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In his reading of Walter Benjamin, Dag Andersson has chosen the phenomenon of remembrance as his main topic. According to this great poet of philosophy, remembrance comes to us through images. While the subject of remembrance was just as important to Freud as it was to Benjamin – in fact, taking a leading position throughout Freud’s writings – the same cannot be said for images. In this short comment to Andersson’s rich paper, I shall focus on the subject of the image and its position and significance in Freudian theory. Where in Freud´s theory do we find a conception of the image, parallel to Benjamin’s? My answer to this question is that with the concept of primary process, Freud pointed to the unconscious process of image making, based on the psychic ability to perceive similarities where our waking consciousness would only see differences. And as Aristotle pointed out, it is a sign of genius to speak in images or metaphors, “[f]or the right use of metaphors means an eye for resemblances” (Aristotle, 1982, p. 91).
Quoting Benjamin, Andersson underlines that remembrance is not first and foremost a question of storytelling. Images, in other words, do not appear through language and consciousness but have the character of the “unthought known” to use a term from Bollas (1987). Images of remembrance make their appearance beyond our voluntary attempts to remember. Benjamin’s philosophical speculation on remembrance is greatly indebted to Marcel Proust. True memory, said Proust, is involuntary; it just happens and it has, according to Benjamin, the structure of awakening accompanied by small shocks.
Benjamin has given us many examples of this kind of image not least in his Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (1950) and in Das Passagen-Werk (1982). These works of personal and social remembrance demonstrate the inspiration from Proust and his Remembrance of things past, while the small essay The image of Proust addresses Proust’s image-making directly. While Proust may be