Autobiographical note 69 страница

It may perhaps be thought that the class of errors whose explanation I have given here is not very numerous or particularly significant. But I leave it open for question whether there is not some ground for extending the same line of approach to our assessment of the far more important errors of judgement made by human beings in their lives and in scientific work. Only for the rarest and best adjusted mind does it seem possible to preserve the picture of external reality, as it is perceived, against the distortion to which it is normally subjected in its passage though the psychical individuality of the percipient.

CHAPTER XI COMBINED PARAPRAXES

Two of the last-mentioned examples - my own error which transferred the Medici to Venice, and that of the young man who succeeded in getting a conversation with his fiancée on the telephone in defiance of my prohibition - have not in fact been described entirely accurately. Careful consideration reveals that they are a combination of an act of forgetting and an error. I can illustrate this combination still more clearly from some other examples.

(1) A friend tells me of the following experience. ‘Some years ago I allowed myself to be elected to the committee of a certain literary society, as I thought that the organization might one day be able to help me to have my play produced; and I took a regular part, though without being much interested, in the meetings, which were held every Friday. Then, a few months ago, I was given the promise of a production at the theatre at F.; and since then I have regularly forgotten the meetings of the society. When I read your book on the subject I felt ashamed of my forgetfulness. I reproached myself with the thought that it was shabby behaviour on my part to stay away now that I no longer needed these people, and resolved on no account to forget the next Friday. I kept on reminding myself of this resolution until I carried it into effect and stood at the door of the room where the meetings were held. To my astonishment it was locked; the meeting was over. I had in fact made a mistake over the day; it was now Saturday!’

(2) The next example combines a symptomatic act with a case of mislaying. It reached me in a somewhat roundabout way, but comes from a reliable source.

A lady travelled to Rome with her brother-in-law, who is a famous artist. The visitor was received with great honour by the German community in Rome, and among other presents he was given an antique gold medal. The lady was vexed that her brother-in-law did not appreciate the lovely object sufficiently. When she returned home (her place in Rome having been taken by her sister) she discovered while unpacking that she had brought the medal with her - how, she did not know. She at once sent a letter with the news to her brother-in-law, and announced that she would send the article she had walked off with back to Rome next day. But next day the medal had been so cleverly mislaid that it could not be found and sent off; and it was at this point that the meaning of her ‘absent mindedness’ dawned on the lady: she wanted to keep the object for herself.

(3) There are some cases in which the parapraxis obstinately repeats itself, at the same time changing the method that it employs:

For reasons unknown to him, Ernest Jones (1911b, 483) once left a letter lying on his desk for several days without posting it. At last he decided to send it off, but he had it returned to him from the ‘Dead Letter Office’ since he had forgotten to address it. After he had addressed it he again took it to the post, but this time it had no stamp. He was then no longer able to over look his reluctance to sending the letter off at all.

(4) The vain attempts to carry out an action in opposition to an internal resistance are most impressively depicted in a short communication by Dr. Karl Weiss (1912) of Vienna:

‘The following episode will show how persistently the unconscious can make itself felt if it has a motive for preventing an intention from being carried out, and how hard it is to guard against that persistence. An acquaintance asked me to lend him a book and to bring it to him the next day. I immediately promised I would, but was aware of a lively feeling of unpleasure which I could not at first explain. Later on it became clear to me: the person in question had for years owed me a sum of money which he apparently had no idea of repaying. I thought no more of the matter, but I remembered it the next morning with the same feeling of unpleasure and at once said to myself "Your unconscious will arrange for you to forget the book; but you don’t want to be disobliging, so you will take all possible steps not to forget it." I came home, wrapped up the book and put it beside me on the desk where I write my letters. After some time I went out; I took a few steps and remembered I had left the letters I wanted to post on my desk. (One of them, by the way, was a letter in which I was obliged to write something disagreeable to someone from whom I was hoping to get support over a certain matter.) I turned back, took the letters and again set off. In the tram it occurred to me that I had promised my wife to buy something for her, and I was very pleased with the thought that it would only make a small parcel. At that point the association "parcel"-"book" suddenly occurred to me, and I now noticed that I was not carrying the book. So I had not only forgotten it the first time I went out, but had also persisted in overlooking it when I took the letters that it lay beside.’

