Freud - Complete Works (82 page)

  
¹
‘Further Remarks on the
Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’ (1896
b
).

Screen Memories

492

   Further investigation of these
indifferent childhood memories has taught me that they can
originate in other ways as well and that an unsuspected wealth of
meaning lies concealed behind their apparent innocence. But on this
point I shall not content myself with a mere assertion but shall
give a detailed report of one particular instance which seems to me
the most instructive out of a considerable number of similar ones.
Its value is certainly increased by the fact that it relates to
someone who is not at all or only very slightly neurotic.

   The subject of this observation
is a man of university education, aged thirty-eight. Though his own
profession lies in a very different field, he has taken an interest
in psychological questions ever since I was able to relieve him of
a slight phobia by means of psycho-analysis. Last year he drew my
attention to his childhood memories, which had already played some
part in his analysis. After studying the investigation made by V.
and C. Henri, he gave me the following summarized account of his
own experience.

   ‘I have at my disposal a
fair number of early memories of childhood which I can date with
great certainty. For at the age of three I left the small place
where I was born and moved to a large town; and all these memories
of mine relate to my birth place and therefore date from my second
and third years. They are mostly short scenes, but they are very
well preserved and furnished with every detail of sense-perception,
in complete contrast to my memories of adult years, which are
entirely lacking in the visual element. From my third year onwards
my recollections grow scantier and less clear; there are gaps in
them which must cover more than a year; and it is not, I believe,
until my sixth or seventh year that the stream of my memories
becomes continuous. My memories up to the time of my leaving my
first place of residence fall into three groups. The first group
consists of scenes which my parents have repeatedly since described
to me. As regards these, I feel uncertain whether I have had the
mnemic image from the beginning or whether I only construed it
after hearing one of these descriptions. I may remark, however,
that there are also events of which I have no mnemic image in spite
of their having been frequently retailed by my parents. I attach
more importance to the second group. It comprises scenes which have
not (so far as I know) been described to me and some of which,
indeed, could not have been described to me, as I have not met the
other participants in them (my nurse and playmates) since their
occurrence. I shall come to the third group presently. As regards
the content of these scenes and their consequent claim to being
recollected, I should like to say that I am not entirely at sea. I
cannot maintain, indeed, that what I have retained are memories of
the most important events of the period, or what I should to-day
judge to be the most important. I have no knowledge of the birth of
a sister, who is two and a half years younger than I am; my
departure, my first sight of the railway and the long
carriage-drive before it - none of these has left a trace in my
memory. On the other hand, I can remember two small occurrences
during the railway-journey; these, as you will recollect, came up
in the analysis of my phobia. But what should have made most
impression on me was an injury to my face which caused a
considerable loss of blood and for which I had to have some
stitches put in by a surgeon. I can still feel the scar resulting
from this accident, but I know of no recollection which points to
it, either directly or indirectly. It is true that I may perhaps
have been under two years old at the time.

Screen Memories

493

   ‘It follows from this that
I feel no surprise at the pictures and scenes of these first two
groups. No doubt they are displaced memories from which the
essential element has for the most part been omitted. But in a few
of them it is at least hinted at, and in others it is easy for me
to complete them by following certain pointers. By doing so I can
establish a sound connection between the separate fragments of
memories and arrive at a clear understanding of what the childish
interest was that recommended these particular occurrences to my
memory. This does not apply, however, to the content of the third
group, which I have not so far discussed. There I am met by
material - one rather long scene and several smaller pictures -
with which I can make no headway at all. The scene appears to me
fairly indifferent and I cannot understand why it should have
become fixed in my memory. Let me describe it to you. I see a
rectangular, rather steeply sloping piece of meadow-land, green and
thickly grown; in the green there are a great number of yellow
flowers - evidently common dandelions. At the top end of the meadow
there is a cottage and in front of the cottage door two women are
standing chatting busily, a peasant-woman with a handkerchief on
her head and a children’s nurse. Three children are playing
in the grass. One of them is myself (between the age of two and
three); the two others are my boy cousin, who is a year older than
me, and his sister, who is almost exactly the same age as I am. We
are picking the yellow flowers and each of us is holding a bunch of
flowers we have already picked. The little girl has the best bunch;
and, as though by mutual agreement, we - the two boys - fall on her
and snatch away her flowers. She runs up the meadow in tears and as
a consolation the peasant-woman gives her a big piece of black
bread. Hardly have we seen this than we throw the flowers away,
hurry to the cottage and ask to be given some bread too. And we are
in fact given some; the peasant-woman cuts the loaf with a long
knife. In my memory the bread tastes quite delicious - and at that
point the scene breaks off.

   ‘Now what is there in this
occurrence to justify the expenditure of memory which it has
occasioned me?  I have racked my brains in vain over it. Does
the emphasis lie on our disagreeable behaviour to the little girl?
Did the yellow colour of the dandelions- a flower which I am, of
course, far from admiring to-day - so greatly please me? Or, as a
result of my careering round the grass, did the bread taste so much
nicer than usual that it made an unforgettable impression on me?
Nor can I find any connection between this scene and the interest
which (as I was able to discover without any difficulty) bound
together the other scenes from my childhood. Altogether, there
seems to me something not quite right about this scene. The yellow
of the flowers is a disproportionately prominent element in the
situation as a whole, and the nice taste of the bread seems to me
exaggerated in an almost hallucinatory fashion. I cannot help being
reminded of some pictures that I once saw in a burlesque
exhibition. Certain portions of these pictures, and of course the
most inappropriate ones, instead of being painted, were built up in
three dimensions - for instance, the ladies’ bustles. Well,
can you point out any way of finding an explanation or
interpretation of this redundant memory of my childhood?’

