95

VII
FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS AND
RESOLUTIONS

If ANYONE should be inclined to overrate the state of our present knowl-
edge of mental life, all that would be needed to force him to assume a
modest attitude would be to remind him of the function of memory. No
psychologic theory has yet been able to account for the connection be-
tween the fundamental phenomena of remembering and forgetting;
indeed, even the complete analysis of that which one can actually observe
has as yet scarcely been grasped. Today, forgetting has perhaps grown
more puzzling than remembering, especially since we have learned from
the study of dreams and pathologic states that even what for a long time
we believed forgotten may suddenly return to consciousness.
To be sure, we are in possession of some viewpoints which we hope will
receive general recognition. Thus we assume that forgetting is a spon-
taneous process to which we may ascribe a certain temporal discharge.
We emphasize the fact that, just as among the units of every impression
or experience, in forgetting, too, a certain selection takes place among the
existing impressions. We are acquainted with some of the conditions that
underlie the tenaciousness of memory and the awakening of that which
would otherwise remain forgotten. Nevertheless, we can observe in in-
numerable cases of daily life how unreliable and unsatisfactory our
knowledge of the mechanism is. Thus we may listen to two persons ex-
changing reminiscences concerning the same outward impressions, say of
a journey that they have taken together some time before. What remains
most firmly in the memory of the one is often forgotten by the other, as if
it had never occurred, even when there is not the slightest reason to
assume that this impression is of greater psychic importance for the one
than for the other. A great many of those factors which determine the
selective power of memory are obviously still beyond our ken.
With the purpose of adding some small contribution to the knowledge
of the conditions of forgetting, I was wont to subject to a psychologic
analysis those cases in which forgetting concerned me personally. As a

96

rule, I took up only a certain group of those cases, namely, those in which
the forgetting astonished me, because, in my opinion, I should have re-
membered the experience in question. I wish further to remark that I am
generally not inclined to forgetfulness (of things experienced, not of
things learned), and that for a short period of my youth, I was able to
perform extraordinary feats of memory. When I was a schoolboy, it was
quite natural for me to be able to repeat from memory the page of a book
which I had read; and shortly before I entered the University, I could
write down practically verbatim the popular lectures on scientific sub-
jects directly after hearing them. In the tension before the final medical
examination, I must have made use of the remnant of this ability, for in
certain subjects I gave the examiners apparently automatic answers,
which proved to be exact reproductions of the text book, which I had
skimmed through but once and then in greatest haste.

Since those days, I have steadily lost control over my memory; of late,
however, I became convinced that with the aid of a certain artifice I can
recall far more than I would otherwise credit myself with remembering.
For example, when, during my office hours, a patient states that I have
seen him before and I cannot recall either the fact or the time, then I help
myself by guessing—that is, I allow a number of years, beginning from
the present time, to come to my mind quickly. Whenever this could be
controlled by records of definite information from the patient, it was
always shown that in over ten years ¹ I had seldom missed it by more
than six months. The same thing happens when I meet a casual acquaint-
ance and, from politeness, inquire about his small child. When he tells of
its progress, I try to fancy how old the child now is. I control my estimate
by the information given by the father, and at most, I make a mistake of
a month, and in older children of three months. I cannot state, however,
what basis I have for this estimate. Of late, I have grown so bold that I
always offer my estimate spontaneously, and still run no risk of grieving
the father by displaying my ignorance in regard to his offspring. Thus I
extend my conscious memory by invoking my larger unconscious memory.

I shall report some striking examples of forgetting, which, for the most
part, I have observed in myself. I distinguish forgetting of impressions and
experiences, that is, the forgetting of knowledge, from forgetting of reso-
lutions, that is, the forgetting of omissions. The uniform result of the
entire series of observations I can formulate as follows: The forgetting
in all cases is proved to be founded on a motive of displeasure.

¹In the course of the conference, the details of the previous first visit return to
consciousness.

97

A. FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS AND KNOWLEDGE

(a) During the summer, my wife once made me very angry, although
the cause in itself was trifling. We sat in a restaurant opposite a gentle-
man from Vienna whom I knew, and who surely also remembered me.
However, I had reasons for not wishing to renew his acquaintance. My
wife, who had heard nothing except the reputed name of the man opposite
her, showed by her actions that she was listening to his conversation with
his neighbors, for, from time to time, she asked me questions which took
up the thread of their discussion. I became impatient and finally irritated.
A few weeks later, I complained to a relative about this behavior of my
wife, but I was not able to recall even a single word of the conversation of
the gentleman in question. As I am usually of a rather resentful nature
and cannot forget a single incident of an episode that has annoyed me, my
amnesia in this case was undoubtedly determined by respect for my wife.

A short time ago, I had a similar experience. I wished to make merry
with an intimate friend over a statement made by my wife only a few
hours earlier, but I found myself hindered by the noteworthy fact that I
had entirely forgotten the statement. I had to ask my wife to recall it to
me. It is easy to understand that my forgetting in this case may be
analogous to the typical disturbance of judgment which dominates us
when it concerns those nearest to us.

