ABSTRACT
Ever since Freud’s statement that ‘Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences’ (Freud and Breuer 1895:7), psychoanalytic theory has been interested in the influence of past memories on the present. But both Freud’s theory of perception and his theory of memory appear naïve to the modern reader-his theory of perception as being one of ‘direct’ or ‘photographic’ perception (Wallerstein 1973; Schimek 1975; Wachtel 1980), and his theory of memory as a trace theory (Paul 1967), according to which memories are stored as distinct memory traces which may be later ‘cathected’ or ‘innervated’. As Rapaport (Levy and Rapaport 1944) stated regarding Freud’s theory of memory: ‘The psychoanalytic theory of memory is based on the view that memory traces are used by psychic forces which find expression through them’ (p. 152).
