Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud - Chapter 7 - Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section seven of Psychopathology of every Day Life translation by
a A brill Forgetting of impressions and resolutions. If any
one should be inclined to overrate the state of our
present knowledge of mental life, all that would be needed
to force him to assume a modest attitude would be
to remind him of the function of memory. No psychologic

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theory has yet been able to account for the connection
between the fundamental phenomena of remembering and forgetting. Indeed, even
the complete analysis of that which one can actually observe
has as yet scarcely been grasped. Today, forgetting has perhaps
grown more puzzling than remembering, especially since we have learned

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from the study of dreams and pathologic states that even
what for a long time we believed forgotten may suddenly
return to consciousness. To be sure, we are in possession
of some viewpoints which we hope will receive general recognition.
Thus we assume that forgetting is a spontaneous process to

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which we may ascribe a certain temporal discharge. We emphasize
the fact that, just as among the units of every
impression of experience, in forgetting, too, a certain selection takes
place among the existing impressions we are acquainted with some
of the conditions that underlie the tenaciousness of memory and

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the awakening of that which would otherwise remain forgotten. Nevertheless,
we can observe in innumerable cases of daily life how
unreliable and unsatisfactory our knowledge of the mechanism is. Thus,
we may listen to two persons exchanging reminiscences concerning the
same outward impressions, say of a journey that they have

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taken together some time before. What remains most firmly in
the memory of the one is often forgotten by the other,
as if it had never occurred, even when there is
not the slightest reason to assume that this impression is
of greater psychic importance for one than for the other.
A great many of those factors which determine the selective

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power of memory are obviously still beyond our ken. With
the purpose of adding some small contribution to the knowledge
of the conditions of forgetting, I was wont to subject
to a psychologic analysis those cases in which forgetting concerned
me personally. As a rule, I took up only a
certain group of those cases, namely those in which the

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forgetting astonished me, Because in my opinion I should have
remembered the experience in question. I wish further to remark
that I am generally not inclined to forgetfulness of things experienced,
not of things learned, and that for a short period
of my youth I was able to perform extraordinary feats
of memory. When I was a schoolboy, it was quite

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natural for me to be able to repeat from memory
the page of a book which I had read. Before
I entered the university. I could write down, practically verbatim
the popular lectures on scientific subjects directly after hearing them
in the tension before the final medical examination. I must
have made use of the remnant of this ability, for

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in certain subjects I gave the examiners apparently automatic answers
which proved to be exact reproductions of the text book
which I had skimmed through but once and then in
greatest haste. Since those days, I have steadily lost control
over my memory. Of late, however, I became convinced that
with the aid of a certain artifice, I can recall

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far more than I would otherwise credit myself with remembering.
For example, when during my office hours a patient states
that I have seen him before, and I cannot recall
either the fact or the time. Then I help myself
by guessing. That is, I allow a number of years
beginning from the present time, to come to mind quickly.

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Whenever this could be controlled by records of definite information
from the patient. It was always shown that in over
ten years I have seldom missed by more than six months.
The same thing happens when I meet a casual acquaintance and,
from politeness, inquire about his small child. When he tells
of its progress, I try to fancy how old the

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child now is. I control my estimate by the information
given by the father, and at most I make a
mistake of a month and an older children of three months.
I cannot state, however, what basis I have for this estimate.
Of late. I have grown so bold that I always
offer my estimates spontaneously and still run no risk of

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grieving the father by displaying my ignorance in regard to
his offspring. Thus I extend my conscious memory by invoking
my larger unconscious memory. I shall report some striking examples
of forgetting, which, for the most part I have observed
in myself. I distinguish forgetting of impressions and experiences, that

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is the forgetting of knowledge, from forgetting of resolutions, that
is the forgetting of omissions. The uniform result of the
entire series of observations I can formulate as follows. The
forgetting in all cases is proved to be founded on
a motive of displeasure. Forgetting of impressions and knowledge. A

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during the summer, my wife once made me very angry,
although the cause in itself was trifling. We sat in
a restaurant opposite a gentleman from Vienna, whom I knew,
and who had cause to know me, and whose acquaintance
I had reasons for not wishing to renew. My wife,
who had heard nothing to the disrepute of the man
opposite her, showed by her actions that she was listening

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to his conversation with his neighbors. For from time to
time she asked me questions, which took up the thread
of their discussion. I became impatient and finally irritated. A
few weeks later, I complained to a relative about this
behavior on the part of my wife, But I was
not able to recall even a single word of the
conversation of the gentleman. In the case, I am usually

