Forgetting Names and Order of Words
‘I am no longer a young man.’ That my resistance was directed against the second half of the name Castelvetrano is shown by the fact that the initial sound of the same returned in the substitutive name Caltanisetta.”
“What about the name Caltanisetta itself?” asked the younger.
“That always seemed to me like a pet name of a young woman,” admitted the elder.
Somewhat later he added: “The name for Enna was also only a substitutive name. And now it occurs to me that the name Castrogiovanni, which obtruded itself with the aid of a rationalization, alludes as expressly to giovane, young, as the last name, Castelvetrano, to veteran.”
The older man believed that he had thus accounted for his forgetting the name. What the motive was that led the young man to this memory failure was not investigated.
In some cases one must have recourse to all the fineness of psychoanalytic technique in order to explain the forgetting of a name. Those who wish to read an example of such work I refer to a communication by Professor E. Jones.[1]
I could multiply the examples of name-forget ting and prolong the discussion very much further if I did not wish to avoid elucidating here almost all the view-points which will be considered in
- ↑ “Analyse eines Falles von Namenvergessen,” Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. 11, Heft 2, 1911.
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