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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF
EVERYDAY LIFE

I

FORGETTING OF PROPER NAMES

DURING the year 1898 I published a short essay On the
Psychic Mechanism of Forgetfulness.¹ I shall now repeat
its contents and take it as a starting-
point for further dis-
cussion. I have there undertaken a psychologic analysis
of a common case of temporary forgetfulness of proper
names, and from a pregnant example of my own observa-
tion I have reached the conclusion that this frequent and
practically unimportant occurrence of a failure of a psychic
function—of memory—admits an explanation which goes
beyond the customary utilization of this phenomenon.

If an average psychologist should be asked to explain
how it happens that we often fail to recall a name which
we are sure we know, he would probably content himself
with the answer that proper names are more apt to be for-
gotten than any other content of memory. He might give
plausible reasons for this “forgetting preference” for proper
names, but he would not assume any deep determinant for
the process.

I was led to examine exhaustively the phenomenon of
temporary forgetfulness through the observation of certain
peculiarities, which, although not general, can, nevertheless,
be seen clearly in some cases. In these there is not only
forgetfulness, but also false recollection: he who strives for
the escaped names brings to consciousness others—substi-
tutive names—which, although immediately recognised as
false, nevertheless obtrude themselves with great tenacity.

¹Monatschrift f. Psychiatrie.

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The process which should lead to the reproduction of the
lost name is, as it were, displaced, and thus brings one to
an incorrect substitute.

Now it is my assumption that the displacement is not
left to psychic arbitrariness, but that it follows lawful and
rational paths. In other words, I assume that the substitutive
name (or names) stands in direct relation to the lost name,
and I hope, if I succeed in demonstrating this connection,
to throw light on the origin of the forgetting of names.

In the example which I selected for analysis in 1898 I
vainly strove to recall the name of the master who made
the imposing frescoes of the “Last Judgment” in the dome
of Orvieto. Instead of the lost name—Signorelli—two other
names of artists—Botticelli and Boltraffio—obtruded them-
selves, names which my judgment immediately and definitely
rejected as being incorrect. When the correct name was
imparted to me by an outsider I recognised it at once with-
out any hesitation. The examination of the influence and
association paths which caused the displacement from
Signorelli to Botticelli and Boltraffio led to the following
results:—

(a) The reason for the escape of the name Signorelli is
neither to be sought in the strangeness in itself of this name
nor in the psychologic character of the connection in which
it was inserted. The forgotten name was just as familiar
to me as one of the substitutive names—Botticelli—and
somewhat more familiar than the other substitute—Boltraffio
—of the possessor of which I could hardly say more than
that he belonged to the Milanese School. The connection,
too, in which the forgetting of the name took place appeared
to me harmless, and led to no further explanation. I jour-
neyed by carriage with a stranger from Ragusa, Dalmatia,
to a station in Herzegovina. Our conversation drifted to
travelling in Italy, and I asked my companion whether he
had been in Orvieto and had seen there the famous frescoes
of ———.

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(b) The forgetting of the name could not be explained
until after I had recalled the theme discussed immediately
before this conversation. This forgetting then made itself
known as a disturbance of the newly emerging theme caused
by the theme preceding it. In brief, before I asked my
travelling companion if he had been in Orvieto we had
been discussing the customs of the Turks living in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. I had related what I heard from a colleague
who was practising medicine among them, namely, that
they show full confidence in the physician and complete
submission to fate. When one is compelled to inform them
that there is no help for the patient, they answer: “Sir
(Herr), what can I say? I know that if he could be saved
you would save him.” In these sentences alone we can
find the words and names: Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Herr
(sir), which may be inserted in an association series between
Signorelli, Botticelli, and Boltraffio.

(c) I assume that the stream of thoughts concerning the
customs of the Turks in Bosnia, etc., was able to disturb
the next thought, because I withdrew my attention from it
before it came to an end. For I recalled that I wished to
relate a second anecdote which was next to the first in my
memory. These Turks value the sexual pleasure above all
else, and at sexual disturbances merge into an utter despair
which strangely contrasts with their resignation at the peril
of losing their lives. One of my colleague’s patients once
told him: “For you know, sir (Herr), if that ceases, life
no longer has any charm.”

I refrained from imparting this characteristic feature
because I did not wish to touch upon such a delicate theme
in conversation with a stranger. But I went still further;
I also deflected my attention from the continuation of the
thought which might have associated itself in me with the
theme “Death and Sexuality.” I was at that time under
the after-effects of a message which I had received a few
weeks before, during a brief sojourn in Trafoi. A patient

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on whom I had spent much effort had ended his life on account
of an incurable sexual disturbance. I know positively that
this sad event, and everything connected with it, did not
come to my conscious recollection on that trip in Herze-
govina. However, the agreement between Trafoi and Bol-
traffio forces me to assume that this reminiscence was at
that time brought to activity despite all the intentional
deviation of my attention.

