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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 functional 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 quota-
tation. 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

II

verse from Virgil: Exoraire . . . 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 attempted 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 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?”

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.

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“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 rein-
carnations 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 there, 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.”

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“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 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 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

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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, liquidation, fluid? Shall I also add to this connec-
tion 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
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 com-
panion. 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 endeavoured 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 examination. This analysis is also important in

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other respects, inasmuch as it elucidates a case of word-
forgetting without substitutive recollection, and thus
confirms the principle formulated above, namely, that the
appearance or nonappearance of incorrect substitutive
recollections does not constitute an essential distinction.¹

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
disturbed through the after-
effects of a stream of thought

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 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 repression. 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.

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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 uncon-
sciously 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 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

¹I 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.

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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 asso-
ciations. Another important agreement 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 discussion we shall repeatedly meet with
this process, which seems to me to be the more easily
understood.