Still at the dawn of the millennium, a Husserlian phenomenology of the unconscious was considered by many to be a contradictio in terminis. One could not help but wonder how Husserlian phenomenology, which identified itself as a science of consciousness, could offer any significant insights into the unconscious. It seemed that the unconscious constitutes the unsurpassable limit of phenomenology. Therefore, as Paul Ricoeur had famously maintained still in the 1960s, for anyone trained in phenomenology “an encounter with psychoanalysis constitutes a considerable shock,” for what it radically puts into question “is something that appears to any good phenomenologist as the field, foundation, and very origin of any meaning at all: consciousness itself” (Ricoeur, 2011: 97). Phenomenologists found themselves compelled to respond to the psychoanalytic challenge, and many responded by turning the tables around and arguing that Husserlian phenomenology offers a much more reliable account of the unconscious than psychoanalysis, although under the heading of other concepts, such as passive synthesis (see Welsh, 2002: 165). At the very least, one should not assume that phenomenology cannot investigate the unconscious. As Dan Zahavi put it in “Self-Awareness and the Unconscious” (published as an Appendix to Self-Awareness and Alterity), “it is quite appropriate to distinguish between a surface phenomenology and a depth phenomenology. The moment phenomenology moves beyond an investigation of object-manifestation and act-intentionality, it enters a realm that has traditionally been called the unconscious” (Zahavi, 1999: 207).

Our situation is significantly different than it was at the turn of the millennium. Due to a number of important critical studies of the unconscious in Husserlian phenomenology, published over the last few decades (see, among others, Welsh (2002), Bernet (2003), Micali (2008), Smith (2010), Brudzinska (2019), Nakamura (2019), Geniusas (2022) and the essays collected in Lohmar and Brudzinska (2012), Legrand and Trigg (2017)) and especially because of the further publication of Husserl’s own manuscripts (especially those collected in Hua XLII), today it would be superfluous to try to convince the phenomenological community of something it well knows, viz., that the unconscious is not a foreign theme in Husserl’s phenomenology. Not only has it been clearly established that Husserl has addressed the unconscious in various contexts of analysis, but it has also become undeniable that for Husserl, our understanding of consciousness remains flawed for as long it is not coupled with an account of the unconscious.

Phenomenologists have occasionally pointed out that the unconscious has many meanings in Freud.Footnote 1 Yet the recently published volumes of Husserliana have made it clear that the unconscious has also many meanings in Husserl. This is especially true of Hua XLII, whose title alone is telling: Limit Problems of Phenomenology. Analyses of the Unconscious and of Instincts. Metaphysics. Late Ethics. In no other volume of Husserliana do we come across such far-reaching reflections on the unconscious.Footnote 2 Especially the manuscripts collected in Parts I and II of this volume are of importance for the phenomenology of the unconscious. As one takes a closer look at how Husserl employs the concept of the unconscious in this volume, one cannot help but notice that in different contexts of analysis, this concept has a significantly different meaning. Moreover, as one goes through the corpus of Husserl’s published and unpublished writings, and as one traces how Husserl has employed the concept of the unconscious beyond Hua XLII (especially in the manuscripts collected in Hua III/2, Hua VI, Hua X, Hua XI, Hua XV, Hua XVII, Hua XXXIX and Experience and Judgment), it becomes undeniable that for Husserl, the unconscious can be spoken of in many ways.

What still remains missing in the literature, and what is much needed today, is a clear articulation of the different ways in which Husserl has spoken of the unconscious in his writings. The absence of clarity on this matter can easily lead to misunderstandings. If one focuses just on one meaning of the term, then in effect one will be left with too narrow a conception of the unconscious; if one focuses on many meanings, although without realizing the differences between them, then one will be left with the impression that Husserl’s concept of the unconscious is incoherent; and if one pays attention to critical discussions, then one will be left wondering if the phenomenological community knows what it is talking about when it addresses the unconscious, for different members of the community seem to put forth significantly different conceptions, while nonetheless building their cases against the same background, viz., that of Husserl’s phenomenology. What is thus much needed is a classification of the unconscious in Husserlian phenomenology, which would in effect help us overcome these shortcomings.

A development of such a classification can serve many important purposes, both within and beyond phenomenology. It would be of great importance for anyone interested in (1) the relation of Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenologies of the unconscious; (2) the intersections of phenomenology and psychoanalysis; (3) understanding phenomenology in light of its critiques, and especially the one that sees it as a metaphysics of presence; (4) the further developments in consciousness studies. However, a development of such a classification comes with a risk. As we will see below, there are at least seven fundamental senses in which one can speak of the unconscious in Husserlian phenomenology, and it is by far not easy to present all these senses in one paper, for each deserves a much more elaborate scrutiny. Despite the risk of offering a far too general analysis of enormously complex themes, I nonetheless believe that such a classification is much needed and that the advantages of such a schematic analysis outweigh its disadvantages.

All in all, there are at least seven meanings of the unconscious that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology: the horizonal unconscious, the time-constituting unconscious, the sedimented unconscious, the repressed unconscious, the absorbed unconscious, the dormant unconscious, and the instinctual unconscious. Let us consider them in terms of their fundamental features.Footnote 3

The Horizonal Unconscious

What I here identify as the horizonal unconscious refers to the most general sense in which Husserl has spoken of the unconscious. All the other forms of the unconscious that will be addressed in the subsequent sections can be understood as specific forms of the horizonal unconscious. In The Crisis, Husserl writes:

…even the concept of ‘horizon’-consciousness [or of] horizon-intentionality contains very diverse modes of an intentionality which is “unconscious” in the usual narrower sense of the word but which can be shown to be vitally involved and cofunctioning in different ways; these modes of intentionality have their own modalities of validity and their own ways of changing them. (Hua VI: 240 / Husserl, 1970: 237)

It is not my goal in the present context to clarify the essential features of Husserl’s concept of the horizon.Footnote 4 What could it possibly mean to speak, as Husserl does, of horizon-intentionality as an “unconscious” intentionality? A few points call for a special emphasis. First, most of Husserl’s reflections on the unconscious unfold in the framework of his deepening investigations of passive syntheses. Husserl understands consciousness as a multi-layered structure and he addresses the lowest levels under the heading of the unconscious. This means that, for Husserl, the unconscious prepares the ground for the central theme in his phenomenology, viz., world-constitution. Second, alluding to the distinction between act-intentionality and horizon-intentionality, here Husserl makes clear that horizon-intentionality can be identified as “unconscious” only if one employs the concept of consciousness in a narrow sense of the word (see also Hua XXXIX: 435). If one reduces intentionality to act-intentionality and if one subscribes to the view that intentional consciousness is thematic and objectifying, then one will have to claim that horizon-intentionality is “unconscious”. In this general sense, the horizonal unconscious refers to the domain of latency and is juxtaposed with patent consciousness. As Husserl also remarks in Formal and Transcendental Logic, unconscious intentionality “makes thematic, but it itself is, for that very reason and as a matter of essential necessity, non-thematic” (Hua XIX: 30 / Husserl, 1969: 34). Horizon-consciousness refers to all that is given latently and implicitly, yet in such a way that without such latent and implicit components, patent and explicit intentionality would not be possible. One should not overlook that Husserl understands the horizonal unconscious as a dimension of consciousness, viz., of “horizon-consciousness”. Here we are confronted with the unconscious taken in the broadest sense, which is juxtaposed with an unusually (and illegitimately) narrow concept of consciousness, and therefore, Husserl notes that he will not consider this concept in the present context (see Hua VI: 240 / Husserl, 1970: 237).Footnote 5

