Association of ideas; Memory; Paragrammatism; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Pathological; Repression (Psychology)
“About six months later 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 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 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 put the money which he needed on the
journey. He was to depart 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. 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 that he had lost
the keys. The next morning he ordered new keys from the desk factory,
which were hurriedly made 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 his vacation; and they were
so skilfully 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-humour 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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