FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS
AND RESOLUTIONS

135

VII

FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS AND
RESOLUTIONS

IF any one should be inclined to overrate the
state of our present knowledge 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
between the fundamental phenomena of remem-
bering and forgetting; indeed, even the com-
plete analysis of that which one can actually
observe has as yet scarcely been grasped.
To-day 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
view-points which we hope will receive general
recognition. Thus we assume that forgetting is
a spontaneous process to which we may ascribe
a certain temporal discharge. We emphasize

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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 innumerable cases of daily life
how unreliable and unsatisfactory our knowledge
of the mechanism is. Thus we may listen to two
persons exchanging 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 con-
tribution to the knowledge of the conditions of
forgetting, I was wont to subject to a psycho-
logic analysis those cases in which forgetting
concerned me personally. As a 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 remem-
bered.

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

bered 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 subjects 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 con-
trolled by records of definite information from

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the patient, it was always shown that in over
ten years ¹ I have seldom missed it by more
than six months. The same thing happens when
I meet a casual acquaintance and, from polite
ness, 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 for-
getting which for the most part I have observed
in myself. I distinguish forgetting of impres-
sions and experiences, that is, the forgetting of
knowledge, from forgetting of resolutions, 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 dis-
pleasure.

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

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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
gentleman from Vienna whom I knew, and who
had cause to know me, and whose acquaintance
I had reasons for not wishing to renew. My
wife, who had heard nothing to the disrepute of
the man opposite her, showed by her actions
that she was listening to his conversation with
his neighbours, 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 behaviour on the part of my
wife, but I was not able to recall even a single
word of the conversation of the gentleman in
the case. As I am usually rather resentful 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 first to beg my wife to

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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 undertaken 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 countless times. To my
chagrin I could not find this establishment 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 identical building. After

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

this intimate friendship had turned to an absolute
estrangement, I had taken care to avoid the
neighbourhood 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 traversed every
street in the neighbourhood 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 comprehen-
sible. 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, con-
cerning 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 contiguity 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.

142

(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 professional 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 collecting 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 build-
ing 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 con-
cerning 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, other-
wise 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

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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 judg-
ment 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 emanating from this
meeting caused me to forget the neighbourhood
of the B. and R. Company, and my interest
to discover the thing forgotten was transferred
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 expecta-
tion, 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

Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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 Ueber 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 en-
lightenment, and a few days before, on return-
ing 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

144

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

book, although the disappearance of the cata-
logue formed no real hindrance, as I remem-
bered well both the name of the book and the
author.

(e) Another case of mislaying merits our in-
terest on account of the conditions under which
the mislaid object was rediscovered. A younger
man narrates as follows: “Several years ago
there were some misunderstandings between me
and my wife. I found her too cold, and though
I fully appreciated her excellent qualities, we
lived together without evincing 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 ‘attention,’ 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.
“ 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
patient’s condition became serious and gave my
wife the opportunity to show the best side of
herself. One evening I returned home full of
enthusiasm 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

Psychopathology of Everyday Life

drawer, and in the very top of it I found the
long-missing, mislaid book.”

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

This patient, whose psychoanalytic treatment
had to be interrupted through the summer vaca-
tion 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 apartment. He became more
and more excited over it, but his search was
unsuccessful. As he recognized this “misplace-
ment” as a symptomatic act—that is, as being
intentional—he aroused his servant in order to
continue his search with the help of an “unpre-
judiced” person. After another hour he gave
up the search and feared that he had lost the
keys. The next morning he ordered new keys
from the desk factory, which were hurriedly
made for him. Two acquaintances who had

146

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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 pamphlet, 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 skil-
fully 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 motive was
naturally ill-
humour 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
entre-
aties, he began to take his dress-
suit from
the trunk when he suddenly thought of shaving.
After accomplishing this he returned to the trunk
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

¹ Brill, loc. cit., p. 197.

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the trunk opened the next morning the lost key
was found within. The husband had absent-
mindedly dropped the key into the trunk and
sprung the lock. He assured me that this was
wholly uninten-
tional 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 mislay-
ing 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.

