Int. J. Psychoanal.

(2002) 83, 1375

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE & PSYCHOANALYSIS WORKING TOGETHER ON MEMORY

GILBERT PUGH
44 Groombridge Road, Hackney, London E9 7DP, UK (Final version accepted 22 April 2002)

The rst part of this paper discusses the development of Freuds views on memory from the time of the Project up to the formulation of the second topography. Freuds attempts to match his psychological views with an organic model were necessarily inconclusive, but in the process many innovative ideas about memory can be seen to resonate with recent developments in cognitive neuroscience. A brief discussion of perceptual identity, internal perception and Freuds affect theory introduce the central theoretical idea in the second half of the paper, namely that Identi cation can be seen as a form of memory. Modern memory theory is linked with the superego, following which the author proposes that internal objects might be renamed memory-objects and that these can be understood in terms of the distinction made in cognitive neuroscience between implicit and explicit memory and between different parts of the brain, in particular the amygdala, the basal ganglia and the hippocampus. Kleins memory in feeling and the views of Fairbairn and Ogden in relation to the dynamic nature of internal objects are brie y discussed. The paper ends with a few comments on the aberrations of memory and some implications of the implicit memory-object system. Keywords: explicit memory, implicit memory, cognitive neuroscience, identi cation, internal objects, memory-objects, J. & A.-M. Sandler, Klein, Fairbairn, Ogden.

Anyone . . . who is engaged scienti cally in the construction of hypotheses will only begin to take his theories seriously if they can be tted into our knowledge from more than one direction . . . (Freud, 1895a). The whole problem of remembering and forgetting has not been dealt with, neither by myself nor by anyone else (Freud, 1907).

The current enthusiasm for more dialogue between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences must be of bene t to both disciplines provided that the aim is the clari cation of mindbody issues that seem to require more

than one approach for fuller understanding. Such a dialogue will not be bene cial if cooperation implies an erosion of the valuable distinctions between empirical and phenomenological points of view. One criterion for deciding which topics might bene t from joint appraisal might be where no comprehensive or convincing statement of theory exists in either discipline. Examples from psychoanalysis might be Freuds theory of Affect (see Neuro-Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1, No. 1) or, the subject of this paper, Memory. Memory is a nomad, belonging neither to neuroscience nor to psychology alone. It has
Copyright # Institute of Psychoanalysis, London, 2002

1376

GILBERT PUGH
proach, which emphasised that complex mental processes are best understood by not trying to isolate them in speci c areas of the brain. This view, which Freud had championed in On Aphasia (1891), enabled him to regard the biological aspects of mental functioning and the psychological as separate but interrelated (see Stewart, 1969; Solms & Saling, 1986; Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000). However, almost forty years later he was, if anything, more pessimistic about understanding this inter-relationship:
Everything that lies between [the brain and our acts of consciousness] is unknown to us . . . If it [knowledge of this interrelationship] existed it would at the most afford an exact localisation of the processes of consciousness and would give us no help towards understandingthem (1940, pp. 1445).

shown itself to be one of the most perplexing and complex human capacities to have been studied by psychoanalysis, and it is proposed in this paper that the multi-dimensional nature of the subject actually requires both an organic and a psychological approach for its elucidation. One reason for this is that memory is a capacity possessed both by the mind and the brain: it can be regarded as mental structure 1 as well as mental content. The psychologist Karl Lashley, after a lifelong search for the engram, could not decide whether it was nowhere in the brain or everywhere (Young, 1987, p. 456). Ebbinghaus (1885) purposely tried to eliminate the psychological from his memory study by employing meaningless syllables for recall. Bartlett (1932, pp. 15, 33) roundly criticised him for so doing and concentrated on the imaginative and reconstructive nature of memory. In the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud encompasses both views in this well-known footnote:
The most important as well as the strangest characteristic of psychic xation is that all impressions are preserved, not only in the same form in which they were received [the Ebbinghaus objective], but also in all the forms which they have adopted in their further developments [Bartlett s perspective] (1901, p. 275n., my italics).

Though he maintained a certain fascination with the view that nothing perceived is ever entirely obliterated (Freud, 1930, p. 69), Freud was always more interested in their further developments.

Historical aspects
By 1893, Freud had rejected rst Meynerts and then Charcots views on the cortical localisation of psychological pathology and had adopted John Hughlings Jacksons ap1

The decade between 1891 and 1901, as well as being one of Freuds most creative periods, was also one lled with changes in direction and disappointments. His study of the simple recall of memory, which had promised so much for a satisfactory therapeutic outcome in his collaboration with Breuer, had provoked the realisation that his affecttrauma model of neurosis was not compatible with his views on repression, a topic he was later to describe as the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests (Freud, 1914a, p. 16). By the mideighteen nineties any new insight into neurosis for Freud had to be compatible with this benchmark: . . . all these theories must ow into the clinical estuary of repression . . . (Masson, 1985, p. 148). As new insights proliferated it became apparent that psychopathology could arise not only as a result of the memory of sexual abuse but even as a result of phantasies which might not be based on actual happenings. The problem that confronted Freud, as he saw it, was how to

Throughout this paper, mental structure is used in the sense of . . . the invariant ordering or organising principles according to which a persons subjective experiences assume their characteristic forms and meanings (Stolorow, 1978, p. 316).

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

enjoin psychology, physiology and clinical practice to construct philosophy a term used by Freud in this context to imply an overall truth accomplished by viewing the same phenomenon from two different perspectives (pp. 159, 180), in Freuds case from the organic and the psychological. This was an heroically ambitious task in the eighteen nineties, and one in which he was only defeated by the severe limitations of nineteenth-century physiology (Stewart, 1969).

1377

Some effects of the memory problem

A psychological theory deserving any consideration must furnish an explanation of memory (Freud, 1895a, p. 299).

(p. 129) was the essence of the endeavour, it is of special signi cance that where memory was concerned, the account in the Project paradoxically provides what Laplanche & Pontalis aptly describe as the best point of access to what is most original in the Freudian theory of memory . . . without making any appeal to a resemblance between trace and object (1980, p. 125). What nally convinced Freud of the need to abandon his seduction theory was not so much that childhood seduction was not a sine qua non for the appearance of neurosis, but that the evidence for the seduction usually derived from fallible memory and from phantasy, both of which revealed psychological or subjective truth rather than historical truth.

Though nding consistency in the way that memory and repression presented was only one aspect of the enigma of the mind-body problem that caused Freud to concentrate on the psychological from about 1901 onwards, it could nevertheless be seen to be indirectly responsible for his abandonment of both the Project for a scienti c psychology and his seduction theory as well as for the long delay in the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. In the longer term, dif culties attributable to the memory trace theory which implied a permanent record of perceptual input that was recoverable when invested with energy and particularly to his indecision about whether to regard the perceptual system as one and the same as the conscious system, were amongst the reasons why he later supplemented the topographical theory with the structural model (Sandler et al., 1997, p. 85). The intense mental effort, particularly with the elucidation of repression and memory that Freud put into the many versions of his Project , came to an end when he dismissed it as a kind of madness (Masson, 1985, p. 152). Though the balancing of psychological insights with quantitative considerations

The delay in the publication of T he Interpretation of Dreams

The phenomena with which we were dealing do not belong to psychology alone; they have an organic and biological side as well . . . (Freud, 1940). From the contemporary account contained in the Freud/Fliess letters, Freud must have wondered in the autumn of 1898 whether his The Interpretation of Dreams would suffer the same fate as his Project three years earlier. The long delay in publication was occasioned by what he saw as the almost insuperable dif culty of completing what he termed the Psychologybetter known to us as Chapter 7. The problem was the same as that of the Project: how much more satisfactory it would be to present a psychological explanation of memory and other mental processes, balanced and complemented by their organic aetiology. He was stuck at the relationship of the two systems of thinking (Masson, 1985, p. 152). Freud enlarges on this in response to a letter from Fliess in which it is clear the latter had complimented him on a draft he had been sent to read, but had criticised him for

