FOOTNOTES:
[1] Monatsschrift f. Psychiatrie.
[2] This is the usual way of bringing to consciousness hidden ideas. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 83-4, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Company, New York, and Allen, London.
[3] Finer observation reduces somewhat the contrast between the analyses of Signorelli and aliquis as far as the substitutive recollections are concerned. Here, too, the forgetting seems to be accompanied by substitutive formations. When I later asked my companion whether in his effort to recall the forgotten word he did not think of some substitution, he informed me that he was at first tempted to put an ab into the verse: nostris ab ossibus (perhaps the disjointed part of a-liquis) and that later the word exoriare obtruded itself with particular distinctness and persistency. Being sceptical, he added that it was apparently due to the fact that it was the first word of the verse. But when I asked him to focus his attention on the associations to exoriare he gave me the word exorcism. This makes me think that the reinforcement of exoriare in the reproduction has really the value of such substitution. It probably came through the association exorcism from the names of the saints. However, those are refinements upon which no value need be laid. It seems now quite possible that the appearance of any kind of substitutive recollection is a constant sign—perhaps only characteristic and misleading—of the purposive forgetting motivated by repression. This substitution might also exist in the reinforcement of an element akin to the thing forgotten, even where incorrect substitutive names fail to appear. Thus, in the example Signorelli, as long as the name of the painter remained inaccessible to me, I had more than a clear visual memory of the cycle of his frescoes, and of the picture of himself in the corner; at least it was more intensive than any of my other visual memory traces. In another case, also reported in my essay of 1898, I had hopelessly forgotten the street name and address connected with a disagreeable visit in a strange city, but—as if to mock me—the house number appeared especially vivid, whereas the memory of numbers usually causes me the greatest difficulty.
[4] I am not fully convinced of the lack of an inner connection between the two streams of thought in the case of Signorelli. In carefully following the repressed thought concerning the theme of death and sexual life, one does strike an idea which shows a near relation to the theme of the frescoes of Orvieto.
[5] The Psychology of Dementia Præcox, translated by F. Peterson and A. A. Brill.
[6] The Psychology of Dementia Præcox, p. 45.
[7] Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, I. 9, 1911.
[8] “Analyse eines Falles von Namenvergessen,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. 11, Heft 2, 1911.
[9] Published in the Monatsschrift f. Psychiatrie u. Neurologie, 1899.
[10] “Enquête sur les premiers souvenirs de l’enfance,” L’Année psychologique, iii., 1897.
[11] “Study of Early Memories,” Psychological Review, 1901.
[12] I assert this as a result of certain investigations made by myself.
[13] The examples are given by the editor.
[14] Those who are interested are referred to pp. 62, 73, and 97 of the author’s work.
[15] Neue Freie Presse, August 23, 1900: “Wie man sich versprechen kann.”
[16] Völker psychologie, vol. i., pt. i., p. 371, etc., 1900.
[17] Italics are mine.
[18] It turned out that she was under the influence of unconscious thoughts concerning pregnancy and prevention of conception. With the words “shut up like a pocket knife,” which she uttered consciously as a complaint, she meant to describe the position of the child in the womb. The word “earnest” in my remark recalled to her the name (S. Ernst) of the well-known Vienna business firm in Kärthner Strasse, which used to advertise the sale of articles for the prevention of conception.
[19] Similar mistakes dealing with Officer 666 were recently reported to me by other psycho-analysts.
