Nachtraglichkeit Revisited

ABSTRACT

Nachtraglichkeit has been translated into English as deferred action or afterwardness, and in French as apres-coup, literally after-blow. Freud used the word initially to describe how sexually charged encounters in childhood produce traumatic effects after the fact, when puberty ascribes new meanings to these memories. In this article, I consider a greatly expanded, radicalized view of nachtraglichkeit as encompassing any enactment or insight that generates an experience of retrospective disorganization. I consider both a traumatic, destructive dimension of nachtraglichkeit and an everyday, expansive dimension of nachtraglichkeit, such as emerges in the clinical situation, in which small-scale disorganizations and reorganizations of the past allow for an enlarged sense of self and world. In considering nachtraglichkeit from the everyday, developmental dimension, I consider how the phenomenon often emerges out of an expanded field of inquiry formed of two minds elaborating backwards around the experiences of one.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Goldin

Daniel Goldin, MFT, is a Member, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.