1378

GILBERT PUGH
Chapter 7 (see Laplanche & Pontalis, 1980, p. 451) are therefore not slips of the pen but rather the neurologist, Freud, still trying to work with ideas on memory from the Project and incorporate them into The Interpretation of Dreams. The reference to degrees of conductive resistance (Freud, 1900, p. 539) hints at the ideas from the Project on contact-barriers and permeable and impermeable neurones which offered the possibility of representing memory (1895a, p. 299). On the same page he writes that A main characteristic of nervous tissue is memory. In Chapter 7, the same idea, translated into psychology, leaps off the page with startling directness: What we describe as our character is based on the memory traces of our impressions (1900, p. 539). Grigsby and Hartlaub (1994) propose a similar idea.

neglecting these organic aspects. Freud replies:

I am not at all in disagreement with you, not at all inclined to leave the psychology hanging in the air without an organic basis. But apart from this conviction I do not know how to go on, neither theoretically nor therapeutically, and therefore must behave as if only the psychological were under consideration. Why I cannot t it together [the organic and the psychological] I have not even begun to fathom (p. 326).

The way in which memory behaves in dreams is undoubtedly of the greatest importance for any theory of memory in general (Freud, 1900, p. 20). Though the most widely studied section of The Interpretation of Dreams is Chapter 7, it was with this part of the book that Freud was least satis ed (Freud, 1900, pp. 511, 549; Masson, 1985, pp. 315, 332). His objective was to present a composite view of the functioning of the mind, especially memory in relation to dreams, in which the clinical/psychological aspects revealed the physiological/neurological. This he felt unable to do but his solution was not to discard the possibilities of an organic approach but rather to discard the particular research tradition within the neurology of the time that centred on the cortical localisation of psychological pathology (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000, Chapter 1). Localisation, then, was not the way forward, but his own neuropsychological ideas, which he tried to develop in the Project, were not suf ciently complete to construct a theory of mental functioning that would match the evidence and the ideas that he was deriving from the utterances of his patients. Thus when he wrote the 300-word introduction to psychical locality in The Interpretation of Dreams, which begins: I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which we are here concerned is also known in the form of an anatomical preparation . . ., he was not discarding neurology or physiology but localisation. The neurological references that abound in this section of

The `copy theory of memory

However, the presentation of memory in The Interpretation of Dreams in such a platonic, signet-ring-in-wax sort of way has confused many authors including Bartlett (1932) and more recently Hirshberg (1989) into accepting that the account of the memory trace theory in Chapter 7 represents Freuds theory of memory. In part, this misunderstanding has misled analysts for more than forty years into believing that the success of treatment could, to some extent, be measured by the number of new memories recorded. Fonagy (1999, p. 220) aptly described this as the pursuit of a false god. Rapaport (1942, p. 140) con rms this authors opinion that nowhere in Freuds writings is there a coherent presentation of the facts and hypotheses which psychoanalysis has to offer about memory. The most likely explanation of why Freud presented a traditional copy theory of memory in Chapter 7 was that, having abandoned the hope of being able to present a synthesised explanation of memory, he had set himself the tasks of assigning memory a

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

place in the topographical model, illustrating the functioning of memory in dreams and describing the processes of progression and regression in dreams. What appears in Chapter 7 is therefore a schematic version of memory which serves the purpose of illustrating these processes. It certainly does not represent the extent and variety of his ideas about memory at this time. For example, at the end of Screen memories he writes: . . . childhood memories did not as people are accustomed to say emerge, they were formed at that time (1899, p. 322). This statement summarises Freuds assessment of the composition of a distorted childhood memory which arose as a result of many different processes and a number of motives, with no concern for historical accuracy (p. 322). Overall he concluded that the motive for the distortion was tendentious and served to assist the repression of painful memories. One idea he had at this time for the process of distortion (Masson, 1985, p. 24) was that painful memories decomposed into fragments and that the resulting phantasy became disconnected from the original memory, thus avoiding the traumatic effect of the original. A reconstruction theory certainly, but also one that involved prior demolition. However, Freud adds that . . . if the intensity of such a phantasy increases to the point at which it would be bound to force its way into consciousness, the phantasy is subject to repression and a symptom is generated . . . Freuds hypothesis has much in common with one current neuroscienti c theory on somatic ashbacks which states that these are memories of the traumatic events without the location and temporal signatures of hippocampal processing and are experienced as happening in the here and now (Pally, 1997, p. 1231; Schacter, 1996, p. 244.) In the same paper (Screen memories, 1899, p. 321) Freud is revealed as one of the rst to write about the distinction between the recall of a memory from the perspective of one who is part of the scene and from the perspective of an onlookerthe eld/obser-

1379

ver distinction. Nigro and Neisser (1983, pp. 467 82) found that people experienced more eld memories when concentrating on feelings but more observer memories when recalling objective facts. Schacter comments on this nding thus: This means that an important part of your recollective experience whether or not you see yourself as a participant in a remembered event is, to a large extent, constructed or invented at the time of attempted recall (1996, p. 21). The in uential psychologist F. C. Bartlett revealed his limited reading of Freud when, referring to The Interpretation of Dreams, he wrote: . . . we nd Freud developing the view that memories form a static mass, the concern of a system all their own, utterly uncontaminated with perceptual functions (1932, p. 15). His reference was: Die Traumdeutung , (3rd Au ., Leipzig und Wein, 1911, VII). Freud could justi ably be criticised in these terms if the schematic depiction of memory in The Interpretation of Dreams represented the totality of his views. However, in 1932, when Bartlett made these comments, he could have had access to everything that Freud had written on memory (with the possible exception of the Project), including the structural theory and his increasing awareness of the interactions between memory and perception. It is certainly true that Bartlett was the rst to describe memory as an imaginative reconstruction (p. 213) but he was being less than accurate when he described Freuds memory traces as . . . lifeless, xed and unchangeable (p. 33). Ironically, despite the absence of a trace-theory in Bartlett, a close reading of both authors reveals a remarkable contiguity!

Repression and amnesia

Freuds early attempts to understand memory and its repression, the links between childhood amnesia and hysterical amnesia, and the process of forgetting in dreams were inevitably incomplete because by supporting

