Memory And Phantasy

A consideration of some texts of Freud problematises this set of assumptions and in the end renders them untenable. The aim of this contribution to today's debate is to present something of what Freud says of the relations between 'memory' and 'phantasy' so that the status we grant to childhood events recollected in analysis may be called into question. In 1899 Freud wrote a paper entitled Screen Memories. What follows is the example that Freud gives of a seemingly trivial recollection from childhood which popped into a particular man's mind from time to time during his adult years for no identifiable reason: I see a rectangular, rather steeply sloping piece of meadow- land, green and thickly grown: in the green there are a great number of yellow flowers - evidently common dandelions.…