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IV

CHILDHOOD AND CONCEALING MEMORIES

In a second essay¹⁾ I was able to demonstrate the purposive
nature of our memories in an unexpected field. I started
with the remarkable fact that the earliest recollections of
a person often seemed to preserve the unimportant and
accidental, whereas (frequently thoughl. not universally!)
not a trace is found in the adult memory of the weighty
and affective impressions of this period. As it is known
that the memory exercises a certain selection among the
impressions at its disposal, it would seem logical to
suppose that this selection follows entirely different
principles in childhood than at the time-
of intellectual
maturity. However, close investigation points to the
fact that such an assumption is superfluous. The in-
different childhood memories owe their existence to a
process of displacement. It may be shown by psycho-
analysis that in the reproduction they represent the
substitute for other really significant impressions, whose
direct reproduction is hindered by some resistance. As
they do not owe their existence to their own contents, but
to an associative relation of their contents to another
repressed thought, they deserve the title of “concealing
memories,” by which I have designated them.

In the aforementioned essay I only touched upon, but

¹⁾Published in the Monatschrift f. Psychiatrie u. Neurologie,
1899.

39

in no way exhausted, the varieties in the relations and
meanings of concealed memories. In the given example
fully analysed I particularly emphasized a peculiarity in
the temporal relation between the concealing memory
and the contents of the memory concealed by it. The
content of the concealing memory in that example
belonged to one of the first years of childhood, while the
thoughts represented by it, which remained practically
unconscious, belonged to a later period of the individual
in question. I called this form of displacement a retro-
active or regressive one. Perhaps more often one finds the
reversed relation – that is, an indifferent impression of the
most remote period becomes a concealing memory in
consciousness, which simply owes its existence to an
association with an earlier experience, against whose
direct reproduction there are resistances. We would call
these encroaching or interposing concealing memories.
What most concerns the memory lies here chronologically
beyond the concealing memory. Finally, there may be a
third possible case, namely, the concealing memory may
be connected with the impression it conceals, not only
through its contents, but also through contiguity of time;
this is the contemporaneous or contiguous concealing
memory.

How large a portion of the sum total of our memory
belongs to the category of concealing memories, and what
part it plays in various neurotic hidden processes, these
are problems into the value of which I have neither
inquired nor shall I enter here. I am concerned only
with emphasizing the sameness between the forgetting of
proper names with faulty recollection and the formation
of concealing memories.

At first sight it would seem that the diversities of both

40

phenomena are far more striking, than their exact analo-
gies. There we deal with proper names, here with com-
plete impressions experienced either in reality or in
thought; there we deal with a manifest failure of the
memory function, here with a memory act which appears
strange to us. Again, there we are concerned with a
momentary disturbance–for the name just forgotten
could have been reproduced correctly a hundred times
before, and will be so again from to-morrow on; here we
deal with lasting possession without a failure, for the
indifferent childhood memories seem’ to be able to
accompany us through a great part of life. In both these
cases the riddle seems to be solved in an entirely different
way. There it is the forgetting, while here it is the
remembering which excites our scientific curiosity.
After deeper reflection one realizes that, although there
is a diversity in the psychic material and in the duration
of time of the two phenomena, yet these are by far out-
weighed by the conformities between the two. In both
cases we deal with the failure of remembering: what should
be correctly reproduced by the memory fails to appear,
and instead something else comes as a substitute. In the
case of forgetting a name there is no lack of memory
function in the form of name substitution. The formation
of a concealing memory depends on the forgetting of
other important impressions. In both cases we are
reminded by an intellectual feeling of the intervention of
a disturbance, which in each case takes a different form.
In the case of forgetting of names we are aware that the
substitutive names are incorrect, while in concealing
memories we are surprised that we have them at all.
Hence, if psychologic analysis demonstrates that the
substitutive formation in each case is brought about in

41

the same manner–that¹⁾is, through displacement along a
superficial association–we are justified in saying that the
diversities in material, in duration of time, and in the
centring of both phenomena serve to enhance our expec-
tation, that we have discovered something that is important
and of general value. This generality purports that the
stopping and straying of the reproducing function indic-
ates more often than we suppose that there is an inter-
vention of a prejudicial factor, a tendency which favours
one memory and at the same time works against another.
The subject of childhood memories appears to me so
important and interesting that I would like to devote to it
a few additional remarks which go beyond the views
expressed so far.

