Feb. 26, 2012 at 4:28pm with 7 notes
Reblogged from myimaginarybrooklyn
freudpsychoanalysisforgetting things
myimaginarybrooklyn: Sigmund Freud, Forgetting Things. “My ability to gain access to what is stored in my memory has deteriorated, but until quite recently I have been able to convince myself that with the aid of a certain trick I can remember far more than I would other wise have thought I could. For instance, if a patient in my consulting rooms mentions that I have seen him before, and I cannot remember when, or indeed recollect meeting him at all, I try guessing, that is to say, thinking quickly of a number of years running from the present backwards. Where written notes or the patient’s own certainty make it possible for me to check my ideas, it turns out that I am seldom wrong by more than six months within a period of over ten years. It is much the same when I meet someone I do not know particularly well, and for the sake of politeness I ask how his small children are. If he tells me about their progress then I try to work out how old the child is now, check that age against what the father says, and I am wrong by a month at the most, or three months with older children, although I cannot say what points of reference I used for making my estimate. Recently I have felt bold enough to bring out my guess spontaneously, so as to run no risk of hurting the father’s feelings by revealing my ignorance of his offspring. In this way I extend my conscious recollections by calling on my unconscious memory, which in any case contains far more material.”

myimaginarybrooklyn:

Sigmund Freud, Forgetting Things.

“My ability to gain access to what is stored in my memory has deteriorated, but until quite recently I have been able to convince myself that with the aid of a certain trick I can remember far more than I would other wise have thought I could. For instance, if a patient in my consulting rooms mentions that I have seen him before, and I cannot remember when, or indeed recollect meeting him at all, I try guessing, that is to say, thinking quickly of a number of years running from the present backwards. Where written notes or the patient’s own certainty make it possible for me to check my ideas, it turns out that I am seldom wrong by more than six months within a period of over ten years. It is much the same when I meet someone I do not know particularly well, and for the sake of politeness I ask how his small children are. If he tells me about their progress then I try to work out how old the child is now, check that age against what the father says, and I am wrong by a month at the most, or three months with older children, although I cannot say what points of reference I used for making my estimate. Recently I have felt bold enough to bring out my guess spontaneously, so as to run no risk of hurting the father’s feelings by revealing my ignorance of his offspring. In this way I extend my conscious recollections by calling on my unconscious memory, which in any case contains far more material.”

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