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Freud pointed out that while the analyst's construction ought to end in the patient's recollection, it often brings about an assured conviction of the truth of the construction
without the recollection of what had been repressed. Nonetheless, the same therapeutic result is achieved. The formation of screen memories which result from reconstructions during analysis and the sense of conviction are examined in this paper. Screen memories are marked by clarity of image; the individual involved is often both onlooker and participant and the memory is often of a trivial event. The concept of screen memories has been extended to include a continuous screening function so that screen memories may be derived from any period of life, current or past. A traumatic memory may screen an even more traumatic recollection. Many final traumatic memories are not recovered in analysis, but are replaced by a growing sense of conviction that events were really as the analyst reconstructed them. There are two forms of the sense of conviction, a subjective sense of the truthfulness of one's own mental functioning and an objective sense about the commonality of certain shared experiences. Whether the sense of conviction is used defensively to support denial and reaction formations or whether it appears in other contexts, such as superstitions, religious or political beliefs, it is dependent on the integrity of the reality testing function and is affected by the vicissitudes of inner conflicts. It seems that the sense of conviction is not as strong in patients with obsessive-compulsive character structures as in those with oral or phallic orientation. In analysis, the increasing sense of conviction is a product of the re-establishment of the connection with an earlier reality, either of a historical or psychological nature. From an economic point of view, there would be a change in the energies investing the sense of conviction from more instinctualized to more neutralized energ