The Horizontal Dimension of the Unconscious

Abstract

The Analysis of social unconscious encounters in psychoanalysis is here focused as horizontal dimension of the unconscious. As even the analyst in his utterances is unconsciously determined by the analysand I propose to renounce of a military metaphor like "intervention". Baby-watchers carefully have documented the details of human resonance phenomena and how important they are. In my bottom-up approach I ascend from the baby-level to the bodily level of analyst-analysand physiology and then to the verbal level and find, by results of documented research, a structural isomorphism between all these levels. Thus, there is continuity from preverbal infant level of resonance to verbally elaborated levels of exchange. This continuity weakens the sharp distinction between "body" and "mind" usually taken as an attack on psychoanalysis where, allegedly, "only words" are exchanged. There is more in verbal exchange than these critics imagine. A case example serves as illustration to discuss some aspects of psychoanalytic technique.