The varieties of remembered experience: Moving memory beyond the bounded self

We review the contributions to this Special Issue that highlight the diverse ways in which memory takes place that go beyond the standard personal autobiographical memory and its reliance on internal imagery. We look at how contributors explore a highly individual memory of trauma and re-consider it as a complex, socially contested phenomenon. We next turn to a discussion of shared memory within dyads and then look at a contribution that examines bodily and gestural alignment during shared recollection among group members and/or families. From there, contributors raise considerations of collective memory in prisoner-of-war survivors and among football fans attending a World Cup event. The next contribution illustrates how collective forgetting creates social bonds in a similar manner to collective remembering. Finally, we show how the boundaries of memory are being stretched by digital technology through its influence on how we recall and share memories. Methodological innovations are also discussed

Affect revisited: transference-countertransference and the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience

This article explores the concept of transference-countertransference which, it argues, holds out the promise of an inherently relational understanding of the unconscious dimensions of affective, felt and emotional experience. This argument is contrasted to Ian Burkitt's multi-dimensional model of affect, feeling and emotion which rejects the notion that these have unconscious dimensions understood in psychoanalytic terms. The article suggests that there may be more grounds for dialogue between these approaches than meets the eye and that, as such, transference-countertransference may be a useful resource in the current putative 'affective turn'