(b) To oblige a woman who was a stranger in Vienna, I had under-
taken to procure a small iron safe for the preservation of documents and
money. When I offered my services, the image of an establishment in the
heart of the city where I was sure I had seen such safes floated before me
with extraordinary visual vividness. To be sure, I could not recall the
name of the street, but I felt certain that I would discover the store in a
walk through the city, for my memory told me that I had passed it count-
less times. To my chagrin, I could not find the store with the show-
window
with the safes, though I walked through the inner part of the city in every
direction. I concluded that the only thing left to do was to search through
a business directory, and if that failed, to try to identify the establishment
in a second round of the city. It did not, however, require so much effort;
among the addresses in the directory, I found one which immediately
presented itself as that which had been forgotten. It was true that I had
passed the show-window countless times, each time, however, when I had
gone to visit the M. family, who have lived a great many years in this very
building. After this intimate friendship had turned to an absolute
estrangement, I had taken care to avoid the neighborhood as well as the
house, though without ever thinking of the reason for my action. In my
walk through the city searching for the safe in the show window, I had

93

traversed every street in the neighborhood but the right one, and I had
avoided this as if it were forbidden ground.

The motive of displeasure which was at the bottom of my disorientation
is thus comprehensible. But the mechanism of forgetting is no longer so
simple as in the former example. Here my aversion naturally does not
extend to the vendor of safes, but to another person, concerning whom I
wish to know nothing, and later, transfers itself from the latter to this
incident where it brings about the forgetting. Similarly, in the case of
Burckhard mentioned above, the grudge against the one brought about
the error in writing the name of the other. The similarity of names which
here established a connection between two essentially different streams of
thought was accomplished in the showcase window instance by the con-
tiguity of space and the inseparable environment. Moreover, this latter
case was more closely knit together, for money played a great part in the
causation of the estrangement from the family living in this house.

(c) The B. and R. Company requested me to pay a professional call
on one of their officers. On my way to him, I was engrossed in the thought
that I must already have been in the building occupied by the firm. It
seemed as if I used to see their signboard in a lower story, while my pro-
fessional visit was taking me to a higher story. I could not recall, however,
which house it was nor when I had called there. Although the entire
matter was indifferent and of no consequence, I nevertheless occupied
myself with it, and at last learned in the usual roundabout way, by col-
lecting the thoughts that occurred to me in this connection, that one story
above the floor occupied by the firm B. and R., was the Pension Fischer,
where I had frequently visited patients. Then I remembered the building
which sheltered both the company and the pension.

I was still puzzled, however, as to the motive that entered into play in
this forgetting. I found nothing disagreeable in my memory concerning
the firm itself or the Pension Fischer, or the patients living there. I was
also aware that it could not deal with anything very painful, otherwise I
hardly would have been successful in tracing the thing forgotten in a
roundabout way without resorting to external aid, as happened in the
preceding example. Finally it occurred to me that a little before, while
starting on my way to a new patient, a gentleman whom I had difficulty in
recalling greeted me in the street. Some months previously, I had seen
this man in an apparently serious condition and had made the diagnosis
of general paresis, but later I had learned of his recovery; consequently
my judgment had been incorrect. Was it not possible that we had in this
case a remission, which one usually finds in dementia paralytica? In that
contingency, my diagnosis would still be justified. The influence emanat-
ing from this meeting caused me to forget the neighborhood of the B. and
R. Company, and my interest to discover the thing forgotten was trans-

99

ferred from this case of disputed diagnosis. But the associative connection
in this loose inner relation was effected by means of a similarity of names:
the man who recovered, contrary to expectation, was also an officer of a
large company that recommends patients to me. And the physician with
whom I had seen the supposed paretic bore the name of Fischer, the name
of the pension in the house which I had forgotten.

(d) Mislaying a thing really has the same significance as forgetting
where we have placed it. Like most people delving in pamphlets and
books, I am well oriented about my desk, and can produce what I want
with one lunge. What appears to others as disorder has become for me
perfect order. Why, then, did I mislay a catalogue which was sent to me
not long ago so that it could not be found? What is more, it had been my
intention to order a book which I found announced therein entitled
Über die Sprache, because it was written by an author whose spirited,
vivacious style I like, whose insight into psychology and whose knowledge
of the cultural world I have learned to appreciate. I believe that was just
why I mislaid the catalogue. It was my habit to lend the books of this
author among my friends for their enlightenment, and a few days before,
on returning one, somebody had said: “His style reminds me altogether
of yours, and his way of thinking is identical.” The speaker did not know
what he was stirring up with this remark. Years ago, when I was younger
and in greater need of forming alliances, I was told practically the same
thing by an older colleague, to whom I had recommended the writings
of a familiar medical author. To put it in his words: “It is absolutely your
style and manner.” I was so influenced by these remarks that I wrote a
letter to this author with the object of bringing about a closer relation,
but a rather cool answer put me back “in my place.” Perhaps still earlier
discouraging experiences conceal themselves behind this last one, for I
did not find the mislaid catalogue. Through this premonition, I was
actually prevented from ordering the advertised book, although the disap-
pearance of the catalogue formed no real hindrance, as I remembered well
both the name of the book and the author.

(e) Another case of mislaying merits our interest on account of the
conditions under which the mislaid object was rediscovered. A younger
man narrates as follows: “Several years ago, there were some misunder-
standings between me and my wife. I found her too cold, and though I
fully appreciated her excellent qualities, we lived together without evinc-
ing any tenderness for each other. One day, on her return from a walk,
she gave me a book which she had bought because she thought it would
interest me. I thanked her for this mark of ‘interest,’ promised to read
the book, put it away and did not find it again. So months passed, during
which I occasionally remembered the lost book, and also tried in vain to
find it.

