THE COUCH IN THE LAB - EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES

In the past, progress in psychoanalytic theory has been greatly hamper ed by inadequate knowledge of the modes of operations of the unconscio us mind on the part of researchers working in perception, dream, memor y, and communication theory. The authors contend that the more recent approaches in the neurosciences (lesion psychology, neuro-imaging) are still not in a position to remedy this deficit. By contrast, modern a pproaches to cognitive psychology appear better able to cooperate with psychoanalysis, thus holding out the promise of genuine progress in o ur knowledge of this area. However, as the ''cognitive unconscious'' o f cognitive psychology has precious little in common with the ''dynami c unconscious'' of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts are constrained to d o the research work of both disciplines themselves, and this in two di fferent settings: experimentally in the laboratory, and hermeneuticall y behind the couch. After outlining the findings in dream, perception, and memory research from psychoanalytic labs, the authors concentrate on the aims and methods of subliminal research. Drawing on their own experiments, they demonstrate what psychoanalytic lab work is able to achieve in methodological terms. It reduces organic wholes to their co mponent parts, decelerates high-speed events and thus resolves part-pr ocesses and individual factors. The experiment performs the function o f a microscope or a slow-motion camera. Fragmenting coherent entities makes them more susceptible of precise scrutiny.