Third, in the Logical Investigations Husserl subscribed the Brentanian view that “each intentional experience is either an objectifying act or has its basis in such an act” (Hua XIX/1: 514 / Husserl, 2000: 648). To claim, as Husserl does in the Crisis, that horizon-intentionality is “unconscious” is to contend that, in contrast to this Brentanian principle, horizon-intentionality is neither an objectifying act, nor does it have such acts at its basis. Nonetheless, horizon-intentionality is “vitally involved and cofunctioning” in experience. Fourth, one should not overlook that here the horizon-consciousness is understood as an umbrella term that covers “diverse modes of intentionality”. We can take this as an indication that, according to Husserl, this broad concept of the horizon calls for further elucidation.

Before turning to other forms of the unconscious in Husserl’s phenomenology, let us note that there is yet another, and much more specific, sense in which Husserl had conceptualized the horizonal unconsciousness. In his Lectures on Passive Synthesis, we come across the following reflections:

We can say with respect to the primordial present that “unconsciousness” is consciousness in the primordial present; the sensible object of which we are unconscious along with all the other sensible objects of which we are unconscious are “given to consciousness” in an undifferentiated manner in a zero-consciousness. All the retentions that were previously still differentiated in the primordial present flow together and do this in such a way that the paths of identity are no longer differentiated, to say nothing of offering an internally differentiated object-sense. The only thing now remaining is a horizon-consciousness, a consciousness of an indeterminate, undifferentiated, completely obscure past as a whole. Thus, it still remains consciousness, empty consciousness, whose object is without affection, and it embraces each and every thing in an undifferentiated manner that was there in the undifferentiated form of the one endless past as well. (Hua XI: 388 / Husserl, 2001: 481)

Here we are confronted with a horizon-consciousness that characterizes the giveness of all past objectivities that can no longer be thematically and explicitly remembered in the primordial present. When retentions lose all of their vivacity, an empty, indeterminate, undifferentiated and completely obscure horizon-consciousness of the past is all that remains. Yet this horizon of the past is still not nothing. Or rather, it is nothing with regard to affective force, yet it is still a mode of consciousness, for as Husserl here makes clear, this empty consciousness, understood as horizonal unconscious, still embraces all past experiences, although in an undifferentiated way. We know this, first, because past experiences, that have already been forgotten, can be brought back to memory, and second, because past experiences, even when they are not remembered, shape the habitual basis of present experiences.

In this sense, horizonal unconscious largely overlaps with the sedimented unconscious, which I will address in the third section. But first, let us turn to the time-constituting unconscious, which is the earliest form of the unconscious that Husserl had conceptualized in his writings.

The Time-Constituting Unconscious

In the final paragraphs of a manuscript that was published as Text No. 54 in Hua X, written sometime between 1909 and 1911, we come across Husserl’s fleeting reflections on the ultimate consciousness (letztes Bewußtsein), which he further characterizes as ultimate intentionality (letzte Intentionalität). We are faced here with a highly complicated issue (which is also addressed in §35-§39 of Husserl’s Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time). Here I only wish to focus on how in this framework of analysis Husserl initiates his reflections on the unconscious.

In this manuscript, we come across the crucial distinction between transverse and horizontal modes of intentionality. Through transverse intentionality, immanent time, with all the temporal objects given in it, is constituted. Through horizontal intentionality, the phases of the temporal flow are constituted. The flow always possesses the same phases, viz., the “now”-point, given impressionally, as well as the series of phases that have preceded it, given retentionally, and that will follow it, given protentionally. Against such a conceptual background, in the concluding paragraphs of this manuscript, Husserl maintains that the twofold distinction between the temporal flow and immanent time might not be sufficient. He introduces the hypothesis that the temporal flow, through which immanent time is constituted, might itself be controlled by what he here identifies as the ultimate consciousness. Of special importance in the present context is Husserl’s contention that this ultimate consciousness might have to be qualified as “‘unconscious’ consciousness” (“unbewußtes” Bewußstsein). Husserl’s hypothesis runs as follows: “But we should seriously consider whether we must assume such an ultimate consciousness, which would necessarily be an ‘unconscious’ consciousness, that is to say, as ultimate intentionality it cannot be an object of attention (if paying attention always presupposes intentionality already given in advance), and therefore, it can never become conscious in this particular sense” (Hua X: 382 / Husserl, 1991: 394).

To understand what the threefold distinction between immanent time, the temporal flow and ultimate consciousness amounts to, consider what happens when one plays the scale on the piano. The tones, say, do-re-mi, are given in immanent time. I can hear them, or remember hearing them, or anticipate hearing them. Yet when I play “re,” “do” does not disappear from my consciousness. I can still hear it, although not impressionally, but retentionally. So also, and especially if I continue playing the scale over and over again, when I play “re,” I already hear “mi,” although not impressionally, but protentionally. We are not faced here with thematic recollection or thematic anticipation. Rather, the hearing of the tone, “re,” is colored by the retention of “do” and the pretension of “mi”. If this were not the case, I would not hear a scale. In fact, I could not even hear a single tone, for it itself is a duration, and thus is constituted impressionally, retentionally and protensionally. One must stress that it is the sequence of tones, not the hearing of this sequence, that is given in immanent time. This does not mean that we are unaware of hearing this sequence. We certainly are. What makes this kind of self-awareness possible is the retentional, impressional and protentional structure of consciousness itself. The impressional, retentional and protentional hearing is given in the flow of consciousness, through which immanent time is constituted. While the sequence of tones is given in virtue of transverse intentionality, the hearing of this sequence is co-given in virtue of horizontal intentionality. Thus, while immanent time is filled with temporal objects following each other in succession, the temporal flow has a uniform structure, viz., it is made up of impressional, retentional and protentional phases of experience.

