Freud - Complete Works (81 page)

The Psychical Mechanism Of Forgetfulness

483

   Among the various factors,
therefore, which contribute to a failure in recollection or a loss
of memory, the part played by repression must not be overlooked;
and it can be demonstrated not only in neurotics but (in a manner
that is qualitatively the same) in normal people as well. It may be
asserted quite generally that the ease (and ultimately the
faithfulness, too) with which a given impression is awakened in the
memory depends not only on the psychical constitution of the
individual, the strength of the impression when it was fresh, the
interest directed towards it at the time, the psychical
constellation at the present time, the interest that is
now
devoted to its awakening, the connections into which the impression
has been drawn, and so on - not only on such things but also on the
favourable or unfavourable attitude of a particular psychical
factor which refuses to reproduce anything that might liberate
unpleasure, or that might subsequently lead to the liberation of
unpleasure. Thus the function of memory, which we like to regard as
an archive open to anyone who is curious, is in this way subjected
to restriction by a trend of the will, just as is any part of our
activity directed to the external world. Half the secret of
hysterical amnesia is uncovered when we say that hysterical people
do not know what they do not
want
to know; and
psycho-analytic treatment, which endeavours to fill up such gaps of
memory in the course of its work, leads us to the discovery that
the bringing back of those lost memories is opposed by a certain
resistance which has to be counterbalanced by work proportionate to
its magnitude. In the case of psychical processes which are on the
whole normal, it cannot, of course, be claimed that the influence
of this one-sided factor in the revival of memories in any way
regularly overcomes all the other factors that must be taken into
account.¹

  
¹
It would be a mistake to believe that the
mechanism which I have brought to light in these pages only
operates in rare cases. It is, on the contrary, a very common one.
On one occasion, for instance, when I was meaning to describe the
same small incident to a colleague of mine, the name of my
authority for the stories about Bosnia suddenly escaped me. The
reason for this was as follows. Just before, I had been playing
cards. My authority was called Pick. Now ‘
Pick
’
and ‘
Herz
’ are two of the four suits in the
pack. Moreover the two words were connected by an anecdote in which
this same person pointed to himself and said: ‘I’m not
called "
Herz
", but "
Pick
".’
‘
Herz
’ appears in the name
‘
Herzegovina
’ and the heart itself, as a sick
bodily organ, played a part in the thoughts I have described as
having been repressed.

The Psychical Mechanism Of Forgetfulness

484

   In connection with the
tendentious nature of our remembering and forgetting, I not long
ago experienced an instructive example - instructive because of
what it betrayed - of which I should like to add an account here. I
was intending to pay a twenty-four-hour visit to a friend of mine
who unfortunately lives very far away, and I was full of the things
I was going to tell him. But before this I felt under an obligation
to call on a family of my acquaintance in Vienna, one of whose
members had moved to the town in question, so as to take their
greetings and messages with me to the absent relative. They told me
the name of the
pension
in which he lived, and also the name
of the street and the number of the house, and, in view of my bad
memory, wrote the address on a card, which I put in my wallet. The
next day, when I had arrived at my friend’s, I began:
‘I’ve only one duty to carry out that may interfere
with our being together; it’s a call, and it shall be the
first thing I do. The address is in my wallet.’ To my
astonishment, however, it was not to be found there. So now I had
to fall back on my memory, after all. My memory for names is not
particularly good, but it is incomparably better than for figures
and numbers. I may have been paying medical visits at a certain
house for a year on end, and yet, if I should have to be driven
there by a cab driver, I should have difficulty in remembering the
number of the house. But in this case I had taken special note of
the house number; it was ultra-clear, as if to jeer at me - for no
trace remained in my recollection of the name of the
pension
or the street. I had forgotten all the data in the address which
might have served as a starting - point for discovering the
pension
; and, quite against my usual habit, I had retained
the number of the house, which was useless for the purpose. In
consequence, I was unable to make the call. I was consoled
remarkably quickly, and I devoted myself entirely to my friend.
When I was back again in Vienna and standing in front of my writing
desk, I knew without a moment’s hesitation where it was that,
in my ‘absent-mindedness’, I had put the card with the
address on it. In my unconscious hiding of the thing the same
intention had been operative as in my curiously modified act of
forgetting.

485

SCREEN MEMORIES

(1899)

486

Intentionally left blank

487

SCREEN MEMORIES

In the course of my psycho-analytic treatment
of cases of hysteria, obsessional neurosis, etc., I have often had
to deal with fragmentary recollections which have remained in the
patient’s memory from the earliest years of his childhood. As
I have shown elsewhere, great pathogenic importance must be
attributed to the impressions of that time of life. But the subject
of childhood memories is in any case bound to be of psychological
interest, for they bring into striking relief a fundamental
difference between the psychical functioning of children and of
adults. No one calls in question the fact that the experiences of
the earliest years of our childhood leave ineradicable traces in
the depths of our minds. If, however, we seek in our
memories
to ascertain what were the impressions that were
destined to influence us to the end of our lives, the outcome is
either nothing at all or a relatively small number of isolated
recollections which are often of dubious or enigmatic importance.
It is only from the sixth or seventh year onwards - in many cases
only after the tenth year - that our lives can be reproduced in
memory as a connected chain of events. From that time on, however,
there is also a direct relation between the psychical significance
of an experience and its retention in the memory. Whatever seems
important on account of its immediate or directly subsequent
effects is recollected; whatever is judged to be inessential is
forgotten. If I can remember an event a long time after its
occurrence, I regard the fact of having retained it in my memory as
evidence of its having made a deep impression on me at the time. I
feel surprised at forgetting; and I feel even more surprised,
perhaps, at remembering something apparently indifferent.

