Les liens ténus et complexes entre mémoire et émotions

Abstract

For a long time, cognitive studies were not interested in the effect of emotion on memory, even more they had completely excluded this dimension from their investigations. However, there is an increasing number of studies focused on emotion through its physiological, behavioral and subjective experience since few years. The particular complex nature of emotions needs transdisciplinary approaches and psychanalysis is one of these approaches. In the present paper, we develop this combined perspective of links between emotion and memory based on both neurosciences and psychanalysis. A first part of the present article focuses on theories of emotion, their evolution with a particular interest for its influence memory, from encoding to retrieval and beyond, its effect on the elaboration of our own identity in the context of autobiographical memory. The second part focuses on some specific emotional memories, i.e. “traumatic memories” that may lead to a posttraumatic stress syndrome. The posttraumatic stress syndrome has a long and complex history, from war surgery, physiology and psychanalysis. Oppenheim, first used the term “traumatic neuroses” in 1889 and at the same time, Charcot reported similar symptoms in patients that he diagnosed as “hysteric neuroses”, and that was further developed by Freud and Janet. This concept has evolved from the two main wars of the 20th century to date. Current approaches that associate psychopathology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging have completely renewed the definition of this syndrome by integrating memory disturbances as core symptoms. Then, this article highlights the importance to conduct transdisciplinary studies to understand emotional effects on memory. We have to go further by taking into account new models especially from human and social sciences that consider relations between individual and collective memories.