Forgetting Names and Order of Words
of varying a well-known maxim. Strangely enough, I did not recall any maxim but the following sentence: ‘God created man in His own image,’ and its changed conception, ‘Man created God in his own image. Immediately I recalled the sought-for recollection.
“My friend said to me at that time in Andrassy Street, ‘Nothing human is foreign to me.’ To which I remarked, basing it on psychoanalytic experience, “You should go further and acknowledge that nothing animal is foreign to you.”
“But after I had finally found the desired recollection I was even then prevented from telling it in this social gathering. The young wife of the friend whom I had reminded of the animality of the unconscious was also among those present, and I was perforce reminded that she was not at all prepared for the reception of such unsympathetic views. The forgetting spared me a number of unpleasant questions from her and a hopeless discussion, and just that must have been the motive of the ‘temporary amnesia.’
“It is interesting to note that as a concealing thought there emerged a sentence in which the deity is degraded to a human invention, while in the sought-for sentence there was an allusion to the animal in the man. The capitis diminutiois therefore common to both. The whole matter
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