Freud - Complete Works (195 page)
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1106
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
.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1107
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
.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1108
‘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?’
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1109
‘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.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1110
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.