In the wake of recent French and German studies that attempted to outline a history of psychology of the so-called unintentional before Freud, this volume intends to present a inquiry that scrutinizes in a more systematic way the various forms of the “non conscious” (independent or complementary of psychoanalysis) developed from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. We focused on their reception by literature, most of all in the Italian arena which has been less investigated up till now. The papers explore the relationships between literature and the “scientific ideologies” such as medicine, psychology and ethnography, with regard to the representation of the vast arena of the “non conscious”, as far as it interferes with and affects the conventions of literary genders and narrative writing.
