Underworlds ─ Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics

The first book of its kind to provide a detailed analysis of the history of the unconscious from the underworlds of Greek and Egyptian mythology to psychoanalysis and metaphysics, Jon Mills presents here a unique study of differing philosophies of the unconscious.

Mills examines how three major philosophical systems on the nature of the unconscious emerge after modern philosophy, finding their most celebrated elaborations in Freud, Lacan and Jung. These three psychoanalytic traditions, quite separate from one another in terms of their emphasis and philosophical presuppositions, are scrutinised alongside contemporaneous movements in existential phenomenology, semiotics, epistemology, transcendental psychology and Western metaphysics in the texts of Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Whitehead. Underworlds provides a scholarly exegesis and critique of the main philosophies of the unconscious to have transpired in the history of ideas.

Exploring the unconscious from its philosophical beginnings in antiquity to its systematic articulation brought about by the rise of psychoanalysis, Underworlds is ideal for practicing psychoanalysts, academics of Freud, Jung and Lacan, and scholars of psychology, philosophy and the humanities.

Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP, is a philosopher, psychoanalyst and psychologist in private practice and Professor of Psychology and Psychoanalysis at the Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto. He is the author of many works in psychoanalysis, philosophy and psychology including Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012), for which he won the Goethe Award for best book in 2013. Mills was also the recipient of a 2013 Gradiva award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis in New York City for his television series The Talking Cure.