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Faimberg, H. (2005). Après-coup. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 86(1):1-6.

(2005). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 86(1):1-6

Après-coup1
Haydée Faimberg

Introduction
Après-coup is the French translation of a concept designated by Freud as Nachträglichkeit (noun) and nachträglich
(adjective). As it is a common word in German, this may be one of the reasons why the concept of nachträglich and
Nachträglichkeit—in the sense we understand après-coup—has not acquired in the German psychoanalytical culture the
same pregnancy as in France; since translation has required reflection.
There is no article written by Freud specifically centred on this concept. This may at least partially explain its
variable fate. Thus, we give credit to Lacan for being the first in 1953 to underline the importance of this Freudian
concept referring exclusively to the Wolf Man case. Laplanche and Pontalis (1967, 1968) were the first to draw attention
to the general importance of the concept and recently Laplanche gave the following definition of après-coup: ‘The notion
of après-coup is important for the psychoanalytical conception of temporality. It establishes a complex and reciprocal
relationship between a significant event and its resignification in afterwardsness, whereby the event acquires new psychic
efficiency’ (2002, p. 121).
As we know, Nachträglichkeit was translated by Strachey as ‘deferred action’. (In some cases, deferred action is a
correct translation of Nachträglichkeit. For the different meanings of the word in Freud's work see Laplanche, 1998;
Green, 2000.) By choosing this term, Strachey was trying to convey the idea of a link between two moments. But the
word ‘deferred’ suggests, in addition, a linear conception of time. It also expresses the direction of the arrow of time, in a
sense opposite to that suggested by après-coup—which is retroactivity.2 But the choice of translation involves perhaps a
particular way of conceiving temporalisation and psychic causality.
In his letter to Fliess of 6 December 1896, Freud wrote, ‘our psychical mechanism has come into being by a process
of stratification: the material present in the form of memory traces is being subjected from time to time to a re-
arrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances—to a re-transcription’ (1896, p. 233).
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1 A longer version of this paper was presented at the Standing Conference on Psychoanalytical Intracultural and Intercultural
Dialogue (Paris 1998) focused on temporality in French culture. André Green (1998) presented his concept of temps éclaté. In the
intercultural dialogue, it became clear that the concept of après-coup characterised the French approach to temporality. Pier-Luigi
Rossi (1998) gave a remarkably clear account of that Conference. The present shorter version was written at the beginning of 2003
and the answer to Ignês Sodré was written in September 2003. I have added the definition by Laplanche of après-coup (2002); my
translation.

2To avoid this translation others have recently been proposed by Thomä (retrospective attribution), Laplanche (afterwardsness). See
Laplanche's (1998) comments on Thomä's translation (Thomä and Cheshire, 1991).
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Revisiting the concept of après-coup in Freud's work would involve revisiting all his work, in so far as this notion is
linked to the theory of seduction, trauma, sexual development in two phases etc.
In France, the need to theorise about après-coup arises first and foremost in the dialogue with other psychoanalytical
cultures, where it has acquired less relevance or none at all. This might explain why the literature devoted to this topic is
less abundant than one might have expected.

Clinical and theoretical problems

How do analysts coming from other traditions deal with the clinical and theoretical problems that we would pose in
terms of après-coup? Would it be relevant to say that in those cases there is an absent concept? Or can these problems be
approached from another perspective? Analysts who propose to do so would probably consider that there is not such an
absent concept (namely après-coup). But, even if this is the case, does the concept of après-coup open new questions in
psychoanalytical theory and clinical experience? Some of these issues and others might be answered aprèscoup by the
reader.

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Après-coup and the present time of the session

The operation of après-coup can be seen, and this is my viewpoint, as consisting of two inseparable phases, of
anticipation and retrospection. This twofold movement will always be present when I refer to après-coup. The Freudian
concept of ‘complementary series’ helps us to understand that this movement is complex and reciprocal.
From what point in time does the après-coup operation come into effect in the psychoanalytical process? I realised
that in the papers I have written since 1981 I have considered that the operation of après-coup takes place in the present
time of the analytical session and gives retroactive significance to a previous experience. Moreover, the two points in time
are linked by a relationship of meaning.
For this reason, the operation of après-coup is different from a fantasy of aprèscoup (as accurately pointed by
Laplanche and Pontalis, 1967; Neyraut, 1997). Indeed, Jung thought that retroactive fantasising (Zurückphantasieren)
shaped the past, which led him to replace Freud's central theory of infantile sexuality (and, we may add, the successive
operations of resignification après-coup).3 From a strictly Freudian point of view (letter 52), the concept of
Nachträglichkeit refers exclusively to the assignment of new meaning to memory traces.4 Reading through earlier works
of mine (Faimberg, 1981, 1985) in which I explicitly used the concepts of historicisation and après-coup, I discovered
that I had used the concept of aprèscoup in a much broader sense than Freud. This, I realised, was due to my own clinical
experience when I was led to explore the narcissistic links between generations.
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3Laplanche (1998) also questions hermeneutic, narrative-based interpretations when he considers that they are confused with an
après-coup operation. It is impossible to address such fundamental and wide- ranging issues in this brief article.