[20] It may be observed that aristocrats in particular very frequently distort the names of the physicians they consult, from which we may conclude that inwardly they slight them, in spite of the politeness with which they are wont to greet them. I shall cite here some excellent observations concerning the forgetting of names from the works of Professor E. Jones, of Toronto: Papers on Psycho-analysis, chap. iii. p. 49:—
“Few people can avoid feeling a twinge of resentment when they find that their name has been forgotten, particularly if it is by some one with whom they had hoped or expected it would be remembered. They instinctively realize that if they had made a greater impression on the person’s mind he would certainly have remembered them again, for the name is an integral part of the personality. Similarly, few things are more flattering to most people than to find themselves addressed by name by a great personage where they could hardly have anticipated it. Napoleon, like most leaders of men, was a master of this art. In the midst of the disastrous campaign of France in 1814, he gave an amazing proof of his memory in this direction. When in a town near Craonne, he recollected that he had met the mayor, De Bussy, over twenty years ago in the La Fère Regiment. The delighted De Bussy at once threw himself into his service with extraordinary zeal. Conversely, there is no surer way of affronting some one than by pretending to forget his name; the insinuation is thus conveyed that the person is so unimportant in our eyes that we cannot be bothered to remember his name. This device is often exploited in literature. In Turgentev’s Smoke (p. 255) the following passage occurs: “‘So you still find Baden entertaining, M’sieur—Litvinov.’ Ratmirov always uttered Litvinov’s surname with hesitation, every time, as though he had forgotten it, and could not at once recall it. In this way, as well as by the lofty flourish of his hat in saluting him, he meant to insult his pride.” The same author, in his Fathers and Children (p. 107), writes: “The Governor invited Kirsanov and Bazarov to his ball, and within a few minutes invited them a second time, regarding them as brothers, and calling them Kisarov.” Here the forgetting that he had spoken to them, the mistake in the names, and the inability to distinguish between the two young men, constitute a culmination of disparagement. Falsification of a name has the same signification as forgetting it; it is only a step towards complete amnesia.”
[21] Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii., Jahrg. I. Cf. also Brill’s Psychanalysis: Its Theories and Practical Application, p. 202. Saunders, Philadelphia and London.
[22] Jones, Papers on Psycho-analysis, p. 60.
“Ce qu’on conçoit bien
S’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire
Arrivent aisément.”
Boileau, Art Poétique.
[24] The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 208.
[25] Bleuler, Affektivität Suggestibilität, Paranoia, p. 121, Halle. Marhold, 1906.
[26] A similar situation occurs in Julius Cæsar, iii. 3:
“Cinna. Truly, my name is Cinna.
“Burgher. Tear him to pieces! he is a conspirator.
“Cinna. I am Cinna the poet! not Cinna the conspirator.
“Burgher. No matter; his name is Cinna; tear the name out of his heart and let him go.”
[27] Ethyl alcohol is, of course, the chemical name for ordinary alcohol.
[28] Jones, Psycho-analysis, p. 66.
[29] Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse, i. 12.
[30] In the course of the conference the details of the previous first visit return to consciousness.
[31] Brill, loc. cit., p. 197.
[32] If we inquire of a person whether he suffered from luetic infection ten or fifteen years ago, we are only too apt to forget that psychically the patient has looked upon this disease in an entirely different manner than on, let us say, an acute attack of rheumatism. In the anamneses which parents give about their neurotic daughters, it is hardly possible to distinguish with any degree of certainty the portion forgotten from that hidden, for anything that stands in the way of the girl’s future marriage is systematically set aside by the parents, that is, it becomes repressed. A man who had recently lost his beloved wife from an affection of the lungs reported to me the following case of misleading the doctor, which can only be explained by the theory of such forgetting. “As my poor wife’s pleuritis had not disappeared after many weeks, Dr. P. was called in consultation. While taking the history he asked among others the customary questions whether there were any cases of lung trouble in my wife’s family. My wife denied any such cases, and even I myself could not remember any. While Dr. P. was taking leave the conversation accidentally turned to excursions, and my wife said: ‘Yes, even to Landgersdorf, where my poor brother lies buried, is a long journey.’ This brother died about fifteen years ago, after having suffered for years from tuberculosis. My wife was very fond of him, and often spoke about him. Indeed, I recall that when her malady was diagnosed as pleurisy she was very worried and sadly remarked: ‘My brother also died of lung trouble.’ But the memory was so very repressed that even after the above-cited conversation about the trip to L. she found no occasion to correct her information concerning the diseases in her family. I myself was struck by this forgetting at the very moment she began to talk about Landgersdorf.” A perfectly analogous experience is related by Ernest Jones in his work. A physician whose wife suffered from some obscure abdominal malady remarked to her: “It is comforting to think that there has been no tuberculosis in your family.” She turned to him very astonished and said, “Have you forgotten that my mother died of tuberculosis, and that my sister recovered from it only after having been given up by the doctors?”
