What is consciousness? What are its purpose and its origin? Awareness, wakefulness, metacognition, subjectivity, experience, phenomenal manifestation? All through the development of Western thinking, philosophers and scientists have been investigating what Arthur Schopenhauer defined the “cosmic knot” (Weltknoten). The debate has since branched out from the domain of philosophy and become central within neurosciences. Therefore the 5° IPD/NPSA Conference aims to relating consciousness to contemporary psychoanalysis. Theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis have extensively debated the unconscious over the last century. However we should also debate the conscious part of psychism - that which the patient openly brings to each session, the basics of the affective, emotional, gestural exchanges within the therapeutic relationship. All this conscious material is woven into the unconscious dimension - into what is procedural, automatic, oneiric and somatic. The “Hard and Easy problem” of consciousness will be tackled from the philosophical as well as the affective and cognitive neuroscientific point of view, in an interdisciplinary dialogue with Psychiatry, Neurology, Neuropsychology and Psychoanalysis. The Conference intends to contribute to this contemporary debate as well as investigate qualitative and quantitative disorders - including minimal states - by focusing on the complexity of consciousness.
