6oo freud's psvchu-pathological tiii-:ortf-s. 



I had seen the name on a list at the dub-house. But I got into 

 my head that the name of my opponent was Cairns, the name 

 of the professional at the Club. I even addressed a letter to 

 Cairns at Mr. Warne's address, which the latter luckily opened. 

 After tinding out my mistake I amused myself by applying the 

 method of psycho-analysis, and seeing what associations I had 

 with the name Warne. There came back to my memory the 

 name of a lady acquaintance who had died suddenl}\ No douljt 

 Freud would have explained the mistake by the unconscious 

 striving to avoid a name with a painful association. But I am 

 inclined to think the explanation would be incorrect. The name 

 of the person I remembered was spelt Warren (not Warne); 

 and although the sound is the same, 1 visualise words rather 

 than go by sound. Besides, the association with the name wa> 

 pleasant rather than otherwise, as happens when we have en- 

 joyed the society of a deceased person, while we have only heard 

 by report of his or her death. 



On the other hand, although I have not lighted upon specific 

 instances in my own case, I cannot help thinking that we do for- 

 get and make mistakes through the unconscious avoidance of 

 painful associations. I have more than once remarked how soon 

 unpleasant incidents seem to pass from the memory, especiall\- 

 when body and mind are in a particularly healthy state. A a eil 

 seems to be drawn over the recent unpleasant matter ; it seems 

 already to belong to the remote past. As a member of the 

 legal profession, I am inclined to agree with Freud, when he 

 says that the conception of motivated forgetting has not yet 

 been sufficiently recognised in the estimation of evidence or 

 testimony in courts of law. A witness is bullied because he has 

 forgotten something that goes against his sympathies in a Ccise. 

 The forgetting may be quite honest, springing from an uncon- 

 scious erasure from his mind of what was unpleasing. And 

 just as the complex may have a negative, so it may have a posi- 

 tive effect ; a person thinks he remembers what is congenial to 

 his disposition. Some years ago there appeared a book by the 

 late Countess of Cardigan, containing a number of scandalous 

 reminiscences, many of which, T understand, were entirely untrue. 

 One can well imagine that a coarse-minded person might easily 

 have faulty recollections of a sort congenial to her mind. 



1 also agree with Freud when he refers to the tendency to 

 exclude from national legends and traditions anything that is 

 painful to the popular feeling. We shall probablv have an un- 

 fortunate example of this in the ease with which the German 

 atrocities in Belgium and France will be forgotten by the Ger- 

 man people, even if they are ever credited by it. It will be with 

 the nation as Nietsche, in a passage quoted by Freud, says it is 

 with the individual : " I have done that." says my Memory. " I 

 could not have done that," savs my Pride, and remains inexor- 

 able. Finally my memory yields. 



