Translation Exercise 8
I am speaking here of things we have consciously seen or heard, and subsequently forgotten. But we all see, hear, smell, and taste many things without noticing them at the time, either because our attention is deflected or because the stimulus to our senses is too slight to leave a conscious impression. The unconscious, however, has taken note of them, and such subliminal sense perceptions play a significant part in our everyday lives. Without our realizing it, they influence the way in which we react to both events and people.
An example of this that I found particularly revealing was provided by a professor who had been walking in the country with one of his pupils, absorbed in serious conversation. Suddenly he noticed that his thoughts were being interrupted by an unexpected flow of memories from his early childhood. He could not account for this distraction. Nothing in what had been said seemed to have any connection with these memories. On looking back, he saw that he had been walking past a farm when the first of these childhood recollections had surged up in his mind. He suggested to his pupil that they should walk back to the point where the fantasies had begun. Once there, he noticed the smell of geese, and instantly he realized that it was this smell that had touched off the flow of memories.
In his youth he had lived on a farm where geese were kept, and their characteristic smell had left a lasting though forgotten impression. As he passed the farm on his walk, he had noticed the smell subliminally, and this unconscious perception had called back long-forgotten experiences of his childhood. The perception was subliminal, because the attention was engaged elsewhere, and the stimulus was not strong enough to deflect it and to reach consciousness directly. Yet it had brought up the "forgotten" memories.
Such a "cue" or "trigger" effect can explain the onset of neurotic symptoms as well as more benign memories when a sight, smell, or sound recalls a circumstance in the past. A girl, for instance, may be busy in her office, apparently in good health and spirits. A moment later she develops a blinding headache and shows other signs of distress. Without consciously noticing it, she has heard the foghorn of a distant ship, and this has unconsciously reminded her of an unhappy parting with a lover whom she has been doing her best to forget.
Aside from normal forgetting, Freud has described several cases that involve the "forgetting" of disagreeable memories - memories that one is only too ready to lose. As Nietzsche remarked, where pride is insistent enough, memory prefers to give way. Thus, among the lost memories, we encounter not a few that owe their subliminal state (and their incapacity to be voluntarily reproduced) to their disagreeable and incompatible nature. The psychologist calls these repressed contents.
A case in point might be that of a secretary who is jealous of one of her employer's associates. She habitually forgets to invite this person to meetings, though the name is clearly marked on the list she is using. But, if challenged on the point, she simply says she "forgot" or was "interrupted." She never admits-not even to herself - the real reason for her omission.