Remembering in the transference--on the interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and biological memory research
Leuzinger-Bohleber, M.
Psychotherapie Psychosomatik Medizinische Psychologie 46(6): 217-227
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0937-2032 PMID: 8767146 Document Number: 468174
The interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and other sientific disciplines, e.g. the biological memory research, is seen as one possibility of aiming at obtaining external coherence (Carlo Strenger, 1991) of psychoanalytic interpretations and concepts. Looking at a sequence from a psychoanalysis with a Borderline patients the author discusses that memory processes can only occur in a new interaction with a "meaningful other" (in the transference relationship): the situative, constructive and empathetic interaction in a new objectrelationship is a presupposition for recalling memories of traumatic infantile experiences. Memory processes are dependent on an inner and/or a real dialogue with a human object, on interaction, on a complex sensorimotoraffective and cognitive experience in and between two persons. Such an understanding of memory contradicts a conceptualization of a "replicative memory" which--according to a metaphor of human mind compared with a computer--stores and evokes information in a static manner. Opposite to this conceptualization G. E. Edelman and others postulate a "dynamic memory", that is part of a living system constantly changing and interacting with environment. The author discusses that this view of memory corresponds well with the clinical findings in psychoanalysis of the last years, that changes in behaviour cannot be attained only by recovering repressed infantile traumata but only in combination with a process of understanding, of "working through"--of recategoriazation--in the transference relationship.