#nachtraglichkeit

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

Retroaction (Fr. après coup) - These terms refer to the way that, in the psyche, present events affect past events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a set of memories which are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of present experience.

Lacan’s term après coup is the term used by French analysts to translate Freud’s Nachträglichkeit (which the Standard Edition renders ‘deferred action’). These terms refer to the way that, in the psyche, present events affect past events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a set of memories which are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of present experience. What concerns psychoanalysis is not the real past sequence of events in themselves, but the way that these events exist now in memory and the way that the patient reports them. Thus when Lacan argues that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is ‘the complete reconstitution of the subject’s history’ (S1, 12), he makes it clear that what he means by the term ‘history’ is not simply a real sequence of past events, but ‘the present synthesis of the past’ (S1, 36). ‘History is not the past. History is the past in so far as it is historicised in the present’. Hence the pregenital stages are not to be seen as real events chronologically prior to the genital stage, but as forms of Demand which are projected retroactively onto the past. Lacan also shows how discourse is structured by retroaction; only when the last word of the sentence is uttered do the initial words acquire their full meaning.

Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge. 1996.

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

Retroaction (Fr. après coup)

Lacan’s term après coup is the term used by French analysts to translate Freud’s Nachträglichkeit (which the Standard Edition renders ‘deferred action’). These terms refer to the way that, in the psyche, present events affect past events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a set of memories which are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of present experience. What concerns psychoanalysis is not the real past sequence of events in themselves, but the way that these events exist now in memory and the way that the patient reports them. Thus when Lacan argues that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is ‘the complete reconstitution of the subject’s history’ (S1, 12), he makes it clear that what he means by the term ‘history’ is not simply a real sequence of past events, but ‘the present synthesis of the past’ (S1, 36). ‘History is not the past. History is the past in so far as it is historicised in the present’. Hence the pregenital stages are not to be seen as real events chronologically prior to the genital stage, but as forms of Demand which are projected retroactively onto the past. Lacan also shows how discourse is structured by retroaction; only when the last word of the sentence is uttered do the initial words acquire their full meaning.

Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge. 1996.

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

Retroaction (Fr. après coup)

Lacan’s term après coup is the term used by French analysts to translate Freud’s Nachträglichkeit (which the Standard Edition renders ‘deferred action’). These terms refer to the way that, in the psyche, present events affect past events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a set of memories which are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of present experience. What concerns psychoanalysis is not the real past sequence of events in themselves, but the way that these events exist now in memory and the way that the patient reports them. Thus when Lacan argues that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is ‘the complete reconstitution of the subject’s history’ (S1, 12), he makes it clear that what he means by the term ‘history’ is not simply a real sequence of past events, but ‘the present synthesis of the past’ (S1, 36). ‘History is not the past. History is the past in so far as it is historicised in the present’. Hence the pregenital stages are not to be seen as real events chronologically prior to the genital stage, but as forms of Demand which are projected retroactively onto the past. Lacan also shows how discourse is structured by retroaction; only when the last word of the sentence is uttered do the initial words acquire their full meaning.

Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge. 1996.

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

The Absence of Time

There is nothing in the id that corresponds to the idea of time; there is no recognition of the passage of time, and . . . no alteration of the mental processes is produced by the passage of time. Wishful impulses . . . impressions too that have been sunk into the id by repression, are virtually immortal; after the passage of decades they behave as though they had just occurred. They can only be recognized as belonging to the past, can only lose their importance and be deprived of their cathexis of energy, when they have been made conscious by the work of analysis . . . Freud, S. (1933) Lecture XXXI ‘The Dissection of the Psychical Personality’. SE 22,

[liula]

Nachtraglichkeit- Freud's concept that the present unsettles the past and that unstable past unsettles the present

[rgr-pop]

I want to use nachträglichkeit in a thing I am making but I don't find it tasteful to use Freud when I am talking about actual sexual trauma

[havesexwithghosts]

Nachträglichkeit

From Kaja Silverman's Flesh of My Flesh:

The unconscious opens onto the world in another way as well; it accommodates not just personal memories but also the "reminiscences of mankind." [...] If we live through more than we are, [Lou Andreas-Salome] argues, it is both because the past lives on in the present and because the present exerts a transformative influence over the past. A psychic Nachtraglichkeit can also open the door to one that is historical in nature. By turning around to face the partner he has left behind, and tarrying with her, the subject described in this passage also reaches out to all of the others who have been left behind--either by himself or by his predecessors.

As my reader may already have observed, another interlocuter has silently joined the conversation I am having with Freud and Salome: Walter Benjamin. He also characterizes the past as a book, and he urges us to read this book by recognizing the similarities that connect our moment to earlier moments in time. If we do this, he writes, we will change the "character" of the past--transform its defeats into victories, and awaken the dead.