In the manuscript under consideration, Husserl further suggests that this twofold distinction might be insufficient. I hear the tones, and when I hear them, I am also aware of hearing them. But who is this I that hears them and is aware of hearing them? Who is the subject of experience that hears these tones impressionally, retentionally and protentionally? The distinction drawn between transverse and horizontal intentionality does not provide us with an answer to this question. According to Husserl’s hypothesis, this subject is the ultimate consciousness, understood as ultimate intentionality. When Husserl contends that the immanent flow is controlled by the ultimate consciousness, we are to understand that the immanent flow is a flow that belongs to someone, and this someone in question is the ultimate consciousness. “The phase of internal consciousness that is actual at any particular moment would be something intended through the ultimate consciousness; and it would be this ultimate consciousness that passes over into the reproductive (retentional) modification, which itself would then be something again intended in the ultimate consciousness” (Hua X: 382 / Husserl, 1991: 394). It is the ultimate consciousness that hears impressionally the tone “re,” hears retentionally the tone “do,” and hears protentionally the tone “mi”. But what can be said about this ultimate consciousness, this ultimate intentionality? Negatively, we can say that it is neither a moment in the flow, for it is neither an impressional, nor a retentional, nor a protentional content, nor their unity; nor is it a temporal object given in immanent time, for it is not localizable in immanent time, neither in the present, nor in the past, nor in the future. In a curious way, this ultimate consciousness, understood as the ultimate presupposition of both immanent time and the temporal flow, is “timeless”. Yet this negative determination does not tell us much about ultimate consciousness. Husserl leaves the matter undetermined: he contends that this ultimate consciousness is an “unconscious” consciousness. All we can say is that the concepts that we apply to characterize objects given in time, and the flow of time itself, do not apply to it. In the present context, this “timeless” and “unconscious” consciousness is identified as the time-constituting unconscious.

In the passage quoted above, Husserl contends that “paying attention always presupposes intentionality already given in advance” (Hua X: 382 / Husserl, 1991: 394). How are we to understand this contention? Arguably, the only way to pay attention to this ultimate consciousness is always already to think of it either as the temporal flow or as a temporal object given in immanent time. Yet the hypothesis that Husserl here introduces suggests that paying attention is neither one, nor the other. The very act of paying attention either to the temporal flow or to immanent time is exactly what cannot be absorbed either into the temporal flow or into immanent time. Paying attention is an act of the ultimate consciousness, i.e., the “timeless” and “unconscious” consciousness, which I here identify as the time-constituting unconscious.

If ultimate consciousness, or ultimate intentionality, is an “unconscious” consciousness, then it becomes at least to a degree understandable why in this text Husserl would famously maintain that the designation of absolute subjectivity as a flow is only metaphorical and why “for all this, we have no names” (Hua X: 371 / Husserl, 1991: 382). The ultimate consciousness can only be objectified in a modified form and therefore, it can only be described metaphorically, while employing concepts that are used to characterize either objects intended in the flow, or the structure of the flow, yet not the ultimate consciousness that controls the flow.Footnote 6

Admittedly, as Zahavi, among others, has pointed out, to identify intentional consciousness with objectifying consciousness would be a matter of adopting a terminology that reflects a far too narrow conception of consciousness (see Zahavi, 1999: 207). It is therefore important not to overlook that Husserl is not speaking here of the unconscious in opposition to consciousness, but of “unconscious” consciousness. The unconscious points to a hidden dimension of consciousness itself: far from circumscribing consciousness within artificial limits, this conception of the unconscious stretches the limits of consciousness. Phenomenology of consciousness necessary leads to the phenomenology of the unconscious, understood as the hidden dimension of consciousness itself, and therefore, without an inquiry into the unconscious, phenomenology can offer only a preliminary conception of consciousness. Yet in the text under consideration, it remains unclear to what degree the unconscious can be conceptualized phenomenologically. While paving the way to the unconscious, phenomenology stops short of offering a positive account of the unconscious: “for all this, we have no names”.

At this point we can say that in Husserl’s phenomenology, the unconscious emerges as a transcendental mystery that concerns the very nature, or being, of ultimate consciousness, or absolute subjectivity. To claim, as Husserl does, that the ultimate consciousness is “unconscious” is to contend that the ultimate consciousness can be recognized, although cannot be thematized phenomenologically. It therefore lies at the limit of phenomenological analysis.

Or at least so things appear in 1909-1911. As we will still see, in his later writings, Husserl had sought for ways to transgress these methodological limits, which in effect led him to the discovery of various other access points to the phenomenology of the unconscious.

The Sedimented Unconscious

The sedimented unconscious is the dominant sense in which Husserl speaks of the unconscious in his phenomenology. Husserl has addressed the sedimented unconscious in various writings, and especially in his Lectures on Passive Synthesis and in the manuscripts that were recently published in Hua XLII (especially Texts 2 and 3). Shorter reflections on the sedimented unconscious are scattered throughout various other texts, such as Ideas II, First Philosophy, Formal and Transcendental Logic, The C Manuscripts, “The Origin of Geometry,” and The Crisis.

In his Lectures on Passive Synthesis, with the aim of broadening the framework of phenomenological reflections, Husserl speaks of the need to “transition from the sphere of the living present into the sphere of forgetfulness and to comprehend reproductive awakening”. Regarding this transition, he writes: “the entirety of these observations that we are undertaking can also be given the famed title of the ‘unconscious’. Thus, our considerations concern a phenomenology of the so-called unconscious” (Hua XI: 154 / Husserl, 2001: 201). This sphere of forgetfulness is what in his other writings Husserl identifies as the “night of the sedimented” (Hua XLII: 62).

To understand what is specific to Husserl’s concept of the sedimented unconscious, we need to return to what has already been said about Husserl’s phenomenology of time. As we saw, according to Husserl, all impressions necessarily pass into retentions. Just as impressions necessarily pass into retentions, so retentions also undergo a further process of retentionalization: retentions of impressions are followed by retentions of retentions and their further retentions. This process is characterized by a continuous affective weakening of the foregoing impression. As it continues to sink into the retentional past, the foregone impression continuously loses its grade of vivacity until it reaches the level of forgetfulness. This sphere of forgetfulness, which Husserl conceptualizes as the sedimented unconscious, is the limit, or the zero point, of affective prominence. Here is how Husserl describes this matter in Formal and Transcendental Logic:

Continuous retentional modification proceeds up to an essentially necessary limit. That is to say: with this intentional modification there goes hand in hand a gradual diminution of prominence; and precisely this has its limit, at which the formerly prominent subsides into the universal substratum — the so-called “unconscious,” which, far from being a phenomenological nothing, is itself a limit-mode of consciousness. The whole intentional genesis relates back to this substratum of sedimented prominences, which, as a horizon, accompanies every living present and shows its own continuously changing sense when it becomes “awakened”. (Hua XIX: 280 / Husserl, 1969: 319)

Thus, according to Husserl, the limit point of conscious retentionalization, which is identified as the “so-called ‘unconscious,’” is not a phenomenological nothing. We read this also in Husserl’s Lectures on Passive Synthesis, where Husserl contends that the sedimented unconscious, understood here as the unconscious in the appropriate sense, “designates the nil of this vivacity of consciousness and, as will be shown, is in no way a nothing: A nothing only with respect to affective force and therefore with respect to those accomplishments that presuppose precisely a positively valued affectivity (above the zero-point)” (Hua XI: 167 / Husserl, 2001: 216). The reason why the sedimented unconscious is not a phenomenological nothing concerns the possibility of awakening. The very fact that the contents that sink into the night of the unconscious can be brought back to memory means that they were not entirely lost, that they were still in consciousness, although paradoxically, in consciousness without consciousness knowing it. It is this paradoxical presence in consciousness that Husserl qualifies as the sedimented unconscious. The awakening of which we speak here can take various forms: a content that has been forgotten can resurface in recollection; or, alternatively, even if it is not remembered, it can still shape the habituality of consciousness and in this way continue to play a role in the present experience. Moreover, it can also resurface in a variety of other ways, such as body memory, flashbacks, nightmares, conversion symptoms, etc.

