Changes

In The [[Psychopathology ]] of Everyday [[Life ]] (1901b), [[Freud ]] discussed forgetting under the rubric of [[psychosis]]. The typical example is [[awareness ]] of having forgotten a proper noun (a [[name]], for example). Like amnesia (where one is unaware that one has forgotten), forgetting is the result of [[repression]]. The forgotten name inhabits the [[preconscious ]] and quickly returns to [[consciousness]]. It is attracted by an [[unconscious ]] [[mental ]] [[complex ]] that primarily operates by [[displacement]].

The [[concept ]] of forgetting in general is [[present ]] in Freud's earliest works on the [[theory ]] of [[neuroses ]] (1894a, 1895b, 1896a). But in "The [[Psychical ]] [[Mechanism ]] of Forgetfulness" (1898b) and [[The Psychopathology of Everyday Life]], Freud considered forgetting, like [[slips of the tongue]], to be a [[parapraxis ]] symptomatic of ongoing repression. To demonstrate the [[existence ]] of the unconscious, Freud uses the example of forgetting because it was one way of talking [[about ]] repression before 1900. Forgetting appears in his first theory of neuroses, which explains [[hysteria ]] as a [[traumatic ]] [[infantile ]] [[sexual ]] [[seduction ]] that has to be rejected and [[repressed ]] because the [[child ]] finds it unacceptable.

Forgetting is associated with a painful [[sense ]] of awareness (the "name on the tip of the tongue"), while repression is most often unconscious. Forgetting is associated with the [[psychology ]] of consciousness and the preconscious, while repression is associated with the [[metapsychology ]] of the unconscious, like [[memory ]] traces. As a [[form ]] of parapraxis, forgetting combines [[partial ]] failure with partial success and must be distinguished from the customary [[psychological ]] form of forgetting, a successful act of repression.

The dreamer who has forgotten his [[dream ]] tries to reconstruct it, but in doing so, constructs it anew: "It is indeed possible that while trying to retell it, we fill in the blanks created by forgetting using new [[material ]] arbitrarily chosen" (Freud, 1900a). We cannot completely [[remember ]] what is forgotten, and so we prefer to [[construct ]] likely hypotheses, capable of introducing conviction about what was forgotten (Freud, 1937d).

The person who has forgotten a name, by concentrating on it, only reinforces the ongoing repression. To remember, Freud tells us, we [[need ]] to abandon the willful attempt to [[control ]] what initially appears to be a cognitive [[disturbance]], a shortcoming, and give in to the [[associations ]] that come to [[mind]].

Freud provides an autobiographical example: Forgetting the name of the painter Signorelli during a conversation, he seeks [[memories]], [[ideas]], and [[words ]] similar to the name. These bring to his mind [[other ]] paintings with the sensory acuity typical of a [[screen ]] memory (an early memory used as a screen for a later [[event]]), along with the names of other Italian painters (Botticelli, Boltraffio). The [[value ]] that Freud attributed to the forgotten name had been transferred to neighboring elements, through displacement, as is the [[case ]] with a mnemonic [[symbol]], which is also a form of [[metonymy]]. "Botticelli" is a metonym of Signorelli, "Botticelli" and "Boltraffio" are metonyms of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Freud was visiting when he forgot Signorelli's name and which is related to the [[castration ]] complex involved in this forgetting, since Freud attributes to the Turks in Bosnia-Herzegovina a strong attraction to [[sexuality ]] and a considerable castration [[anxiety]]. "Boltraffio" was a metonym of Trafoi, an Italian city where Freud learned of the [[suicide ]] of one of his [[patients]], which triggered his [[thoughts ]] on "[[death ]] and sexuality." The [[sentence ]] "Herr, was ist da zu sagen? (Sir, what is there to say)" reported to Freud by his interlocutor as reflecting the Turks' attitude toward the inevitability of death, evoked their attitude toward sexuality ("You [[know ]] very well, Lord, if that fails, then life has no value"), the source of [[psychic ]] [[conflict ]] and repression behind his act of forgetting. The [[representation ]] of death Freud associated with that of castration (the Turkish sentences imply that a life without sexuality is worth no more than death). Moreover, Herr, pre-sent in Herzegovina, refers to Signor (Lord), to the [[father ]] [[figure]], and to Herz, the heart, an [[organ ]] likely to grow sick and [[cause ]] death. Forgetting the name of Signorelli is thus associated with an [[oedipal ]] [[dimension ]] that Freud had discovered through his [[self]]-[[analysis]]: his repression of sexuality, his attraction for his [[mother]], his [[rivalry ]] with his father, and his ambivalent [[identification ]] with his father caught up in a [[desire ]] for [[parricide ]] and a [[fear ]] of losing his father.

Freud [[analyzed ]] two levels at the same [[time]], the psychology of consciousness and the preconscious and the metapsychology of the unconscious. He thus provided an example of the [[psychoanalytic ]] method, although repression is not associated with the name "Signorelli" so much as the unconscious complex he represents. The names substituted for the forgotten name are composed of [[verbal ]] memory traces and other proper nouns. They are substituted for the forgotten name through a [[process ]] that [[acts ]] on the phonemic material of words (the [[signifier]]) through [[association]], metonymy, homology, as well as [[translation ]] from one [[language ]] to [[another]], [[metaphor]], and polysemy (Herr has multiple [[meanings]], as does Herz). In the process of forgetting the name, displacement is metonymy, and [[condensation ]] is metaphor.

Forgetting, like [[remembering]], belongs more to the [[phenomenology ]] of consciousness than to the metapsychology of the unconscious. As a specific form of parapraxis, it also signifies repression according to popular convention. Because it occurs in the preconscious and is attracted by the unconscious, forgetting and the rediscovery of the forgotten are similar to what occurs when the [[subject ]] clearly formulates for himself something he had always known. There have been few developments in [[psychoanalysis ]] concerning the pre-[[conscious ]] ego. As a result, it is easier to formulate psychoanalytic approaches that emphasize the cognitive [[causality ]] of forgetting.Amnesia; Cryptomnesia; Déjà-vu; [[Delusions ]] and [[Dreams ]] in Jensen's "Gradiva"; [[Formations ]] of the unconscious; Memory; [[Moses ]] and [[Monotheism]]; Mythology and psychoanalysis; Slips of the tongue; "Remembering, [[Repeating]], and [[Working]]-Through"; [[Reminiscence]]; Repression; Psychopathology of Everyday Life The.

* [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1894a). The neuro-[[psychoses ]] of [[defence]]. SE, 3: 41-61.* ——. (1895b). On the grounds for detaching a [[particular ]] syndrome from neurasthenia under the description "anxiety [[neurosis]]." SE, 3: 85-115.

* ——. (1900a). The [[interpretation ]] of dreams. SE, 4: 1-338; 5: 339-625.