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THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
Forgetting, Slips of the Tongue, Bungled Actions, Superstitions and Errors
(1901)
Nun ist die Luft von solchem Spuk so voll,
Dass niemand weiss, wie er ihn meiden soll.
Faust, Part II, Act V, Scene 5
Now fills the air so many a haunting shape,
That no one knows how best he may escape.
(Bayard Taylor’s translation)
1100
Intentionally left blank
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CHAPTER I
THE FORGETTING OF PROPER NAMES
In the 1898 volume of the Monatschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie I published under the title of ‘The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness’ a short paper the substance of which I shall recapitulate here and take as the starting-point for more extensive discussions. In it I applied psychological analysis to the frequent circumstance of proper names being temporarily forgotten, by exploring a highly suggestive example drawn from my self-observation; and I reached the conclusion that this particular instance (admittedly commonplace and without much practical significance), in which a psychical function - the memory - refuses to operate, admits of an explanation much more far-reaching than that which the phenomenon is ordinarily made to yield.
If a psychologist were asked to explain why it is that on so many occasions a proper name which we think we know perfectly well fails to enter our heads, he would, unless I am much mistaken, be satisfied with answering that proper names succumb more easily to the process of being forgotten than other kinds of memory-content. He would bring forward the plausible reasons why proper names should thus be singled out for special treatment, but would not suspect that any other conditions played their part in such occurrences.
My close preoccupation with the phenomenon of names being temporarily forgotten arose out of my observation of certain characteristics which could be recognized sufficiently clearly in individual cases, though not, it is true, in all of them. These are cases in which a name is in fact not only forgotten, but wrongly remembered. In the course of our efforts to recover the name that has dropped out, other ones - substitute names - enter our consciousness; we recognize them at once, indeed, as incorrect, but they keep on returning and force themselves on us with great persistence. The process that should lead to the reproduction of the missing name has been so to speak displaced and has therefore led to an incorrect substitute. My hypothesis is that this displacement is not left to arbitrary psychical choice but follows paths which can be predicted and which conform to laws. In other words, I suspect that the name or names which are substituted are connected in a discoverable way with the missing name: and I hope, if I am successful in demonstrating this connection, to proceed to throw light on the circumstances in which names are forgotten.
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The name that I tried without success to recall in the example I chose for analysis in 1898 was that of the artist who painted the magnificent frescoes of the ‘Four Last Things’ in Orvieto cathedral. Instead of the name I was looking for - Signorelli - the names of two other painters - Botticelli and Boltraffio - thrust themselves on me, though they were immediately and decisively rejected by my judgement as incorrect. When I learnt the correct name from someone else, I recognized it at once and without hesitation. The investigation into the influences and the associative paths by which the reproducing of the name had been displaced in this way from Signorelli to Botticelli and Boltraffio led to the following results
(a) The reason why the name Signorelli was lost is not to be found in anything special about the name itself or in any psychological characteristic of the context into which it was introduced. The name I had forgotten was just as familiar to me as one of the substitute names - Botticelli - and much more familiar than the other substitute name - Boltraffio - about whose owner I could scarcely produce any information other than that he belonged to the Milanese school. Moreover the context in which the name was forgotten seemed to me harmless and did not enlighten me further. I was driving in the company of a stranger from Ragusa in Dalmatia to a place in Herzegovina: our conversation turned to the subject of travel in Italy, and I asked my companion whether he had ever been to Orvieto and looked at the famous frescoes there, painted by . . .
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(b) Light was only thrown on the forgetting of the name when I recalled the topic we had been discussing directly before, and it was revealed as a case in which a topic that has just been raised is disturbed by the preceding topic. Shortly before I put the question to my travelling companion whether he had ever been to Orvieto, we had been talking about the customs of the Turks living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had told him what I had heard from a colleague practising among those people - that they are accustomed to show great confidence in their doctor and great resignation to fate. If one has to inform them that nothing can be done for a sick person, their reply is: ‘Herr: what is there to be said? If he could be saved, I know you would have saved him.’ In these sentences we for the first time meet with the words and names Bosnia, Herzegovina and Herr, which can be inserted into an associative series between Signorelli and Botticelli-Boltraffio.
(c) I assume that the series of thoughts about the customs of the Turks in Bosnia, etc., acquired the capacity to disturb the next succeeding thought from the fact that I had withdrawn my attention from that series before it was brought to an end. I recall in fact wanting to tell a second anecdote which lay close to the first in my memory. These Turks place a higher value on sexual enjoyment than on anything else, and in the event of sexual disorders they are plunged in a despair which contrasts strangely with their resignation towards the threat of death. One of my colleague’s patients once said to him: ‘Herr, you must know that if that comes to an end then life is of no value.’ I suppressed my account of this characteristic trait, since I did not want to allude to the topic in a conversation with a stranger. But I did more: I also diverted my attention from thoughts which might have arisen in my mind from the topic of ‘death and sexuality.’ On this occasion I was still under the influence of a piece of news which had reached me a few weeks before while making a brief stay at Trafoi. A patient over whom I had taken a great deal of trouble had put an end to his life on account of an incurable sexual disorder. I know for certain that this melancholy event and everything related to it was not recalled to my conscious memory during my journey to Herzegovina. But the similarity between ‘Trafoi’ and ‘Boltraffio’ forces me to assume that this reminiscence, in spite of my attention being deliberately diverted from it, was brought into operation in me at the time.
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(d) It is no longer possible for me to take the forgetting of the name Signorelli as a chance event. I am forced to recognize the influence of a motive in the process. It was a motive which caused me to interrupt myself while recounting what was in my mind (concerning the customs of the Turks, etc.), and it was a motive which further influenced me so that I debarred the thoughts connected with them, the thoughts which had led to the news at Trafoi, from becoming conscious in my mind. I wanted, therefore, to forget something; I had repressed something. What I wanted to forget was not, it is true, the name of the artist at Orvieto but something else - something, however, which contrived to place itself in an associative connection with his name, so that my act of will missed its target and I forgot the one thing against my will, while I wanted to forget the other thing intentionally. The disinclination to remember was aimed against one content; the inability to remember emerged in another. It would obviously be a simpler case if disinclination and inability to remember related to the same content . Moreover the substitute names no longer strike me as so entirely unjustified as they did before the matter was elucidated: by a sort of compromise they remind me just as much of what I wanted to forget as of what I wanted to remember; and they show me that my intention to forget something was neither a complete success nor a complete failure.
(e) The way in which the missing name and the repressed topic (the topic of death and sexuality, etc., in which the names of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Trafoi appeared) became linked is very striking. The schematic diagram which I have inserted at this point, and which is repeated from the 1898 paper, aims at giving a clear picture of this.
Fig. 1.
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The name Signorelli has undergone a division into two pieces. One of the pairs of syllables (elli) recurs without alteration in one of the substitute names: while the other, by means of the translation of Signor into Herr, has acquired a numerous and miscellaneous set of relations to the names contained in the repressed topic, but for this reason is not available for reproduction. The substitute for it has been arrived at in a way that suggests that a displacement along the connected names of ‘Herzegovina and Bosnia’ had taken place, without consideration for the sense or for the acoustic demarcation of the syllables. Thus the names have been treated in this process like the pictograms in a sentence which has had to be converted into a picture-puzzle (or rebus). Of the whole course of events that have in ways like these produced the substitute names instead of the name Signorelli no information has been given to consciousness. At first sight it seems impossible to discover any relation between the topic in which the name Signorelli occurred and the repressed topic which preceded it in time, apart from this recurrence of the same syllables (or rather sequence of letters).
Perhaps it is not superfluous to remark that the conditions which psychologists assume to be necessary for reproducing and for forgetting, and which they look for in certain relations and dispositions, are not inconsistent with the above explanation. All we have done is, in certain cases, to add a motive to the factors that have been recognized all along as being able to bring about the forgetting of a name; and, in addition, we have elucidated the mechanism of false recollection (paramnesia). These dispositions are indispensable to our case as well, in order to make it possible for the repressed element to get hold of the missing name by association and draw it with itself into repression. In the case of another name with more favourable conditions for reproduction this perhaps would not happen. It is probable indeed that a suppressed element always strives to assert itself elsewhere, but is successful in this only when suitable conditions meet it half way. At other times the suppression succeeds without any functional disturbance, or, as we can justly say, without any symptom.
The conditions necessary for forgetting a name, when forgetting it is accompanied by paramnesia, may then be summarized as follows: (1) a certain disposition for forgetting the name, (2) a process of suppression carried out shortly before, (3) the possibility of establishing an external association between the name and the element previously suppressed. The difficulty of fulfilling the last condition need probably not be rated very high, since, considering the low standards expected of an association of this kind, one could be established in the great majority of cases. There is, however, the profounder question whether an external association like this can really be a sufficient condition for the repressed element’s disturbing the reproduction of the lost name - whether some more intimate connection between the two topics is required. On a superficial consideration one would be inclined to reject the latter demand, and accept as sufficient a temporal contiguity between the two, even if the contents are completely different. On close enquiry, however, one finds more and more frequently that the two elements which are joined by an external association (the repressed element and the new one) possess in addition some connection of content; and such a connection is in fact demonstrable in the Signorelli example.
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The value of the insight that we have gained in analysing the Signorelli example naturally depends on whether we want to pronounce that instance as typical or as an isolated occurrence. I must affirm, that the forgetting of names, accompanied by paramnesia, takes place with uncommon frequency in the way in which we have explained it in the Signorelli case. In almost every instance in which I could observe this phenomenon in myself, I have also been able to explain it in the way described above, i.e. as motivated by repression. I must also draw attention to another consideration which supports the typical nature of our analysis. I think there is no justification for making a theoretical separation between those cases in which the forgetting of names is accompanied by paramnesia and the sort where incorrect substitute names have not presented themselves. These substitute names occur spontaneously in a number of cases; in others, where they have not emerged spontaneously, it is possible to force them to emerge by an effort of attention; and they then show the same relation to the repressed element and the missing name as they would if they had appeared spontaneously. Two factors seem to be decisive in bringing the substitute names to consciousness: first, the effort of attention, and secondly, an inner condition that attaches to the psychical material. We might look for the latter in the greater or lesser facility with which the necessary external association between the two elements establishes itself. A good portion of the cases of name-forgetting without paramnesia can thus be added to the cases in which substitute names are formed - to which the mechanism of the Signorelli example applies. I shall certainly not venture to affirm that all cases of name-forgetting are to be classed in the same group. There is no question that instances of it exist which are much simpler. We shall, I think, have stated the facts of the case with sufficient caution if we affirm: By the side of simple cases where proper names are forgotten there is a type which is motivated by repression.
