Lalwende has already pointed out that we do get inside the heads of various characters - principally Frodo - through their dreams. Yet these 'dreams' seem mostly not to be the workings of their unconscious mind's, working through old memories of the day, or due to the hopes & fears the individual characters may have, but almost to be 'communications' from another 'reality', or because of some 'echo' of past or present events the individual is tapping into. Faramir & Boromir's dream is an example of the first kind, Frodo's dream in Bombadil's house of the second. Of curse, there are examples of what we could call 'normal' dreams - Sam dreaming of the overgrown garden of Bag End & looking for his pipe for instance
It does seem as though the characters have very 'undeveloped' subconsciouses though. Its as if their conscious minds merely 'float above' the depths of what Jung called the Collective Unconscious, the realm of the Archetypes or 'gods. Yet the character's waking consciousness seems a seperate thing from the spiritual dimension in Tolkien's world. Tolkien clearly doesn't think of the Valar as having only psychological reality.
Perhaps this is one reason why their souls are so 'visible' - this is pre-Freudian psychology - closer to Jung but closest of all to Catholic theology. The Saints & Angel are not 'Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious', but living beings present & active within their own dimension.
This is not so much a 'fairy tale' view of the human mind as a medieval (& pre-medieval one. And perhaps its due to the fact that up to recent times we lived in greater harmony with our environment, & therefore knew who & what we are in our essential nature. The 'sub-conscious' with its mass of 'complexes, 'drives', hidden motives, etc, may be simply the result of the loss of our ability to live in harmony with nature. In fact, perhaps the existence of a subconscious of any kind is a symbol of what's wrong with us.
I suspect that the reason the characters in Middle earth have 'visible souls' is due to simple fact that there was nothing within them to obscure their souls.
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Originally Posted by Fordim
The characters who think in terms of self-determination, or even self-improvement, are people like Saruman, Boromir and – most disturbingly – Sauron (with his obsession over the Eye/I). These are the real individuals in the text, in the modern sense, insofar as their identity is defined by what they want, what they desire, what they think of themselves, what they want others to think of themselves. The heroes of the book are just not individuals in the sense we think of individuality. They are not defined by their inner core, by what they are but by what they do.
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I'm not sure I'd include Boromir in this, but Sauron & Saruman I wonder if these characters (& perhaps Gollum & Ted Sandyman as well) are victims of this new 'mental illness' of developing a 'sub conscious' because of their seperating of themselves from nature....