current
ideas are partial. the expression of transitory preoccupations
and inhibitions. One can be fascinated by the past for its
own sake, and at the same time allow history to enlighten
one. For past thinkers, in their different contexts, knew
much that we have either forgotten or have not yet learned
to express in mid-twentieth-<:entury language. Thus I came
to feel that here was a task appropriate to my situation and
interests.
This book may perhaps be regarded as a contribution
toward the general education of the second half century,
with the twofold aim of using the historical approach to
clarify and unify foundations, and of warning the young
from accepting anyone doctrine as absolute. The specializa
tion of contemporary thought can be remedied by remem
bering our roots.
The hurried reader may welcome a summary of my main
assumptions and conclusions:
1. Ideas often come suddenly to individuals. but they
usually have a long history.
:2. There is seldom a monopoly in great ideas. The general
conception of unconscious mental processes, in a different
context, is implicit in many ancient traditions. The develop
ment of the idea in Europe-prior to the relatively precise
theories of OUI time-occupied some two centuries, say
1680-1880, and was the work of many countries and
schools of thought. The idea was forced on them as a re
sponse to facts; it was necessary to correct an overemphasis,
c. 1600-1700, on the consciousness of the individual.
3. Criticism is the due of genius. Freud's greatness and
lasting influence are here taken for granted. But his origi
nality was in some respects less than he and others have im
agined. Every generation exaggerates the achievements of
the heroes it has created. The worthy followers of great men
are those who seek to lessen any damage they may have done
by showing where their ideas were inadequate or mistaken.
xii PREFACE
In the case of Freud this task may take another half
century.
4. For Freud to achieve what he did between 1895 and
1920 two conditions were necessary: that a long preparation
should already have taken place and that he should himself
be largely unaware of it, so that while unconsciously influ
enced by it he was free to make his own inferences from
clinical observations.
5. The antithesis conscious/unconscious probably does
not hold the clue to the further advance of psychological
theory. It requires modification or reinterpretation in terms
of more comprehensive and precise ideas. Some suggestions
are made regarding these.
6. Reason has not yet learned what its precise limitations
are, and Done of the various sciences understands its own
foundations. The application of supposedly scientific ideas
and methods to the interpretation (let alone the control!)
of human situations calls for the greatest caution. For ex
ample, this entire book should be set in giant quotation
marks implying: "These concepts and assertions are all
partial, being borrowed from a tradition known to be in
adequate, but they are the best I can do now."
I wish to thank the countless friends, too numerous to
cite, who have helped with suggestions, making Chapters
V-VIII a collective product. Also my wife, Eve, for her in
valuable aid. Finally, the work would have been more diffi
cult without the facilities of the Widener Library at Har
vard, which I enjoyed while holding a Graham Foundation
Fellowship (1958/59).
London, March 1960 L.L.W.