FORGETTING AND REPRESSION
How we remember is an old and unsolved question, but few people think of
asking how we forget: and yet one problem is as important as the other.
I cannot answer either except by putting a new one, which is, 'Do we
ever forget?'
If we specify the factors concerned in memory and say that it depends
upon impression, retention, and recall, then what do we mean by
'forgetting'? If an event makes no impression upon the mind there is
neither remembering nor forgetting; if there is retention of a memory,
but one cannot recall it, it is nevertheless stored in the mind and may
yet be revived by some association. So that the only certain factor in
forgetting is the loss of power of recall, for what is apparently quite
forgotten may still be retained in the unconscious.
Can we voluntarily forget? If by that is meant, 'Can we voluntarily lose
the power of voluntary recall?' I must, strange as it seems at first
sight, assert that we can, though I make the proviso that 'voluntarily'
is a word with a very elastic meaning, and one whose definition would
open up the never-ended argument about Free-will. I will take refuge in
a quotation[4]:--
'We ought not to assume that a clear and full anticipation or idea
of the end is an essential condition of purposive action, and we
have no warrant for setting up the instances in which anticipation
is least incomplete as alone conforming to the purposive type, and
for setting apart all instances in which anticipation is less full
and definite as of a radically different nature.'
[Footnote 4: McDougall, _Social Psychology_, p. 359.]
Expressing this idea in the terms employed in the previous chapters, we
can picture an action as being produced by motives in consciousness, and
these motives as being influenced to a greater or less extent by the
instincts, emotions, and desires of the unconscious. Every action is
influenced by the unconscious, however voluntary it may appear. The
young man who seeks the society of a maiden may think he is acting
voluntarily and with full consciousness of the end in view, but the end
is often visualised by the friends of the pair before the young man
realises where his instincts and emotions have led him.
The man who resolutely refuses to think of an unpleasant experience and
shuts off the thought of it whenever it rises into his consciousness may
not have the intention of placing it beyond reach of voluntary recall,
but he may succeed in so doing, and the process by which the end was
reached was voluntary. That we have this power is shown by the
investigation of war-strained soldiers of the type said to be suffering
from 'shell-shock'. These men are often stout fellows who have fought
long and bravely, and whose condition is a result of the emotions they
have suffered rather than of any particular shell explosion. Their
typical symptoms are depression, dreams of battle horrors, tremors and
stammerings, and strange fears without apparent cause.
In an ordinary case there is great difficulty in persuading the man to
talk about his war experiences: he says plainly that he doesn't want to
talk about them, or may persistently avoid the subject, or he gives a
poor account and shows difficulty in recall, or he claims to have
forgotten and requires stimulating in order to remember, or he may have
an absolute blank in his memory for certain periods.
Here we see all grades of the result of trying to forget, and the more
successful the result the more difficult is the cure; for though the
memories are repressed their associated emotions cannot be so dealt
with, but remain in consciousness exaggerated and distorted. The
dependence of an emotion upon a repressed memory prevents the sufferer
from knowing its cause, and the sufferer from an apparently causeless
emotion is to be pitied, for he can see no end to his trouble.
A man who was afraid of walking in the dark for fear of falling into
holes which he knew only existed as a product of his fancy, affords a
simple example of this condition. He said that his fear was absurd,
therefore it was useless to point out to him its absurdity; the proper
course was to show that it was not absurd, that it had a cause, and
that the cause was something in the past which, when recognised, could
be reasoned away. Fortunately the cause was easily found by any one with
a knowledge of modern war: there was soon brought to light a 'forgotten'
memory of his mates being drowned in shell-holes at night, and the fear
disappeared as the patient learnt to look his memories in the face and
not sink them into his unconscious.
More striking, however, are those cases in which a man forgets all his
war experiences, and, though he is ready to believe that he has spent,
say, two years in France, has no recollection of them. Such cases are
not rare, the loss of memory often including part or all of the
patient's previous life. One man could only remember the last three
months of his life and failed to recognise his own father, though his
memory was subsequently restored; this loss, occurring suddenly, could
hardly be in any degree voluntary, though it served the purpose of
excluding many horrible memories from his consciousness. Another nervous
lad was so constituted that he forgot all incidents that frightened him,
only to be haunted by the emotions attached to them. Seeing a
steeple-jack fall was forgotten, and produced nightmares for years; a
practical joke gave him a terror of the dark; his sister calling to him
when burglars were in the house gave him hallucinations of voices; and
minor incidents were equally forgotten, each producing its own symptoms.
