Examination of the hypothesis thatrepression is premature automatization: A psychoanalytic case report and discussion

This paper is a combined and edited version of two oral presentations by the authors in 2016, under the titles “A case which challenges the neuropsychoanalytic theory of repression” (at the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute) and “Examination of the repression-as-premature-automatization hypothesis, using a psychoanalytic case presentation” (at the 17th International Neuropsychoanalysis Congress, Chicago). The aim of these meetings was to provide analytic material to see if Solms’s neuropsychoanalytic theory of repression as premature automatization, and the related conceptualization of transference interpretation as reconsolidation of memory, could be used to characterize therapeutic action in an analytic case in a new way. If this proved to be possible, then this could have technical implications for the practicing analyst.