In this seminar, Susan will explore some of the origins of our thinking about the unconscious and how its conceptualisation has changed over time from its philosophical underpinnings, through Freud and Psychoanalysis, into understanding broad group and societal phenomena. The unconscious is a transformative idea and provides potential explanations for what seem often to be intractable personal, work and social issues.

The idea of the unconscious is central to psychoanalytic and socioanalytic theories. It is an idea about processes that are elusive and can only be observed through their effects, or inferred from the gaps in our direct experience, and hence is constantly hypothetical and open to challenge; so, we may expect the idea of the unconscious to be in constant evolution. It is a thought about thoughts; an idea about ideas. It is an idea about how thoughts influence us even though we may not be aware of them. It is an idea about what we do with unwanted thoughts or thoughts that we are not ready to entertain. It is an idea about how thoughts shape and are shaped by our experience. It is an idea that responds to the question: what lies beneath consciousness? Or put another way: what prevents us from consciously thinking thoughts?