As the individual memories were brought up from his unconscious he went
through the fright again, but the associated symptoms soon disappeared.
In these pathological losses of memory, whether for one incident or for
a whole period, it is important to note that the patient does not
necessarily recognise the incident when he is told of it, just as the
lad mentioned above failed to recognise his father when he met him. A
patient may in a sleep-walking state act as if performing a definite
action, such as bayoneting one of the enemy, and when awake deny all
knowledge of such an incident; yet the memory of it may return later
with overwhelming emotion. This failure to recognise a personal
experience is of great importance in the consideration of some
spiritualist phenomena.
It requires little thought to realise that the only memories we try to
repress are those that conflict with our other feelings or desires, and
their repression is to some extent tolerated by a healthy man and may be
regarded to that extent as a normal process.
But in addition to the repression of unpleasant memories there are other
ways of forgetting. It has been assumed that each individual has a limit
to his capacity for remembering, and that when that limit is reached
fresh memories can be stored up only by casting out old ones. Whether
that be so or not, it is certain that we can recall to consciousness
only a tiny fraction of our past experiences, and no one can say what
proportion that fraction bears to the whole contents of the storehouse
of the unconscious. Let two men meet and recall old school-days spent
together: one memory brings up another, schoolboy phrases and terms of
speech appear as it were spontaneously, and by their united efforts the
two recall far more than the sum of their recollections before the
meeting, and still neither knows how much is left untouched.
The ordinary man reads many books, and each one leaves some impression
and has some influence upon his later thoughts, though in time the
recollection, not only of the contents of the book, but even of having
read it, may fade away. This is the explanation of some cases of
literary plagiarism: a previously read phrase comes up from the
unconscious, and all recognisable connections with memory having been
lost it is greeted as a fresh creation and given rank accordingly.
There is still another type of forgetting: most of us know the man who
'draws the long bow', who embellishes his story and embroiders it with
imagined incidents, whilst we listen and wonder how much the narrator
himself believes. Fishermen's stories and snake yarns are examples, and
one explains the mental process of the story-teller by saying, 'He's
told the story so often that at last he believes it himself.' The
process is really one of forgetting and is closely allied to the
repression of an unpleasant memory, for the man is the victim of a
mental conflict: on the one side is his desire to tell a good story, and
on the other is his moral complex which forbids a lie, so he solves the
conflict by forgetting that the embroideries are inventions. This type
is an important one, and what I shall call the 'repression of the
knowledge of deceit' plays an important part in the explanation of the
abnormal phenomena with which this book deals. In tracing the
development of the abnormal we must start with what is nearest the
normal, and the man who embroiders his story gives an illustration of
the simplest form of this particular repression.
Now, just as memories are repressed because they were repugnant to the
other contents of the consciousness, so other complexes may be repugnant
and meet the same fate. To be torn by conflicting emotions is the fate
of most people at some time or other, and the conflict between two
complexes may be solved in various ways. The healthy way is to face the
difficulty, to reason it out, and reach a conclusion by which action may
be guided; another way, a common one, is to seclude one complex in a
logic-tight compartment and so avoid the conflict. The man who uses
sharp or shady methods in the city and is a gentle-minded philanthropist
in other walks of life is using the latter method, and will produce such
rationalisations as 'business is business' when the contents of his
different compartments need protection from each other.
But for some people such methods are impossible: either they cannot
directly solve the conflict or they are too self-critical to build a
logic-tight compartment, and in such cases a repression of one of the
opposing complexes may result. In this way complexes concerning
ambitions and desires may be repressed, and so may those concerning
fears and dislikes. The youth put to an uncongenial trade, the man or
woman married to an unsuitable partner, may find no escape from the
position and decide to bear it and forget its anxiety. How far this
succeeds depends upon the previously existing tendencies of the
individual: he may suffer no evil from the repression or, like the
soldier's repressed war memories, it may manifest itself by indirect
means and the unfortunate sufferer becomes a victim of one of the varied
forms of neurosis.
The day-dreams of youth are rarely openly expressed: no one can tell
what fantasies a child may have, and many of us are familiar with the
thoughtful child who sits lost in meditation and presents an
impenetrable barrier to the grown-up who would enter into the secrets of
the day-dream. These fancies may be, and probably are, completely
forgotten, but they can still lie in the unconscious, and Freud and his
followers claim that they influence us throughout life.