Unconscious without Freud

Rosemarie Sand has been a psychoanalyst for twenty-five years. She is a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the International Psychoanalytical Association. Her works include Early Nineteenth Century Anticipation of Freudian Theory, Confirmation in the Dora Case, Pre-Freudian Discovery of Dream Meaning: the Achievements of Charcot, Janet, and Krafft-Ebing, On a Contribution to a Future Scientific Study of Dream Interpretation, and Freud and the Western Dream Tradition. She specializes in antecedents to Freudian theory.

• PrefaceChapter 1. Leibniz and the UnconsciousChapter 2. PsychodynamicsChapter 3. The Light and the Dark in the MindChapter 4. The Power of Dark IdeasChapter 5. The Leibnizian BrainChapter 6. Free AssociationChapter 7. The Cartesian UnconsciousChapter 8. The Demonic Unconscious Chapter 9. The Romantic ImaginationChapter 10. Schopenhauer: The Ego and the IdChapter 11. Hartmann: the BlockbusterChapter 12. The Ghost in the Freudian MansionChapter 13. The Psychic MechanismChapter 14. The Herbartian LegacyReferences About the Author

Rosemarie Sand has resurrected the splendid theory of unconscious mental functioning proposed by G.W. Leibniz at the beginning of the eighteenth century, together with the contributions of Christian Wolff and other disciples during the following decades. The teaching of this Leibniz-Wolffian psychology was highly regarded and widely accepted during the nineteenth century. Freud himself relied on its conceptualization of unconscious mind during the decade before he created his own first theory. Its immediate, potential importance today is attributable to its being unencumbered by the controversial ‘Freudian’ features to which critics have objected, the grounds for the interminable ‘Freud wars.’ Devoid of these obstacles, the Leibnizian vision could easily serve as the common denominator for diverse Freudian schools; it could also render service as a common ground where psychoanalytic theoreticians and the experimenters of cognitive psychology could meet.