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The group is carrying on its work in a number of psychoanalysis centers in various towns and cities. These groups meet every three months to exchange information regarding their research areas. We held a workshop both at the EPF Congress in Prague, 2002, and at the SPI National Congress in Trieste, 2002, during which relations between recent scientific discoveries in the field of neuroscience and memory structuring, seen from the psychoanalytic point of view, were explored. The neurobiologist who also took part reported on mnemonic classifications put forward by neuroscientists. The general aim was to see which aspects of memory described in terms of psychoanalytic development might (or might not) be confirmed by neurobiological research. The following are some abstracts of the subjects presented:
E. C. Gori: “Primary Memory: Between Psychoanalytic Setting and Neurobiology.” Usually the names are different, but the functions described are very similar. It has also been noted that neurobiologists, following Kandel (1998, 1999), do not take into consideration the primal repression function proposed by Freud (1915a, 1915b, 1919, 1929, 1950 [1895]). Freud proposed that at the start of life drives and emotions do not cathect all thing-presentations and therefore they play no part in the construction of the id, which is the first locus in which cathected presentations are stored. Freud draws a distinction between primal repression and secondary repression (a function of the ego). Thus, the first function of the id is not repressive, since at this point there is no ego: the first memories are actively placed in the body. We are also considering the function of words and affects in the construction of memory and whether neuroscience might improve the therapeutic relationship (transference-countertransference) or whether we must expect further developments in the field of neurobiology. Starting out from the clinical encounter, we have begun studying the way neurobiological sc