«Some people are commonly described as forgetful, and are forgiven for it in much the same way as a short-sighted person is forgiven for failing to greet an acquaintance in the street. These people forget all the minor promises they have made, and neglect all the tasks they are asked to perform, thus showing themselves unreliable in small things and suggesting that such minor offences in them should not be taken ill – that is to say, should not be explained by their characters but ascribed to something organic in them. I am not one of them myself, and have had the opportunity of analysing the actions of such people in order to discover the motivation for their omissions by looking at what they choose to forget. However, I cannot help suspecting, by analogy, that unusually great if unadmitted contempt for another person is a motive employing that constitutional factor for its own ends. »

Forgetting Things, Sigmund Freud