Projective Identification and the Ability to Suffer: A Response to Arnold Modell's “Memory and the Psychoanalytic Cure” (May 1994)

Dr. Modell has used Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit1 as meaning a recontextualization of affectively charged memories. He proposes that when this occurs within the transference new meanings are generated that have a curative effect. He also suggests that the process of this retranscription of memory is analogous to Gerald Edelman's neurobiological theory of the refinding of perceptual categories.

We agree on the fundamental importance in analysis of linking memories and feelings, and of the roles of transference and countertransference. We disagree about the connection to Edelman's theory. I will begin with this, accepting for the moment Modell's idea of memory as “a bridge between physiology and psychology … [but] our theory of memory cannot be derived from psychoanalytic observation alone: we must attend to theories of the brain.” There are difficulties with the theory of the brain he has chosen, but the more important of these occur because of the way he has used the theory in his argument.

Modell begins by using Edelman's idea of the refinding of perceptual categories to explain the pain of repetition compulsion, saying that this refinding transcends the seeking of pleasure. Even if we accept the theory of the refinding of perceptual categories, however, there is a confusion in Modell's parallel. In Other Times, Other