Elsewhere I have argued that Husserl’s concept of sedimentation has three components of sense: static, genetic and generative (see Geniusas, 2024). In the static sense, the sedimented unconscious refers to the sphere of forgetfulness, understood as a necessary modification of retentional consciousness and as a necessary condition of recollection. In the genetic sense, the sedimented unconscious is the horizonal consciousness that implicitly shapes types, habits and moods and in this way continues to resonate in the present field of experience. In the generative sense, the sedimented unconscious refers to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. This generative sense is especially intriguing in the present context, even though Husserl’s own reflections remain underdeveloped. Here we are faced with sedimentations that do not originate in the field of consciousness. We are faced here with material sedimentations, that is, with textual inscriptions, which can be reawakened by another consciousness. This opens the intriguing possibility to speak of a cultural and sociohistorical unconscious. Yet as mentioned, in Husserl’s own writings, this mode of sedimented unconscious remains underdeveloped.

At this point we can say that, for Husserl, the sedimented unconscious is a modified consciousness: only those experiential contents that were once present in consciousness can undergo the process of retentionalization until they reach the “night of the sedimented”. For our purposes, this brief account of the sedimented unconscious will have to suffice.

The Repressed Unconscious

As we just saw, an intentional content can become unconscious when it passes through retentional chains and reaches the sphere of the sedimented unconscious. In this regard, unconsciousness can be characterized as a modified consciousness. If a content were not conscious in the first place, it could not have entered the sphere of the sedimented unconscious. More precisely, if it were not, first, given impressionally and if it were not subsequently given retentionally, it could not have been sedimented. Are we then to say that Husserl conceptualizes the unconscious as a modified consciousness? While this is true of Husserl’s account of the sedimented unconscious, it is surely not the case when it comes to his analysis of the repressed unconscious. So as not to overlook this important difference, we could qualify the sedimented unconscious as a modified unconscious and the repressed unconscious as an original unconscious. This calls for some clarification.

Dermot Moran has suggested that “Husserl does not have a specific concept of ‘repression’ as such, but he does have the concept of ‘sedimentation’” (Moran, 2017: 15). If by “specific concept” one means a concept of repression whose meaning and strategic importance would be equal to the role it plays in Freud, then one has to agree with this remark.Footnote 7 Yet one must also admit that Husserl on occasion employs the concept of repression (Verdrängung) (see, for instance, the manuscripts collected in Hua XLII). Moreover, he employs a number of other, closely related, terms, such as Verdeckung (concealment), Unterdrückung and Hinunterdrückung (both can be translated as suppression) and Hemmung (inhibition). Admittedly, Husserl’s concept of repression is significantly different from Freud’s. Moreover, as I will now try to show, the structure of the repressed unconscious is in an important way different from that of the sedimented unconscious. This provides the justification for employing the concept of repressed unconscious.

We come across some helpful clues in Husserl’s Lectures on Passive Synthesis. In Appendix 22, Husserl draws important distinctions between different form of the unconscious. With reference to the sedimented unconscious, he speaks of “the retentional element that has become ‘unconscious’ (Hua XI: 420 / Husserl, 2001: 525). He explicitly differentiates the sedimented unconscious from “another kind of unconscious,” which “is already unclear from the beginning even though it is intuitive;” it is unclear because “it is lacking the force of its own affection” (Hua XI: 420f. / Husserl, 2001: 525). With regard to the latter form of the unconscious, which I here identify as the repressed unconscious, Husserl further writes: “something that is given as unconscious here would be something that is not grasped and that toward which the ego does not let itself to be drawn even one step of the way” (Hua XI: 420f. / Husserl, 2001: 525).

An experiential content can be given in the present experience in such a way that it is overpowered by other contents. This can happen because of the intensity of feelings or the vivacy of sensuous contents. One of Husserl’s helpful examples concerns the experience of intense pain, which can make us insensitive to all other contents of experience. Husserl writes: “An affection, like that of extreme contrast (“unbearable pain”) can suppress all other affections” (Hua XI: 415 / Husserl, 2001: 518). Or consider less dramatic scenarios: the bright sunlight can overpower all other contents of experience by blinding us to anything appearing within sight; so also, under certain circumstances, the affective power of appearing objectivities can be so weak that consciousness does not pay any attention to them: they are purely marginal, concealed within the unnoticed horizon. In all these cases, we are faced with “a suppression of the affection in which the affection is repressed or covered over, but is still present” (Hua XI: 415 / Husserl, 2001: 518). Whenever we are faced with a conflict of affections, the one that wins out does not annihilate the others, but suppresses them. “Affections can be there, i.e., progressing from the ‘unconscious,’ but suppressed” (Hua XI: 423 / Husserl, 2001: 529).

It is important not to overlook that experiential contents can be overpowered not only by other contents, but also by our own interests. As the famous legend has it, the Thracian servant girl made fun of Thales after he fell into the well, for he must have been crazy to think of what was up in the heavens while he could not see what was in front of him beneath his feet. So also, the joy that I experience at seeing a close friend after a long absence can make me blind to my surroundings. Various emotions, such as joy or fear, can force me to push so many presently appearing phenomena into the background of consciousness, which we can identify as the repressed unconscious. Moreover, as Husserl notes, some instincts can be suppressed by other instincts (Hua XI: 423 / Husserl, 2001: 529).

There is a gradation of vivacity that characterizes manners of givenness: when phenomena are given with great vivacity, they appear in the foreground of consciousness; when they are given without affective force, they emerge in the distant background. Yet even such a marginal givenness is still a mode of givenness. We know this because what is given only peripherally can be made thematic and explicit. Much like distant memories which have sunk into the sedimented unconscious, so peripheral phenomena given in repressed unconsciousness, can be reawakened: “Awakening is possible because the constituted sense is actually implied in background-consciousness, in the non-living form that is called here unconsciousness” (Hua XI: 179 / Husserl, 2001: 228). With this structural analogy between the sedimented and the repressed unconscious in mind, Husserl can contend that “the unconscious object has in principle the same style everywhere, even in the sphere of the present” (Hua XI: 422 / Husserl, 2001: 527).

