The Return of Childhood in Autobiography: Freud's “Screen Memories”

Freud's early essay, “Screen Memories” (1899), purports to be a dialogue with a “man of university education, aged thirty-eight. Though his own profession lies in a very different field, he has taken an interest in psychological questions ever since I was able to relieve him of a slight phobia by means of psychoanalysis” (p. 309). The dialogue is concerned with certain childhood memories, the question of whether such memories are authentic or fabricated, and the function that such memories serve in adult life. It has been shown by Bernfeld (1946-1947), and generally acknowledged, that the “man of university education” in the dialogue is in fact Freud himself. Bernfeld does not speculate on Freud's motives for concealing biographical information by creating a hypothetical conversation, beyond suggesting that the device is an early form of Freud's self-analysis and that discretion demanded the disguise. The device of conducting a conversation with oneself is, in fact, of considerable interest in regard to the problematic nature of the self in