[33] During the days when I was first writing these pages the following almost incredible case of forgetting happened to me. On the 1st of January I examined my notes so that I could send out my bills. In the month of June I came across the name M——l, and could not recall the person to whom it belonged. My surprise increased when I observed from my books that I treated the case in a sanatorium, and that for weeks I had called on the patient daily. A patient treated under such conditions is rarely forgotten by a physician in six months. I asked myself if it could have been a man—a paretic—a case without interest? Finally, the note about the fee received brought to my memory all the knowledge which strove to elude it. M——l was a fourteen-year-old girl, the most remarkable case of my latter years, a case which taught me a lesson I am not likely ever to forget, a case whose upshot gave me many painful hours. The child became afflicted with an unmistakable hysteria, which quickly and thoroughly improved under my care. After this improvement the child was taken away from me by the parents. She still complained of abdominal pains which had played the part in the hysterical symptoms. Two months later she died of sarcoma of the abdominal glands. The hysteria, to which she was greatly predisposed, took the tumour-formation as a provocative agent, and I, fascinated by the tumultuous but harmless manifestations of hysteria, perhaps overlooked the first sign of the insidious and incurable disease.
[34] A. Pick (“Zur Psychologie des Vergessens bei Geistes- und Nervenkranken,” Archiv. f. Kriminal-Anthropologie u. Kriminalistik, von H. Gross) has recently collected a number of authors who realize the value of the influence of the affective factors on memory, and who more or less clearly recognize that a defensive striving against pain can lead to forgetting. But none of us has been able to represent this phenomenon and its psychologic determination as exhaustively, and at the same time as effectively, as Nietzsche in one of his aphorisms (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, ii., Hauptstück 68): “‘I have done that,’ says my Memory. ‘I could not have done that,’ says my Pride, and remains inexorable. Finally, my Memory yields.”
[35] Cf. Hans Gross, Kriminal Psychologie, 1898.
[36] Darwin on forgetting. In Darwin’s autobiography one finds the following passage that does equal credit to his scientific honesty and his psychologic acumen: “I had during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought, came across me which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones” (quoted by Jones, loc. cit., p. 38).
[37] Cf. Bernheim, Neue Studien über Hypnotismus, Suggestion und Psychotherapie, 1892.
[38] Young men of education who can pass the examination and pay for their maintenance serve one instead of two years’ compulsory service.
[39] In Bernard Shaw’s Cæsar and Cleopatra, Cæsar’s indifference to Cleopatra is depicted by his being vexed on leaving Egypt at having forgotten to do something. He finally recollected what he had forgotten—to take leave of Cleopatra—this, to be sure, is in full accord with historical truth. How little Cæsar thought of the little Egyptian princess! Cited from Jones, loc. cit., p. 50.
[40] Women, with their fine understanding of unconscious mental processes, are, as a rule, more apt to take offence when we do not recognize them in the street, and hence do not greet them, than to accept the most obvious explanation, namely, that the dilatory one is short-sighted or so engrossed in thought that he did not see them. They conclude that they surely would have been noticed if they had been considered of any consequence.
[41] Dr. Ferenczi reports that he was a distracted person himself, and was considered peculiar by his friends on account of the frequency and strangeness of his failing. But the signs of this inattention have almost all disappeared since he began to practise psychoanalysis with patients, and was forced to turn his attention to the analysis of his own ego. He believes that one renounces these failings when one learns to extend by so much one’s own responsibilities. He therefore justly maintains that distractedness is a state which depends on unconscious complexes, and is curable by psychoanalysis. One day he was reproaching himself for having committed a technical error in the psychoanalysis of a patient, and on this day all his former distractions reappeared. He stumbled while walking in the street (a representation of that faux pas in the treatment), he forgot his pocket-book at home, he was a penny short in his car fare, he did not properly button his clothes, etc.