1380

GILBERT PUGH
these psychical acts (p. 304): they may not have been registered in consciousness in the rst place. The differential development rates of the amygdala and basal ganglia compared to the hippocampus could mean that, for young children, there could be unconscious memory for fear, hurtful or sexual feelings but no conscious memory of the events. In addition, Le Doux (1999, p. 47) proposes that, since stress has been shown to increase the output of adrenal steroid hormones and that this excess adversely affects the functioning of the hippocampus (McEwan & Sapolsky, 1995), then the hippocampus, in periods of stress, may not be able to carry out its role in the creation of memories. Furthermore, Le Doux (1996) believes that stress can amplify the functions of the amygdala, thus magnifying the feelings in unconscious memory. This may have important implications when considering the amnesia that may accompany sexual abuse. Though these ideas are tentative, a process such as this goes some way towards explaining how certain hurtful experiences, misrepresentations of external reality and even frightening phantasies can have a profound effect on the psyche. But of even greater interest to psychoanalysis would be con rmation from one of the neurosciences that not only sexual trauma but also sexual con icts such as arise from the oedipal situationthe misperception of violence, confusion about sexual feelings and sexual jealousyhave a uniquely and disproportionately powerful effect on unconscious feeling memory. Such information would answer for the rst time Freuds vexed question at the time of writing the Project: Why should the unpleasure which stems from ideas from sexual life result in repression while equally or more severe unpleasure from other aspects of life does not? As long as there is no correct theory of the sexual process, the question of the origin of the unpleasure operating in repression remains unanswered (Masson, 1985, pp. 163 4, 167). Recent neuroscienti c ideas on repression consider that the right

his psychological insights with organic considerations he came across exactly those dif culties he had hoped to reconcile in the Project. He believed consistently that what brought about the repression of the impressions of childhood was also responsible for hysterical amnesia (Freud, 1905, p. 175; Masson, 1985, p. 302). It now seems likely that normal childhood amnesia results at least in part from the massive reorganisation of the mnemic contents consequent upon the physical maturation of the pre-frontal cortex (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000, pp. 274, 275). However, neuroscience generally recognises other brain structures whose differential development is important for understanding memory processing. These were unknown to Freud but he did observe their manifestations in his patients (Masson, 1985, p. 24). Of these, the amygdala, involved in the implicit, unconscious processing of emotion (Le Doux, 1999, p. 45), and the basal ganglia, which process cognitive skills unconsciously, are of the greatest interest to psychoanalysis. Both of these structures are well developed at birth, whereas the hippocampus, necessary for explicit and therefore conscious memory processing, starts functioning at about eighteen months (Joseph, 1996). Though this nding is not universally accepted by neuroscientists, most would agree that the brain structures that support implicit memory are in place before the systems needed for explicit memory. In contesting the organic basis for childhood amnesia, Freud argues in Screen memories that . . . a normally developed child of three or four already exhibits an enormous amount of highly organised mental functioning in the comparisons and inferences which he makes and in the expression of his feelings (1899, p. 304, my italics). It is probably not coincidental that some kinds of comparison and inference use unconsciously processed bottom-up mechanisms of perception using the basal ganglia, and feelings are similarly unconsciously processed by the amygdala. Amnesia may not have overtaken

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

frontal lobe may act to prevent distressing memories from gaining access to the left hemisphere in order to protect verbal information processing (Joseph, 1996). Alternatively there may be an inhibitory effect of explicit memory of information stored in long-term memory (Schacter, 1996, pp. 233 6).

1381

world and are accompanied by consciousness, as long as they are charged, and offer protection against excessive stimuli overwhelming the organism (see also Sandler & Sandler, 1998, p. 28). These new perceptions are sampled, compared with former perceptions and adjusted to matcha process he called cognizing. This is an early description of what is now termed top-down processing (see Pribram & Gill, 1976, pp. 238, 91).

Perception and memory

With hindsight, we can see that Freud was hampered in his exploration of memory while developing the topographical model by his adherence to the assumption, originally Breuers, that perception and memory, though interrelated, belonged to different systems: The mirror of a re ecting telescope cannot at the same time be a photographic plate (Freud, 1895b, p. 189n). This idea remained axiomatic for Freud until, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, it was presented more cautiously: Though this consideration [that memory and perception belonged to different systems] is not absolutely conclusive, it nevertheless leads us to suspect . . . (1920, p. 25). What gave rise to these doubts was Freuds awareness (see Screen memories, p. 322) that the long-standing tradition in philosophy that perception invariably offers true information was inaccurate. It is interesting that Freud, freed somewhat from the constraints of his topographical viewpoint, is able at the end of the Mystic Writing Pad2 and in Negation to re-examine some of the extensive work he carried out in the Project on the interactions of perception and memory. Subsequent knowledge of the Project (p. 330) enables us to recognise the origin of the periodic impulses. These can be seen as feelers from the interior which take small samples from the external
2 On

Perceptual identity
The process of cognizing not only provided a model for reality testing, for differentiating subjective from objective, inside from outside; it also allowed for the possibility of explaining the wish-ful lling mechanism in dreams whereby the original perception could, in the extreme case, be confronted again as an hallucination (regression), thus achieving what Freud termed perceptual identity (1900, p. 566). This is an example of a memorial process that was both dynamic and autonomous, and based on the wish to re-experience a memory of satisfaction. However, Freud is more speci c than this when he writes that perceptual identity is a repetition of the perception which was linked with the satisfaction of the need (p. 566, my italics; see also Laplanche & Pontalis, 1980, p. 305.) This has important implications for understanding transference phenomena but probably does not imply that all such are attempts to actualise a wish, though undoubtedly many are. Sandler et al. (1997, p. 85n.) suggested that Freuds indecision in later years about whether to postulate a Perceptual system as distinct from a Conscious system, or whether to regard them as one and the same (the Perceptual-Conscious) may have had some-

coming across this childs toy, Freud was intrigued by how neatly it could illustrate the views he held on memory and perception twenty- ve years earlier. Hence he constructs the paper (1925) in the past tense. Many authors, e.g. Rapaport (1957, p. 140) failed to notice the past tense and hence assume that the views expressed in the bulk of the paper were current in 1925.

1382

GILBERT PUGH
like mnemic symbolswith the implication that they are not actually menmic symbols. In the second, he stresses their non-mnemic origin but points out that recent, individually acquired neuroses are mnemic.
If we go further and enquire into the origin of that anxietyand of affects in generalwe shall be leaving the realm of pure psychology and entering the borderland of physiology. Affective states have become incorporated in the mind as precipitates of primaeval traumatic experiences, and when a similar situation occurs they are revived like mnemic symbols (1926, p. 93). The other affects (apart from anxiety) are also reproductions of very early, perhaps even pre-individual experiences of vital importance; and I should be inclined to regard them as universal, typical and innate hysterical attacks, as compared to the recently and individually acquired attacks which occur in hysterical neuroses and whose origin and signi cance as mnemic symbols have been revealed by analysis (p. 133, my italics).

thing to do with his awareness of subliminal perception. However, by the time Freud had written Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he was of the opinion that: . . . they [memory traces] are often most powerful and most enduring when the process which left them behind was one which never entered consciousness (1920, p. 25).

Internal perceptions
It was Freuds consideration of a second perceptual front, that of internal perceptions and their relationship with the ego (1923, p. 121), that once more gave rise to doubts about whether he was really correct in referring the whole of consciousness to the single supercial system Perceptual-Conscious . Earlier, Freud acknowledges that it is possible to be aware of sensory mnemic images to which we cannot possibly allow a psychical location in the systems Cs. or Pcpt (1917a, p. 232). He thought that the sensations and feelings belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series best exempli ed internal perceptions. They are . . . multilocular, like external perceptions; they may come from different places simultaneously, and may thus have different or even opposite qualities (1923, p. 22). It was these internal perceptions which gave rise to one of Freuds fundamental ideas about affect, the idea that felt emotions are the conscious perception of something experienced earlier. Whilst it now seems unlikely that memory of any sort actually creates emotional feelings (Panksepp, 1999, p. 78), in 1926 Freud resists reawakening his attempts in the Project thirty years earlier to explain such topics as memory and affect quantitatively. He therefore makes it clear that he regards the basic emotions as having a phylogenetic origin and not a mnemic one and of being placed in the prehistory not of the individual but of the species (1916 17, pp. 395 6). In the rst of the quotations below he makes a special point of emphasising that the traumatic experiences are revived

