Response

Dear Sir,

First of all I would like to thank Dr Goldberg for his thoughtful commentary, which was intended to create controversy as well as to focus psychoanalysts’ attention on issues concerning memory.

I am not sure why Dr Goldberg asserts that procedural memory plays no part in autobiographical memory. This is most unlikely to be the case. In fact, Eric R. Kandel (1999), exploring declarative and procedural aspects of memory in his recent brilliant exposition of the role of psychoanalysis in the intellectual framework of psychiatry, stated: ‘These two memory systems overlap and are commonly used together so that many learning experiences recruit both of them. Indeed constant repetition can transform declarative memory into a procedural type’ (p. 508). Very much in line with the suggestions in the editorial, but with the authority befitting one of the key investigators in this field (Milner, Squire & Kandel, 1998), Kandel suggests that procedural memory may be considered as one aspect of Freud's unconscious which incorporates not just interpersonal relations but also ‘moral rules’ that govern behaviour.

Memory systems evidently interact. How I do things, particularly if this is drawn to my attention, may well serve as a retrieval cue for a particular experience I have had. I would have thought that comments and questions concerning the ‘how of behaviour’ in our patients is one of the most common bases for reconstructive work in most analyses. Whether the ‘how of behaviour’ is retrieved in action sequences (procedural memory) or meaning structures (semantic memory) would, in my view, depend on the nature of the encoding. Experience would evidently affect both and both provide material for interpretation. For example, painful bodily experiences may be retained both as an unconscious reluctance to perform a specific action or as an idiosyncrasy within the range of meanings associated with specific words or conceptual structures.

Dr Goldberg's comments on my ‘special