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Forgetting Names and Order of Words

stranger. I had recently felt it very plainly when I was consulted during my office hours by a man named S. Freud. However, I am assured by one of my own critics that in this respect he behaves in quite the opposite manner.

(f) The effect of personal relation can be recognized also in the following examples reported by Jung.[1]

“Mr. Y. falls in love with a lady who soon thereafter marries Mr. X. In spite of the fact that Mr. Y. was an old acquaintance of Mr. X., and had business relations with him, he repeatedly forgot the name, and on a number of occasions, when wishing to correspond with X., he was obliged to ask other people for his name.”

However, the motivation for the forgetting is more evident in this case than in the preceding ones, which were under the constellation of the personal reference. Here the forgetting is manifestly a direct result of the dislike of Y. for the happy rival; he does not wish to know anything about him.

(g) The following case, reported by Ferenczi, the analysis of which is especially instructive through the explanation of the substitutive thoughts (like Botticelli-Boltraffio to Signorelli), shows in a somewhat different way how self-reference leads to the forgetting of a name:—

“A lady who heard something about psycho-

  1. The Psychology of Dementia Præcox, p. 45.

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