Pathways of emotional communication

The phenomena that have been characterized clinically as "unconscious commu nication" may be accounted for systematically as emotional communication, w hich occurs both within and outside of awareness. The new formulation is ba sed on current work in cognitive science, extended to account for emotional information processing, not information processing alone, and emphasizes t he structure and organization of the multiple modalities of mental processi ng, rather than the dimension of awareness. The process of emotional commun ication, as it takes place in treatment las in all the interactions of life ), is accounted for in terms of the referential process, defined within the theoretical context of the multiple code theory. The referential process o perates in the patient attempting to express emotional experience, includin g warded off experience, in verbal form; in the analyst who listens, experi ences, and generates an intervention; and in the interaction between the tw o.