ABSTRACT
It comes as a surprise, at the end of the reexamination of Freudian theories, that concepts that might at first appear to be abstract elements of a theoretical construction effortlessly find a concrete physiological basis in the fact of neural plasticity. The trace, which is at the center of the phenomenon of plasticity, lies at the intersection of the neurosciences and psychoanalysis. The unconscious and the drive may remain useful concepts without the need for further attention to the question of their existence or their biological function. A biology of the unconscious and the drive has been made possible today by the recent advances in the neuro-sciences. Through the association of somatic states, and traces left by experience, the psychoanalytic concepts of the unconscious and drives turn out to have a biological resonance.
