Freud - Complete Works (196 page)
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1111
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.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1112
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:
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1113
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?
’]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1114
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’.)]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1115
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
1116
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.