This book explores the unconscious in psychoanalysisusing cross-disciplinary input from the cultural, social and linguistic perspectives. This book is the first contemporary collection applying the various perspectives from within the psychoanalytic discipline.

It covers the unconscious from three main perspectives: the metaphysical, including links with quantum mechanics and Jung’s thought; the socio-relational, drawing on ideas from politics, inter-generational trauma and the interpersonal; and the linguistic, drawing on notions of the social construct of language and hermeneutics. Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, theorists have wrestled with the ubiquitousness and diverse nature of the unconscious. This collection is an account of the contemporary psychoanalytic struggle to understand and work with this quintessential, defining, and foundational object of psychoanalysis.