In his writing between the wars Sassoon was strongly influenced by Rivers's concept of autognosis, the twofold process by which an individual ‘learns to understand the real state of his mind’ by accounting for both conscious and unconscious motivations, and also the environmental ‘conditions by which this state has been produced’. The epigraph for this chapter comes from Sassoon's 1921 diary, where it is followed by comments asserting the importance of being ‘a watchful critic’ of his own behaviour: ‘I must be both action and the audience; “produced” by environment.’ His words echo Rivers's sense of the combined influence of internal and external forces that shape self-understanding, but Sassoon comes to adopt a version of autognosis that incorporates his increasingly nostalgic inclinations. Although his published poetry of the early 1920s was predominantly satirical, culminating in his 1926 collection Satirical Poems, his diaries during these years make it clear that he was intrigued by the potential of autognosis to enrich his poetry but at the same time wary of uncovering and writing about ‘the unconscious causes of unrest’.

In his youth, Sassoon was advised by his uncle, Hamo Thornycroft, about writing poetry: ‘Let your thoughts ring true; and always keep your eye on the object while you write.’ After he met Rivers, the ‘object’ on which he typically fixed his eye was himself, and under Rivers's influence he strove in his own circumscribed way ‘to pluck unconscious causes of unrest from self-deceiving nature’ through the act of poetic self-reflection and, later, semi-fictionalized memoirs.