The unconscious in psychoanalysis and cognitive science - 06 - Sandler C...

source: SigmundFreudInstitut Frankfurt     2014年3月8日
Mark Solms, Cape Town

Consciousness by surprise: The unconscious in psychoanalysis and cognitive science
JOSEPH SANDLER PSYCHOANALYTIC RESEARCH CONFERENCE 2014
THE UNCONSCIOUS

A bridge between psychoanalysis and cognitive science
Researchers and clinicians in dialogue
DAS UNBEWUSSTE
Eine Brücke zwischen Psychoanalyse und Cognitive Science
Forscher und Praktiker im Dialog
Friday, February 28 to Sunday, March 2, 2014
Goethe-Universität, Campus Westend, Casino
Grüneburgplatz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main

You are invited to the Joseph Sandler Research Conference 2014 taking place in Frankfurt for the 7th time. Joseph Sandler initiated this conference -- together with other leading psychoanalytic clinicians and researchers. His aim was to build bridges between psychoanalysts working mainly in their private offices and those engaged in various forms of extra-clinical research in academic institutions. Joseph Sandler was President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Freud Memorial Professor at University College London (UCL) and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was also senior scientist at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt between 1986 and 1990.

The conference this year is devoted to a central topic of the interdisciplinary dialogue between contemporary psychoanalysis and other scientific disciplines: the Unconscious. As is well-known, in Freud´s time psychoanalysis was characterized as "the science of the unconscious mind". In the last hundred years many other disciplines, among them cognitive science, have studied non conscious mental functions. What are the differences between the conceptualisation of "the unconscious" in psychoanalysis and cognitive science? Is the core thesis of psychoanalysis still plausible, namely that unbearable impulses and ideas from the past and present are banished into the unconscious, from where they continue to determine feelings, thoughts and behaviours in unknown ways? And is such an understanding of the unconscious still central for helping patients in contemporary psychotherapy?

These sorts of questions will be discussed by interdisciplinary researchers and practising psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

We are pleased that such prominent international speakers have accepted our invitations and that we were able to organize this international conference in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud Institute and the IDeA Centre of the LOEWE 'excellence initiative' in the state of Hessen.

We expect a most interesting exchange of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in dialogue with their interdisciplinary scientific colleagues, as well as with other professionals and the broader public.

Ricardo Bernardi
Rober Galatzer-Levy
Marcus Hasselhorn
Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
Anne-Marie Sandler and
Mark Solms