Although there is now evidence for a right cerebral representation of affect-laden autobiographical information (Fink et al., 1996), there is no consensus amongst neuroscientists about how affective states are generated in the brain, though most would agree with Panksepp (1999, p. 78) that working memory has a lot to do with human emotions . . . We have already noted the role of the amygdala in the unconscious processing of emotional memory and it is about this area in the brain that Adolphs et al. make the following statement: An intriguing question that remains to be addressed is the amygdalas relative participation in triggering information that is innate, versus information that is acquired through individual experience in a cultural setting (1998, p. 473). Plus c a me chose . change, plus cest la me

The Psychopathology of E veryday Life

If anyone should feel inclined to over-

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

estimate the state of our present knowledge of mental life, a reminder of the function of memory is all that would be needed to force him to be more modest (Freud, 1901, p. 134). There is more than a hint of exasperation in this quotation from Chapter 7 of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. By the time he had written this book, Freud had already directed enormous mental energy into the topics of memory and perception. With the Project and Seduction theory abandoned and The Interpretation of Dreams published at last, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life of 1901 can be seen as a cathartic catalogue for Freud of the mishaps of the mind and in particular of the vagaries and caprices of memory function. Here he employs his lifelong interest in forgetting, parapraxes and other mental mishaps insidiously to reveal the autonomous nature of unconscious processes. It is in this work, unlike The Interpretation of Dreams, that he truly abandons any attempt at a composite philosophy of memory. He concludes on a portentous note: . . . incompletely suppressed psychical material . . . has nevertheless not been robbed of all capacity of expressing itself (1901, p. 279).

1383

never have been forgotten because it was . . . never conscious. This is an elegant description of implicit memory. Gone are the optical references of fteen years earlier. The emphasis now was away from the attempt to bring a particular moment or problem into focus (p. 147).

Mourning and melancholia: Identi cation as memory

In The Interpretation of Dreams, we see memory instigating character formation. In remembering, repeating and working through, memory forms the basis of transference and in Mourning and melancholia (1917) Freud turns his attention towards trying to understand the connection between internal and external things and how the latter are represented in the former. Just as the memory aspect of his affect theory had cautiously become a phylogenetic memory only, so too, by 1917, is the word memory dropped in favour of another process, Identi cation, which though certainly part of a memorial system, avoids the facultative problems inherent in the trace-memory theory. By concentrating on identi cation as the process at work in both melancholia and later in superego formation (1940, p. 205), Freud was able to bypass some of the inconsistencies in the workings of perception and memory. Mindexpanding metaphors replace mechanical analogues; percepts are replaced by concepts that contain the seeds of the possibility of relationships within the mind (see Ogden, 2002). He writes of an attitude of revolt which is transformed into melancholic contrition: Thus the shadow of the object fell on the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object (Freud, 1917b, p. 249). Within this shadow something of the true nature of memory was subsumed. But this shadow was no mere echo of the object. It had teeth, it had the capacity to criticise, to feel, to effect and alter behaviour, to induce melancholia . . .

Remembering, repeating and working through

After the publication of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud wrote little on memory until we are made aware of his views on the workings of unconscious memory in remembering, repeating and working through in 1914. Here he subsumes remembering in the old mannerthe recall of mnemic imagesand points out that repeating behaviour without being aware of it consciously, especially transference repetitions, is another way that patients remember. In one passage (1914b, pp. 148, 149) he discusses internal acts such as phantasies, processes of reference, emotional impulses and thought connections: In these processes . . . something is remembered which could

1384

GILBERT PUGH
and A.-M. Sandler (1998, pp. 127 8). Here a distinction was drawn between internalisations that modify the self-representation, which they arbitrarily called identi cations, and internalisations that elevate object representations to the special status of introjects. The Sandlers use the term identi cation as a modi cation of the self-representation on the basis of another (usually an object) representation as a model (p. 127). Using this distinction, it is proposed that the introjects involve both self and object experiential representations, are accessible to memory and indeed form part of the explicit or declarative memory system. Bringing attention to bear opens the possibility of re ection and modi cation. How would my father have tackled this problem? indicates something of the nature of the introjects. On the other hand, the identi cations are part of character, part of the self and bringing attention to bear in no way opens up a debate as they do not involve subjective experience. They are ego-syntonic and held with unquestioning conviction. They can be regarded as procedural, unconscious memory structures and part of the implicit or non-declarative memory system. Rapaport makes a similar distinction when he compares the internal world with the inner world: the latter is an inner map of the external world whereas the internal world he describes as a world of major structures including identi cations (1996, p. 696). Both, however, are types of memory and just as superego manifestations can be observed clinically as being outside the realm of subjective experience, part of character, with widespread dynamic structural in uence leading to signi cantly modi ed selfrepresentation, so too can we observe superego manifestations that are more exible and do involve subjective experience. It is also possible to detect how identi cations used in this sense can be down-graded and softened in the course of time or as a result of psychoanalysis so that they more closely come to resemble introjections. This may be one of the factors involved in insight.

but it had also one important characteristic in common with its more concrete forbear the memory trace: it effected permanent changes in the internal world. A lost object reinstated within the ego, has a great share in determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution to building up what is called its character (Freud, 1923, p. 28). It might be said that unconscious identi cation held a similar skeletal function in the structural theory to that which memory had in the topographical. It may have been partly because Freud had of cially twinned Consciousness with Perception that he insisted that the origins of affect did not lie in individual unconscious memory; to have done so would have seemed inconsistent. It may also be asked why he did not wholeheartedly endorse his identi cation process as a memorial one. It is true that in The Ego and the Id he does describe the superego as . . . a memorial of the former weakness and dependence of the ego . . . (1923, p. 48) but in the same paper he also makes it clear that
. . . it is as impossible for the super-ego as for the ego to disclaim its origin from things heard . . . [i.e. word presentations which are residues of memories]. But the cathectic energy does not reach these contents of the super-ego from auditory perception (instruction or reading) but from sources in the id (p. 52).

According to Freud, for a memory trace to become conscious it requires the application of a particular psychical function, that of attention (1900, p. 593) and this attention belongs to the ego and not to the id. We see then that the superego and other identi cation processes are not considered to be memories by Freud because the cathexis does not come from the ego.

`Identi cations and `introjects

Some light can be thrown on this dif culty by referring to work carried out by the Hampstead Index Project and quoted by J.

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

This distinction between variable levels of superego awareness accounts in part for the paradox of the unrealistically harsh superego experience in which the unconscious construction bears little resemblance to the external reality. Internal objects then, according to this idea, are composed of both explicit and implicit memory. However, the terminology is much less important than the idea that aspects of the ego and all internal objects including the superego are composed of memorial material, some of which is accessible to consciousness and some of which is not. One neuroscienti c theory of the cortical consolidation of memory may be important here, when, after cortical strengthening, the memory becomes less susceptible to disruption but also less susceptible to modi cation (Squire & Zola Morgan, 1991). However, in whichever brain system storage takes place, overall there is a wide range in the degree of indelibility and access and further, it is unlikely that the formation of ego material is any different from that of other mental contents, including so-called internal objects. In trying to match clinical material with theoretical formulations, the Sandlers make a similar observation in their book Internal Objects Revisited. They write: So, for example, although it was easy to talk about ego identi cations as opposed to superego identi cation in practice it was often impossible to distinguish between the two (Sandler & Sandler, 1998, p. 125). The Sandlers were amongst the rst to link their version of internal objects to memory, stating that: We can consider the structures constituting internal objects and internal object relationships as being based on affectively invested implicit or procedural memories and organizations (p. 131). It should be noticed however that they restrict their view to unconsciously processed memory whereas this author considers all memory, both implicit and explicit, to be involved in the formation not only of the superego but also of all internal objects. Whichever view is taken, this important insight goes some way

1385

towards making sense of some of the confusions voiced in The Freud Klein Controversies (King & Steiner, 1991) on how internal objects were to be conceptualised. For example, Marjorie Brierley wrote:
One of the dif culties the present discussion has brought to light might be described as that of nding room in the same mind for internalized objects and memory images . . . we can try to decide at once whether or not there is room for both concepts in a consistent theory or whether they are mutually exclusive and can have no common basis (p. 400).

