Memory and psychoanalysis: a new look at infantile amnesia and transference.

OBJECTIVE: This article reexamines the psychoanalytic concepts of infantile amnesia and transference in the light of certain findings derived from neurobiological research, information-processing theory, child development research, cognitive-developmental theory, and, more speculatively, evolutionary theory concerning memory.
METHOD: Relevant developments from recent research in the neurosciences, and psychopathological phenomena in two psychiatric disorders--posttraumatic stress disorder and child abuse--in which memory changes are of critical importance, are first reviewed briefly. Four alternative hypotheses for infantile amnesia and three for transference are then derived from this review.
RESULTS: The hypotheses discussed provide plausible alternative explanations for at least part of the phenomena classically subsumed in the psychoanalytic concepts of infantile amnesia and transference.
CONCLUSIONS: Neurobiological, information-processing, developmental shifts, cognitive-developmental, and evolutionary findings and theories provide alternative hypotheses for infantile amnesia and transference that suggest a need for revisions and redefinitions for these two psychoanalytic concepts.