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For [[psychoanalysis]], memories are [[conscious ]] representations of the [[past ]] suspected of [[being]], at least in part, [[illusory]]. The fact is that conscious memories or recollections may conceal [[unconscious ]] ones, even if the ego accepts [[them ]] at face [[value ]] and finds comfort therein. In his early [[work ]] [[Freud ]] spoke of "unconscious memories," but he later replaced this term with "[[memory ]] traces.

In Freud's initial work on the [[theory ]] of [[neuroses ]] (1894-96), "memories were pathogenic reminiscences of [[traumatic ]] [[seduction]]; subsequently the memories of [[childhood ]] were included in the [[category]].

Freud contrasted the obsessive "memory [[image]]," or "mnemic image," with the supposedly genuine memory adequate to the [[affect ]] experienced. Memories could be [[false]], however, from their inception (Erinnerungsfälschung): one has only to [[think ]] of the "first lie" of the [[hysterical ]] proton-pseudos of Freud's "[[Project ]] for a [[Scientific ]] [[Psychology]]" (1950c [1895]), or of "[[screen ]] memories" (1899a), behind which authentic memories lie.

Freud's [[notion ]] of memories, even when he uses it in the context of the psychology of [[consciousness ]] in normal states, is always related to his first theory of the neuroses caused by traumatic seduction. It is not by accident that Freud used two very similar [[words ]] to designate two conceptually opposed concepts—conscious memory (Erinnerung) and the unconscious memory-trace (Erinerungsspur)—and the paradoxical expression "unconscious memory" can often be found in his writings. In the theory of the traumatic origins of [[hysteria]], he constructs the notion of memory traces from that of unconscious memories: the conscious memory of the [[trauma ]] has been refused, rejected, [[repressed]], or [[split]]. It is no longer accessible to consciousness, at least not directly, and is now represented in altered [[form ]] in the [[symptom]], notably in the mnemic [[symbol]]. The unconscious memory strives to become conscious once more, for ontically it is conscious. The notion of unconscious memories prefigures that of the unconscious, as distinct from the [[idea ]] of a provisional pathological [[repression]], which is still tainted by the psychology of consciousness; likewise, unconscious memory traces or mnemic [[images ]] are so intense and sensorially alive that they overflow into consciousness in a quasi-[[hallucinatory ]] form nonetheless distinct from [[hallucination]].

Memories are par excellence the memories of affects, "the persistent effect of an [[emotion ]] experienced in the past" (1896a) in the "memory [[chain]]." In Freud's work there is much that belongs to the associative theory of memory. Memories, like the mnemic [[symbols]], screen memories, and [[fantasies]], form "memory chains." It was from this conception of memory that Freud developed the [[technique ]] of free [[association]], whence in turn he derived the notion of primary [[processes]].

The archaeological [[metaphor ]] accompanied the notion of memory throughout Freud's work, from 1896 ("The Aetiology of Hysteria"), where he writes of the explorer, whose "interest is aroused by an expanse of ruins" and who "may start upon the ruins, clear away the rubbish, and, beginning from the [[visible ]] remains, uncover what is buried. . . . If his work is crowned with success . . . [it may] yield undreamd-of information [[about ]] the events of the remote past, to commemorate which the monuments were built" (p. 192), to [[Civilization ]] and its Discontents (1930a [1929]), where he introduces a visitor who discovers beneath the city of Rome not an ancient Roman city but the ruins of reconstruction performed at the end of the ancient era on the site of [[primitive ]] buildings that have disappeared, attempting to picture to himself what might produce the simultaneity of memories, here [[visual]], of intertwined monuments from different eras.

What distinguishes between "[[true]]" and "false" memories is the affect, which is "always [[right]]" (1900a), and which can lead to the rediscovery, on the basis of the mnemic symbol of the original idea. In the Emma [[case ]] (1950c [1895]), the [[phobic ]] symptom and the [[belief ]] that an ordinary [[event ]] from adolescence could be its [[cause ]] concealed what should have been a memory but had become a memory trace, namely the [[scene ]] of childhood seduction. The transition from conscious memory to unconscious memory trace follows the [[topography ]] of a [[psychic ]] [[internalization ]] of the event requiring a certain amount of [[time]]. Every memory is more or less a screen, always suspected by Freud of not faithfully conveying the impressions of the actual experiences of childhood.

