“At a social gathering some one quoted, _Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner_, to which I remarked that the first part of the sentence should suffice, as ‘pardoning’ is an exemption which must be left to God and the priest. One of the guests thought this observation very good, which in turn emboldened me to remark--probably to ensure myself of the good opinion of the well-disposed critic--that some time ago I thought of something still better. But when I was about to repeat this clever idea I was unable to recall it. Thereupon I immediately withdrew from the company and wrote my concealing thoughts. I first recalled the name of the friend who had witnessed the birth of this (desired) thought, and of the street in Budapest where it took place, and then the name of another friend, whose name was Max, whom we usually called Maxie. That led me to the word ‘maxim,’ and to the thought that at that time, as in the present case, it was a question of varying a well-known maxim. Strangely enough, I did not recall any maxim but the following sentence: ‘_God created man in His own image_,’ and its changed conception, ‘_Man created God in his own image_.’ Immediately I recalled the sought-for recollection. “My friend said to me at that time in Andrassy Street, ‘_Nothing human is foreign to me_.’ To which I remarked, basing it on psychoanalytic experience, ‘You should go further and acknowledge _that nothing animal is foreign to you_.’ “But after I had finally found the desired recollection I was even then prevented from telling it in this social gathering. The young wife of the friend whom I had reminded of the animality of the unconscious was also among those present, and I was perforce reminded that she was not at all prepared for the reception of such unsympathetic views. The forgetting spared me a number of unpleasant questions from her and a hopeless discussion, and just that must have been the motive of the ‘temporary amnesia.’ “It is interesting to note that as a concealing thought there emerged a sentence in which the deity is degraded to a human invention, while in the sought-for sentence there was an allusion to the animal in the man. The _capitis diminutio_ is therefore common to both. The whole matter was apparently only a continuation of the stream of thought concerning understanding and forgiving which was stimulated by the discussion. “That the desired thought so rapidly appeared may be also due to the fact that I withdrew into a vacant room, away from the society in which it was censored.”