In 1894, but primarily in 1896 when he published The Psychology of the Emotions (La Psychologie des sentiments), Ribot dubbed his new psychology “emotional” (affective). Symbolist poetry, music, love, sexuality, nostalgia, provided illustrations for his new investigations. Ribot emphasized the importance of a kind of memory he called “emotional memory” (mémoire affective). He supposed there could exist pure recollections, only emotional and corporeal, which would exclude mental representations. His new psychological orientation called for new methods. Far from condemning introspection, Ribot published auto-observations made by educated “subjects”, such as the poet and Nobel Prize Sully-Prudhomme, who recounted a first love memory of his. The topic of emotional memory was controversial among philosophers and psychologists, but it appealed to amateurs, literary critics and novelists. This might explain why Proust chose it as the central plot of his Recherche du temps perdu.