[42] E. Jones remarks regarding this: “Often the resistance is of a general order. Thus a busy man forgets to mail a letter entrusted to him—to his slight annoyance—by his wife, just as he may ‘forget’ to carry out her shopping orders.”
[43] For the sake of the unity of the theme I may here digress from the accepted classification, and add that the human memory evinces a particular partiality in regard to money matters. False reminiscences of having already paid something are often very obstinate, as I know from personal experience. When free sway is given to avaricious intent outside of the serious interests of life, when it is indulged in in the spirit of fun, as in card playing, we then find that the most honourable men show an inclination to errors, mistakes in memory and accounts, and without realizing how, they even find themselves involved in small frauds. Such liberties depend in no small part also on the psychically refreshing character of the play. The saying that in play we can learn a person’s character may be admitted if we can add “the repressed character.” If waiters ever make unintentional mistakes they are apparently due to the same mechanism. Among merchants we can frequently observe a certain delay in the paying out of sums of money, in payments of bills and the like, which brings the owner no profit and can be only understood psychologically as the expression of a counter-will against giving out money. Brill sums it up with epigrammatic keenness: “We are more apt to mislay letters containing bills than cheques” (Brill, Psychanalysis, its Theories and Practical Application, p. 197).
[44] Translated by A. A. Brill.
[45] A second publication of Meringer has later shown me how very unjust I was to this author when I attributed to him so much understanding.
[46] Jones, loc. cit., p. 79.
[47] Alas! the Venus of Medici is lost!
[48] The Œdipus dream as I was wont to call it, because it contains the key to the understanding of the legend of King Œdipus. In the text of Sophocles the relation of such a dream is put in the mouth of Jocasta (cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 222-4, etc.).
[49] New York Medical Journal, September, 1912. Reprinted in large form as Chapter X of Psychanalysis, etc., Saunders, Philadelphia.
[50] The self-inflicted injury which does not entirely tend toward self-annihilation has, moreover, no other choice in our present state of civilization than to hide itself behind the accidental, or to break through in a simulation of spontaneous illness. Formerly, it was a customary sign of mourning, at other times it expressed itself in ideas of piety and renunciation of the world.
[51] The case is then identical with a sexual attack on a woman, in whom the attack of the man cannot be warded off through the full muscular strength of the woman because a portion of the unconscious feelings of the one attacked meets it with ready acceptance. To be sure, it is said that such a situation paralyses the strength of a woman; we need only add the reasons for this paralysis. Insofar the clever sentence of Sancho Panza, which he pronounced as governor of his island, is psychologically unjust (Don Quixote, vol. ii. chap. xlv). A woman hauled before the judge a man who was supposed to have robbed her of her honour by force of violence. Sancho indemnified her with a full purse which he took from the accused, but after the departure of the woman he gave the accused permission to follow her and snatch the purse from her. Both returned wrestling, the woman priding herself that the villain was unable to possess himself of the purse. Thereupon Sancho spoke: “Had you shown yourself so stout and valiant to defend your body (nay, but half so much) as you have done to defend your purse, the strength of Hercules could not have forced you.”
[52] It is evident that the situation of a battlefield is such as to meet the requirement of conscious suicidal intent which, nevertheless, shuns the direct way. Cf. in Wallenstein the words of the Swedish captain concerning the death of Max Piccolomini: “They say he wished to die.”
[53] “Selbstbestrafung wegen Abortus von Dr. J. E. G. van Emden,” Haag (Holland), Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 12.
[54] “Beitrag zur Symbolik im Alltag von Ernest Jones,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, i. 3, 1911.
[55] Psychoanalytic research, with the penetration of infantile amnesia, has shown that this apparent precocity is a less abnormal occurrence than was previously supposed.
[56] The term “medical questions” is a common periphrasis for “sexual questions.”
[57] Cf. Oldham’s “I wear my pen as others do their sword.”