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rather resentful and cannot forget a single incident of an
episode that has annoyed me. My amnesia in this case
was undoubtedly determined by respect for my wife. A short
time ago, I had a similar experience. I wished to
make mary with an intimate friend over a statement made
by my wife only a few hours earlier. But I

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found myself hindered by the noteworthy fact that I had
entirely forgotten the statement. I had first to beg my
wife to recall it to me. It is easy to
understand that my forgetting in this case may be analogous
to the typical disturbance of judgment, which dominates us when
it concerns those nearest to us. B to oblige a

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woman who was a stranger. In Vienna, I had undertaken
to procure a small iron safe for the preservation of
documents and money. When I offered my services, the image
of an establishment in the heart of the city where
I was sure I had seen such safes floated before
me with extraordinary visual vividness. To be sure, I could

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not recall the name of the street, but I felt
certain that I would discover the store in a walk
through the city, for my memory told me that I
had passed it countless times. To my chagrin, I could
not find this establishment with the safes. Though I walked
through the inner part of the city in every direction.
I concluded that the only thing left to do was
to search through a business directory, and if that failed,

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to try to identify the establishment in a second round
of the city. It did not, however, require so much effort.
Among the addresses in the directory, I found one which
immediately presented itself as that which had been forgotten. It
was true that I had passed the show window countless times.
Each time, however, or when I had gone to visit

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the m family, who had lived a great many years
in this identical building. After this intimate friendship had turned
to an absolute estrangement, I had taken care to avoid
the neighborhood as well as the house, though without ever
thinking of the reason for my action. In my walk
through the city searching for the safe in the show window,

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I had traversed every street in the neighborhood but the
right one, and I had avoided this as if it
were forbidden ground. The motive of displeasure, which was at
the bottom of my disorientation is thus comprehensible. But the
mechanism of forgetting is no longer so simple as in
the former example. Here my aversion naturally does not extend

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to the vendor of safes, but to another person concerning
whom I wished to know nothing, and later transfers itself
from the latter to this incident, where it brings about
the forgetting. Similarly, in the case of Burkhardt mentioned above,
of the grudge against the one brought about the error
in writing the name of the other. The similarity of names,

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which here established a connection between two essentially different streams
of thought, was accomplished in the showcase window instance by
the contiguity of space and the inseparable environment. Moreover, this
latter case was more closely knit together. For money played
a great part in the causation of the estrangement from

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the family living in this house. C the B and
R Company requested me to pay a professional call on
one of their officers. On my way to him, I
was engrossed in the thought that I must already have
been in the building occupied by the firm. It seemed
as if I used to see their sign board in
a lower story, while my professional visit was taking me

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to a hire story. I could not recall, however, which
house it was, nor when I had called there. Although
the entire matter was indifferent and of no consequence, I
nevertheless occupied myself with it, and at last learned in
the usual roundabout way, by collecting the thoughts that occurred
to me in this connection, that one story above the

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floor occupied by the firm B and R was the
pension Fisher, where I had frequently visited patients. Then I
remembered the building which sheltered both company and the pension.
I was still puzzled, however, as to the motive that
entered into play in this forgetting. I found nothing disagreeable
in my memory concerning the firm itself, or the pension Fisher,

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or the patients living there. I was also aware that
it could not deal with anything very painful, Otherwise I
hardly would have been successful in tracing the thing forgotten
in a roundabout way without resorting to external aid, as
happened in the preceding example. Finally, it occurred to me
that a little before, while starting on my way to

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a new patient, a gentleman whom I had difficulty in
recalling greeted me in the street. Some months previously. I
had seen this man in an apparently serious condition, and
had made the diagnosis of general persis, But later I
had learned of his recovery. Consequently, my judgment had been incorrect.

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Was it not possible that we had in this case
a remission which one usually finds in dementia paralytica. In
that contingency, my diagnosis would still be justified. The influence
emanating from this meeting caused me to forget the neighborhood
of the B and R Company, and my interest to
discover the thing forgotten was transferred from this case of

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disputed diagnosis. But the associative connection in this loose inner
relation was affected by means of a similarity of names.
The man who recovered, contrary to expectation, was also an
officer of a large company that recommends patience to me,
and the physics with whom I had seen the supposed

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poetic bore the name of Fisher, the name of the
pension in the house which I had forgotten. D Mislaying
a thing really has the same significance as forgetting where
we have placed it. Like most people delving in pamphlets
and books. I am well oriented about my desk and
can produce what I want with one lunge. What appears

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to others as disorder has become for me perfect order.
Why then, did I mislay a catalog which was sent
to me not long ago, so that it could not
be found? What is more, it had been my intention
to order a book, which I found announced therein and
titled Uber di Sparca, because it was written by an