The growing evidence is that they are in fact not mutually exclusive but are another way of conceptualising the same ideas. Kleins perceptions were not always backed by consistent conceptions, giving rise to accusations that she confused levels of abstraction. But an observation is not rendered invalid because it is not fully understood. It would be twenty years after the Controversial Discussions before the neurosciences began to shed some light on the dynamic nature of memory whereby it was no longer so preposterous to contemplate a memory system with some autonomy. Once again it was Brierley who incisively spotted the problem:
One may legitimately inquire into the evidence for the existence of internalized object phantasies but, in so doing, one will be inquiring into the existence of a special class of unconscious phantasy, not into some strange new phenomenon that has no precedent in psychoanalysis(p. 401).

Neuroscience has largely ignored the topic of internal objects perhaps because the concept seemed to be the somewhat obscure preserve of psychoanalysis or was deemed inaccessible to empirical research or indeed because it was subsumed under the general heading of memory (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000, p. 200). For many years the topic was also the preserve of Kleinian thought until classical psychoanalysis incorporated it into their thinking, nding it particularly

1386

GILBERT PUGH
experiential and non-experiential realms. In other words they can be conceived of both as structures and as unconscious phantasies giving rise to conscious phantasies, which are of course thoughts. Both groups acknowledge that at rst feeling states predominate in the infant (Hinshelwood, 1991, p. 75; Sandler & Sandler, 1998, p. 69), and both groups agree that internal objects will have been established well before the Oedipus complex has arrived on the scene (Sandler & Sandler, 1998, p. 134). From the foregoing it is evident that both groups are contemplating the same phenomena but are emphasising different developmental stages, or more precisely, the different degrees of mentalisation that existed at the time of their formation (Lecours & Bouchard, 1997). Though it is proposed here that internal objects as memories are established throughout life, early internal objects can be conceptualised in stages. One such model could be, for example, MoneyKyrles three stages of the development of symbols in which concrete belief in a physically present object develops into mental content. This is initially observable only in the dream process (Bions ideographs), but after further mentalisation it develops into verbal representation (1968, p. 422). Such a model goes some way towards elucidating the very concrete nature of some internal objects as explained by the Klein group. They are describing raw, unmentalised experiences and bodily sensations, giving rise to thoughts and phantasies about the object. Bion pithily expresses the same general idea when he writes:
. . . thinking has to be called into existence to cope with thoughts . . . this differs from any theory of thought as a product of thinking, in that thinking is a development forced on the psyche by the pressure of thoughts and not the other way round (1962b, p. 111).

helpful in understanding transference and countertransference phenomena (Sandler & Sandler, 1998, Preface p. x). It may be helpful to look brie y and schematically at some of the differences between the Klein and Contemporary Freudian groups views on internal objects. These can illustrate the thesis that internal objects can usefully be seen as forming part of the memory system and can hence become more accessible for joint consideration by cognitive neuroscience and psychoanalysis in the future. The Klein group emphasises the patients experience of the internal objectwhat it feels like to have a knot in the stomach. By contrast, the Contemporary Freudian group proposes that the internal object should most usefully be considered as a construct in the mind of the analyst because, they argue, the internal object belongs only to the nonexperiential realm. The concreteness of the experience is not emphasised. The CF group suggests that internal objects are based on affectively invested implicit or procedural memories. Although Melanie Klein wrote about memories in feelings, she does not equate internal objects with this important concept. The Klein group accept that internal objects are formed through the introjection of external objects and that the process starts at birth and can continue through life though it is more intense in childhood and belongs to the deeper layers of the unconscious (Hinshelwood, 1991, pp. 68 82). The CF group considers that internal objects belong to the past unconscious: An organisation which has crystallized during the rst years of childhood. They suggest the rst ve years of childhood (Sandler & Sandler, 1987, p. 334). The CF group formulates internal objects as lying outside the realm of subjective experience and existing as structures in the non-experiential realm that gave rise to conscious and unconscious phantasies (Sandler & Sandler, 1998, Chapter 8). For the Klein group, internal objects nd expression both in

It is only after some mentalisation invol-

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

ving the linking of basic experiences with images and words leading to the full development of symbol formation, that multiple internal objects express themselves as the psychological experience we call structure. The internal objects as envisaged by the CF group have undergone considerable mental elaboration: self and object representations 3 have already become non-experiential structures. The Sandlers are quite speci c that in their view internal objects belong to the past unconscious : The promptings of the past unconscious can be thought of as representing the impulses and reactions of a child which has reached a certain point in development (1987, p. 334). In my view, the memory-based structures that we call internal objects are constructed throughout life from both explicit and implicit memory and the earliest internal objects are based only on implicit memory. The Sandlers past unconscious is nonexperiential because explicitly stored information is either absent or rudimentary. The appearance in the transference of an egosyntonic procedural attitude, for example to threatening authority gures, may have been engendered by internal or external experiences and may have its origins in conscious awareness involving explicit memory and/or non-experientially, in which case implicit memory is involved. A combination of the two is almost inevitable. When excessive harshness is experienced towards an authority gure in the absence of explicit memory, this is a strong indication that unconsciously processed implicit memory is at work. Patients may try to justify the negative feelings, in the absence of explicit memories, by rationalisations. This gives rise to the familiar feeling in the countertransference that there is something ser-

1387

iously amiss with the temporal sequence of the patients grievances.

Superego as memory
Freuds later descriptions of superego formation, for example in An Outline of PsychoAnalysis, can be understood in terms of modern memory theory. Here he describes how at about 5 years old (since Klein, there has been a general acceptance that this process occurs much earlier), A portion of the external world has at least partially been abandoned as an object and has instead, by identi cation, been taken into the ego and thus becomes part of the internal world (1940, p. 205). This describes the period at which often repeated parental injunctions of the superego type are being consolidated in memory. These injunctions are often counterinstinctual and hence the procedural consolidation becomes linked with conscience, harshness and, because of the independent vitality of these memory-objects, also with guilt. It is with procedural memory that mental content comes closest to being set in stone. Melanie Klein can be seen to be describing two types of memory in her earlier formulations of the superego. First she describes it as . . . the faculty which has resulted from the Oedipus development through the introjection of the Oedipus objects (1927, p. 157). Second, however, she concedes that . . . children (but also adults) will set up all kinds of ego-ideals, installing various superegos, but this surely takes place in the more super cial strata (p. 157). Elsewhere she puts the same idea in different words but this time in relation to internal objects in general:

The author believes that much confusion could be avoided in the literature if the term representationwas not applied to the rst, raw, unmentalised experiences whilst accepting that, because these are only experienced as being actualities, it is technically correct.

