What surrealist technique did Dalí use to create the imagery?

Dalí used the paranoiac-critical method to create the painting’s imagery.

He developed this Surrealist technique in the early 1930s as a way to provoke and organize irrational associations. Dalí was interested in how the mind can perceive connections between objects that are not logically linked, then turn those perceptions into deliberate visual compositions.

The method helped him create double images, optical ambiguities, and dreamlike forms. In The Persistence of Memory, familiar objects such as pocket watches become physically impossible: they bend, sag, and appear to lose their normal mechanical function. The imagery looks spontaneous, but the painting was executed with highly controlled, realistic detail.

The term is sometimes confused with frottage, decalcomania, or automatic writing. Those are separate Surrealist practices associated with other artists or procedures. Dalí’s method specifically combines irrational or paranoid associations with critical, systematic shaping of the resulting images.