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author whose spirited by vacious style I liked, whose insight
into psychology, and whose knowledge of the cultural world I
had learned to appreciate. I believe that was just why
I mislaid the cattle. It was my habit to lend
the books of this author among my friends for their enlightenment,
And a few days before, on returning one, somebody had said,

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his style reminds me altogether of yours, and his way
of thinking is identical. The speaker did not know what
he was stirring up with his remark. Years ago, when
I was younger and in greater need of forming alliances,
I was told practically the same thing by an older
colleague to whom I had recommended the writings of a

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familiar medical author to put it in his words, it
is absolutely your style and manner. I was so influenced
by these remarks that I wrote a letter to this
author with the object of bringing about a closer relation.
But a rather cool answer put me back in my place.
Perhaps still earlier discouraging experiences concealed themselves behind this last one,

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for I did not find the mislaid catalog. Through this premonition,
I was actually prevented from ordering the advertised book, although
the disappearance of the catalog formed no real hindrance, as
I remembered well both the name of the book and
the author e. Another case of mislaying merits our attention

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on account of the conditions under which the mislaid object
was rediscovered. A younger man narrates as follows. Several years ago,
there were some misunderstandings between me and my wife. I
found her too cold, and though I fully appreciated her
excellent qualities, we lived together without evincing any tenderness for

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each other. One day, on her return from a walk,
she gave me a book which she had bought because
she thought it would interest me. I thanked her for
this mark of attention, promised to read the book, put
it away, and did not find it again. So months passed,
during which I occasionally remembered the lost book and also
tried in vain to find it. About six months later,

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my beloved mother, who was not living with us, became ill.
My wife left home to nurse her mother in law.
The patient's condition became serious and gave my wife the
opportunity to show the best side of herself. One evening,
I returned home full of enthusiasm over what my wife
had accomplished, and felt very grateful to her. I stepped

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to my desk, and without definite intention, but with the
certainty of a somnambulist, I opened a certain drawer, and
in the very top of it I found the long
missing mislaid book. The following example of misplacing belongs to
a type well known to every psychoanalyst. I must add
that the patient who experienced this misplacing has himself found

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the solution of it. This patient, whose psychoanalytic treatment had
to be interrupted through the summer vacation, when he was
in a state of resistance and ill health, put away
his keys in the evening in their usual place or
so he thought. He then remembered that he wished to
take some things from his desk, where he also had

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put the money which he needed on the journey he
was to part the next day, which was the last
day of treatment and the date when the doctor's fee
was due. But the keys had disappeared. He began a
thorough and systematic search through his small apartment. He became
more and more excited over it, but his search was unsuccessful.

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As he recognized this misplacement as a symptomatic act, that is,
as being intentional, He aroused his servant in order to
continue his search with the help of an unprejudiced person.
After another hour, he gave up the search and feared
he had lost the keys. The next morning, he ordered
new keys from the desk factory, which were hurriedly made

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for him. Two acquaintances, who had been with him in
a cab even recalled hearing something fall to the ground
as he stepped out of the cab, and he was
therefore convinced that the keys had slipped from his pocket.
They were found lying between a thick book and a
thin pamphlet, the latter a work of one of my pupils,
which he wished to take along as reading matter for

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his vacation. They were so skillfully placed that no one
would have supposed that they were there. He himself was
unable to replace the keys in such a position as
to render them invisible. The unconscious skill with which an
object is misplaced on account of secret but strong motives
reminds one of somnambulistic sureness. The motive was naturally ill

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humor over the interruption of the treatment, and the secret
rage over the fact that he had to pay such
a high fee when he felt so ill. G. Brill
relates a man was urged by his wife to attend
a social function in which he really took no interest.
Yielding to his wife's entreaties, he began to take his

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dress suit from the trunk when he suddenly thought of shaving.
After accomplishing this, he returned to the trunk and found it.
Despite a long earnest search, the key could not be found.
A locksmith could not be found on Sunday evening, so
that the couple had to send their regrets on having
the trunk opened. The next morning, the lost key was

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found within. The husband had absent mindedly dropped the key
into the trunk and sprung the lock. He assured me
that this was wholly unintentional and unconscious, But we know
that he did not wish to go to this social affair.
The mislaying of the key therefore lacked no motive. Ernest

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Jones noticed in himself that he was in the habit
of mislaying his pipe whenever he suffered from the effects
of oversmoking. The pipe was then found in some unusual
place where it did not belong and which it normally
did not occupy. If one looks over the cases of mislaying,
it will be difficult to assume that mislaying is anything

