A Note on the Indelible. (February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fischer, Newell
• Is Part Of: Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Volume 66:Number 1(2018:Feb.)
• Page Start: 93
• Page End: 102
• Publication Date: 2018-02
• Subjects: psychoanalysis -- neonatal trauma -- preverbal memory -- memorialize -- indelible; Psychoanalysis -- Periodicals; 616.891705
• DOI: 10.1177/0003065117752892
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0003-0651

Abstract

An eighty-year-old man reports a recurrent nightmare involving a gummy substance being stuffed into his mouth and, despite his anxiety-driven efforts, being unable to remove it. A narrative of his neonatal years is developed and it is speculated that this nightmare is a rekindling of his very distressful breast feeding experience—an experience memorialized in his earliest pre-representational memory. Rich clinical reports of preverbal infant trauma help elucidate the earliest infant-mother dyad.