On the Edge of the Abyss

A history of the unconscious in public discourse before Freud and its significance for Jewish emancipation.

When Sigmund Freud published his theory of the unconscious in 1899, he popularised an idea that had fascinated generations of Jewish philosophers before him. In On the Edge of the Abyss, Clémence Boulouque charts the development of the pre-Freudian unconscious from subcultural inquiry to dominant discourse during the long nineteenth century.

Although Freud's scientific notion differed from Schelling's mythical description of the abyss from which creation springs, its resonance with older ideas was celebrated as an opportunity to express specifically Jewish contributions to modernity. Indeed, Boulouque shows that the pre-Freudian unconscious emerged from conversations in Jewish mysticism about otherness and coexistence.

In the hopeful years before World War I, Boulouque argues, such reflections offered the possibility of emancipation not only to Jews but to all.