Clara Mucci - Böcker

Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory, and Clinical Work analyses the psychological and neurobiological characteristics of what nowadays goes 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 identified: 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.

This book represents a major effort to integrate contemporary theories and findings regarding the psychological effects of severe trauma. It explores the psychodynamic implications of aggression, sexuality and dependency, and the consequences of primitive defensive operations dealing with them.

People with personality disorders often attack their own bodies through eating disorders and other self-destructiveness. This book takes a wide-ranging approach to borderline personality disorders and argues that people cannot be treated effectively until the complex mind-body-brain connection is understood.

Arnold Wm. Rachman and Clara Mucci provide a detailed examination of the significance of Sándor Ferenczi’s paradigm shifting theory of trauma, the Confusion of Tongues, and confirm its relevance for the psychoanalytic theory and analysis of trauma today.As the first alternative to Freud’s theory of the Oedipal complex, Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues theory expanded the theoretical and clinical boundaries of psychoanalysis to establish that psychological trauma as a result of childhood sexual abuse and trauma experiences are a significant contributing factor to the development of psychological disorders. The authors address the lack of attention paid to the significance of sexual abuse trauma to understanding psychological ill health in psychoanalysis, and integrate the latest research on neurobiology to demonstrate how Ferenczi’s theory is meaningful to understanding many aspects of human behavior today.This work will be formative to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists both in training and in practice and provide renewed insight into the treatment of childhood sexual abuse and psychological trauma.

Arnold Wm. Rachman and Clara Mucci provide a detailed examination of the significance of Sándor Ferenczi’s paradigm shifting theory of trauma, the Confusion of Tongues, and confirm its relevance for the psychoanalytic theory and analysis of trauma today.As the first alternative to Freud’s theory of the Oedipal complex, Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues theory expanded the theoretical and clinical boundaries of psychoanalysis to establish that psychological trauma as a result of childhood sexual abuse and trauma experiences are a significant contributing factor to the development of psychological disorders. The authors address the lack of attention paid to the significance of sexual abuse trauma to understanding psychological ill health in psychoanalysis, and integrate the latest research on neurobiology to demonstrate how Ferenczi’s theory is meaningful to understanding many aspects of human behavior today.This work will be formative to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists both in training and in practice and provide renewed insight into the treatment of childhood sexual abuse and psychological trauma.

The book combines for the first time attachment theory, regulation attachment therapy, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, showing how the clinical therapeutic process of "going beyond trauma" may result in forgiveness of past relationships and other reparatory practices in which self and other, both internal and external, are integrated and reconnected, opening the subject to creativity and new meaning in life.From early relational trauma to abuse and neglect, to massive social trauma such as war and genocide, the most recent psychoanalytic theories on trauma highlight the relevance of attachment on one side and intergenerational transmission of trauma on the other. The appropriate psychoanalytic treatment of traumatisation of human origin therefore needs to address the specific relational issues, trying to repair precisely the connection between self and other, thanks to the clinician's active participation in the exchange. Abreaction, we could say with Ferenczi, whose concept of trauma differs both in theory and in practice from Freud's idea, "is not enough": in order to restore the empathic dyad between self and other, reparatory connections need to be re-established in the therapetic space, filled with both verbal and nonverbal interactions, fostered by the activity of the right brain of both therapist and patient, as the most recent neurobiology findings show. In the new psychoanalytic turn, the classic talking cure becomes a practice of testimony in which the reality of trauma is carefully recuperated, together with a new awareness of the distortions in the relationship, in this way interrupting the chain of repetition of the traumatic identifications, fixing the subjects in a predictable script of victim and persecutor.Through the appropriate steps, an integration of the split parts of the traumatised self allows the subject to reach a beyond-ness of trauma, where creativity, social reconnection and possibly forgiveness between self and other and reconciliation between groups can be envisioned and experienced.

Unrepressed Unconscious, Implicit Memory, and Clinical Work analyses the psychological and neurobiological characteristics of what nowadays goes 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 identified: 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").