"The repressed unconscious can become conscious only by being transformed into an external perception, by being projected. According to Freud, the mythological conception of the universe, which survives even in the most modern religions, is only psychology projected onto the outer world.

"Not just mythology but the entirety of culture is projection. In the words of Spender, "The world which we create the world of slums and telegrams and newspapers is a kind of language of our inner wishes and thoughts." The first breakthrough of the insight which flowers into psychoanalysis occurs in German idealism, in Hegel's notion of the world as the creation of spirit and, even more, in Novalis' notion of the world as the creation of the magic power of fantasy.

"In fact, there is a loss of insight reflected in the tendency of psychoanalysis to isolate the individual from culture. Once we recognize the limitations of talk from the couch, or rather, once we recognize that talk from the couch is still an activity in culture, it becomes plain that there is nothing for psychoanalysis to psychoanalyze except these projections--the world of slums and telegrams and newspapers, and thus psychoanalysts fulfills itself only when it becomes historical and cultural analysis.

"It also follows that consciousness of the repressed unconscious is itself a cultural and historical product, since the repressed unconscious can become conscious only by being transformed into an external perception in the form of a cultural projection."