(5) The same situation is found in an instance which Otto Rank (1912) analysed exhaustively:

‘A scrupulously orderly and pedantically precise man reported the following experience, which was quite unusual for him. One afternoon he was in the street and wanted to know the time; and he found he had left his watch at home - a thing he did not remember ever having done before. As he had an evening engagement for which he had to be punctual, and as he had not enough time to fetch his own watch before it, he took advantage of a visit to a lady, a friend of his, to borrow her watch for the evening. This was all the more feasible since he already had an engagement to visit the lady next morning, and he promised to return the watch on that occasion. Next day, however, when he wanted to hand over the watch he had borrowed to its owner, he found to his astonishment that now he had left it at home. This time he had his own watch on him. He then firmly resolved to return the ladies’ watch the same afternoon and actually carried out his resolution. But when he wanted to see the time upon leaving her, he found to his immense annoyance and astonishment that he had again forgotten his own watch.

‘The repetition of this parapraxis seemed so pathological to a man with his love of orderliness that he would have been glad to learn of its psychological motivation; and this was promptly revealed by the psycho-analytic enquiry as to whether anything disagreeable had happened to him on the crucial day when he was forgetful for the first time, and in what connection it had occurred. He immediately related how after lunch - shortly before he went out forgetting his watch - he had had a conversation with his mother, who told him that an irresponsible relative, who had already caused him much worry and expense, had pawned his [the relative’s] watch, but, as it was needed in the house, was asking him [the narrator] to provide the money to redeem it. He was very much upset by what was a more or less forced loan, and it recalled to his mind all the annoyances that the relative had caused him over many years. His symptomatic act therefore proves to have had more than one determinant. In the first place it gave expression to a train of thought that ran somewhat as follows: "I won’t allow money to be extorted from me in this way, and if a watch is needed I shall leave my own at home." But since he needed it in the evening for keeping an appointment, this intention could only come into effect by an unconscious path, in the form of a symptomatic act. In the second place, what the act of forgetting signified came to this: "The perpetual sacrifice of money on this good-for-nothing will be the utter ruin of me, so that I shall have to give up everything." Although, according to him, his indignation at this piece of news was only momentary, the repetition of the same symptomatic act nevertheless shows that it continued to operate intensively in the unconscious, somewhat as though his consciousness were saying: "I can’t get this story out of my head."¹ In view of this attitude of the unconscious, it will come as no surprise to us that the same thing should have happened to the borrowed ladies’ watch. But perhaps there were also special motives that favoured this transference on to the "innocent" ladies’ watch. Probably the most obvious motive is that he would no doubt have liked to keep it to take the place of the watch of his own which he had sacrificed, and that he therefore forgot to return it the next day. He would also perhaps have been glad to have the watch as a souvenir of the lady. Furthermore, forgetting the ladies’ watch gave him the opportunity of paying the lady he admired a second visit. He was in any case obliged to call on her in the morning in connection with another matter, and by forgetting the watch he seems, as it were, to indicate that it was a shame to use this visit, which had been arranged some time before, for the incidental purpose of returning the watch. Moreover, having twice forgotten his own watch, and in that way being able to return the other watch, goes to show that unconsciously he was trying to avoid carrying both watches at once. He was obviously seeking to avoid giving this appearance of superfluity, which would have been in striking contrast to his relative’s want. But on the other hand he contrived by these means to counter his apparent intentions of marrying the lady, by warning himself that he had indissoluble obligations to his family (his mother). Finally, another reason for forgetting a ladies’ watch may be sought in the fact that the evening before he had, as a bachelor, felt embarrassment in front of his friends about looking at the ladies’ watch, and only did so surreptitiously; and to avoid a repetition of this awkward situation he did not like to carry it any longer. But as he had on the other hand to return it, the result here too was an unconsciously performed symptomatic act, which proved to be a compromise-formation between conflicting emotional impulses, and a dearly-bought victory by the unconscious agency.’

¹ ‘The continued operation of an idea in the unconscious manifests itself sometimes in the form of a dream following the parapraxis, and sometimes in a repetition of the parapraxis or in a failure to correct it.’7

Here are three cases observed by J. Stärcke (1916, 108-9):

