Psychoanalysis and neuroscience

Mauro Mancia (ed)

Springer - Berlin

2006

The most recent scientific studies have brought a significant contribution to the understanding of basic mental functions such as memory, dreams, identification, repression, which constitute the basis of the psychoanalytical theory. As a matter of fact, numerous neuroscientific observations in recent years have laid the ground for hypotheses on the neurological organization of mental functions that are fundamental to psychoanalytical theory; the discovery of the implicit memory has extended Freud's concept of the unconscious (1915) and highlighted the unrepressed unconscious connected particularly to experiences of the primary relation, stored in the implicit memory.