On Nuclear Unconscious

Any use of the term “unconscious” poses a problem that is still almost impossible to solve either theoretically or operationally. To begin with, the prefix “un” denies what follows, much as unreality denotes what is “not real.” But have any two physicists or philosophers ever agreed as to what is “real?” And can any psysiologist, psychologist or semanticist “really” delimit what is “conscious?” Indeed, in the history of thought, the term has had about as many connotations as there were commentators. The following is a kaleidoscopic review:

The ancient Chinese conceived of chi as a principle that “unconsciously” pervaded all animation, divisible into the positive constructive forces of Yang and the negative ones of Yin — curiously analogous to the Hebrew Yetzer ah'tov and Yetzer ah'rah. Galen repostulated the Ionic “humors” of blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile which, singly or in combination, unconsciously rendered human beings respectively sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric or melancholic. Shakespeare regarded “the pale cast of thought” as only a shadow of human passions. Paracelsus, Spinoza and Pascal wrote of latent affects, Fichte of unformed ideas, Goethe and Schopenhauer of the hidden wellsprings of creative imagery, and von Schubert of the motivation of dreams. Liebnitz, Hubbard, Driesch and von Fechner recognized the existence of “unconscious memories,” expanded by Jung to include the atavistic residues of all animate experiences — part of Bergson's universally conative élan vital. Nietzsche, Schilling, Schopenhauer and Carus acknowledged irrational impulses to action, thus anticipating Groddeck's “id.” Mesmer, Liebault and Janet (vide his cathartic cure of Achilles, a “demon possessed patient”) also anticipated Freud in attributing deviant behavior to “unconscious” motivations,

This editorial was condensed from a Plenary Address, “Are we Unconscious of an Impending Nuclear Holocaust?,” to the Twelfth Congress of Psychotherapy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Augus