4 Modell (1990) also studied this problem (articulated with Edelman's theories) from his perspective.
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I should like the reader to join me in thinking about this extension of the concept. Thus, we can give a fresh thought
to the concept of Nachträglichkeit, from the perspective of this broader concept. I am avoiding any idea that could be
taken for a unified conception of psychoanalytical thinking and trying to convey one of the possible ways of putting to
work the concept in the clinical situation. I shall do so centred on one aspect of psychoanalytical listening and on one
aspect of construction. In order to keep my presentation as brief as possible, I shall use a clinical vignette, ‘Brigitte’, to
allow the interested reader to link it to a wider context (Faimberg, 1997).
Paradoxical as it might seem, I shall take an example from an author who never used (at least explicitly) the concept
of après-coup. Yet, in my view, Winnicott's 1974 paper is a splendid illustration of the extended concept of après-coup
(proposed in 1996, once I realised how I had been using it). Winnicott interprets that the breakdown, which the patient
fears will inexorably occur in the future, already took place at a time when there was, properly speaking, no subject to
experience it. What happens in the present (fear of breakdown) is linked to what has already occurred (a primitive agony)
by a relationship of meaning. And this relationship is established, as an operation of après-coup, by way of a
construction. I consider this process as an operation of après-coup in the larger sense I am proposing.
Let us advance one more step and link the broader concept of après-coup to the process of construction. We consider
thus one type of construction as having a status similar to that given by Freud to the second phase of the girl's fantasy in
1919:
This second phase is the most important and the most momentous of all. But we may say of it in a certain
sense that it has never had a real existence. It is never remembered,5 it has never succeeded in being
conscious. It is a construction of analysis, but it is no less a necessity on that account (p. 185, my italics).
Thinking that there may be no content of memory to recover (‘the patient repeats instead of remembering’, as Freud
wrote in 1914), we can say that a construction provides a new and unprecedented link in the après-coup whereby the past
is constituted as such and the patient acquires a history (Faimberg and Corel, 1990).
‘A piece of the early history that the patient has forgotten’, as Freud writes, may be equivalent to the ‘disaster that
already took place when there was no subject to experience it’, mentioned by Winnicott.6 The enlarged operation of
après-coup is active both in the process of construction (Freud, 1919, 1937) and in Winnicott (1974). Winnicott provides
a new link by which the experience of primitive agony is constituted as past. In this joint approach to après-coup and
construction (with the construction of the patient's past), the dilemma often posed, between interpreting in the present or
interpreting in the past, would appear in a new light.
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5 The status of unconscious memory is not studied here, as it deserves another essay.

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6We may note, however, that Winnicott says that now through repetition the analyst can acknowledge and voice this experience of
primitive helplessness. This could help reframe the question ‘Would not the idea of repetition compulsion suffice to explain this?’
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As will be seen in the clinical example I also explored the après-coup in the process of psychoanalytical listening
(function of ‘listening to listening’) (Faimberg, 1981, 1996).

