It references the inextricable relationship between psychoanalytic treatment and memory in Remembering, Repeating & Working-through. Why are memories forgotten? Why do resistances exist to prevent us from remembering certain things?

 

These analyst techniques, “Descriptively speaking, it is to fill in gaps in memory; dynamically speaking, it is to overcome resistances due to repression.” (Freud, pp.148). According to Sigmund, the memories we are aware of is actually kinds of concealed memories. Concealed memories are manifested as a number of seemingly insignificant or meaningless memory impressions, which play a role in consciousness equivalent to placeholder, can also be understood as a “substitute” (Freud, The psychopathology of Everyday Life, 2003) for traumatic memory, childhood memories are missing part of the “completely counterbalanced by screen memories”(Freud, pp.148).

 

Another term what Sigmund mentions is “Repetion Compulsion”. “As long as the patient is in the treatment he cannot escape from this compulsion to repeat; and in the end we understand that this is his way of remembering.”(Freud, pp.150).  Repetition Compulsion can be roughly divided into four categories:

1. In a old relationship last repeating old terrible interaction.

2. In a new relationship repeat old interaction.

3. In a new relationship recreate old circumstance.

4. Repeatedly falling into new relationships that resemble old ones.

 

As Sigmund mentioned, people who experienced trauma always don’t remember but they will act it out, and repeat it in a unknown situation. This allows me to relate the behavior that a certain group of people exhibit to the trauma that they have experienced. A person who is chronically lacking in love will become more controlling of his friends and those around him. Whether from new friends or old friends. This creates a bad cycle – he becomes controlling of his friends, they leave him, he makes new friends and starts to become controlling of his new friends. Over time, this becomes what we call “Repetition Compulsion”.

 

A friend of mine, she has always liked the feeling of being surrounded by guys and enjoying their adoration, but she has rarely confirmed a relationship with a guy. This behavior seems to have been going on for a long time, from high school to college. But when I learned about her childhood experience, I realized that this is the “repeat it in an unknown situation” we mentioned above. When she was in junior high school, she was excluded and laughed at by classmates because of her appearance and body problems, which has formed a kind of trauma in her teenage years. And she seems to have repeatedly turned this adulation by male into a form of self-preservation of adolescent trauma.

 

Cathy Caruth gives the definition of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and the explaination of Trauma in Introduction I. But for me, I am more interested in what she mentioned in Introduction II. “The transformation of the trauma into a narrative memory that allows the story to be verbalized and communicated, to be integrated into one’s own, and others’, knowledge of the past, may lose both the precision and the force that characterizes traumatic recall.”(Caruth, pp153). We often use subjective ideas to describe our experiences, but the point is, is what we want others to know about ourselves really what we’ve been through? Everyone wants to show others a glorified version of themselves. Therefore, there will be photoshop, makeup and cosmetic surgery in this world. So on the psychological side, I think the same is true. On the one hand people want to use their bad experiences to get others sympathy; but on the other hand do not want to let themselves behave so badly.

 

In fact, it is a process of struggle, including the struggle between the psychoanalyst and the patient, the struggle between the dominant memory and the unconscious memory.