Screen memories as a formation of the unconscious
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Authors
Magee, Brian
Issue Date
2009
Degree
Higher Diploma in Arts in Psychoanalytic Studies
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
During arguably the most productive period of his life spanning ten years from 1895 – 1905 Freud developed his Final Year Project of the psyche and its unconscious mechanisms, the psychosexual development of the individual, underwent his own self analysis and outlined the formations of the unconscious. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905) and Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) were all written within this period. The dream, the joke, the symptom and parapraxes were all recognised as having meaning and understood to be subject to unconscious motivations and mechanisms. These formations of the unconscious were central to Freud’s theory of the unconscious highlighting for him that “the most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness” (1900 p. 593). These formations of the unconscious are still today key to an understanding of the unconscious internal struggle of patients and are the very material which analysts use to further the patients analysis. Among the many areas of inquiry relating to the psychical life of the individual which Freud delved into at this time was one of particular interest for this Final Year Project, that of screen memories.