Autobiographical note 67 страница

I owe to Dr. B. Dattner, of Vienna, an excellent example of this kind which the observer made very skilful use of:

‘I was lunching in a restaurant with my colleague H., a doctor of philosophy. He spoke of the hardships of probationary students, and mentioned incidentally that before he had finished his studies he was given the post of secretary to the ambassador, or, more precisely, the minister plenipotentiary and extraordinary, of Chile. "But then the minister was transferred and I did not present myself to his successor." While he was uttering the last sentence he raised a piece of cake to his mouth, but let it drop from the knife in apparent clumsiness. I immediately grasped the hidden meaning of this symptomatic act, and, as it were casually, interjected to my colleague, who was unfamiliar with psycho-analysis: "You certainly allowed a tasty morsel to slip from you there." He did not, however, notice that my words could apply equally well to his symptomatic act, and repeated my exact words with a peculiarly charming and surprising liveliness just as if my remark had taken the words out of his mouth: "Yes, that was certainly a tasty morsel that I allowed to slip from me", and went on to unburden himself by means of a detailed description of the clumsiness which had lost him this well-paid position.

‘The meaning of the symbolic symptomatic act becomes clearer if it is realized that my colleague had scruples about telling a fairly remote acquaintance like myself of his precarious material situation, and that the obtrusive thought thereupon disguised itself as a symptomatic act which expressed symbolically what was meant to be hidden and in this way afforded the speaker relief which arose from unconscious sources.’9

The following examples will show how much meaning may turn out to lie in an apparently unintentional act of carrying something off or taking something away with one.

Dr. B. Dattner relates: ‘A colleague paid a visit to a friend, a lady he had much admired in the days of his youth; it was the first visit after her marriage. He told me of this visit and expressed his surprise at the fact that he had not succeeded in keeping his resolution to stay only a very short time with her. He then went on to recount a singular parapraxis which had happened to him there. His friend’s husband, who had joined in the conversation, had looked for a box of matches which had quite definitely been on the top of the table when he arrived. My colleague, too, had looked through his pockets to see whether he had not accidentally "snapped it up",¹ but without avail. Some time later he had in fact found "it" in his pocket, and was struck by the fact that there was only a single match in the box. - A dream a few days later which prominently displayed the match-box symbolism and was concerned with this same friend of his youth confirmed my explanation that my colleague’s symptomatic act was intended to announce that he had prior rights and to demonstrate his claim to exclusive possession (only one match in the box).’

Dr. Hanns Sachs relates: ‘Our maid is particularly fond of a certain kind of cake. There is no possible doubt of this, as it is the only thing that she always makes well. One Sunday she brought in this particular cake, put it down on the sideboard, removed the plates and cutlery of the previous course and stacked them on the tray on which she had brought in the cake; she then put the cake back on the top of this pile instead of on the table, and disappeared with it into the kitchen. Our first idea was that she had noticed something that ought to be put right about the cake, but when she failed to appear again my wife rang and asked: "Betty, what has happened to the cake?" "How do you mean?" replied the maid, not understanding. We had first to point out to her that she had taken the cake away with her again. She had put it on the pile of dishes, carried it out and put it away "without noticing". - Next day, as we were about to eat what remained of this cake, my wife noticed that there was just as much as we had left the day before - in other words, that the maid had rejected her own share of her favourite dish. When asked why she had not eaten any of the cake she replied in some embarrassment that she had not wanted any. - The infantile attitude is very clear on both occasions: first the childish insatiability which did not want to share the object of her wishes with anyone, followed by the equally childish defiant reaction: "If you grudge it me, keep it for yourselves; I don’t want anything at all now.”'

¹ [In German the word for ‘box’ (‘Schatel’) is feminine; so that this might equally mean ‘snapped her up’.]0

Chance actions and symptomatic acts occurring in matrimonial matters often have the most serious significance and might induce people who disregard the psychology of the unconscious to believe in omens. It is not a happy beginning when a young bride loses her wedding-ring on the honeymoon; but after all it is usually only mislaid and is soon found again. - I know a lady, now divorced from her husband, who in managing her money affairs frequently signed documents in her maiden name, many years before she in fact resumed it. - I was once the guest of a young married couple and heard the young woman laughingly describe her latest experience. The day after her return from the honeymoon she had called for her unmarried sister to go shopping with her as she used to do, while her husband went to his business. Suddenly she noticed a gentleman on the other side of the street, and nudging her sister had cried: ‘Look, there goes Herr L.’ She had forgotten that this gentleman had been her husband for some weeks. I felt a cold chill as I heard the story, but I did not dare to draw the inference. The little incident only occurred to my mind some years later when the marriage had come to a most unhappy end.

