Giovanni Piana’s Contribution to the Clarification of the Unconscious

This article aims to show that Giovanni Piana’s work provides a valuable and coherent outline for a phenomenology of the unconscious. After a necessary introduction to the topic as it appears in Piana’s writings, the analysis develops along three main lines of inquiry. First, Piana’s account of the structure of consciousness is reconstructed, highlighting its critical distance from the Freudian model. Second, the possible forms of the unconscious in a properly phenomenological sense that emerge from his writings are presented. Finally, Piana’s contribution is applied to the clarification of dream life, in particular to its interpretation and to the tracing back of dream work to the rules of imagination. The conclusion synthesizes the results of this investigation, emphasizing the relevance of Piana’s thought for a dialogue between phenomenology and psychoanalysis.