Forgetting Names and Order of Words
‘A Pine-tree Stands Alone,’ etc. In the line ‘He felt drowsy’ he became hopelessly stuck at the words ‘with the white sheet.’ This forgetting of such a well-known verse seemed to me rather peculiar, and I therefore asked him to reproduce what came to his mind when he thought of the words ‘with the white sheet.’ He gave the following series of associations: ‘The white sheet makes one think of a white sheet on a corpse—a linen sheet with which one covers a dead body—[pause]—now I think of a near friend—his brother died quite recently—he is supposed to have died of heart disease—he was also very corpulent—my friend is corpulent, too, and I thought that he might meet the same fate—probably he doesn’t exercise enough—when I heard of this death I suddenly became frightened: the same thing might happen to me, as my own family is predisposed to obesity—my grandfather died of heart disease—I, also, am somewhat too corpulent, and for that reason I began an obesity cure a few days ago.’”
Jung remarks: “The man had unconsciously immediately identified himself with the pine-tree which was covered with a white sheet.”
For the following example of forgetting the order of words I am indebted to my friend Dr. Ferenczi, of Budapest. Unlike the former examples, it does not refer to a verse taken from
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