How far back into childhood do our memories reach?
I am familiar with some investigations on this question
by V. and G. Henri¹⁾ and Potwin.²⁾ They assert that such
examinations show wide individual variations, inasmuch
as some trace their first reminiscences to the sixth month
of life, while others can recall nothing of their lives before
the end of the sixth or even the eighth year. But what
connection is there between these variations in the behav-
iour of childhood reminiscences, and what signification
may be ascribed to them? It seems that it is not enough
to procure the material for this question by simple
inquiry, but it must later be subjected to a study in which
the person furnishing the information must participate.

I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile
amnesia–that is, the failure of memory for the first years
of our lives–and fail to find in it a strange riddle. We

¹⁾“Enquête sur les premiers souvenirs de l’enfance,” L’Année
psychologique, iii., 1897.

²⁾“Study of Early Memories,” Psychological Review, 1901.

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forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of
what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable.
We really ought to wonder why the memory of later
years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic
processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming
that these same forgotten childhood activities have not
glided off without leaving a trace in the development of,
the person, but that they have left a definite influence for
all future time. Yet in spite of this unparalleled effective-
ness they were forgotten! This would suggest that there
are particularly formed conditions of memory (in the
sense of conscious reproduction) which have thus far
eluded our knowledge. It is quite ‘possible that the
forgetting of childhood may give us the key to the under-
standing of those amnesias which, according to our
newer studies, lie at the basis of the formation of all
neurotic symptoms.
Of these retained childhood reminiscences, some
appear to us readily comprehensible, while others seem
strange or unintelligible. It is not difficult to correct
certain errors in regard to both kinds. If the retained
reminiscences of a person are subjected to an analytic test,
it can be readily ascertained that a guarantee for their
correctness does not exist. Some of the memory pictures
are surely falsified and incomplete, or displaced in point
of time and place. ‘I’he assertions of persons examined
that their first memories reach back perhaps to their
second year are evidently” unreliable. Motives can soon
be discovered which explain the disfigurement and the
displacement of these experiences, but they also demon-
strate that these memory lapses are not the result of a
mere unreliable memory. Powerful forces from a later
period have moulded the memory capacity of our infantile

43

experiences, and it is probably due to these same forces
that the understanding of our childhood is generally so
very strange to us.

The recollection of adults, as is known, proceeds
through different psychic material. Some recall by means
of visual pictures—their memories are of a visual charac-
ter; other individuals can scarcely reproduce in memory
the most paltry sketch of an experience; we call such
persons “auditifs” and “moteurs” and in contrast to the
“visuels,” terms proposed by Charcot. These differences
vanish in dreams; all our dreams are preponderatingly
visual. But this development is also found in the childhood
memories; the latter are plastic and visual, even in those
people whose later memory lacks the visual element. The
visual memory, therefore, preserves the type of the
infantile recollections. Only my earliest childhood
memories are of a visual character; they represent plastic-
ally depicted scenes, comparable only to stage settings.

In these scenes of childhood, whether they prove true
or false, one usually sees his own childish person both in
contour and dress. This circumstance must excite our
wonder, for adults do not see their own persons in their
recollections of later experiences.¹ It is, moreover, against
our experiences to assume that the child’s attention during
his experiences is centred on himself rather than exclus-
ively on outside impressions. Various sources force us
to assume that the so-called earliest childhood recollec-
tions are not true memory traces but later elaborations
of the same, elaborations which might have been subjected
to the influences of many later psychic forces. Thus the
“childhood-
reminiscences” of individuals altogether

¹ I assert this as a result of certain investigations made by
myself.

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advance to the signification of „concealing memories,“
and thereby form a noteworthy analogy to the childhood
reminiscences as laid down in the legends and myths of
nations.

