Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory, and Clinical Work

A book dedicated to the 'unrepressed unconscious' is a long-awaited contribution to psychodynamic theory and practice. It makes us address questions to which we cannot, and probably we should not, give final answers. How does the clinician move between the unconscious of neuroscience and the unconscious of psychoanalysis? What is the role of implicit memory in normal and pathological functioning? How are our ideas of different kinds of unconscious affected by our understanding trauma, dissociation, attachment, and implicit relational knowledge? Giuseppe Craparo and Clara Mucci have edited a thought-provoking book wherein the major scholars of the field are called to share their different perspectives, keeping us suspended between the longing for answers and the desire for new questions. --Vittorio Lingiardi, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

The notion of the unrepressed unconscious has been a major psychoanalytic puzzle since the inception of the discipline. Psychoanalytic thinking about the nature of consciousness has always implicitly distinguished between a non-conscious and a dynamically unconscious mental content, whether marked by distinctions such as repressed vs. unrepressed, preconscious vs. unconscious or, using Sandler's three-box model, past vs. present unconscious. This excellent book attempts to map this somewhat controversial field and addresses the dichotomy from six distinct perspectives that share the wish to integrate contemporary neuroscience with psychoanalytic perspectives, using the clinical setting as the primary constraint on theory-building. --Peter Fonagy, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, University College London; from the Foreword