Day 1185: I left my phone at the office

I left my phone at the office, yesterday.

That means

• I can’t show you any new photos,
• I might have missed an important call from the office of cardiologist and Congenital Adult Heart specialist Dr.  Carole Warnes at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and
• something significant to Sigmund Freud , although he might have made an exception for cell phones.

Because I didn’t leave my laptop at my office, I can look this up, here and now:

Freud said we often forget things for a reason. Motivated forgetting is a concept well documented in psychology and recognized in everyday life. For example, workers at dental offices know they have to call patients the day before an appointment, because otherwise patients commonly forget to show up. Freud would say this is because on some level they want to forget a dental appointment.

How can motivated forgetting or losing things reflect an “unconscious wish”?
Losing things can be revealing if the loss occurs “accidentally on purpose.” Freud said people sometimes lose a valuable thing they borrowed because, unconsciously, they rebel at giving it back. On other occasions, a loss might reflect an unconscious wish to get rid of something.

A student who raised her hand during a discussion of meaningful losses supplied an example. She said, “What would Freud say about this? I threw my wedding ring away while I was sleepwalking the first night I was married!” Not wanting to say, “That means you don’t want to be married,” I said, “Freud would probably make a lot out of that, but not all errors are meaningful.” In this case, however, the student was divorced within a year.

“Freudian Slips” and Other Errors (www.intropsych.com)

What do you think it means, that I left my phone at the office? What do you think it means when you forget things?

I may have left my phone at the office, but I didn’t leave my mind at the office.  Therefore, I can share some videos my co-worker Megan and I were talking about yesterday:

Even though I left my phone at my office, I can still remember that next Wednesday, April 6,  I’m seeing Martin Short and Steve Martin in “An Evening You Will Forget For the Rest of Your Life” with my son Aaron!

I wonder what Freud would say about that?   I especially wonder what Freud would say if you left behind a comment.

Left behind thanks to all who helped me create this post and to you — of course! — for not leaving this blog behind, today.