Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, August 3, 1926

Budapest, August 3, 1926

Dear Professor,

I am writing this time only to share with you a small discovery. In a patient who accomplished the feat of forgetting an entire day of his life (and in the process experienced all kinds of things, but mostly “forbidden” ones on that day), who thus produced one of the otherwise so famous instances of splitting of the personality, I found out that this symptom was an indirect (and unconscious) communication in my direction, to wit, that he had consciously concealed from me or misrepresented to me a whole lot of things. I am convinced that all other instances of this kind can be explained in a similar way—they are an admission of mendacity, that is to say, the fact that, in various situations in their lives or in relation to various groups of people, these people expose only parts of their total character and conceal a large part of their behavior. The cause lies, naturally, in the infantile lie in sexual matters—at the same time, an imitation of the mendacity of adults.

Many thanks for your last letter!

Yours,

Ferenczi