Page:Freud - Psychopathology of everyday life.djvu/61

Forgetting Names and Order of Words 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 49