Many of the novels and short stories discussed so far indicate that Ballard's fiction, despite its dystopian premises, is often concerned with the possibility of attaining a superior state of awareness by breaking through the boundaries that separate the conscious from the unconscious mind. One of the clearest and fullest expressions of the continuing struggle taking place within the human psyche between the conscious, rational presence of the ego and the secret forces of the buried self is enacted in ‘The Terminal Beach’, a short story originally published in New Worlds in 1964. The protagonist, a former military pilot named Traven, has been driven by some private unconscious drive to the island of Eniwetok. There, he embarks on a quest for his dead wife and 6-year-old son, who were killed in a car accident. A biologist and his assistant, an unnamed young woman, meet him and help him by attending to his injured foot. In a manner reminiscent of Maitland's patient and obsessive resignation in Concrete Island, Traven eludes a search party that has come to find him and, sustained by memories and visions of his wife and son, decides to stay among the abandoned towers, blockhouses and bunkers located at the centre of the island, which also bears the scars of the atomic and hydrogen weapons tests carried out by the American government in the years that followed World War II. Responding to the complex and ambiguous sensations triggered by the island, Traven proceeds with his quest for a state of absolute forgiveness and self-forgetfulness, his awareness reduced to ‘the few square inches of sand beneath his feet’ (BSS 255). He later discovers the corpse of a Japanese man named Dr Yasuda, with whom he attempts to communicate. In what appears to be a parody of a Taoist parable, the dead man replies and recommends to Traven ‘a philosophy of acceptance’ that would enable him to recognize in the desolate landscape of Eniwetok ‘an ontological Garden of Eden’ (BSS 263).

The role of the inner world of the psyche as a communicating link with a prelapsarian reality and a source of spiritual power is also at the heart of The Unlimited Dream Company (1979), which signals an important turning point in Ballard's career.