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How do we understand the pre-verbal, pre-symbolic part of the mind which is structurally unconscious? How does it differ from the repressed, dynamic unconscious with which we are so much more familiar? Guiseppe Craparo and Clara Mucci attempt to provide a clearer understanding of the concept of the unrepressed unconscious in this edited book, which brings together contributions from some of the leading figures in this developing field. They are both psychoanalytic psychotherapists and academics whose focus on bringing together conceptual and applied understanding is helpful for the clinician.
In his foreword, Peter Fonagy notes that the book approaches the topic of the unrepressed unconscious from six ‘distinct perspectives that share the wish to integrate contemporary neuroscience with psychoanalytic perspectives’, with each chapter taking a focus on different aspects of the matter at hand, including links with memory, attachment process and trauma. It is indeed the case that the variety of perspectives presented in the book provides a breadth of thinking and evidence to consider, each contributor presenting thoughts on the conjunction between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, as well as the implications for clinical practice.
Mark Solms looks at the way in which modern thinking and research into the nature of the unconscious requires major revisions of Freud’s original theory – perhaps most startlingly the proposition (drawn from the work of Jaak Panksepp and others) that it is consciousness that resides at the deepest level of the mind and more primitive parts of the brain, and that it is the higher brain systems that are unconscious, ‘borrowing’ consciousness through associative links to the lower system. Meanwhile Mauro Mancia presents the role of long-term memory systems and their relation to the unrepressed unconscious, drawing in the contributions of neuroscience and molecular biology and making helpful illustrative links to the psychoanalytic therapy process.