Mnemic Symbol

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MNEMIC SYMBOL

The idea of the mnemic symbol (Erinnerungssymbol ) occurs in Freud's early writings as the equivalent of the notion of the hysterical symptom. A mnemic symbol appears as a hysterical thought with an unaccounted for intense affect, or it manifests itself through compulsion, for example, a hysterical attack in which the patient's movements represent a seduction scene. The term mnemic symbol appears prominently in "A Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950c [1895]) and Studies on Hysteria (1895d), but also in "The Neuropsychoses of Defence" (1894a) and "The Aetiology of Hysteria" (1896c). In "The Aetiology of Hysteria," Freud reiterated the explanation given by Josef Breuer in Studies on Hysteria (1895d): "The symptoms of hysteria (apart from the stigmata) are determined by certain experiences of the patient's which have operated in a traumatic fashion and which are being reproduced in his psychical life in the form of mnemic symbols" (pp. 192-193).

The mnemic symbol, a psychic stigma resulting from a traumatic event, is a mnemic trace —although not all mnemic traces necessarily correspond to a seduction and a trauma—that displaces the affect associated with the trauma onto an isolated adjacent representation in such a way that the person does not understand the intense cathexis of this representation.

The mnemic symbol is characteristic of a hysterical symptom, but no doubt is also characteristic of all symbols. This notion belongs to the first theory of the neuroses, the theory that trauma causes hysteria, from before 1900, and it is not often encountered in Freud's later writings. A mnemic symbol results from a displacement, as Freud explained in "A Project for a Scientific Psychology": "B stands in a particular relation to A. For there has been an occurrence which consisted of B + A. A was an incidental circumstance; B was appropriate for producing the lasting effect. The reproduction of this event in memory has now taken a form of such a kind that it is as though A had stepped into B 's place. A has become a substitute, a symbol for B " (p. 349). Condensation and metaphor are also at work here. When A is substituted for B, there is total amnesia of B. B is repressed but remains "a mnemic image like any other; it is not extinguished" (p. 351); that is, it remains as an unconscious memory trace. This explains hysterical compulsion. In hysterical repression, "A is compulsive" (p. 350), and "instead of B, A always becomes conscious—that is, is cathected. Thus it is symbol-formation of this stable kind which is the function that goes beyond normal defence" (p. 352).

The mnemic symbol not only repeats what was experienced at the time of the trauma; it also reinforces it. Affect and libidinal excitation are more intense in the symptom than in the event it commemorates, according to Freud in "The Aetiology of Hysteria." This sheds light on the paradox, recounted in "A Project for a Scientific Psychology," of Emma's childhood seduction, whose attendant affects she did not feel until puberty. The mnemic trace of this traumatic seduction must indeed have been registered when it occurred in childhood, but this trace was only intensified through deferred action, when it was transformed into a mnemic symbol. Emma's fear of entering shops and her conviction that her symptoms came from an episode during puberty where she felt seduced by a young shop assistant were in effect the mnemic symbol, A, of the repressed childhood scene actually at issue, B. The mnemic symbol is the clothing through which Emma was sexually molested as a child. In the episode from her adolescence, Emma thinks that people are making fun of her because her clothes are ridiculous, while she also feels attracted to the young shop assistant. In this case, the mnemic symbol almost takes on the value of a fetish.

The notion of the mnemic symbol, encompassing the notions of mnemic trace, hysterical symptom, and symbol, may seem overly general, but its definition limits its usage to a very specific field of psychopathology.

FranÇois Richard

See also: Amnesia; Conversion; Forgetting; Memory; Phylogenesis; Physical pain/psychic pain; Screen memory.