In this article, the author tries to show an alternative to the Marxist concept of the spectre, a psychoanalytic critical theory based on the category of the “genetic spectre.” He focuses on the early texts of the author of Politics of Friendship to address the concept of the spectre, as well as other, key categories in Derrida’s projects: writing, day-dreams and memory. The analysis is based on the assumption that – according to Derrida – Freud builds a “stage” for dreaming, on which the theatricality of inscriptions and a departure from the principle of metaphor in favour of the rule of metonymy is played out. However, in Derrida’s later texts (Mal d’archive), the author sees a generalized psychoanalytic criticism of sources and of the inability to experience unmediated memory.