The following observation is quoted from one of Alphonse Maeder’s valuable studies, published in French (Maeder, 1906). It might equally well have been included among the examples of forgetting:

‘Une dame nous racontait récemment qu’elle avait oublié d’essayer sa robe de noce et s’en souvint la veille du mariage à huit heures du soir; la couturière désespérait de voir sa cliente. Ce détail suffit a montrer que la fiancée ne se sentait pas très heureuse de porter une robe d’épouse, elle cherchait à oublier cette représentation pénible. Elle est aujourd’hui... divorcée.’¹

A friend who has learnt to read signs has told me that the great actress Eleonora Duse introduces into one of her parts a symptomatic act which clearly shows the depths from which she draws her artistry. It is a drama of adultery; she has just had an altercation with her husband and now stands apart deep in thought, before the seducer approaches. During the short interval she plays with her wedding ring, takes it off her finger, puts it on again, and then once more takes it off. She is now ready for the other man.

I add here an account by Theodor Reik (1915) of some other symptomatic acts involving rings.

‘We are familiar with the symptomatic acts of married people which consist in their taking off and replacing their wedding rings. My colleague M. produced a series of similar symptomatic acts. He had received a ring as a present from a girl he was in love with, with a note saying that he must not lose it or she would know that he did not love her any more. Subsequently he grew increasingly worried that he might lose the ring. If he had temporarily taken it off (for example while he was washing) it would regularly be mislaid, so that often it could only be found again after a long search. When he was posting a letter he could not suppress a slight fear that the ring might be pulled off by the edges of the letter-box. On one occasion he managed things so clumsily that the ring did fall into the box. The letter he was sending off on that occasion was a parting note to an earlier lady-love of his, and he fell guilty towards her. Simultaneously he was filled with a longing for this other lady which conflicted with his feelings towards his present love-object.’

¹ [‘A lady was telling us recently how she had forgotten to try on her wedding dress and remembered it at eight o’clock on the eve of her wedding. The dressmaker had given up hope of seeing her customer. This detail was enough to show that the bride did not feel very happy about wearing a wedding-dress; she was trying to forget the painful performance. To-day... she is divorced.’]2

The theme of the ring leaves one once again with the impression of how hard it is for a psycho-analyst to discover anything new that has not been known before by some creative writer. In Fontane’s novel Vor dem Sturm Justizrat Turgany declares during a game of forfeits: ‘You may be sure, ladies, that the deepest secrets of nature are revealed in the pledging of forfeits.’ Among the examples he uses to support his claim there is one that deserves our special interest: ‘I recall a professor’s wife - she had reached the age of embonpoint - who again and again pulled off her wedding ring to offer it as a forfeit. Do not ask me to describe the happiness of her marriage.’ He then went on: ‘In the same company there was a gentleman who never tired of depositing his English pocket-knife, with its ten blades, corkscrew and flint and steel, in the ladies’ laps, until the bladed monster, after tearing several silk dresses, finally disappeared amid general cries of indignation.’

We shall not be surprised if an object of such rich symbolic meaning as a ring should be made to play a part in some significant parapraxes, even where it does not, in the form of a wedding ring or an engagement ring, mark an erotic tie. The following example of an occurrence of this sort has been put at my disposal by Dr. M. Kardos:

‘Several years ago a man who is much my junior attached himself to me; he shares my intellectual endeavours and stands to me somewhat in the relation of a pupil to his teacher. On one particular occasion I presented him with a ring; and this ring has several times given rise to symptomatic acts or parapraxes, whenever anything in our relationship has met with his disapproval. A short time ago he was able to report the following case, which is particularly neat and transparent. We used to meet once a week, when he regularly came to see me and talk with me; but on one occasion he made an excuse to stay away, as a rendezvous with a young lady seemed more attractive to him. The following morning he noticed - not, however, until long after he had left the house - that the ring was not on his finger. He did not worry any more about it, since he assumed he had left it behind on his bedside table, where he put it every evening, and would find it there when he got home. As soon as he reached home he looked for it, without success, and then began a systematic search of the room, which was equally fruitless. At last it crossed his mind that the ring had been lying on the bedside table - just as had been the case, in fact, for more than a year - beside a small pocket-knife that he normally carried in his waistcoat pocket; the suspicion thus occurred to him that he might have "absent-mindedly" pocketed the ring with the knife. So he felt in his pocket and found that the missing ring was in fact there. "His wedding-ring in his waistcoat pocket" is a proverbial way of referring to the place where the ring is kept by a husband who intends to betray the wife who gave it to him. My friend’s feeling of guilt had therefore caused him first to punish himself ("you no longer deserve to wear this ring") and secondly to confess his unfaithfulness, though only in the form of an unwitnessed parapraxis. It was only in a roundabout way, while he was describing this parapraxis - an eventuality which could, incidentally, have been foreseen - that he came to confess his little "unfaithfulness".’

