More than one hundred years after Freud began publishing some of his seminal theories, the concept of the unconscious still occupies a central position in many theoretical frameworks and clinical approaches. When trying to understand clients’ internal and interpersonal struggles, it is almost inconceivable not to look for unconscious motivation, conflicts and relational patterns. Clinicians also consider it a breakthrough to recognise how our own unconscious patterns have interacted with those of our clients.
Although clinicians use concepts such as the unconscious and dissociation, in actuality many do not take into account the newly emerging neuropsychological attributes of nonconscious processes. As a result, assumptions and lack of clarity overtake information that can become central in our clinical work.
This revolutionary book presents a new model of the unconscious, one that is continuing to emerge from the integration of neuropsychological research with clinical experience.
Topics covered include:
The centrality of subcortical regions
Automaticity, repetition, and biased memory systems
Role of the amygdala and its sensitivity to fears in shaping and coloring unconscious self-systems
Self-narratives
Therapeutic enactments
Therapeutic resistance
Defensive systems and narcissism
Therapeutic approaches designed to utilize some of the new understandings regarding unconscious processes and their interaction with higher-level conscious ones embedded in the prefrontal cortex