(6) Mislaying, breaking and forgetting as an expression of a counter-will that has been pushed back. ‘I had got together a number of illustrations for a scientific work, when one day my brother asked me to lend him some which he wanted to use as lantern slides in a lecture. Though I was momentarily aware of thinking I would prefer it if the reproductions I had collected at much pains were not exhibited or published in any way before I could do so myself, I promised him I would look out the negatives of the pictures he wanted and make lantern slides from them. These negatives however I was unable to find. I looked through the whole pile of boxes full of the relevant negatives, and a good two hundred negatives passed through my hands, one after the other; but the negatives I was looking for were not there. I had a suspicion that in fact I seemed not to want my brother to have the pictures. After I had made this unfriendly thought conscious and had combated it, I noticed I had put the top box of the pile on one side, and had not looked through it; and this box contained the negatives I was looking for. On the lid of this box there was a brief note of the contents, and it is likely that I had given it a hasty glance before I put the box aside. The unfriendly thought, however, seemed not yet to have been totally subdued, for there were a variety of further happenings before the slides were dispatched. I pressed too hard on one of the slides and broke it, while I was holding it in my hand and was wiping the glass clean. (In the ordinary way I never break a lantern slide like that.) When I had made a new copy of this slide it fell from my hand, and was only saved from being smashed by my stretching out my foot and breaking its fall. When I mounted the lantern slides the whole pile fell to the ground once more, fortunately without any being broken. And finally, several days passed before I actually packed them and sent them off; for though I intended to do so afresh every day, each time I forgot my intention once again.’

(7) Repeated forgetfulness - eventual performance bungled. ‘One day I had to send a postcard to an acquaintance; but I kept on postponing doing so for several days. I strongly suspected that this was due to the following causes: he had informed me by letter that a certain person would come to see me in the course of the week from whom I was not particularly anxious to have a visit. When the week had passed and the prospect of the unwanted visit had become very slender I finally wrote the post card, in which I informed him when I should be free. When writing the postcard I thought at first of adding that I had been prevented from writing earlier by druk werk ("laborious, exacting or burdensome work"); but in the end I did not do so as no reasonable human being believes this stock excuse any longer. Whether this little untruth was nevertheless bound to makes its appearance I do not know; but when I pushed the postcard into the letter box I accidentally put it into the lower opening: Drukwerk ("printed matter").’

(8) Forgetting and error. ‘One morning, in very fine weather, a girl went to the Rijksmuseum to draw some plaster-casts there. Though she would have preferred to go for a walk, as the weather was so fine, she nevertheless made up her mind to be industrious for once and to do some drawing. First she had to buy some drawing paper. She went to the shop (about ten minutes’ walk from the museum), and bought some pencils and other materials for sketching, but quite forgot to buy the drawing paper. Then she went to the museum, and as she was sitting on her stool ready to begin, she found she had no paper and had to go back to the shop. After fetching some paper she began to draw in earnest, made good progress and, after some time, heard the clock in the museum tower strike a large number of times. "That will be twelve o’clock", she thought, and continued working until the clock in the tower struck the quarter ("that", she thought, "will be a quarter past twelve"), packed up her drawing materials and decided to walk through the Vondelpark to her sister’s house and have coffee there (which, in Holland, is equivalent to luncheon). At the Suasso Museum she saw to her astonishment that it was only twelve o’clock, not half past! The temptingly fine weather had got the better of her industriousness, and in consequence she had not recalled, when the clock struck twelve times at half past eleven, that belfry clocks strike the hour at the half hour as well.’

(9) As some of the above instances have already shown, the unconsciously disturbing purpose can also achieve its aim by obstinately repeating the same kind of parapraxis. I borrow an amusing example of this from a small volume, Frank Wedekind und das Theater, which has been published in Munich by the Drei Masken Verlag; but I must leave the responsibility for the anecdote, which is told in Mark Twain’s manner, to the author of the book.

‘In Wedekind’s one act play Die Zensur [The Censorship] there occurs at its most solemn moment the pronouncement: "The fear of death is an intellectual error [‘Denkfehler’]." The author, who set much store by the passage, asked the performer at rehearsal to make a slight pause before the word "Denkfehler". On the night, the actor entered wholeheartedly into his part, and was careful to observe the pause; but he involuntarily said in the most solemn tones: "The fear of death is a Druckfehler [a misprint]." In reply to the actor’s enquiries at the end of the performance, the author assured him that he had not the smallest criticism to make; only the passage in question did not say that the fear of death is a misprint but that it is an intellectual error. - When Die Zensur was repeated on the following night, the actor, on reaching the same passage, declared, and once again in the most solemn tones: "The fear of death is a Denkzettel [a memorandum]." Wedekind once more showered unstinted praise on the actor, only remarking incidentally that what the text said was not that the fear of death was a memorandum but that it was an intellectual error. - Next night Die Zensur was given again, and the actor, with whom the author had meanwhile struck up a friendship and had exchanged views on artistic questions, declared when he came to the passage, with the most solemn face in the world: "The fear of death is a Druckzettel [a printed label]." The actor received the author’s unqualified appreciation, and the play was given many more performances; but the author had made up his mind that the notion of an "intellectual error" was a lost cause for good and all.’

