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as soon as ecstatic climax is past, the woman involved is experienced as another claustrophobic object. Clinical inquiry on these infinitizations of symmetrizations highlights the symmetry of the role of prey and that of the of predator , which gradually leads to a relinquishment of the centrality of the erotic frenzies, to more tranquil relationships and to more comfortable states of mind. Infinitization is also repetition compulsion, but carries more direct link to the instinctual expression, a no thought realm. Matte-Blanco’s concept of Unconscious Logic concerns the deepest stratum of the Unconscious, the root of the psyche, the non-repressed structural unconscious, deeply connected with somatic sensations. In this context, it has been often viewed as related to such conceptualizations as Armando Ferrari’s (eclipse of the body) (Lombardi, 2000) and Bion’s (1962) transformative processes, as all of them stress the structural difficulty of thinking in the face of the disturbing bio-psychological thrust of the emotions. The pressure the body exerts on mental functioning constitutes the first structural elements of infinitization, as mental trace in contact with the body. The notions of the memory trace and mnemic image in Freud takes us to the “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1895, p.351) and The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a, b) where we also find the notion of transcription, repetition and “Bahnung”, which can be translated as facilitation or pathway. The trace is the first somatic impression. Lombardi (2008 p. 713) writes: “We wish thereby to emphasize once more how it is that the unconscious and the infinite find their roots in the primitive experience of the body”. And “So Matte-Blanco’s research is focused on the functioning of the logic that characterizes thought and language, as elements that spur on the analytic exchange, as well as being absolutely central to the treatment of serious cases “ (p. 711). Lombardi (p.709) has added the absence of relations in the structure of thought, the co-existence of thought and non-thought, the presence and absence of time, and the disintegration–confusion of space/time as properties of Unconscious Logic . There are technical implications to Matte-Blanco’s work, in particular the recognition that at deep levels of mental functioning, a process of reverie (Bion, 1962) and various forms of ‘holding’ (Winnicott, 1971) may need to precede systematic interpretative approaches. This initial phase may be necessary so that the subject/analysand can experience interpretations, which require tolerance of asymmetry, and therefore a logical (symbolic/metaphoric) leap, as emotionally meaningful and not infinitely dangerous. Florence Guignard (1995) views Matte- Blanco’s conceptualization of the Unconscious as a way of bringing “the drive-related, developmental and structural elements of ‘the infantile’ into the analytic relationship” (p.1083). In summary, Matte-Blanco’s theory of Unconscious Logic (bi-logic, symmetric logic) explores at the microscopic level the deepest unconscious layers. In his theory, two irreconcilable logics determine, to varying degrees, all psychic processes: one is asymmetrical and characteristic of the conscious system, and is based on the principle of non-contradiction, while the other is the symmetrical infinitely generalizing logic of the unconscious. Asymmetrical logic tends to differentiate objects in increasingly individualized sets and characterizes scientific thought. The properties of the unconscious system according to Freud (timelessness, displacement, substitution of external reality by psychic reality, the lack of
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