100

“About six months later, my beloved mother, who was not living with
us, became ill. My wife left home to nurse her mother-
in-law. The pa-
tient’s condition became serious and gave my wife the opportunity to
show the best side of herself. One evening, I returned home full of en-
thusiasm over what my wife had accomplished, and felt very grateful to
her. I stepped to my desk and, without definite intention but with the
certainty of a somnambulist, I opened a certain drawer, and in the very
top of it I found the long-missing, mislaid book.”

(f) The following example of “misplacing” belongs to a type well
known to every psychoanalyst. I must add that the patient who expe-
rienced this misplacing has himself found the solution of it.

This patient, whose psychoanalytic treatment had to be interrupted
through the summer vacation when he was in a state of resistance and ill
health, put away his keys in the evening in their usual place, or so he
thought. He then remembered that he wished to take some things from
his desk, where he also had put the money which he needed on the journey.
He was to depart the next day, which was the last day of treatment and
the date when the doctor’s fee was due. But the keys had disappeared.

He began a thorough and systematic search through his small apart-
ment. He became more and more excited over it, but his search was un-
successful. As he recognized this “misplacement” as a symptomatic act—
that is, as being intentional—he aroused his servant in order to continue
his search with the help of an “unprejudiced” person. After another hour,
he gave up the search and feared that he had lost his keys. The next
morning, he ordered new keys from the desk factory, which were hurriedly
made for him. Two acquaintances who had been with him in a cab even
recalled hearing something fall to the ground as he stepped out of the
cab, and he was therefore convinced that the keys had slipped from his
pocket. They were found lying between a thick book and a thin pam-
phlet, the latter a work of one of my pupils, which he wished to take along
as reading matter for his vacation; and they were so skillfully placed that
no one would have supposed that they were there. He himself was unable
to replace the keys in such a position as to render them invisible. The
unconscious skill with which an object is misplaced on account of secret
but strong motives reminds one of “somnambulistic sureness.” The mo-
tive was naturally ill humor over the interruption of the treatment and
the secret rage over the fact that he had to pay such a high fee when he
felt so ill.

(g) Brill relates: ¹ “A man was urged by his wife to attend a social
function in which he really took no interest. Yielding to his wife’s en-
treaties, he began to take his dress-suit from the trunk when he suddenly
thought of shaving. After accomplishing this, he returned to the trunk

¹Brill, loc. cit., p. 197.

101

IMPRESSIONS AND RESOLUTIONS

and found it locked. Despite a long, earnest search, the key could not be
found. A locksmith could not be found on Sunday evening, so that the
couple had to send their regrets. On having the trunk opened the next
morning, the lost key was found within. The husband had absent-mind-
edly dropped the key into the trunk and sprung the lock. He assured me
that this was wholly unintentional and unconscious, but we know that he
did not wish to go to this social affair. The mislaying of the key therefore
lacked no motive.”

Ernest Jones noticed in himself that he was in the habit of mislaying
his pipe whenever he suffered from the effects of over-smoking. The pipe
was then found in some unusual place where it did not belong and which
it normally did not occupy.

(h) In the summer of 1901, I once remarked to a friend with whom I
was then actively engaged in exchanging ideas on scientific questions:
“These neurotic problems can be solved only if we take the position of
absolutely accepting an original bi-sexuality in every individual.” To
which he replied: “I told you that two and a half years ago, while we
were taking an evening walk in Br. At that time, you wouldn’t listen to
it.”

It is truly painful to be thus requested to renounce one’s originality. I
could neither recall such a conversation nor my friend’s revelation. One
of us must be mistaken; and according to the principle of the question
cui prodest?, I must be the one. Indeed, in the course of the following
weeks, everything came back to me just as my friend had recalled it. I
myself remembered that at that time, I gave the answer: “I have not yet
got so far, and I do not care to discuss it.” But since this incident, I have
grown more tolerant when I miss any mention of my name in medical
literature in connection with ideas for which I deserve credit.

It is scarcely accidental that the numerous examples of forgetting
which have been collected without any selection should require for their
solution the introduction of such painful themes as exposing one’s wife;
a friendship that has turned into the opposite; a mistake in medical diag-
nosis; enmity on account of similar pursuits, or the borrowing of some-
body’s ideas. I am rather inclined to believe that every person who will
undertake an inquiry into the motives underlying his forgetting will be
able to fill up a similar sample card of vexatious circumstances. The tend-
ency to forget the disagreeable seems to me to be quite general; the ca-
pacity for it is naturally differently developed in different persons. Certain
denials which we encounter in medical practice can probably be ascribed to
forgetting.¹ Our conception of such forgetting confines the distinction be-

¹If we inquire of a person whether he suffered from leucitic infection ten or fifteen
years ago, we are only too apt to forget that psychically the patient has looked upon
this disease in an entirely different manner than on, let us say, an acute attack of

102

tween this and that behavior to purely psychologic relations, and permits
us to see in both forms of reaction the expression of the same motive. Of
the numerous examples of unpleasant recollection which I have
observed in kinsmen of patients, one remains in my memory as especially
singular.

