FORGETTING OF FOREIGN WORDS

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 dif-
ferent 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 demon-
stration of this I shall report a single analysis,
characterized, however, by valuable features, con-
cerning 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 con-

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

versation 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 pre-
vented from developing its talents and from grati-
fying its desires. He concluded his passionately
felt speech with the familiar verse from Virgil :
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 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.’ ”

19

Forgetting of Foreign Words

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 atten-
tion, without any particular intention, on the for-
gotten 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 reliques–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

¹⁾This 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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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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 gentle-
man 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 Origen. 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?”

21

Forgetting of Foreign Words

“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 connection and no necessity for
telling it.”

“I will take care of the connection. Of course
I cannot compel you to reveal what is disagree-
able 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?”

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

“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 repro-
duce 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 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 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-
ever, that every similar case that you analyse
will lead you to just such remarkable ‘coincidences!’”

I have more than one reason for valuing this

23

Forgetting of Foreign Words

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 other-
wise 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 impor-
tant in other respects, inasmuch as it elucidates a
case of word-
forgetting without substitutive recol-
lection, and thus confirms the principle formu-
lated above, namely, that the appearance or
nonappearance of incorrect substitutive recollec-
tions 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

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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 reproduc-
tion of the name becomes disturbed 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 connec-
tion

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 for
gotten, 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 inten-
sive 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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Forgetting of Foreign Words

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 contra-
diction 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 predica-
ment 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 veng-
eance.

¹ I am not fully convinced of the lack of an inner con
nection 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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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

ance.” 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 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 rela-
tionship 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 ema-
nating from the repression. In the course of this
discussion we shall repeatedly meet with this pro-
cess, which seems to me to be the more easily
understood.