Part 6

It is clear that this lady, who had lost her husband at the age of thirty-nine, and had no prospect of marrying a second time, had cause enough to avoid reminiscences recalling youth or old age. The remarkable thing is that the concealing thoughts of the desired name came to the surface as simple associations of content without any sound-associations.

(h) Still different and very finely motivated is an example of name-forgetting which the person concerned has himself explained.

“While taking an examination in philosophy as a minor subject I was questioned by the examiner about the teachings of Epicurus, and was asked whether I knew who took up his teachings centuries later. I answered that it was Pierre Gassendi, whom two days before while in a café I had happened to hear spoken of as a follower of Epicurus. To the question how I knew this I boldly replied that I had taken an interest in Gassendi for a long time. This resulted in a certificate with a magna cum laude, but later, unfortunately, also in a persistent tendency to forget the name Gassendi. I believe that it is due to my guilty conscience that even now I cannot retain this name despite all efforts. I had no business knowing it at that time.”

To have a proper appreciation of the intense repugnance entertained by our narrator against the recollection of this examination episode, one must have realized how highly he prizes his doctor’s degree, and for how many other things this substitute must stand.

I add here another example of forgetting the name of a city, an instance which is perhaps not as simple as those given before, but which will appear credible and valuable to those more familiar with such investigations. The name of an Italian city withdrew itself from memory on account of its far-reaching sound-similarity to a woman’s first name, which was in turn connected with various emotional reminiscences which were surely not exhaustively treated in this report. Dr. S. Ferenczi, who observed this case of forgetting in himself, treated it--quite justly--as an analysis of a dream or an erotic idea.

“To-day I visited some old friends, and the conversation turned to cities of Northern Italy. Some one remarked that they still showed the Austrian influence. A few of these cities were cited. I, too, wished to mention one, but the name did not come to me, although I knew that I had spent two very pleasant days there; this, of course, does not quite concur with Freud’s theory of forgetting. Instead of the desired name of the city there obtruded themselves the following thoughts: ‘Capua--Brescia--the lion of Brescia.’ This lion I saw objectively before me in the form of a marble statue, but I soon noticed that he resembled less the lion of the statue of liberty in Brescia (which I saw only in a picture) than the other marble lion which I saw in Lucerne on the monument in honour of the Swiss Guard fallen in the Tuileries. I finally thought of the desired name: it was Verona.

“I knew at once the cause of this amnesia. No other than a former servant of the family whom I visited at the time. Her name was Veronica; in Hungarian Verona. I felt a great antipathy for her on account of her repulsive physiognomy, as well as her hoarse, shrill voice and her unbearable self-assertion (to which she thought herself entitled on account of her long service). Also the tyrannical way in which she treated the children of the family was insufferable to me. Now I knew the significance of the substitutive thoughts.

“To Capua I immediately associated caput mortuum. I had often compared Veronica’s head to a skull. The Hungarian word kapzoi (greed after money) surely furnished a determinant for the displacement. Naturally I also found those more direct associations which connected Capua and Verona as geographical ideas and as Italian words of the same rhythm.

“The same held true for Brescia; here, too, I found concealed side-tracks of associations of ideas.

“My antipathy at that time was so violent that I thought Veronica very ugly, and have often expressed my astonishment at the fact that any one should love her: ‘Why, to kiss her,’ I said, ‘must provoke nausea.’

“Brescia, at least in Hungary, is very often mentioned not in connection with the lion but with another wild beast. The most hated name in this country, as well as in North Italy, is that of General Haynau, who is briefly referred to as the hyena of Brescia. From the hated tyrant Haynau one stream of thought leads over Brescia to the city of Verona, and the other over the idea of the grave-digging animal with the hoarse voice (which corresponds to the thought of a monument to the dead), to the skull, and to the disagreeable organ of Veronica, which was so cruelly insulted in my unconscious mind. Veronica in her time ruled as tyrannically as did the Austrian General after the Hungarian and Italian struggles for liberty.

“Lucerne is associated with the idea of the summer which Veronica spent with her employers in a place near Lucerne. The Swiss Guard again recalls that she tyrannized not only the children but also the adult members of the family, and thus played the part of the ‘Garde-Dame.’

“I expressly observe that this antipathy of mine against V. consciously belongs to things long overcome. Since that time she has changed in her appearance and manner, very much to her advantage, so that I am able to meet her with sincere regard (to be sure I hardly find such occasion). As usual, however, my unconscious sticks more tenaciously to those impressions; it is old in its resentment.

“The Tuileries represent an allusion to a second personality, an old French lady who actually ‘guarded’ the women of the house, and who was in high regard and somewhat feared by everybody. For a long time I was her élève in French conversation. The word élève recalls that when I visited the brother-in-law of my present host in northern Bohemia I had to laugh a great deal because the rural population referred to the élèves (pupils) of the school of forestry as löwen (lions). Also this jocose recollection might have taken part in the displacement of the hyena by the lion.”

(i) The following example can also show how a personal complex swaying the person at the time being may by devious ways bring about the forgetting of a name.

Two men, an elder and a younger, who had travelled together in Sicily six months before, exchanged reminiscences of those pleasant and interesting days.

“Let’s see, what was the name of that place,” asked the younger, “where we passed the night before taking the trip to Selinunt? Calatafini, was it not?”

The elder rejected this by saying: “Certainly not; but I have forgotten the name, too, although I can recall perfectly all the details of the place. Whenever I hear some one forget a name it immediately produces forgetfulness in me. Let us look for the name. I cannot think of any other name except Caltanisetta, which is surely not correct.”

“No,” said the younger, “the name begins with, or contains, a w.”

“But the Italian language contains no w,” retorted the elder.

“I really meant a v, and I said w because I am accustomed to interchange them in my mother tongue.”

The elder, however, objected to the v. He added: “I believe that I have already forgotten many of the Sicilian names. Suppose we try to find out. For example, what is the name of the place situated on a height which was called Enna in antiquity?”

“Oh, I know that: Castrogiovanni.” In the next moment the younger man discovered the lost name. He cried out ‘Castelvetrano,’ and was pleased to be able to demonstrate the supposed v.

For a moment the elder still lacked the feeling of recognition, but after he accepted the name he was able to state why it had escaped him. He thought: “Obviously because the second half, vetrano, suggests veteran. I am aware that I am not quite anxious to think of ageing, and react peculiarly when I am reminded of it. Thus, e.g., I had recently reminded a very esteemed friend in most unmistakable terms that he had ‘long ago passed the years of youth,’ because before this he once remarked in the most flattering manner, ‘I am no longer a young man.’ That my resistance was directed against the second half of the name Castelvetrano is shown by the fact that the initial sound of the same returned in the substitutive name Caltanisetta.”

“What about the name Caltanisetta itself?” asked the younger.

“That always seemed to me like a pet name of a young woman,” admitted the elder.

Somewhat later he added: “The name for Enna was also only a substitutive name. And now it occurs to me that the name Castrogiovanni, which obtruded itself with the aid of a rationalization, alludes as expressly to giovane, young, as the last name, Castelvetrano, to veteran.”

The older man believed that he had thus accounted for his forgetting the name. What the motive was that led the young man to this memory failure was not investigated.