23 Jan Freud revelled in the Latin aphorism Saxa loquuntur, ‘the stones speak’ (BRETT KAHR)
Shortly before his death, Freud provided us with his most explicit analogy yet of the psychoanalyst as an archaeologist of the mind:
His work of construction, or, if it is preferred, of reconstruction, resembles to a great extent an archaeologist’s excavation of some dwelling-place that has been destroyed and buried or of some ancient edifice. The two processes are in fact identical, except that the analyst works under better conditions and has more material at his command to assist him, since what he is dealing with is not something destroyed but something that is still alive – and perhaps for another reason as well. But just as the archaeologist builds up the walls of the building from the foundations that have remained standing, determines the number and position of the columns from depressions in the floor and reconstructs the mural decorations and paintings from the remains found in the débris, so does the analyst proceed when he draws his inferences from the fragments of memories, from the associations and from the behaviour of the subject of the analysis. Both of them have an undisputed right to reconstruct by means of supplementing and combining the surviving remains. Both of them, moreover, are subject to many of the same difficulties and sources of error. One of the most ticklish problems that confronts the archaeologist is notoriously the determination of the relative age of his finds; and if an object makes its appearance in some particular level, it often remains to be decided whether it belongs to that level or whether it was carried down to that level owing to some subsequent disturbance. It is easy to imagine the corresponding doubts that arise in the case of analytic constructions.
(‘Constructions in Analysis’, 1937)
As a psychotherapist, I spend a great deal of my working life helping patients to think about their childhood and its impact. Many people suffer from parental bereavements, painful punishments, crushing humiliations and other adverse experiences, and may, also, have enjoyed tender affection from mother or father, or the joys of happy play with siblings and friends. Some of us revisit childhood in our mind, celebrating the healthy peaks, and crying about the debilitating troughs. But other people place a repressive blanket over childhood, pretending that toxic events never happened. I find that such people often suffer from great anger, resentment and rage in adult life, still nursing early wounds which have never healed. Fortunately, Freud has helped us to recognize the importance of childhood and of its excavation.
Freud revelled in the Latin aphorism Saxa loquuntur, ‘the stones speak’ (‘The Aetiology of Hysteria’, 1896), a phrase that he may well have noticed while walking through the Sigmundstor or Sigmund’s door, an eighteenth-century tunnel in Salzburg which, as it happens, bears his forename. By relishing the archaeological excavation of the mind, and by resurrecting repressed memories, Freud taught us a vital life lesson, namely, that we cannot, and must not, forget the past.
Past impacts upon us whether we wish it to do so or not; and thus we have an obligation to explore our childhood in the hope of putting our ghosts in the nursery to rest.
Life Lessons from Freud
Brett Kahr