Rank (1912 and 1915b) has also given attention to the very interesting relations between ‘Parapraxes and Dreams’, but they cannot be followed without a thorough analysis of the dream which is linked to the parapraxis. I once dreamt, as part of a longish dream, that I had lost my purse. In the morning while I was dressing I found that it was really missing. While undressing the night before I had the dream, I had forgotten to take it out of my trouser pocket and put it in its usual place. I was therefore not ignorant of my forgetfulness and it was probably meant to give expression to an unconscious thought which was prepared for making its appearance in the content of the dream.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1924:] It is not so rare an event for a parapraxis like losing or mislaying something to be undone by means of a dream - by one’s learning in the dream where the missing object is to be found; but this has nothing about it in the nature of the occult, so long as dreamer and loser are the same person. A young lady writes: ‘About four months ago at the bank I lost a very beautiful ring. I hunted in every nook and cranny of my room without finding it. A week ago I dreamt it was lying beside the cupboard by the radiator. Naturally the dream gave me no rest, and next morning I did in fact really find it in that very spot.’ She is surprised at this incident, and maintains that it often happens that her thoughts and wishes are fulfilled in this way, but omits to ask herself what change had occurred in her life between the loss and the recovery of the ring.

I do not mean to assert that cases of combined parapraxes like these can teach us anything new that could not already be observed in the simple cases. And yet this situation, of there being a change in the form taken by the parapraxis while the outcome remains the same, gives a vivid impression of a will striving for a definite aim, and contradicts in a far more energetic way the notion that a parapraxis is a matter of chance and needs no interpretation. We may also be struck by the fact that a conscious intention should in these examples fail so completely to prevent the success of the parapraxis. My friend failed in spite of everything to attend the meeting of the society, and the lady found it impossible to part from the medal. The unknown factor that opposed these intentions found another outlet after the first path had been barred to it. For what was required to overcome the unconscious motive was something other than a conscious counter-intention; it called for a piece of psychical work, which could make what was unknown known to consciousness.

CHAPTER XII DETERMINISM, BELIEF IN CHANCE AND SUPERSTITION - SOME POINTS OF VIEW

The general conclusion that emerges from the previous individual discussions may be stated in the following terms. Certain shortcomings in our psychical functioning - whose common characteristics will in a moment be defined more closely - and certain seemingly unintentional performances prove, if psycho-analytic methods of investigation are applied to them, to have valid motives and to be determined by motives unknown to consciousness.

In order to be included in the class of phenomena explicable in this way, a psychical parapraxis must fulfil the following conditions:

(a) It must not exceed certain dimensions fixed by our judgement, which we characterize by the expression ‘within the limits of the normal’.

(b) It must be in the nature of a momentary and temporary disturbance. The same function must have been performed by us more correctly before, or we must at all times believe ourselves capable of carrying it out more correctly. If we are corrected by someone else, we must at once recognize the rightness of the correction and the wrongness of our own psychical process.

(c) If we perceive the parapraxis at all, we must not be aware in ourselves of any motive for it. We must rather be tempted to explain it by ‘inattentiveness’, or to put it down to ‘chance’.

There thus remain in this group the cases of forgetting [‘Vergessen’], the errors in spite of better knowledge, the slips of the tongue [‘Versprechen’], misreadings [‘Verlesen’], slips of the pen [‘Verschreiben’], bungled actions [‘Vergreifen’] and the so-called ‘chance actions’. Language points to the internal similarity between most of these phenomena: they are compounded alike [in German] with the prefix ‘ver-'.¹

The explanation of the psychical processes which are defined in this way leads on to a series of observations which should in part excite a wider interest.

