A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
I do not wish to go any further to-day, but since our time is not yet up
I intend to call your attention to another characteristic of our two
analyses, namely, the memory gaps or amnesias, whose full appreciation
will be possible later. You have heard that it is possible to express
the object of psychoanalytic treatment in a formula: all pathogenic
unconscious experience must be transposed into consciousness. You will
perhaps be surprised to learn that this formula can be replaced by
another: all the memory gaps of the patient must be filled out, his
amnesias must be abolished. Practically this amounts to the same thing.
Therefore an important role in the development of his symptoms must be
accredited to the amnesias of the neurotic. The analysis of our first
case, however, will hardly justify this valuation of the amnesia. The
patient has not forgotten the scene from which the compulsion act
derives--on the contrary, she remembers it vividly, nor is there any
other forgotten factor which comes into play in the development of these
symptoms. Less clear, but entirely analogous, is the situation in the
case of our second patient, the girl with the compulsive ritual. She,
too, has not really forgotten the behavior of her early years, the fact
that she insisted that the door between her bedroom and that of her
parents be kept open, and that she banished her mother out of her place
in her parents' bed. She recalls all this very clearly, although
hesitatingly and unwillingly. Only one factor stands out strikingly in
our first case, that though the patient carries out her compulsive act
innumerable times, she is not once reminded of its similarity with the
experience after the bridal-night; nor was this memory even suggested
when by direct questions she was asked to search for its motivation. The
same is true of the girl, for in her case not only her ritual, but the
situation which provoked it, is repeated identically night after night.
In neither case is there any actual amnesia, no lapse of memory, but an
association is broken off which should have called out a reproduction, a
revival in the memory. Such a disturbance is enough to bring on a
compulsion neurosis. Hysteria, however, shows a different picture, for
it is usually characterized by most grandiose amnesias. As a rule, in
the analysis of each hysterical symptom, one is led back to a whole
chain of impressions which, upon their recovery, are expressly
designated as forgotten up to the moment. On the one hand this chain
extends back to the earliest years of life, so that the hysterical
amnesias may be regarded as the direct continuation of the infantile
amnesias, which hides the beginnings of our psychic life from those of
us who are normal. On the other hand, we discover with surprise that the
most recent experiences of the patient are blurred by these losses of
memory--that especially the provocations which favored or brought on the
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