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CHAPTER II
THE FORGETTING OF FOREIGN WORDS
The current vocabulary of our own language, when it is confined to the range of normal usage, seems to be protected against being forgotten. With the vocabulary of a foreign language it is notoriously otherwise. The disposition to forget it extends to all parts of speech, and an early stage in functional disturbance is revealed by the fluctuations in the control we have over our stock of foreign words - according to the general condition of our health and to the degree of our tiredness. In a number of cases this kind of forgetting exhibits the same mechanism disclosed to us by the Signorelli example. In proof of this I shall give only a single analysis, one which is distinguished, however, by some useful characteristics: it concerns the forgetting of a non-substantival word in a Latin quotation. Perhaps I may be allowed to present a full and clear account of this small incident.
Last summer - it was once again on a holiday trip - I renewed my acquaintance with a certain young man of academic background. I soon found that he was familiar with some of my psychological publications. We had fallen into conversation - how I have now forgotten - about the social status of the race to which we both belonged; and ambitious feelings prompted him to give vent to a regret that his generation was doomed (as he expressed it) to atrophy, and could not develop its talents or satisfy its needs. He ended a speech of impassioned fervour with the well-known line of Virgil’s in which the unhappy Dido commits to posterity her vengeance on Aeneas: ‘Exoriare . . .’ Or rather, he wanted to end it in this way, for he could not get hold of the quotation and tried to conceal an obvious gap in what he remembered by changing the order of the words: ‘Exoriar(e) ex nostris ossibus ultor.’ At last he said irritably: ‘Please don’t look so scornful: you seem as if you were gloating over my embarrassment. Why not help me? There’s something missing in the line; how does the whole thing really go?’
‘I’II help you with pleasure,’ I replied, and gave the quotation in its correct form: ‘Exoriar(e) ALIQUIS nostris ex ossibus ultor.’
‘How stupid to forget a word like that! By the way, you claim that one never forgets a thing without some reason. I should be very curious to learn how I came to forget the indefinite pronoun "aliquis" in this case.’
I took up this challenge most readily, for I was hoping for a contribution to my collection. So I said: ‘That should not take us long. I must only ask you to tell me, candidly and uncritically, whatever comes into your mind if you direct your attention to the forgotten word without any definite aim.’¹
‘Good. There springs to mind, then, the ridiculous notion of dividing up the word like this: a and liquis.’
‘What does that mean?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘And what occurs to you next?’ ‘What comes next is Reliquien [relics], liquefying, fluidity, fluid. Have you discovered anything so far?’
‘No. Not by any means yet. But go on.’
‘I am thinking,’ he went on with a scornful laugh, ‘of Simon of Trent, whose relics I saw two years ago in a church at Trent. I am thinking of the accusation of ritual blood-sacrifice which is being brought against the Jews again just now, and of Kleinpaul’s book in which he regards all these supposed victims as incarnations, one might say new editions, of the Saviour.’
¹ This is the general method of introducing concealed ideational elements to consciousness. Cf. my Interpretation of Dreams, p. 604.
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‘The notion is not entirely unrelated to the subject we were discussing before the Latin word slipped your memory.’
‘True. My next thoughts are about an article that I read lately in an Italian newspaper. Its title, I think, was "What St. Augustine says about Women." What do you make of that?’
‘I am waiting.’
‘And now comes something that is quite clearly unconnected with our subject.’
‘Please refrain from any criticism and---'
‘Yes, I understand. I am thinking of a fine old gentleman I met on my travels last week. He was a real original, with all the appearance of a huge bird of prey. His name was Benedict, if it’s of interest to you.’
‘Anyhow, here are a row of saints and Fathers of the Church: St. Simon, St. Augustine, St. Benedict. There was, I think, a Church Father called Origen. Moreover, three of these names are also first names, like Paul in Kleinpaul.’
‘Now it’s St. Januarius and the miracle of his blood that comes into mind - my thoughts seem to me to be running on mechanically.’
‘Just a moment: St. Januarius and St. Augustine both have to do with the calendar. But won’t you remind me about the miracle of his blood?’
‘Surely you must have heard of that? They keep the blood of St. Januarius in a phial inside a church at Naples, and on a particular holy day it miraculously liquefies. The people attach great importance to this miracle and get very excited if it’s delayed, as happened once at a time when the French were occupying the town. So the general in command - or have I got it wrong? was it Garibaldi? - took the reverend gentleman aside and gave him to understand, with an unmistakable gesture towards the soldiers posted outside, that he hoped the miracle would take place very soon. And in fact it did take place . . .
‘Well, go on. Why do you pause?’
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‘Well, something has come into my mind . . . but it’s too intimate to pass on. . . . Besides, I don’t see any connection, or any necessity for saying it.’
‘You can leave the connection to me. Of course I can’t force you to talk about something that you find distasteful; but then you mustn’t insist on learning from me how you came to forget your aliquis.’
‘Really? Is that what you think? Well then, I’ve suddenly, thought of a lady from whom I might easily hear a piece of news that would be very awkward for both of us.’
‘That her periods have stopped?’
‘How could you guess that?’
‘That’s not difficult any longer; you’ve prepared the way sufficiently. Think of the calendar saints, the blood that starts to flow on a particular day, the disturbance when the event fails to take place, the open threats that the miracle must be vouchsafed, or else . . . In fact you’ve made use of the miracle of St. Januarius to manufacture a brilliant allusion to women’s periods.’
‘Without being aware of it. And you really mean to say that it was this anxious expectation that made me unable to produce an unimportant word like aliquis?’
‘It seems to me undeniable. You need only recall the division you made into a-liquis, and your associations: relics, liquefying, fluid. St. Simon was sacrificed as a child - shall I go on and show how he comes in? You were led on to him by the subject of relics.
‘No, I’d much rather you didn’t. I hope you don’t take these thoughts of mine too seriously, if indeed I really had them. In return I will confess to you that the lady is Italian and that I went to Naples with her. But mayn’t all this just be a matter of chance?’
‘I must leave it to your own judgement to decide whether you can explain all these connections by the assumption that they are matters of chance. I can however tell you that every case like this that you care to analyse will lead you to "matters of chance" that are just as striking.’¹
¹ This short analysis has received much attention in the literature of the subject and has provoked lively discussion. Basing himself directly on it, Bleuler (1919) has attempted to determine mathematically the credibility of psycho-analytic interpretations, and has come to the conclusion that it has a higher probability value than thousands of medical ‘truths’ which have gone unchallenged, and that it owes its exceptional position only to the fact that we are not yet accustomed to take psychological probabilities into consideration in science.
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I have several reasons for valuing this brief analysis; and my thanks are due to my former travelling-companion who presented me with it. In the first place, this is because I was in this instance allowed to draw on a source that is ordinarily denied to me. For the examples collected here of disturbances of a psychical function in daily life I have to fall back mainly on self-observation. I am anxious to steer clear of the much richer material provided by my neurotic patients, since it might otherwise be objected that the phenomena in question are merely consequences and manifestations of neurosis. My purpose is therefore particularly well served when a person other than myself, not suffering from nervous illness, offers himself as the object of such an investigation. This analysis is significant in a further respect: it throws light on the case of a word being forgotten without a substitute for it appearing in the memory. It thus confirms my earlier assertion that the appearance or non-appearance in the memory of incorrect substitutes cannot be made the basis for any radical distinction.¹
¹ Closer scrutiny somewhat diminishes the contrast between the analyses of Signorelli and of aliquis in regard to substitutive memories. In the latter example too it appears that the forgetting was accompanied by a substitutive formation. When subsequently I asked my companion whether in the course of his efforts to recall the missing word no substitute whatever came into his mind, he reported that at first he had felt a temptation to introduce an ab into the line (perhaps the detached portion of a-liquis) - nostris ab ossibus; and he went on to say that the exoriare had thrust itself on him with peculiar clarity and obstinacy, ‘evidently,’ he added with his characteristic scepticism, ‘because it was the first word in the line.’ When I asked him to attend all the same to the associations starting from exoriare, he produced exorcism. I can therefore very well believe that the intensification of exoriare when it was reproduced actually had the value of a substitutive formation of this sort. This substitute would have been arrived at from the names of the saints viâ the association ‘exorcism.’ These however are refinements to which one need attach no importance. (On the other hand Wilson, 1922, stresses the fact that the intensification of exoriare is of great significance to the understanding of the case, since exorcism would be the best symbolic substitute for repressed thoughts about getting rid of the unwanted child by abortion. I gratefully accept this correction, which does not weaken the validity, of the analysis.) It seems possible, however, that the appearance of any kind of substitute memory is a constant sign - even though perhaps only a characteristic and revealing sign - of tendentious forgetfulness which is motivated by repression. It would seem that substitutive formation occurs even in cases not marked by the appearance of incorrect names as substitutes, and that in these it lies in the intensification of an element that is closely related to the forgotten name. For example, in the Signorelli case, so long as the painter’s name remained inaccessible, the visual memory that I had of the series of frescoes and of the self-portrait which is introduced into the corner of one of the pictures was ultra-clear - at any rate much more intense than visual memory-traces normally appear to me. In another case, also described in my 1898 paper, which concerned a visit which I was very reluctant to pay to an address in a strange town, I had forgotten the name of the street beyond all hope of recovery, but my memory of the house number, as if in derision, was ultra-clear, whereas normally I have the greatest difficulty in remembering numbers.
