The Archive and Psychoanalysis: Memories and Histories Toward Futures

The archive and psychoanalysis are reconnected in a new framework. The archaeological metaphor of psychoanalysis, the traditional view of archives as storehouses of historical items, and the notion of memory as storage are revised according to the conceptions of fluid and dynamic archival and memory systems. A combination of psychoanalytic models and cognitive memory research is proposed to form developmental archival theory that will take into account the changing contexts of memory, meaning—making, negotiation of interpretation, and knowledge regulation. The three phases of registration (archivalization, archivization, and archiving) are seen in the dynamics of unconsciousness—consciousness, and in relation to the archivists’ and researchers’ transferences to their records as self—objects, transitional objects or evocative objects. Becoming conscious of archives is a continuous journeying through the multiple registrations and narrativizations of archives in the interaction between non—declarative and declarative memory. The archive and psychoanalysis touch upon processes that are suggested to concern metamemory and metareflection (the interplay between meta—emotion and metacognition). The futures of archives and psychoanalysis call for context—sensitive remembering and being attentive to the co—constructive translations of personal and social memory. Opening archives and psychoanalysis toward the unprecedented, without closing histories and memories, is the interminable task of encountering the “missing moment.”