The Construction, Reconstruction, and Deconstruction of Memory in the Light of Social Cognition

Abstract

Psychic trauma results when the ego is overwhelmed by intolerable affect. Some childhood experiences are directly traumatic, requiring no intervening interpretive process to render them traumatic. Troublesome affect that falls short of being truly traumatic, in the strict sense of the term, may nevertheless exert a psychopathogenic effect on the child's psychic development. Whether a child is troubled by an experience depends on what that experience meant to the child. Accordingly, the psychopathogenic effects of childhood experience are a function of the child's general level of cognitive sophistication and specific ability to appreciate the subtle nuances of social interactions. If a child's cognitive capabilities are not up to the task of providing the necessary explanations for a given social interaction, the child is left to fall back on fantasy to fill in the gaps. The field of "social cognition" proves particularly helpful in understanding what a child is capable of gleaning from an experience. Research in this area helps psychoanalysts understand how experience becomes constructed and reconstructed in the form of memories. Social cognition also helps psychoanalysts understand when and how a lived experience ends up being psychopathogenic or, alternatively, ceases any longer to exert an ongoing psychopathogenic effect on an individual's psyche. A review of social cognition research leads to a reconsideration of such psychoanalytic concepts as repression, dissociation, reconstruction, and resistance. It also directs attention to the concept of developmental (as opposed to psychoanalytic) reconstruction and deconstruction.

The Child's Cognitive Struggle to Understand “Damage” to an Important Object: A Six-Year-Old's Attempt to Deal with the Trauma of His Father's Epilepsy

“…It is clear, however, that cognition is important to the successful rediscovery of the trauma in treatment (cf., e.g., Dorpat, 1983Dorpat, , 1987Krystal, 1985;Tuch, 1999), and in this regard, I suggest that it is crucial to address the anxiety attendant in trauma from the child's perspective by assisting him in making cognitive differentiations. One of the differentiations especially difficult to make involves the nature and degree of unanticipated damage to a loved one and whether it is reparable.…”

Traumatic Subjective Experiences Invite Suicide

“…They specifically wrote that, among other causes, hypnoid states could be brought on by emotional shock, including fear (Breuer & Freud, 1893-1895, see especially p. 215). The implications for child development of traumatically induced affect states continue to be of psychoanalytic interest (Tuch, 1999). Freud never lost his interest in mental trauma, ultimately taking the view that when the mind is overwhelmed by affects breaking through mental structures inadequate for their regulation, annihilation experiences resulted.…”

Psychoanalytic Developmental Theory: A Contemporary Reconsideration

“…The application of a nonlinear systems approach shifts our thinking away from simplistic linear dynamic formulations and requires that we recognize the power of developmental transformation as an ongoing force throughout childhood and adolescence and even into adulthood, with its potential for beneficial corrections as well as premature closure and fixity. Moreover, since memory, a fundamental vehicle for the psychoanalytic process, is yet another interacting system that is profoundly shaped by the nature of the mind at the moment of encoding, it can be better recognized as a function in a high state of flux throughout development and in the psychoanalytic setting (Tuch 1999).…”