“A lady who heard something about psychoanalysis could not recall the name of the psychiatrist, Young (Jung).
“Instead, the following names occurred to her: Kl. (a name)—Wilde—Nietzsche—Hauptmann.
“I did not tell her the name, and requested her to repeat her free associations to every thought.
“To Kl. she at once thought of Mrs. Kl., that she was an embellished and affected person who looked very well for her age. ‘She does not age.’ As a general and principal conception of Wilde and Nietzsche, she gave the association ‘mental disease.’ She then added jocosely: ‘The Freudians will continue looking for the causes of mental diseases until they themselves become insane.’ She continued: ‘I cannot bear Wilde and Nietzsche. I do not understand them. I hear that they were both homosexual. Wilde has occupied himself with young people’ (although she uttered in this sentence the correct name she still could not remember it).
“To Hauptmann she associated the words half and youth, and only after I called her attention to the word youth did she become aware that she was looking for the name Young (Jung).”
It is clear that this lady, who had lost her husband at the age of thirty-nine, and had no prospect of marrying a second time, had cause enough to avoid reminiscences recalling youth or old age. The remarkable thing is that the concealing thoughts of the desired name came to the surface as simple associations of content without any sound-associations.
(h) Still different and very finely motivated is an example of name-forgetting which the person concerned has himself explained.
“While taking an examination in philosophy as a minor subject I was questioned by the examiner about the teachings of Epicurus, and was asked whether I knew who took up his teachings centuries later. I answered that it was Pierre Gassendi, whom two days before while in a café I had happened to hear spoken of as a follower of Epicurus. To the question how I knew this I boldly replied that I had taken an interest in Gassendi for a long time. This resulted in a certificate with a magna cum laude, but later, unfortunately, also in a persistent tendency to forget the name Gassendi. I believe that it is due to my guilty conscience that even now I cannot retain this name despite all efforts. I had no business knowing it at that time.”
To have a proper appreciation of the intense repugnance entertained by our narrator against the recollection of this examination episode, one must have realized how highly he prizes his doctor’s degree, and for how many other things this substitute must stand.
I add here another example of forgetting the name of a city, an instance which is perhaps not as simple as those given before, but which will appear credible and valuable to those more familiar with such investigations. The name of an Italian city withdrew itself from memory on account of its far-reaching sound-similarity to a woman’s first name, which was in turn connected with various emotional reminiscences which were surely not exhaustively treated in this report. Dr. S. Ferenczi, who observed this case of forgetting in himself, treated it—quite justly—as an analysis of a dream or an erotic idea.