Association of ideas; Memory; Paragrammatism; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Pathological; Repression (Psychology)
[Footnote 27: Ethyl alcohol is, of course, the chemical name for
ordinary alcohol.]
[Footnote 28: Jones, _Psycho-analysis_, p. 66.]
[Footnote 29: _Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyse_, i. 12.]
[Footnote 30: In the course of the conference the details of the
previous first visit return to consciousness.]
[Footnote 31: Brill, _loc. cit._, p. 197.]
[Footnote 32: If we inquire of a person whether he suffered from luetic
infection ten or fifteen years ago, we are only too apt to forget that
psychically the patient has looked upon this disease in an entirely
different manner than on, let us say, an acute attack of rheumatism. In
the anamneses which parents give about their neurotic daughters, it is
hardly possible to distinguish with any degree of certainty the portion
forgotten from that hidden, for anything that stands in the way of the
girl’s future marriage is systematically set aside by the parents,
that is, it becomes repressed. A man who had recently lost his beloved
wife from an affection of the lungs reported to me the following case
of misleading the doctor, which can only be explained by the theory
of such forgetting. “As my poor wife’s pleuritis had not disappeared
after many weeks, Dr. P. was called in consultation. While taking the
history he asked among others the customary questions whether there
were any cases of lung trouble in my wife’s family. My wife denied any
such cases, and even I myself could not remember any. While Dr. P.
was taking leave the conversation accidentally turned to excursions,
and my wife said: ‘Yes, even to Landgersdorf, where my poor brother
lies buried, is a long journey.’ This brother died about fifteen years
ago, after having suffered for years from tuberculosis. My wife was
very fond of him, and often spoke about him. Indeed, I recall that
when her malady was diagnosed as pleurisy she was very worried and
sadly remarked: ‘My brother also died of lung trouble.’ But the memory
was so very repressed that even after the above-cited conversation
about the trip to L. she found no occasion to correct her information
concerning the diseases in her family. I myself was struck by this
forgetting at the very moment she began to talk about Landgersdorf.” A
perfectly analogous experience is related by Ernest Jones in his work.
A physician whose wife suffered from some obscure abdominal malady
remarked to her: “It is comforting to think that there has been no
tuberculosis in your family.” She turned to him very astonished and
said, “Have you forgotten that my mother died of tuberculosis, and that
my sister recovered from it only after having been given up by the
doctors?”]
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