The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness

Editor's Note

Zum Psychischen Mechanismus Der Vergesslichkeit

(a) German Editions:

1898  Mschr. Psychiat. Neurol.,  4 (6),  436-443. (December.)

1952 G.W.,  1,  519-27.↗

(b) English Translation:

‘The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness’

The present translation, by Alix Strachey, seems to be the first into English.

The episode which is the subject of this paper occurred during Freud's visit to the Adriatic coast in September, 1898. He sent a short account of it to Fliess on his return to Vienna in a letter dated September 22 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 96), and reported a few days later (September 27, Standard Ed., Letter 97) that he had sent this paper off to the journal in which it appeared soon afterwards. This was the first published history of a parapraxis, and Freud made it the basis of the opening chapter of his longer work on the subject three years later (1901b); the Editor's Introduction to this (Standard Ed., 6) discusses the whole matter more fully. The present paper was only reprinted after Freud's death, more than fifty years after its first publication. It had been generally assumed, on the basis of Freud's remarks at the beginning of the first chapter of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Standard Ed., 1, that what was in question was no more than a rough draft of the later version. An actual comparison of the two works now shows that only the main lines of the topic are the same, that the chain of argument is differently arranged here, and that at one or two points the material is amplified.