[58] Maeder, “Contribution à la psychologie de la vie quotidienne,” Arch. des psychologie, T. vi. 1906.
[59] Here is another small collection of various symptomatic actions in normal and neurotic persons. An elderly colleague who does not like to lose at cards had to pay one evening a large sum of money in consequence of his losses; he did this without complaint, but with a peculiar constrained temper. After his departure it was discovered that he had left at this place practically everything he had with him, spectacles, cigar-case, and handkerchief. That would be readily translated into the words: “You robbers, you have nicely plundered me.” A man who suffers from occasional sexual impotence, which has its origin in the intimacy of his infantile relations to his mother, relates that he is in the habit of embellishing pamphlets and notes with an S, the initial of his mother’s name. He cannot bear the idea of having letters from home come in contact with other unsanctified correspondence, and therefore finds it necessary to keep the former separate. A young woman suddenly flings open the door of the consulting-room while her predecessor is still present. She excused herself on the ground of “thoughtlessness”; it soon came to light that she demonstrated her curiosity which caused her at an earlier time to intrude into the bedroom of her parents. Girls who are proud of their beautiful hair know so well how to manipulate combs and hairpins, that in the midst of conversation their hair becomes loosened. During the treatment (in a reclining position) some men scatter change from their pockets and thus pay for the hour of treatment; the amount scattered is in proportion to their estimation of the work. Whoever forgets articles in the doctor’s office, such as eyeglasses, gloves, handbags, generally indicates that he cannot tear himself away and is anxious to return soon. Ernest Jones says: “One can almost measure the success with which a physician is practising psychotherapy, for instance, by the size of the collection of umbrellas, handkerchiefs, purses, and so on, that he could make in a month. The slightest habits and acts performed with a minimum of attention, such as the winding of a clock before retiring to sleep, the putting out of lights before leaving the room, and similar actions, are occasionally subject to disturbances which clearly demonstrate the influence of the unconscious complex, and what is thought to be the strongest ‘habits.’”
In the journal Cœnobium, Maeder relates about a hospital physician who, on account of an important matter, desired to get to the city that evening, although he was on duty and had no right to leave the hospital. On his return he noticed to his surprise that there was a light in his room. On leaving the room he had forgotten to put it out, something that had never happened before. But he soon grasped the motive of this forgetting. The hospital superintendent who lived in the same house must have concluded from the light in the room that he was at home. A man overburdened with worries and subject to occasional depressions assured me that he regularly forgot to wind his watch on those evenings when life seemed too hard and unfriendly. In this omission to wind his watch he symbolically expressed that it was a matter of indifference to him whether he lived to see the next day. Another man who was personally unknown to me wrote: “Having been struck by a terrible misfortune, life appeared so harsh and unsympathetic, that I imagined that I had not sufficient strength to live to see the next day. I then noticed that almost every day I forgot to wind my watch, something that I never omitted before. I had been in the habit of doing it regularly before retiring in an almost mechanical and unconscious manner. It was only very seldom that I thought of it, and that happened when I had something important for the next day which held my interest. ‘Should this be considered a symptomatic action? I really cannot explain it.’” Whoever will take the trouble, like Jung (The Psychology of Dementia Præcox, translated by Peterson and Brill), or Maeder (“Une voie nouvelle en Psychologie—Freud et son ecole,” Cœnobium, Lugano, 1906), to pay attention to melodies which one hums to himself aimlessly and unconsciously, will regularly discover the relation of the melody’s text to a theme which occupies the person at that time.
[60] “Das Verlieren als Symptom-handlung,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, i. 10-11.
[61] Translated by A. A. Brill. The Macmillan Company, New York; George Allen Company, London.
[62] This is not a perfect error. According to the orphic version of the myth the emasculation was performed by Zeus on his father Kronos.
[63] Loc. cit., p. 191.
[64] Nouvelles contributions, etc., Arch. de Psych., vi. 1908.
[65] Loc. cit., p. 42.
[66] Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 9.
[67] Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 5.
