ABSTRACT
Existential phenomenology is at often its best when it questions once again phenomena that are enigmatic not because of their remoteness but because of their proximity. Remembering and forgetting are a case in point. The fallibility of memory is taken for granted, and memories are too quickly discussed in terms of neurology (“traces”), their relationship to factual histories (“recovered memories”), or their over-determined falsifications (“false-memory syndrome”). Any competent analyst or psychotherapist comes to sit comfortably with deep uncertainties surrounding memory, even as it is at the center of analytic work (perhaps reconstructively through the transference). We are tempted to say that memories are a “mixture” of historical fact, primitive fantasy, transference derivatives, and so on. But few of us have taken up the question of what memories are as memories. This is Charles Scott’s question.
