As relações entre o inconsciente da psicologia de Carl Gustav Jung e a consciência subliminal de Frederic Myers

Abstract

The present work aims to investigate what relationships, whether of agreement or disagreement, that the concept of unconscious engendered by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung establishes with the concept of subliminal consciousness by the British researcher of psychology and late modern spiritualism 19th century, Frederic Myers. To this end, the two concepts were compared, using the hermeneutic method as a guide, mainly based on two texts by these authors, namely, On the Nature of the Psyche, from 1946, by Jung, and The Subliminal Consciousness, from 1892, by Myers. To carry out such a comparison, first, using the intertextual hermeneutic method, the meaning of the Jungian concept of the unconscious was interpreted, taking into account the socio-historical context and philosophical affiliation, more specifically the romantic philosophy of the unconscious of the doctor and philosopher Germanic Carl Gustav Carus, to which the Swiss thinker was subjected, thus highlighting the impact of these intertextual elements on his conception of the unconscious. Thus, it was concluded that the social context, which extends from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, of paranormal research with mediums that were so popular at the time, as well as the scientific consolidation movement of psychology at the time, decisively influenced the conception of the Swiss author's unconscious. Furthermore, it was found that the late romantic philosophy of the 19th century, represented in this research by Carus, also served as an ideational basis for the Swiss psychologist's thinking. Finally, it was concluded that the concepts of Myers and Jung have similarities regarding their innate, polypsychic, psychodynamic and creative-symbolic characters. A detail was found regarding the teleological understanding of these concepts. In this way, Jungian thought would appear much more affiliated with the sphere of subliminal psychologies at the turn of the century, whose main representatives were William James, Théodore Flournoy and, mainly, as a pioneer, Frederic Myers, than with the psychoanalytic context, as is commonly thought, given that the Freudian unconscious, unlike the Jungian, assumes an unknowability of unconscious contents resulting from the repressive effects of consciousness on them. Furthermore, this dissertation raises a hypothesis regarding the fact that Jung made very few mentions of Myers' work in his writings, unlike what happens with authors such as James and Flournoy. Given that the Swiss had read the British scholar's writings since his medical training, it is conjectured that this “omission” occurred due to Jung's desire, as well as that of all psychology at the time, to give scientific credibility to his analytical psychology, since Myers' psychological-spiritualist research was rejected by the medical-scientific community at the time.