The Unpast

<p>The Unpast: The Actual Unconscious, the principal text of this collection, was</p><p>the focus of the 2014 Congress of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts. Three</p><p>earlier texts show the progression of his thought which culminated in "The</p><p>Unpast". Scarfone's foreword to this volume begins in this way:</p><p><br></p><p>Time was a somewhat neglected theme in Freud's nearly fifty-year long study</p><p>of the unconscious, and he himself deplored this fact in one of his late works:</p><p><br></p><p><em>Again and again I have had the impression that we have made too little</em></p><p><em>theoretical use of [the] fact, established beyond any doubt, of the</em></p><p><em>unalterability by time of the repressed. This seems to offer an approach to</em></p><p><em>the most profound discoveries. Nor, unfortunately, have I myself made</em></p><p><em>any progress here. (1932)</em></p><p><br></p><p>One can only speculate about where a renewed effort on Freud's part would</p><p>have led him regarding the "unalterability by time of the repressed." In the</p><p>present series of essays, that idea is embraced again, though from a different</p><p>angle. Instead of subscribing to the general notion of "timelessness"</p><p>regarding the unconscious, I take stock of Freud's formulation in the citation</p><p>above. The "unalterability by time of the repressed" points at something</p><p>more dynamic or more dialectical than the blunt assertion that the</p><p>unconscious is timeless. Indeed, if the unconscious were timeless, one might</p><p>well wonder how any part of it could be brought into a time-bound form of</p><p>existence. Timelessness points to an unconscious that is out of this world,</p><p>whereas "the unalterability by time of the repressed," suggests a different</p><p>story: time does exist for the unconscious, but somehow the repressed is</p><p>protected from its corrosive effects. The question then becomes what makes</p><p>the repressed so sturdy?</p>