“The unconscious” in psychoanalysis and neuroscience: An integrated approach to the cognitive unconscious

Using Freud’s (1915a) essay on ‘The Unconscious’ as my starting point, I will attempt in this chapter to update Freud’s classical metapsychology in the light of recent developments in cognitive and affective neuroscience. In doing so, I will try to integrate Freud’s concept of repression with contemporary notions of the cognitive – unrepressed – unconscious. I will set out my arguments under eight headings.