Preexistence of a repressed that attracts to itself any elements of the subject's current life that resemble it.įreud compares infantile amnesia to the hysterical amnesia of adults and suggests that in both cases the process would consist 'in a simple withholding of these impressions from consciousness, viz., in their repression' (1905d, p.

The infantile impressions falling under this amnesia constitute the reference point and model for later amnesias in the adult, helped into being by the Having conceived since 1895 of the notion of hysterical amnesia, he now acknowledges an amnesia bearing upon the first six to eight years of life, contrasting with the capacity of the child's memory and its ability to register impressions. The notion of amnesia is defined by Freud in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), when he develops his conception of infantile sexuality. It 'hides the earliest beginnings' of our lives 'up to the sixth or eighth year' even though we have 'good reason to believe that there is no period at which the capacity of receiving and reproducing impressions is greater than precisely during the years of childhood' (Freud, Sigmund 1905d, p. It constitutes a reference point and a model for subsequent (especially hysterical) amnesias and repressions. Infantile amnesia results from the repression of childhood polymorphous sexuality and the oedipal complex during the latency period.