L’inconscient et conscience de soi. Merleau-Ponty entre phénoménologie et psychanalyse

This paper addresses the question as to whether the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious is compatible with the phenomenological notion of consciousness defined as self-awareness. This problem is approached by explicating various concepts that Merleau-Ponty used in his attempts at a reinterpretation of the psychoanalytic unconscious. At first, the paper focuses on MerleauPonty’s position in the Phenomenology of Perception, which is specified by the concepts of bad faith, institution and body schema. After that, it is explained what are the implications of Merleau-Ponty’s late conceptions of primordial symbolism and embodied intersubjectivity for the problem of the unconscious and its manifestation in the consciousness.