Terry Ball – Reconstructing Reminiscences
 
The Letter Issue 66-67 (Autumn 2017/Spring 2018) Pages 55-64
 
‘Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences’
 
This paper looks at the distinction between three related but distinct terms, reconstructing, remembering and reminiscences, in order to examine the origins of the key psychoanalytic concepts of repression and the unconscious. Imbedded in this exploration is a discussion on psychoanalytic practice, its task and its aim. Freud’s texts from 1893 to 1937 are consulted as are some of Lacan’s Seminars and texts from the 1950s which support Freud’s theses. There are musings on Freud’s being made to feel like an alien in his early student years and how he later described the unconscious as an alien, foreign body.