SOURCE: "Kierkegaard's View of the Unconscious," in Kierkegaard: Poet of Existence, 1989, reprinted in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, edited by Martin J. Matuštik and Merold Westphal, Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 76-97.

In the following essay, Evans studies the role of the unconscious in Kierkegaard's writings. In particular, Evans analyzes the way in which the unconscious informs Kierkegaard's "relational" view of the self.

No informed observer of the twentieth century world of letters could fail to notice the significance of the concept of the unconscious in psychology, psychiatry, literature, and even in philosophy. We live in the age of depth psychology, an age in which the notion of the unconscious has passed over into what is termed "common sense." Despite or because of the popularity of the concept it is by no means evident that the unconscious is clearly understood. Indeed, the very notion that there is such a...