The Foundation of the Unconscious The unconscious, cornerstone of psychoanalysis, was a key twentieth- century concept and retains an enormous influence on psychological and cultural theory. Yet there is a surprising lack of investigation into its roots in the critical philosophy and Romantic psychology of the early nineteenth century, long before Freud. Why did the uncon- scious emerge as such a powerful idea? And why at that point? This interdisciplinary study breaks new ground in tracing the emergence of the unconscious through the work of philosopher Friedrich Schelling, examining his association with Romantic psychologists, anthropolo- gists and theorists of nature. It sets out the beginnings of a neglected tradition of the unconscious psyche and proposes a compelling new argument: that the unconscious develops from the modern need to theorise individual independence. The book assesses the impact of this tradition on psychoanalysis itself, re-reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams in the light of broader post-Enlightenment attempts to theorise individuality. matt ffytche is a lecturer at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. His research focuses on the history of psychoanalysis, and critical theories of subjectivity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a co-editor of the web-based digital archive, ‘Deviance, Disorder and the Self’. The Foundation of the Unconscious Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche Matt ffytche cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521766494 © Matt ffytche 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Ffytche, Matt. The foundation of the unconscious : Schelling, Freud, and the birth of the modern psyche / Matt Ffytche. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-76649-4 (hardback) 1. Subconsciousness. 2. Psychoanalysis – History. 3. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775–1854. 4. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. I. Title. BF315.F53 2011 154.209–dc23 2011031544 ISBN 978-0-521-76649-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For Andrea Light cast over our camp as if in day by reason and seeks cover underground. Contents Acknowledgements page viii Introduction: the historiography of the unconscious 1 Part I The subject before the unconscious 35 1 A general science of the I: Fichte and the crisis of self-identification 37 2 Natural autonomy: Schelling and the divisions of freedom 75 Part II The Romantic unconscious 97 3 Divining the individual: towards a metaphysics of the unconscious 99 4 The historical unconscious: the psyche in the Romantic human sciences 138 5 Post-idealism and the Romantic psyche 178 Part III The psychoanalytic unconscious 215 6 Freud: the Geist in the machine 217 7 The liberal unconscious 255 Conclusion 274 Bibliography 289 Index 306 vii Acknowledgements I would like to thank John Forrester and the editorial team on Psychoanalysis and History for publishing an earlier draft of some of the arguments in Chapter 6 as ‘“The Most Obscure Problem of All”: Autonomy and its Vicissitudes in The Interpretation of Dreams’, Psychoanalysis and History, 9, 1 (2007), 39–70, and Joel Faflak for pub- lishing a portion of my earlier researches on the Romantic psyche as ‘F.W. J. Schelling and G. H. Schubert: Psychology in Search of Psyches’, in the issue on Romantic Psyche and Psychoanalysis he guest edited for Romantic Circles Praxis Series (December 2008), and for his encourag- ing editorial comments. I am very grateful to have had access to the collections at Senate House Library, the Wellcome Library and the British Library, through- out the period of my research, and for the patience and professionalism of the staff there. Also to the librarians and staff of the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex, and the libraries at Queen Mary, and at the Institute of Germanic Studies (University of London). I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Board who funded the begin- nings of this project many years ago as a Ph.D. at Queen Mary, and to Paul Hamilton for his benign supervision and preparedness to enter the Schellingian abyss when it was still very dimly lit. I count myself lucky, and am immensely grateful for the many expert and critical readers of parts of this manuscript in earlier forms, especially to John Forrester, Howard Caygill, Sonu Shamdasani and Andrea Brady who read and commented on the first draft of this book, and whose critical insights and practical support have been invaluable. Also to Daniel Pick, Jacqueline Rose, Peter Dews, Peter Howarth, Will Montgomery and Ben Watson who generously read and responded to sections of this work and offered valuable suggestions and help. I would like to thank Rowan Boyson, Molly MacDonald, Garry Kelly, Helen McDowell, Dominic ffytche, Michèle Barrett, David Dwan, Nikolay Mintchev, Angus Nicholls, Keston Sutherland, Ian Patterson, John Wilkinson and Jeremy Prynne, variously, for encouragement, support, viii