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Can a worthwhile exchange be set up between the seemingly opposing viewpoints of psychoanalytic therapy and cognitive science? Stein and the other contributing authors of Cognitive Science and the Unconscious say yes. In fact, it is their contention that such an interchange of theory and method—combining the theoretical clarity and empirical rigor of cognitive science with the richness and complexity of clinical work—holds the promise of enriching both disciplines. The concept of unconsciousness, as variously conceived by psychoanalysis ("The Unconscious") and cognitive science ("unconscious processing"), is the reference point of this dialogue.
Written by a distinguished group of researchers and clinicians, this volume examines those aspects of the unconscious mind most relevant to the psychiatric practitioner, including unconscious processing of affective and traumatic experience, unconscious mechanisms in dissociative states and disorders, and cognitive approaches to dreaming and repression. Although cognitive psychology forms the backbone of the book, many of the chapters illuminate relevant work from the fields of artificial intelligence, linguistics, and biology.
[A] very readable introduction, and should be of interest to students, clinicians and psychotherapy researchers seeking to orientate themselves to this significant emerging field.
— Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
Dan J. Stein, M.B., is Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Stellenbosch, Tygerberg, South Africa.
Foreword. Introduction: cognitive science and the unconscious. Psychoanalytic and cognitive conceptions of the unconscious. Conscious and unconscious memory: a model of functional amnesia. How unconscious metaphorical thought shapes dreams. What neural network studies suggest regarding the boundary between conscious and unconscious mental processes. Rethinking repression. Dissociated cognition and disintegrated experience. Cognitive psychodynamics: the clinical use of states, person schemas, and defensive control processes theories. Index.