Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory, and Clinical Work

by Giuseppe Craparo

Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory, and Clinical Work analyses the psychological and neurobiological characteristics of what goes nowadays under the name of "unrepressed unconscious," as opposed to Freud's earlier version of a kind of "repressed unconscious" encountered and described initially in his work with hysterical patients. Pioneering Italian psychoanalyst and neuroscientist Mauro Mancia has distinguished this seminal Freudian concept from an earlier version of the unconscious (preverbal and pre-symbolic) that he terms "unrepressed," and which he describes as "having its foundations in the sensory experiences the infant has with his mother (including hearing her voice, which recalls prosodic experiences in the womb). In connection with this description of two different kinds of unconscious, a 'double' system of memory has been if a traumatic event or series of events takes place when the nervous system is not ready to encode them linguistically and register them within the declarative memory system, they leave a trace within the implicit memory and particularly within the right brain, which both Mancia and Schore see as the seat of implicit memory and of that kind of unconscious that is not available for recollection but has not been properly repressed either (therefore "unrepressed").

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Reviews

[Narkitsa Orada · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars really, and also a hard book for me to rate. I was a little hesitant to pick this up because I've never been a big fan of Freud. But I may have to re-evaluate, because the way it synthesized traditional psychoanalytic ideas about the unconscious with what neuroscience tells us about the way the brain functions answered a lot of questions I didn't know I had.

On the other hand, some of the essays felt like they were 90% literature review and 10% actual argument. A lot of them were highly abstract. I would have appreciated more examples (theoretical or case studies). As it is, we're told that the relationship between therapist and patient is key to resolving early childhood trauma, but we don't really get clear examples of what that looks like, or whether the authors' theories are actually benefiting patients. Something along the lines of, "In 10 years of practice treating borderline patients, I've found that the relationship between therapist and patient is key to reducing self-harm," (or whatever) would have been helpful.