Shortly before his death, Freud provided us with his most explicit\u00a0analogy yet of the psychoanalyst as an archaeologist of the mind:
\nHis work of construction, or, if it is preferred, of reconstruction, resembles to a great extent an archaeologist\u2019s 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 \u2013 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 d\u00e9bris, 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.
\n(\u2018Constructions in Analysis\u2019, 1937)
\nAs a psychotherapist, I spend a great deal of my working life\u00a0helping patients to think about their childhood and its impact.\u00a0Many people suffer from parental bereavements, painful punishments, crushing humiliations and other adverse experiences, and\u00a0may, also, have enjoyed tender affection from mother or father,\u00a0or the joys of happy play with siblings and friends. Some of us\u00a0revisit childhood in our mind, celebrating the healthy peaks, and\u00a0crying about the debilitating troughs. But other people place a\u00a0repressive blanket over childhood, pretending that toxic events\u00a0never happened. I find that such people often suffer from great\u00a0anger, resentment and rage in adult life, still nursing early\u00a0wounds which have never healed. Fortunately, Freud has helped\u00a0us to recognize the importance of childhood and of its excavation.<\/p>\n
Freud\u00a0revelled\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0Latin\u00a0aphorism\u00a0Saxa\u00a0loquuntur,\u00a0\u2018the\u00a0stones speak\u2019 (\u2018The Aetiology of Hysteria\u2019, 1896), a phrase that\u00a0he may well have noticed while walking through the\u00a0Sigmundstor\u00a0or Sigmund\u2019s door, an eighteenth-century tunnel in Salzburg\u00a0which, 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,\u00a0that we cannot, and must not, forget the past.<\/p>\n
Past impacts upon us\u00a0whether 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\u00a0in the nursery to rest.<\/p>\n
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Life Lessons from Freud<\/strong><\/em> Shortly before his death, Freud provided us with his most explicit\u00a0analogy 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\u2019s excavation of some dwelling-place that 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before his death, Freud provided us with his most explicit\u00a0analogy 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\u2019s excavation of some dwelling-place that 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\nBrett Kahr<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"