Dictionary

ur-mind en · NOUN

Etymology

From ur- (“original, primitive”) + mind.

Meanings

1. The primitive, subconscious, latent, or unconscious mind; instinct.
   • From the muse, from god, from literature itself, the subconscious mind, the Ur-mind, some kind of Jungian other, from the reptilian brain. Who knows? I ride horses a lot, and there's a lot that you feel coming from the horse when you're riding it. 1999, Susan K. Perry, Writing in flow: keys to enhanced creativity:
   • […] whose deification of personal vision, whose wildly romantic glorification of the inner light, first supplied Western thought with an imposing conceptual apparatus by which to justify its habitual excursions into the dark corners of the ur-mind. 1942, William Allison Shimer, Phi Beta Kappa, The American scholar:
   • […] the non-specific 'deep structure', a deep structure that presumably lies so far down in the ur-mind as to realize itself again and again in all forms of cultural activity, basket-making no less than myth-making, cooking no less than love-making. 1989, Richard Ellmann, Susan Dick, Essays for Richard Ellmann: Omnium Gatherum:
   • This Ur-mind also contains information about the future, information available to everyone — but particularly the novelist. 2003, Angela Hague, Fiction, intuition, & creativity:

Forms