Page:Freud - Psychopathology of everyday life.djvu/42

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

She hesitated many times during the recitation, being sure that there was something wrong with the last line. To her great surprise, on referring to the book she found that not only was the last line misquoted but that there were many other mistakes. The correct lines read as follows:—

Ode to Apollo

“‘In thy western halls of gold
      When thou sittest in thy state,
Bards, that erst sublimely told
      Heroic deeds and sang of fate.’

The words italicized are those that have been forgotten and replaced by others during the recitation.

“She was astonished at her many mistakes, and attributed them to a failure of memory. I could readily convince her, however, that there was no qualitative or quantitative disturbance of memory in her case, and recalled to her our conversation immediately before quoting these lines.

“We were discussing the over-estimation of personality among lovers, and she thought it was Victor Hugo who said that love is the greatest thing in the world because it makes an angel or a god out of a grocery clerk. She continued: ’Only when we are in love have we blind faith in humanity; everything is perfect, everything

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