The Unpast

The Unpast: The Actual Unconscious, the principal text of this collection, wasthe focus of the 2014 Congress of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts. Threeearlier texts show the progression of his thought which culminated in 'TheUnpast'. Scarfone’s foreword to this volume begins in this way:Time was a somewhat neglected theme in Freud’s nearly fifty-year long studyof the unconscious, and he himself deplored this fact in one of his late works:Again and again I have had the impression that we have made too littletheoretical use of [the] fact, established beyond any doubt, of theunalterability by time of the repressed. This seems to offer an approach tothe most profound discoveries. Nor, unfortunately, have I myself madeany progress here. (1932)One can only speculate about where a renewed effort on Freud’s part wouldhave led him regarding the 'unalterability by time of the repressed.' In thepresent series of essays, that idea is embraced again, though from a differentangle. Instead of subscribing to the general notion of 'timelessness'regarding the unconscious, I take stock of Freud’s formulation in the citationabove. The 'unalterability by time of the repressed' points at somethingmore dynamic or more dialectical than the blunt assertion that theunconscious is timeless. Indeed, if the unconscious were timeless, one mightwell wonder how any part of it could be brought into a time-bound form ofexistence. Timelessness points to an unconscious that is out of this world,whereas 'the unalterability by time of the repressed,' suggests a differentstory: time does exist for the unconscious, but somehow the repressed isprotected from its corrosive effects. The question then becomes what makesthe repressed so sturdy?