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Ricardo Bernardi (1994) describes the different modes in which temporal relationships can be found in Freud’s work, modes that Freud does not consider exclusive . A) A model in which before determines after. B) The model of Nachträglichkeit [which Bernardi translates as a posteriori ] in which an anterior event posteriorly acquires new meaning and psychic efficacy by virtue of it being modified when it becomes part of a new context. C) The phenomenon of retrospective fantasy, Zuruckphanthasieren, which results in attributing something to an anterior moment that occurs after it. Bernardi (1994) argues that it is possible to find modifications to the concept of Nachträglichkeit once Freud discovers infantile sexuality. Carlos M. Aslan (2006) stresses that Nachträglichkeit is a mode in which the apparatus works. For Aslan, the term is relevant to day-to-day experiences and should not be reduced to its relationship with traumatic situations. “One need only remember the Freudian concept of an a posteriori mechanism which, as Blum has noted, is not exceptional but rather habitual, and not only in traumatic situations; [it can occur in] day-to-day experiences when a modifying effect relates to the meaning of a mnemonic trace [anterior structured events]. It occurs not in material reality but rather in the subject’s historical psychic reality. Once it is structured, the [historical psychic reality] will influence the perception and interpretation of new experiences, and this will continue in a successive manner. In this way, not only are new structures produced but, to reiterate, anterior structures are modified” (Aslan 2006, p. 71). Along the same lines as Aslan, Madeleine Baranger, Willy Baranger , and Jorge Mom (1987) argue that Freud’s readers have not given a posteriori adequate importance. They emphasize the concept’s participation in the constitution of the fantasy, limiting the economic aspect of the trauma. A trace of an event remains in the psyche without constituting a trauma in and of itself until subsequent events retroactively convert it into such, assimilating this first mute period into the death drive. “It is not simply a question of a deferred action nor of a cause that remains latent until the opportunity to manifest itself arises, but rather of a retroactive action causation from the present towards the past” (M. Baranger, W. Baranger, J. Mom, 1987 p. 750). The authors emphasize that “temporality and retroactive action is what makes it possible to carry out the specific therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, which would be impeded if we remained within the categories of causality and temporality when understood linearly” (M. Baranger, W. Baranger, J. Mom 1987, p.750). In this manner, they articulate Nachträglichkeit with what remains inassimilable in the analytic process. They emphasize that the first period, which is mute, unnamble, unrepresentable as the death drive is, needs the permission of Nachträglichkeit to be constituted in trauma.
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