The Unconscious Before Freud

The Unconscious Before Freud
Author Lancelot Law Whyte
Country United States
Language English
Published 1960 (Basic Books)
Media type Print
Pages 219

The Unconscious Before Freud is a 1960 book about the history of ideas about the unconscious mind by Lancelot Law Whyte.

Summary

Whyte, writing from a nonpsychoanalytic perspective,[1] describes the two thousand years of thinking about the unconscious that preceded Sigmund Freud, showing how Freud's predecessors established its importance.[2]

Reception

Psychologist Hans Eysenck notes in his Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985) that Whyte's book has become a classic.[2] Historian Peter Gay called the work "a brief but helpful survey" in his Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), but contrasted it unfavorably with Henri Ellenberger's subsequent work The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970).[3]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Gay 1995. p. 767.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Eysenck 212. p. 213.
  3. ↑ Gay 1995. p. 754.

Bibliography

Books
  • Eysenck, Hans (1986). Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books. ISBN 0-14-022562-5.
  • Gay, Peter (1995). Freud: A Life for Our Time. London: Papermac. ISBN 0-333-48638-2.