#screen memory

14th September 2021

In my last blog post I presented some of Klein's notes from file PP/KLE/D.23, entitled 'Notes for intended paper on memory' and dating from 1958. I wanted to continue with the theme of memory, and to shine a light on some more material from this very interesting file, so I’m reproducing a couple of paragraphs in which Klein discusses a 'cover memory' brought to her by patient 'C' (this particular clinical material is dated 10th September 1957). As Steiner (2017) has noted, Klein uses 'cover memory' in place of Freud’s ‘screen memory’, though it appears to be exactly the same concept, as you will see below.

The memory in question here is one that patient C reports at the start of her analysis. It is a memory she feels has been with her all her life, and one which Klein felt was ‘of fundamental importance to her whole development’. The patient herself, Klein notes, felt that the memory accounted for her having turned away from her parents, and for her whole emotional attitude towards them. Klein makes very clear that she felt such memories, recoverable in analysis as ‘memories in feeling’, were really only understandable in the context of a patient’s earliest experiences, including his or her relation to the breast. She also remarks on the value of memory, and evidently feels she is building on Freud’s ideas about the importance of ‘excavating’ memory and reconstructing it in analysis.

(Images are from file D.23: 8-14 of 22)

[S]he was lying in her pram in a conservatory and in the room which adjoined the conservatory were her parents and other people. It was a dining room and guests were also received there, so she thought they might be some people visiting her parents. She had a feeling of being completely ejected and rejected and that her attitude of cutting herself off from the parents and making herself independent and indifferent towards them which set in very early with her was linked with this memory.

It is an interesting point that the patient maintained that the pram situation was a memory going back to the first year. She had been convinced that this was a memory. In the course of my interpretation she agreed that it was possible she was in the second year, which would have been the time when the mother was pregnant and the baby born. The details she gave me about the situation were apparently actual memories. She knew she was lying in the pram in the conservatory, that the door led into the dining room where her parents often saw visitors and she remembered entirely the locality. One would say that the memory may or may not have been like that, but part of it was a memory. What we meet here is an actual cover memory and the details of the material I have given show how such a cover memory comes about. One situation of feeling deserted and left alone covered a number of emotional situations, fundamental for her relationships and development. It was as it were transfixed into the one situation and I should never have been able to unravel these situations condensed into that memory if the analysis had not led, as was the case, into very great depths including earliest breast relations to the mother, and so on. I therefore would maintain that the value of memories, which is not doubted, has to be considered from this angle. The deeper the analysis leads the earlier stages are recovered. The more the patient can re-experience quite early situations which may not be available as memory traces but which imply what I would describe as memories in feelings the conclusion would be that our whole attitude towards the value and meaning of memories has to be reconsidered. There is no doubt that whenever memory reappears in analysis it is of value, as Freud always assumed, but the full value lies in getting behind this memory, which very often is a cover memory and this can only be understood by enabling the patient to experience the emotions, the internal situations and the external ones, which are bound up with this memory.

In another note Klein continues to reflect upon the value of recovering memories, or memories in feeling, in analysis. She discusses the ‘understructure’ of memory and again refers to Freud, noting that his ‘discovery of the importance of memories has often been taken in too narrow a sense’.

Notes on Unconscious Memories

The analysis of deep layers of the mind leads to what I have described as memories in feelings. Patients re-experience earlier situations and these experiences often lead to the memories of actual situations. It is also frequently the other way round, that a memory coming up in analysis only proves its value if it can get behind what is usually only condensed in that memory, and these are emotions, situations which takes us back into the past. Freud’s discovery of the importance of memories has often been taken in too narrow a sense. A memory coming up from the unconscious is always of value and interest, but only if the background and the situations which are condensed in that memory are fully explored. I think, in the developments of psycho-analysis, the coming up of memories without exploring the emotions, situations, etc which are the understructure of this memory, has become a shibboleth which is of no great value. I believe that, when Freud recognized the importance of memory, what he was pointing out was the need to reconstruct the past in as many details as possible, but this is not achieved if a memory is not taken in the sense which I have just explained. We must also remember Freud’s discovery of cover memories. I believe that an isolated memory is always a cover memory and crying out for exploration of what lies behind it. I have found that the consistent analysis of transference, negative and positive, is bound to lead to the exploration of the past and does in no way preclude memories in the general sense of the word, but allows for the deeper understanding of such memories.

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References:

There are two types of screen memories, the first is a false memory that masks a true true memory of an experience. In Psychoanalysis, a Screen Memory serves to protect a fragile psyche from a traumatic experience by offering a false memory in it’s place. The true memory is not lost, but is buried deep “behind” the Screen Memory. Individuals who have suffered traumatic experiences such as physical and sexual abuse, are most likely to create Screen Memories as a way of sheltering their conscious mind from painful memories.

The second type in the case of trauma based mind control screen memories are created so the individual can account for what would otherwise be large gaps of lost time. Screen memories assist to steer the person away from talking about the abuse as the replacement memories can sometimes be nonsensical.

Virtual Reality can be used to implement screen memories as well as drug-augmented hypnosis.

How does one tell if it’s a screen memory or a real memory?  Sometimes screen memories are ‘cookie cutter’ they are too perfect and nice and in the story line of your life they don’t fit. Others may fall into to the extreme of the nonsensical where someone would run the risk of sounding extremely mentally ill if they spoke about the memory.  Therefore they don’t talk about it which is a sign of sanity.  The memory is 'too clear.’  For example one can 'remember’ every aspect of what happened.  The screen memory has emotions that are too strong for the even remembered.

“If childhood was once constructed and recorded by adults and mirrored back to children (e.g., in a carefully curated family photo album or a series of home video clips), this is no longer the case,” Eichhorn writes. “Today, young people create images and put them into circulation without the interference of adults.”

This practice can be hugely beneficial. New technology—especially the smartphone—allows us to produce a narrative of our lives, to choose what to remember and what to contribute to our own mythos. For Eichhorn, this is the latest instance of a long-held, if mysterious, practice. “Long before children were able to create, edit, and curate images of their lives,” she writes, “they were already doing so on a psychic level.” Freud called these images “screen memories”—no pun intended—and he thought that we used them to soften or obscure painful experiences. Humans have always tried to cope with the difficulty of memory, to turn it “from an intolerable horror to something which is reassuringly innocuous and familiar.” Social media just makes us more adept at it.

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