Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of ViennaFreud, Sigmund
Science
Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
The forgetting of names seems, however, to be especially facilitated
psycho-physiologically, and therefore does occur on occasions where the
intervention of an unpleasantness-motive cannot be established. When
anyone has a tendency to forget names, it can be confirmed by analytic
investigation that names escape, not merely because he does not like
them or because they remind him of something disagreeable, but also
because the particular name belongs to some other chain of associations
of a more intimate nature. The name is anchored there, as it were, and
is refused to the other associations activated at the moment. If you
recall the devices of memory systems you will realize with some surprise
that the same associations which are there artificially introduced, in
order to save names from being forgotten, are also responsible for their
being forgotten. The most conspicuous example of this is afforded by
proper names of persons, which naturally possess quite different values
for different people. For instance, take a first name, such as Theodore.
For some of you it will have no particular significance; for others it
will be the name of father, brother, friend, or your own name. Analytic
experience will show you that the former among you will be in no danger
of forgetting that some stranger bears this name; whereas the latter
will be continually inclined to grudge to strangers a name which to them
seems reserved for an intimate relationship. Now let us assume that this
inhibition due to associations may coincide with the operation of the
“pain”-principle, and in addition with an indirect mechanism; you will
then be able to form a commensurate idea of the complexity, in
causation, of such temporary forgetting of names. An adequate analysis
that does justice to the facts will, however, completely disclose all
these complications.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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