A mother telling me of the childhood of her nervous son, now in his
puberty, made the statement that, like his brothers and sisters, he was
subject to bed-
wetting throughout his childhood, a symptom which cer-
tainly has some significance in a history of a neurotic patient. Some weeks
later, while seeking information regarding the treatment, I had occasion
to call her attention to signs of a constitutional morbid predisposition in
the young man, and at the same time, referred to the bed-
wetting re-
counted in the anamnesis. To my surprise, she contested this fact con-
cerning him, denying it as well for the other children, and asked me how
I could possibly know this. Finally, I let her know that she herself had
told me a short time before what she had thus forgotten.¹

rheumatism. In the anamneses which parents give about their neurotic daughters, it
is hardly possible to distinguish with any degree of certainty the portion forgotten
from that hidden, for anything that stands in the way of the girl’s future marriage
is systematically set aside by the parents, that is, it becomes repressed. A man who
had recently lost his beloved wife from an affection of the lungs reported to me the
following case of misreading the doctor, which can only be explained by the theory
of such forgetting. “As my poor wife’s pleuritis had not disappeared after many
weeks, Dr. P. was called in consultation. While taking the history, he asked among
others the customary question whether there were any cases of lung trouble in my
wife’s family. My wife denied any such cases, and even I myself could not remember
any. While Dr. P. was taking leave, the conversation accidentally turned to excur-
sions, and my wife said: ‘Yes, even to Landgersdorf, where my poor brother lies
buried, is a long journey.’ This brother died about fifteen years ago, after having
suffered for years from tuberculosis. My wife was very fond of him and often spoke
about him. Indeed, I recall that when her malady was diagnosed as pleurisy, she was
very worried and sadly remarked: ‘My brother also died of lung trouble.’ But the
memory was so very repressed that even after the above-
cited conversation about
the trip to L., she found no occasion to correct her information concerning the
diseases in her family. I myself was struck by this forgetting at the very moment
she began to talk about Landgersdorf.” A perfectly analogous experience is related
by Ernest Jones in his work, A physician whose wife suffered from some obscure
abdominal malady remarked to her: “It is comforting to think that there has been
no tuberculosis in your family.” She turned to him very astonished and said: “Have
you forgotten that my mother died of tuberculosis, and that my sister recovered from
it only after having been given up by the doctors?”

¹During the days when I was first writing these pages, the following almost in-
credible case of forgetting happened to me. On the 1st of January, I examined my
notes so that I could send out my bills. In the month of June, I came across the
name M––l, and could not recall the person to whom it belonged. My surprise
increased when I observed from my books that I treated the case in a sanatorium,
and that for weeks, I had called on the patient daily. A patient treated under such
conditions is rarely forgotten by a physician in six months. I asked myself if it
could have been a man—a paretic—a case without interest? Finally the note about
the fee received brought to my memory all the knowledge which strove to elude it.
M––l was a fourteen-
year-
old girl, the most remarkable case of my latter years, a
case which taught me a lesson I am not likely to forget ever, a case whose upshot

103

One also finds abundant indications which show that even in healthy,
not neurotic persons, resistances are found against the memory of dis-
agreeable impressions and the idea of painful thoughts.¹ But the full
significance of this fact can be estimated only when we enter into the
psychology of neurotic persons. One is forced to make such elementary
defensive striving against ideas which can awaken painful feelings, a striv-
ing which can be put side by side only with the flight-reflex in painful
stimuli, as the main pillar of the mechanism which carries the hysterical
symptoms. One need not offer any objection to the acceptance of such
defensive tendency on the ground that we frequently find it impossible
to rid ourselves of painful memories which cling to us, or to banish such
painful emotions as remorse and reproaches of conscience. No one main-
tains that this defensive tendency invariably gains the upper hand, that
in the play of psychic forces, it may not strike against factors which stir
up the contrary feeling for other purposes and bring it about in spite of it.

As the architectural principle of the psychic apparatus, we may con-
jecture a certain stratification or structure of instances deposited in strata.
And it is quite possible that this defensive tendency belongs to a lower
psychic instance, and is inhibited by higher instances. At all events, it
speaks for the existence and force of this defensive tendency, when we can
trace it to processes such as those found in our examples of forgetting.
We see then that something is forgotten for its own sake, and where this
is not possible, the defensive tendency misses the target and causes some-
thing else to be forgotten–something less significant, but which has fal-
len into associative connection with the disagreeable material.

The views here developed, namely, that painful memories merge into
motivated forgetting with special ease, merits application in many spheres
where as yet, it has found no, or scarcely any, recognition. Thus it seems
to me that it has not yet been strongly enough emphasized in the estima-

gave me many painful hours. The child became afflicted with an unmistakable hys-
teria which quickly and thoroughly improved under my care. After this improve-
ment, the child was taken away from me by the parents. She still complained of
abdominal pains which had played the main part in the hysterical symptoms. Two
months later she died of sarcoma of the abdominal glands. The hysteria to which she
was greatly predisposed, took the tumor-formation as a provocative agent, and I,
fascinated by the tumultuous but harmless manifestations of hysteria overlooked the
first sign of the insidious and incurable disease.

¹A. Pick (“Zur Psychologie des Vergessens bei Geistes-
und Nervenkranken,” Archiv. f. Kriminal-Anthropologie u. Kriminalistik, von H. Gross) has recently collected a
number of authors who realize the value of the influence of the affective factors on
memory and who more or less clearly recognize that a defensive striving against pain
can lead to forgetting. But none of us has been able to represent this phenomenon
and its psychologic determination as exhaustively, and at the same time as effectively,
as Nietzsche in one of his Aphorisms (Jenseits von Gut und Bösen, ii., Hauptstück 68):
“I have done that,” says my Memory. “I could not have done that,” says my Pride.
And remains inexorable. Finally, my Memory yields.”