As Rudolf Bernet insightfully remarks in his analysis of the unconscious consciousness in Husserl and Freud, “the unconscious proves to be a relative and dialectical concept” (Bernet, 2003: 213), meaning thereby that “nothing is unconscious in itself, instead, everything unconscious is unconscious in relation to something conscious” (Bernet, 2003: 214). To avoid confusion, it is important not to overlook that here Bernet is speaking of the repressed unconscious, and not its other forms. It is especially important to stress that, as the foregoing analysis demonstrates, time-constituting unconscious could not be characterized as only relative. Yet as far as the repressed unconscious is concerned, “what the content of the Unconscious signifies in each case is determined by the form of what it posits as conscious” (Bernet, 2003: 214). The background/foreground structure of consciousness requires us to recognize the repressed unconscious as a dynamic feature of conscious life.

The Absorbed Unconscious

In a manuscript published as Text Nr. 3 in Hua XLII we come across a different concept of the unconscious. Here Husserl speaks of the state of absorption (he employs such terms as Versunkensein and Versunkenheit) as an unconscious state. Absorption is a peculiar mode of intentionality, which Husserl juxtaposes with wakeful intentionality. While in a wakeful state, intentional acts are carried out by an ego that consciously lives in the present and intentionally relates to the present world, in the state of absorption, consciousness forgets the present world as it sinks into its own presentifications (Vergegenwärtigungen), viz., into own memories, phantasies, daydreams, or nightdreams. As Husserl explains, absorption is a mode of unconsciousness in a twofold sense of the term: when consciousness is absorbed, the field of presence loses all its positive affectivity, thereby becoming “unconscious”. Moreover, the ego, understood as the actual ego that inhabits the actual world, becomes “unconscious” to itself (see Hua XLII: 57). In short, as it absorbs itself in its presentifications, the ego loses touch with the surrounding world and with itself. Absorbed consciousness is preoccupied only with its own virtual projections of sense and it relates to these virtualities as if they were actualities. This circumstance allows one to distinguish absorbed unconscious from the repressed unconscious. In the case of the repressed unconscious, specific experiential contents are suppressed by other contents that emerge in one’s wakeful life. By contrast, absorbed unconscious manifests itself as the suppression of the whole field of wakefulness, taken in its totality. Here we are not faced with the emptying of consciousness characteristic of dreamless sleep or fainting, which are characterized by the suppression of all conscious acts (more on this later). Rather, here we are faced with the suppression of wakeful acts, taken in their totality, a suppression that is achieved in virtue of consciousness absorbing itself in its own presentifications. The field of presence is inhibited by one’s absorption in the world of dreams, the phantasy world, etc.

When I am absorbed in my own presentifications, I no longer intend objects in my surrounding world and I no longer relate to myself as the present ego. We are faced here with a specific mode of affection: absorbed consciousness is touched only by its own virtually projected affections. All of its intentional acts unfold exclusively in the field of phantasies or recollections. In contrast to wakeful intentionality, absorbed intentionality is no longer characterized by immediate reflexion (unmittelbare Reflexion) that would terminate in the wakeful ego (see Hua XLII: 52). This does not mean that absorbed intentionality is not characterized by any kind of immediate reflexion. It is characterized by immediate reflexion of a different kind, viz., a reflexion that immediate leads to the past, or the phantasized, ego. Husserl characterizes such a mode of immediate reflexivity as a second-level self-consciousness (“Ichbewusstsein zweiter Stufe” [Hua XLII: 56]). It is this modification in the structure of immediate reflexion that allows one to identify absorbed intentionality as a specific mode of the unconscious.

Just as in the case of other modes of the unconscious, in this case, too, Husserl contends that the absorbed unconscious is a specific modality of consciousness. When absorbed, “my self-consciousness was latent, modified, darkened, so to speak, yet it was not nothing” (Hua XLII: 53).Footnote 8 As Husserl’s further reflections suggest, if this were not so, absorbed consciousness could not awaken to the present world (see Hua XLII: 53). Thus, much like other forms of the unconscious discussed above, the absorbed unconscious can also be said to be a mode of latent consciousness.

In his reflections on absorbed intentionality, Husserl draws distinctions between different levels of absorbed (un)consciousness. One can be to a greater or lesser degree absorbed in one’s own presentifications. Among different modes of absorption, Husserl also singles out the mode of a pure absorption (reine Versunkensein). Are we to say that the absorbed unconscious admits of degrees, or are we rather to maintain that only pure absorption is a mode of unconscious experience? At first glance, the first possibility might strike one as incoherent: one can be either conscious, or unconscious, between them there is no “more or less”. However, taking Husserl’s characterization of the absorbed unconsciousness as a mode of latent consciousness into account, one has full right to choose the first alternative. One can be more or less absorbed in one’s presentifications, more or less forgetful of the surrounding world; employing the term the way Husserl does, one can be more or less unconscious. In the present context, this brief characterization of the absorbed unconscious will have to suffice.Footnote 9

The Dormant Unconscious

Besides drawing a phenomenological distinction between wakefulness and absorption as two different modes of intentionality (Text Nr. 3 in Hua XLII), Husserl also draws a different, and more fundamental, distinction between wakefulness and dreamless sleep (see especially Texts Nr. 1 and Nr. 2 in Hua XLII). While the distinction between wakefulness and absorption concerns different kinds of intentional acts (those carried out in the state of wakefulness and in the absorbed state), the distinction between wakefulness and dreamless sleep marks the divide between two fundamentally different modes of consciousness. While the wakeful consciousness is continuously carrying out intentional acts, the dormant unconscious, understood as the ego’s sunkenness in dreamless sleep, refers to a mode of consciousness that does not intend any kind of intentional objectivities, either in the wakeful or in the absorbed state. Here we are confronted with a more radical form of unconsciousness than those discussed above. While in the discussion of the repressed unconscious we were concerned with particular experiential contents that are suppressed by other contents, and while in the discussion of the absorbed unconscious we were preoccupied with modified intentional acts that overshadow original acts, in the present case, we are concerned neither with specific contents, nor with specific acts. While the repressed unconscious and the absorbed unconscious refer to different kinds of inner blindness that accompanies attentive consciousness, in the case of the dormant unconscious we are concerned with a mode of consciousness that is emptied of all contents and all acts. The dormant unconscious is an empty mode of consciousness, where emptiness is understood as the absence of any kind of intentionality.Footnote 10

Another way to capture the difference in question would be to state that the dormant unconscious refers to consciousness in a radically disinterested state. This is what differentiates the dormant unconscious from the absorbed or the repressed unconscious. While the absorbed unconscious is enthralled in its own presentifications, and while the repressed unconscious is focused on those affections that suppress other affections, in the present case we are concerned with the ego that is no longer interested in anything. When it is in a dormant state, no affections have any effect upon the ego. With reference to what I here identify as the dormant unconscious, in one manuscript Husserl remarks that “the unconscious ego is in Nirvana” (Hua XLII: 14), meaning thereby that when the ego is no longer guided by any interests, it is not moved by anything, not even by itself. Such an ego “does not do anything, does not experience anything, does not see anything, does not hear anything, does not act upon anything, etc” (Hua XLII: 14).