If one looks over the cases of mislaying it
will be difficult to assume that mislaying is
anything other than the result of an unconscious
intention.

(h) In the summer of 1901 I once remarked
to a friend with whom I was then actively
engaged in exchanging ideas on scientific ques-
tions: “These neurotic problems can be solved
only if we take the position of absolutely accept-
ing 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

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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 litera-
ture 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 of one’s wife; a friendship that
has turned into the opposite; a mistake in
medical diagnosis; enmity on account of similar
pursuits, or the borrowing of somebody’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 tendency to forget the disagreeable seems
to me to be quite general; the capacity for
it is naturally differently developed in different
persons. Certain denials which we encounter
in medical practice can probably be ascribed

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

to forgetting.¹⁾ Our conception of such for-
getting confines the distinction between this and
that behaviour 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 denials 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 state-
ment that, like his brothers and sisters, he was
subject to bed-wetting throughout his childhood,

¹If we inquire of a person whether he suffered from luetic
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 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 misleading
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 questions 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 accident-
ally turned to excursions, and my wife said: ‘Yes, even to

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

a symptom which certainly 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 predisposi-
tion in the young man, and at the same time
referred to the bed-wetting recounted in the
anamnesis. To my surprise she contested this
fact concerning 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⁾

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-
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?”

¹⁾ During the days when I was first writing these pages the
following almost incredible case of forgetting happened to

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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

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 ever to forget,
a case whose upshot gave me many painful hours. The child
became afflicted with an unmistakable hysteria, which quickly
and thoroughly improved under my care. After this im-
provement the child was taken away from me by the parents.
She still complained of abdominal pains which had played the
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 tumour-formation as a
provocative agent, and I, fascinated by the tumultuous but
harmless manifestations of hysteria, perhaps overlooked
the first sign of the insidious and incurable disease.

¹A. Pick (“Zur Psychologie des Vergessens bei Geistesund
Nervenkranken,” Archiv. f. Kriminal-Anthropologie u. Kriminal-
istik, von H. Gross) has recently collected a number of authors

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

against ideas which can awaken painful feel-
ings, a striving 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 con-
science. No one maintains 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 conjecture a certain strati-
fication or structure of instances deposited in
strata. And it is quite possible that this defensive
tendency belongs to a lower psychic instance, and

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.”

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

is inhibited by higher instances. At all events,
it speaks for the existence and force of this defen-
sive 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
something else to be forgotten—something less
significant, but which has fallen 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
estimation 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 purify-
ing influence 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. Per-
haps on closer investigation it may be possible
to form a perfect analogy between the manner
of development of national traditions and in-
fantile reminiscences of the individual. The
great Darwin has formulated a “golden rule” for

Cf. Hans Gross, Kriminal Psychologie, 1898.

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

the scientific worker from his insight into this
pain-motive of forgetting.¹

Almost exactly as in the forgetting of names,
faulty recollections can also appear in the for-
getting 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 con-
stituting 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 beyond our
present treatment. Instead, I will give from my
own experience a curious example of memory
disturbance showing clearly enough its deter-
mination 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

¹Darwin on forgetting. In Darwin’s autobiography one
finds the following passage 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 favourable
ones” (quoted by Jones, loc. cit., p. 38).

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

and reference books, so that I was compelled to
introduce into the manuscript all kinds of refer-
ences and citations from memory. These I
naturally reserved for future correction. In the
chapter on day-
dreams I thought of the dis-
tinguished 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
fantasy 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 fantasy 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 saviour—I owe my life to you! What
can I do for you?”

I assured myself that casual inaccuracies in
the rendition of this fantasy could readily be
corrected at home on consulting the book. But
when I perused Nabab in order to compare it
with my manuscript, I found to my very great
shame and consternation that there was nothing
to suggest 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

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reminiscence. Joyeux, of which Joyeuse is the
feminine form, was the only possible word which
would translate my own name Freud into French.
Whence, therefore, came this falsely remembered
fantasy 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 absolutely 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 Nabab 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 some one’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 protected
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

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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 somewhere, 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
besides that the author had changed the title,
that it no longer read “Versuch” but “Ansätze
zu einer Sexualpsychologie.”