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other than the result of an unconscious intention. In the
summer of nineteen o one, I once remarked to a
friend with whom I was then actively engaged in exchanging
ideas on scientific questions. These neurotic problems can be solved
only if we take the position of absolutely accepting an
original bisexuality in every individual, to which he replied, I

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told you that two and a half years ago, while
we were taking an evening walk. At the time, you
wouldn't listen to it. It is truly painful to be
thus requested to renounce one's originality. I could neither recall
such a conversation nor my friend's revelation. One of us
must be mistaken, and according to the principle of the question,

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cui protest, I must be the one. Indeed, in the
course of the following week, everything came back to me
just as my friend had recalled it. I myself remembered
that at that time I gave the answer. I have
not got so far, and I do not care to
discuss it. But since this incident, I have grown more
tolerant when I miss any mention of my name in

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medical literature in connection with ideas for which I deserve credit.
It is scarcely accidental that the numerous examples of forgetting,
which have been collected without any selection, should require for
their solution the introduction of such painful themes as exposing
one's wife, a friendship that has turned into the opposite,

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a mistake in medical diagnosis, enmity on account of similar pursuits,
or the borrowing of somebody's ideas. I am rather inclined
to believe that every person who will undertake an inquiry
into the motives underlying his forgetting will be able to
fill up a similar sample card of vexatious circumstances. The

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tendency to forget the disagreeable seems to me to be
quite general. The capacity for it is naturally differently developed
in different persons. Certain denials which we encounter or in
medical practice can probably be ascribed to forgetting. Our conception
of such forgetting confines the distinction between this and that

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behavior to purely psychologic relations, and permits us to see
in both forms of reaction the expression of the same motive.
Of the numerous examples of denials of unpleasant recollection which
I have observed in kinsmen of patients, one remains in
my memory as especially singular. A mother, telling me of

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the childhood of her nervous son, now in his puberty,
made the statement that, like his brothers and sisters, he
was subject to bed wedding throughout his childhood, a symptom
which certainly has some significance in the history of a
neurotic patient. Some weeks later, while seeking information regarding the treatment,
I had occasion to call her attention to signs of

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a constitutional morbid predisposition in the young man, and at
the same time referred to the bed wedding recounted in
the US and amnesis. To my surprise, she contested this
fact concerning him, denying it as well for the other children,
and ask me how I could possibly know this. Finally,
I let her know that she herself had told me

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a short time before what she had thus forgotten. One
also vines of undon indications which show that even in
healthy not neurotic persons, resistances are found against the memory
of disagreeable impressions and the idea of painful thoughts. But
the full significance of this fact can be estimated only

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when we enter into the psychology of neurotic persons. One
is forced to make such elementary defensive striving against ideas
which can awaken painful feelings, a striving which can be
put side by side only with the flight reflex in
painful stimuli as the main pillar of the mechanism which
carries the hysterical symptoms. One need not offer any object

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to the acceptance of such defensive tendency on the ground
that we frequently find it impossible to rid ourselves of
painful memories which cling to us, or to banish such
painful emotions as remorse and reproaches of conscience. No one
maintains that this defensive tendency invariably gains the upper hand,

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that in the play of psychic forces, it may not
strike against factors which stir up the contrary feeling for
other purposes and bring it about in spite of it.
As the architectural principle of the psychic apparatus, we may
conjecture a certain stratification or structure of instances deposited in strata,

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and it is quite possible that this defense tendency belongs
to a lower psychic instance and is inhibited by higher
instances at all events. It speaks for the existence and
force of this defensive tendency when we can trace it
to processes such as the found in our examples of forgetting.

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We see then that something is forgotten for its own sake,
and where it is not possible, the defensive tendency misses
the target and causes something else to be forgotten, something
less significant but which has fallen into associative connection with
the disagreeable material. The views here developed, namely that painful

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memories merge into motivated forgetting with special ease, merits application
in many spheres, where as yet it has found no
or scarcely any recognition. Thus, it seems to me that
it has not been strongly enough emphasized in the estimation
of testimony taken in court, where the putting of a
witness under oath obviously leads us to place too great

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a trust in the purifying influence of his psychic play
of forces. It is universally admitted that in the origin
of the traditions and folklore of a people, care must
be taken to eliminate from men memory such a motive
as would be painful to the national feeling. Perhaps, on
a closer investigation, it may be possible to form a

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perfect analogy between the manner of development of national traditions
and infantile reminiscences of the individual. The Great Darwin has
formulated a golden rule for the scientific worker from his
insight into his pain motive of forgetting. Almost exactly as
in the forgetting of names, faulty recollections can also appear

