Association of ideas; Memory; Paragrammatism; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Pathological; Repression (Psychology)
“To Kl. she at once thought of Mrs. Kl., that she was an embellished
and affected person who looked very well for her age. ‘She does not
age.’ As a general and principal conception of Wilde and Nietzsche, she
gave the association ‘mental disease.’ She then added jocosely: ‘The
Freudians will continue looking for the causes of mental diseases until
they themselves become insane.’ She continued: ‘I cannot bear Wilde
and Nietzsche. I do not understand them. I hear that they were both
homosexual. Wilde has occupied himself with _young_ people’ (although
she uttered in this sentence the correct name she still could not
remember it).
“To Hauptmann she associated the words _half_ and _youth_, and only
after I called her attention to the word _youth_ did she become aware
that she was looking for the name Young (Jung).”
It is clear that this lady, who had lost her husband at the age of
thirty-nine, and had no prospect of marrying a second time, had
cause enough to avoid reminiscences recalling youth or old age. The
remarkable thing is that the concealing thoughts of the desired name
came to the surface as simple associations of content without any
sound-associations.
(_h_) Still different and very finely motivated is an example of
name-forgetting which the person concerned has himself explained.
“While taking an examination in philosophy as a minor subject I was
questioned by the examiner about the teachings of Epicurus, and was
asked whether I knew who took up his teachings centuries later. I
answered that it was Pierre Gassendi, whom two days before while in a
café I had happened to hear spoken of as a follower of Epicurus. To the
question how I knew this I boldly replied that I had taken an interest
in Gassendi for a long time. This resulted in a certificate with a
_magna cum laude_, but later, unfortunately, also in a persistent
tendency to forget the name Gassendi. I believe that it is due to my
guilty conscience that even now I cannot retain this name despite all
efforts. I had no business knowing it at that time.”
To have a proper appreciation of the intense repugnance entertained by
our narrator against the recollection of this examination episode, one
must have realized how highly he prizes his doctor’s degree, and for
how many other things this substitute must stand.
I add here another example of forgetting the name of a city, an
instance which is perhaps not as simple as those given before, but
which will appear credible and valuable to those more familiar with
such investigations. The name of an Italian city withdrew itself
from memory on account of its far-reaching sound-similarity to a
woman’s first name, which was in turn connected with various emotional
reminiscences which were surely not exhaustively treated in this
report. Dr. S. Ferenczi, who observed this case of forgetting in
himself, treated it--quite justly--as an analysis of a dream or an
erotic idea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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