ABSTRACT
In the Berliner Tageblatt of the 25th March, 1922, there appeared an amusing article by the actor, Ludwig Barnay, who had recently celebrated his eightieth birthday, on the honours he had received both in former and in recent times. He jokingly mentioned that all the tokens of esteem usually bestowed only on the dead had been conferred on him in his lifetime. In one town a monument had been erected to him; in another a commemorative tablet had been placed on the house in which he had lived; in a third a street had been named after him. The mistake which appears in the last sentence shows very clearly the writer's wish not to die at all, and gives them a good insight into the deep unconscious conviction of his own indestructibility held by every human being. No less interesting psycho-analytically is the fact that neither the editor nor the proof-reader had noticed the writer's mistake.
