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When Freud (1899) concluded in his paper “Screen Memories,” “It may indeed be questioned whether we have any memories at all from our childhood: memories relating to our childhood may be all that we possess” (p. 322, emphasis Freud's), he challenged us to consider the ubiquity of screening phenomena; for if childhood memories do not replicate the original event, in an objective sense, can it be said that any memories do? In this early topographical notion of “screening,” Freud anticipated later explorations into the subjectivity of memory by Kris (1956a) and Arlow (1969b) and, more recently, Schafer (1983), Schwaber (1983b), Spence (1982), and Gray (1973), among others (see also Smith, 1988.)
Viewed topographically, all memories can be seen to possess this “screening” characteristic, whereby other memories, fantasies, and conflicts lie behind and are expressed through the manifest content of the memory in question. And if this is so, what limits the term screening to the specific function of memory? In 1908 Freud, in fact, spoke of “screen phantasy” (p. 171, n. 2). Fenichel (1927, 1945), Glover (1929), Deutsch (1930), Greenacre (1949), Lewin (1950), Reider (1953), Kris (1956b), and Greenson (1958), among others, have all either added to the list of specific screen phenomena or discussed aspects of the screening process in general, thus broadening the concept. Even if we consider a screen memory to be a unique phenomenon in our work, with a characteristic “ultra clear” quality observed by Freud, and even if screen memory may occupy a “special place in reconstructive work” (Mahon and Battin-Mahon, 1983, p. 476), as Greenacre has suggested, may we not also be talking of some manner in which the mind, at least as seen through the lens of the analytic process, organizes all experience, including fantasy, language, and perception itself?