Careful inquiry of the author and comparison
of all dates showed conclusively 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 to 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 now look-
ing for it in all available catalogues I was able
to explain to him why his effort must remain

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fruitless. The work on agoraphobia existed
only in his fantasy 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 bookseller’s announcement which had occa-
sioned 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
have perpetrated the same inaccuracy in the re-
petition of the title by saying “ Ansätze ” in
place of “ Versuch.”

B. FORGETTING OF INTENTIONS.

No other group of phenomena is better quali-
fied to demonstrate the thesis that lack of atten-
tion 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 post-
poned for a suitable occasion. Now, in the
interval thus created sufficient change may take
place in the motive to prevent the inten-
tion from
coming to execution. It is not, however, for-
gotten, it is simply revised and omitted.

We are naturally not in the habit of explaining

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the forgetting of intentions which we daily ex-
perience 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 con-
dition for the occurrence of the intention, and
was then at the disposal of the same action, no
longer exists. Observation of our normal be-
haviour 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 in-
dividual, should carry it in my hand and con-
tinually 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 behaviour in a formed intention

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corresponds perfectly with the experimentally
produced conduct of persons who are under a
so-
called “post-
hypnotic suggestion” to perform
something after a certain time.¹ We are accus-
tomed to describe the phenomenon in the follow-
ing 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 positions of life even the layman is
cognizant of the fact that forgetting referring
to intended purposes can in no wise claim con-
sideration as an elementary phenomenon no
further reducible, but realizes that it ultimately
depends on unadmitted motives. I refer to
affairs of love and military service. A lover
who is late at the appointed place will vainly
tell 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 woman, who has become as keen-
sighted
as the physician in the psychoanalytic treatment,
“How remarkable that such business disturb-
 

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

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ances did not occur before! ” Of course the
woman 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 military service demands of
him. If he forgets in spite of this, even when
he is acquainted with the demands, then it is
due to the fact that the motives which urge
the fulfilment of the military exactions are op-
posed by contrary motives. Thus the one year’s
volunteer ¹⁾ 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 because “this miserable
menial service is altogether disgusting to me.”
Owing to this saving of punishment for economic
reasons, as it were, he makes use of forgetting
as an excuse, or it comes about as a compromise.

¹⁾Young men of education who can pass the examination
and pay for their maintenance serve one instead of two
years’ compulsory service.

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The service of women (as well as the military
service of the State) demands that nothing relat-
ing to that service be subject to forgetting. Thus
it but suggests that forgetting is permissible in
unimportant matters, but in weighty matters its
occurrence is an indication that one wishes to
treat weighty matters as unimportant: that is,
that their importance is disputed.¹ The view-point
of psychic 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 of being a sufferer from
mental weakness. Our investigations therefore
can extend only to the forgetting of more or
less secondary intentions, for no intention do
we deem absolutely indifferent, otherwise it would
certainly never have been formed.

As in the preceding functional disturbances,
I have collected the cases of neglect through for-
getting which I have observed in myself, and
endeavoured to explain them. 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-

¹In Bernard Shaw’s Cæsar and Cleopatra, Cæsar’s in-
difference 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 sure, is in full accord with historical
truth. How little Cæsar thought of the little Egyptian
princess! Cited from Jones, loc. cit., p. 50.

Psychopathology of Everyday Life

will. In a number of these cases I found my-
self in a position similar to that of being in
some distasteful service: I was under a con-
straint to which I had not entirely resigned
myself, so that I showed my protest in the form
of forgetting. This accounts for the fact that I
am particularly prone to forget to send con-
gratulations on such occasions as birthdays,
jubilees, wedding celebrations, and promotions
to higher rank. I continually make new resolu-
tions, but I am more than ever convinced that
I shall not succeed. I am now on the point
of giving it up altogether, and to admit con-
sciously 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.
Condolences in cases of death are excepted from
this double treatment; once I determine to send

164

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them I do not neglect them. Where my
emotional participation has nothing more to do
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 favour for
others can similarly be explained as antagonism
to conventional duty and as an unfavourable
inward opinion. Here it regularly proves cor-
rect, inasmuch as the only person appealed to
believes in the excusing power of forgetfulness,
while the one requesting the favour has no
doubt about the right answer: he has no interest
in this matter, otherwise he would not have for-
gotten it.