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The chief importance however of the aliquis example lies in another of the ways in which it differs from the Signorelli specimen. In the latter, the reproducing of a name was disturbed by the after-effect of a train of thought begun just before and then broken off, whose content, however, had no clear connection with the new topic containing the name of Signorelli. Contiguity in time furnished the only relation between the repressed topic and the topic of the forgotten name; but this was enough to enable the two topics to find a connection in an external association.¹ Nothing on the other hand can be seen in the aliquis example of an independent repressed topic of this sort, which had engaged conscious thinking directly before and then left its echoes in a disturbance. The disturbance in reproduction occurred in this instance from the very nature of the topic hit upon in the quotation, since opposition unconsciously arose to the wishful idea expressed in it. The circumstances must be construed as follows. The speaker had been deploring the fact that the present generation of his people was deprived of its full rights; a new generation, he prophesied like Dido, would inflict vengeance on the oppressors. He had in this way expressed his wish for descendants. At this moment a contrary thought intruded. ‘Have you really so keen a wish for descendants? That is not so. How embarrassed you would be if you were to get news just now that you were to expect descendants from the quarter you know of. No: no descendants - however much we need them for vengeance.’ This contradiction then asserts itself by exactly the same means as in the Signorelli example - by setting up an external association between one of its ideational elements and an element in the wish that has been repudiated; this time, indeed, it does so in a most arbitrary fashion by making use of a roundabout associative path which has every appearance of artificiality. A second essential in which the present case agrees with the Signorelli instance is that the contradiction has its roots in repressed sources and derives from thoughts that would lead to a diversion of attention.
So much for the dissimilarity and the inner affinity between these two typical specimens of the forgetting of words. We have got to know a second mechanism of forgetting - the disturbance of a thought by an internal contradiction which arises from the repressed. Of the two processes this is, I think, the easier to understand; and we shall repeatedly come across it again in the course of this discussion.
¹ I am not entirely convinced of the absence of any internal connection between the two groups of thoughts in the Signorelli case. After all, if the repressed thoughts on the topic of death and sexual life are carefully followed up, one will be brought face to face with an idea that is by no means remote from the topic of the frescoes at Orvieto.
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CHAPTER III
THE FORGETTING OF NAMES AND SETS OF WORDS
Observations such as those mentioned above, of what happens when a portion of a set of words in a foreign tongue is forgotten, may make us curious to know whether the forgetting of sets of words in our own language demands an essentially different explanation. We are not usually surprised, it is true, if a formula learnt by heart, or a poem, can be reproduced only inaccurately some time later, with alterations and omissions. Since, however, this forgetting does not have a uniform effect on what has been learnt as a whole but seems on the contrary to break off isolated portions of it, it may be worth the trouble to submit to analytic investigation a few instances of such faulty reproduction.
A younger colleague of mine told me in conversation that he thought it likely that the forgetting of poetry in one’s own language could very well have motives similar to the forgetting of single elements from a set of words in a foreign tongue. At the same time he offered to be the subject of an experiment. I asked him on what poem he would like to make the test, and he chose ‘Die Braut von Korinth,’ a poem of which he was very fond and of which he thought he knew at least some stanzas by heart. At the beginning of his reproduction he was overcome by a rather remarkable uncertainty. ‘Does it run "Travelling from Corinth to Athens",’ he asked, ‘or "Travelling to Corinth from Athens"?’ I also had a moment’s hesitation, until I laughingly observed that the title of the poem ‘The Bride of Corinth’ left no doubt which way the young man was travelling. The reproduction of the first stanza then proceeded smoothly or at any rate without any striking falsifications. My colleague seemed to search for a while for the first line of the second stanza; he soon continued, and recited as follows:
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Aber wird er auch willkommen scheinen,
Jetzt jeder Tag was Neues bringt?
Denn er ist noch Heide mit den Seinen
Und sie sind Christen und - getauft.¹
Before he reached this point I had already pricked up my ears in surprise; and after the end of the last line we were both in agreement that some distortion had occurred here. But as we did not succeed in correcting it, we hurried to the bookcase to get hold of Goethe’s poems, and found to our surprise that the second line of the stanza had a completely different wording, which had, as it were, been expelled from my colleague’s memory and replaced by something that did not seem to belong. The correct version runs:
Aber wird er auch willkommen scheinen,
Wenn er teuer nicht die Gunst erkauft?²
‘Getauft’ [‘baptized,’ two lines below] rhymes with ‘erkauft’, and it struck me as singular that the connected group of ‘heathen’, ‘Christian’ and ‘baptized’ should have given him so little help in restoring the text.
‘Can you explain,’ I asked my colleague, ‘how you have so completely expunged a line in a poem that you claim you know so well, and have you any notion from what context you can have taken the substitute?’
¹ [Literally: ‘But will he in fact seem welcome,
Now, when every day brings something new?
For he is still a heathen with his kindred
And they are Christians and baptized.’]
² [‘But will he in fact seem welcome if he does not buy the favour dearly?’]
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He was in a position to provide an explanation, though obviously with some reluctance. ‘The line "Jetzt, wo jeder Tag was Neues bringt" seems familiar to me; I must have used the words a short time ago in referring to my practice - as you know, I am highly satisfied with its progress at the present time. But how does the sentence fit in here? I could think of a connection. The line "Wenn er teuer nicht die Gunst erkauft’ was obviously one which I found disagreeable. It is connected with a proposal of marriage which was turned down on the first occasion, and which, in view of the great improvement in my material position, I am now thinking of repeating. I cannot tell you any more, but if I am accepted now, it certainly cannot be enjoyable for me to reflect that some sort of calculation tipped the scale both then and now.’
This struck me as intelligible, even without my needing to know further particulars. But I continued with my questions: ‘How in any case have you and your private affairs become involved in the text of the "Bride of Corinth"? Is yours perhaps a case that involves differences in religious belief like those that play an important part in the poem?’
(Keimt ein Glaube neu,
Wird oft Lieb’ und Treu
Wie ein böses Unkraut ausgerauft.)¹
My guess was wrong; but it was curious to see how a single well-aimed question gave him a sudden perspicacity, so that he was able to bring me as an answer something of which he had certainly been unaware up to that time. He gave me a pained, even an indignant look, muttered a later passage from the poem:
Sieh sie an genau!
Morgen ist sie grau.²
and added shortly: ‘She is rather older than I.’ To avoid distressing him further I broke off the enquiry. The explanation struck me as sufficient. But it was certainly surprising that the attempt to trace a harmless failure of memory back to its cause should have had to come up against matters in the subject’s private life that were so remote and intimate, and that were cathected with such distressing affect.
¹ [‘When a faith is newly sprung up, love and troth are often torn out like an evil weed.’]
² [‘Look on her carefully. Tomorrow she will be grey.’] My colleague has incidentally made changes in this beautiful passage from the poem, somewhat altering both the wording and what the words refer to. The ghostly maiden says to her bridegroom:
‘Meine Kette hab’ ich dir gegeben;
Deine Locke nehm’ ich mit mir fort.
Sieh sie an genau!
Morgen bist du grau,
Und nur braun erscheinst du wieder dort.’
[‘My necklace I have given thee; your lock of hair I take away with me. Look on it carefully. Tomorrow you will be grey, and you will appear brown again only there.’ (The context shows that ‘sie’ (‘it’ or ‘her’) in the third line refers to the lock of hair. In a different context the line could mean: ‘Look on her carefully’.)]
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Here is another instance, given by Jung (1907, 64), of the forgetting of a set of words in a well-known poem. I shall quote the author’s own words.
‘A man was trying to recite the well-known poem that begins "Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam . . ."¹ In the line beginning "Ihn schläfert"² he became hopelessly stuck; he had completely forgotten the words "mit weisser Decke ". Forgetting something in so familiar a verse struck me as surprising, and I therefore made him reproduce what occurred to him in connection with "mit weisser Decke". He had the following train of associations: "A white sheet makes one think of a shroud - a linen sheet to cover a dead body" - (a pause) - "now a close friend occurs to me - his brother died recently quite suddenly - he is supposed to have died of a heart attack - he was also very stout - my friend is also stout, and I have thought before now that it might also happen to him - probably he takes too little exercise - when I heard of his brother’s death I suddenly became anxious that it might also happen to me; for in our family we have in any case a tendency to fatness, and my grandfather, too, died of a heart attack; I have noticed that I too am over-stout and I have therefore begun a course of slimming recently."
‘Thus,’ comments Jung, ‘the man had, unconsciously, identified himself at once with the fir-tree wrapped in the white shroud.’
¹ [‘A fir-tree stands alone.’]
² [The relevant lines are:
Ihn schläfert; mit weisser Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
He slumbers; with a white sheet
Ice and snow cover him.]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
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The following example of the forgetting of a set of words which I owe to my friend Sándor Ferenczi of Budapest, differs from the preceding ones in that it concerns a phrase coined by the subject himself and not a sentence taken from a writer. It may also present us with the somewhat unusual case in which the forgetting ranges itself on the side of our good sense, when the latter threatens to succumb to a momentary desire. The parapraxis thus comes to serve a useful function. When we have sobered down once more we appreciate the rightness of this internal current, which had previously only been able to express itself in a failure to function - a forgetting, a psychical impotence.
‘At a social gathering someone quoted "Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner". I made the comment that the first part of the sentence was enough; "pardoning" was a piece of arrogance: it should be left to God and the priests. One of those present thought this observation very good, and this emboldened me to say - probably with the intention of securing the good opinion of the benevolent critic - that I had recently thought of something better. But when I tried to repeat it I found it had escaped me. I immediately withdrew from the company and wrote down the screen-associations. There first occurred to me the names of the friend and of the street in Budapest that witnessed the birth of the idea I was looking for; next came the name of another friend, Max, whom we usually call Maxi. This led me to the word "maxim" and to the recollection that what we were after was, like my original remark, a variation on a well-known maxim. Strangely enough my next thought was not a maxim but the following sentence: "God created man in His own image" and the same idea in reverse: "Man created God in his." Thereupon the memory of what I was looking for immediately appeared. On that occasion my friend had said to me in Andrássy Street: "Nothing human is foreign to me", whereupon I had answered, in allusion to the discoveries of psycho-analysis: "You ought to have gone further and have admitted that nothing animal is foreign to you."
