Memory and Desire

What I want to do this evening is something which is rather different from a scientific paper; it is a discussion of the subject in which I am interested, and I hope that it will interest you. The first point I would make is this: It is a paper about an event that hasn't taken place yet. The remarks I am making are addressed specifically to analysts who are seeing a patient tomorrow, or the day after. I think it would be helpful to focus not so much on what I am saying as on tomorrow's session; the one you are going to have tomorrow with the particular patient.

Now, to turn to the title of the paper: These two terms – memory and desire – I intend to use as what I have called elsewhere terms which bind a constant conjunction.1 By a constant conjunction I mean that in certain circumstances you might notice that certain elements kept on turning up constantly conjoined – that you think, for example, that there is fur, claws, whiskers, and you bind the lot by saying “Cat” – the object of that being that once you have bound this constant conjunction you can then set about researching, as superficially or as deeply as you choose, into what you mean by this term. It is rather different from the ordinary views which are held philosophically about abstraction. I am really suggesting that you start with the unknown, that you note a constant conjunction, that you bind it by a term which is virtually meaningless, and then you proceed to investigate what you mean by that term – for the rest of your life if you are so inclined.

The first term, memory: the constant conjunction which I wish to bind by that is very much, probably, what we all understand by

that term in ordinary conversation. I think one might say that it also includes the ideas which Freud expresses when he speaks of Notation and of its relation to memory in the paper on the two principles of mental functioning1.

It is also related to what we ordinarily mean when we