Buddhist Influences on the Idea of the Unconscious

This article evaluates the role of Buddhism in helping to shape a key concept in psychology. The essay begins by deconstructing the synchronicity of Kant's publication of the Critique of Pure Reason with the formation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal by Sir William Jones. The implications of these two separate yet meaningfully related events, occurring within just a few years of each other, contribute to a re-vision of the word unconscious. With the influx of actual Sanskrit works, through the popular Asiatic Researches and other publications, the idea of the unconscious began to take on new value. Under the impact of a critical paradigm shift in Western thought via the work of Kant and the burgeoning science of comparative linguistics, the conception of unconscious thought processes is shown to have evolved semantically. This development is traced through a series of stages, identified as aesthetic, philosophical, and scientific. The aesthetic usage is exemplified in the Lyrical Ballads of Coleridge and Wordsworth, both of whom were familiar with Sanskrit literature. The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, a student of Kant and an early champion of Buddhism, echoed Buddhist notions of dharma and pratitya samupada. The “revised” conceptualization of the unconscious then passed into a scientific stage, through psychological researchers such as Fechner and Wundt. This is followed by the clinical application of the concept within the school of psychodynamic psychology, characterized by Freud and Jung.