ABSTRACT
While dissociative forgetting is often cited as the hallmark of trauma, in Chapter 5 Brothers and Sletvold show that remembering plays an equally crucial role. They suggest that even when the verbal declarative form of memory is lost to consciousness, as is often the case for patients who focus on only one component of the I-you-we-world flow, implicit nonverbal memories of these events may continue to influence what happens. These memories subtly affect the facial expressions of the analytic partners – how they move, gesture, speak and look at one another. The authors contend that even though the changed embodiment of the analytic partners may elude verbal expression, it does not go unnoticed in the body-to-body exchange.
They then describe the importance of memory in Freud’s conceptualization of transference. Since Freud first discovered oedipal transferences, the concept has been elaborated to include positive and negative transferences, maternal and paternal transferences, erotic transferences, counter-transferences, self-object transferences and co-transferences.
Building on the idea that memory is narrative in nature, the authors revisit the concept of transference. In their view, it is only when traumatic memories have slowed the flow of I, you, we and world that specific transferences can be identified. A clinical example involving the bodily manifestation of traumatic experiences for both analyst and patient is presented.
