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opens the way and explains a flexible gateway of give-and-take between the Ucs and the Pcs- Cs systems. In this context, repression becomes the main defensive operation, preventing and facilitating (in the disguised return of the repressed) the passage back and forth of psychic content. Where the early environment has been inadequate, in place of repression the psyche relies predominantly on ego splitting as defensive operation and the situation becomes one of pure opposition between the Ucs and the Pcs-Cs. This latter type of psychic functioning is found in the non-neurotic registers. All of this work attests to the intimate bond postulated between the unconscious and drive in contemporary French theorization. An important theme is the close examination of the “construction” of drive from basic physiological reflexes. Drive is regarded as mutable, perpetually in transition, proliferating in all mentation, and created anew in certain intersubjective experiences. The early caretaking environment is assumed to have had a crucial role in the shaping and evolution both of the content and of the processes of unconscious operations in the individual. Thus, even in its most archaic manifestations, the unconscious is never purely unfettered instinctual energy but rather drive intimately marked by, and containing the traces of, the human being’s earliest dependency on specific adult others. Thus Aulagnier (2001) wrote “for the perceptions and sensory experiences of the infant as well as its feelings of pleasure and pain to become psychically representable . . . it is essential that [they] be invested libidinally by the maternal psyche” (p xxi). She goes on to point out that her viewpoint is akin to Bion’s concept of maternal reverie. Laplanche (1999a,b,c) has introduced the concept of “intromission” in contrast to “implantation” to describe a violent transmission of unconscious sexuality unmitigated by repression and secondary elaboration on the part of the adult. Another similar conceptualization taking into account the quality of parental presence in the construction of the unconscious comes from Christophe Dejours (2001). When the caretaker attacks the thinking process of the child, the capacity for repression is put out of order, Dejours argues, resulting in what he calls an ‘amential’ (thoughtless) unconscious , which lacks the associative and elaborative generativity of the repressed unconscious. Another twist on the connection between the unconscious and representation comes recently from French Canadian analyst Scarfone (2016a in press, 2016b in press) who has pointed out that the English language has two words: consciousness and awareness. Etymology shows that the “ware” in “awareness” is related to not losing sight of something. But awareness seems to be only a first step towards consciousness, in that one can be aware of something and yet not fully understand what this something is about . To be fully conscious requires awareness + the meaning of what one is aware of. According to Wittgenstein, meaning is usage . Therefore, one can say that to be conscious is to have some usage, in words or in deeds, of what one is aware. Conversely, « unconscious » designates that which dwells inside or outside of awareness but of which one has no deliberate usage either in thoughts or in deeds. Still another object of study among French analysts has been the temporality characteristic of the unconscious. Pontalis (2001) has described the unconscious as “this time that does not pass”. In a similar vein, Green has also written about the multiple temporalities dwelling within the same subject and in particular about « states in which consciousness (and
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