I also know of an elderly man who married a very young girl and who decided to spend the wedding night in a hotel in town instead of on the honeymoon journey. Hardly had they reached the hotel when he noticed in alarm that he was without his wallet, which contained all the money for the honeymoon; he had either mislaid it or lost it. He was still able to reach his servant by telephone; the latter found the missing wallet in the discarded wedding suit and brought it to the hotel to the waiting bridegroom who had accordingly entered upon his marriage without means. He was thus able to start his journey with his young bride next morning. In the night, however, he had, as he had apprehensively foreseen, proved ‘incapable '.¹

¹ [‘Unvermögend’, ‘without means’, ‘without power’, and so ‘impotent’.]3

It is consoling to reflect that there is an unsuspected extension of the human habit of ‘losing things’ - namely, symptomatic acts, and that this habit is consequently welcome, at least to a secret intention of the loser’s. It is often only an expression of the low estimation in which the lost object is held, or of a secret antipathy towards it or towards the person that it came from; or else the inclination to lose the object has been transferred to it from other more important objects by a symbolic association of thoughts. Losing objects of value serves to express a variety of impulses; it may either be acting as a symbolic representation of a repressed thought - that is, it may be repeating a warning that one would be glad enough to ignore -, or (most commonly of all) it may be offering a sacrifice to the obscure powers of destiny to whom homage is still paid among us to-day.

Here are a few examples to illustrate these remarks about losing things.

Dr. B. Dattner: ‘A colleague told me he had unexpectedly lost his "Penkala" pencil which he had had for over two years and which he valued highly because of its superior quality. Analysis revealed the following facts. The day before, my colleague had received a thoroughly disagreeable letter from his brother-in-law, which concluded with the sentence: "I have neither the inclination nor the time at present to encourage you in your frivolity and laziness." The affect connected with this letter was so powerful that next day my colleague promptly sacrificed the pencil, which was a present from this brother-in-law, so as not to feel under too great an obligation to him.’

A lady of my acquaintance understandably refrained from visiting the theatre while in mourning for her old mother. There were only a few days still to elapse before the end of her year of mourning, and she allowed herself to be persuaded by her friends to buy a ticket for a particularly interesting performance. On reaching the theatre she made the discovery that she had lost the ticket. She thought afterwards that she had thrown it away with her tram ticket on leaving the tram. This lady used to pride herself on never losing anything through carelessness.

It is therefore fair to assume that another experience she had of losing something was not without a good reason either. On her arrival at a health resort she decided to pay a visit to a pension where she had stayed on an earlier occasion. She was welcomed there as an old friend and entertained, and when she wanted to pay she was told she was to look on herself as a guest; but this she did not feel was quite proper. It was agreed that she might leave something for the maid who had waited on her, so she opened her purse to put a one mark note on the table. In the evening the pension’s manservant brought her a five mark note which had been found under the table and which the proprietress thought must belong to the lady. She must therefore have dropped it from her purse in getting out the tip for the maid. She had probably wanted to pay her bill in spite of everything.

An article of some length by Otto Rank (1911) makes use of dream-analysis to expose the sacrificial mood that forms the basis of this act, and to reveal its deeper motives.¹ It is of interest when he writes later that often not only losing objects but also, finding them appears to be determined. In what sense this is to be understood may be gathered from his story, which I include here (Rank, 1915a). It is obvious that in cases of losing, the object is already provided; in cases of finding, it has first to be looked for.