There are some who are noted as generally
forgetful, and we excuse their lapses in the same
manner as we excuse those who are short-sighted
when they do not greet us in 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

¹Women, with their fine understanding of unconscious
mental processes, are, as a rule, more apt to take offence
when we do not recognize them in the street, and hence do
not greet them, than to accept the most obvious explanation,
namely, that the dilatory one is short-sighted or so engrossed
in thought that he did not see them. They conclude that
they surely would have been noticed if they had been con-
sidered of any consequence.

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demand that we shall not take these slight
offences amiss—that is, they do not want us to
attribute these failings to personal characteristics
but to refer them to an organic peculiarity.¹⁾
I am not one of these people myself, and have
had no opportunity to analyse 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 unusual
large amount of unavowed disregard for others
which exploits the constitutional factor for its
purpose.²⁾

¹⁾Dr. Ferenczi reports that he was a distracted person
himself, and was considered 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 extend 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 technical error in the psychoanalysis
of a patient, and on this day all his former distractions
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.

²⁾E. 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.

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In other cases the motives for forgetting are
less easy to discover, and when found excite
greater astonishment. Thus, in former years I
observed 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 neuras-
thenic to make a memorandum of the com-
munications he wishes to make to the doctor.
He apparently lacks confidence in the repro-
ductive 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 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 memoran-
dum he probably only demonstrates one of his
symptoms, the frequency with which his resolu-
tions are disturbed through the interference of
obscure motives.

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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 behaviour 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 sub-
dued through culture and training.¹

¹For the sake of the unity of the theme I may here digress
from the accepted classification, and add that the human
memory evinces a particular partiality in regard to money
matters. False reminiscences of having already paid some-
thing 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

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

I fear that in all the examples thus far given I
have grown quite commonplace. But it can be
only a pleasure to me if I happen upon familiar
matters which every one 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 admis-
sion 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 intentions of
some importance are forgotten when obscure
motives arise to disturb them. In still less im-
portant intentions we find a second mechanism

most honourable 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 “the
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 than cheques” (Brill, Psychanalysis, its
Theories and Practical Application, p. 197).

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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 resolu-
tion. The following example reported by Brill
illustrates this: “A patient found that she had
suddenly became very negligent in her corre-
spondence. She was naturally punctual and 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 received an important
letter calling for a categorical answer. She was
undecided 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 motiva-
tion 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.¹ 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 corrected the sheets the

¹ Translated by A. A. Brill.

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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 afternoon 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 Interpre-
tation of Dreams. I left a few orders; then, as
if impelled by a sudden thought, said, “You un-
doubtedly 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 satisfied; he feared that the abstract would
hurt the sale of the book. I disagreed with
him, and finally asked: “If I had come to you
before, would you have objected to the publica-
tion?” “No; under no circumstances,” he
answered.

Personally I believe I acted within my full
rights and did nothing contrary to the general
practice; still it seems certain to me that a

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thought similar to that entertained by the pub-
lisher was the motive for my procrastination in
dispatching the proof sheets.

This reflection leads back to a former occasion
when another publisher 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 hand-
book. There again the reproach received no
recognition; that time also I had loyally in-
formed my first publisher (the same who pub-
lished The Interpretation of Dreams) of my
intention.

However, if this series of recollections is fol-
lowed 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 dis-
satisfied 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

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Forgetting Impressions and Resolutions

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 resolution not to carry out
the request, and only hesitates to acknowledge
it to himself.

Much light is thrown, moreover, on the for-
getting 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 promised him that it would be done the same
evening. I really had serious intentions 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 re-
fused the author’s request.