Abstract

Starting from the monography by Théodule Ribot (1839-1916) on Les maladies de la mémoire (1881), the idea of organic memory is analysed. Ribot brings to the emerging field of 'scientific psychology' a new view of memory, making the latter a fact of biological essence. In so doing, memory has been considered a 'faculty of the soul'. The sources of this concept and its consequences on two points, knowledge of the modern status of the mnesic trace and the relationship between heredity and memory, have been studied