Trauma, memory, and corporeal acts: A dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi

Abstract

This article probes psychoanalytic theory regarding the repercussions of traumatic experiences in memory function. Both memory and trauma are fundamental to psychoanalysis and lead to the psyche's constitution as well as to its limits. The relationship between trauma and memory, based mainly on an aspect beyond the pleasure principle, points toward a function at the limits of the psychic, something between the body and the psyche, between perception and representation – all of which is responsible for psychic differentiation. Trauma has been associated with death drive dynamics and automatic anxiety, which constantly require a prior link to the establishment of the pleasure principle. When there is no possibility of linking and transcribing an event, its effects are negative, that is, it causes narcissistic damage. Ferenczi considers the object's role to be the determinant as far as an event's traumatic fate is concerned. When the object cannot accommodate the subject's needs or assign some meaning to the traumatic experience, introjection and psychic inscription are interrupted. We suggest that the lack of intersubjective recognition occasions the nonrepresentation and the meaninglessness that emerge as corporeal acts during psychoanalytic treatment.

Keywords:

• psychoanalytic theory
• trauma
• memory
• nonrepresentation
• corporeal acts

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge with thanks the financial support of the FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo).

Notes

¹This article won the prize for best paper by a psychoanalytic candidate at the 16^th International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Athens, Greece, October 2010.