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Reminiscences are special forms of [[memory ]] that rise up from the [[past]], confused, vague, involuntary, distorted, or rendered unrecognizable by [[unconscious ]] [[mental ]] [[activity]]. They also entail a relaxation of the [[psychic ]] [[apparatus ]] such that the [[subject ]] does not necessarily recognize these "rememberings" as belonging to his own past.

The [[concept ]] entered into the field of [[psychopathology ]] in Sigmund [[Freud ]] and Josef [[Breuer]]'s "Preliminary [[Communication]]" (1893a). The phrase "der Hysterische leidet grösstenteils an Reminiszenzen" ("the [[hysteric ]] suffers for the most part from reminiscences") represents both a break with earlier psychopathology and an introductory maxim for [[psychoanalysis]]. This phrase, linking [[hysteria ]] and reminiscence, introduced a new field of exploration by showing that hysteria consists in alterations of [[remembering]], that is, the [[concrete ]] [[affect ]] of the past that will be lastingly expressed in [[symptoms]].

The concept of reminiscence, like its use in psychoanalysis, turned out to be both incontrovertible and difficult to [[identify]]. This difficulty has to do with the variety of the relationships between [[patients ]] and [[analysts ]] and their own pasts, their histories, and conceptions of [[reality]], as well as the [[appearance]], from 1896 until now, of new [[concepts ]] and [[ideas]]. Given growing [[experience ]] with [[therapy ]] and [[theoretical ]] research, these factors require continued attention to terminological accuracy. In 1996, following the refocusing of interest an reminiscence, the [[notion ]] seemed to be more difficult and problematic to identify because of its increasingly generalized [[nature]].

Initially the use of the term reminiscence referred to both the nature of the psychogenesis of hysteria and the effectiveness of cathartic therapy. Freud and Breuer associated [[hysterical ]] symptoms with old psychic traumas whose memory had remained unconscious—in a [[space ]] that had been [[split ]] off from [[consciousness]]; in their attempt to transform these pathogenic reminiscences into [[true ]] [[memories]], the therapists showed they were capable of suppressing both the symptoms and healing the [[splitting ]] from consciousness that had produced [[them]]. This, together with the notion of pathogenic psychic [[trauma]], prefigured the notion of the unconscious.

The different attempts to [[model ]] the [[psychic apparatus ]] (homeostatic models, memory models, [[linguistic ]] models) were so many constructions needed to articulate different realities: [[infantile ]] reality and its effects, [[sexuality]], [[dreams]], the container and [[content ]] of [[psychoanalytic ]] therapy. Reminiscences, which are inherent in all the [[analysand]]'s [[material]], appear as the veiled echo of a reality that is itself problematic. The products of constructions and [[interpretations]], these are situated between a so-called "[[mystic ]] [[writing ]] pad" or [[primal ]] writing surface, and the [[decentering ]] of a subject who reappropriates their own [[history]].

The clearest manifestation of reminiscences, which extends beyond the [[Freudian ]] context of 1893, is found in the psychotraumatic syndromes or "[[traumatic ]] [[neuroses]]." Here the [[patient ]] suffers from an implacable [[repetition ]] of the traumatizing [[situation ]] in dreams and in the production of flashbacks, which are either reproduced with cinematic accuracy or distinctly transposed. This [[pathology]], which is fairly common and sometimes appears during the [[analysis ]] of a "classic" [[neurosis]], closely resembles Freud and Breuer's 1893 discovery: the [[metaphor ]] of the [[internal ]] foreign [[body ]] and the irruption of mnemonic material that does not consist of memories but of [[images ]] of an almost persecutory past. It is extremely difficult to transform these reminiscences into memories. Freud and Breuer themselves noted that the psychic trauma did not only involve Jean Martin Charcot's traumatic hysteria, but the traumatic neuroses more generally. In the early twenty-first century, the concept of reminiscence can provide psychoanalysis with an opportunity to [[return ]] to the investigation of "psychic trauma" with greater accuracy.

Amnesia; [[Cathartic method]]; [[Cinema ]] and psychoanalysis; Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis; [[Forgetting]]; Hysteria; Lie; Memory; Neurotica; Psychic reality; Remembering; [[Repression]], lifting of; [[Seduction]]; [[Studies on Hysteria]]; [[Symbolic]], the ([[Lacan]]).[[Bibliography]]

* [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1925a [1924]). A note upon the "mystic writing pad." SE, 19: 225-232.* Freud, Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1893a). On the [[psychical ]] [[mechanism ]] of hysterical phenomina: Preliminary communication. SE, 2: 1-17.