Freud - Complete Works (200 page)
Oder der
Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.
¹
‘I gave a cry of triumph.
"There’s our Erdmann," I said. "The man who
‘stands on the earth’, that is to say the earthman or
Erdmann, cannot reach up far enough to bear comparison with the
linden (Lindeman) or the vine (wine merchant). In other words, our
Lindeman, the stupid student, who later became a wine merchant, was
certainly an ass, but our Erdmann is a much greater ass than that,
and cannot even be compared with this Lindeman." - Such
derisive or abusive language in the unconscious is quite usual; so
it seemed to me that the chief cause of the name being forgotten
had probably now been found.
¹
[Literally: ‘If he stands with firm,
pliant bones on the
earth
, he does not reach up far enough
to bear comparison even with the
linden
or the
vine
.’]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1132
‘I now asked what the poem
was from which the lines were quoted. Z. said it was a poem by
Goethe, which he thought began:
Edel sei der Mensch
Hilfreich und gut!
¹
and which later contained the lines:
Und hebt er sich aufwärts,
So spielen mit ihm die Winde.
²
‘The next day I looked up
this poem of Goethe’s, and it turned out that the case was
even prettier (though also more complex) than it had seemed at
first.
(
a
) ‘The first
lines that he quoted run (cf. above):
Steht er mit festen
Markigen
Knochen . .
.
³
‘"
Gefügige
Knochen" would be a rather peculiar combination; but I shall
not go further into this point.
(
b
) ‘The next
lines of this stanza run (cf. above):
. . . Auf der
wohlgegründeten
Dauernden
Erde,
Reicht er nicht auf,
Nur mit der
Eiche
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.
4
So in the whole poem there is no
mention of a linden. The change of "oak" into
"linden" had taken place (in his unconscious) only in
order to make the play on the words "earth-linden-vine"
possible.
(
c
) ‘This poem
is called "Grenzen der Menschheit" and compares the
omnipotence of the gods with man’s puny strength. But the
poem beginning:
Edel sei der Mensch,
Hilfreich und gut!
is a different one, appearing some pages
further on. Its title is "Das Göttliche [The Divine
Nature]", and it too contains thoughts about gods and men. As
the matter was not gone into further I can at the most offer an
opinion that thoughts about life and death, the temporal and the
eternal, and the subject’s own frail life and future death
also played a part in bringing about the occurrence of this
case.’
¹
[‘Let Man be noble, helpful and
good.’]
²
[‘And if he raises himself upwards
the winds play with him.’]
³
[‘If he stands with firm,
sturdy
bones . . .’]
4
[‘. . . on the
firmly-based, enduring
earth, he does
not reach up far enough to bear comparison even with the
oak
or the vine.’]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1133
In some of these examples all the
subtleties of psycho-analytic technique have to be called upon in
order to explain the forgetting of a name. Anyone who wishes to
learn more about such work may be referred to a paper by Ernest
Jones of London (1911
a
). It has been translated into
German.
(18) Ferenczi has observed that
forgetting a name may also make its appearance as a hysterical
symptom. In this situation it displays a very different mechanism
from that of a parapraxis . The nature of this distinction may be
seen from what he says:
‘At the moment I am
treating a patient, a spinster getting on in years, in whose mind
the most familiar and best-known proper names fail to appear,
although her memory is otherwise good. In the course of the
analysis it has become clear that this symptom is intended by her
as a documentation of her ignorance. This demonstrative parade of
her ignorance is, however, really a reproach against her parents,
who did not let her have any higher education. Her tormenting
obsession to clean things ("housewife’s psychosis")
also comes in part from the same source. What she means by this is
something like: "You have turned me into a
housemaid."'
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1134
I could cite further instances of
the forgetting of names and explore the matter much more fully if I
were not reluctant to anticipate at this first stage almost all the
points of view that will come up for discussion under later topics.
But I may perhaps allow myself to summarize in a few sentences the
conclusions to be drawn from the analyses that have been reported
here:
The mechanism of names being
forgotten (or, to be more accurate, the mechanism of names escaping
the memory, of being
temporarily
forgotten) consists in the
interference with the intended reproduction of the name by an alien
train of thought which is not at the time conscious. Between the
name interfered with and the interfering complex either a
connection exists from the outset, or else such a connection has
established itself, often in ways that appear artificial,
viâ
superficial (external) associations.
Among the interfering complexes
those of personal reference (i.e. the personal, family and
professional complexes) prove to have the greatest effect.
A name which has more than one
meaning and consequently belongs to more than one group of thoughts
(complexes) is frequently interfered with in its connection
with one train of thought owing to its participation in another,
stronger complex.
Among the motives for these
interferences the purpose of avoiding arousing unpleasure by
remembering is conspicuous.
