On Freud's "The Unconscious"

'Psychoanalysis evolved essentially as a psychology of the unconscious. This very scholarly and fascinating compendium explores the current concepts of the unconscious. A broad spectrum of authors clearly and cogently present evidence supporting diverse propositions. Descriptive, dynamic, neurobiological, and cultural issues are comprehensively examined, facilitating comparison and evaluation. The reader is invited to review such historically relevant, inherent controversy as unconscious problem solving versus the unconscious dominated by the primary process. Salman Akhtar and Mary O'Neil's thoughtful selection and careful editing result in an impressive contribution to the psychoanalytic literature. A century after Freud's papers on meta-psychology this volume provides a very valuable contemporary reference resource on the unconscious.'- Harold P. Blum, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Supervising and Training Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of the New York Medical Center'The broad ranging essays in this volume challenge, explore and expand upon the seminal paper of 1915 on "The Unconscious". In so doing, they reaffirm its position as one of Freud's most generative metapsychological achievements and as the forerunner of some of the past century's most important developments in psychoanalytic thought.'- Howard B. Levine, MD, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East (PINE), and author of Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning: Clinical and Theoretical Contributions