‘But after I had at last remembered what I wanted, I was less than ever able to repeat it in the company I happened to be in. The young wife of the friend whom I had reminded of the animal nature of the unconscious was among those present, and I had to recognize that she was by no means prepared to receive such disagreeable truth. My forgetting spared me a number of unpleasant questions from her and a pointless discussion. This and nothing else must have been the motive for my "temporary amnesia".
‘It is interesting that a screen-association was provided by a sentence in which the Deity is debased to the status of a human invention, while in the missing sentence there is an allusion to the animal in man. Capitis diminutio is therefore the element common to both. The whole subject is clearly only the continuation of the train of thought about understanding and forgiving which the conversation had instigated.
‘The fact that what I was looking for in this case was so quick in presenting itself may perhaps be due also to my immediate withdrawal from the company where it was censored to an empty room.’
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I have since undertaken numerous other analyses where forgetting or faulty reproduction of a set of words took place, and the consistent result of these investigations has inclined me to assume that the mechanism of forgetting demonstrated above in the instances of ‘aliquis’ and ‘The Bride of Corinth’ has an almost universal validity. It is generally a little awkward to give an account of such analyses since, like those just mentioned, they constantly lead to matters which are of an intimate sort and are distressing to the person analysed. I shall therefore not give any further examples. What is common to all these cases, irrespective of the material, is the fact that the forgotten or distorted matter is brought by some associative path into connection with an unconscious thought-content - a thought-content which is the source of the effect manifested in the form of forgetting.
I now return to the forgetting of names. So far we have not exhaustively considered either the case-material or the motives behind it. As this is exactly the kind of parapraxis that I can from time to time observe abundantly in myself, I am at no loss for examples. The mild attacks of migraine from which I still suffer usually announce themselves hours in advance by my forgetting names, and at the height of these attacks, during which I am not forced to abandon my work, it frequently happens that all proper names go out of my head. Now it is precisely cases like mine which could furnish the grounds for an objection on principle to our analytic efforts. Should it not necessarily be concluded from such observations that the cause of forgetfulness, and in particular of the forgetting of names, lies in circulatory and general functional disturbances of the cerebrum, and should we not therefore spare ourselves the search for psychological explanations of these phenomena? Not at all, in my view; that would be to confuse the mechanism of a process, which is of the same kind in all cases, with the factors favouring the process, which are variable and not necessarily essential. Instead of a discussion, however, I shall bring forward an analogy to deal with the objection.
Let us suppose that I have been imprudent enough to go for a walk at night in a deserted quarter of the city, and have been attacked and robbed of my watch and purse. I report the matter at the nearest police station in the following words: ‘I was in such and such a street, and there loneliness and darkness took away my watch and purse.’ Although I should not have said anything in this statement that was not true, the wording of my report would put me in danger of being thought not quite right in the head. The state of affairs could only be described correctly by saying that favoured by the loneliness of the place and under the shield of darkness unknown malefactors robbed me of my valuables. Now the state of affairs in the forgetting of names need not be any different; favoured by tiredness, circulatory disturbances and intoxication, an unknown psychical force robs me of my access to the proper names belonging to my memory - a force which can in other cases bring about the same failure of memory at a time of perfect health and unimpaired efficiency.
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If I analyse the cases of the forgetting of names that I observe in myself, I almost always find that the name which is withheld from me is related to a topic of close personal importance to me, and one capable of evoking in me strong and often distressing affects. In accordance with the convenient and commendable practice of the Zurich school (Bleuler, Jung, Riklin) I can also formulate this fact as follows: The lost name has touched on a ‘personal complex’ in me. The relation of the name to myself is one that I should not have expected and is usually arrived at through superficial associations (such as verbal ambiguity or similarity in sound); it can be characterized quite generally as an oblique relation. Its nature will best be illustrated by some simple examples.
(1) A patient asked me to recommend him a health resort on the Riviera. I knew of such a resort quite close to Genoa, and I also remembered the name of a German colleague of mine who practised there; but the name of the resort itself escaped me, well as I thought I knew that too. There was nothing left for me but to ask the patient to wait while I hurriedly consulted the ladies of my family. ‘What on earth is the name of the place near Genoa where Dr. N. has his little sanatorium, the one in which so and so was under treatment for so long?’ ‘Of course you of all people would be the one to forget the name. The place is called Nervi.’ I must admit I have plenty to do with nerves.
(2) Another patient was talking about a neighbouring summer resort, and declared that besides its two well-known inns there was a third one there with which a certain memory of his was connected; he would tell me the name in a moment. I disputed the existence of this third inn, and appealed to the fact that I had spent seven summers at the place and must therefore know it better than he did. But under the provocation of my contradiction he had already got hold of the name. The inn was called the ‘Hochwartner’. At this point I was obliged to give in and I even had to confess that I had lived for seven whole summers close by the inn whose existence I had denied. Why in this instance should I have forgotten both the name and the thing? I believe it was because the name was only too similar in sound to that of a colleague, a specialist in Vienna and, once again, had touched upon the ‘professional complex’ in me.
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(3) On another occasion, as I was on the point of booking a ticket at Reichenhall railway station, the name of the next main station would not come into my mind. It was perfectly familiar to me, and I had passed through it very frequently. I had actually to look it up in the time-table. It was ‘Rosenheim’. But I then knew at once owing to what association I had lost it. An hour before, I had paid a visit to my sister at her home close to Reichenhall; as my sister’s name is Rosa this was also a ‘Rosenheim’. The ‘family complex’ had robbed me of this name.
(4) I have a whole quantity of examples to illustrate further the positively predatory activities of the ‘family complex’.
There came to my consulting-room one day a young man who was the younger brother of a woman patient. I had seen him countless times and used to refer to him by his first name. When I wanted to speak about his visit I found I had forgotten his first name (which was, I knew, not at all an unusual one ), and nothing could help me to recover it. I thereupon went out into the street to read the names over the shops, and recognized his name the first time I ran across it. The analysis of the episode showed me that I had drawn a parallel between the visitor and my own brother, a parallel which was trying to come to a head in the repressed question: ‘Would my brother in the same circumstances have behaved in a similar way, or would he have done the opposite?’ The external link between the thoughts concerned with my own and with the other family was made possible by the chance fact that in both cases the mothers had the same first name of Amalia. Later in retrospect I also understood the substitute names, Daniel and Franz, which had forced themselves on me without making me any wiser. These, like Amalia too, are names from Schiller’s Die Räuber which were the subject of a jest made by Daniel Spitzer, the ‘Vienna walker’.
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(5) Another time I was unable to recall a patient’s name; it belonged to associations from my youth. My analysis followed a very devious path before it provided me with the name I was looking for. The patient had expressed a fear of losing his sight; this awoke the memory of a young man who had been blinded by a gunshot; and this in turn was connected with the figure of yet another youth, who had injured himself by shooting. This last person had the same name as the first patient, though he was not related to him. However, I did not find the name until I had become conscious that an anxious expectation was being transferred by me from these two young men who had been injured to a member of my own family.
There thus runs though my thoughts a continuous current of ‘personal reference’, of which I generally have no inkling, but which betrays itself by such instances of my forgetting names. It is as if I were obliged to compare everything I hear about other people with myself; as if my personal complexes were put on the alert whenever another person is brought to my notice. This cannot possibly be an individual peculiarity of my own: it must rather contain an indication of the way in which we understand ‘something other than ourself’ in general. I have reasons for supposing that other people are in this respect very similar to me.
The neatest instance of this sort was reported to me by a Herr Lederer, who had experienced it himself. While he was on his honeymoon in Venice he came across a gentleman with whom he was superficially acquainted and whom he had to introduce to his young wife. Since however he had forgotten the stranger’s name, he helped himself out the first time by means of an unintelligible mumble. On meeting the gentleman a second time, as he was bound to do in Venice, he drew him aside and asked him to save him from embarrassment by telling him his name, which he had unfortunately forgotten. The stranger’s reply gave evidence of an unusual knowledge of human nature. ‘I can readily imagine your failing to remember my name. I have the same name as you - Lederer!’ - One cannot help having a slightly disagreeable feeling when one comes across one’s own name in a stranger. Recently I was very sharply aware of it when a Herr S. Freud presented himself to me in my consulting hour. (However, I must record the assurance of one of my critics that in this respect his feelings are the opposite of mine.)
(6) The effects that can be produced by personal reference can also be seen in the following example, reported by Jung (1907, 52):
‘A Herr Y. fell in love with a lady; but he met with no success, and shortly afterwards she married a Herr S. There after, Herr Y., in spite of having known Herr X. for a long time and even having business dealings with him, forgot his name over and over again, so that several times he had to enquire what it was from other people when he wanted to correspond with Herr X’.
The motivation of the forgetting is however more transparent in this case than in the preceding ones that fall within the constellation of personal reference. Here the forgetting seems a direct consequence of Herr Y’s antipathy to his more fortunate rival; he wants to know nothing about him: ‘never thought of shall he be.’
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(7) The motive for forgetting a name may also be a more refined one; it may consist in what might be called a ‘sublimated’ grudge against the bearer of it. A Fräulein I. von K. writes from Budapest as follows:
‘I have propounded a little theory of my own. I have noticed that people who have a talent for painting have no feeling for music, and vice versa. Some time ago I had a conversation with someone on this point, in which I remarked: "So far my observation has always held good, with the exception of only one person." When I wanted to recall that person’s name, I found it had been irretrievably forgotten, even though I knew that the owner of it was one of my closest friends. When I heard the name mentioned quite by chance a few days later, I knew at once, of course, that it was the destroyer of my theory who was being spoken of. The grudge I unconsciously bore against him was expressed by my forgetting his name, which, apart from that, I knew so well.’
