On knowing what one knows

The author presents vignettes of a type of experience that is familiar to many analysts. He suggests that analysts and analysands know much more about each other than is generally recognized and that much of the important communication is subliminal, out of conscious awareness. Evidence of our unconscious knowledge surfaces in the form of emotion, fantasy, images, intrusive thoughts, and physical feelings. Often it seems uncanny. Recent experimental evidence and neurobiological research seem to explain and validate these analytic experiences.