Remembering, Repeating and Working Through: The Impact of the Controversial Discussions

Freud's recognition that what cannot be remembered may well be repeated in action is useful for understanding the trauma and aftermath of the Controversial Discussions. I shall be concentrating on disavowal, repeating, working through and remembering in the evolving context of the process of the impact of the Discussions. I suggest that we can distinguish three phases of the impact of the Discussions: the first a silence as if the Discussions constituted something too traumatic or too shameful to speak about; the second a phase of mutual influence between two or more groups which constitutes one form of working through, an attempt to integrate (with its opposite a concentration on irreconcilable differences); and third a further stage of working through which is closer to remembering, treating the Discussions as a historical point of reference in the service of sorting out clinical and conceptual problems.