Memory and its Vicissitudes

About

The significance of memories in psychoanalysis has been a vexed question.  In the early days great emphasis was placed on the importance of remembering, starting with Breuer and Freud’s famous aphorism, ‘Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences’, and Freud stressed the need to help the patient remember their past in order to avoid interminably repeating it.  However, he soon came to realise that often repeating was the only way to remember, and subsequent analysts have stressed that the crucible of change is the here and now, and that some of the most crucial early experiences cannot be recollected but only reconstructed through the experience of the analytic relationship.  This conference will explore the role of memory in psychoanalysis today, and will also offer broader reflections on contemporary sociocultural debates about the need to forget and the imperative to remember problematic histories. 

Image Credit: Photo by Intricate Explorer on Unsplash