Posting after such a long gap, and with tongue only lightly in cheek, it occurs to me that I have been unconsciously processing this thread for some time now, and recent posts have brought it back to consciousness. I'm still looking for a better sense of the initial impetus for the subject. Is this a question of whether things that would have been "unthinkable" in centuries past--collectively pressed into each individual's unconsciousness--are now more commonly allowed into consciousness?

Various societies at various times are certainly more outwardly repressive of a variety of thoughts, feelings, and actions. For many individuals, the effect of this is to drive those things into unconsciousness, and so perhaps we live in a time and place where there is more room for more people to experience them consciously and in a socially open way. But I think it is difficult on a societal level to distinguish between what is heavily repressed socially and what is truly unconscious individually.

I would say that we live in a time when there is a greater (if not great) collective willingness to deal with personal interiors, leaving more room for individual unconsciousness to emerge into consciousness.

One of the difficulties in this subject, if I've understood it, is that it can be difficult to distinguish between a person who is unaware of something, one who chooses not to reveal it, and one whose level of awareness is somewhere in between.