(8) The following case, reported by Ferenczi, shows a somewhat different way in which the personal reference led to a name being forgotten. Its analysis is particularly instructive because of the explanation it gives of the substitute associations (like Botticelli and Boltraffio as substitutes for Signorelli).
‘A lady, who had heard something about psycho-analysis, could not recall the name of the psychiatrist Jung.¹
‘The following names came to her mind instead: Kl--- (a name), Wilde, Nietzsche, Hauptmann.
‘I did not tell her the name and invited her to give free associations to each name in turn.
‘Starting from Kl--- she immediately thought of Frau Kl---, and of how she was a prim and affected person, but looked very well for her age. "She’s not ageing." As a common characterization of Wilde and Nietzsche she named "insanity". Then she said chaffingly: "You Freudians will go on looking for the causes of insanity till you’re insane yourselves." Then: "I can’t bear Wilde and Nietzsche. I don’t understand them. I hear they were both homosexuals; Wilde had dealings with young people." (In spite of having uttered the correct name - in Hungarian, it is true - in this sentence, she was still unable t recall it.)
‘Starting from Hauptmann, first "Halbe" and then "Jungend’ occurred to her; and it was there for the first time, after I had drawn her attention to the word "Jungend", that she realized she had been in search of the name Jung.
‘This lady had lost her husband when she was thirty-nine and had no prospect of marrying again. Thus she had certainly reason enough to avoid recalling anything that reminded her of youth or age. It is striking that the ideas screening the missing name were associated entirely with its content and that associations with its sound were absent.’
¹ [‘Jung’ is also the German for ‘young’.]
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(9) Here is an example of name-forgetting with yet another and a very subtle motivation, which the subject of it has explained himself:
‘When I was being examined in philosophy as a subsidiary subject I was questioned by the examiner about the teachings of Epicurus, and after that I was asked if I knew who had taken up his theories in later centuries. I answered with the name of Pierre Gassendi, whom I had heard described as a disciple of Epicurus while I was sitting in a café only a couple of days before. To the surprised question how I knew that, I boldly answered that I had long been interested in Gassendi. The result of this was a certificate magna cum laude, but also unfortunately a subsequent obstinate tendency to forget the name Gassendi. My guilty conscience is, I think, to blame for my inability to remember the name in spite of all my efforts; for I really ought not to have known it on that occasion either.’
In order to appreciate the intensity of our informant’s aversion to recalling this examination episode, the reader would have to know the high value he sets on his doctorate and for how many other things it has to serve as a substitute.
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(10) At this point I shall insert another example of the name of a town being forgotten. It is not perhaps as simple as the ones given above, but it will strike any one who is fairly well versed in investigations of this nature as authentic and valuable. The name of a town in Italy escaped the subject’s memory as a consequence of its great similarity in sound to a woman’s first name, with which a number of memories charged with affect were connected, which are doubtless not here reported in full. Sándor Ferenczi of Budapest, who observed this case of forgetting in himself, has treated it in the way in which one analyses a dream or a neurotic idea a - procedure which is fully justified.
‘To-day I was with a family that I know, and the conversation turned to cities of North Italy. Someone observed that they still showed traces of Austrian influence. A few of these cities were mentioned, and I wanted to give the name of one too, but it escaped me, although I knew I had spent two very pleasant days there - a fact which did not agree very well with Freud’s theory of forgetting. In place of the name I was looking for, the following associations forced themselves on me: Capua, Brescia, The Lion of Brescia.
‘The picture that I had of this "Lion" took the form of a marble statue standing before my eyes like a solid object; I noticed at once, however, that it had less of a resemblance to the lion on the Monument to Freedom at Brescia (of which I have only seen illustrations) than to the other celebrated marble lion which I have seen on the monument to the dead at Lucerne - the monument to the Swiss guards who fell at Tuileries, and of which I have a miniature replica on my bookcase. And now at last the missing name came back to me: it was Verona.
‘At the same time I knew at once who was to blame for my amnesia. It was no other than a former servant of the family whose guest I was at the time. Her name was Veronika (Verona in Hungarian), and I had a strong antipathy to her because of her repulsive looks, her shrill, raucous voice and her insufferable assertiveness, to which she believed herself entitled by her length of service. At the same time the tyrannical way in which she used to treat the children of the house was intolerable to me. I now also understood the meaning of the associations.
‘My immediate association to Capua was caput mortuum. I very often compared Veronika’s head to a death’s head. The Hungarian word "kapszi" (avaricious) doubtless provided an additional determinant for the displacement. I also, of course, found the much more direct associative paths which connect Capua and Verona as geographical idea and as Italian words that have the same rhythm.
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‘The same is true for Brescia; but here too there were winding by-paths in the linkage of ideas.
‘My antipathy was at one time so violent that I found Veronika positively nauseating, and I had more than once expressed my astonishment that all the same it was possible for her to have an erotic life and be loved by someone. "Why," I said, "to kiss her would make one feel sick!"¹ Nevertheless, she could certainly long since have been brought into connection with the idea of the fallen Swiss Guards.
‘Brescia is very often mentioned, at any rate here in Hungary, in connection not with the lion but with another wild animal. The most hated name in this country, and in the north of Italy too, is that of General Haynau, commonly known as the "Hyaena of Brescia". Thus one thread in my thoughts ran from the hated tyrant Haynau viâ Brescia to the town of Verona, while the other led, viâ the idea of the animal that haunts the graves of the dead (which helped to determine the emergence in my mind of a monument to the dead), to the death’s head and to the disagreeable voice of Veronika - the victim of such gross abuse by my unconscious - who in her time had acted almost as tyrannically in this house as had the Austrian general after the Hungarian and Italian struggles for freedom.
‘Lucerne is connected with the thought of the summer which Veronika spent with her employers in the neighbourhood of the town of Lucerne, on the lake of that name. The Swiss Guard in turn recalls that she knew how to play the tyrant not only to the children but also to the grown-up members of the family, and fancied herself in the part of a "Garde-Dame ".
‘I must expressly remark that this antipathy of mine towards Veronika is - consciously - something that has long been surmounted. Since those times both her appearance and her manner have changed, greatly to her advantage, and I can meet her, though I have in fact little occasion for doing so, with genuinely warm feelings. As usual, my unconscious clings more tenaciously to my impressions: it is "retrospective" and resentful.²
‘The Tuileries are an allusion to another person, an elderly French lady, who on many occasions actually "guarded" the women of the house; she was respected by everyone, young and old - and no doubt somewhat feared as well was feared. For a while I was her élève for French conversation. The word élève further recalls that when I was on a visit to the brother-in-law of my present host, in northern Bohemia, I was very much amused because the local country-people called the élèves at the school of forestry there by the name of "Löwen"³. This entertaining memory may also have played a part in the displacement from the hyaena to the lion.’
¹ [The first half of the German word for ‘nausea’ (‘Brechreiz’) has a sound similar to the first syllable of ‘Brescia’.]
² [In German: ‘"nachträglich" und nachtragend.’]
³ [The dialect pronunciation of the first syllable of this word would resemble that of the second syllable of ‘élèves’.]
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(11) The next example, too, shows how a personal complex which is dominating someone at the time may cause a name to be forgotten in some very remote connection.
‘Two men, an older and a younger one, who six months before had made a trip together in Sicily, were exchanging recollections of those pleasant and memorable days. "Let’s see," said the younger, "what was the name of the place where we spent the night before making our trip to Selinunte? Wasn’t it Calatafimi?" The older one rejected it: "No, it certainly wasn’t, but I’ve forgotten the name too, though I recall most clearly all the details of our stay there. I only need to find someone else has forgotten a name, and it at once makes me forget it too. Let’s look for the name. But the only thing that occurs to me is Caltanisetta, which certainly isn’t right." "No," said the younger man, "the name begins with a ‘w’ or has a ‘w’ in it." "But there’s no ‘w’ in Italian," objected the older. "I really meant a ‘v’, and I only said ‘w’ because I’m so used to it in my own language." The older man still opposed the "v". "As a matter of fact," he declared, "I believe I’ve forgotten a lot of the Sicilian names already; this would be a good time to make some experiments. For example, what was the name of the place on a hill that was called Enna in antiquity? Oh, I know - Castrogiovanni." The next moment the younger man had recalled the lost name as well. "Castelvetrano," he exclaimed, and was pleased at being able to point to the "v" he had insisted on. For a short while the older one had no sense of recognition; but after he had accepted the name it was for him to explain why he had forgotten it. "Obviously," he said, "because the second half, ’-vetrano’, sounds like ‘veteran’. I know I don’t much like to think about growing old, and I have strange reactions when I’m reminded of it. For instance, I recently charged a very dear friend of mine in the strangest terms with having ‘left his youth far behind him’, for the reason that once before, in the middle of the most flattering remarks about me, he had added that I was ‘no longer a young man’. Another sign that my resistance was directed against the second half of the name Castelvetrano is that the initial sound recurred in the substitute name Caltanisetta." "What about the name Caltanisetta itself?" asked the younger man. "That," confessed the older one, "has always seemed to me like a pet name for a young woman."
‘Some time later he added: "Of course the name for Enna was also a substitute name. And it occurs to me now that Castrogiovanni - a name that forced its way to the front with the help of a rationalization - sounds like ‘giovane’ (young) in exactly the same way as the lost name Castelvetrano sounds like ‘veteran’ (old)."
‘The older man believed that in this way he had accounted for his forgetting the name. No investigation was made of the motive for the similar failure of the younger man’s memory.’
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Not only the motives, but also the mechanism governing the forgetting of names, deserve our interest. In a large number of cases a name is forgotten not because the name itself arouses such motives, but because - owing to similarity in sound and to assonance - it touches upon another name against which these motives do operate. If the determinants are relaxed in this way, the occurrence of the phenomenon will obviously be made very much easier, as the following examples show.
