On Nachträglichkeit: The modernity of an old concept1

Abstract

Nachträglichkeit provides the memory, not the event, with traumatic significance and signifies a circular complementarity of both directions of time. Conceived by Freud as early as 1895 in the Project for a scientific psychology, the concept remains in his work without official status but through its character of biphasic development and latency indispensable for understanding temporal connections and psychic causality. As an implicit principle it is linked with the postponement and biphasic onset of sexual life and retains its sometimes hidden importance until the late Moses study. Temporarily virtually forgotten, it was recalled to memory by Lacan in 1953. Translations into French as après-coup and into English as 'deferred action' emphasized the two vectors (retroactivity and after-effect) separately which are united in the substantive form coined by Freud. Unnoticed, it played a part in many aspects of clinical practice, especially in Winnicott's Fear of breakdown and the subsequent (nachträglich) working through of unconscious infantile and transgenerational conflicts. The author uses a clinical illustration to elucidate the belated understanding of the striving for non-existence in Winnicott's sense. Wolfgang Loch extended Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit in a constructivist way, advocating an art of interpretation as an innovative enterprise through which connections are not only unmasked but also created, constituted by subsequent (nachträglich) reinterpretation of a subjective past. Very briefly the author refers to the interdisciplinary reception of the concept of Nachträglichkeit, especially in cultural studies.

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