Online research in philosophy

This paper explores the psychoanalytic conception of the unconscious and critiques it from a phenomenlogical perspective, especially Sartre and Heidegger, with a view to conceptualizing the unconscious from an ontological rather than psychological mindset.

Alasdair MacIntyre argues that Freud's conception of the unconscious is complicated by his tendency to use the term in two different ways. MacIntyre shows how Freud uses the term "unconscious" both as a straightforward description of psychological phenomena, and as an evaluative notion to explain the links between childhood events and adult behavior. This clarification helps to shed light on the many misunderstandings of psychoanalysis, and to separate out what is and what is not of lasting value in Freud's account of the unconscious. This new edition includes a substantial new preface by the author, in which he discusses repression, determinism, transference, and "practical rationality," and offers a rare comparison of Aristotle and Lacan on the concept of desire. MacIntyre takes the opportunity to reflect both on the reviews and criticisms of the first edition and also on his own philosophical stance.

Over the past two decades, a new picture of the unconscious has emerged from a variety of disciplines that are broadly part of cognitive science. According to this picture, unconscious processes seem to be capable of doing many things that were thought to require intention, deliberation, and conscious awareness. Moreover, they accomplish these things without the conflict and drama of the psychoanalytic unconscious. These processes range from complex information processing, through goal pursuit and emotions, to cognitive control and self-regulation. This collection of 20 original chapters by leading researchers examines the unconscious from social, cognitive, and neuroscientific viewpoints, presenting some of the most important developments at the heart of this new picture of the unconscious. The New Unconscious will be an important resource on the unconscious for researchers in psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience.

Does the unconscious exist? Cultural critic Antony Easthope answers with a witty, lucid, informed "yes" and draws out its implications for the way we live, how we enjoy art, and how we think about people in society and history. Drawing on the writings of Freud and Lacan, he argues that the study of the unconscious is a way of analyzing meanings across culture as an effect of desire. Easthope tests for unconscious significance in an amazing variety of examples, including jokes, Tampax advertisements, Hamlet , Hitchcock's Psycho , the life and death of Princess Di, Terminator 2 , Bob Geldof's autobiography, and the film Titanic.

The author confirms the existence of the unconscious mind and traces its importance, using hypnosis, psychoanalysis, subliminal manipulation, dreams, and hard ...

Introduction -- Tending the dark fire: the Boehmian notion of drive -- The night-side of nature: the early Schellingian unconscious -- The speculative psychology of dissociation: the later Schellingian unconscious -- Schellingian libido theory.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: the historiography of the unconscious; Part I. The Subject Before the Unconscious: 1. A general science of the I: Fichte and the crisis of self-identification; 2. Natural autonomy: Schelling and the divisions of freedom; Part II. The Romantic Unconscious: 3. Divining the individual: towards a metaphysics of the unconscious; 4. The historical unconscious; 5. Post-idealism and the Romantic psyche; Part III. The Psychoanalytic Unconscious: 6. Freud: the Geist in the machine; 7. The liberal unconscious; Conclusion.