Childhood Memories and Scream Memories

Actually, that's all I wanted to say. But a little context. In class, students were presenting to one another two-page segments of Freud's essay of a similar name--asking questions and writing the categories that emerged up on the board.

In a section on the forgetting of proper names, the person writing on the board distinguished between "Screem Memories" and "Forgetting Names." Having written "Screem" first, he hesitated over and revised himself several times on the question of whether "forgetting" had one 't' or two: rubbing out two chalked 't's with his finger, he replaced them with two new ones, tidier than the first two and not intertwined. A clearly defined 't' and 't' alongside one another inside "Forgetting." No one said anything about "Screem," though I myself noticed and saw others noticing it as well. There was a curious pleasure to it, and I hesitated to interrupt what I told myself was the flow of the presentation: the pleasure of the "Screem."

Realizing in a later moment of discussion his error, this same student rushed to amend the original--to the amusement of all but the student at that moment speaking, who did not himself notice what had occurred. He appeared perplexed, this latter person, when the class burst into hilarity at the first person's manner of correcting the mistake: "Scream." This, at last, had satisfied the promise of the initial error; yes, they were "scream memories," these screen memories, and we all knew it. All but the student still earnestly pursuing his line of thought, who seemed relieved when I returned us to his statements, to a distinction of Freud's that he was clarifying: between the (I knew it!) forget-remember of paramnesia and the (Surprise!) remember-forget of the screen memory.

As I write now, however, something has felt unallowable--impermissible--about the 't's themselves, scattered about here without accompaniment. They repulse me; I feel physically disgusted by them. They may have only a troubled place inside of "forgetting," but alone they are intolerable.

Where was the transference?