Whoever has examined mentally a number of persons
by the method of psychoanalysis must have gathered in
this work numerous examples of concealing memories of
every description. However, owing to the previously
discussed nature of the relations of the childhood reminis-
cences to later life, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to
report such examples. For, in order to attach the value
of the concealing memo-
ry to an infantile reminiscence, it
would be often necessary to present the entire-life-history
of the person concerned. Only seldom is it possible, as in
the following good example, to take out from its context
and report a single childhood memory.

A twenty-four-year-old man preserved the following
picture from the fifth year of his life: In the garden of a
summer-house he sat on a stool next to his aunt, who was
engaged in teaching him the alphabet. He found difficulty
in distinguishing the letter m from n, and he begged his
aunt to tell him how to tell one from the other. His aunt
called his attention to the fact that the letter m had one
whole portion (a stroke) more than the letter n. There
was no reason to dispute the reliability of this childhood
recollection; its meaning, however, was discovered only
later, when it showed itself to be the symbolic represen-
tation of another boyish inquisitiveness. For just as he
wanted to know the difference between m and n at that
time, so he concerned himself later about the difference
between boy and girl, and he would have been willing
that just this aunt should be his teacher. He also dis-
covered that the difference was a similar one; that the boy

45

again had one whole portion more than the girl, and at
the time of this recognition his memory awoke to the
corresponding childish inquisitiveness.

I would like to show by one more example the sense
that may be gained by a childhood reminiscence through
analytic work, although it may seem to contain no sense
, before. In my forty-third year, when I began to interest
myself in what remained in my memory of my own
childhood, a scene struck me which for a long time, as I
afterwards believed, had repeatedly come to consciousness,
and which through reliable identification could be traced
to a period before the completion of my third year. I saw
myself in front of a chest, the door of which was held
open by my half-
brother, twenty years my senior. I stood
there demanding something and screaming; my mother,
pretty and slender, then suddenly entered the room, as if
returning from the street.
In these words I formulated this scene so vividly seen,
which, however, furnished no other clue. Whether my
brother wished to open or lock the chest (in the first
explanation it was a “cupboard”), why I cried, and what
bearing the arrival of my mother had, all these questions
were dim to me; I was tempted to explain to myself that
it dealt with the memory of a hoax by my older brother,
which was interrupted by my mother. Such misunder-
standings of childhood scenes retained in memory are not
uncommon; we recall a situation, but it is not centralized;
we do not know on which of the elements to place the
psychic accent. Analytic effort led me to an entirely
unexpected solution of the picture. I missed my mother
and began to suspect that she was locked in this cupboard
or chest, and therefore demanded that my brother should
unlock it. As he obliged me, and I became convinced that

46

she was not in the chest, I began to cry; this is the moment
firmly retained in the memory, which was directly
followed by the appearance of my mother, who appeased
my worry and anxiety.

But how did the child get the idea of looking for the
absent mother in the chest? Dreams which occurred at
the same time pointed dimly to a nurse, concerning whom
other reminiscences were retained; as, for example, that
she conscientiously urged me to deliver to her the small
coins which I received as gifts, a detail which in itself may
lay claim to the value of a concealing memory for later
things. I then concluded to facilitate for myself this time
the task of interpretation, and asked my now aged mother
about that nurse. I found out all sorts of things, among
others the fact that this shrewd but dishonest person had
committed extensive robberies during the confinement of
my mother, and that my half-brother was instrumental in
bringing her to justice.

This information gave me the key to the scene from
childhood, as through a sort of inspiration. The sudden
disappearance of the nurse was not a matter of indifference
to me; I had just asked this brother where she was,
probably because I had noticed that he had played a part
in her disappearance, and he, evasive and witty as he is
to this day, answered that she was “boxed in.” I under-
stood this answer in the childish way, but asked no more,
as there was nothing else to be discovered. When my
mother left me shortly thereafter I suspected that the
naughty brother had treated in her the same way as he
did the nurse, and therefore pressed him to open the chest.
• I also understand now why in the translation of the
visual childhood scene my mother’s slenderness was
accentuated; she must have struck me as being newly

47

restored. I am two and a half years older than the sister
born at that time, and when I was three years of age I was
separated from my half-brother.