However, just as the ego in the absorbed state, so the ego in the dormant state also can awaken. Awakening is a matter of transitioning into a new mode, viz., that of “openness for everything” (Hua XLII: 37). As we already saw in the earlier analysis of the absorbed unconscious, Husserl understands the possibility of awakening as an indication that the ego in the dormant state still remains conscious of the world, although not patently, but latently. This concerns both the absorbed and the dormant unconscious. In both cases, the ego keeps the world at a distance from itself (Husserl speaks of Abständigkeit ([Hua XLII: 29]), meaning thereby that although the ego is still affected by the world, it refuses to be moved by its affections. Indeed, to claim that the sleeping ego is disinterested is to contend that the ego still experiences various affections, although it is not interested in them. Thus, Husserl contends that falling asleep is not a matter of a metamorphosis into a nothing (see Hua XLII: 36). This keeping of the world at a distance from oneself that characterizes both absorbed and dormant unconsciousness admits of degrees. If I am absorbed in my memories when I cross the street, I still know how to avoid approaching vehicles. By contrast, in the case of the dormant state, the ego loses this basic capacity to act in the world, and therefore, if I fall asleep while driving a vehicle, I will cause an accident. The intentional distance to the world characteristic of the dormant unconscious is significantly greater than that of the absorbed unconscious. And yet, the very fact that the sleeping ego can wake up means that it is still affected by the world, although it is not moved by its affections. As Husserl remarks, even though the sleeping ego is still touched by affections, they are powerless (see Hua XLII: 34). The sleeping ego experiences affections at a distance from itself, for it is turned away from them (entrückt). It will suffice for these affections to either grow in intensity, or for various instinctual drives to move the ego inwardly (more on that later), and the sleeping ego will awaken. Awakening of the ego thus marks the awakening of the center of interests, of actual intentionalities (see Hua XLII: 15). Therefore, the awakening of the ego is at the same time the awakening of the whole world, viz., the world of experience.

In his manuscripts, Husserl interpreted dreamless sleep both as a limit phenomenon and as a transitional phenomenon (Übergangsphänomen), which opens the possibility to pursue phenomenological reflections on such limit phenomena as birth and death (see Hua XLII: 8-9). Although a detailed analysis of these phenomena is not possible in the present context, still, one might wonder how we are to understand Husserl’s notorious claim in an Appendix to the Lectures on Passive Synthesis that the transcendental ego cannot constitute either its own birth or its own death (see Hua XI: 377–381 / Husserl, 2001: 466–471). Should we take this metaphysically sounding proclamation to mean that, according to Husserl, not just dreamless sleep, but also birth and death, are states of dormant unconsciousness? More precisely, does Husserl want to suggest that birth is a state of dormant unconsciousness that was not preceded by wakefulness, and death is a state of dormant unconsciousness from which there is no awakening? In some of his metaphysical reflections, Husserl answers these questions affirmatively (see Hua XV, Appendix XLVI). Yet there are important differences to note. In contrast to dreamless sleep, Husserl does not qualify these limit phenomena in terms of givenness of affections by which the transcendental ego remains unmoved. These limit phenomena appear to be characterized by a radical absence of all affections, even those that the dormant ego keeps at a distance from itself. Because of the absence of all affections and all interests, death transforms the ego into a nobody. By contrast, in the case of sleep, I still remain myself. This is because the will to life that still characterizes the ego in a dormant state is no longer there with death. Yet as Husserl remarks in a different manuscript, “in death I become nobody (not-I), but not an absolute nothing” (Hua XLII: 21). As seen from a phenomenological point of view, every retention is preceded by an earlier retention; every protention is followed by another protention, which in effect means that, as Husserl puts it in Hua XV, Appendix XLVI, “monads cannot begin and cannot end” (Hua XV: 609).Footnote 11

The Instinctual Unconscious

Although we come across some of Husserl’s reflections on instincts already in the Fifth Logical Investigation, the most penetrating analyses of this theme are to be found in his later writings, and especially in those manuscripts that have been recently published in Part II of Hua XLII. In general, as Nam-in Lee has noted, in Husserl’s later writings instincts are shown to belong to the deepest layer of genetic phenomenology (see Lee, 2021: 241).

Husserl characterizes the process of life as a process that is regularly shaped by unconscious drives, instincts, desires, and wishes. In his writings on ethics, Husserl juxtaposes merely instinctual behavior with conscious efforts and strivings (see, for instance, Hua XLII: 87 and 111). In this regard, he conceptualizes life as a process that is marked by giving in to blind inclinations, by surrendering to the drives, desires and wishes, and by spontaneous valuing and free self-determination for what is of high value and against what is of low value or even worthless. Life is thus a process that binds together the blind, irrational and unfree activity with rational action and free self-determination. In this framework, the instinctual unconscious refers to irrational facticity, i.e., to what is blind, irrational and unfree, while consciousness stands for reason, i.e., for rational decision and self-determination.

Although the distinction between life lived in accordance with reason and life driven by blind instincts has ethical significance, it can also lead to misunderstandings. Throughout various manuscripts, Husserl repeatedly argues that all human life, taken in its rational and irrational forms, is rooted in instincts. It just cannot be any other way: only an act of suicide would succeed in freeing oneself from all instincts. This means that reason also has instinctual roots and that in instincts we can discern a proto-rational form of life: “reason itself ⟨is⟩ transformed instinct, through all rational life ⟨goes⟩ the instinctive affection and intention” (Hua XLII: 134).

Husserl employs the concepts of instinct and drive interchangeably. On some occasions Husserl speaks of instinct, or drive, in the singular, on other occasions in the plural. In Appendix XX to Hua XLII, he writes: “the drive is a universal drive with a universal drive-horizon. A particular drive is ‘directed’ at something, at something in a horizon” (Hua XLII: 225). Husserl explicitly speaks of various kinds of instincts, such as the instinct for nourishment, the instinct of self-preservation, the sexual instinct, the maternal instinct, the social instinct, the instinct of curiosity, the instinct of objectification, etc. Although instincts undergo various modifications, they are always there. The seeds of what was originally only instinctual are to be found in all apperceptions and objectivations (see Hua XLII: 104 and 116). Importantly, Husserl also distinguishes between animalistic drives as well as rational drives (see Hua XLII: 243). Thus, if Husserl’s account of the sedimented and the absorbed unconscious implied that unconsciousness is a modification of consciousness, in the present context, the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious is reversed. We already encountered such a reversal in our account of the repressed unconscious, which I qualified as an “original unconscious”. The instinctual unconscious is no less original, although in a significantly different sense of the term: although originally blind and in this sense unconscious, instincts are the genetic origins of various modes of consciousness. Innate instincts underlie the transcendental genesis and all constitution (see Hua XLII: 121), which in effect means that consciousness is shaped by the instinctual unconscious.

