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The protagonist of this book is the Freudian unconscious. Its nature and my reformulation of it will be found in the introductory chapter which Eric Rayner and David Tuckett have kindly written.
Further reflection about the subject has made me aware that the Freudian notion of the unconscious contains implicitly two essential aspects which, so far as I know, have not been explicitly mentioned before: the concept of bi-logical structure and that of the fundamental antinomy which is its most obvious consequence. This book devotes special attention to both. Once they are clearly understood, the reader may find that, together, they open up new ways towards a deeper understanding of human beings and of certain aspects of the world. This does not mean, however, that I intend to neglect other aspects of the unconscious.
This chapter and the next one describe these concepts. The rest of the book is devoted to the study of clinical examples of them, to widen their understanding, to see their various applications and possible developments, and, finally, to give some hints about their philosophical pertinence. (Both clinical and non-clinical examples are numbered consecutively throughout the book.)
If we translate Freud's intuitions about the unconscious into a more general, logical, and philosophical language, as I have tried to do, we become aware that such intuitions are only one expression of a fundamental epistemological problem which is also found in other fields, such as mathematics, philosophy, and probably also physics. The subjects of these disciplines are in themselves completely alien to