Discovery of the Unconscious
1970
Henri F. Ellenberger (1905–1993)
A landmark book when it was published in 1970, psychiatrist Henri Ellenberger’s Discovery of the Unconscious remains the best introduction to psychodynamic psychology—a term that refers to a range of psychological theories about the unconscious determinants of human behavior. In no other book do we find such a careful and clear exposition of how psychotherapeutic treatments evolved over the course of human history.
Ellenberger was of French Swiss descent and was educated in France. He specialized in psychiatry when he entered medical school. Thus he was trained in psychiatry at just the time that psychodynamic training and practice were becoming commonly available. (The word psychodynamic is used here to mean both the psychoanalytic approach of Freud and the depth psychology of Carl Jung.) During the 1950s, Ellenberger spent six years at the Menninger Clinic in the United States, where he first began writing histories of psychodynamic psychology.
Discovery of the Unconscious is astonishing in its range. Ellenberger convincingly demonstrates the multiple interconnections across time and place of insights and practices that eventually formed modern psychological approaches to treating mental disorders. Rather than divide history into prescientific and scientific eras, Ellenberger documents the creation of our understanding of the unconscious as a product of the therapeutic and religious work of many people over several millennia. Thus shamans, curanderos, mystics, mesmerists, spiritualists, priests, and poets all contributed throughout human history, along with those one would normally expect: physicians, psychiatrists, pastoral counselors, and psychologists.
Ellenberger provides the most comprehensive account of the context of Sigmund Freud’s life and work. He situates Freud within nineteenth-century Jewish history and traces the many and varied influences—intellectual, political, social, economic—on Freud’s intellectual and clinical development. In addition, he highlights the work of many other key contributors in the modern era, such as Pierre Janet.
This is the book to read to understand how modern mental-health treatment evolved.
SEE ALSO Shamanism (c. 10,000 BCE), Psychoanalysis (1899), Emmanuel Movement (1906), Jungian Psychology (1913)
Surface and Depth. This photograph of leaves reflected in water conveys the layers of consciousness and the idea that not all meaning can be found on the surface.