(12) Reported by Dr. Eduard Hitschmann (1913a): ‘Herr N. wanted to give someone the name of the firm of book sellers Gilhofer and Ranschburg. But however much he thought over it, only the name Ranschburg occurred to him, though he knew the firm perfectly well. He returned home feeling somewhat dissatisfied, and thought it sufficiently important to ask his brother (who was apparently already asleep) what the first half of the firm’s name was. His brother gave him the name without hesitation. Thereupon the word "Gallhof" immediately sprang to Herr N.’s mind as an association to "Gilhofer". Gallhof was the place where a few months before he had gone for a memorable walk with an attractive young lady. As a momento the lady had given him a present which was inscribed "A souvenir of the happy hours at Gallhof ". In the course of the days just before the name was forgotten, this present had been badly damaged, seemingly by accident, through N.’s shutting a drawer too hastily. He noticed this with a certain sense of guilt, for he was familiar with the meaning of symptomatic acts. At the time his feelings towards the lady were somewhat ambivalent: he certainly loved her, but he felt hesitation in the face of her desire that they should get married.’
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(13) Reported by Dr. Hanns Sachs: ‘In a conversation about Genoa and its immediate surroundings, a young man wanted to mention the place called Pegli, but could only recall the name with an effort after racking his brains. On the way home he thought of the distressing manner in which so familiar a name had slipped away, and in doing so was led to a word sounding very similar: Peli. He knew that there was a South Sea island of that name, whose inhabitants still retained a few remarkable customs. He had read about them recently in an ethnological work and had at the time made up his mind to use the information in support of a hypothesis of his own. It then occurred to him that Peli was also the setting of a novel which he had read with interest and enjoyment - namely Van Zanten’s glücklichste Zeit by Laurids Bruun. The thoughts that had occupied his mind almost incessantly during the day centred round a letter he had received that same morning from a lady he was very fond of. This letter gave him reason to fear that he would have to forgo a meeting that had been arranged. After being in a very bad mood all day, he had gone out in the evening resolved not to plague himself any longer with the tiresome thought but to enjoy the social occasion in front of him, on which he in fact set an extremely high value, in as serene a mood as possible. It is clear that his resolution could have been gravely imperilled by the word Pegli, as its connection in sound with Peli was so close; and Peli in turn, having acquired a personal connection with himself by its ethnological interest, embodied not only Van Zanten’s but also his own "happiest time", and therefore the fears and anxieties as well which he had nursed all day long. It is characteristic that this simple explanation only became clear after a second letter from his friend had transformed his doubt into the happy certainty of seeing her again soon.’
This example may recall what might be described as its geographical neighbour, in which the name of the town of Nervi could not be remembered (Example 1). Thus we see how a pair of words that are similar in sound can have the same effect as a single word that has two meanings.
(14) When war broke out with Italy in 1915 I was able to make the observation upon myself that a whole quantity of Italian place-names which at ordinary times were readily available to me had suddenly been withdrawn from my memory. Like so many other Germans I had made it my habit to spend a part of my holidays on Italian soil, and I could not doubt that this large-scale forgetting of names was the expression of an understandable hostility to Italy which had now replaced my former partiality. In addition to this directly motivated forgetting of names, however, an indirect amnesia could also be detected, which it was possible to trace back to the same influence. I showed a tendency to forget non-Italian place-names as well; and on investigating the incidents I found that these names were in some way connected by means of remote similarities of sound with the proscribed enemy names. Thus I tormented myself one day in trying to recall the name of the Moravian town of Bisenz. When it finally came to my mind I at once recognized that this act of forgetting was to be laid to the charge of the Palazzo Bisenzi at Orvieto. The Hotel Belle Arti, where I had stayed on all my visits to Orvieto, is located in this palazzo. The most precious memories had naturally been the most severely damaged by the change in my emotional attitude.
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Some examples may also help to remind us of the variety of purposes that can be served by the parapraxis of name-forgetting.
(15) Reported by A. J. Storfer (1914): ‘One morning a lady who lived in Basle received news that a friend of her youth, Selma X. of Berlin, who was just then on her honeymoon, was passing through Basle, but staying only one day. The Basle lady hurried straight away to her hotel. When the friends separated, they made an arrangement to meet again in the afternoon and to be with each other up to the time of the Berlin lady’s departure.
‘In the afternoon the Basle lady forgot about the rendezvous. I do not know what determined her forgetting it, yet in this particular situation (a meeting with a school-friend who has just married) various typical constellations are possible which could determine an inhibition against the repetition of the meeting. The point of interest in this case lies in a further parapraxis, which represents an unconscious safeguarding of the first one. At the time when she was to have met her friend from Berlin the Basle lady happened to be in company at another place. The recent marriage of the Viennese opera singer Kurz came up in conversation; the Basle lady gave vent to some critical remarks (!) about this marriage, but when she wanted to mention the singer by name, she found to her very great embarrassment that she could not think of her first name. (There is, as is well known, a particular tendency to give the first name also, precisely in cases where the surname is a monosyllable.) The Basle lady was all the more put out by her lapse of memory since she had often heard Kurz sing and ordinarily knew her (whole) name perfectly well. Before anyone had mentioned the missing first name the conversation took another direction.
‘In the evening of the same day our Basle lady was among a number of people, some of whom were the same as those she had been with in the afternoon. By a coincidence the conversation again turned to the marriage of the Viennese singer; and without any difficulty the lady produced the name "Selma Kurz". "Oh dear!" she at once exclaimed, "it’s just struck me - I’ve completely forgotten I had an appointment with my friend Selma this afternoon." A glance at the clock showed that her friend must have left already.’
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We are perhaps not ready yet to appreciate all the aspects of this pretty example. The following is a simpler specimen, though here it was not a name but a foreign word that was forgotten, from a motive arising out of the situation. (We can already see that we are dealing with the same processes, whether they apply to proper names, first names, foreign words or sets of words.) Here it was a case of a young man forgetting the English word for ‘Gold’ - which is identical with the German word - so as to find an opportunity for carrying out an action he desired.
(16) Reported by Dr. Hanns Sachs: ‘A young man became acquainted in a pension with an English lady, whom he took a liking to. On the first evening of their acquaintance he was having a conversation with her in her native language, which he knew fairly well; and in the course of it he wanted to use the English word for "Gold". In spite of strenuous efforts the word would not come to him. Instead, the French or, the Latin aurum and the Greek chrysos obstinately forced themselves on him as substitutes, so that it needed quite an effort to reject them, though he knew for certain that they were not related at all to the word he was looking for. In the end the only way he could find of making himself understood was by touching a gold ring on the lady’s hand; and he was very much abashed on learning from her that the long-lost word for gold was exactly the same as the German one, namely "gold". The great value of this touching, for which the forgetting gave an opportunity, did not lie merely in the unobjectionable satisfaction of the instinct for laying hold or touching - for there are other opportunities for this which are eagerly exploited by lovers. It lay much more in the way in which it assisted in clarifying the prospects of the courtship. The lady’s unconscious would divine the erotic aim of the forgetting, hidden by its mask of innocence, especially if her unconscious was sympathetically drawn to the man she was talking with. The manner in which she treated his touching of her and accepted its motivation could in this way become a means - unconscious for both of them, yet full of significance - of reaching an understanding on the chances of the flirtation just begun.’
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(17) From J. Stärcke (1916) I report another interesting observation that concerns the forgetting and subsequent recovery of a proper name. This case is distinguished by the fact that the forgetting of the name was connected with the misquoting of a set of words from a poem, as in the example of the ‘Bride of Corinth’.
‘Z., an old jurist and philologist, was describing in company how in his student days in Germany he had known a quite exceptionally stupid student, and had some anecdotes to tell of his stupidity. He could not, however, recall the student’s name; he believed it began with a "W", but later took back the idea. He recalled that the stupid student later became a wine merchant. He then told another anecdote about the student’s stupidity, and once again expressed surprise that his name did not come back to him. "He was such an ass," he then remarked, "that I still don’t understand how I succeeded in drumming Latin into his head." A moment later he remembered that the name he was looking for ended in ". . . man". At this point we asked him if any other name ending in "man" occurred to him, and he gave "Erdmann ". "Who is that?" "That was another student of those days." His daughter, however, observed that there was also a Professor Erdmann. Some closer questioning revealed that this Professor Erdmann, who was the editor of a periodical, had recently refused to accept a piece of work submitted by Z., with which he partly disagreed, except in a shortened form; and Z. had been considerably put out. (In addition, I later discovered that years before, Z. had very probably expected to become professor in the same department in which Professor Erdmann now lectured. This, then, may have been another reason why the name touched on a sensitive spot.)
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‘At this point the stupid student’s name suddenly came back to him: "Lindeman". Since he had already recalled that the name ended in "man", it was "Linde " that had remained repressed for longer. When he has asked what came to his mind when he thought of "Linde", he at first said "Absolutely nothing." When I urged that something connected with this word would no doubt occur to him, he remarked with an upward gaze and a gesture of his hand in the air: "A linden - well, a linden is a beautiful tree." Nothing further would come to his mind. No one spoke and everyone went on with their reading or other activity, till a few moments later Z. quoted the following passage in a dreamy voice:
Steht er mit festen
Gefügigen Knochen
Auf der erde,
So reicht er nicht auf
Nur mit der Linde
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.¹
‘I gave a cry of triumph. "There’s our Erdmann," I said. "The man who ‘stands on the earth’, that is to say the earthman or Erdmann, cannot reach up far enough to bear comparison with the linden (Lindeman) or the vine (wine merchant). In other words, our Lindeman, the stupid student, who later became a wine merchant, was certainly an ass, but our Erdmann is a much greater ass than that, and cannot even be compared with this Lindeman." - Such derisive or abusive language in the unconscious is quite usual; so it seemed to me that the chief cause of the name being forgotten had probably now been found.
¹ [Literally: ‘If he stands with firm, pliant bones on the earth, he does not reach up far enough to bear comparison even with the linden or the vine.’]
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‘I now asked what the poem was from which the lines were quoted. Z. said it was a poem by Goethe, which he thought began:
Edel sei der Mensch
Hilfreich und gut!¹
and which later contained the lines:
Und hebt er sich aufwärts,
So spielen mit ihm die Winde.²
‘The next day I looked up this poem of Goethe’s, and it turned out that the case was even prettier (though also more complex) than it had seemed at first.
