Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian physician and the founder of Psychoanalysis, was the first one who popularized the idea of the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the cornerstone of psychoanalysis, and for years the term “unconscious mind” was the monopoly of psychoanalysts. But the idea of an unconscious mind did not start with Freud, nor a contemporary believer in the unconscious mind is necessarily a Freudian.
Before Freud
Psychology, at its dawn in the 19th century, started with the conscious mind. To the pioneers, from Wundt to James, the idea of unconscious mental activity was pretty far-fetched. However, long before this time, philosophers knew that there were different levels in our psychological life. Significant names in philosophy had somehow noticed that part of our mind works outside our awareness.
German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the first European philosophers to point out the unconscious mental processes. He believed that if sensory stimuli are below a certain threshold they will not reach our consciousness and we cannot be aware of them. What we become aware of is the summation of these subliminal stimuli.
By the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant devoted a chapter of his book “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view” to the perceptions we are not conscious of having.
Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) belonged to the group of German “Naturphilosophe” who believed in the unconscious mind and assumed that, in art, we could see the interplay of conscious and unconscious minds.
Arthur Schopenhauer ( 1788-1860) was a prominent figure who talked in more detail about the Unconscious. He mentioned many of its aspects and believed that most of our mental content and functioning are unconscious and many of our instinctual drives reside there.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) also believed in the distinction between conscious and unconscious minds and the domination of the unconscious over the conscious mind.
Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842 – 1906) published his book named “Philosophy of the Unconscious” where he describes three levels of the unconscious in his attempt to reconcile Hegel’s “Idea” with Schopenhauer’s “Will.”
As we see, the concept of the unconscious mind was utterly familiar in the 18th and 19th century Europe, at least among the German-speaking elite. It is not Freud’s discovery. However, Freud elaborated and formulated this concept, particularly in a clinical context and developed a form of psychology based on the dynamics of the Unconscious. He was an outstanding physician, but he stands, as Newton once said, “on the shoulder of giants.”