104

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

tion of testimony taken in court,¹ where the putting of a witness under
oath obviously leads us to place too great a trust on the purifying in-
fluence of his psychic play of forces. It is universally admitted that in the
origin of the traditions and folklore of a people, care must be taken to
eliminate from memory such a motive as would be painful to the national
feeling. Perhaps, on closer investigation, it may be possible to form a
perfect analogy between the manner of development of national tradi-
tions and infantile reminiscences of the individual. The great Darwin has
formulated a “golden rule” for the scientific worker from his insight into
this pain-motive of forgetting.²

Almost exactly as in the forgetting of names, faulty recollections can
also appear in the forgetting of impressions, and when finding credence,
they may be designated as delusions of memory. The memory disturbance
in pathologic cases (in paranoia, it actually plays the rôle of a constitut-
ing factor in the formation of delusions) has brought to light an extensive
literature in which there is no reference whatever to its being motivated.
As this theme also belongs to the psychology of the neuroses, it goes be-
yond our present treatment. Instead, I will give from my own experience,
a curious example of memory disturbance, showing clearly enough its
determination through unconscious repressed material and its connection
with this material.

While writing the latter chapters of my volume on the interpretation of
dreams, I happened to be in a summer resort without access to libraries
and reference books, so that I was compelled to introduce into the manu-
script all kinds of references and citations from memory. These I naturally
reserved for future correction. In the chapter on day-dreams, I thought of
the distinguished figure of the poor book-keeper in Alphonse Daudet’s
Nabab, through whom the author probably described his own day-dreams.
I imagined that I distinctly remembered one phantasy of this man, whom
I called Mr. Jocelyn, which he hatched while walking the streets of Paris,
and I began to reproduce it from memory. This phantasy described how
Mr. Jocelyn boldly hurled himself at a runaway horse and brought it to
a standstill; how the carriage door opened and a great personage stepped
from the coupé, pressed Mr. Jocelyn’s hand and said: “You are my savior
—I owe my life to you! What can I do for you?”

I assured myself that casual inaccuracies in the rendition of this
phantasy could readily be corrected at home on consulting the book. But

¹Cf. Hans Gross, Kriminal Psychologie, 1898.
²Ernest Jones quotes the following passage from Darwin’s autobiography that does
equal credit to his scientific honesty and his psychologic acumen: “I had, during
many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new
observation or thought, came across me which was opposed to my general results, to
make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience
that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than
favorable ones” (Jones, loc. cit., p. 38).

105

when I perused Nabob in order to compare it with my manuscript, I found,
to my very great shame and consternation, that there was nothing to sug-
gest such a dream by Mr. Jocelyn; indeed, the poor book-
keeper did not
even bear this name—he was called Mr. Joyeuse.
This second error then furnished the key for the solution of the first
mistake, the faulty reminiscence. Joyeux, of which Joyeuse is the femi-
nine form, was the only possible word which would translate my own name
Freud into French. Whence, therefore, came this falsely remembered
phantasy which I had attributed to Daudet? It could only be a product
of my own, a day-
dream which I myself had spun, and which did not
become conscious, or which was once conscious and had since been abso-
lutely forgotten. Perhaps I invented it myself in Paris, where frequently
enough I walked the streets alone, and full of longing for a helper and
protector, until Charcot took me into his circle. I had often met the author
of Nabob in Charcot's house. But the provoking part of it all is the fact
that there is scarcely anything to which I am so hostile as the thought of
being someone’s protégé. What we see of this sort of thing in our country
spoils all desire for it, and my character is little suited to the rôle of a pro-
tected child. I have always entertained an immense desire to “be the
strong man myself.” And it had to happen that I should be reminded of
such a, to be sure, never fulfilled day-
dream! Besides, this incident is a
good example of how the restraint relation to one’s ego, which breaks
forth triumphantly in paranoia, disturbs and entangles us in the objective
grasp of things.
Another case of faulty recollection which can be satisfactorily explained
resembles the fausse reconnaissance to be discussed later. I related to one
of my patients, an ambitious and very capable man, that a young student
had recently gained admittance into the circle of my pupils by means of
an interesting work, Der Künstler, Versuch einer Sexualpsychologie.
When, a year and a quarter later, this work lay before me in print, my
patient maintained that he remembered with certainty having read some-
where, perhaps in a bookseller’s advertisement, the announcement of the
same book, even before I first mentioned it to him. He remembered that
this announcement came to his mind at that time, and he ascertained be-
sides that the author had changed the title, that it no longer read “Ver-
such” but “Ansätze zu einer Sexualpsychologie.”
Careful inquiry of the author and comparison of all dates showed con-
clusively that my patient was trying to recall the impossible. No notice
of this work had appeared anywhere before its publication, certainly not a
year and a quarter before it went into print. However, I neglected to seek a
solution for this false recollection until the same man brought about an
equally valuable renewal of it. He thought that he had recently noticed a
work on “agoraphobia” in the show window of a bookshop, and as he was

106

now looking for it in all available catalogues, I was able to explain to him
why his effort must remain fruitless. The work on agoraphobia existed
only in his phantasy as an unconscious resolution to write such a book
himself. His ambition to emulate that young man, and through such a
scientific work, to become one of my pupils, had led him to the first as well
as to the second false recollection. He also recalled later that the book-
seller’s announcement which had occasioned his false reminiscence dealt
with a work entitled Genesis, Das Gesetz der Zeugung (“Genesis, The
Law of Generation”). But the change in the title as mentioned by him
was really instigated by me: I recalled that I myself had perpetrated the
same inaccuracy in the repetition of the title by saying “Ansätz” in place
of “Versuch.”