In [[Leonardo ]] [[da Vinci ]] and a Memory of His Childhood (1910c), Freud states that memories include both historically constituted memory-traces of perceptions in childhood and pure [[fantasy ]] elements. In Leonardo's memory a vulture opens the mouth of the [[child ]] Leonardo with its tail, which Freud analyzes as the [[desire ]] to have been engendered by a [[phallic ]] [[mother]]. A memory then, appears to be a fantasy, but in fact the fantasy harbors [[real ]] memories: the memory of having been passionately kissed by his mother during childhood, the memory of [[breastfeeding]], the [[father]]'s absence—all essential elements described by Freud as "real nothings," out of which Leonardo created his fantasy. Finally, what Leonardo remembers is not any specific event from childhood but elements from the [[psyche ]] of the child he was, which constitutes the background of his [[adult ]] psyche. Without realizing it Leonardo discovers on the lips of the Mona Lisa his mother's smile, of which he has no memory.

In psychoanalysis the [[concept ]] of memory is part of the paradigm of the lost [[object]]. In "[[Mourning ]] and [[Melancholia]]" (1916-17g [1915]), Freud demonstrates how, in melancholia, the pathological memory fixes and fetishizes the idealized object, hated as much as loved, and how, in the [[work of mourning]], all memories about the object are illuminated in their smallest detail, so that remembering may facilitate [[abreaction]], followed by a [[withdrawal ]] of [[cathexis]].

Freud envisages a [[drive ]] to [[remember ]] (Impuls zur Erinnerung) whose motor is a [[wish ]] for a kind of [[representation ]] close to hallucination: where the "mnemic image," the sensory intensity of the "unconscious memory" becomes conscious in a hypnoid mode by virtue of the lifting of amnesia. This drive also strives to rediscover the strength of the impressions (Eindruck) imparted by previous [[experience ]] (Erlebnis).

In Freud's original approach to [[therapy]], centered on abreaction and remembering, memories were meant to confirm the accuracy of the [[interpretation]]. In "Remembering, [[Repeating ]] and [[Working]]-Through" (1914g), Freud noted "the [[patient ]] does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but [[acts ]] it out" (p. 150). "[T]he patient repeats insted of remembering" (p. 151). This leads to the possibility of a [[clinical ]] approach based on [[working-through ]] rather than remembering and abreaction, or, otherwise stated, a conception of remembering centered on constructions rather than memory. From this point of view a childhood memory is always a memory about childhood. The concept of memories belongs to the psychology of consciousness more than to the [[metapsychology ]] of the unconscious, despite the obvious kinship between Erinnerung (memory) and Erinnerungsspur (unconscious [[mnemic trace]]) in Freud's work. An [[illusion ]] of consciousness, memories support the defenses and idealizations of the ego.

No memory is exempt from the influence of fantasy, and no fantasy can do without ideational elements borrowed from a perceived [[reality]]. The notion of memory employed by Freud differed from that found in psychology and [[philosophy]]. Although in "[[Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses]]" (1896a) he tried to establish the ages of memories because it was the oldest events that were the most pathogenic, he wrote to [[Fliess ]] on May 2, 1897 that it was not, strictly [[speaking]], memories that the [[hysteric ]] repressed but [[instinctual ]] impulses associated with stimulating fragments of memories. What he refers to as memories derive from multiple sources and are the object of constant reworking. In discussing the memories and the childhood [[dreams ]] of the "[[Wolf Man]]," Freud concluded that what was involved was a [[complex ]] mixture of memories, fantasies, and day's residues (1918b [1914]). [[Psychoanalytic ]] interpretation rediscovers—but more often reconstructs—childhood memories with the [[help ]] of screen memories, fantasies, and dreams, whose day's residues, in combination with memory traces, give rise to visual representations that appear as memories. What is thus disinterred is the child's psyche. The frequently debated question is whether [[analysis ]] constructs the [[mind ]] as [[fiction ]] or reconstructs the past facts to take into account the complexity and paradoxical [[nature ]] of memories at once historical and subjectively constructed. The continuous rewriting of every [[subject]]'s [[history ]] by the subject himself defines memory as a temporary current version only. Freud played down the contrasts between memory and screen memory and memory and [[construction]], emphasizing instead the complexity of psychic working-through, which mixes different types of mnemic representations as well as non-mnemic ones—including [[libidinal ]] representations and unconscious and conscious [[thoughts]]. A memory is something [[other ]] than a memory-trace, but there are points of contact between the two. Freud refuted the idealist psychology of consciousness but he also avoided falling prey to a [[metaphysics ]] of an unconscious with no [[relationship ]] to reality, [[perception]], or memories.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1896a). Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses. SE, 3: 141-156.

# ——. (1900a). The [[interpretation of dreams]]. SE, 4-5.# ——. (1910c). [[Leonardo da Vinci ]] and a memory of his childhood. SE, 11: 57-137.# ——. (1914g). On [[narcissism]]: An introduction. SE, 14: 67-102.