For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s nationally distributed book and media review publication, we have Tony Miksanek’s review of “The Unconscious: A Cultural History from Hippocrates to Philip K. Dick and Beyond” by Antonio Melechi, first published January 27, 2026, at Booklist Online.
Enjoy.
“The Unconscious: A Cultural History from Hippocrates to Philip K. Dick and Beyond”
By Antonio Melechi. February 2026. 288p. MIT, $29.95 (9780262051026).
Beneath layers of conscious thoughts is a domain that is mysterious and surreal, fascinating and familiar. Dreams, sleep, intuition, memories, habits, near-death experiences, instincts, and possibly expansion of the mind with the use of psychedelic substances occupy this realm. Yet Melechi fears that the idea of the unconscious has become “a mobile, fuzzy, and notoriously imprecise catch-all.” This anthology of mostly short excerpts on the subject penned by philosophers, scientists, fiction writers, and psychologists is held together by Melechi’s scholarly discussion on the history and competing theories (behavioral, Freudian, cognitive, neurological) of the unconscious state. Plato, St. Augustine, Jung, Descartes, Hobbes, Freud, Kant, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Francis Crick weigh in on the topic. A letter in 1949 from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell about the use of psychological conditioning as a potent tool of authoritarian government is unnerving. Somnambulism, subliminal projection, flashbacks, hypnosis, brainwashing, blindsight, multiple personality disorder, experiments on split-brain patients, the utility of electroencephalography (EEG), and functional MRI scans are a sample of this volume’s many tantalizing subjects to mull over.— Tony Miksanek
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