Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

November 14, 1972. PERSPECTIVES ON MEMORY. (Brill Lecture.) Hans W. Loewald, M.D.

Memory is not a discrete, sharply defined intellectual function. Rather it must be conceived of in terms of memorial processes which are at once influenced by, and have influence upon, all the major functions and organizations of the psyche. Dr. Loewald uses the term 'memorial processes' to replace 'memory' in order to emphasize that memory is made up of cathectic processes of varying intensities, with different aims, drawing upon a variety of sources. Unlike the system described by Freud in The Mystic Writing Pad, no part of the process of memory is passive: the distinction between an active system Pcpt-Cs and a passive system Ucs does not hold. The revivability of memory implies that these processes are invested with 'low-key cathectic processes' which are revived by new cathexes (e.g., in recall) and themselves become repatterned through the recathexis. Just as the unconscious wish determines the character of the manifest dream, so does unconscious reproductive activity 'determine the character of present experience. This applies throughout the psychic system, including mnemic images themselves.'

Instincts are not energies within a closed system seeking discharge but rather are 'relational phenomena, arising … from a psychic matrix constituted essentially by the mother-child unit'. Dr. Loewald considers them as wholly psychic forces, with the biological roots put to one side for such purposes. As psychic forces, they are defined as the 'most primitive' psychologically motivating forces. From the mother-child matrix, instinctual cathexes differentiate into narcissistic and object cathexes. The former are the cathectic currents within the individual; the latter, the currents between the ego system and the environment. To clarify what Freud left vague, narcissistic cathexes are subdivided into those which cathect the 'totality of the personality' and those which are 'inter