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in the forgetting of impressions, and when finding credence, they
may be designated as delusions of memory, the memory disturbance
in pathological cases. In paranoia, it actually plays the role
of a constituting factor in the formation of delusions has
brought to light and extensive literature in which there is

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no reference whatever to its being motivated. As this theme
also belongs to the psychology of the near roses, it
goes beyond our present treatment. Instead, I will give from
my own experience a curious example of memory disturbance, showing
clear enough its determination through unconscious repressed material and its

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connection with this material. While writing the latter chapters of
my volume on the Interpretation of Dreams, I happened to
be in a summer resort without access to libraries and
reference books, so that I was compelled to introduce into
the manuscript all kinds of references and citations from memory.

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These I naturally reserved for future correction. In the chapter
on day dreams, I thought of the distinguished figure of
the poor bookkeeper in Alphonse Daudette's Nabab, through whom the
author probably described his own day dreams. I imagine that
I distinctly remembered one fantasy of this man, whom I

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called mister Jocelyn, which he hatched while walking the streets
of Paris, and I began to reproduce it from my memory.
This fantasy described how mister Joselyn boldly hurled himself at
a runaway horse and brought it to a standstill, How
the carriage door opened, and a great personage stepped from
the coupet pressed mister Joselyn's hand and said, you are

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my savior. I owe you my life. What can I
do for you? I assured myself that casual inaccuracies in
the rendition of this fantasy could readily be corrected at
home on consulting the book. But when I perused Nabab
in order to compare it with my manuscript, I found,
to my very great shame and consternation, that there was

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nothing to suggest such a dream by mister Joselyn. Indeed,
the poor bookkeeper did not even bear this name. He
was called mister joye Is. This second error then furnished
the key for the solution of the first mistake. The
faulty reminiscence Joyeu, of which Joieu is the feminine form,

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was the only possible word which would translate my own
name Freud into French. Whence therefore came this falsely remembered phantasy,
which I had attributed to Daudet. It could only be
a product of my own day dream, which I myself
had spun and which did not become conscious, or which
was once conscious and had been absolutely forgotten. Perhaps I

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invented it myself in Paris, where frequently enough I walked
the streets alone and full of longing for a helper
and protector, until Charcot took me into his circle. I
had often met the author of Nabab in Charcot's house.
But the provoking part of it all is the fact
that there is scarcely anything to which I am so

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hostile as the thought of being someone's protege. What we
see of this sort of thing in our country spoils
all desire for it, and my character is little suited
to the role of a protected child. I have always
entertained an immense desire to be the strong man myself,
and it had to happen that I should be reminded
of such a to be sure never fulfilled daydream. Besides,

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this incident is a good example of how the restraint
relation to one's ego, which breaks forth triumphantly in paranoia,
disturbs and entangles us in the objective grasp of things.
Another case of faulty recollection which can be satisfactorily explained,
resembles the Foe's reconnaissance, to be discussed later. I related

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to one of my patients, an ambitious and very capable man,
that a young student had recently gained admittance into the
circle of my pupils by means of an interesting work,
der Kunsler Verscheimer's Sexual Psychology. When a year and a
quarter later this work lay before me in print, my
patient maintained that he remembered, with certainly having read so

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some perhaps in a bookseller's advertisement, the announcement of the
same book, even before I first mentioned it to him.
He remembered that this announcement came to his mind at
that time, and he ascertained, besides that the author had
changed the title, that it no longer read Versuch but
Onsatse's Inosexual Psychology. Careful inquiry of the author in comparison

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of all dates showed conclusively that my patient was trying
to recall the impossible. No notice of this work had
appeared anywhere before its publication, certainly not a year and
a quarter before it went to print. However, I neglected
to seek a solution for this false recollection until the
same man brought about an equally valuable renewal of it.

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He thought that he had recently noticed a work on
agoraphobia in the show window of a book shop, and
as he was now looking for it in all available
catalog I was able to explain to him why his
effort must remain fruitless. The work on agoraphobia existed only
in his fantasy as an unconscious resolution to write such

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a book himself. His ambition to emulate that young man,
and through such a scientific work, to become one of
my pupils, had led him to the verse as well
as to the second false recollection. He also recalled later
that the bookseller's announcement, which had occasioned his false reminiscence,
dealt with a work entitled Genesis dos Gesseigdruzugen Genesis the

(31:38):
Law of Generation. But the change in the title, as
mentioned by him was really instigated by me. I recalled
that I myself had perpetrated the same inaccuracy in the
repetition of the title by saying ansatsea in place of
versearch forgetting of intentions. No other group of phenalmana is

