Recovering a Repressed Memory,and Representational Shift in an Adolescent

Abstract

This case report focuses on the disappearance of a fixed pictorial iconic representation and transformation to symbolic (word) representation following the recovery of a repressed memory in a twelve-and-a-half-year-old after the first eleven months of psychoanalysis. There is a substantial body of psychoanalytic literature on the importance of language, naming or articulation of experiences associated with transformation of psychic structure (Fenichel, 1941; Glover, 1955; Kris, 1956a, 1956b; Werner and Kaplan, 1963; Schafer, 1976, 1978a, 1978b, 1980; Shapiro, 1979; Spence, 1982; Stern, 1989) and a relatively autonomous literature on the communicative representational power of children's play or visual portrayals (Piaget, 1962; A. Freud, 1947; Klein, 1964; Axeline, 1947; Esman, 1983; Neubauer et al., 1987; Krall, 1989). To our knowledge, there is no report of the structural effect of the recovery of a repressed traumatic experience, in this case, with subsequent parental confirmation of the traumatic event.

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