(a) ‘The first lines that he quoted run (cf. above):
Steht er mit festen
Markigen Knochen . . .³
‘"Gefügige Knochen" would be a rather peculiar combination; but I shall not go further into this point.
(b) ‘The next lines of this stanza run (cf. above):
. . . Auf der wohlgegründeten
Dauernden Erde,
Reicht er nicht auf,
Nur mit der Eiche
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.4
So in the whole poem there is no mention of a linden. The change of "oak" into "linden" had taken place (in his unconscious) only in order to make the play on the words "earth-linden-vine" possible.
(c) ‘This poem is called "Grenzen der Menschheit" and compares the omnipotence of the gods with man’s puny strength. But the poem beginning:
Edel sei der Mensch,
Hilfreich und gut!
is a different one, appearing some pages further on. Its title is "Das Göttliche [The Divine Nature]", and it too contains thoughts about gods and men. As the matter was not gone into further I can at the most offer an opinion that thoughts about life and death, the temporal and the eternal, and the subject’s own frail life and future death also played a part in bringing about the occurrence of this case.’
¹ [‘Let Man be noble, helpful and good.’]
² [‘And if he raises himself upwards the winds play with him.’]
³ [‘If he stands with firm, sturdy bones . . .’]
4 [‘. . . on the firmly-based, enduring earth, he does not reach up far enough to bear comparison even with the oak or the vine.’]
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In some of these examples all the subtleties of psycho-analytic technique have to be called upon in order to explain the forgetting of a name. Anyone who wishes to learn more about such work may be referred to a paper by Ernest Jones of London (1911a). It has been translated into German.
(18) Ferenczi has observed that forgetting a name may also make its appearance as a hysterical symptom. In this situation it displays a very different mechanism from that of a parapraxis . The nature of this distinction may be seen from what he says:
‘At the moment I am treating a patient, a spinster getting on in years, in whose mind the most familiar and best-known proper names fail to appear, although her memory is otherwise good. In the course of the analysis it has become clear that this symptom is intended by her as a documentation of her ignorance. This demonstrative parade of her ignorance is, however, really a reproach against her parents, who did not let her have any higher education. Her tormenting obsession to clean things ("housewife’s psychosis") also comes in part from the same source. What she means by this is something like: "You have turned me into a housemaid."'
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I could cite further instances of the forgetting of names and explore the matter much more fully if I were not reluctant to anticipate at this first stage almost all the points of view that will come up for discussion under later topics. But I may perhaps allow myself to summarize in a few sentences the conclusions to be drawn from the analyses that have been reported here:
The mechanism of names being forgotten (or, to be more accurate, the mechanism of names escaping the memory, of being temporarily forgotten) consists in the interference with the intended reproduction of the name by an alien train of thought which is not at the time conscious. Between the name interfered with and the interfering complex either a connection exists from the outset, or else such a connection has established itself, often in ways that appear artificial, viâ superficial (external) associations.
Among the interfering complexes those of personal reference (i.e. the personal, family and professional complexes) prove to have the greatest effect.
A name which has more than one meaning and consequently belongs to more than one group of thoughts (complexes) is frequently interfered with in its connection with one train of thought owing to its participation in another, stronger complex.
Among the motives for these interferences the purpose of avoiding arousing unpleasure by remembering is conspicuous.
In general two main types of name-forgetting may be distinguished: those cases where the name itself touches on something unpleasant, and those where it is brought into connection with another name which has that effect. Thus names can have their reproduction interfered with on their own account, or because of their closer or remoter associative relations.
A survey of these general propositions shows us why the temporary forgetting of names is the most frequently to be observed of all our parapraxes.
(19) We are however far from having outlined all the characteristics of this phenomenon. There is a further point I wish to make. The forgetting of names is highly contagious. In a conversation between two people it is often sufficient for one of them merely to mention that he has forgotten such and such a name, and the result will be that it slips the other’s mind as well. In cases like these, however, where the forgetting is induced, the forgotten name returns more readily. - This ‘collective’ forgetting, strictly speaking a phenomenon of group psychology, his not yet been made the subject of psycho-analytic study. In a single instance (but an especially, neat one) Reik (1920) has been able to offer a good explanation of this curious phenomenon.
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‘In a small gathering of university people, which included two women students of philosophy, there was a discussion on the numerous questions raised in the fields of religious studies and the history of civilization by the origin of Christianity. One of the young ladies who took part in the conversation recalled that in an English novel she had read recently she had found an interesting picture of the many religious currents by which that age had been stirred. She added that the novel portrayed the whole of Christ’s life from his birth up to his death; but the name of the work refused to come to her mind. (The visual memory she had of the cover of the book and the appearance of the lettering in the title was excessively clear.) Three of the men who were present also said that they knew the novel, and they remarked that - strange to relate - they too were unable to produce the name.’
The young lady was the only one to subject herself to analysis in order to discover why this name was forgotten. The title of the book was Ben Hur, by Lewis Wallace. The ideas that had occurred to her as substitutes for it had been: ‘Ecce homo’ - ‘Homo sum’ - ‘Quo vadis?’ The girl herself realized that she had forgotten the name ‘because it contains an expression that I (like any other girl) do not care to use - especially in the company of young men’.¹ In the light of the very interesting analysis, this explanation took on a profounder significance. In the context already alluded to, the translation of ‘homo’ (man) also has a disreputable meaning. Reik’s conclusion is as follows: ‘The young lady treated the word as though by uttering the questionable title in front of young men she would have been acknowledging the wishes which she had rejected as out of keeping with her character and distressing to her. More briefly: saying the words "Ben Hur"² was unconsciously equated by her with a sexual offer, and her forgetting accordingly, corresponded to the fending-off of an unconscious temptation of that kind. We have reason for supposing that similarly unconscious processes had determined the young men’s forgetting. Their unconscious understood the real significance of the girl’s forgetting and, so to speak, interpreted it. The men’s forgetting shows respect for this modest behaviour. . . . It is as if the girl who was talking with them had by her sudden lapse of memory given a clear sign which the men had unconsciously understood well enough.’
¹ [‘Hure’ is the German for ‘whore’.]
² [The German words ‘bin Hure’ (‘I am a whore’) sound not unlike ‘Ben Hur’.]
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A type of continued forgetting of names occurs also, in which whole chains of names are withdrawn from the memory. If in the attempt to recover a lost name other names closely connected with it are pursued, it frequently happens that these new names, which were to serve as stepping stones to the other one, disappear in just the same way. The forgetting thus jumps from one name to another, as if to prove the existence of an obstacle which cannot easily be surmounted.
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CHAPTER IV
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND SCREEN MEMORIES
In a second paper, which was published in the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie (1899a), I was in a position to demonstrate at an unexpected point the tendentious nature of the workings of our memory. I started from the striking fact that a person’s earliest childhood memories seem frequently to have preserved what is indifferent and unimportant, whereas (frequently, though certainly not universally) no trace is found in an adult’s memory of impressions dating from that time which are important, impressive and rich in affect. It might be assumed from this - since it is known that the memory makes a selection from among the impressions offered to it - that in childhood the selection is conducted on entirely different principles from those which apply at the time of intellectual maturity. Careful investigation nevertheless shows that such an assumption is unnecessary. The indifferent memories of childhood owe their existence to a process of displacement: they are substitutes, in reproduction, for other impressions which are really significant. The memory of these significant impressions can be developed out of the indifferent ones by means of psychical analysis, but a resistance prevents them from being directly reproduced. As the indifferent memories owe their preservation not to their own content but to an associative relation between their content and another which is repressed, they have some claim to be called ‘screen memories’, the name by which I have described them.
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In the paper which I have mentioned I only touched on and in no way exhausted the multiplicity of the relations and meanings of screen memories. In the example quoted there, of which I gave a detailed analysis, I laid special stress on the peculiarity of the chronological relation between the screen memory and the content which is screened off by it. In that example the content of the screen memory belonged to one of the earliest years of childhood, while the mental experiences which were replaced by it in the memory and which had remained almost unconscious occurred in the subject’s later life, I described this sort of displacement as a retroactive or retrogressive one. The opposite relation is found perhaps still more frequently: an indifferent impression of recent date establishes itself in the memory as a screen memory, although it owes that privilege merely to its connection with an earlier experience which resistances prevent from being reproduced directly. These would be screen memories that have pushed ahead or been displaced forward. Here the essential thing with which the memory is occupied precedes the screen memory in time. Finally, we find yet a third possibility, in which the screen memory is connected with the impression that it screens not only by its content but also by contiguity in time: these are contemporary or contiguous screen memories.
How large a part of our store of memory falls into the category of screen memories, and what role they play in various neurotic thought-processes, are problems whose significance I neither discussed in my earlier paper nor shall enter into here. My only concern is to emphasize the similarity between the forgetting of proper names accompanied by paramnesia, and the formation of screen memories.
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At first sight the differences between the two phenomena are much more striking than any analogies that may be found. The former phenomenon relates to proper names; the latter to whole impressions, things experienced either in reality or in thought. In the former we have a manifest failure of the function of memory; in the latter, an act of memory that strikes us as strange. In the former it is a case of momentary disturbance - for the name that has just been forgotten may have been produced correctly a hundred times before, and from tomorrow may be produced once again; in the latter it is a case of a permanent and constant memory, since the indifferent childhood memories seem to have the power of staying with us through a large part of our life. The problem in these two cases appears to be quite differently focused. In the former it is the forgetting, in the latter the retention which arouses our scientific curiosity. Closer study reveals that in spite of the dissimilarity between the two phenomena in regard to their psychical material and their duration, the points at which they agree far outbalance it. Both have to do with mistakes in remembering: what the memory reproduces is not what it should correctly have reproduced, but something else as a substitute. In the case of the forgetting of names the act of memory occurs, though in the form of substitute names; the case of the formation of screen memories has as its basis a forgetting of other more important impressions. In both instances an intellectual feeling gives us information of interference by some disturbing factor; but it takes two different forms. With the forgetting of names we know that the substitute names are false: with screen memories we are surprised that we possess them at all. If, now, psychological analysis establishes that the substitutive formation has come about in the same way in both cases, by means of displacement along a superficial association, it is precisely the dissimilarities between the two phenomena, in regard to their material, their duration and their focal point, which serve to heighten our expectation that we have discovered something of importance and of general validity. This general principle would assert that when the reproducing function fails or goes astray, the occurrence points, far more frequently than we suspect, to interference by a tendentious factor - that is, by a purpose which favours one memory while striving to work against another.
