One night I was dining out in London, and I told my host the new theory
of forgetting.
"That's all bunkum," he said. "Why, there is a flower growing at the
front door there, and I can never remember the name of it. I am fond
of flowers and never have any difficulty in remembering their names as
a rule."
"What flower is it?" I asked.
He tried to recall it, and had to give it up.
"It's the joke of the family," said his wife. "He can never remember
the name Begonia."
"Begonia!" cried my host, "that's the name! But surely you don't mean
to tell me that I want to forget it? Why should I?"
"It may be associated with something unpleasant in your life," I said.
"Nonsense!" he laughed. "The name conveys nothing to me."
We began to talk about other things. Ten minutes later my host
suddenly exclaimed:
"I've got it!"
"What?" I asked.
"That Begonia business. When I began business as a chartered
accountant over twenty years ago, the first books I had to audit were
the books of a company calling itself The Begonia Furnishing Company.
I glanced through the books and soon concluded that they were
swindlers. I worried over that case for a week; you see it was my
first case, and I felt a little superstitious about it. However, at
the end of a week I sent the books back saying that I couldn't see my
way to undertake the auditing. I've never given them a thought since."
I explained the mechanisms to him. The whole idea of this Begonia
Company was so painful to him that he repressed it, that is, drove it
down into the unconscious. Twenty years later he was unconsciously
afraid to recall the name of the flower, because the name might have
brought back the painful memories of the questionable books.
On Friday night during question time one man got up.
"Why is it, then," he asked, "that I cannot forget the painful time
when my wife died?"
I explained that a big thing like that cannot be forgotten, but pointed
out that in a case like that the tendency is to forget little things in
connection with the big pain. I told him of a case I had myself known.
A lady of my acquaintance lived for a few years in Glasgow; then she
moved to Edinburgh, where she lived for almost thirty years. Now she
lives in London. When she talks of her old home in Edinburgh she
always says: "When we were in Glasgow." Invariably she makes this
mistake. The reason is almost certainly this: just before she left
Edinburgh she lost the one she loved most in life. She says: "When we
were in Glasgow" because the word Edinburgh would at once bring back
the painful memories connected with her loved one's death.
When I was teaching in Hampstead one of my pupils, a boy of sixteen,
came to me one day.
"That's all rot, what you say about wanting to forget things," he said.
"I went and left my walking-stick in a bus yesterday."
"Were you tired of it?" I asked.
"Tired of it?" he said indignantly. "Why, it was a beauty, a
silver-topped cane, got it from mother on my birthday. That proves
your theory is all wrong."
"Tell me about yesterday," I said.
"Well, I was going to a match at lord's, and it looked rather dull, so
mother told me I'd better take a gamp. I said it wasn't going to rain,
and took my cane, but I had just got on the top of a bus when down came
the rain in bucketfuls and I tell you I was wet to the skin."
"So you did mean to leave your cane behind?" I asked, with a smile.
"But I tell you I didn't!"
"You did, all the same. You kicked yourself because you hadn't taken
your mother's advice and brought a gamp. You deliberately left your
cane behind you because it had proved useless."