Václav Smyčka
Psychoanalysis befor psychoanalysis? Late Enlightenment interest in the unconscious and trauma
This study deals with the understanding of trauma, neurosis and the unconscious in psychological narratives and case studies during the late Enlightenment in the Czech lands, focusing on the texts of the philosopher, writer and naturalist Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel and the writer Christian Heinrich Spiess. It shows that the interest of these authors in these phenomena did not so much stem from emerging Romanticism as from the empirical Enlightenment teaching on the soul, and often from surprisingly archaic theories such as the Aristotelian concept of the soul and memory and the mechanical notion of the functioning of nerve fibres, based on the principle of vibration. In particular, Wenzel combined his reflections on neuroses with his research into dreams, displaced thoughts and the principles behind dream imagery, thus anticipating some of the theses of psychoanalysis.
Keywords: Psychoanalysis – Enlightenment – Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel – dream – unconscious – story
design by Bedřich Vémola
