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The ‘act of faith’ (F) depends on disciplined denial of memory and desire. A bad memory is not enough: what is ordinarily called forgetting is as bad as remembering. It is necessary to inhibit dwelling on memories and desires. They are two facets of the same thing: both are composed of elements based on sense impressions; both imply the absence of immediate sensual satisfaction; one supposes a store of sensual objects, the memory being the container, and the other a conjunction of sensually satisfying objects. The invariants are an inside and an outside composed of objects which are sensible. The more the psychoanalyst occupies himself with memory and desire the more his facility for harbouring them increases and the nearer he comes to undermining his capacity for F. For consider: if his mind is preoccupied with what is or is not said, or with what he does or does not hope, it must mean that he cannot allow the experience to obtrude, particularly that aspect of it which is more than the sound of the patient's voice or the sight of his postures. What sounds the patient makes, or what spectacle he presents, relates to O only in so far as O has evolved into the K domain.
Uninhibited exercise of memories and desires is indistinguishable from, inseparable from, and analogous to, making pre-conception impossible by virtue of leaving no unsaturated element (the desire or the memory precludes preconception if it occupies the ‘space’ that should remain unsaturated). If the mind is preoccupied with elements perceptible to sense it will be that much less able to perceive elements that cannot be sensed. Yet obviously anxiety cannot be said, except by analogy, to be smelled or touched or felt. Even so, anxiety comes nearer to being ‘sensed’ than many more subtle aspects of the personality which do nevertheless exist. It is important that the
analyst should avoid mental activity, memory and desire, which is as harmful to his mental fitness as some forms of physical activity are