American writers in the 1830s and 1840s felt the need for a new terminology to express their awakening perception of "new" aspects of the mind. Without words like the "unconscious" vast areas of the psyche would have remained unexpressed and thus unapproachable. This "discovery" of the unconscious constitutes to the theme of this study, which was first published in 1987. This title will be of interest to students of literary theory.