The Unconscious before the Unconscious. Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry in Nineteenth-Century France

This paper aims to briefly analyse the history of the notion of ‘unconscious’ in nineteenth-century French philosophy. French philosophical tradition tended to interpret this notion in two different ways (albeit often intertwined): physiologically and psychologically. The first approach has its roots in Maine de Biran’s doctrine, which postulated the idea of an unconscious cerebration – later developed and modified by some alienists of the second half of the 19th century and by Pierre Janet. The second approach instead addresses the psychological nature of the unconscious and can be traced back to the French debate on Animism in the 1850s.