‘A girl who was materially dependent on her parents wished to buy a piece of cheap jewellery. She enquired in the shop about the price of the article she fancied, but was disappointed to find that it cost more than the sum she had saved. All the same, it was only a matter of two kronen that stood between her and this small pleasure. In a depressed mood she began to stroll home through the streets, which were thronged with the evening crowds. Though she describes herself as having been deep in thought, she suddenly noticed lying on the ground, in one of the busiest squares, a small piece of paper which she had just passed by without attending to it. She turned round, picked it up and was astonished to find it was a folded two kronen note. She thought: "This has been sent me by fate so that I can buy the jewellery", and started happily back with the idea of taking the hint. But at the same moment she told herself that she ought not to do so, since money that one finds is lucky money and should not be spent.

‘The bit of analysis which would make this "chance action" intelligible may probably be inferred from the situation described, even in the absence of personal information from the girl herself. Among the reflections that occupied her mind as she was walking home, the thought of her poverty and her restricted material position must no doubt have bulked large; moreover we may guess that that thought took the form of a wishful removal of her straitened circumstances. The idea of how the required sum could most easily be obtained will surely have arisen from her interest in satisfying her modest wish; and it will have suggested the simplest solution - namely, that of finding the money. In this way her unconscious (or preconscious) was predisposed towards "finding", even though - owing to claims on her attention from other quarters ("deep in thought") - the actual thought did not become fully conscious to her. We may go further and, on the strength of similar cases which have been analysed, actually assert that unconscious "readiness to look for something" is much more likely to lead to success than consciously directed attention. Otherwise it would be almost impossible to explain how it was that precisely this one person out of the many hundreds of passers-by - and with all the difficulties caused by the poor street-lighting and the dense crowds - was able to make the find that came as a surprise to her herself. Some indication of the actual strength of this unconscious or preconscious readiness may be obtained from the remarkable fact that after making this find - that is, at a time when the attitude had become superfluous and had certainly been removed from conscious attention - the girl found a handkerchief at a later point on her way home, in a dark and lonely part of a suburban street.’

¹ [Footnote added 1917:] Other articles on the same topic will be found in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 2, and in the Internationale Zetschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1 (1913).6

It must be said that it is precisely such symptomatic acts that often offer the best approach to an understanding of people’s intimate mental life.

Turning now to the chance actions that occur sporadically, I will report an example which suggested a comparatively deep interpretation even without analysis. It gives a clear illustration of the conditions under which such symptoms can be produced entirely unobtrusively, and it enables me to subjoin a remark of practical importance. In the course of a summer holiday it happened that I had to wait a few days at a particular place for the arrival of my travelling companion. In the meantime I made the acquaintance of a young man who also seemed to be lonely and was willing enough to join me. As we were staying at the same hotel it was natural for us to take all our meals and walks together. On the afternoon of the third day he suddenly told me that he was expecting his wife to arrive by train that evening. My psychological interest was now aroused, for I had already been struck that morning by my companion’s rejecting my proposal for a longish expedition and objecting during our short walk to taking a certain path which he said was too steep and dangerous. On our afternoon walk he suddenly remarked that I must no doubt be hungry; I must certainly not delay my evening meal on his account - he was going to wait for his wife to arrive and have supper with her. I took the hint and sat down to dinner while he went to the station. Next morning we met in the hall of the hotel. He introduced me to his wife and then said: ‘You’ll have breakfast with us, won’t you?’ I had first to go on a small errand in the next street, but promised to be back soon. When I entered the breakfast room, I saw that the couple were both sitting on the same side of a small table by the window. On the opposite side there was only one chair; the husband’s big, heavy waterproof cape had been hung over the back of it, covering the seat. I understood very well the meaning of the coat’s being arranged in that way; it had certainly not been done deliberately and was therefore all the more expressive. It meant: ‘There’s no room for you here, you’re superfluous now.’ The husband failed to notice that I was standing in front of the table without sitting down; but his wife did, and quickly nudged her husband and whispered: ‘Look, you’ve taken up the gentleman’s seat.’

This and other similar experiences have led me to conclude that actions carried out unintentionally must inevitably become the source of misunderstandings in human relations. The agent, who knows nothing of there being an intention connected with these actions, does not feel that they are chargeable to him and does not hold himself responsible for them. The second party, on the other hand, since he regularly bases his conclusions as to the agent’s intentions and sentiments on such actions among others, knows more of the other’s psychical processes than that person himself is ready to admit or believes he has communicated. The agent, indeed, grows indignant if these conclusions drawn from his symptomatic acts are brought up against him; he declares them to be baseless, since he is not conscious of having had the intention at the time they were carried out, and complains of being misunderstood by the second party. Strictly considered, misunderstandings of his kind are based on too intimate and too extensive understanding. The more two people suffer from ‘nerves’, the more readily will they give each other cause for disputes, the responsibility for which each disclaims just as decidedly in regard to himself as he considers it certain in regard to the other person. And this is no doubt the punishment for people’s internal dishonesty in only giving expression under the pretext of forgetting, bungling and doing things unintentionally to impulses that would better be admitted to themselves and to others if they can no longer be controlled. It can in fact be said quite generally that everyone is continually practising psychical analysis on his neighbours and consequently learns to know them better than they know themselves. The road whose goal it is to observe the precept ãõþèé óåáíôüõ¹ runs viâ the study of one’s own apparently accidental actions and omissions.