B. FORGETTING OF INTENTIONS

No other group of phenomena is better qualified to demonstrate the
thesis that lack of attention does not in itself suffice to explain faulty acts
as the forgetting of intentions. An intention is an impulse for an action
which has already found approbation, but whose execution is postponed
for a suitable occasion. Now, in the interval thus created, sufficient change
may take place in the motive to prevent the intention from coming to
execution. It is not, however, forgotten, it is simply revised and omitted.

We are naturally not in the habit of explaining the forgetting of inten-
tions which we daily experience in every possible situation as being due
to a recent change in the adjustment of motives. We generally leave it
unexplained, or we seek a psychologic explanation in the assumption that
at the time of execution, the required attention for the action, which
was an indispensable condition for the occurrence of the intention, and
was then at the disposal of the same action, no longer exists. Obser-
vation of our normal behavior towards intentions urges us to reject
this tentative explanation as arbitrary. If I resolve in the morning to
carry out a certain intention in the evening, I may be reminded of it
several times in the course of the day, but it is not at all necessary that
it should become conscious throughout the day. As the time for its execu-
tion approaches, it suddenly occurs to me and induces me to make the
necessary preparation for the intended action. If I go walking and take a
letter with me to be posted, it is not at all necessary that I, as a normal,
not nervous individual, should carry it in my hand and continually look
for a letter-box. As a matter of fact, I am accustomed to put it in my
pocket and give my thoughts free rein on my way, feeling confident that
the first letter-box will attract my attention and cause me to put my hand
in my pocket and draw out the letter.

This normal behavior in a formed intention corresponds perfectly with
the experimentally produced conduct of persons who are under a so-called

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IMPRESSIONS AND RESOLUTIONS

“post-hypnotic suggestion” to perform something after a certain time.¹
We are accustomed to describe the phenomenon in the following manner:
the suggested intention slumbers in the person concerned until the time
for its execution approaches. Then it awakes and excites the action.

In two situations of everyday life, even the layman is cognizant of the
fact that forgetting of resolutions is by no means excusable on the basis
of elementary phenomena no further reducible, but he realizes that it ulti-
mately depends on unadmitted motives. I am referring to affairs of love
and army service. A lover who is late at a rendezvous will vainly excuse
himself to his sweetheart that unfortunately he has entirely forgotten
their rendezvous. She will not hesitate to answer him: “A year ago, you
would not have forgotten. Evidently you no longer care for me.” Even if
he should grasp the above cited psychologic explanation, and should wish
to excuse his forgetting on the plea of important business, he would only
elicit the answer from the lady—as keen-sighted as the physician in the
psychoanalytic treatment—“How remarkable that such business dis-
turbances did not occur before!” Of course, the lady does not wish to deny
the possibility of forgetting; but she believes, and not without reason,
that practically the same inference of a certain unwillingness may be
drawn from the unintentional forgetting as from a conscious subterfuge.

Similarly, in military service, no distinction is recognized between an
omission resulting from forgetting and one in consequence of intentional
neglect. And rightly so. The soldier dares forget nothing that the service
demands of him. If he forgets in spite of his knowledge of the require-
ments, then it is due to the fact that the motives which urge the fulfillment
of the military exactions are opposed by contrary motives. Thus the
soldier who at inspection pleads forgetting as an excuse for not having
polished his buttons, is sure to be punished. But this punishment is small
in comparison to the one he courts if he admits to his superiors that the
motive for his negligence is that “I am entirely disgusted with the
service.” Owing to this saving of punishment for economic reasons, as it
were, he makes use of forgetting as an excuse, or it is the result of a com-
promise.

Duties towards women (like army service) demand that nothing relat-
ing to them must be subject to forgetting, and thus imply that forgetting
may be permissible in unimportant matters, but in weighty matters, its
occurrence is an indication that one wishes to treat them as unimportant:
that is, that their importance is disputed.² The viewpoint of psychic

¹Cf. Bernheim, Neue Studien über Hypnotismus, Suggestion und Psychotherapie,
1892.

²In Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, Caesar’s indifference to Cleopatra is
depicted by his being vexed on leaving Egypt at having forgotten to do something.
He finally recollected what he had forgotten—to take leave of Cleopatra—this, to be

108

validity is in fact not to be contested here. No person forgets to carry out
actions that seem important to himself without exposing himself to the
suspicion that he is suffering from some mental disturbance. Our inves-
tigations therefore can refer only to forgetting of more or less secondary
resolutions, for no resolution is deemed absolutely indifferent, otherwise
it would certainly never have been formed.

As in the former functional disturbances, I have collected the cases of
neglect through forgetting which I have observed in myself, and en-
deavored to explain them. In doing so, I have found that they could
invariably be traced to some interference of unknown and unadmitted
motives—or, as may be said, they were due to a counter-will. In a number
of these cases, I found myself in a position similar to that of being in
some distasteful service: I was under a constraint to which I had not
entirely resigned myself, so that I showed my protest in the form of for-
getting. This accounts for the fact that I am particularly prone to forget
to send congratulations on such occasions as birthdays, jubilees, wedding
celebrations and promotions to higher rank. I continually make new
resolutions not to forget them, but I am more than ever convinced that I
shall not succeed. I am now on the point of dropping them altogether, and
to admit consciously the striving motives. In a period of transition, I told
a friend who asked me to send a congratulatory telegram for him, at a
certain time when I was to send one myself, that I would probably forget
both. It was not surprising that the prophecy came true. It is undoubtedly
due to painful experiences in life that I am unable to manifest sympathy
where this manifestation must necessarily appear exaggerated, for the
small amount of my feeling does not admit the corresponding expression.
Since I have learned that I often mistook the pretended sympathy of
others for real, I am in rebellion against the conventions of expressing
sympathy, the social expediency of which I naturally acknowledge. Con-
dolences in cases of death are excepted from this divided feeling; once I
determine to send them I do not neglect them. Wherever my emotional
participation is no longer involved with social duty, its expression is never
inhibited by forgetting.

