'Clear and precise in its arguments, Finn's book draws illuminatingly on an impressive range of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, from medical treatises and theses, medical and cultural history to writers' correspondence, biography, literary fiction, reception studies and literary criticism. Finn has produced a book that enlivens our thinking and enriches our understanding of the place of pre-Freudian unconscious during a period when developments in medicine, psychology and psychiatry in France were informing and being reflected in creative writing of various sorts.' Adam Watt, University of Exeter '... an excellent and important project ... This detailed rereading of scientific discourse is in turn enriched by literary deployments of psychic phenomena. The research is thorough. The claims made are original and insightful.' Janell Watson, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 'Finn charts the quarrels that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century over the very existence of the unconscious, and, later, the debates over the creative potential of the unconscious, all in anticipation of Freudian contributions and discoveries, and of Proustian thought. ... The scope of the study is illuminating ...' Kate Rees, French Studies