ABSTRACT
This chapter is a tribute to Heinz Hartmann's great contribution to scientific progress in psychoanalytic theory. The purpose of psychoanalytic work with individuals is to correct their impaired ability to function and to achieve a certain degree of psychic integration and harmony. The clinical material deals with certain forms of amnesia. Since amnesia is closely related to preconscious mental processes, the author would like to refer to them not in their far-reaching theoretical implications but only in so far as they constitute a frame of reference for the clinical problems involved. During analysis one may discover patches of amnesia for single events or even for some periods of life which completely escaped the awareness of both the analyst and the patient. The amnesia could be clearly demarcated in regard to time; it extended from June to October of a certain year and embraced the period between the end of graduate school and the start of his professional career.