¹ [‘Know thyself’]8

Of all the writers who have from time to time passed comment on our minor symptomatic acts and parapraxes, or who have made use of them, none has understood their secret nature so clearly or exhibited them in so uncannily lifelike a manner as Strindberg - a man whose genius in recognizing such things was, it is true, assisted by grave mental abnormality. Dr. Karl Weiss of Vienna (1913) has drawn attention to the following passage in one of his works:

‘After a while the Count did in fact come, and he approached Esther quietly, as though he had a rendezvous with her.

‘"Have you been waiting long?" he asked in his low voice.

‘"Six months, as you know," answered Esther; "but did you see me to-day?"

‘"Yes, just now, in the tram: and I looked into your eyes feeling that I was talking to you."

‘"A great deal has ‘happened’ since the last time."

‘"Yes, and I believed it was all over between us."

‘"How so?"

‘"All the little gifts that I had from you broke in pieces - in an occult way, what is more. But that is something that has been noticed long, long ago."

‘"Dear me! Now I remember a whole set of events that I took to be accidents. Once I was given a pair of pince-nez by my grandmother, at a time we were good friends. They were made of polished rock-crystal and were excellent for making post-mortems - a real miracle of which I took the greatest care. One day I broke with the old lady and she was angry with me. And during the next post-mortem the lenses happened to fall out for no reason. I thought they were simply broken and sent them to be repaired. But no, they went on refusing to help me; they were put in a drawer and got lost."

‘"Dear me! Strange that things that concern the eyes should be the most sensitive. I was once given some opera glasses by a friend; they suited my eyes so well that it was a pleasure to use them. This friend and I fell out. You know how it happens without visible cause; it seems as though one were not allowed to be in harmony. The next time I wanted to use the opera glasses I could not see clearly. The cross-piece was too short and I saw two images. I don’t need to tell you that the cross-piece had not grown shorter and my eyes had not grown further apart! It was a miracle that happens every day - one that bad observers do not notice. How can we explain it? The psychical power of hatred must be greater than we suppose. - What is more, the ring that I had from you has lost its stone and will not let itself be repaired; no, it will not. Do you want to part from me, then?..."’ (The Gothic Rooms, German trans., p. 258 f.)

In the field of symptomatic acts, too, psycho-analytic observation must concede priority to imaginative writers. It can only repeat what they have said long ago. Wilhelm Stross has drawn my attention to the following passage in Laurence Sterne’s celebrated humorous novel, Tristram Shandy (Volume VI, Chapter V):

‘... And I am not at all surprised that Gregory of Nazianzum, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of Julian, should foretell he would one day become an apostate; - or that St. Ambrose should turn his Amanuensis out of doors, because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail; - or that Democritus should conceive Protagoras to be a scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs inwards. - There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, - or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.’

I add here a brief and varied collection of symptomatic acts found in healthy and neurotic people:

An elderly colleague who was not a good loser at cards had one evening paid up a largish sum of money that he had lost. He did this without complaining but in a peculiarly restrained mood. After his departure it was discovered that he had left behind at his seat more or less everything he had on him: spectacles, cigar-case and handkerchief. This no doubt calls for the translation: ‘You robbers! You have well and truly plundered me!’

A man suffering from occasional sexual impotence, which originated from the intimacy of his relations with his mother in childhood, related that he was in the habit of decorating pamphlets and notes with the letter S, his mother’s initial. He cannot bear letters from home coming in contact with other profane correspondence on his desk, and is therefore forced to put the former away separately.

A young lady suddenly flung open the door of the consulting room though the woman who preceded her had not yet left it. In apologizing she blamed her ‘thoughtlessness’; it soon turned out that she had been demonstrating the curiosity that in the past had caused her to make her way into her parents’ bedroom.

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