Freud
In several of his books, including Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis and
On Dreams, Freud combines the topics of forgetting a
proper name and dream
analysis, formulating a thesis that helps to clarify
his theories on both. He
describes in psychoanalytic terms the mechanisms
behind forgetting of a proper
name and how they relate to the methods used in
dream analysis. By looking at
the two topics from a joint perspective, we can
gain a greater understanding of
them and how they relate to other areas of
psychoanalysis. The tendency toward
forgetting of a proper name is an
important theme in Freud’s work. He
explained the way in which forgetting
something like a name was actually a
substitute for forgetting something
that, unconsciously, an individual does not
wish to remember. He described
the unconscious force that prompted this
forgetfulness as a "counter-will",
or an unconscious desire parallel to an
individual’s conscious desire.
According to Freud, there is a connection
between what one consciously
forgets and what one unconsciously wants to forget.
When a person has
some unpleasant thought or issue that they wish to banish from
their mind,
the will to forget may "miss its target", and the wish to forget
may manifest
itself in some other way. In this case the individual may forget
something
seemingly unconnected to the thought they wish to banish, such as a
proper
name. Freud gives some relevant examples of this phenomenon
in
Introductory Lectures: "For instance, if we have temporarily forgotten
a name,
we are annoyed about it, do all we can to remember it and cannot
leave the
business alone. Why in such cases do we so extremely seldom succeed
in directing
our attention, as we are after all anxious to do, to the word
which (as we say)
is ‘on the tip of our tongue’ and which we recognize at
once when we are
told it? Or again: there are cases in which the parapraxes
multiply, form
chains, and replace one another..." (ILp 35-36) It is in this
line that
understanding the preconscious becomes important. "Preconscious"
describes a
division of the mind that falls in between repression
(unconscious) and
recognition (conscious). Freud described thoughts in the
preconscious as having
crossed the threshold from the unconscious mind, but
not yet having caught the
eye of consciousness (IL p366). The preconscious is
an important element in the
dynamic between an individual’s conscious
intention and their counter-will,
because it falls somewhere in the middle
and may be the most manifested part of
the phenomenon. For instance, when a
proper name is forgotten, this is a
function of repression. The individual
unconsciously wants to forget one thing,
but the counter-will resists by
forgetting another. It is when a name is "on
the tip of the tongue" but still
unclear that countless other irrelevant names
will come to mind; these
irrelevant names are the inhabitants of the
preconscious. The case detailed
in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, in
which Freud discusses his own
experience with the forgetting of a proper name,
is a good example of a clear
analysis of the mechanism Freud saw behind this
phenomenon. He explains the
situation, and will later go on to fully analyze its
significance: " The name
that I tried without success to recall in the example
I chose for
analysis in 1898 was that of the artist who painted the magnificent
frescoes
of the ‘Four Last Things’ in Orvieto Cathedral. Instead of the name
I was
looking for – Signorelli – the names of two other painters –
Botticelli
and Boltrafio – thrust themselves at me, though they were
immediately and
decisively rejected by my judgment as incorrect. When I learn
the correct
name from someone else, I recognized it at once and without
hesitation (PEL
p2). When he tries to remember the forgotten name, and later
remembers it and
brings it back to his consciousness, he plunges into a maze of
explanations
of how and why the particular substitutions occurred. This is where
I
find Freud to be stretching the limits of reasonable deduction; it is
my
opinion that the chart he included in Psychopathology of Everyday Life
is
unconvincing at best. The chart, however, manages to lead him from
the
substituted name to the source of the repressed material. Whether the
chart and
its analysis was superfluous to this discovery or not is something
of which I am
not convinced. The way he uses the first few letters of his
mixed up words to
relate them to each other and tie everything together
seemed too orderly and
simplified to be the product of something as willful
as the unconscious mind,
but it did seem to work in validating his points on
the issue. Comparing and
contrasting the phenomenon of forgetting proper
names and all that it entails
with the practice of dream-analysis is
challenging and adds another dimension to
our understanding of both. Though
study of both is focused on a part of the mind
other than the conscious
thoughts, there is a distinction between the roles
played by the unconscious
and the preconscious in these phenomena. In dream
analysis, the
dream-thoughts are recognized as unconscious material, waiting in
the
unconscious mind to be revealed to the dreamer in sleep. Much of
this
material could not be recognized by the individual in any form other
than a
dream, either because it is repressed or it has not yet reached the
conscious
level of recognition. In forgetting of a proper name, however, the
answer seems
to be "on the tip of the tongue", or just out of reach of the
conscious
mind. In this case both the material that is forgotten and the
material that the
memory substitutes is found in the preconscious mind, the
state in between
conscious and unconscious thought. The significant tie
between these two realms
of thought can be found in hypnosis. In a hypnotic
state induced by suggestion,
and individual is made able to access both
preconscious and unconscious
thoughts, and to express them while not asleep.
This is a valuable tool both for
the psychoanalyst and for the patient; in a
hypnotic state the patient has
access to unconscious material that otherwise
would be difficult to uncover and
interpret. Understanding of the areas of
forgetting a proper name and the dream
work is essential to understanding
much of Freud’s work, and comparing and
contrasting the two can help us gain
an extra dimension of insight into both.
The tremendous impact of Freud’s
work, both culturally and clinically, is
inescapable in American society. It
is for this reason that it is so relevant
for us to study it today.