BRIEF AN ROMAIN ROLLAND (EINE ERINNERUNGSSTORUNG AUF DER AKROPOLIS) (2) Gensan Eprrions: 1936 Almanach 1937, 9-21. 1950 G.W., 16, 250-7. (8) Enouisi: Transtation: ‘A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis’ 1941 Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 22 (2), 93-101. (Tr, James Strachey.) 1950 C.P,, 5, 302-12. (Reprint of above.) ‘The present translation is a corrected version of the one published in 1950, Romain Rolland was born on January 29, 1866, and this paper was dedicated to him on the occasion of his seventicth birthday. Freud had the greatest admiration for him, as is proved not only by the present work, but by the message to Rolland on ‘ieth birthday (Freud, 1926a) and by the {2 him which have been published (Freud, 0a), a y a passage at the beginning of Civilization and is Discontents (19300), Standard Ed, 24, 64-5, Freud had first x vith him in 1923, and had met him, for the only time, it seems, in 1924. -en impossible to trace any earlier publication of this pa ferman, other than that in the A/manack noted above, It should be borne in mind that any publications connected ith Romain Roland, ax wity many other author including }omas Mann and of course all Jewish writers, w uring this period by the Nai a 238 A DISTURBANCE OF MEMORY ON THE ACROPOLIS AN OPEN LETTER TO ROMAIN ROLLAND ON THE OCCASION OF HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY ‘My dear Friend, T have been urgently pressed to make some written con- tribution to the celebration of your seventicth birthday and I have made long efforts to find something that might in any way be worthy of you and might give expression to my admiration for your love of the truth, for your courage in your beliefs and for your affection and good will towards humanity; or, again, something that might bear witness to my gratitude to you as a ‘writer who has afforded me so many moments of exaltation and pleasure, But it was in vain, I am ten years older than you and my powers of production are at an end. All that I can find to offer you is the gift of an impoverished creature, who has ‘seen better days’. ‘You know that the aim of my scientific work was to throw light upon unusual, abnormal or pathological manifestations of the mind—that is to tay, to trace them back to the psychical forces operating behind them and to indicate the mechanisms at work. I began by attempting this upon myself and then went on to apply it to other people and finally, by a bold extension, to the human race as a whole. During the last few years, a phenomenon of this sort, which I myself had experienced a ‘generation ago, in 1904, and which I had never understood, has kept on recurring to my mind. not at first see why; but at last I determined to analyse the incident—and I now present you with the results of that enquiry. In the process, I shall have, of course, to ask you to give more attention to some events in my private life than they would otherwise deserve. Every year, at that time, towards the end of August or the 2 [Freud had made a short allusion to the episode some ten years earlier, in Chapter V of The Future of an Ilusion (1927), Standard Ed, 24,25, but had not put forward the explanation]20 AN EXPERIENCE ON THE ACROPOLIS beginning of September, I used to set out with my younger ‘brother on a holiday tri would last for some weeks and would take us to Rome or to some other region of Italy or to some part of the Mediterranean sea-board, My brother is ten years younger than I am, so he is the same age as you—a coin- cidence which has only now occurred to me. In that particular year my brother told me that his business affairs would not allow him to be away for long: a week would be the mot that he could manage and we should have to shorten our trip. So ‘we decided to travel by way of Trieste to the island of Corfu and there spend the few days of our holiday. At Trieste he called upon a business acquaintance who lived there, and I went with him. Our host enquired in a friendly way about our plans and, hearing that ‘our intention to go to Corfu, advised us strongly against it: “What makes you think of going there at this time of year? muld be too hot for you to do anything. You had far better go to Athens instead. The Lloyd boat sails this afternoon; it will give you three days there to see the town and will pick you up on its return voyage. That would be more agereable and more worth while.” ‘As we walked away from ably depressed spirits. We proposed, agreed that it was racticable and saw noth- ing but difficulties in the way of carrying it out; we assumed, moreover, that we should not be allowed to land in Greece without passports. We spent the hours that elapsed before the Lloyd offices opened in wandering about the town in a discon- tented and irresolute frame of mind, But when the time came, we went up to the counter and booked our passages for Athens as though it were a matter of course, without bothering in the least about the supposed difficulties and indeed without having discussed with one another the reasons for our decision. Such it, we were both in remark- it we had accepted the suggestion that we should go to Athens instead of Corfu instantly and most readily, But, if'so, why had we spent the interval before the offices opened in such a gloomy state and foreseen nothing but obstacles and uch a g thing ‘When, finally, on the afternoon after our arrival, I stood on the Acropolis and cast my eyes around upon the landscape, a = naa a AN EXPERIENCE ON THE ACROPOLIS 241 prising thought suddenly entered my mind: ‘So all this really does exist, just as we learnt at school!” To describe the situation more accurately, the person who gave expression to i erator Ne suddenly caught sight of the form of the famous Monster stranded upon the shore and found himself driven to the admis- sion: ‘So it really dies exist—the sea-serpent we've never be- lieved in!" The second person, on the other hand, was justifiably astonished, because he had been unaware that the real exist- ‘ence of Athens, the Acropolis, and the landscape around ‘ithad ever been objects of doubt. What he had been expecting was rather some expresion of delight or admiration. Or When Iwas weheaboy Thad hgh vas historical reality of the city of Athens an i that the occurrence of this idea on the Acropolis had precisely shown that in my unconscious I had not believed in it, and that T was only now acquiring a conviction that ‘reached down to the unconscious’. An explanation of this sort sounds very pro- thens? Out of the question!—it will be far too difficult!” The Se ‘seein corresponded to a regret that it was242 AN EXPERIENCE ON THE ACROPOLIS AN EXPERIENCE ON THE ACGROPOLIS 243, out of the question: it would have been so lovely. And now cf the other. For, as has long been known, the Fate which we we know where we are, Itis one of those cases of ‘too good to ‘expect to treat us so badly is a materialization of our con- ‘be true’ that we come across s0 often. It is an example of the q science, of the severe super-ego within us, itself a residue of the incredulity that arises 1 often when we are surprised by a piéce punitive agency of our childhood.* of good news, when we hear we have won a prize, for instance, ‘This, I think, explains our behaviour in Trieste. We could not or drawn a winner, or when a girl learns that the man whom believe that we were to be given the joy of seeing Athens. The she has secretly loved has asked her parents for leave to pay his fact that the piece of reality that we were trying to repudiate addresses to her. ‘was to begin with only a possibilty determined the character of ‘When we have established the existence of a phenomenon, cur immediate reactions. But when we were standing on the the next question is of course as to its cause. Incredulity ofthis kind is obviously an attempt to repudiate a piece of reality; but there is omething strange about it. We should not bein the result of frustration, of the non-fulfilment of some vital neces- the whole episode; and it was this which had already interfered sity or desire. But with these people the opposite is the cases ‘with our exchanging thoughts at Tri they fall ill, or even go entirely to pieces, because an over- If I have rightly guessed the of the thought that whelmingly powerful wish of theirs has been fulfilled. But the came to me on the Acropolis a contrast between the two situations is not so great as it seems Joyful astonishment at finding a at first. What happens in the paradoxical case is merely that the question now arises why this meaning should have been subjected place of the external frustration is taken by an internal one, The in the thought itself to such a distorted and distorting disguise, sufferer does not permit himself happiness: the internal frus- ‘The essential subject-matter of the thought, to be = was 1 [in English in, the original.) ing olin Some Charter Type Met within PyeboAnaiyie ou [Of uP ME of The Fate fo Hsin (82), Sd By