Select Page

The Mirror Image of the Present: Freud’s Theory of Retrogressive Screen Memories

by | Vol 18 (1) 2000

Freud formulated the concept of retrogressive screen memories in 1897 to describe memories of past events which unconsciously portray contemporary situations. He used this concept at several points in his self-analysis and in the disguised autobiographical paper “Screen memories” (1899). The 1899 paper on screen memories contains contradictions and incoherences. Freud’s correspondence allows us to reconstruct what may be the immediate triggers for Freud’s recollections of the screen memory of the meadow with the yellow flowers described in 1899. Freud’s theory of retrogressive screen memories seems to have been formulated specifically in order to reinterpret the data previously explained by the “seduction theory” of 1896. Freud never used the theory of retrogressive screen memories to reinterpret this data. It is suggested that if Freud had done this he would have been forced to conclude that his patients unconsciously regarded his psychotherapeutic approach as a form of seduction. Freud’s screen memory of the meadow with the yellow flowers may have provided a source of countertransference in his treatment of the Rat Man en the Wolf Man.

Download full text

Related articles

  • The Origins of Freud's Theory of the Unconscious: A Philosophical Link

    The recent publication of Freud’s correspondence to his school friend, Edward Silberstein, has provided new impetus for research into Freud’s relationship with the philosopher Franz Brentano. In this paper I will address one possible objection to any claim that the philosopher could have influenced Freud on a theoretical level. It may be argued that there could be no significant theoretical influence because the psychoanalyst constructed a model of mental functioning which presupposes an unconscious, while Brentano was a philosopher of…

  • Who's the Author of Freud's Works? A Confutation of "A Critique of Freud's Pre-analytic and Psychoanalytic Dream-theory" by Adolf Grünbaum

    This work shows how Grunbaum’s critique, "Manifest Dream-Content a Compromise-Formation with Repressed Wishes. A critique of Freud's pre-analytic and psychanalytic dream-theory" is wholly inconsistent. First, it shows that Freud’s theory of dreams as wishfulfillment was not based on the neurophysiological model of the "Project for a Scientific Psychology", as Grunbaum suggested.. Further, his reading of this text rests on four very serious conceptual confusions: 1) confusion between sleep and dream; 2) confusion between structure and function; 3) confusion between real…

  • Freud en de archeologie

    Download full Text