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Comment by thenerdhead | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting book review. I think popularizing the unconscious is different than coming up with it. It’s like when the Greeks would use the word “logos” to refer to it. Many around the timeframe of Freud popularized it. Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Janet, etc.

From my studies it just sounds like people didn’t like how authoritative Freud was. Which is funny given the line about the necessity for a confident doctor leading to positive outcomes. Jung even had a falling out with him. But the author is also a neurosurgeon, quite a brilliant one at that. It sounds like a cyclical review in itself. Almost like a modern version of the exact book he is reviewing given his own relationship as a neurosurgeon potentially being forgotten alongside Freud.

Great article!

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"Logos" meant a few different things in ancient Greek (or later philosophy), but never the unconscious: divine/cosmic end reason of things, philosophical discourse, rationality, and so on.

Not sure where GP got that, either. There was no term for "consciousness" in ancient Greece, but perhaps psyche (soul) gets closest. And logos is far, far older than ancient Greece... In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. (Hope you know I'm kidding)

John wasn't kidding.

Usually it's translated as "Word." And it's very true that language created the world.

It's a bad translation, but it has stuck. "Divine order" or "The spirit that carries meaning" would have been a better one. John was the Gospel writer well versed in ancient Greek philosophy.

Heraclitus, Aurelius, etc all use this in a similar way to how Freud and Jung extended it. You’re allowed to interpret it however you please just like I have. I believe they all are the same abstract concept. The dao, the logos, the divinity, the unconscious, etc.

>Heraclitus, Aurelius, etc all use this in a similar way to how Freud and Jung extended it. You’re allowed to interpret it however you please just like I have.

No, they didn't. Here's how Heraclitus used Logos (as I described it above): https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/17-the-heraclitean-logos/

And here's how Aurelius used it: "Marcus Aurelius uses logos to refer both to the divine that infuses and directs all things in nature and to the “fragment” of God, the rational mind, that is found in every person".

Nothing to do with the subconscious in either case.

There are many interpretations of said "fragments" that exist. Even in the article you link, there are plenty of interpretations extending the logos to the idea of both a personal unconscious (freud) and collective unconscious (jung).

I don't care to argue. I believe everyone is right in their own interpretations. It isn't unheard of for something that predated an idea to then be interpreted as an extension of said contemporary idea.

> I believe everyone is right in their own interpretations.

“Everything can mean anything. Words have no meaning.”

> I don't care to argue.

No wonder. Who would?

“Unconscious” in ancient Greek would be better translated as ἀνεξήγητος (unspeakable, ineffable). They are related, sure, but not the same. In fact, “Logos” quite opposes the Unconscious in Jungian Psychology. [1]

[1] https://aras.org/concordance/content/logos?back=concordance&...

That’s an interpretation. There are plenty of others regarding the integration of opposites, transcendence, and unconscious archetypes to name a few.

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