Screen Memories

488

   It is only in certain
pathological mental conditions that the relation holding in normal
adults between the psychical significance of an event and its
retention in memory once more ceases to apply. For instance, a
hysteric habitually shows amnesia for some or all of the
experiences which led to the onset of his illness and which from
that very fact have become important to him and, apart from that
fact, may have been important on their own account. The analogy
between pathological amnesia of this kind and the normal amnesia
affecting our early years seems to me to give a valuable hint at
the intimate connection that exists between the psychical content
of neuroses and our infantile life.

   We are so much accustomed to this
lack of memory of the impressions of childhood that we are apt to
overlook the problem underlying it and are inclined to explain it
as a self-evident consequence of the rudimentary character of the
mental activities of children. Actually, however, a normally
developed child of three or four already exhibits an enormous
amount of highly organized mental functioning in the comparisons
and inferences which he makes and in the expression of his
feelings; and there is no obvious reason why amnesia should
overtake these psychical acts, which carry no less weight than
those of a later age.

   Before dealing with the
psychological problems attaching to the earliest memories of
childhood, it would of course be essential to make a collection of
material by circularizing a fairly large number of normal adults
and discovering what kind of recollections they are able to produce
from these early years. A first step in this direction was taken in
1895 by V. and C. Henri, who sent round a paper of questions drawn
up by them. The highly suggestive results of their questionnaire,
which brought in replies from 123 persons, were published by the
two authors in 1897. I have no intention at present of discussing
the subject as a whole, and I shall therefore content myself with
emphasizing the few points which will enable me to introduce the
notion of what I have termed ‘screen memories’.

   The age to which the content of
the earliest memories of childhood is usually referred back is the
period between the ages of two and four. (This is the case with 88
persons in the series observed by the Henris.) There are some,
however, whose memory reaches back further - even to the time
before the completion of their first year; and, on the other hand,
there are some whose earliest recollections go back only to their
sixth, seventh, or even eighth year. There is nothing at the moment
to show what else is related to these individual differences; is to
be noticed, say the Henris, that a person whose earliest
recollection goes back to a very tender age - to the first year of
his life, perhaps - will also have at his disposal further detached
memories from the following years, and that he will be able to
reproduce his experiences as a continuous chain from an earlier
point of time - from about his fifth year - than is possible for
other people, whose first recollection dates from a later time.
Thus not only the date of the appearance of the first recollection
but the whole function of memory may, in the case of some people,
be advanced or retarded.

Screen Memories

489

   Quite special interest attaches
to the question of what is the usual
content
of these
earliest memories of childhood. The psychology of adults would
necessarily lead us to expect that those experiences would be
selected as worth remembering which had aroused some powerful
emotion or which, owing to their consequences, had been recognized
as important soon after their occurrence. And some indeed of the
observations collected by the Henris appear to fulfil this
expectation. They report that the most frequent content of the
first memories of childhood are on the one hand occasions of fear,
shame, physical pain, etc., and on the other hand important events
such as illnesses, deaths, fires, births of brothers and sisters,
etc. We might therefore be inclined to assume that the principle
governing the choice of memories is the same in the case of
children as in that of adults. It is intelligible - though the fact
deserves to be explicitly mentioned - that the memories retained
from childhood should necessarily show evidence of the difference
between what attracts the interest of a child and of an adult. This
easily explains why, for instance, one woman reports that she
remembers a number of accidents that occurred to her dolls when she
was two years old but has no recollection of the serious and tragic
events she might have observed at the same period.

   Now, however, we are met by a
fact that is diametrically opposed to our expectations and cannot
fail to astonish us. We hear that there are some people whose
earliest recollections of childhood are concerned with everyday and
indifferent events which could not produce any emotional effect
even in children, but which are recollected (
too
clearly,
one is inclined to say) in every detail, while approximately
contemporary events, even if, on the evidence of their parents,
they moved them intensely at the time, have not been retained in
their memory. Thus the Henris mention a professor of philology
whose earliest memory, dating back to between the ages of three and
four, showed him a table laid for a meal and on it a basin of ice.
At the same period there occurred the death of his grandmother
which, according to his parents, was a severe blow to the child.
But the professor of philology, as he now is, has no recollection
of this bereavement; all that he remembers of those days is the
basin of ice. Another man reports that his earliest memory is an
episode upon a walk in which he broke off a branch from a tree. He
thinks he can still identify the spot where this happened. There
were several other people present, and one of them helped him.

