Recollection

recollection (remÈmoration)

Recollection (remÈmoration) and way Freud understood the term when he introduced it in 1900, and not in a

remembering (mÈmoration) are Symbolic processes which Lacan contrasts temporal sense (see TIME). In other words, 'there is regression on the plane of

with reminiscence (Fr. rÈminiscence), which is an Imaginary phenomenon∑ signification and not on the plane of Reality' (S2, 103). Thus regression is to be

Whereas remembering is the act whereby some event or signifier is registered understood 'not in the instinctual sense, nor in the sense of the resurgence of

for the first time in the Symbolic MEMORY, recollection is the act whereby such something anterior', but in the sense of 'the reduction of the Symbolic to the

  an event or signifier is recalled                                                                                                   Imaginary' (S4, 355).

     Reminiscence involves reliving past experience and feeling once again the                                 Insofar as regression can be said to have          a temporal sense, it does not

emotions associated with that experience. Lacan stresses that the analytic involve the subject 'going back in time', but rather a rearticulation of certain

process does not aim at reminiscence but at recollection. In this sense, it DEMANDs: 'regression shows nothing other than a return to the present of

differs from the 'cathartic method' invented by Josef Breuer, in which the signifiers used in demands for which there is a prescription' (E, 255). Regres-

emphasis was placed on a discharge of pathogenic affects via the reliving of sion to the oral stage, for example, is to be understood in terms of the

certain traumatic events. While it is true that intense memories may be evoked articulation of oral demands (the demand to be fed, evident in the demand

in psychoanalytic treatment, with accompanying emotional discharge, this is for the analyst to supply interpretations). When understood in this sense, Lacan

 not the basis of the analytic process. Reminiscence is also linked by Lacan to                             reaffirms the importance of regression in psychoanalytic treatment, arguing

the Platonic theory of knowledge- that regression to the anal stage, for example, is so important that no analysis

     Recollection in the treatment involves the patient tracing the master sig-                               which has not encountered this can be called complete (S8, 242).

nifiers of his life, or, in other words, 'the Realization by the subject of his

history in his relation to a future' (E, 88). By means of recollection, the religion (religion) Freud renounced the Jewish religion of his parents

 treatment aims at 'the complete reconstitution of the subject's history' (S1,                                (though not his Jewish identity) and considered himself an atheist. While he

12) and the 'assumption of his history by the subject' (E, 48). What matters is regarded monotheistic forms of religion as the sign of a highly developed state

  not 'reliving' the formative events of the past in any intuitive or experiential                            of civilisation, he nevertheless thought that all religions           were barriers to

way (which would be mere reminiscence, or - even worse - Acting Out); on the cultural progress, and thus argued that they should be abandoned in favour

contrary, what matters is what the analysand reconstructs of his past (Sl, 13), of Science. Freud argued that religions were an attempt to protect oneself

the key word being 'reconstruct'. 'It is less a matter of remembering than of against suffering by 'a delusional remoulding of Reality', and thus concluded

rewriting history' (Sl, 14). that they 'must be classed among the mass-Delusions' of humankind (Freud,

                                                                                                                                                     1930a: SE XXI, 81). He saw the idea of God as an expression of infantile