THE DISCOVERY OF THE PSYCHIC UNCONSCIOUS AND THE FIRST BERGSONIAN THEORY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

Abstract

In the second introduction to The Creative Mind, Bergson states that intuition led him to the acknowledgment of the existence of the psychological unconscious. In this paper we seek to reconstruct the path taken by Bergsonian thought that led him to this result. To this end, we resort not only on Bergson’s early writings but also on the records of the classes he taught in which the theme of the unconscious is made explicit. We attempt to show that Bergsonian intuition led him to reframe the problem of the unconscious in new terms in relation to some of the discursive traditions on the unconscious that existed at the time, as well as to the discovery of the psychic unconscious along the lines of what we call the tradition of the hypnoclinic unconscious and to the formulation of his own theory of the unconscious.

Keywords: Bergson. Unconscious. Duration.