title: A Special Sort of Forgetting: Negation in Freud and Augustine.
abstract: The development from a positive, dualistic theory of memory and forgetting to a concept of memory that includes forgetting as a variety of remembering is traced in two thinkers. Freud's concept of repression is discussed as a complex negation of both remembering and forgetting, and the development of this construct is shown in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess. A close reading of Augustine of Hippo's Confessions shows a similar concept of a special sort of forgetting, in which what is forgotten is remembered nonetheless. Finally, the limits of the comparison are discussed, and a reading of Freud's "Negation" reveals ways in which the unconscious is fundamentally unlike Augustine's interiority.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rosengart
mesh_terms: D005619:Freudian Theory / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history*; D012094:Repression, Psychology
keywords: Freud; Pseudo-Dionysius; Saint Augustine; forgetting; negation