In general two main types of
name-forgetting may be distinguished: those cases where the name
itself touches on something unpleasant, and those where it is
brought into connection with another name which has that effect.
Thus names can have their reproduction interfered with on their own
account, or because of their closer or remoter associative
relations.
A survey of these general
propositions shows us why the temporary forgetting of names is the
most frequently to be observed of all our parapraxes.
(19) We are however far from
having outlined all the characteristics of this phenomenon. There
is a further point I wish to make. The forgetting of names is
highly contagious. In a conversation between two people it is often
sufficient for one of them merely to mention that he has forgotten
such and such a name, and the result will be that it slips the
other’s mind as well. In cases like these, however, where the
forgetting is induced, the forgotten name returns more readily. -
This ‘collective’ forgetting, strictly speaking a
phenomenon of group psychology, his not yet been made the subject
of psycho-analytic study. In a single instance (but an especially,
neat one) Reik (1920) has been able to offer a good explanation of
this curious phenomenon.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1135
‘In a small gathering of
university people, which included two women students of philosophy,
there was a discussion on the numerous questions raised in the
fields of religious studies and the history of civilization by the
origin of Christianity. One of the young ladies who took part in
the conversation recalled that in an English novel she had read
recently she had found an interesting picture of the many religious
currents by which that age had been stirred. She added that the
novel portrayed the whole of Christ’s life from his birth up
to his death; but the name of the work refused to come to her mind.
(The visual memory she had of the cover of the book and the
appearance of the lettering in the title was excessively clear.)
Three of the men who were present also said that they knew the
novel, and they remarked that - strange to relate - they too were
unable to produce the name.’
The young lady was the only one
to subject herself to analysis in order to discover why this name
was forgotten. The title of the book was
Ben Hur
, by Lewis
Wallace. The ideas that had occurred to her as substitutes for it
had been: ‘
Ecce homo
’ - ‘
Homo
sum
’ - ‘
Quo vadis?
’ The girl herself
realized that she had forgotten the name ‘because it contains
an expression that I (like any other girl) do not care to use -
especially in the company of young men’.¹ In the light
of the very interesting analysis, this explanation took on a
profounder significance. In the context already alluded to, the
translation of ‘
homo
’ (man) also has a
disreputable meaning. Reik’s conclusion is as follows:
‘The young lady treated the word as though by uttering the
questionable title in front of young men she would have been
acknowledging the wishes which she had rejected as out of keeping
with her character and distressing to her. More briefly: saying the
words "Ben Hur"² was unconsciously equated by her
with a sexual offer, and her forgetting accordingly, corresponded
to the fending-off of an unconscious temptation of that kind. We
have reason for supposing that similarly unconscious processes had
determined the young men’s forgetting. Their unconscious
understood the real significance of the girl’s forgetting
and, so to speak, interpreted it. The men’s forgetting shows
respect for this modest behaviour. . . . It is as if
the girl who was talking with them had by her sudden lapse of
memory given a clear sign which the men had unconsciously
understood well enough.’
¹
[‘
Hure
’ is the German
for ‘whore’.]
²
[The German words ‘
bin
Hure
’ (‘I am a whore’) sound not unlike
‘Ben Hur’.]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1136
A type of continued forgetting of
names occurs also, in which whole chains of names are withdrawn
from the memory. If in the attempt to recover a lost name other
names closely connected with it are pursued, it frequently happens
that these new names, which were to serve as stepping stones to the
other one, disappear in just the same way. The forgetting thus
jumps from one name to another, as if to prove the existence of an
obstacle which cannot easily be surmounted.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1137
CHAPTER IV
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND SCREEN MEMORIES
In a second paper, which was published in the
Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie
(1899
a
), I was in a position to demonstrate at an unexpected
point the tendentious nature of the workings of our memory. I
started from the striking fact that a person’s earliest
childhood memories seem frequently to have preserved what is
indifferent and unimportant, whereas (frequently, though certainly
not universally) no trace is found in an adult’s memory of
impressions dating from that time which are important, impressive
and rich in affect. It might be assumed from this - since it is
known that the memory makes a selection from among the impressions
offered to it - that in childhood the selection is conducted on
entirely different principles from those which apply at the time of
intellectual maturity. Careful investigation nevertheless shows
that such an assumption is unnecessary. The indifferent memories of
childhood owe their existence to a process of displacement: they
are substitutes, in reproduction, for other impressions which are
really significant. The memory of these significant impressions can
be developed out of the indifferent ones by means of psychical
analysis, but a resistance prevents them from being directly
reproduced. As the indifferent memories owe their preservation not
to their own content but to an associative relation between their
content and another which is repressed, they have some claim to be
called ‘screen memories’, the name by which I have
described them.
