The Contemporaneity of the Unconscious: Interviews with John Gale, Cristiana Cimino, Sergio Benvenuto and Vittorio Lingiardi.

The interest in the unconscious aspects of psychic life goes back a long way. However, it is with Freud and psychoanalytic theory that a real overturning of the conception of man’s psychic functioning and the treatment of the mental takes place. Since then, various disciplines have had to come to terms with this necessary construct for both the clinic and theory. In the contemporary fields of psychology, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis different conceptualizations and models of the unconscious are identifiable which often differ with respect to languages, description levels and disciplines. Otherwise, for empirical psychology and neuroscience the concept of the unconscious seems to blur into the biological activity of the brain, memory functions and cognitive processes that operate below the threshold of attention. A confrontation of different voices on the “nature” of the unconscious could be a convenient tool both for future psychotherapists and psychoanalysts who find themselves having to choose a training pathway, and for the scientific community.