Back to Table of Contents
however, have not been repressed because they have not been articulated; they have not been put into words. Taking these considerations as a starting point, in “Moses and Monotheism” , Freud (1939 [1934-38]), Freud acknowledges a historical truth, that of parricide, which underlies religious history. Establishing an analogy with the analytic experience, the historical truth would be the one constructed by the analyst (actual construction) based on feelings and experiences, indications of yet other scenes that accompany the scene provided by transference. This construction refers to a tragedy, present albeit silent until now, which, spurred on by the compulsion to repeat, becomes manifest in the analysis with its deadly fate. This unstoppable force can lead to the interruption of the analytic task. The masochistic component reveals the tragic guilt or the need for punishment while transference provides a stage where tragedy unfolds. This construction becomes connected to an historical construction (which the analyst arrives at by means of symptoms, screen memories and the transference) in the same way as Freud describes in “Constructions in Analysis” (1937b): “Up to your nth year you regarded yourself as the sole and unlimited possessor of your mother; then came another baby (…) your feelings towards your mother became ambivalent…” (p.261). If remembering is presented as the ultimate goal of the analysis, as it leads to establishing coherence, continuity and full range of choices, then, when it is not achievable, constructions can compensate for its failure and provide attempts at representing the repressed, traumatically dissociated, lost, ‘expelled’ or buried. The transference indeed works towards the possibility of bringing a lost object back to life from under the sway of repression, by representing it on the basis of clues: such work is carried out by the treatment. The transference in neurosis is therefore only sought as a form leading to remembering and not as an end in itself: there lies the border against a possible manipulative hijacking of transference. On this point Freud always remains curious and mindful of the links between transference and suggestion as well as between transference and occultism: he wonders how does a memory that belongs to the patient’s past become tied to the therapeutic situation via the person of the analyst and is thus shifted to the forefront of the psychic stage, and if there a misalliance in which the concurrent affect is of equal force and intensity as the affect that once begot the symptom. These early observations made by Freud initiated an ongoing debate about the recognition of the importance of psychic reality and its impact on all mental processes, including perception and memory.
1060
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online