Samuel Beckett and the Presence of Memory

Lois Oppenheim approaches the work of Samuel Beckett from a psychoanalytic point of view in the article “A Preoccupation With Object Representation: The Beckett–Bion Case Revisited.” Oppenheim asks, “why would an author endowed with as rich a visual memory as Beckett’s place the preoccupation with memory, the anxiety of remembrance, at the forefront of his art? . . . To what extent, more precisely, might there be a disturbance in object representation deriving from pathology in the writer’s own inner representational world?” In order to answer this question, Oppenheim brings Wilfred Bion, Beckett’s psychiatrist, to the forefront.