Brigitte
In this session, as on many previous occasions, Brigitte speaks in a provocative and apparently unemotional way of
various sexual relationships in which she tries to become pregnant, as though she did not care who the baby's father might
be. She imagines that I shall use a theory about the importance of the father which will lead me to moralise; she refers to
situations that smell bad; the bad smell of her last partner; if it were not for the smell, she would have a child with him;
she says sarcastically that perhaps it's just a matter of finding some good deodorant; then there is silence.
I felt that if I kept silent she would hear my silence as a collusion with someone in her unconscious psychic reality
totally indifferent to her suffering and despair. Retrospectively I hoped that I had voiced this as an interpretation, but
instead I found myself voicing an interpretation with which I do not agree:
A: You talk about situations characterised by a bad smell and about your intention to get pregnant, as
though you felt there is a link between the two situations and as if you were saying that something in this
project seems to have a bad smell.
P: You have no right to say that and I very much like to insult you.
A: You said with anger ‘and I want to insult you’ … This ‘and’ [I want to insult you] makes me think that
you heard my interpretation as though it were an insult.
P: It's not a matter of what I heard, what you really said was: ‘Tell me about your project; you can only
produce foul-smelling projects’ (in a contemptuous and dismissive voice which is puzzling to me).
A: It might be that through my interpretation we are hearing someone who treats you like someone without
value … If this is so … I wonder who it might be?
[This is a rhetorical question aiming to open a new psychic space: it concerns unconscious associations
and not conscious introspective answers.]
P: [When I was an adolescent] Mother told me that I should look after my teeth as daughters inherit their
father's teeth. I protested that we both have good teeth. Before leaving the room, my mother, as though it
were of no importance, declared that my father was not my real biological father. When, later, I could ask
for explanations, she told me that I was making a fuss about nothing. She said that my father had
recognised me so that she would not have an abortion.
During the same session I could then interpret: ‘In telling me about your efforts to get pregnant perhaps
you were trying to explore what is legitimate entitlement, what is a legitimate desire, who gives
legitimacy’.
P: My father saved my life, and he's my real dad.
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By the operation of après-coup, I hear ‘the patient's unconscious identification with the discourse of a particular kind
of mother’ which allows me to resignify my interpretation. The analyst's words are heard as those of ‘this kind of mother’.
The unconscious identifications were mute and are heard (through the ‘listening to the listening’ function) après-coup,
nachträglich. The transferential misunderstanding is linked by a relationship of meaning to the intrapsychical historical
truths as reconstructed après-coup.
Brigitte assumed unconsciously that I would talk about the ‘father of my theory’ (following the narcissistic discourse
of her mother) without concern for her and her dad: this is the kernel of historical truth of her not accepting interpretations
concerning a father. Brigitte is then receptive to hearing an interpretation of the transference when some sessions later she
dismisses and trivialises an interpretation in the harsh and contemptuous tone we had already recognised (in her
unconscious identification with a particular kind of mother). I then say that she is stripping all legitimacy from what is
concerning us in the session. She then can work through her responsibility for her unconscious conflicts and their
consequences (difference between narcissistic omnipotence and psychic responsibility).
The operation of après-coup in the intersubjective function of ‘listening to the listening’ allows us to discover an
intrapsychic object in a historical context as (re)constructed. Brigitte can recognise then her position with respect to her
own intrapsychic historical truths.

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Historicisation and après-coup

It is not uncommon to regard as history material events from the past. Viderman (1970) has critically discussed this
approach. From my viewpoint, I consider that material events in the past as such are never to be considered as history in
its psychoanalytical relevance. The material fact in itself (the non-biological father) is not history as we have already said.
But, according to my chosen viewpoint, the mother's discourse is not history either, it is a story. Brigitte only recognises
the still unconscious active effects of the story when she brings it in her associations during the session. Après-coup is
operating both in the analysis of misunderstanding (in the session) and in the way that this story (thus associated) receives
a new meaning. This is the moment where the story is transformed into her history. And reciprocally this resignification
(in all its complexity) gives new meaning to her attempt to become pregnant with a fatherless child.
This attribution of significance is linked in a relationship of meaning to the unconscious identifications through
which the patient heard the interpretation. Until that moment the identifications were mute and the analyst could only
recognise them in après-coup, nachträglich.
When we consider the psychoanalytical process in itself, in the history of the transference, as we listen to the
unconscious, conflicts can be resignified, screen memories can be linked to different meaningful contexts, and indeed
even memories can be created in the psychoanalytical process itself. From the standpoint I have presented, we can say
that this is an instance of the operation of après-coup.
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References
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Faimberg H (1996). Listening to listening. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 77: 667-77. [→]
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validation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 71: 411-20. [→]
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and Intercultural Dialogue (IPA), Paris, July. [Reprinted in: Essays on otherness. London: Routledge, 1998.]
[Related→] 
Laplanche J (2002). Après-coup. In: de Mijolla A, editor. Dictionnaire international de la psychanalyse. Paris: Calmann-
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Modell A (1990). Other times, other realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
Neyraut M (1997). Considérations rétrospectives sur ‘l'après-coup’ [Retrospective considerations on après-coup]. Rev.
Franç Psychanal 61: 1247-54.
Rossi Pier-Luigi (1998). Gli approcci teorico-clinici francesi alla temporalità et la sua costruzione nel processo
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Thomä H, Cheshire N (1991). Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit and Strachey's ‘deferred action’: Trauma,
constructions and the direction of causality. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal. 3: 401-45. [→]

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Viderman S (1970). La construction de l'espace analytique [The construction of analytical space]. Paris: Denoël.
[Related→] 
Winnicott DW (1974). Fear of breakdown. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal. 1: 103-7. [→]
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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]

Faimberg, H. (2005). Après-coup1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 86(1):1-6

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