Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious [Hardcover]

Frank Tallis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2002 | ISBN-10: 1559706430 | ISBN-13: 978-1559706438 | Edition: 1

The concept of the unconscious has staged a comeback. New research, employing brain scans and other techniques, has shown that the unconscious is not only real but indispensable. HIDDEN MINDS traces our enduring fascination with the unconscious and our attempts to tame it through hypnosis, psychoanalysis, subliminal manipulation, lucid dreams, and even the principles of the ìquantum mind.î Drawing widely on scientific research, art, literature, and philosophy, Frank Tallis shows that an understanding of this ìhidden mindî is essential to understanding our true selves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As British clinical psychiatrist and novelist Tallis (How to Stop Worrying) notes, Freud famously claimed to have delivered the "third and most wounding blow" to humanity's "naive self-love" by exposing the power of unconscious processes-the first two blows having been dealt by Copernicus and Darwin. Though Freud's reputation has been waning for the last 30 years, Tallis sifts current reports and argues that science has vindicated Freud's sweeping claim. Most of the history here, however, is of the idea of the unconscious, from Augustine and Leibniz through 19th-century opium dreams and hypnotic therapies to Freud's psychoanalytic theory and its aftermath. The book is strongest when reporting the post-Freudian research that has built a new understanding of unconscious processes, including ingeniously designed empirical studies of self-deception, first impressions, preconscious volition and subliminal influence. But Tallis's argument weakens when it tries to tie all the pieces together in explicit support of Freud. Tallis has to work hard rhetorically to relate the unconscious mapped by contemporary scientists to the Freudian version. He tries to strengthen Freud's blow by attempting to demonstrate that our conscious self and free will are illusions, and maybe even that Buddhism is right-that the world is, too. But these claims go far beyond his well-presented empirical evidence, extending into philosophy without the necessary nuance and rigor. At best, the literature review here provides a unique narrative of a key modern construct's development.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A renewed interest in the nature of the unconscious is evident in the publication of several books on the subject this fall: Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive, Barry Opatow's Psychoanalysis as a Theory of Consciousness and Willy Apollon's After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious. This work, a brief but thorough overview of the unconscious as a concept from the Enlightenment to modern times, is perhaps the most accessible. A clinical psychiatrist and award-winning fiction writer, Tallis offers a roughly chronological approach that begins with Wilhelm Liebnez's groundbreaking rebuttal to John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and then goes on to describe how conceptions have changed with the emergence of new ideas, such as Romanticism, Darwinism, and computer technology. Not surprisingly, considerable space is given to the dominant influence of Freud and his early adherents, such as Carl Jung. Tallis also includes accounts of early experimenters with the unconscious mind, such as Franz Mesmer (an early hypnotist and the source of the term mesmerized), the manipulation of the unconscious in subliminal advertising, and its appearance in art and literature. Highly readable and possessing a surprising degree of depth, this book manages to be both entertaining and informative. Recommended for all public libraries.
David Valencia, King Cty. Lib. Syst., Washington
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (September 20, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559706430
• ISBN-13: 978-1559706438
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #993,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Frank Tallis is a consultant clinical psychologist at the Charter Nightingale Hospital in London. He has also written How to Stop Worrying (1990) and is a trustee of Obsessive Action, a charity which helps sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and their families.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Long Time No See, August 20, 2002

By 

Robert S. Corrington (Madison, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious (Hardcover)

Frank Tillis has done a noble job of showing just how important the idea of the unconscious has been in philosophy and science since the time of Plato. He traces its articulation through Romanticism, psychoanalysis, information theory, computer modeling, cognitive and perceptual studies, and neuroscience. Not only has he got it right, but he shows that at least some aspects of Freud's work have been vindicated by the seemingly contrary empirical approaches of the latter half of the twentieth century. Of course, the term "empirical" is a loaded one, and its authoritative presence is often invoked without deep philosophic reflection. For example, why is a phenomenological analysis of dream material less empirical than a study of the delay response between a brain stimulation and a conscious correlary to that stimulation? Or why is a reductive information model more empirical than one that deals with archetypal formations within the unconscious? Tallis seems to assume an implicit (and narrow) understanding of conceptual and experiental warrant (i.e., the empirical) that philosophically reduces the self to a passing cluster of febrile forms of consciousness that quickly return to the dark origin from which they have come. Specifically, in his conclusion to the book he quickly dismisses quantum theory and its evocation of non-located consciousness as entailing a reductio ad infinitutum that posits something analogous to a conscious homunculus within the brain that stands behind the curtain generating macro-consciousness. Further, he argues that neuroscience and the Buddhist doctrine of an-atman (no self) are conceptually isomorphic. But what about a Hindu notion of atman (infinite self) in its stead, which could really explain the out of the body experiences he mentions? In fact, it may well be the case that quantum theories of consciousness can only work on a Hindu model of the infinite realm and scope of consciousness within and without the finite self. And what about the correlation of the unconscious and telepathy (fairly well documented)? I do strongly agree with Tallis on his call for a unified theory of the correlation between consciousness and the unconscious, although it will most likely come from philosophy rather than the conjunction of dynamic psychology and neuroscience. And I further agree that the evidence for the unconscious is so overwhelming that it has the same status as the evidence for evolution. If fact, evolutionary psychology, which he describes very well, is one place where we can expect great advances (in spite of some crucial gender issues that must be dealt with). My suspicion is that the unconscious is much bigger than Tallis believes, and that the prospects of consciousness are less confined than he asserts. His constricted view is seen, for example, in his slightly distorted understanding of Jung's probes into the unconscious. Specifically, he accuses Jung of being a victim of psychic inflation rather than being a thinker who actually probed its power and worked through and out of it. His total neglect of Wilhelm Reich is even more astonishing insofar as Reich is the one psychoanalyst who really did attempt a unified theory around energy dynamics and sexuality, thus, in many respects, outdistancing Freud. But these comments are somewhat minor irritations on my part. Tallis is a fine writer and every sentence is lucid and well crafted. His rich historical and conceptual knowledege has really nailed home the argument that the unconscious is here to stay. I would urge psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to take this book to heart and gain some perspective on the depths of the self that are so often ignored, repressed, or denied.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Keystone Work in the Pursuit of Truth, April 14, 2009

By 

Clarke Waldron "inventor/writer" (Provo, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious (Hardcover)

If you keep in mind that this book is actually a thesis, you will appreciate the careful thoroughness that is employed throughout the entire book. It is a careful, fair-handed history of our understanding of the unconscious/subconscious mind.

The author pulls no punches as he presents the facts and I must say that his well-supported conclusions have made a life-time impression on me. I will not spoil it for you; you owe it to yourself to discover and understand the true nature of the mind of man according to the best information available.

I found this truth to be absolutely liberating.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview of the concept of the Unconscious, March 27, 2003

By 

Anacreon (Charlottesville, Va) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Minds: A History of the Unconscious (Hardcover)

I read this book on a whim - it looked interesting in the new books area of the local public library - and was enthralled. Tallis begins with the Locke/Leibniz disputes of the 18th century and moves to the present. I especially appreciated the attention he gave to Romanticism's views of the unconscious - I had ascribed much to Jung that actually began long before Analytical Psychology - and the career of Janet, whose immense contributions to the concept of the Unconscious have been undervalued as Freud got most of the attention. I enjoyed Tallis' observation that Jung's final personal apotheosis into something like the Wise Old man was the kind of inflation that he tried to cure patients of! All in all, I would heartily recommend this book to anyone wanting an overview of concepts of the Unconscious- it's only deficiency is that it's too short - less than 200 pages, but packed with information, analysis and human insight.