1388

GILBERT PUGH
structures, constructs in the mind of the analyst, the CF group do not account for the peculiar energy and animation of the memory-objects. Though Melanie Klein did not propose a theoretical model based on memory for internal objects, she did however describe in several places what she termed memories in feeling and it is these latter that most closely resemble what we now know to be implicit memories. Klein states that The exploration of deep layers of the mind leads to the very vivid revival of early internal and external situationsa revival that I would describe as memories in feeling (1961, p. 136). Again, in Envy and Gratitude , she writes of pre-verbal emotions and phantasies as memories in feeling and discusses how these are put into words with the help of the analyst: . . . we cannot translate the language of the unconscious into consciousness without lending it words from our conscious realm (1957, p. 180.). Klein recorded what she had observed just as Freud had done when he wrote: The memory will operate [sometimes] as though it were a contemporary event (1896a, p. 154). Klein was describing the memory that had feeling but no words, and Freud the memory that had neither the location nor the temporal signature of hippocampal functioning. Wordsworth, too, recognised something of the workings of implicit memory:
. . . but that the soul, Remembering how she felt, but what she felt Remembering not, retains an obscure sense Of possible sublimity, to which, With growing faculties she doth aspire, With faculties still growing, feeling still That whatsoever point they gain, they still Have something to pursue (1933, p. 29, ll. 31322).

In these [deep] layers it [the internal object] is not felt to be part of the mind in the sense, as we have learnt to understand it, of the super-ego being the parents voices inside ones mind. This is the concept we nd in the higher strata of the unconscious. In the deep layers, however, it is felt to be a physical being, or rather a multitude of beings . . . (Hinshelwood, 1997, p. 895).

Memory-objects
It seems likely that what Klein describes as deep, represent the earliest, unelaborated identi cations, and the higher strata represent consolidated explicit memory, corresponding to the introjections discussed above. I would prefer to call these implicit memory-objects and explicit memory-objects respectively. The term internal object, though long established in psychoanalytical language, is problematical not only for the same reasons that Loewald (1972, p. 304) criticised the word object itself, but also because object implies an actuality (see Chiozza, 2000, p. 119), whereas so-called internal objects are on-the-theme of , based on or simply about objects (McIntosh, 1986, p. 437n. 6). The term memory-object makes this distinction as well as opening out the concept to other disciplines. The earliest memory-objects are of the greatest importance because, as dynamic implicit memories, they have the capacity to in uence all subsequent perceptions. They can be considered blueprints which organise all subsequent mental life, including character, defence and transference. They constitute the superego. The ego itself, though shaped by memory and perceptions, also exercises control over drive impulses and wishes and, unlike internal objects, cannot therefore be considered as a memorial structure only.

Kleins `memories in feeling

By limiting their conception of internal objects to theoretical, developed, mentalised

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE Fairbairn & Ogden

Although Kleins own contribution to the understanding of internal objects was largely phenomenological, it was Fairbairn who grappled with the anomaly of the dynamism of internal objects. Using the idea that Freud had endowed the superego with a fund of energy derived from the id, as well as attributing to it considerable autonomy, Fairbairn applied the same thinking to other internal objects. He was reluctant to make a categorical statement that internal objects had this autonomy but conceded that . . . nevertheless . . . under certain conditions internalized objects may acquire a dynamic independence . . . It is doubtless in this direction that we must look for an explanation of the fundamental animism of human beings (1952, p. 132). However, it was Ogden who proposed that: the logical extension of Fairbairns notion of dynamic structure is the idea that the ego is the only source of dynamism and that further dynamic structures [i.e. internal objects] are formed only by means of a subdivision in the ego (1983, p. 234). He proposed that internal objects be considered as the result of a dual splitting of the ego into a pair of dynamically unconscious sub-organisations of the personality, one identi ed with the self and the other with the object in the original early object relationship. Ogden writes that each has the capacity to generate experience (e.g. to think, feel and perceive) semi-autonomously and yet in relation to one another (p. 239). It was this bold extension of Fairbairns more cautious statements which further established the point of view that internal objects are not self-explanatory entities or unconscious phantasies but important, lively components of the personality. His theory also explains why early pre-linguistic internal objects are so powerfully experienced. He proposed that the splitting of the ego took place early in development and hence the identi cation with the object was experienced as a concrete belief in a physically present

1389

object, whereas adult internalisations are built on existing splits in the ego and are therefore experienced in a more detached way. In this context Ogden writes of the difference between becoming the object and feeling like the object (p. 234). This may be compared with the distinction made by the Sandlers (1998, p. 128) between the two mechanisms of taking in in superego formation, in which identi cation was seen as modifying the sense of self, and introjection as perceiving the object as a sort of back-seat driver (from whom one does not feel obliged to accept instruction!) As we have seen, at the time of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud did not present his ideas psychologically because he preferred it that way; in the absence of more neurological knowledge, observation and deduction were the only possibilities available to him. What matters for psychoanalysis today is that given theory is not insisted upon in the light of new evidence from other elds. Psychoanalytical observation is a unique scienti c tool, which has given the world so many remarkable insights. Kleins observations are no less remarkable, because in retrospect they can be seen to have charted precise neurological changes in the development of the childs brain. To observe that the child is developing the capacity to perceive people as whole objects is only enriched by the knowledge that at this timesay 4 monthsredundant axons in the cortex are being eliminated, synaptic elds are being integrated and the inter-hemispheric bridge is enlarging through myelination. Similarly, it must be of signi cance to psychoanalysis that damage to the right heteromodal cortical zone of the right cerebral hemisphere can result in regression from whole- to part-object relationships . . . (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000, pp. 258, 261). The predictable capability of the process of psychoanalysis to change, however little, patterns of archaic thought and behaviour must be enhanced if what is being changed can be accurately charted neurologically.

1390 Aberrations of memory

GILBERT PUGH
rather than an accurate match process should alert the clinician to the fact that any recovered memories emerging within the context of the transference will inevitably provide important information for the reconstruction of the patients psychological past but less reliable information about the historical veracity of past events. Hans Loewald, in his landmark paper Perspectives on Memory (1972), emphasised that memory and mourning are closely related etymologically. Memory of the past is sad also only because it is over. Stephen Poliakoff, in his recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of Remember This, has the character Rick in essence say this: They were truly terrible times, so why do I feel so sad now that they are over? As we have seen, both of Freuds theories about the origins of hysteria involved aberrations of memory. We now suspect that high levels of stress hormones following sexual and other trauma interfere with episodic explicit memory recall as well as enhancing implicit feeling memory (see earlier remarks under Repression & Amnesia and additionally Jacobs et al., 1996). It is likely also that the future understanding of repression may require knowledge of its neurobiology since, contrary to what might be expected, there is some evidence that repression is more successful following repeated trauma (see Schacter, 1996, p. 256).

It is no coincidence that the issue of false memory has aroused feelings somewhat reminiscent of those surrounding the debate on internal objects during the Controversial Discussions . In my view, the central issue was the same: the dif culty in accepting and understanding the autonomous nature of internal object-memories. Kleins internal world was often criticised for being populated by demons, and the fear of having his version of the internal world tarred with the same brush was one reason for Fairbairns reluctance to endow his internal structure with too much autonomy. However, in his only contribution to the FreudKlein Controversies, Fairbairn seems to have overcome his reticence:
. . . in my opinion the time is now ripe for us to replace the concept of phantasy by a concept of an inner reality peopled by the ego and its internal objects. These internal objects should be regarded as having an organised structure, an identity of their own and endopsychic existence, and an activity as real within the inner world as those of any objects in the outer world (p. 359).