[68] This continued action in the unconscious manifested itself once in the form of a dream which followed the faulty action, another time in the repetition of the same or in the omission of a correction.
[69] Alfred Adler, “Drei Psychoanalysen von Zahlen einfällen und obsedierenden Zahlen,” Psych. Neur. Wochenschr., No. 28, 1905.
[70] As an explanation of Macbeth, No. 17 of the U. L., I was informed by Dr. Adler that in his seventeenth year this man had joined an anarchistic society whose aim was regicide. Probably this is why he forgot the content of the play Macbeth. The same person invented at that time a secret code in which numbers substituted letters.
[71] For the sake of simplicity I have omitted some of the not less suitable thoughts of the patients.
[72] Loc. cit., p. 36.
[73] “Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Zahlentraumes,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, i. 12.
[74] “Unconscious Manipulation of Numbers” (ibid., ii. 5, 1912).
[75] This is another excellent example showing how a conscious intention was powerless to counteract an unconscious resistance.
[76] These conceptions of strict determinism in seemingly arbitrary actions have already borne rich fruit for psychology—perhaps also for the administration of justice. Bleuler and Jung have in this way made intelligible the reaction in the so-called association experiments, wherein the test person answers to a given word with one occurring to him (stimulus-word reaction), while the time elapsing between the stimulus word and answer is measured (reaction-time). Jung has shown in his Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien, 1906, what fine reagents for psychic occurrences we possess in this association-experiment. Three students of criminology, H. Gross, of Prague, and Wertheimer and Klein, have developed from these experiments a technique for the diagnosis of facts (Tatbestands-Diagnostik) in criminal cases, the examination of which is now tested by psychologists and jurists.
[77] Proceeding from other points of view, this interpretation of the trivial and accidental by the patient has been designated as “delusions of reference.”
[78] For example, the fantasies of the hysterical regarding sexual and cruel abuse which are made conscious by analysis often correspond in every detail with the complaints of persecuted paranoiacs. It is remarkable but not altogether unexpected that we also meet the identical content as reality in the contrivances of perverts for the gratification of their desires.
[79] Which naturally has nothing of the character of perception.
[80] Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 5.
[81] Thus far this explanation of Déjà vu has been appreciated by only one observer. Dr. Ferenczi, to whom the third edition of this book is indebted for so many contributions, writes to me concerning this: “I have been convinced, through myself as well as others, that the inexplicable feeling of familiarity can be referred to unconscious fantasies of which we are unconsciously reminded in an actual situation. With one of my patients the process was apparently different, but in reality it was quite analogous. This feeling returned to him very often, but showed itself regularly as originating in a forgotten (repressed) portion of a dream of the preceding night. Thus it appears that the Déjà vu can originate not only from day dreams but also from night dreams.”
[82] I can perhaps give the following outline concerning the mechanism of actual forgetting. The memory material succumbs in general to two influences, condensation and disfigurement. Disfigurement is the work of the tendencies dominating the psychic life, and directs itself above all against the affective remnants of memory traces which maintain a more resistive attitude towards condensation. The traces which have grown indifferent merge into a process of condensation without opposition; in addition it may be observed that tendencies of disfigurement also feed on the indifferent material, because they have not been gratified where they wished to manifest themselves. As these processes of condensation and disfigurement continue for long periods during which all fresh experiences act upon the transformation of the memory content, it is our belief that it is time that makes memory uncertain and indistinct. It is quite probable that in forgetting there can really be no question of a direct function of time. From the repressed memory traces it can be verified that they suffer no changes even in the longest periods. The unconscious, at all events, knows no time limit. The most important as well as the most peculiar character of psychic fixation consists in the fact that all impressions are on the one hand retained in the same form as they were received, and also in the forms that they have assumed in their further development. This state of affairs cannot be elucidated by any comparison from any other sphere. By virtue of this theory every former state of the memory content may thus be restored, even though all original relations have long been replaced by newer ones.
[83] Cf. here The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 483. Macmillan: New York; and Allen: London.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON