“If Someone Is There”¹: On Finding and Having One's Own Mind

Abstract

Memory played a central role in the development of psychoanalysis. But what is the role of memory in our current theory of mind, and in our thinking about the psychoanalytic process, more than a century after Freud's first formulations? Are memories themselves crucial to an experience of psychic integrity, or as Freud suggested in his later work, are we “constructing” something more fundamental? Using the lens of the development and destruction of personal agency, this paper suggests that the possession of memory and the feeling of having one's own mind is a capacity that is developed in relational space; “if someone is there” (Winnicott). In the absence of being able to feel the impact of one's mind on others, memory will be dissociated. Through a clinical vignette, the paper suggests that the ability to feel ownership of one's mind, and to tell even the saddest memories, must arise in the understanding that one's own mind matters to other people.

Keywords:

• agency
• memory
• mind
• psychic integrity
• sexual abuse
• trauma

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, New York, 2009; the annual meeting of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2009; and the conference on Psychology and the Other, Cambridge, MA, 2011.

Thanks to Tanya Cotler, Mia Medina, PsyD, and Owen Renik, MD, for commenting on drafts of this paper. I am especially grateful to Miki Rahmani, MA, who has contributed substantively to several iterations of this work.

Notes

²Thanks to Miki Rahmani, MA, for bringing this vignette to my attention.

¹ Winnicott (1971). See opening text for full quotation.

³I have discussed elsewhere (Slavin, 2010) the idea that “being in possession of one's own mind,” in the sense of being liberated from the internalized voices of parental or other, even analytic, authority, was central to Freud's view of healthy emergence into adulthood.

⁴I have detailed my work with Amanda in two published articles (Slavin, 2007a; 2007b), and will discuss here only those elements relevant to the issues of memory.

⁵Permission to publish the papers was subsequently given. Details of the process that enabled this have been discussed in as yet unpublished clinical presentations.