<P> In 1880, Edmond Colsenet supports at the Sorbonne, a philosophy thesis on the unconscious . Elie Rabier and Alfred Fouillee perform syntheses of the unconscious "at a time when Freud was not interested in the concept". </P> <P> Psychologist Jacques Van Rillaer points out that, "the unconscious was not discovered by Freud . In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology (The Principles of Psychology), examined the way Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term' unconscious' and' subconscious"'. Historian of psychology Mark Altschule observes that, "It is difficult--or perhaps impossible--to find a nineteenth - century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance ." </P> <P> Van Rilliaer could have also mentioned that Eduard von Hartmann published a book dedicated to this topic, Philosophy of the Unconscious, in 1869--long before anybody else . </P> <P> Furthermore, 19th century German psychologists, Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt, had begun to use the term in their experimental psychology, in the context of manifold, jumbled sense data that the mind organizes at an unconscious level before revealing it as a cogent totality in conscious form ." </P>

Layer of consciousness is just below the surface of awareness