Panel Report, IPA Congress Boston 2015: Knowing and Not Knowing Ones' Own Mind. Is an Unconscious at Work”

Introducing the panel topic and panelists, L. Chaves noted that Freud described psychoanalysis as a procedure that collects data which are almost inaccessible in any other fashion. She said that the work presented in the panel by Dr. Taylor and discussed by Dr. Vermote focused on a theory of unconscious mental functioning.

The panelists and the chair are members of the IPA Clinical Research Subcommittee. This present panel is one attempt to explore what Freud in 1912 stressed: that psychoanalysis is both a research method and a mode of treatment; both of these aspects coincide within the simultaneous work of the psychoanalyst and patient in the consulting room.

In introducing his paper, Dr.Taylor stressed that in this work in progress he and the research group, from which this paper was developed, were attempting to look at certain phenomena which are central in psychoanalysis. In an attempt to ask questions about what we don't understand and to know about the psychoanalytic endeavour, Dr. Taylor made the point that he was looking at a process of the unfolding unconscious mental functioning as it emerged in a patient and within the analyst.

Dr. Taylor stated that both experiencing and observing at the same time is a fundamental dilemma for the psychoanalyst. He was hoping to start a discussion about how our understanding of a patient's dynamics and their internal world are altered, also how they shift and evolve over the course of analysis and by what means.

Informed by Freud's “Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis,” and then Wittgenstein's letter in 1945 to Malcolm Norman, Taylor framed the problem he wished to address in this panel.

Wittgenstein described the conundrum for philosophers and psychoanalysts as attempting to not be overcome by the ‘charm’, ‘fishy thinking’ and lack of findings from early psychoanalysis. How do we keep in mind the