Screen Memories

490

   The Henris describe such cases as
rare. In my experience, based for the most part, it is true, on
neurotics, they are quite frequent. One of the subjects of the
Henris’ investigation made an attempt at explaining the
occurrence of these mnemic images, whose innocence makes them so
mysterious, and his explanation seems to me very much to the point.
He thinks that in such cases the relevant scene may perhaps have
been only
incompletely
retained in the memory, and that that
may be why it seems so unenlightening: the parts that have been
forgotten probably contained everything that made the experience
noteworthy. I am able to confirm the truth of this view, though I
should prefer to speak of these elements of the experience being
omitted
rather than forgotten. I have often succeeded, by
means of psycho-analytic treatment, in uncovering the missing
portions of a childhood experience and in thus proving that when
the impression, of which no more than a torso was retained in the
memory, had been restored to completeness, it did in fact agree
with the presumption that it is the most important things that are
recollected. This, however, provides no explanation of the
remarkable choice which memory has made among the elements of the
experience. We must first enquire why it should be that precisely
what is important is suppressed and what is indifferent retained;
and we shall not find an explanation of this until we have
investigated the mechanism of these processes more deeply. We shall
then form a notion that two psychical forces are concerned in
bringing about memories of this sort. One of these forces takes the
importance of the experience as a motive for seeking to remember
it, while the other - a resistance - tries to prevent any such
preference from being shown. These two opposing forces do not
cancel each other out, nor does one of them (whether with or
without loss to itself) overpower the other. Instead, a compromise
is brought about, somewhat on the analogy of the resultant in a
parallelogram of forces. And the compromise is this. What is
recorded as a mnemic image is not the relevant experience itself -
in this respect the resistance gets its way; what is recorded is
another psychical element closely associated with the objectionable
one - and in this respect the
first
principle shows its
strength, the principle which endeavours to fix important
impressions by establishing reproducible mnemic images. The result
of the conflict is therefore that, instead of the mnemic image
which would have been justified by the original event, another is
produced which has been to some degree associatively
displaced
from the former one. And since the elements of the
experience which aroused objection were precisely the important
ones, the substituted memory will necessarily lack those important
elements and will in consequence most probably strike us as
trivial. It will seem incomprehensible to us because we are
inclined to look for the reason for its retention in its own
content, whereas in fact that retention is due to the relation
holding between its own content and a different one which has been
suppressed. There is a common saying among us about shams, that
they are not made of gold themselves but have lain beside something
that is made of gold. The same simile might well be applied to some
of the experiences of childhood which have been retained in the
memory.

Screen Memories

 
491

   There are numerous possible types
of case in which one psychical content is substituted for another,
and these come about in a variety of psychological constellations.
One of the simplest of these cases is obviously that occurring in
the childhood memories with which we are here concerned - the case,
that is, where the essential elements of an experience are
represented in memory by the inessential elements of the same
experience. It is a case of displacement on to something associated
by continuity; or, looking at the process as a whole, a case of
repression accompanied by the substitution of something in the
neighbourhood (whether in space or time). I have elsewhere¹
had occasion to describe a very similar instance of substitution
which occurred in the analysis of a patient suffering from
paranoia. The woman in question hallucinated voices, which used to
repeat long passages from Otto Ludwig’s novel
Die
Heiterethei
to her. But the passages they chose were the most
trifling and irrelevant in the book. The analysis showed, however,
that there were other passages in the same work which had stirred
up the most distressing thoughts in the patient. The distressing
affect was a motive for putting up a defence against them, but the
motives in favour of pursuing them further were not to be
suppressed. The result was a compromise by which the innocent
passages emerged in the patient’s memory with pathological
strength and clarity. The process which we here see at work -
conflict, repression, substitution involving a compromise - returns
in all psychoneurotic symptoms and gives us the key to
understanding their formation. Thus it is not without importance if
we are able to show the same process operating in the mental life
of normal individuals, and the fact that what it influences in
normal people is precisely their choice of childhood memories seems
to afford one more indication of the intimate relations which have
already been insisted upon between the mental life of children and
the psychical material of the neuroses.

   The processes of normal and
pathological defence and the displacements in which they result are
clearly of great importance. But to the best of my knowledge no
study whatever has hitherto been made of them by psychologists; and
it remains to be ascertained in what strata of psychical activity
and under what conditions they come into operation. The reason for
this neglect may well be that our mental life, so far as it is the
object of our
conscious
internal perception, shows nothing
of these processes, apart from instances which we classify as
‘faulty reasoning’ and some mental operations which aim
at producing a comic effect. The assertion that a psychical
intensity can be displaced from one presentation (which is then
abandoned) on to another (which thenceforward plays the
psychological part of the former one) is as bewildering to us as
certain features of Greek mythology - as, for instance, when the
gods are said to clothe someone with beauty as though it were with
a veil, whereas
we
think only of a face transfigured by a
change of expression.