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better qualified to demonstrate the thesis that lack of attention
does not in itself suffice to explain faulty acts as
the forgetting of intentions. An intention is an impulse for
an action which has already found approbation, but whose execution
is postponed for a suitable occasion. Now in the interval

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thus created, sufficient change may take place in the motive
to prevent the intention from coming to execution. It is not, however, forgotten.
It is simply revised and omitted. We are naturally not
in the habit of explaining the forgetting of intentions, which
we daily experience in every possible situation, as being due

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to a recent change in the adjustment of motives. We
generally leave it unexplained, or we seek a psychologic explanation
in the assumption that at the time of execution there
required attention for the action, which was an indispensable condition
for the occurrence of the intention, and was then at
the disposal of the same action no longer exists. Observation

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of our normal behavior towards intentions urges us to reject
this tentative explanation as arbitrary. If I resolve in the
morning to carry out a certain intention in the evening,
I may be reminded of it several times in the
course of the day, but it is not at all
necessary that it should become conscious throughout the day. As

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the time for its execution approaches, it suddenly occurs to
me and induces me to take the necessary preparation for
the intended action. If I go walking and take a
letter with me to be posted, it is not at
all necessary that I, as a normal not nervous individual,
should carry it in my hand and continually look for

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a letter box. As a matter of fact, I am
accustomed to put it in my pocket and give my
thoughts free rein on my way, feeling confident that the
first letter box will attract my attention and cause me
to put my hand in my pocket and draw out
the letter. This normal behavior in a formed intention corresponds
perfectly with the experimentally produced conduct of persons who are

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under a so called post hypnotic suggestion to perform something
after a certain time. We are accustomed to describe the
phenomenon in the following manner. The suggested intention slumbers in
the person concerned until the time for its execution approaches.
Then it awakes and excites the action in two positions

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of life. Even the layman is cognizant of the fact
that forgetting referring to intended purposes can in no wise
claim consideration as an elementary phenomenon no further reducible, but
realizes that it ultimately depends on unadmitted motives. I refer
to affairs of love and military service. A lover who

(34:54):
is late at the appointment place will vainly tell his
sweetheart that unfortunately he has rarely forgotten their rendezvous. She
will not hesitate to answer him. A year ago you
would not have forgotten. Evidently you no longer care for me.
Even if she should grasp the above cited psychologic explanation,
and should wish to excuse his forgetting on the plea

(35:17):
of important business, he would only elicit the answer from
the woman, who has become as keen sighted as the
physician in the psychoanalytic treatment. How remarkable that such business
disturbances did not occur before. Of course, the woman does
not wish to deny the possibility of forgetting, but she believes,
and not without reason, that practically the same inference of

(35:40):
a certain unwillingness may be drawn from the unintentional forgetting.
As from the conscious subterfuge. Similarly, in military service, no
distinction is recognized between an omission resulting from forgetting and
one in consequence of intentional neglect, and rightly so. The
soldier dard forget nothing that military service demands of him.

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If he forgets in spite of this, even when he
is acquainted with the demands, then it is due to
the fact that the motives which urge the fulfillment of
the military exactions are opposed by contrary motives. Thus, the
one year's volunteer who at inspection pleads forgetting as an
excuse for not having polished his suttons is sure to

(36:24):
be punished, but this punishment is small in comparison to
the one he courts. If he admits to his superiors
that the motive for his negligence is because this miserable
menial service is altogether disgusting to me. Owing to this
saving of punishment for economic reasons, as it were, he
makes use of forgetting as an excuse, or it comes

(36:45):
about as a compromise. The service of women, as well
as the military service of the state, demands that nothing
relating to that service be subject to forgetting. Thus it
suggests that forgetting is permissible in uni important matters, but
in weighty matters its occurrence is an indication that one
wishes to treat weighty matters as unimportant, that is, that

(37:09):
their importance is disputed. The viewpoint of psychic validity is
in fact not to be contested. Here. No person forgets
to carry out actions that seem important to himself without
exposing himself to the suspicion of being a sufferer from
mental weakness. Our investigations, therefore can extend only to the

(37:30):
forgetting of more or less secondary intentions. For no intention
do we deem absolutely indifferent, otherwise it would certainly never
have been formed. As in the preceding functional disturbances, I
have collected the cases of neglect through forgetting which I
have observed in myself, and endeavored to explain them. I

(37:50):
have found that they could invariably be traced to some
interference of unknown and unadmitted motives, or, as may be said,
they are due to a count will. In a number
of these cases, I found myself in a position similar
to that of being in some distasteful service. I was
under a constraint to which I had not entirely resigned

