Freud as Memoirist: A Reading of “Screen Memories”

It may indeed be questioned whether we have any memories at all from our childhood: memories relating to our childhood may be all that we possess.

Sigmund Freud, “Screen Memories” (1899)

At a time when Freud was deeply engaged in the labor of self-analysis that led to the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), the ground work for much of his subsequent theorizing, he was also concerned with the dynamics of memory itself, the raw material of his own analysis, as well as the basis for the discipline of psychoanalysis. In an essay titled “Screen Memories” (1899), he makes the startling claim that memories from childhood vividly recalled in adult life bear no specific relationship to what happened in the past. Rather, they are composite formations—elements of childhood experience as represented through the distorting lens of adult wishes, fantasies, and desires. Although Freud did not pursue the full implications of such a view of memory, it has proved to be prescient, resonating with two contemporary phenomena: the neural network theory of memory formation and retrieval, and the elevation of memoir writing to premier literary status. These two developments, in turn, pose questions about psychoanalysis as a memory-based discipline. A reading of “Screen Memories” that focuses on the memoiristic aspects of Freud’s writing offers a useful point of departure for exploring this issue.

Freud as a Literary Writer

Freud, who began his career as a neurologist, then as a medical practitioner treating patients suffering from neurological diseases, regarded himself primarily as a scientist, even when he turned his attention to matters of mind that could not directly be observed and were not susceptible to laboratory testing or experimentation. Interpretation of mental distress for Freud became a matter of decoding the obscure symbols and representations offered by the dreaming (or fantasizing) mind and by the disguised symptomatics of the body. Thus, the image of a tower for a male patient could represent an erect phallus, indicative of his sexual wishes or needs. Or a nervous cough on the part of a young woman could signify a repressed desire for the ‘forbidden’ act of fellatio.¹ In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud outlined his method by describing the dreaming mind’s strategies of repression, displacement and condensation that serve simultaneously to conceal and to reveal the expression of a wish. Freud attributed these mental dynamics to the activity of the unconscious, a part of the mind that we cannot directly know but can infer from its ceaseless productivity. Cognitive activity, no matter how sophisticated, can never fully capture the workings of the unconscious, which by its very nature eludes representation.

For this reason, Freud’s writings have struck many of his readers as more literary than scientific.² How, after all, can one demonstrate the existence of the Oedipus complex? That Freud uncovered a wish in his own fantasy life to displace his father in order to enjoy his mother’s undivided love and attention seems reasonable enough, but it is less clear that every male child—across history and culture—shares this wish. It is even less apparent that Sophocles’ drama Oedipus Rex validates Freud’s hypothesis that every boy wants to murder his father in order to have sex with his mother. A work of drama may resonate powerfully across time, but will hardly generate the same set of meanings within each cultural/historical context. Freud’s interpretation, however ingenious, is just that—an interpretation.³

Nor does widespread assent to Freud’s incest/murder scheme establish its validity. The fact that others find personal significance in Freud’s hypothesis does not in itself indicate its universal truth. Assent may be a condition of discipleship, of professional status (especially in the formative stages of psychoanalysis as a discipline), of shared cultural experience, of a desire for group identity, of pleasure in espousing an un-orthodox concept, or of a tendency toward credulity. Assent in itself proves nothing except perhaps the power of an idea to shape cultural understanding. In the absence of a means of confirming Freud’s hypotheses...