MATTE BLANCO AND THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL REALM OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

The author offers an introduction to the work and thinking of the Chilean psychoanalyst, Ignacio Matte Blanco (1908–1995), which can be understood as the exploration of the logical properties inherent in Freud's five characteristics of the unconscious (Freud, 1915). One consequence of these properties is that unconscious phenomena behave as if they occupy dimensions that are greater than those of conscious phenomena. These are the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. The unconscious has to be ‘unfolded’ or ‘translated’ out of this higher number of dimensions into those available for conscious representation and thought. This characteristic, together with the fact that the individual is lost in the unconscious, makes the experience terrifying and bewildering. In addition, Matte Blanco shows that the logical properties of the unconscious and those of emotion are indistinguishable, suggesting an equation between the two. Material from a patient's analysis is offered to illustrate this phenomenology and the clinical application of Matte Blanco's thinking.