mystic writing pads of memory
To Freud, typical writing media like the paper notepad and the slate offered imperfect versions of memory: either they are too finite and fixed (as in the former case) or too ephemeral (the latter). Conventional writing fell short as a “materialized porton of (the) mnemic apparatus”; “an unlimited receptive capacity and a retention of permanent traces,” he wrote, “seem to be mutually exclusive properties in the apparatus which we use as substitutes for our memory: either the receptive surface must be renewed or the note must be destroyed.”
Freud observes that while other technologies for extension of the senses—ear trumpets, spectacles, cameras—are models of the sense organs themselves, writing “seem(s) imperfect, since our mental apparatus accomplishes precisely what they cannot: it has unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent—even though not unalterable—memory-traces of them.”
While most writing media make for very imperfect virtual memory systems, Freud found a more suggestive example in the so-called “mystic writing pad,” versions of which are still sold in drug stores and toy stores for the use of children. Modern examples consist of a wax-covered card with a two-layered plastic overlay attached at the top edge. Using a stylus, one writes upon the plastic overlay, pressing it into the dark wax, which shows through as a mark on the lower translucent plastic overlay. A clear sheet of plastic atop this layer protects the lower overlay (which in Freud’s time was wax paper) from permanent inscription. By peeling these overlays from the wax one “erases” these marks, as it were magically.
In the short essay “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing Pad,’” quoted throughout this post, Freud explores the erasable wax tablet as a near-perfect illustration of his idea of the links between perception and memory. Perceptions arrive, making contact with the substrates of memory and the unconscious; their traces last awhile, until the outer surface is swept clean. Atop it all, a clear layer seeks to protect the fragile ego (I mean the plastic) from indelible damage by limiting the force of impressions intruding from the outside world. And yet a trace always remains—beneath the superficial layers, down in the dark wax, the traces of remembered inscriptions mingle indelibly.
If only Freud had lived to experience the Etch-a-sketch! Its ungainly mechanism seems more suggestive of our labored grasp of reality—and its mechanism of forgetting, akin to suppressed memory, is effectuated with the trauma of a vigorous upside-down shake. Or consider the Auquadoodle: a tablet impregnated with “hydrochromatic ink” which turns color with the application of water by brush or pen, only to fade back to a blank slate as the water evaporates—just as memory itself slips implacably as the once-indelible marks give way to dessication and senescence.
The title of Freud’s essay is punning—read wrong, it makes it sound as if he composed his work upon the very “Wunderblock” he describes. Like writing on the mystic pad, Freud’s theories have largely been peeled away from the surface discourse—and yet they remain impressed into the dark, sticky stuff of the collective unconscious, where they’ve taken up residence among an uneasy palimpsest of gods, mythology, and the constellations. The bright lines have faded, but the grooves remain.
