The Evolution of Unconscious-to-Unconscious Communication Within Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This hermeneutic theoretical dissertation addresses the concept of unconscious-to-unconscious communication within three psychoanalytic paradigms—classical psychoanalysis, object relations, and analytic field theory—and illustrates each of these paradigm’s tenets about the unconscious and the related topic of unconscious-to-unconscious communication. The dissertation shows the three psychoanalytic paradigmatic views through summaries of the theoretical perspectives of significant psychoanalysts along with their clinical use of unconscious-to-unconscious communication. These views, respective to these paradigms, are that psychoanalysis is a predominantly static inquiry into repressed unconscious dream content in order to bring material to consciousness; that dreaming can be used to explore the unrepressed unconscious in order to understand more about its relational quality in-the-moment; and that focusing on dreaming the entire sessional material through a limitless, affectively based creative process expands the search into the unrepressed unconscious that is affected by and reflected in the transference relationship of both participants. The dissertation highlights that central to unconscious-to-unconscious communication is aesthetics as exemplified by the humanities.