Cases in which we forget to carry out actions which we have promised
to do as a favor for others, can similarly be explained as antagonism to
conventional duty and as an unfavorable inward opinion. Here, it regu-
larly happens that only the patron believes in the excusing power of for-
getfulness, while the petitioner has no doubt about the right answer: “He
has no interest in this matter, otherwise he would not have forgotten it.”
There are some who are noted as generally forgetful, and we excuse

¹⁾sure, is in full accord with historical truth. How little Caesar thought of this little
Egyptian princess! Cited from Jones, loc. cit., p. 50.

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IMPRESSIONS AND RESOLUTIONS

their lapses in the same manner as we excuse those who are short-
sighted when they do not greet us on the street.¹ Such persons forget all small
promises which they have made; they leave unexecuted all orders which
they have received; they prove themselves unreliable in little things; and
at the same time, demand that we shall not take these slight offenses amiss
—that is, they do not want us to attribute these failings to personal char-
acteristics but to refer them to an organic peculiarity.² I am not one of
these people myself, and have had no opportunity to analyze the actions
of such a person in order to discover from the selection of forgetting the
motive underlying the same. I cannot forego, however, the conjecture
per analogiam, that here the motive is an unusually large amount of un-
avowed disregard for others which exploits a constitutional factor for its
purpose.³

In other cases, the motives for forgetting are less easy to discover, and
when found, excite great astonishment. Thus, in former years, I ob-
served that of a great number of professional calls, I only forgot those
that I was to make on patients whom I treated gratis or on colleagues.
The mortification caused by this discovery led me to the habit of noting
every morning the calls of the day in a form of resolution. I do not know
if other physicians have come to the same practice by a similar road.
Thus, we get an idea of what causes the so-called neurasthenic to make a
memorandum of the communications he wishes to make to the doctor. He
apparently lacks confidence in the reproductive capacity of his memory.
This is true, but the scene usually proceeds in this manner. The patient
has recounted his various complaints and inquiries at considerable length.
After he has finished, he pauses for a moment, then he pulls out the
memorandum and says apologetically, “I have made some notes because

¹Women, with their fine understanding of unconscious mental processes, are, as a
rule, more apt to take offense at not being recognized in the street, and hence not
greeted, than to accept the most obvious explanation, namely, that the neglector is
short-sighted or so engrossed in thought that he did not notice them. They conclude
that they surely would have been noticed if he had considered them of any conse-
quence.

²Dr. Ferenczi reports that he was an absent-minded person himself, and was consid-
ered peculiar by his friends on account of the frequency and strangeness of his failing.
But the signs of this inattention have almost all disappeared since he began to practise
psychoanalysis with patients, and was forced to turn his attention to the analysis
of his own ego. He believes that one renounces these failings when one learns to
subtely by so much one’s own responsibilities. He therefore justly maintains that
distractedness is a state which depends on unconscious complexes, and is curable by
psychoanalysis. One day, he was reproaching himself for having committed a tech-
nical error in the psychoanalysis of a patient, and on this day all his former distrac-
tions reappeared. He stumbled while walking in the street (a representation of that
faux pas in the treatment), he forgot his pocket-book at home, he was a penny short
in his car fare, he did not properly button his clothes, etc.

³E. Jones remarks regarding this: “Often the resistance is of a general order. Thus
a busy man forgets to mail a letter entrusted to him—to his slight annoyance—by his
wife, just as he may ‘forget’ to carry out her shopping orders.”

110

I cannot remember anything.” As a rule, he finds nothing new on the
memorandum. He repeats each point and answers it himself: “Yes, I have
already asked about that.” By means of the memorandum, he probably
only demonstrates one of his symptoms, the frequency with which his
resolutions are disturbed through the interference of obscure motives.

I am touching, moreover, on an affliction to which even most of my
healthy acquaintances are subject, when I admit that especially in
former years, I had the habit of easily forgetting for a long time to return
borrowed books, also that it very often happened that I deferred pay-
ments through forgetfulness. One morning, not long ago, I left the tobacco
shop where I make my daily purchase of cigars without paying. It was a
most harmless omission, as I am known there and could therefore expect
to be reminded of my debt the next morning. But this slight neglect, the
attempt to contract a debt, was surely not unconnected with reflections
concerning the budget with which I had occupied myself throughout the
preceding day. Even among the so-called respectable people, one can
readily demonstrate a double behavior when it concerns the theme of
money and possession. The primitive greed of the suckling which wishes
to seize every object (in order to put it in its mouth) has generally been
only imperfectly subdued through culture and training.¹

I fear that in all the examples thus far given, I have grown quite com-
monplace. But it can be only a pleasure to me if I happen upon familiar
matters which everyone understands, for my main object is to collect
everyday material and utilize it scientifically. I cannot conceive why
wisdom, which is, so to speak, the sediment of everyday experiences,
should be denied admission among the acquisitions of knowledge. For it
is not the diversity of objects but the stricter method of verification and
the striving for far-reaching connections which make up the essential
character of scientific work.

