Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A mishap or accident of communication which may possibly occur in the structuring of certain family myths . It is characterized by a lack of information directed towards oneself, which may possibly have consequences on the plane of wider interactions. It is possible to imagine a whole semiotics of forgetting which relates to different psycho-pathological interactions. Freud was the first to reveal the full importance of forgetting and of parapraxes, discovering the process of repression of unconscious representations which continue to be active. Repression appears quite particularly in the hysteric who ‘suffers from reminiscences’ relating essentially to the Oedipus complex. In this sense, the analysis of the Oedipus complex appears as the identification and prescription of a particular family myth. This is met with in head injury, but is also brought about experimentally when electric shock treatment is prescribed. It generates a radical break in the continuum of personal experience, creating a ‘blank’ in the system of memorization of affects and representations. In a different form, the severely mentally handicapped engender mechanisms of forgetting around them: or they are, rather, the expression of a deficiency of family and social memory. Hence the difficulties of developing an approach to these problems, where, paradoxically, an excess of intervention and care very often ... log in or subscribe to read full text