Diagnostic Concepts of the Unconscious as a Foundation of Romanticist Identity: Maine de Biran’s Psycho-Physiological and Psycho-Pathological Self-Investigations

Abstract

ABSTRACT The foundations of psychoanalysis in the German idealist concepts of the reflexive human self have been the subject of detailed investigations devoted to the intertwined processes of introspection, consciousness, and the unconscious. Much less consideration has been given to the contemporary French spiritualist philosopher Maine de Biran (1766–1824), whose physiologically-oriented philosophical psychology was (partially) known in its essence by some of the founding thinkers of psycho-analysis. According to Biran’s explicitly anti-Cartesian notion of individual identity, consciousness is constitutively generated through voluntary corporeal effort—by the resistance implied in the act of (ap)perception. Biran’s shift from an empiricist and sensualist outward perception to a spiritualist introspection (sens intime) marks the turn from Enlightenment to Romanticism. In his chef d’oeuvre, the Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie (1811–ca. 1813), he distinguishes four concentrically layered, heterogeneous spheres or systems of consciousness. At its core is the instinctively motivated système affectif (shared by both animals and humans), followed by the système sensitif that is still subordinated to affections, albeit interconnected with consciousness. The système perceptif involves the tactile and visual senses of attention, while the outer système réflexif of communication via cultural signage is critically interconnected with terminology-based experimental sciences. Departing from Biran’s crucial transformation of Leibniz’s term “petites perceptions” (1704/1714) to “impressions affectives” (1807), this article examines the functioning of the affective unconscious, as analyzed in Biran’s diary, his first treatise (1799-1802), and a speech on obscure perception (1807), delivered during sessions of the Société Médicale de Bergerac.