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- Title
מפוּנֶס הזכרן לאגנס השכחנית: על זיכרונות מתים ושכחות חיות.
- Authors
מירב רוט
- Abstract
My goal in this essay is to differentiate between two paradoxical forms of memory. On the one hand, I shall identify and discuss what I term ‘dead remembered memories.’ These are memories characterized by knowledge about the past that is disconnected from experience, relatedness and emotion. Such ‘memories’ are thus not integrated in the mind in a way that enables internalized early object relations and experiences to nourish the mature self. On the other hand, I identify and discuss what I term ‘live lost memories.’ The latter refers to repressed memories which continue to live in the depths of the mind, and unconsciously shape an individual’s life and his or her object relationships. In Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) famous paper “Repeating, remembering and working through” (1914), he wrote about the manner in which traumatized experiences become, on the one hand, lost memories, though, on the other hand, these may reappear again and again in what he termed “repetition compulsion” – an unconscious psychic form of reliving and trying to gain control over the origin of suffering. Since Freud, psychoanalytic thinking about trauma has developed significantly, such that currently traumatic experience is more broadly understood, perhaps even determined by the new perception of trauma as “unclaimed experience” (Caruth, 1996). In the case of trauma, in Cathy Caruth’s (1955- ) view, the individual’s mind cannot even be said to have experienced the given traumatogenic phenomenon, the trauma being in some way beyond the mind’s capacity to grasp, comprehend and contain. As a result, if the mind experiences anything at all during such moments (can it even be said to “suffer?” as Bion would ask), it is essentially as a gap, a lacuna, a missing experience. The traumatic event is at best marked by the psychological derivatives of the unprocessed trauma, namely “an event which injures the system, sabotages its course, thus making it impossible for the subject… to integrate the event into a symbolic-experiential system which is comprehensible to him and structures his world” (Lazar, 2017, p. 202). In Shoshana Felman (1942- ) and Dori Laub’s (1937-2014) words, “It is impossible to testify from the inside because the inside has no voice” (1992, p. 232). In certain cases, the individual can describe the traumatic experience in details, and sometimes even in excess (Amir, 2018), even as she or he at the same time keeps himself disconnected from its psychological impact. I shall illustrate the two kinds of memory I describe, and the role of the lacuna in psychological experience as well as its broader psychological influence, through the medium of Gorge Luis Borges’ (1899-1986) famous short story “Funes the memorious” (1944).1 I demonstrate how the prodigious – the truly accurate word would be ‘phenomenal’ – memory of Funes, the hero in Borges’ story, for all of the innumerable data it accumulates, functions as a defense against feelings of loss, anxiety, pain and vulnerability. In many cases in basic psychological development, early experiences are out of reach of consciousness yet are not necessarily traumatic (although the true scope of what we term “trauma” is debatable). Many memories are not retained in consciousness, and/or are repressed, due to essentially ‘economic’ reasons (i.e., questions of autonomous psychic homeostasis rather than trauma as such), while others are repressed in the classical sense, i.e., due to internal unconscious conflict, guilt, shame, pain and more. For these latter cases, I suggest the term ‘live lost memories’ and in this paper I demonstrate the two forms of such memories The first example of ‘live lost memories’ is rooted in a neurological condition. This is illustrated by reference to Noa Lazar’s (1977- ) play “Berthod and Agnes” (2019). This play tells the story of a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, and her husband, both of whom loved each other and still very much do, and the way that her lost memories blur consciousness and cause great confusion, anxiety and pain, yet at the very same time exert tremendous influence, both direct and indirect, on the core, inner emotional and relational structures from where these influences and memories are still signalling in very meaningful ways. For example, as indirect, and perhaps questionable evidence occurs to suggest a previous, unspoken affair, Berthod continues to love and care for Agnes, despite knowing what he believes he knows, and despite being aware that the medications he has been told to give her have little effect on her disease. Though this example might be considered atypical for clinical psychoanalytic work, I believe that the principle applies, and that careful listening enables the clinician to trace such levels of memories that are still alive and influential, even though the coherent symbolic, linguistic narratives that once accompanied them seem to have been lost. The second form of ‘live lost memories’ results from unconscious dynamics. After I define these memories, I offer a clinical vignette that demonstrates how old psychological wounds that have apparently become silent and absent from the conscious memory are, in fact, unconsciously present, alive and most influential. Moreover, in the clinical vignette I demonstrate how such lost memories strive toward indirect ways of communication – such as in free associations, dreams and the very deep levels of transference-countertransference influences. In the final part of my paper I highlight the importance of the psychotherapist’s readiness to delve into the phenomenological experience with the patient, as the latter is gradually shaped by the powerful phenomena of projective identification, through which lost memories can be relived between the patient and the analyst, remobilizing historic deadlocks and reopening internal barriers. I describe in great detail the to-and-fro of the analyst’s and patient’s communications in order to illuminate clinical and technical considerations related to the re-enactment of lost memories of internal early object relations of the patient, now relived between patient and analyst. This coming to light of lost memories enables not only their working through but also provides the opportunity for turning repetition into reparation. Only by allowing ourselves to become deeply and intimately involved in the projective identification with the patient can we truly and deeply understand and interpret analytic experience, thereby allowing the patient to mourn and work-through past memories, attempting new meanings in the context of the current analytic dyad.
- Publication
Ma'arag: Israeli Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019, Vol 9, p3
- ISSN
2413-290X
- Publication type
Article