<p>The Freudian concept of the unconscious is generally presented in terms of a region of the mind that is inaccessible to consciousness. Against this background, classical phenomenologists insisted that, be it latent dream-thoughts or repressed wishes, the mind can disguise the inappropriate content and repress the unwanted only if it somehow “knows” what it thereby represses and disguises. What has been largely neglected, however, is that upon closer scrutiny, Freud himself also repeatedly admits that the unconscious must be somehow present to itself. The paradox that he faces is that of an <i>unconscious mind</i> that is nonetheless <i>aware of itself.</i> To account for this self-presence, Freud introduces the notion of “endopsychic perception”. Lacking the proper philosophical tools, he never managed to clarify the issue, however, and the notion has been only touched upon in the subsequent psychoanalytic tradition. What is at stake is nothing less than the fate of the concept of the unconscious and the psychoanalytic practice built upon it. Delving into Freud’s thinking in depth, I argue that, unlike it first seems, Freud’s notion of endopsychic perception does not annul his psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious but rather sets it on a stable philosophical foundation.</p><p> “Every science is based on observations and experiences arrived at through the medium of our psychical apparatus. But since <i>our</i> science has as its subject that apparatus itself, the analogy ends here. We make our observations through the medium of the same perceptual apparatus”. </p><p>– Sigmund Freud (1938b, 159).</p><p> “Freudian mythology has the seriousness of all mythologies, in that they all arise from the same, essential, secret ground that we are, which is life. And this is why we believe in it so effortlessly, because we recognize ourselves in it so easily”. </p><p>– Michel Henry (1993, 9).</p>