(38:12):
myself so that I showed my protest in the form
of forgetting. This accounts for the fact that I am
particularly prone to forget to send congratulations on such occasions
as birth's jubilees, wedding celebrations, and promotions to higher rank.
I continually make new resolutions, but I am more than
ever convinced that I shall not succeed. I am now

(38:35):
on the point of giving it up altogether, and to
admit consciously the striving motives. In a period of transition,
I told a friend who asked me to send a
congratulatory telegram for him at a certain time, when I
was to send one myself, that I would probably forget both.
It was not surprising that the prophecy came true. It

(38:56):
is undoubtedly due to painful experiences in life that I
am unable to manifest sympathy, where this manifestation must necessarily
appear exaggerated, for the small amount of my feeling does
not admit the corresponding expression. Since I have learned that
I often mistook the pretended sympathy of others for real,

(39:17):
I am in rebellion against the conventions of expressing sympathy.
The social expediency of which I naturally acknowledge. Condolences in
cases of death are accepted from this double treatment. Once
I determine to send them, I do not neglect them.
Where my emotional participation has nothing more to do with

(39:38):
social duty, its expression is never inhibited by forgetting. Cases
in which we forget to carry out actions which we
have promised to do as a favor for others can
similarly be explained as antagonism to conventional duty and as
an unfavorable inward opinion. Here it regularly proves correct in

(39:59):
his wa as much as the only person appealed to
believes in the excusing power of forgetfulness. While the one
requesting the favor has no doubt about the right answer,
he has no interest in this matter, otherwise he would
not have forgotten it. There are some who are noted
as generally forgetful, and we excuse their lapses in the

(40:20):
same manner as we excuse those who are shortsighted when
they do not greet us in the street. Such persons
forget all small promises which they have made, They leave
unexecuted all orders which they have received. They prove themselves
unreliable in little things, and at the same time demand
that we shall not take these slight offenses amiss. That is,

(40:43):
they do not want us to attribute these failings to
personal characteristics, but to refer them to an organic peculiarity.
I am not one of these people myself, and have
had no opportunity to analyze the actions of such a
person in order to discover from the selection forgetting the
motive underlying the same. I cannot forego, however, the conjecture

(41:06):
per Anagolium, that here the motive is an unusual large
amount of unavowed disregard for others, which exploits the constitutional
factor for its purpose. In other cases, the motives for
forgetting are less easy to discover, and when found, excite
greater astonishment. Thus, in former years I observed that of

(41:28):
a great number of professional calls, I only forgot those
that I was to make on patients whom I treated gratis,
or on colleagues. The mortification caused by this discovery led
me to the habit of noting every morning the cause
of the day in a form of resolution. I do
not know if other physicians have come to the same

(41:49):
practice by a similar road. Thus we get an idea
of what causes the so called noristhenic to make a
memorandum of the communications he wished to make to the doctor.
He apparently lacks confidence in the reproductive capacity of his memory.
This is true, but the scene usually proceeds in this manner.

(42:11):
The patient has recounted his various complaints and inquiries at
considerable length. After he has finished, he pauses for a moment.
Then he pulls out the memorandum and says, apologetically, I
have made some notes because I cannot remember anything. As
a rule, he finds nothing new in the memorandum. He
repeats each point and answers it himself. Yes, I have

(42:34):
already asked about that. By means of the memorandum, he
probably only demonstrates one of his symptoms, the frequency with
which his resolutions are disturbed through the interference of obscure motives.
I am touching moreover on an affliction to which even
most of my healthy acquaintances are subject when I admit that,

(42:55):
especially in former years, I had the habit of easily
forgetting for a law long time to return borrowed books.
Also that it very often happened that I deferred payments
through forgetfulness. One morning not long ago I left the
tobacco shop where I made my daily purchase of cigars
without paying. It was a most harmless omission, as I

(43:17):
am known there and could therefore expect to be reminded
of my debt the next morning. But this slight neglect,
the attempt to contract a debt, was surely not unconnected
with reflections concerning the budget with which I had occupied
myself throughout the preceding day. Even among the so called
respectable people, one can readily demonstrate a double behavior when

(43:41):
it concerns the theme of money and possession. The primitive
greed of the suckling, which wishes to seize every object
in order to put it in its mouth, has generally
been only imperfectly subdued through culture and training. I fear
that in all the examples thus far given, I have
grown quite commonplace. But it can be only a pleasure