Screen Memories

494

   I thought it advisable to ask him
since when he had been occupied with this recollection: whether he
was of opinion that it had recurred to his memory periodically
since his childhood, or whether it had perhaps emerged at some
later time on some occasion that could be recalled. This question
was all that it was necessary for me to contribute to the solution
of the problem; the rest was found by my collaborator himself, who
was no novice at jobs of this kind.

   ‘I have not yet considered
that point,’ he replied. ‘Now that you have raised the
question, it seems to me almost a certainty that this childhood
memory never occurred to me at all in my earlier years. But I can
also recall the occasion which led to my recovering this and many
other recollections of my earliest childhood. When I was seventeen
and at my secondary school, I returned for the first time to my
birthplace for the holidays, to stay with a family who had been our
friends ever since that remote date. I know quite well what a
wealth of impressions overwhelmed me at that time. But I see now
that I shall have to tell you a whole big piece of my history: it
belongs here, and you have brought it upon yourself by your
question. So listen. I was the child of people who were originally
well-to-do and who, I fancy, lived comfortably enough in that
little corner of the provinces. When I was about three, the branch
of industry in which my father was concerned met with a
catastrophe. He lost all his means and we were forced to leave the
place and move to a large town. Long and difficult years followed,
of which, as it seems to me, nothing was worth remembering. I never
felt really comfortable in the town. I believe now that I was never
free from a longing for the beautiful woods near our home, in which
(as one of my memories from those days tells me) I used to run off
from my father, almost before I had learnt to walk. Those holidays,
when I was seventeen, were my first holidays in the country, and,
as I have said, I stayed with a family with whom we were friends
and who had risen greatly in the world since our move. I could
compare the comfort reigning there with our own style of living at
home in the town. But it is no use evading the subject any longer:
I must admit that there was something else that excited me
powerfully. I was seventeen, and in the family where I was staying
there was a daughter of fifteen, with whom I immediately fell in
love. It was my first calf-love and sufficiently intense, but I
kept it completely secret. After a few days the girl went off to
her school (from which she too was home for the holidays) and it
was this separation after such a short acquaintance that brought my
longings to a really high pitch. I passed many hours in solitary
walks through the lovely woods that I had found once more and spent
my time building castles in the air. These, strangely enough, were
not concerned with the future but sought to improve the past. If
only the smash had not occurred! If only I had stopped at home and
grown up in the country and grown as strong as the young men in the
house, the brothers of my love! And then if only I had followed my
father’s profession and if I had finally married her - for I
should have known her intimately all those years! I had not the
slightest doubt, of course, that in the circumstances created by my
imagination I should have loved her just as passionately as I
really seemed to then. A strange thing. For when I see her now from
time to time - she happens to have married someone here - she is
quite exceptionally indifferent to me. Yet I can remember quite
well for what a long time afterwards I was affected by the yellow
colour of the dress she was wearing when we first met, whenever I
saw the same colour anywhere else.’

Screen Memories

495

   That sounds very much like your
parenthetical remark to the effect that you are no longer fond of
the common dandelion. Do you not suspect that there may be a
connection between the yellow of the girl’s dress and the
ultra-clear yellow of the flowers in your childhood scene?

   ‘Possibly. But it was not
the same yellow. The dress was more of a yellowish brown, more like
the colour of wallflowers. However, I can at least let you have an
the intermediate idea which may serve your purpose. At a later
date, while I was the in the Alps, I saw how certain flowers which
have light colouring in the lowlands take on darker shades at high
altitudes. Unless I am greatly mistaken, there is frequently to be
found in mountainous regions a flower which is very similar to the
dandelion but which is dark yellow and would exactly agree in
colour with the dress of the girl I was so fond of. But I have not
finished yet. I now come to a second occasion which stirred up in
me the impressions of my childhood and which dates from a time not
far distant from the first. I was seventeen when I revisited my
birthplace. Three years later during my holidays I visited my uncle
and met once again the children who had been my first playmates,
the same two cousins, the boy a year older than I am and the girl
of the same age as myself, who appear in the childhood scene with
the dandelions. This family had left my birthplace at the same time
as we did and had become prosperous in a far-distant
city.’

   And did you once more fall in
love - with your cousin this time - and indulge in a new set of
phantasies?

   ‘No, this time things
turned out differently. By then I was at the University and I was a
slave to my books. I had nothing left over for my cousin. So far as
I know I had no similar phantasies on that occasion. But I believe
that my father and my uncle had concocted a plan by which I was to
exchange the abstruse subject of my studies for one of more
practical value, settle down, after my studies were completed, in
the place where my uncle lived, and marry my cousin. No doubt when
they saw how absorbed I was in my own intentions the plan was
dropped; but I fancy I must certainly have been aware of its
existence. It was not until later, when I was a newly-fledged man
of science and hard pressed by the exigencies of life and when I
had to wait so long before finding a post here, that I must
sometimes have reflected that my father had meant well in planning
this marriage for me, to make good the loss in which the original
catastrophe had involved my whole existence.’