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.
[5] A. Pick ("Zur Psychologie des Vergessens bei Geistesund 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 (Fenseits von Gut und Bosen, ii.,
Haupstuck 68) : "'I have done that,' says my Memory. 'I could not have done that,' says my Pride,
and remains inexorable. Finally, my Memory yields."
[6] Cf. Hans Gross, Kriminal Psychologie, 1898.
[7] Darwin 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).
[8] Cf. Bernheim, Neue Studien über Hypnotismus, Suggetion und Psychotherapie, 1892.
[9] Young men of education who can pass the examination and pay for their maintenance serve
one instead of two years' compulsory service.
[10] In Bernard Shaw's Cæsar and Cleopatra, Cæsar'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 sure, is in full accord with historical truth.
How little Cæsar thought of the little Egyptian princess! Cited from Jones, loc. cit., p. 50.
[11] Women, 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 considered of any consequence.
[12] 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.
[13] 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.
[14] For 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 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 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