ABSTRACT
Sometimes those fresh to the psychodynamic way of thinking question how remote events remain unconscious and dormant for years before causing any effects for good or ill, in the way that streams flow underground before suddenly breaking to the surface. This seems less of a mystery to writers such as Thomas Hardy who wrote ‘I have a faculty for burying an emotion in my heart and brain for 40 years, and exhuming it at the end of that time as fresh as when interred’ (quoted by Gittings 1975:5).