Although Husserl qualifies instinct as reason that is still undisclosed and unfulfilled, one should not be too quick to conclude that Husserl sees the course of human life and human history as the transformation of latent reason (i.e., instinct) into patent reason. As he remarks in Appendix XX to Hua XLII, “reason is always in the tension between latency and patency, between undisclosed and unfulfilled drive and conscious will, which is not fulfilled as a single will, but in the universality of a will of a higher and infinite level – subjective and yet intersubjective in one as will that runs through all wills” (Hua XLII: 227).

Husserl’s phenomenology of instincts is set against the mechanistic conception, which explains different kinds of behavior as an automatic pattern. Husserl rejects the view that drives and instincts are merely mechanical powers that predetermine behavior and sees them as innate drives and the hidden stock of capacities. Husserl’s correlationism entails that the world as a whole is intentionally correlated with the system of our capacities, whose origins, he contends, lie in our instinctual lives. Thus, according to Husserl, in the whole system of drives and instincts we can already discern the seeds for the world constitution (Hua XLII: 102).Footnote 12 It thereby becomes understandable why, in his research manuscripts, Husserl would qualify the instinctual life in general in terms of “rationality of all that is irrational”. For Husserl, the realization that all egoic life is rooted in instincts does not pose a threat to reason, but quite on the contrary, it allows phenomenology to account for the hidden grounds of reason. The instinctual unconscious is the irrationality that makes rationality possible (see Hua XLII: 116). There is an inborn teleology that Husserl locates in the instinctual dimensions of life (see esp. Hua XLII, Text Nr. 8).

Husserl on occasion characterizes original instincts as pre-intentional and he claims that they continue to play a role in all explicit intentionality (see Hua XLII: 127).Footnote 13 As Nam-in Lee convincingly observes (2021: 242), instincts have a noetic/noematic structure. Noetically, they are characterized as innate drives that are in search of objective correlates, which would appease and satisfy them, while noematically, they are related to objects of various kind (food is the noema of hunger instinct, etc.).

Among various distinctions that Husserl draws in his reflections, we also encounter the distinction between primal, or original, instincts (Urinstinkten), which Nicholas Smith appropriately qualifies as primal world-disclosing processes (see Smith, 2010: 255 and 265), and developed, or acquired, instincts (entwickelte Instinkten). Primal instincts are preliminary forms of intentionality, while acquired instincts are higher-order drives. In the C Manuscripts, Husserl qualifies primal instincts as intentionality that belongs to the originary essential structure of psychic being (see Mat VIII: 169). Although Husserl also qualifies primal instincts as blind (see Hua XLII: 96), this does not mean that they are necessarily irrational (see Hua XLII: 86). Husserl draws a distinction between rational and sick, or perverse, instincts. In Husserl’s view, all original instincts are proto-rational, while some of the developed instincts are perverse. Although the question concerning the development of perverse instincts is highly intriguing, a detailed account is not to be found in Husserl’s own reflections.

According to Husserl, while the rational instincts are directed at what is valuable, the perverse instincts are directed at what has negative value (see Hua XLII: 86–87). Husserl often characterizes the instincts that belong to the first group as “rational” in quotation marks, which we can take to mean that he identifies at least some of the original instincts as proto-rational: their rational nature can be discovered ex post facto, while taking into account their development (see Hua XLII: 225). Husserl’s account of the instinctual unconscious thereby leads to the realization that the unconscious is the seed that in various ways preforms our conscious relation to the world.

In Husserl’s writings, we also come across a highly intriguing account of the blocked, or repressed, instinctual unconscious, addressed under the heading of “trapped affects – ascesis” (see Hua XLII: 112–113). When various drives, instincts and desires are unfulfilled, they are suppressed (Husserl states that they are subjected to an epoche), although not eliminated, or crossed out.Footnote 14 Finding oneself in such a condition, one searches for compensation and alternative modes of satisfaction. Yet such alternative modes of satisfaction leave one unfulfilled. Husserl contends that one can be cured from some affects of this nature. Presumably, the cure lies in the fully clear presentation of what is entailed in the satisfaction of such affects, viz., in the fully clear presentation of the illusion that such forms of satisfaction entails. Yet to what degree is such a solution satisfactory? Husserl’s own manuscript ends with a question that he himself leaves unanswered: how can the original drive (Urtrieb) be crossed out, i.e., eliminated?

While in some of the manuscripts Husserl’s account of repressed instincts concerns the tension between original or developed instincts and social norms (see Hua XLII, Appendix XIV), in other manuscripts he also considers repression to be a result of a conflict between different instincts. In Text Nr. 8 and Nr. 9 in Hua XLII Husserl speaks of a battle between instincts and of a tension between different directions opened up by competing instincts. In Text Nr. 8, Husserl provides a telling example: how does the instinct for food relate to the instinct to care for others? There is a tension between them: “But ‘carnivorous’ animals, including humans (as ‘omnivora’), are actually animals that eat animals, animals that eat animal bodies (Tierkörper), in that they transform animal lived-bodies (Tierleiber) into mere bodies (Körper)…” (Hua XLII: 114). Thus, a satisfaction of a drive can go hand-in-hand with the inhibition of another drive, and as Husserl further adds in Text Nr. 9, this can occur without explicit awareness on the part of the subject. This brings phenomenology into proximity with Freudian psychoanalysis, as Husserl himself recognizes.Footnote 15 Husserl explicitly speak of the unconscious in his discussion of instincts and drives (see Hua XLII: 125, 126, 128), although as usual, employing the concept in quotation marks. However, for Husserl, the blindness characteristic of original instincts in their primal functioning can be overcome, and is, in fact, overcome when the instincts in question are given the opportunity to develop (see Hua XLII: 124). By contrast, if instincts are suppressed and undeveloped, they remain blind, i.e., unconscious. Since my ambition here is not to provide an exhaustive account of Husserl’s phenomenology of instincts, but only to clarify what it means to speak of the instinctual unconscious, the foregoing analysis will have to suffice.

Conclusion

The psychoanalytic critique of classical Husserlian phenomenology suggests that insofar as phenomenology is a science of consciousness, it cannot help but remain on the surface, that its method does not enable it to penetrate into the depths, for it does not recognize the unconscious as the secret origin of all conscious phenomena. The foregoing analysis demonstrates that such a critique of Husserlian phenomenology springs from methodological and thematic misunderstandings. Methodologically, especially in his later writings on limit problems and limit phenomena, Husserl had reconceptualized and broadened the phenomenological method precisely so as to incorporate into phenomenology reflections on various problems that in psychoanalysis are addressed under the heading of the unconscious. Thematically, throughout Husserl’s various writings we come across highly diverse analyses of the unconscious. As we saw, in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology, the unconscious can be spoken of at least in seven ways, as, horizonal unconscious, time-constituting unconscious, sedimented unconscious, repressed unconscious, absorbed unconscious, dormant unconscious, and instinctual unconscious. Although each determination calls for a much more thorough analysis, I hope that the schematic landscape I have here sketched serves important purposes, for one needs to have the bigger picture in mind if one is to avoid the error of reducing Husserl’s phenomenology of the unconscious to any specific form. Such forms of reductionism easily lead to illegitimate generalizations and other misconceptions of what was at stake in Husserl’s reflections on the unconscious.

