There is to me a striking analogy between the microcosmos composed of bacteria and the unconscious mental process presented in Freud's writings. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan have written a book titled, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years Of Microbial Evolution, in which I read a revealing passage comparing the only two types of living cells on earth, prokaryotes, or, cells without a nucleus, and eukaryotes, or, nucleated cells.

"People and other eukaryotes are like solids frozen a specific genetic mold, whereas the mobile, inter-changing suite of bacterial genes is akin to a liquid or gas. If the genetic properties of the microcosm were applied to larger creatures, we would have a science-fiction world in which green plants could share genes for photosynthesis with nearby mushrooms, or where people could exude perfumes of grow ivory by picking up genes from a rose of a walrus." 89.

Hum, sounds like a dream. Freud writes: "The kernal of the system Ucs consists of instinct-presentations whose aim is to discharge their cathexis; that is to say, they are wish impulses. These instinctual impulses are co-ordinate with one another, exist independently side by side, and are exempt from mutual contradiction." And this: "Intensity of cathexis is mobile in a far greater degree in this than in the other systems. By the process of displacement one idea may surrender to another the whole volume of its cathexis; by that of condensation it may appropriate the whole cathexis of several other ideas." Collected Papers, Vol. IV. 119.

The microcosm and the unconscious are non-nuclear systems; the macrocosm and consciousness are nuclear systems. The puzzle that remains is relationship between the two.