The Unconscious

ENDORSEMENTS“A treasury of fascinating and astutely selected texts that brings clarity and focus to a vast and unwieldy subject. Antonio Melechi has distilled a lifetime of multidisciplinary research into an admirably concise volume that sparks fresh ideas and insights at every turn.”—Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts and High Society“The unconscious always surprises; it appears in the most curious of places and in the strangest of guises. Bringing together a vast range of materials from voodoo rites to contemporary neuroscience, Melechi’s astonishing compendium is the first to properly acknowledge the startling history of the unconscious.”—Rhodri Hayward, Reader in Medical History, Queen Mary University of London“Packed with insight and ideas, Antonio Melechi’s marvelous anthology adds up to a multifaceted intellectual biography of that elusive entity, the unconscious. Going far beyond its subject’s well-known Freudian incarnation, it features 2,000 years of material from the classical world to the New Age, ranging from heavy-duty philosophers to lesser-known pioneers such as Frances Power Cobbe and her ‘unconscious cerebration,’ along with more unexpected figures such as Henri Michaux, Philip K. Dick, and even George Orwell.”—Phil Baker, author of Austin Osman Spare and City of the Beast “A fascinating tour of our sometimes futile and always contested efforts to demystify the unconscious—from ancient Greece to modern neuroscience, via Nietzsche, Freud, and more.”—Christian Jarrett, editor, Psyche magazine; author of Be Who You Want

Antonio Melechi is a historian of medicine and psychology, specializing in the cultural history of the unconscious. He is the author of Fugitive Minds and Servants of the Supernatural, and his essays and reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Granta, New Statesman, Prospect, and Aeon.

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