41

II

FORGETTING OF FOREIGN WORDS

The ordinary vocabulary of our own language seems to be protected
against forgetting within the limits of normal function, but it is quite
different with words from a foreign language. The tendency to forget
such words extends to all parts of speech. In fact, depending on our own
general state and the degree of fatigue, the first manifestation of func-
tional disturbance evinces itself in the irregularity of our control over
foreign vocabulary. In a series of cases, this forgetting follows the same
mechanism as the one revealed in the example Signorelli. As a demon-
stration of this, I shall report a single analysis, characterized, however,
by valuable features concerning the forgetting of a word, not a noun,
from a Latin quotation. Before proceeding, allow me to give a full and
clear account of this little episode.

Last summer, while journeying on my vacation, I renewed the ac-
quaintance of a young man of academic education, who, as I soon noticed,
was conversant with some of my works. In our conversation we drifted—
I no longer remember how—to the social position of the race to which we
both belonged. He, being ambitious, bemoaned the fact that his genera-
tion, as he expressed it, was destined to become stunted, that it was pre-
vented from developing its talents and from gratifying its desires. He
concluded his passionately felt speech with the familiar verse from Vir-
gil: Exoriare . . . in which the unhappy Dido leaves her vengeance upon
Aeneas to posterity. Instead of “concluded,” I should have said “wished
to conclude,” for he could not bring the quotation to an end, and at-
tempted to conceal the open gap in his memory by transposing the words:
“Exoriar (e) ex nostris ossibus ultor!” He finally became piqued and
said: “Please don’t make such a mocking face, as if you were gloating
over my embarrassment, but help me. There is something missing in this
verse. How does it read in its complete form?”

“With pleasure,” I answered, and cited it correctly:
“Exoriar (e) aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!”

“It was too stupid to forget such a word,” he said. “By the way, I un-
derstand that you are interested in such things. Perhaps you can tell me
how I came to forget the word aliquis.”

42

derstand you claim that forgetting is not without its reasons; I should be
very curious to find out how I came to forget this indefinite pronoun
‘aliquis’.”

I gladly accepted the challenge, as I hoped to get an addition to my
collection, and said, “We can easily do this, but I must ask you to tell me
frankly and without any criticism everything that occurs to your mind
after you focus your attention, without any particular intention, on the
forgotten word.”¹

“Very well, the ridiculous idea comes to me to divide the word in the
following way: a and liquis.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“What else does that recall to you?”

“The thought goes on to reliquies—liquidation—liquidity—fluid.”

“Does that mean anything to you now?”

“No, not by a long shot.”

“Just go ahead.”

“I now think,” he said, laughing sarcastically, “of Simon of Trent,
whose relics I saw two years ago in a church in Trent. I think of the old
accusation which has been brought against the Jews again, and of the
work of Kleinpaul, who sees in these supposed sacrifices reincarnations
or revivals, so to speak, of the Saviour.”

“This stream of thoughts has some connection with the theme which
we discussed before the Latin word escaped you.”

“You are right. I now think of an article in an Italian journal which I
have recently read. I believe it was entitled: ‘What St. Augustine said
Concerning Women.’ What can you do with this?”

I waited.

“Now I think of something which surely has no connection with the
theme.”

“Oh, please abstain from all criticism, and—”

“Oh, I know! I recall a handsome old gentleman whom I met on my
journey last week. He was really an original type. He looked like a big
bird of prey. His name, if you care to know, is Benedict.”

“Well, at least you give a grouping of saints and church fathers: St.
Simon, St. Augustine and St. Benedict. I believe that there was a Church
father named Origines. Three of these, moreover, are Christian names,
like Paul in the name of Kleinpaul.”

“Now I think of St. Januarius and his blood miracle—I find that the
thoughts are running mechanically.”

¹This is the usual way of bringing to consciousness hidden ideas. Cf. The Interpreta-
tion of Dreams, pp. 191–194 of the present volume; also published in an edition by
The Macmillan Company, New York, and Allen & Unwin, London, (1937).

43

“Just stop a moment; both St. Januarius and St. Augustine have some
thing to do with the calendar. Will you recall to me the blood miracle?”

“Don’t you know about it? The blood of St. Januarius is preserved in
a phial in a church in Naples, and on a certain holiday, a miracle takes
place causing it to liquefy. The people think a great deal of this miracle,
and become very excited if the liquefying process is retarded, as hap-
pened once during the French occupation. The General in command—or
Garibaldi, if I am not mistaken—then took the priest aside, and with a
very significant gesture pointed out to him the soldiers arrayed without,
and expressed his hope that the miracle would soon take place. And it
actually took place. . . .”

“Well, what else comes to your mind? Why do you hesitate?”

“Something really occurred to me . . . but it is too intimate a matter
to impart . . . besides, I see no connection and no necessity for telling
it.”

“I will take care of the connection. Of course I cannot compel you to
reveal what is disagreeable to you, but then you should not have de-
manded that I tell you why you forgot the word ‘aliquis’.”

“Really? Do you think so? Well, I suddenly thought of a woman from
whom I could easily get a message that would be very annoying to us
both.”

“That she missed her courses?”

“How could you guess such a thing?”

“That was not very difficult. You prepared me for it long enough. Just
think of the saints of the calendar, the liquefying of the blood on a cer-
tain day, the excitement if the event does not take place, and the distinct
threat that the miracle must take place. . . . Indeed, you have elabo-
rated the miracle of St. Januarius into a clever allusion to the courses of
the woman.”

“It was surely without my knowledge. And do you really believe that
my inability to reproduce the word ‘aliquis’ was due to this anxious ex-
pectation?”

