The Immemorial in the Work of Memory

Abstract

By means of recollections, a human experience by excellence,memory traces this paper like a red thread, conjugating at its end  both memory and analytic practice, whilst situating memory as the fundamental substratum of the psychoanalytic work. This core overview linked to this multi-layered problem, which concerns innumerable conceptual subject matters, provided a theoretical précis and stressed its metapsychological aspect. This paper is based on Freud's concept of unconscious determinism, referred to, in relation to memory, in his essay "Screen Memories", but which nevertheless goes beyond the specific subject of memory in his work. It attempts to go deeper into the conceptualization of a memory that unfolds in the preconscious, but which is nurtured
by, deep-rooted in, and determined by the unconscious. Some post Freudian authors will be discussed, authors who explain the subject of memory, and lay emphasis on its funding and structuring role through the essential imprints that craft the psychic subject. Towards the end of the paper, the aim is to address the matter of the articulation of memory and the analytic work. Its nature of  verisimilitude versus veracity, psychic reality versus factual reality of events, the importance of deconstruction in the warmness of the transference bond, in order to allow the emergence of new symbolizations and connections.