Memory (n.) is able to capture and store things below consciousness outside the grasp of processes of forgetting. A thing is often 'remembered' which could never have been 'forgotten' because it was never conscious.
Memory (n.) as dreams reveal it loses nothing: whatever we have once mentally possessed — even the most insignificant impression — leaves an unalterable trace, forever liable to reappear.
Memory (n.) is impartial: summoned to prove one's innocence, it hands over the evidence for the prosecution as well.
Memory (n.) narrows to serve the analysis: the man with five uncles swears he never had more than one — the one the dream meant.
Memory (n.) carries no guarantee of correctness, yet we yield to the compulsion to believe it far more often than is justified.
Memory (n.) is in itself unconscious, even the most deeply stamped — and does all its work without ever becoming conscious.
Memory (n.) overcompensates: while the painter's name was lost, my picture of his frescoes was ultra-clear; I forgot a street I dreaded visiting but remembered its house number, as if in derision.
Memory (n.) fails in two ways — with forgotten names we know the substitutes are false; with screen memories we are surprised we have them at all — and in both a purpose favours one memory while working against another.
Memory (n.) is the cure for over-confidence in psychology: no theory yet explains remembering and forgetting, and forgetting is now the greater puzzle, since nothing seems truly lost.
Memory (n.) keeps different things from the same journey: years later what is firm in one traveller is gone from the other as if it never happened.
Memory (n.) that is unconscious is far more extensive than conscious: I guess at random how old an acquaintance's children are and am rarely off by a month.
Memory (n.) yields to pride: “‘I did this,’ says my Memory. ‘I cannot have done this,’ says my Pride, and remains inexorable. In the end — Memory yields.”
Memory (n.) keeps its place-marks: crossing the Bidassoa bridge, a line from Uhland rose unbidden — and on the facing page of the book was a poem called “Bidassoa Bridge”.
Memory (n.) proved indestructible: the first great sacrifice, at the very point where men sought to be farthest from its motives, re-emerged undistorted as the sacrifice of the god.
A Memory (n.) thrown out casually near an analysis's end may prove the key to the weightiest secrets the neurosis has veiled.
Memory (n.) is partial: it stands ready to block the return of whatever once hurt.
A Memory (n.) can turn ultra-clear on trivial details beside a constructed event — a compromise: resistance lets the memory surface, but onto the wrong objects.
Memory (n.) serves the analyst best unconsciously: unconnected material sinks, and rises again the moment something new links to it.
A Memory (n.) found first in analysis is often only a link in the chain, pointing back to an earlier scene that does the real work.
A Memory (n.) behind a symptom never hangs in a row like pearls on a string; such memories branch and intermarry like a family tree.