17

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 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 demonstration 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 acquaintance 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
generation, as he expressed it, was destined to grow crippled,
that it was prevented from developing its talents and from
gratifying its desires. He concluded his passionately felt
speech with the familiar verse from Virgil: Exoriare . . .
in which the unhappy Dido leaves her vengeance upon
Æneas to posterity. Instead of “concluded,” I should have
said “wished to conclude,” for he could not bring the
quotation to an end, and attempted to conceal the open
gap in his memory by transposing the words:—

“Exoriar(e) ex nostris ossibus ultor!”

18

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 is too stupid to forget such a word,” he said. “By
the way, I understand 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.”

¹This is the usual way of bringing to consciousness hidden
ideas. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 83–4, translated by
A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Company, New York, and Allen,
London.

19

“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 con-
nection 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
Kleinpaul.”

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

“Just stop a moment; both St. Januarius and St. Augustine
have something 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 happened
once during the French occupation. The General in com-
mand—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. . . .”

20

“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 con-
nection 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 demanded 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 certain day, the excitement if
the event does not take place, and the distinct threat that
the miracle must take place. . . . Indeed, you have elaborated
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 expectation?”

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

“Please stop. I hope you do not take these thoughts—
if I really entertained 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 coinci-
dental?”

“I must leave to your own judgment whether you can
explain all these connections through the assumption of

21

coincidence. I will tell you, however, that every similar
case that you analyse will lead you to just such remarkable
‘coincidences!’”

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 en-
deavoured to evade the far richer material furnished me
by my neurotic patients, because 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 examina-
tion. This analysis is also important in other respects, inas-
much as it elucidates a case of word-forgetting without
substitutive recollection, and thus confirms the principle
formulated above, namely, that the appearance or non-
appearance of incorrect substitutive recollections does not
constitute an essential distinction.¹

¹Finer observation reduces somewhat the contrast between
the analyses of Signorelli and aliquis as far as the substitutive
recollections are concerned. Here, too, the forgetting 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 sceptical, 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 refine-
ments upon which no value need be laid. It seems now quite
possible that the appearance of any kind of substitutive recollec-
tion is a constant sign—perhaps only characteristic and misleading
—of the purposive forgetting motivated by repression. This

22

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

But the principal value of the example aliquis lies in
another of its distinctions from the case Signorelli. In the
latter example the reproduction of the name becomes dis-
turbed through the after-effects of a stream of thought
which began shortly before and was interrupted, 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 represented 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 deprived of its rights, and like Dido
he presaged that a new generation would take upon itself
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.

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.

23

FORGETTING OF FOREIGN WORDS

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
artificial detour of associations. Another important agree-
ment with the example 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 contradiction
emanating from the repression. In the course of this dis-
cussion we shall repeatedly meet with this process, which
seems to me to be the more easily understood.