On Freud’s "Screen Memories"

225 Pages·2014·7.405 MB·English

by  Gail S. Reed, Howard B. Levine

REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page i
CHAPTERTITLE I
ON FREUD’S
“SCREEN MEMORIES”
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page ii
CONTEMPORARY FREUD
Turning Points and Critical Issues
Series Editor: Gennaro Saragnano
IPA Publications Committee
Gennaro Saragnano (Rome), Chair; Leticia Glocer Fiorini (Buenos Aires), Consultant;
Samuel Arbiser (Buenos Aires); Paulo Cesar Sandler (São Paulo); Christian Seulin (Lyon);
Mary Kay O’Neil (Montreal); Gail S Reed (New York); Catalina Bronstein (London);
Rhoda Bawdekar (London), ex-officio as Publications Officer;
Paul Crake (London), IPA Executive Director (ex officio)
On Freud’s “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”
edited by Joseph Sandler
On Freud’s “On Narcissism: An Introduction”
edited by Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector Person, Peter Fonagy
On Freud’s “Observations on Transference-Love”
edited by Ethel Spector Person, Aiban Hagelin, Peter Fonagy
On Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”
edited by Ethel Spector Person, Peter Fonagy, Sérvulo Augusto Figueira
On Freud’s “A Child Is Being Beaten”
edited by Ethel Spector Person
On Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”
edited by Ethel Spector Person
On Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia”
edited by Leticia Glocer Fiorini, Thierry Bokanowski, Sergio Lewkowicz
On Freud’s “The Future of an Illusion”
edited by Mary Kay O’Neil and Salman Akhtar
On Freud’s “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence”
edited by Thierry Bokanowski and Sergio Lewkowicz
On Freud’s “Femininity”
edited by Leticia Glocer Fiorini and Graciela Abelin-Sas
On Freud’s “Constructions in Analysis”
edited by Thierry Bokanowski and Sergio Lewkowicz
On Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”
edited by Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O’Neil
On Freud’s “Negation”
edited by Mary Kay O’Neil and Salman Akhtar
On Freud’s “On Beginning the Treatment”
edited by Christian Seulin and Gennaro Saragnano
On Freud’s “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety”
edited by Samuel Arbiser and Jorge Schneider
On Freud’s “The Unconscious”
edited by Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O’Neil
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page iii
ON FREUD’S
“SCREEN MEMORIES”
Edited by
Gail S. Reed and Howard B. Levine
Series Editor
Gennaro Saragnano
CONTEMPORARY FREUD
Turning Points and Critical Issues
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 22/09/2014 12:20 Page iv
First published in 2015 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2015 to Gail S. Reed and Howard B. Levine
for the edited collection, and to the individual authors for their
contributions.
The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work
have been asserted in accordance with §77 and 78 of the
Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–1–78220–055–0
Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd
www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
e-mail: [email protected]
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page v
CONTENTS
CONTEMPORARY FREUD
IPA Publications Committee vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS x
PART I
“Screen memories” (1899a)
Sigmund Freud 1
PART II
Discussion of “Screen memories” 25
1 Screen memories: a reintroduction
Gail S. Reed and Howard B. Levine 27
2 The screen memory and the act of remembering
Lucy LaFarge 36
v
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page vi
vi Contents
3 Screen memories: the faculty of memory and the
importance of the patient’s history
Franco De Masi 58
4 The screen and behind it: manifest and latent themes
in Freud’s Über Deckerinnerungen
Rivka R. Eifermann 80
5 The waning of screen memories:
from the Age of Neuroses to an Autistoid Age
Jorge L. Ahumada 104
6 “Screen memories” revisited
Shlomith Cohen 118
7 Reading Freud’s semiotic passion
John P. Muller 135
8 Phyllis Greenacre: screen memories and reconstruction
Nellie Thompson 150
9 Screen memories today: a neuropsychoanalytic essay
of definition
Florence Guignard 172
10 Some final thoughts on memory and screen memory
Howard B. Levine and Gail S. Reed 185
REFERENCES 192
INDEX 205
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page vii
CONTEMPORARY FREUD
IPA Publications Committee
This significant series was founded by Robert Wallerstein and
subsequently edited by Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector Person, Peter
Fonagy, and lately by Leticia Glocer Fiorini. Its important contribu-
tions have always greatly interested psychoanalysts of different
latitudes. It is therefore my great honour, as the new Chair of the
Publications Committee of the International Psychoanalytical
Association, to continue the tradition of this most successful series.
The objective of this series is to approach Freud’s work from a
present and contemporary point of view. On the one hand, this
means highlighting the fundamental contributions of his work that
constitute the axes of psychoanalytic theory and practice. On the
other, it implies the possibility of getting to know and spreading the
ideas of present psychoanalysts about Freud’s oeuvre, both where
they coincide and where they differ.
This series considers at least two lines of development: a con-
temporary reading of Freud that reclaims his contributions, and a
clarification of the logical and epistemic perspectives from which he
is read today.
Freud’s theory has branched out, and this has led to a theoretical,
technical, and clinical pluralism that has to be worked through. It
vii
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page viii
viii Contemporary Freud
has therefore become necessary to avoid a snug and uncritical co-
existence of concepts in order to consider systems of increasing
complexities that take into account both the convergences and the
divergences of the categories at play.
Consequently, this project has involved an additional task—that
is, gathering psychoanalysts from different geographical regions
representing, in addition, different theoretical stances, in order to be
able to show their polyphony. This also means an extra effort for the
reader that has to do with distinguishing and discriminating, estab-
lishing relations or contradictions that each reader will have to even-
tually work through.
Being able to listen to other theoretical viewpoints is also a way of
exercising our listening capacities in the clinical field. This means
that the listening should support a space of freedom that would allow
us to hear what is new and original.
In this spirit we have brought together authors deeply rooted in
the Freudian tradition and others who have developed theories that
had not been explicitly taken into account in Freud’s work.
“Screen Memories” is one of Freud’s first and most original arti-
cles. Written in 1899, it is part of the result of his own pioneering work
of self-analysis, which would soon culminate with the “Traumdeutung”,
and contains the seminal idea that memories, when referred to one’s
infancy, are subject to processes of concealment and retranscription
in order to keep unconscious material that would generate anxiety in
the subject. In this new and important volume, edited by Gail S. Reed
and Howard B. Levine, Freud’s concept of “screen memories” has
been revisited in depth by the editors and by eight highly distin-
guished psychoanalysts, from different geographical areas and from
different theoretical frames, who have written about the relevant
clinical complexities it uncovers, and have put them in the light of
contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, thus perfectly
fulfilling the aim of this book series. Special thanks are therefore
due to all the contributors to this volume which enriches the
Contemporary Freud series.
Gennaro Saragnano
Series Editor
Chair, IPA Publications Committee
REED Prelims_Akhtar PRELIMS 26/08/2014 15:00 Page ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To our eight contributors, for struggling creatively with screen
memories.
ix