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The subject of childhood memories seems to me to be of such significance and interest that I should like to devote to it a few additional observations which go beyond the views that I have so far expressed.
How far back into childhood do our memories extend? I am familiar with a few investigations into this question, such as those by V. and C. Henri (1897) and by Potwin (1901). They show that great individual differences exist among the persons examined: a few assign their earliest memories to the sixth month of life, while others remember nothing of their lives up to the end of their sixth or even eighth year. But with what are these differences in retaining childhood memories connected, and what significance attaches to them? Clearly it is not sufficient to assemble the material for answering these points by means of a questionnaire; what is required in addition is that it should be worked over - a process in which the person supplying the information must participate.
In my opinion we take the fact of infantile amnesia - the loss, that is, of the memories of the first years of our life - much too easily; and we fail to look upon it as a strange riddle. We forget how high are the intellectual achievements and how complicated the emotional impulses of which a child of some four years is capable, and we ought to be positively astonished that the memory of later years has as a rule preserved so little of these mental processes, especially as we have every reason to suppose that these same forgotten childhood achievements have not, as might be thought, slipped away without leaving their mark on the subject’s development, but have exercised a determining influence for the whole of his later life. And in spite of this unique efficacy they have been forgotten! This suggests that there are conditions for remembering (in the sense of conscious reproducing) of a quite special kind, which have evaded recognition by us up to now. It may very well be that the forgetting of childhood can supply us with the key to the understanding of those amnesias which lie, according to our more recent discoveries, at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms.
Of the childhood memories that have been retained a few strike us as perfectly understandable, while others seem odd or unintelligible. It is not difficult to correct certain errors regarding both sorts. If the memories that a person has retained are subjected to an analytic enquiry, it is easy to establish that there is no guarantee of their accuracy. Some of the mnemic images are certainly falsified, incomplete or displaced in time and place. Any such statement by the subjects of the enquiry as that their first recollection comes from about their second year is clearly not to be trusted. Moreover, motives can soon be discovered which make the distortion and displacement of the experience intelligible, but which show at the same time that these mistakes in recollection cannot be caused simply by a treacherous memory. Strong forces from later life have been at work on the capacity of childhood experiences for being remembered - probably the same forces which are responsible for our having become so far removed in general from understanding our years of childhood.
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Remembering in adults, as is well known, makes use of a variety of psychical material. Some people remember in visual images; their memories have a visual character . Other people can scarcely reproduce in their memory even the scantiest outlines of what they have experienced. Following Charcot’s proposal, such people are called auditifs and moteurs in contrast to the visuels. In dreams these distinctions disappear: we all dream predominantly in visual images. But this development is similarly reversed in the case of childhood memories: they are plastically visual even in people whose later function of memory has to do without any visual element. Visual memory accordingly preserves the type of infantile memory. In my own case the earliest childhood memories are the only ones of a visual character: they are regular scenes worked out in plastic form, comparable only to representations on the stage. In these scenes of childhood, whether in fact they prove to be true or falsified, what one sees invariably includes oneself as a child, with a child’s shape and clothes. This circumstance must cause surprise: in their recollections of later experiences adult visuels no longer see themselves.¹ Furthermore it contradicts all that we have learnt to suppose that in his experiences a child’s attention is directed to himself instead of exclusively to impressions from outside. One is thus forced by various considerations to suspect that in the so-called earliest childhood memories we possess not the genuine memory-trace but a later revision of it, a revision which may have been subjected to the influences of a variety of later psychical forces. Thus the ‘childhood memories’ of individuals come in general to acquire the significance of ‘screen memories’ and in doing so offer a remarkable analogy with the childhood memories that a nation preserves in its store of legends and myths.
¹ This statement is based on a number of enquiries I have made.
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Anyone who has investigated a number of people psychologically by the method of psycho-analysis will in the course of his work have collected numerous examples of every kind of screen memory. However, the reporting of these examples is made extraordinarily difficult owing to the nature of the relations, which I have just discussed, between childhood memories and later life. In order to show that a childhood memory is to be regarded as a screen memory, it would often be necessary to present the complete life history of the person in question. Only rarely is it possible to lift a single screen memory out of its context in order to give an account of it, as in the following good example.
A man of twenty-four has preserved the following picture from his fifth year. He is sitting in the garden of a summer villa, on a small chair beside his aunt, who is trying to teach him the letters of the alphabet. He is in difficulties over the difference between m and n and he asks his aunt to tell him how to know one from the other. His aunt points out to him that the m has a whole piece more than the n - the third stroke. There appeared to be no reason for challenging the trustworthiness of this childhood memory; it had, however, only acquired its meaning at a later date, when it showed itself suited to represent symbolically another of the boy’s curiosities. For just as at that time he wanted to know the difference between m and n, so later he was anxious to find out the difference between boys and girls, and would have been very willing for this particular aunt to be the one to teach him. He also discovered then that the difference was a similar one - that a boy, too, has a whole piece more than a girl; and at the time when he acquired this piece of knowledge he called up the recollection of the parallel curiosity of his childhood.
Here is another example, from the later years of childhood. A man who is severely inhibited in his erotic life, and who is now over forty, is the eldest of nine children. At the time that the youngest of his brothers and sisters was born he was fifteen, yet he maintains firmly and obstinately that he had never noticed any of his mother’s pregnancies. Under pressure from my scepticism a memory presented itself to him: once at the age of eleven or twelve he had seen his mother hurriedly unfasten her skirt in front of the mirror. He now added of his own accord that she had come in from the street and had been overcome by unexpected labour pains. The unfastening of the skirt was a screen memory for the confinement. We shall come across the use of ‘verbal bridges’ of this kind in further cases.
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I should like now to give a single example of the way in which a childhood memory, which previously appeared to have no meaning, can acquire one as a result of being worked over by analysis. When I began in my forty-third year to direct my interest to what was left of my memory of my own childhood there came to my mind a scene which had for a long while back (from the remotest past, as it seemed to me) come into consciousness from time to time, and which I had good evidence for assigning to a date before the end of my third year. I saw myself standing in front of a cupboard demanding something and screaming, while my half-brother, my senior by twenty years, held it open. Then suddenly my mother, looking beautiful and slim, walked into the room, as if she had come in from the street. These were the words in which I described the scene, of which I had a plastic picture, but I did not know what more I could make of it. Whether my brother wanted to open or shut the cupboard - in my first translation of the picture I called it a ‘wardrobe’ - why I was crying, and what the arrival of my mother had to do with it all this was obscure to me. The explanation I was tempted to give myself was that what was in question was a memory of being teased by my elder brother and of my mother putting a stop to it. Such misunderstandings of a childhood scene which is preserved in the memory are by no means rare: a situation is recalled, but it is not clear what its central point is, and one does not know on which of its elements the psychical accent is to be placed. Analytic effort led me to take a quite unexpected view of the picture. I had missed my mother, and had come to suspect that she was shut up in this wardrobe or cupboard; and it was for that reason that I was demanding that my brother should open the cupboard. When he did what I asked and I had made certain that my mother was not in the cupboard, I began to scream. This is the moment that my memory has held fast; and it was followed at once by the appearance of my mother, which allayed my anxiety or longing. But how did the child get the idea of looking for his absent mother in the cupboard? Dreams which I had at the same time contained obscure allusions to a nurse of whom I had other recollections, such as, for example, that she used to insist on my dutifully handing over to her the small coins I received as presents - a detail which can itself claim to have the value of a screen memory for later experiences. I accordingly resolved that this time I would make the problem of interpretation easier for myself and would ask my mother, who was by then grown old, about the nurse. I learned a variety of details, among them that this clever but dishonest person had carried out considerable thefts in the house during my mother’s confinement and had been taken to court on a charge preferred by my half-brother. This information threw a flood of light on the childhood scene, and so enabled me to understand it. The sudden disappearance of the nurse had not been a matter of indifference to me: the reason why I had turned in particular to this brother, and had asked him where she was, was probably because I had noticed that he played a part in her disappearance; and he had answered in the elusive and punning fashion that was characteristic of him: ‘She’s "boxed up".’ At the time, I understood this answer in a child’s way, but I stopped asking any more questions as there was nothing more to learn. When my mother left me a short while later, I suspected that my naughty brother had done the same thing to her that he had done to the nurse and I forced him to open the cupboard for me. I now understand, too, why in the translation of this visual childhood scene my mother’s slimness was emphasized: it must have struck me as having just been restored to her. I am two and a half years older than the sister who was born at that time, and when I was three years old my half-brother and I ceased living in the same place.¹
¹ [Footnote added 1924:] Anyone who is interested in the mental life of these years of childhood will find it easy to guess the deeper determinant of the demand made on the big brother. The child of not yet three had understood that the little sister who had recently arrived had grown inside his mother. He was very far from approving of this addition to the family, and was full of mistrust and anxiety that his mother’s inside might conceal still more children. The wardrobe or cupboard was a symbol for him of his mother’s inside. So he insisted on looking into this cupboard, and turned for this to his big brother, who (as is clear from other material) had taken his father’s place as the child’s rival. Besides the well-founded suspicion that this brother had had the lost nurse ‘boxed up’, there was a further suspicion against him - namely that he had in some way introduced the recently born baby into his mother’s inside. The affect of disappointment when the cupboard was found to be empty derived, therefore, from the superficial motivation for the child’s demand. As regards the deeper trend of thought, the affect was in the wrong place. On the other hand, his great satisfaction over his mother’s slimness on her return can only be fully understood in the light of this deeper layer.