We have invariably found that resolutions of some importance are

¹For the sake of the unity of the theme, I may here digress from the accepted classifi-
cation, and add that the human memory evinces a particular partiality in regard to
money matters. False reminiscences of having already paid something are often very
obstinate, as I know from personal experience. When free sway is given to avaricious
intent outside of the serious interests of life, when it is indulged in in the spirit of
fun, as in card playing, we then find that the most honorable men show an inclination
to errors, mistakes in memory and accounts, and without realizing how, they even
find themselves involved in small frauds. Such liberties depend in no small part also
on the psychically refreshing character of the play. The saying that in play we can
learn a person’s character may be admitted if we can add “his repressed character.”
If waiters ever make unintentional mistakes, they are apparently due to the same
mechanism. Among merchants, we can frequently observe a certain delay in the
paying out of sums of money, in payments of bills and the like, which brings the
owner no profit and can be only understood psychologically as the expression of a
counter-will against giving out money. Brill sums it up with epigrammatic keenness:
“We are more apt to mislay letters containing bills and cheques.” (Brill, Psycho-
analysis, its Theories and Practical Application, p. 197.)

111

forgotten when obscure motives arise to disturb them. In still less im-
portant resolutions, we find a second mechanism of forgetting. Here a
counter-
will becomes transferred to the resolution from something else
after an external association has been formed between the latter and the
content of the resolution. The following example reported by Brill illus-
trates this: “A patient found that she had suddenly become very negligent
in her correspondence. She was naturally punctual and usually took
pleasure in letter-
writing, but for the last few weeks, she simply could not
bring herself to write a letter without exerting the greatest amount of
effort. The explanation was quite simple. Some weeks before, she had re-
ceived an important letter calling for a categorical answer. She was unde-
cided what to say, and therefore did not answer it at all. This indecision
in the form of inhibition was unconsciously transferred to other letters
and caused the inhibition against letter-
writing in general.”

Direct counter-
will and more remote motivation are found together in
the following example of delaying: I had written a short treatise on the
dream for the series Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens, in which I
gave an abstract of my book, The Interpretation of Dreams. Bergmann,
the publisher, had sent me the proof sheets and asked for a speedy return
of the same as he wished to issue the pamphlet before Christmas. I cor-
rected the sheets the same night, and placed them on my desk in order to
take them to the post office the next morning. In the morning, I forgot all
about it, and only thought of it in the after-
noon at the sight of the paper
cover on my desk. In the same way, I forgot the proofs that evening and
the following morning, and until the afternoon of the second day, when I
quickly took them to a letter-
box, wondering what might be the basis of
this procrastination. Obviously, I did not want to send them off, although
I could find no explanation for such an attitude.

After posting the letter, I entered the shop of my Vienna publisher, who
put out my Interpretation of Dreams. I left a few orders; then, as if im-
pelled by a sudden thought, said, “You undoubtedly know that I have
written the ‘Dream’ book a second time?” “Ah!” he exclaimed, “then I
must ask you to-
—” “Calm yourself,” I interposed; “it is only a short
treatise for the Löwenfeld-Kurella collection.” But still he was not satis-
fied; he feared that the abstract would hurt the sale of the book. I dis-
agreed with him, and finally asked: “If I had come to you before, would
you have objected to the publi-
cation?” “No; under no circumstances,”
he answered.

Personally, I believe I acted within my full rights and did nothing con-
trary to the general practice; still, it seems to me that a thought similar
to that entertained by the publisher was the motive for my procrastina-
tion in dispatching the proof sheets.

This reflection leads back to a former occasion when another publisher

112

raised some difficulties because I was obliged to take out several pages of
the text from an earlier work on cerebral infantile paralysis, and put them
unchanged into a work on the same theme in Nothnagel’s handbook.
There again the reproach received no recognition; that time also I had
loyally informed my first publisher (the same who published The In-
terpretation of Dreams) of my intention.

However, if this series of recollections is followed back still farther, it
brings to light a still earlier occasion relating to a translation from the
French, in which I really violated the property rights that should be
considered in a publication. I had added notes to the text without asking
the author’s permission, and some years later, I had cause to think that
the author was dissatisfied with this arbitrary action.

There is a proverb which indicates the popular knowledge that the
forgetting of intentions is not accidental. It says: “What one forgets once
he will often forget again.”

Indeed, we sometimes cannot help feeling that no matter what may be
said about forgetting and faulty actions, the whole subject is already
known to everybody as something self-evident. It is strange enough that it
is still necessary to push before consciousness such well-known facts. How
often I have heard people remark: “Please do not ask me to do this, I
shall surely forget it.” The coming true of this prophecy later is surely
nothing mysterious in itself. He who speaks thus perceives the inner reso-
lution not to carry out the request, and only hesitates to acknowledge it
to himself.

Much light is thrown, moreover, on the forgetting of resolutions
through something which could be designated as “forming false resolu-
tions.” I had once promised a young author to write a review of his short
work, but on account of inner resistances, not unknown to me, I prom-
ised him that it would be done the same evening. I really had serious in-
tentions of doing so, but I had forgotten that I had set aside that evening
for the preparation of an expert testimony that could not be deferred.
After I thus recognized my resolution as false, I gave up the struggle
against my resistances and refused the author’s request.