Phenomenologists have often argued that one of the chief limitations of the psychoanalytic accounts of the unconscious is that they presuppose an illegitimately narrow conception of consciousness. We come across this realization already in Eugen Fink’s short text on the problem of the “unconscious,” written in 1936 and published as an Appendix to Husserl Crisis (see Fink, 1970). Here Fink famously maintained that consciousness must be the point of departure for the study of the unconscious. It would be a fatal mistake to assume that we all already know what consciousness is and, while relying on such a vague givenness of consciousness, to proceed to the analysis of the unconscious. An illusory understanding of consciousness can only lead to a confused understanding of the unconscious. Thus, according to Fink, to understand the unconscious, one must begin with consciousness, which in effect must mean that psychoanalysis must be grounded in phenomenology. This view, however, is only partially legitimate. The foregoing analysis allows us to say that the relation between consciousness and the unconscious is not foundational, but circular: just as it is not possible to understand the unconscious without understanding consciousness, so also, a full-fledged account of consciousness already presupposes an understanding of the unconscious. We are not faced here with a vicious, but with a productive circle: the guiding conception of consciousness must pave the way to the analysis of the unconscious, which in its own way leads to a more thorough understanding of consciousness. As Husserl put it in a different context, “We have no other choice than to proceed forward and backward in a zigzag pattern” (Hua VI: 59 / Husserl, 1970: 58). Such being the case, one has full right to contend that even though the unconscious arises in the margins of phenomenological reflections, it is in fact a central theme in phenomenology, for it refers to the deepest levels of consciousness itself.

Yet the broadening of the field of the unconscious brings new difficulties. In light of the plurality of senses of the unconscious in Husserl’s phenomenology, one cannot help but wonder if Husserl is employing the concept of the unconscious in a coherent way. Are we to say that in Husserl’s phenomenology, the unconscious is just an umbrella term that covers a large variety of contradictory determinations, or is there anything that all these determinations share? At least five answers are in place. First, the horizonal unconscious is the most general qualification of the unconscious that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology, and all the other forms of the unconscious here addressed could be understood as specifications of the horizonal unconscious.Footnote 16 Second, for Husserl, the unconscious, taken in all its modes, is not opposed to consciousness, but is a dimension of consciousness itself. As Nakamura rightly observes (see Nakamura, 2019: 104), and as we saw in Husserl’s analyses of different modes of the unconscious, what is opposed to consciousness is not the unconscious, but the nothing (das Nichts schlechthin). Thus, as mentioned, Husserl understands consciousness as a multi-layered structure and he analyzes its lowest levels under the heading of the unconscious. Third, we can understand Husserl’s analyses of the unconscious as reflections on different modes of forgetfulness. Such a qualification, however, further requires that we draw a distinction between original and non-original forgetfulness. Fourth, all forms of the unconscious here addressed could be qualified as modes of implicit consciousness, or implicit intentionality. In highly diverse ways, the unconscious in Husserl’s phenomenology refers to what lies beyond the reach of thematic and explicit consciousness, yet nonetheless, and paradoxically, is still within the field of consciousness. Fifth, taken in all its diverse senses, the unconscious shows itself as a limit problem and a limit phenomenon in the sense that Husserl himself gave these terms in his later writings. The unconscious lies at the limit, although not beyond the reach of phenomenology, and its conceptualization brings forth a significant broadening, not only of consciousness itself, but also of the phenomenological method that underlies its analysis.

If, in a general sense, the unconscious refers to all that is given implicitly in consciousness, then, with references to Freud’s account of the unconscious, are we to say that Husserlian phenomenology reduces the unconscious to the preconscious? This view appears to be widely accepted by phenomenologists. Yet if one takes the diversity of senses here distinguished into account, can this view still be sustained? I do not think so. Relying on the distinction between patency and latency, Freud argued that latent ideas are of two kinds: unconscious and preconscious. He characterized preconscious ideas as weak ideas that can enter consciousness when they gain strength. By contrast, unconscious ideas cannot penetrate consciousness, no matter how strong they become. Unconscious ideas are “not only latent ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of their intensity and activity” (Freud, 1991: 36).Footnote 17 While most of the forms of the unconscious that Husserl has addressed in his writing could indeed be reconceptualized as forms of Freudian preconsciousness, nonetheless, this cannot be said about all of them. In the case of the dormant unconscious, we are faced with a form of life that cannot be integrated into wakefulness. In this regard, the distinction between wakefulness and sleep is more radical than the distinction between wakefulness and absorption, or the distinction between perception and phantasy, which can also be conceptualized as Husserlian alternatives to the Freudian distinction between consciousness and the unconscious (see Bernet, 2003). So also, when it comes to Husserl’s reflections on the conflicts that arise between original instincts, we are confronted with forms of repression that occur at very basic genetic levels of conscious life and therefore, not only do they lie behind the back of thematic consciousness, but also, because of their originality, it is highly unlikely that they could be integrated into thematic consciousness. Last but not least, one should not be too quick to reduce Husserl’s account of the repressed unconscious to the split between the conscious and the pre-conscious levels, for nothing warrants such a reduction. A more careful approach would suggest that under the heading of the unconscious, Husserl addressed a plethora of issues that in Freud’s psychoanalysis are understood both as preconscious and unconscious phenomena. Husserl’s concept of the unconscious is overdetermined, and therefore, the view that Husserl’s unconsciousness equals Freud’s preconsciousness needs to be abandoned. This does not mean, however, that under the broad concept of the unconscious, Husserl succeeds at phenomenologically reinterpreting Freudian unconscious. Important differences remain between them. As Talia Welsh had argued a few decades ago, “the Freudian unconscious is something truly different from the Husserlian unconscious” (Welsh, 2002: 178).

There is yet another important difference between Husserl’s and Freud’s analysis of the unconscious. While Freud considers two systems to be indispensable for the psychoanalytic account of the unconscious, Husserl is convinced that one system fully suffices for the phenomenology of the unconscious. Understanding consciousness much more broadly than Freud, Husserl holds the view that the unconscious is a dimension of consciousness itself. It is a tacit, or implicit, consciousness which necessarily accompanies thematic consciousness. Throughout his writings Husserl demonstrates that consciousness has a multi-layered structure, and he conceptualizes the lowest layers under the heading of the unconscious. It is one and the same consciousness that can lead parallel lives; so also, it is one and the same consciousness that can suppress its own instinctual drives as well as cover up various contents of its own experience. For this reason, consciousness can tacitly shape not only the contents of its own experience, but also the style of its existence, without recognizing its own accomplishments. In the final analysis, the unconscious in Husserl’s phenomenology refers to consciousness’ own secret life as well as to its hidden tendencies and accomplishments: to what consciousness accepts and what it rejects, approves and disapproves, tolerates and what it finds intolerable.