(d) I can no longer conceive the forgetting of the name
Signorelli as an accidental occurrence. I must recognize
in this process the influence of a motive. There were motives
which actuated the interruption in the communication of
my thoughts (concerning the customs of the Turks, etc.),
and which later influenced me to exclude from my conscious-
ness the thought connected with them, and which might
have led to the message concerning the incident in Trafoi
—that is, I wanted to forget something, I repressed some-
thing. To be sure, I wished to forget something other than
the name of the master of Orvieto; but this other thought
brought about an associative connection between itself and
this name, so that my act of volition missed the aim, and
I forgot the one against my will, while I intentionally wished
to forget the other. The disinclination to recall directed
itself against the one content; the inability to remember
appeared in another. The case would have been obviously
simpler if this disinclination and the inability to remember
had concerned the same content. The substitutive names
no longer seem so thoroughly justified as they were before
this explanation. They remind me (after the form of a
compromise) as much of what I wished to forget as of
what I wished to remember, and show me that my object
to forget something was neither a perfect success nor a
failure.

(e) The nature of the association formed between the lost
name and the repressed theme (death and sexuality, etc.),
containing the names of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Trafoi,

Signor elli

Her zegovina and

Herr Sir, What can I say, etc.

Bo ttcelli

Bo snia

Bo l traffio

Trafo!

Death and Sexuality

Repressed thoughts

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is also very strange. In the scheme inserted here, which
originally appeared in 1898, an attempt is made to graphi-
cally represent these associations.

The name Signorelli was thus divided into two parts.
One pair of syllables (elli) returned unchanged in one of
the substitutions, while the other had gained, through the
translation of signor (sir, Herr), many and diverse relations
to the name contained in the repressed theme, but was
lost through it in the reproduction. Its substitution was
formed in a way to suggest that a displacement took place
along the same associations—“Herzegovina and Bosnia”—
regardless of the sense and acoustic demarcation. The names
were therefore treated in this process like the written pictures
of a sentence which is to be transformed into a picture-
puzzle (rebus). No information was given to consciousness
concerning the whole process, which, instead of the name
Signorelli, was thus changed to the substitutive names. At
first sight no relation is apparent between the theme that
contained the name Signorelli and the repressed one which
immediately preceded it.

Perhaps it is not superfluous to remark that the given
explanation does not contradict the conditions of memory
reproduction and forgetting assumed by other psychologists,
which they seek in certain relations and dispositions. Only in
certain cases have we added another motive to the factors
long recognized as causative in forgetting names, and have
thus laid bare the mechanism of faulty memory. The assumed
dispositions are indispensable also in our case, in order to
make it possible for the repressed element to associatively
gain control over the desired name, and take it along into
the repression. Perhaps this would not have occurred in
another name having more favourable conditions of repro-
duction. For it is quite probable that a suppressed element
continually strives to assert itself in some other way, but
attains this success only where it meets with suitable condi-
tions. At other times the suppression succeeds without dis--

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turbance of function, or, as we may justly say, without
symptoms.

When we recapitulate the conditions for forgetting a
name with faulty recollection we find: (1) a certain disposi-
tion to forget the same; (2) a process of suppression which
has taken place shortly before; and (3) the possibility of
establishing an outer association between the concerned
name and the element previously suppressed. The last
condition will probably not have to be much overrated,
for the slightest claim on the association is apt in most
cases to bring it about. But it is a different and farther-
reaching question whether such outer association can really
furnish the proper condition to enable the suppressed
element to disturb the reproduction of the desired name,
or whether after all a more intimate connection between
the two themes is not necessarily required. On superficial
consideration one may be willing to reject the latter require-
ment and consider the temporal meeting in perfectly dissimilar
contents as sufficient. But on more thorough examination
one finds more and more frequently that the two elements
(the repressed and the new one) connected by an outer
association, possess besides a connection in content, and
this can also be demonstrated in the example Signorelli.

The value of the understanding gained through the analysis
of the example Signorelli naturally depends on whether we
must explain this case as a typical or as an isolated process.
I must now maintain that the forgetting of a name associated
with faulty recollection uncommonly often follows the same
process as was demonstrated in the case of Signorelli. Almost
every time that I observed this phenomenon in myself I
was able to explain it in the manner indicated above as
being motivated by repression.

I must mention still another view-point in favour of the
typical nature of our analysis. I believe that one is not
justified in separating the cases of name-forgetting with
faulty recollection from those in which incorrect substitutive

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names have not obtruded themselves. These substitutive
names occur spontaneously in a number of cases; in other
cases, where they do not come spontaneously, they can be
brought to the surface by concentration of attention, and
they then show the same relation to the repressed element
and the lost name as those that come spontaneously. Two
factors seem to play a part in bringing to consciousness the
substitutive names: first, the effort of attention, and second,
an inner determinant which adheres to the psychic material.
I could find the latter in the greater or lesser facility which
forms the required outer associations between the two
elements. A great many of the cases of name-
forgetting without faulty recollection therefore belong to the cases
with substitutive name formation, the mechanism of which
corresponds to the one in the example Signorelli. But I
surely shall not venture to assert that all cases of name
forgetting belong to the same group. There is no doubt
that there are cases of name-forgetting that proceed in a
much simpler way. We shall represent this state of affairs
carefully enough if we assert that besides the simple forgetting
of proper names there is another forgetting which is motivated
by repression.