Memory is described as vague when it does not ful l our expectation and worse, false when it exceeds its remit by being creative. It is the persistent expectation of the probability of accuracy that creates so much confusion. To worry too much about a match between memory and an historical event is merely a hopeless exercise in wish-ful lment. If the issue becomes a preoccupation, it is the value of psychological truth that is betrayed. Fresh memories emerging have always been features of the analytic process. Much greater signi cance was placed on these recovered memories before it was realised, in the modern era, that memory is far from being a simple reproductive process and that repression is not the only mechanism of defence (Kris, 1955, p. 55). This new perspective, linked to the knowledge that transference phenomena involve a perceptual best match

Concluding remarks
As Freud predicted (1920, p. 60), cognitive neuroscience has enlarged our knowledge of memory to the extent that many of Freuds problems with memory are now close to having scienti cally veri able explanations. Few would disagree that the signs and symptoms which are now designated as posttraumatic stress disorder do not differ signi cantly from those which were termed hysteria at the end of the nineteenth century (Yovell, 2000, p. 171). Freuds seduction theory was not wrong: it was a very important part of a

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

much bigger picture. But for some reason, at this time, Freud did not want to consider that there could be more than one source of the Nile (1896b, p. 203). Cognitive neuroscience in co-operation with psychoanalysis has enabled us to understand the precision, reliability and near indestructibility of one type of explicit memory, semantic memory (Tulving, 1972, p. 380), due to cortical consolidation. It has highlighted the fragility of another type, episodic memory, due to the susceptibility of the hippocampus to stress hormones. However, semantic memory is concerned with general facts and knowledgewhere you were born, who is Prime Ministerand therefore is of much less interest in the consulting room than episodic memory, which is re ned to remember details and nuances of events but is vulnerable to forgetting. However it is with implicit memory, which exists from our earliest days until death as autonomous, unconscious emotion that often feels as if it were contemporary, where psychoanalysis has so much to offer neuroscience in their joint elucidation of memory. Attempts to understand this type of memory have always found expression in art and poetry and, in the modern era, in abstract art perhaps because the complex temporal component of the emotion can more effectively be conveyed in this way (Schacter, 1996, gs. 110.5 & p. 11). To evaluate all memory in terms of true and false is like trying to evaluate abstract art on the basis of how naturalistic it is. This implicit memory-object system has far-reaching implications. For example, it is likely that character traits such as fanaticism, fundamentalism and idealism derive from the concrete and polarised appreciation of experiences during the pre-reason, pre-truth (Winnicott, 1954 5, p. 265) paranoid/schizoid period. It is not suggested, however, that such traits belong necessarily to a primitive mental state (Caper, 1998, p. 539), but rather that the persistence of such traits results from a failure to reorganise early emotional memory

1391

in the light of subsequent experience (cf. Bion, 1962a). The philosopher John Locke expressed a similar idea in 1690: . . . madmen do not appear to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly they mistake them for truths. Both Freud and Klein warned of the dangers to the childs growing sense of reality resulting from early indoctrination with speculative ideas (Klein, 1921, p. 24). World events involving fanatical, fundamental attitudes continue to provide tragic con rmation of their views.

Dedication
This paper was inspired by the late Tom Hayley, who generously shared with me his enthusiasm for the subject of memory.

Translations of summary
Der erste Teil dieses Artikels ero rtert die Entwicklung von Freuds Ansichten bezu glich Geda chtnis aus der Zeit des Projekts bis zur Formulierung der zweiten Topographie. Die Versuche Freuds, seine psychologischen Ansichten mit einem organischen bereinstimmung zu bringen, waren Modell in U zwangsla u g nicht schlu ssig, aber im Prozess kann man sehen, wie sich viele innovative Ideen u ber Geda chtnis mit neueren Entwicklungen in den kognitiven Neurowissenschaften spiegeln. Eine kurze Diskussion von Wahrnehmungsidentita t, innerer Wahrnehmung und Freuds Affekttheorie fu hrt die zentrale theoretische Idee in der zweiten Ha lfte des Artikels ein, na mlich, dass Identi zierung als eine Form der Erinnerung gesehen werden kann. Moderne Theorie ber-Ich in Verbindes Geda chtnis steht mit dem U dung, woraufhin der Autor vorschla gt, dass innere Objekte Erinnerungsobjekte neubenannt werden. Diese ko nnen hinsichtlich der Unterscheidung, die in kognitiven Neurowissenschaften zwischen implizitem und explizitem Geda chtnis und zwischen verschiedenen Teilen des Gehirns, besonders dem Amygdala, den Basalganglienund dem Hippocampus gemacht wird, verstanden werden. Kleins Erinnerung im Gefu hl und die Ansichten von Fairbairn und Ogden bezu glich der dynamischen Natur von inneren Objekten werden kurz ero rtert. Der Artikel schliesst mit einigen Kommentaren u ber die Abweichungen

1392

GILBERT PUGH
centrale, a ` savoir que lidenti cation peut e tre vue comme une forme de me moire. La the orie contemporaine de la me moire est lie e au surmoi apre ` s que lauteur propose que les objets internes peuvent e tre renomme s objets me moire et quils peuvent e tre compris, selon la distinction des sciences cognitives, entre me moire implicite et me moire explicite ainsi quentre des parties diffe rentes du cerveau, en particulier les amygdales, les ganglions et lhippocampe. La me moire au feeling de Klein et les opinions de Fairbairn et Ogden en relation avec la nature dynamique des objets internes sont brie `vement discute es. Ce texte sache ` ve par quelques commentaires sur les aberrations de la me moire et sur quelques implications du syste ` me implicite me moire - objet. La prima parte dellarticolo e ` dedicata alla discussione dello sviluppo della visione di Freud sulla memoria dai tempi del Progetto no alla seconda topica. Gli sforzi di Freud di far combaciare le sue teorie psicologiche con un modello organico erano per forza di cose inconcludenti, ma da questo tentativo sono scaturite alcune idee innovative sulla memoria che entrano in risonanza con i recenti sviluppi delle neuroscienze cognitive. Una breve discussione sullidentita ` percettiva, sulla percezione interna e sulla teoria degli affetti di Freud introduce lipotesi teorica centrale dellarticolo e cioe ` che lidenti cazione possa essere vista come una forma di memoria. Le moderne teorie sulla memoria vengono associate al Super-Io, portando alla proposta che gli oggetti interni possano essere ride niti oggetti-memoria e che essi possano essere spiegati nei termini della distinzione, proposta dalle neuroscienze cognitive, tra memoria implicita e memoria esplicita e tra differenti parti del cervello, in particolare lamigdala, i gangli basali e lippocampo. Vengono poi discussi brevemente i punti di vista della Klein, di Fairbairn e di Ogden sulla natura dinamica degli oggetti interni. L articolo si conclude con un breve commento sui disturbi della memoria e su alcune implicazioni del sistema memoria implicita-oggetto.

von Geda chtnis und einigen Implikationen des impliziten Erinnerungs-ObjektSystems. La primera parte de este art culo discute el desarrollo de los puntos de vista de Freud sobre la memoria, desde la e poca del Proyecto hasta la formulacio n de la segunda topograf a. Los esfuerzos de Freud por hacer coincidir sus ideas psicolo gicas con un modelo orga nico eran necesariamente inconcluyentes;, pero muchas ideas innovadoras ir an a tener consomnacia con los desarrollos de la neurociencia cognitiva reciente. Una breve discusio n de la identidad perceptiva, la percepcio n interna y la teor a de Freud sobre los afectos, introduce la idea teo rica central de la segunda mitad del art culo, a saber, que la identi cacio n puede verse como forma de la memoria. La teor a moderna sobre la memoria esta enlazada con el superyo , y de acuerdo a la misma, el autor propone que los objetos internos podr an tener el nuevo nombre de objetos-memoria y que e stos pueden ser comprendidos a la luz de la diferencia que hace la neurociencia cognitiva entre memoria impl cita y expl cita, y entre diferentes partes del cerebro, en particular la am gdala, los ganglios basales y el hipocampo. La memoria en el sentir de Klein, y los puntos de vista de Fairbairn y Ogden sobre la naturaleza dina mica de los objetos internos, se discuten brevemente. El art culo termina con unos cuantos comentarios sobre las aberraciones de la memoria y algunas implicaciones del sistema impl cito memoria-objeto. En premie ` re partie, cet article discute le de veloppement des ide es de Freud sur la me moire a ` partir de lEsquisse jusqua ` la formulation de la seconde topique. Les tentatives de Freud dassocier ses ide es psychologiques avec un mode ` le organique e taient ne cessairement peu concluantes; cependant, dans ce cheminement, beaucoup dinnovations sur la me moire peuvent e tre en re sonance avec de re cents de veloppements en sciences cognitives. Dans la seconde partie, une bre ` ve discussion de lidentite perceptive, de la perception interne et de la the orie de laffect par Freud introduit une ide e the orique

R eferences
Adolphs, R. et al. ( 1998) . The human amygdala in social judgement. Nature , 393: 470 4. Bartle tt, F. C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995. Bion, W . R. (1962a). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann. (1962b). Second Thoughts . London: Karnac, 1993 Caper, R. (1998). Psychopathology and primitive mental states. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 79: 539 51. Chiozza, L. (1999). Body, affect & language. Neuro-Psychoanal. , 1: 111 21.

