英：memory; 法：memoire
“记忆”这一术语在拉康的著作中是以两种截然不同的方式来使用的。
(1)在1950年代，记忆被理解为一种象征秩序中的现象，联系着能指链条 (SIGNIFYING CHAIN)。它与铭记 (remembering)和回忆 (RECOLLECTION)的概念有关，而与想象性的回想 (reminiscence)相反。
拉康明确指出，他的记忆概念不是一个生物学或者心理学的概念，“精神分析感兴趣的记忆，与心理学家们在动物实验中向我们展示其机制时所讲的东西是截然不同的”(S3,152)。对于精神分析而言，记忆是主体的象征性历史，是一连串能指相互联系而构成的链条，即一种“能指的链接”(signifying articulation)(S7,223)。只有当某种事物“被登记在能指链条中”(S7,212)的时候，它才是可记忆 (memorable)且记忆化 (memorized)的。从此种意义上来说，无意识是一种记忆 (S3,155), 因为“我们教主体将其作为他的无意识来加以认识的正是他的历史”(E, 52).
在与记忆相联系的那些现象中，最能引起分析家兴趣的便是当某件事情的记忆出错，当主体无法召回其历史中的某一部分的那些时刻。正是他可能遗忘，即一个能指可能从能指链条中被节略掉的这一事实，让精神分析的主体变得与众不同 (S7,224).
(2)在1960年代，拉康则把“记忆”这一术语保留给了生物学抑或生理学的记忆概念，即把记忆看作一种有机体的属性。因而，它便不再指代精神分析所关心的主体的象征性历史，而是指代某种完全位于精神分析之外的东西。
(memoire) The term 'memory'is used in two very different ways in Lacan's work.
- In the 1950s, memory is understood as a phenomenon of the symbolic order, relatedtothe SIGNIFYING CHAIN. It is related to the concepts of remembering andRECOLLECTION, and opposed to imaginary reminiscence.
Lacan makes it clear that his concept of memory is not a biological or psychologicalone; the memory which interests psychoanalysis is quite distinct from whatpsychologists speak of when they display its mechanism to us in an animate being in anexperiment' (S3,152). For psychoanalysis, memory is the symbolic history of thesubject, a chain of signifiers linked up together, a 'signifying articulation' (S7,223). Something is memorable and memorised only when it is 'registered in the signifyingchain' (S7,212). In this sense, the unconscious is a sort of memory (S3,155), since 'whatwe teach the subject to recognise as his unconscious is his history' (E, 52).
The phenomena associated with memory which most interest the analyst are thosemoments when something goes wrong with memory, when the subject cannot recall apart of his history. It is the fact that he can forget, that a signifier can be elided from thesignifying chain, that makes the psychoanalytic subject distinctive (S7,224). 2. In the 1960s Lacan reserves the term 'memory'for the biological or physiologicalconcept of memory as an organic property (Ec, 42). It thus no longer designates thesymbolic history of the subject which is the concemn of psychoanalysis, but somethingwhich lies outside psychoanalysis altogether.