Freud Memorial Lecture 2018

Remembering and forgetting are recurring themes in clinical psychoanalysis, in society and in politics.

Think of the demand to recognise and respond to charges of historical abuse. Victims insist that time does not erode the legitimacy and importance of bringing perpetrators to justice. They also feel that their dignity should be restored from the shame and indignity forced upon them. But their demand often comes up against the reply of the accused that they do not remember the alleged abuse.

Here we have remembering and forgetting in both individual and social domains. Think also of recurring commemorations over the years, both private and public. The demand to remember people and events from years ago faces the exhortation that it is time to forget, whether as an individual or a society: time to put it all behind us and to ‘remember the future’.

In a psychoanalytic framework, remembering can be reparative and healing, but can also be anti-reparative and destructive. This complex and often confused relationship between remembering and forgetting is the topic of this lecture, which is based on clinical and historical material.

The Speaker

Karl Figlio is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and founding director of the former Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. He is a senior member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of the British Psychoanalytic Council and Clinical Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, in private practice.

He has published widely on psychoanalysis, both as a discipline and in relation to society. Recent work includes:

• “The Mentality of Conviction: Feeling Certain and the Search for Truth”. In The Feeling of Certainty. Hinshelwood, R. and Mintchev, N. (eds). London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017 
• Remembering as Reparation: Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017

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