(44:02):
to me if I happen upon familiar matters which every
one understands. For my main object is to collect every
day material and utilize it scientifically. I cannot conceive why wisdom,
which is, so to speak, the sediment of every day experiences,
should be denied admission among the acquisitions of knowledge. For
it is not the diversity of objects, but the stricter

(44:25):
method of verification and the striving for far reaching connection,
which make up the essential character of scientific work. We
have invariably found that intentions of some importance are forgotten
when obscure motives arise to disturb them. In still less
important intentions, we find a second mechanism of forgetting. Here,

(44:47):
a counter will becomes transferred to the resolution from something else,
after an external association has been formed between the latter
and the content of the resolution. The following example, reported
by Bryll, illustrates this. A patient found that she had
suddenly become very negligent in her correspondence. She was naturally

(45:09):
punctual and took pleasure in letter writing, but for the
last few weeks she simply could not bring herself to
write a letter without exerting the greatest amount of effort.
The explanation was quite simple. Some weeks before, she had
received an important letter calling for a categorical answer. She
was undecided what to say, and therefore did not answer

(45:30):
at all. This decision, in the form of inhibition, was
unconsciously transferred to other letters and caused the inhibition against
letter writing. In general, direct counter will and more remote
motivation are found together in the following example of delaying.
I had written a short treatise on the dream for

(45:51):
the series grins Frog and desnerven Wound Celan Levin's, in
which I gave an abstract of my book, The Interpretation
of Dreams. Bergmann, the publisher, had set me the proof
sheets and asked for a speedy return of the same,
as he wished to issue the pamphlet before Christmas. I
corrected the sheets the same night and placed them on

(46:12):
my desk in order to take them to the post
office the next morning. In the morning, I forgot all
about it, and only thought of it in the afternoon
at the sight of the paper cover on my desk.
In the same way, I forgot the proofs that evening
and the following morning, and until the afternoon of the
second day, when I quickly took them to a letter box,

(46:33):
Wondering what might be the basis of this procrastination. Obviously
I did not want to send them off, although I
could find no explanation for such an attitude. After posting
the letter, I entered the shop of my Vienna publisher,
who put out my interpretation of Dreams. I left a
few orders, then, as if impelled by a sudden thought, said,

(46:56):
you undoubtedly know that I have written the dream Book
second time. Ah, he exclaimed, Then I must ask you
to calm yourself. I interposed, it is only a short
treatise for the Loenfelt Corella collection. But still he was
not satisfied. He feared that the abstract would hurt the
sale of the book. I had disagreed with him, and

(47:18):
finally asked, if I had come to you before, would
you have objected to the publication. No, under no circumstances,
he answered personally, I believe I acted within my full
rights and did nothing contrary to the general practice. Still,
it seemed certain to me that a thought similar to
that entertained by the publisher was the motive for my

(47:41):
procrastination in dispatching the proof sheets. This reflection leads back
to a former occasion when another publisher raised some difficulties
because I was obliged to take out several pages of
the text from an earlier work on cerebral infantile paralysis
and put them unchanged into a work on the same theme.

(48:03):
In Notthingeal's Handbook there again, the reproach received no recognition
that time. Also, I had loyally informed my first publisher,
the same who published the interpretation of Dreams of my intention. However,
if this series of recollections is followed back still farther,

(48:24):
it brings to light a still earlier occasion, relating to
a translation from the French, in which I really violated
the property rights that should be considered in a publication.
I had added notes to the text without asking the
author's permission, and some years later I had cause to
think that the author was dissatisfied with this arbitrary action.

(48:46):
There is a proverb which indicates the popular knowledge that
the forgetting of intentions is not accidental. It says what
one forgets once, he will often forget again. Indeed, we
sometimes cannot help feeling that, no matter what may be
said about forgetting and faulty actions, the whole subject is
already known to everybody as something self evident. It is

(49:10):
strange enough that it is still necessary to push before
consciousness such well known facts. How often I have heard
people remark, please do not ask me to do this,
I shall surely forget it. The coming true of this
prophecy later is surely nothing mysterious in itself. He who
speaks thus perceives the inner resolution not to carry out

(49:33):
the request, and only hesitates to acknowledge it to himself.
Much light is thrown moreover on the forgetting of resolutions
through something which could be designated as forming false resolutions.
I had once promised a young author to write a
review of his short work, but on account of inner
resistances not unknown to me, I promised him that it

(49:56):
would be done the same evening. I really had serious
intentions of doing so, but I had forgotten that I
had set aside that evening for the preparation of an
expert testimony that could not be deferred. After I thus
recognized my resolution as false, I gave up the struggle
against my resistances and refused the author's request. End of

(50:18):
Section seven