Abstract

ROUDINESCO, Elisabeth  and  JORGE, Marilei. Freud, history, and memory. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2017, vol.51, n.2, pp. 197-210. ISSN 0486-641X.

Freud's work has never been as studied as it is now. It may be because the work of history starts when creation and theory are in crisis. The author discusses in this paper the dividing line between history and memory - a dividing line that has crossed psychoanalysis since its origin. Freud used to think that psychoanalysis could be applied to every field of knowledge; that is why there is no historical ideas in Freud's thinking as such. The history of psychoanalysis was first written by Ernest Jones, a Freud's pupil who presented an official history, focused on a biographical principle and in whose core the founding father was introduced as the one and only responsible for discovering the unconscious, by breaking away from the thinking or ideas of his time. Some time later, scientific historiography played a significant part in placing psychoanalysis back within the permanent history of the medicine of soul. On the other hand, throughout the 20th century and still today, psychoanalysis, its history and its memory have been object of discussion, especially due to Kurt Eissler's work. Kurt Eissler, a Viennese psychoanalyst who emigrated to the United States of America, was the pioneer in providing an ample space for the memory of the psychoanalytic movement: the famous Freud Archives, which are deposited at the Library of Congress in Washington, d.c. The following time has been characterized by revisionism, which was initially healthy while the dominant hagiography was being questioned. After a while, the revisionism has taken an extreme proportion both in France and in English-speaking countries. The author of this paper writes about the way black legend and golden legend have been opposed to each other. She attempts to show the difference between the fantasy of an absolute knowledge, based on the cult of the archive, and an interpretative delirium which refuses to know anything. The author discusses the interrelation between the theory of the unconscious, the own Freud's history, and, at last, the history of psychoanalysis as therapeutics.

Keywords : history of psychoanalysis; psychobiography; Judaism; Sigmund Freud's biography; Enlightenment.

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