“That appears to me absolutely certain. Don’t you recall dividing it into
a-liquis and the associations: reliquies, liquidation, fluid? Shall I also add
to this connection the fact that St. Simon, to whom you got by way of
reliquies, was sacrificed as a child?”

“Please stop. I hope you do not take these thoughts—if I really enter-
tained them—seriously. I will, however, confess to you that the lady is
Italian, and that I visited Naples in her company. But may not all this
be coincidental?”

“I must leave to your own judgment whether you can explain all these
connections through the assumption of coincidence. I will tell you, how-

44

ever, that every similar case that you analyze will lead you to just such
remarkable ‘coincidences’!”¹

I have more than one reason for valuing this little analysis, for which
I am indebted to my travelling companion. First, because in this case, I
was able to make use of a source which is otherwise inaccessible to me.
Most of the examples of psychic disturbances of daily life that I have here
compiled, I was obliged to take from observation of myself. I endeavored
to evade the far richer material furnished me by my neurotic patients be-
cause I had to preclude the objection that the phenomena in question
were only the result and manifestation of the neurosis. It was therefore
of special value for my purpose to have a stranger free from a neurosis
offer himself as a subject for such examination. This analysis is also im-
portant in other respects, inasmuch as it elucidates a case of word-forget-
ting without substitutive recollection, and thus confirms the principle
formulated above, namely, that the appearance or nonappearance of in-
correct substitutive recollections does not constitute an essential distinc-
tion.²

But the principal value of the example aliquis lies in another of its dis-
tinctions from the case Signorelli. In the latter example, the reproduc-
tion of the name becomes disturbed through the after-effects of a stream

¹This small analysis has aroused much attention and evoked lively discussions in
the literature. Through it, Bleuler attempted to prove mathematically the authen-
ticity of psychoanalytic interpretation. He states: “It contains more probability
value than thousands of unassailed medical ‘cognitions,’ and its peculiar position is
only due to the fact that we are not yet in the habit of dealing in science with psy-
chological probabilities.”—Bleuler: “Austistisch-Undiszipliniertes Denken,” p. 142.
Springer, Berlin, 1921.

²Finer observation reduces somewhat the contrast between the analyses of Signorelli
and aliquis as far as the substitutive recollections are concerned. Here, too, the for-
getting seems to be accompanied by substitutive formations. When I later asked my
companion whether in his effort to recall the forgotten word, he did not think of
some substitution, he informed me that he was at first tempted to put an ab into
the verse: nostris ab ossibus (perhaps the disjointed part of a-liquis) and that later
the word exoriare obtruded itself with particular distinctness and persistency. Being
skeptical, he added that it was apparently due to the fact that it was the first word
of the verse. But when I asked him to focus his attention on the associations to
exoriare, he gave me the word exorcism. This makes me think that the reinforcement
of exoriare in the reproduction has really the value of such substitution. It probably
came through the association exorcism from the names of the saints. However, those
are refinements upon which no value need be laid. It seems now quite possible that
the appearance of any kind of substitutive recollection is a constant sign—perhaps
only characteristic and misleading—of the purposive forgetting motivated by repres-
sion. This substitution might also exist in the reinforcement of an element akin to
the thing forgotten, even where incorrect substitutive names fail to appear. Thus,
in the example Signorelli, as long as the name of the painter remained inaccessible
to me, I had more than a clear visual memory of the cycle of his frescoes, and of
the picture of himself in the corner; at least it was more intensive than any of my
other visual memory traces. In another case, also reported in my essay of 1898, I
had hopelessly forgotten the street name and address connected with a disagreeable
visit in a strange city, but—as if to mock me—the house number appeared especially
vivid, whereas the memory of numbers usually causes me the greatest difficulty.

45

FORGETTING OF FOREIGN WORDS

of thought which began shortly before and was inter-
rupted, but whose
content had no distinct relation to the new theme which contained the
name Signorelli. Between the repression and the theme of the forgotten
name, there existed only the relation of temporal contiguity, which reached
the other in order that the two should be able to form a connection
through an outer association.¹⁾ On the other hand, in the example aliquis,
one can note no trace of such an independent repressed theme which
could occupy conscious thought immediately before and then re-echo as
a disturbance. The disturbance of the reproduction proceeded here from
the inner part of the theme touched upon, and was brought about by the
fact that unconsciously a contradiction arose against the wish-idea repre-
sented in the quotation.

The origin must be construed in the following manner: The speaker
deplored the fact that the present generation of his people was being de-
prived of its rights, and like Dido, he presaged that a new generation
would take upon itself vengeance against the oppressors. He therefore
expressed the wish for posterity. In this moment, he was interrupted by
the contradictory thought: “Do you really wish so much for posterity?
That is not true. Just think in what a predicament you would be if you
should now receive the information that you must expect posterity from
the quarter you have in mind! No, you want no posterity—as much as
you need it for your vengeance.” This contradiction asserts itself, just as
in the example Signorelli, by forming an outer association between one
of his ideation elements and an element of the repressed wish, but here
it is brought about in a most strained manner through what seems an ar-
tificial detour of associations. Another important agreement with the ex-
ample Signorelli results from the fact that the contradiction originates
from repressed sources and emanates from thoughts which would cause a
deviation of attention.

So much for the diversity and the inner relationship of both paradigms
of the forgetting of names. We have learned to know a second mechanism
of forgetting, namely, the disturbance of thought through an inner con-
tradiction emanating from the repression. In the course of this discussion,
we shall repeatedly meet with this process, which seems to me to be the
more easily understood.

¹⁾I am not fully convinced of the lack of an inner connection between the two
streams of thought in the case of Signorelli. In carefully following the repressed
thought concerning the theme of death and sexual life, one does strike an idea which
shows a near relation to the theme of the frescoes of Orvieto.