FREUDS PROBLEM: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

Ebbinghaus, H. (1913). Memory. New York: Teachers College, (originally published 1885). Fairbairn, W . R. D. (1943). Second discussion of Scienti c Controversies in The FreudKlein Controversies 1941 45. London: Tavistock/Routledge. (1952). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. London: Tavistock/Routledge. Fink, G. R. et al. (1996). Cerebral repression of ones own past: Neural networks involved in autobiographical memory. J. Neurosc., 16: 4275 82. Fonagy, P. (1999). Memory and therapeutic action. (Guest Editorial.) Int. J. Psychoanal. , 80: 215 23. Freud, S. (1891). On Aphasia: a critical study. New York: Int. Univ. Press. (1895a). Project for a scienti c psychology. S.E. 1. (1895b). Studies on Hysteria. S.E. 2. (1896a). Heredity and aetiology of the neuroses. S.E. 3. (1896b). The aetiology of hysteria. S.E. 3. (1899). Screen memories. S.E. 3. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. S.E. 4 & 5. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. S.E. 6. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E.7. (1907). Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, ed. H. Nunberg & E. Federn. New York: Int. Univ. Press, 1962, Vol. 1, p. 134. (1914a). On the history of the psychoanalytical movement. S.E. 14. (1914b). Remembering, repeating and working-through. S.E. 12. (1916 17). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. S.E. 15 & 16. (1917a). A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams. S.E. 14. (1917b). Mourning and melancholia. S.E.14. (1920). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S.E .18. (1923). The Ego & the Id. S.E . 19. (1925). A note upon the mystic writing-pad. S.E. 19. (1925). Negation. S.E. 19.

1393

(1926). Inhibitions, Symptoms & Anxiety. S.E .20. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. S.E .21. (1940). An Outline of Psycho-Analysis. S.E . 23. Grigsby, J. & Hartlaub , G. H. (1994). Procedural learning and the development and stability of character. Perceptual and Motor skills, 79: 355 70. Hinshelwood, R. D. (1991). A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. London: Free Association Books. (1997). The elusive concept of internal objects (1934 1943). Appendix 2: Extracts from some of Melanie Kleins notes in the archives of the Welcome Museum. D16. Int. J. Psychoanal., 78: 877 97. Hirshbe rg, L. M. (1989). Remembering: reproduction or construction? Psychoanal. Contemp. Thought , 12: 343 381. Jacobs, W. J. et al. (1996). On the veracity and variability of traumatic memory. Traumatology, 2: 15. Joseph, R. (1996). Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Clinical Neuroscience. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. Kaplan- Solms, K. & Solms, M. (2000). Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac. King, P. & Steiner, R. (eds) (1991). The FreudKlein Controversies, 1941 45. London: Routledge. Klein, M. (1921).The development of a child. In The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 1. London: Hogarth, 1975, pp. 153. (1927).Symposium on child-analysis. In The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 1. London: Hogarth, pp. 139 69. (1957). Envy and gratitude. In The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 3. London: Hogarth, 1975, pp. 176 235. (1961). Narrative of a child analysis. In The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 4. London: Hogarth, 1975. Kris, E. (1955). The recovery of childhood memories in psychoanalysis. Presented to the Midwinter Meeting of the Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc., New York, on 4 December 1955. Laplanche, J. & Pontalis, J. B. (1980). The Language of Psychoanalysis. London:

1394

GILBERT PUGH
ergies & the neuroscience of emotions. Response to the commentaries. NeuroPsychoanal. , 1: 69 89. Pribram, K. H. & Gill, M. M. (1976). Freuds Project Reassessed. London: Hutchinson. Rapaport, D. (1942). The Collected Papers of David Rapaport. New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1996. Sandler, J. & Sandler, A. M. (1987). The vicissitudes of guilt. Int. J. Psychoanal., 68: 331 341. (1998). Internal Objects Revisited. London: Karnac. , et al. (1997). Freuds Models of the Mind. London: Karnac. Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for Memory. New York: Basic Books. Solms, M. & Saling, M. (1986). On psychoanalysis and neuroscience: Freuds attitude to the localisationist tradition. Int. J. Psychoanal., 67: 397 416. Squire, L. R. & Zola-Morgan, S. (1991). The medial temporal lobe system. Science, 253: 1380 6. Stewart, S. (1969). Psychoanalysis: The First Ten Years, 1888 1898. London: George Allen and Unwin. Stolorow, R. D. (1978). The concept of psychic structure: its metapsychological and clinical psychoanalytic meanings. Int. Rev. Psychoanal., 5: 313 320. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In Organization of Memory, ed. E. Tulving & W. Donaldson. New York: Academic Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1954 5). The depressive position in normal emotional development. In Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth, 1975, p. 265. Wordsworth, W. (1805). The Prelude. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1933. Young, J. Z. (1987). Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Yovell, Y. (2000). From hysteria to posttraumatic stress disorder: psychoanalysis and the neurobiology of traumatic memories. Neuro-Psychoanal. , 2: 171 81.

The Hogarth Press. Lecours, L. & Bouchard, M. A. (1997). Dimensions of mentalisation: outlining levels of psychic transformation. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 78: 855 75. Le Doux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. (1999). Psychoanalytic theory: clues from the brain. Neuro-Psychoanal. , 1: 449. Locke, J. (1690). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975. Loewald, H. W. (1972). Perspectives on memory. Presented at the Brill Memorial Lecture to the New York Psychoanal. Soc., 14 November 1972. Masson, J. M. ( ed.) (1985). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887 1904. London: Belknap Press. McIntosh, D. (1986). Sigmund Freud: the ego and the self. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 67: 429 48. Mcewan, B. S. & Sapolsky, R. M. (1995). Stress & cognitive function. Curr. Opinion in Neurobiol. , 5: 205 216. Money-Kyrle, R. (1968). Cognitive development. Int. J. Psychoanal. 49: 691 8. Republished in The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle. Perth: Clunie, 1978, pp. 416 33. Nigro, G. & Neisse r, U. (1983). Point of view in personal memories. Cognitive Psychology, 15: 467 82. Ogden, T. ( 1983) . The concept of internal object relations. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 64: 227 41. (2002). A new reading of the origins of object-relations theory. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 83: 767 82. Pally, R. (1997). Memory: brain systems that link past, present & future. Int. J. Psychoanal. , 78: 1223 34. (1998). Bilaterality: hemispheric specialisation and integration. Int. J. Psychoanal., 79: 565 78. Panksepp, J. (1999). Drives, affects, id en-