¹ [The prefix ‘ver-' in German corresponds closely to the English prefix ‘mis-' in such words as ‘mis-hear’, ‘mis-lay’ and ‘mis-read’.]2 (A) If we give way to the view that a part of our psychical functioning cannot be explained by purposive ideas, we are failing to appreciate the extent of determination in mental life. Both here and in other spheres this is more far-reaching than we suspect. In an article in Die Zeit by R. M. Meyer, the literary historian, which I came across in 1900, the view was put forward and illustrated by examples that it is impossible intentionally and arbitrarily to make up a piece of nonsense. I have known for some time that one cannot make a number occur to one at one’s own free choice any more than a name. Investigation of a number made up in an apparently arbitrary manner - one, let us say, of several digits uttered by someone as a joke or in a moment of high spirits - reveals that it is strictly determined in a way that would really never have been thought possible. I will begin by briefly discussing an instance of an arbitrarily chosen first name, and then analyse in some detail an analogous example of a number ‘thrown out without thinking’.

(1) With a view to preparing the case history of one of my women patients for publication I considered what first name I should give her in my account. There appeared to be a very wide choice; some names, it is true, were ruled out from the start - the real name in the first place, then the names of members of my own family, to which I should object, and perhaps some other women’s names with an especially peculiar sound. But otherwise there was no need for me to be at a loss for a name. It might have been expected - and I myself expected - that a whole host of women’s names would be at my disposal. Instead, one name and only one occurred to me - the name ‘Dora’.

I asked myself how it was determined. Who else was there called Dora? I should have liked to dismiss with incredulity the next thought to occur to me - that it was the name of my sister’s nursemaid; but I have so much self-discipline or so much practice in analysing that I held firmly to the idea and let my thoughts run on from it. At once there came to my mind a trivial incident from the previous evening which provided the determinant I was looking for. I had seen a letter on my sister’s dining-room table addressed to ‘Fräulein Rosa W.’. I asked in surprise who there was of that name, and was told that the girl I knew as Dora was really called Rosa, but had had to give up her real name when she took up employment in the house, since my sister could take the name ‘Rosa’ as applying to herself as well. ‘Poor people,’ I remarked in pity, ‘they cannot even keep their own names!’ After that, I now recall, I fell silent for a moment and began to think of a variety of serious matters which drifted into obscurity, but which I was now easily able to make conscious. When next day I was looking for a name for someone who could not keep her own, ‘Dora’ was the only one to occur to me. The complete absence of alternatives was here based on a solid association connected with the subject-matter that I was dealing with: for it was a person employed in someone else’s house, a governess, who exercised a decisive influence on my patient’s story, and on the course of the treatment as well.

Years later this little incident had an unexpected sequel. Once, when I was discussing in a lecture the long since published case history of the girl now called Dora, it occurred to me that one of the two ladies in my audience had the same name Dora that I should have to utter so often in a whole variety of connections. I turned to my young colleague, whom I also knew personally, with the excuse that I had not in fact remembered that that was her name too, and added that I was very willing to replace it in my lecture by another name. I was now faced with the task of rapidly choosing another one, and I reflected that I must at all costs avoid selecting the first name of the other lady in the audience and so setting a bad example to my other colleagues, who were already well grounded in psycho-analysis. I was therefore very much pleased when the name ‘Erna’ occurred to me as a substitute for Dora, and I used it in the lecture. After the lecture I asked myself where the name Erna could possibly have come from, and I could not help laughing when I noticed that the possibility I had been afraid of when I was choosing the substitute name had nevertheless come about, at least to some extent. The other lady’s family name was Lucerna, of which Erna is a part.

(2) In a letter to a friend I informed him I had just then finished correcting the proofs of The Interpretation of Dreams and did not intend to make any more changes in the work, ‘even if it contains 2467 mistakes’. I at once tried to explain this number to myself and added the little analysis as a postscript to my letter. The best plan will be to quote it as I wrote it down at the time, just after I had caught myself in the act:

‘Let me hastily add a contribution to the psychopathology of everyday life. You will find that in the letter I put down the number 2467 as a bold arbitrary estimate of the number of mistakes which will be found in the dream book. What I meant was some very big number; but that particular one emerged. However, nothing in the mind is arbitrary or undetermined. You will therefore rightly expect that the unconscious had hastened to determine the number which was left open by consciousness. Now, immediately before, I had read in the newspaper that a General E. M. had retired from the post of Master of Ordnance. I should explain that I am interested in this man. While I was serving as a medical officer-cadet he came to the sick quarters one day (he was then a colonel) and said to the medical officer: ‘You must make me well in a week, because I have some work to do for which the Emperor is waiting.’ After that episode I decided to follow his career, and lo and behold! now he has reached the end of it, having become Master of Ordnance, and is already (1899) on the retired list. I wanted to work out how long he had taken over this. Assuming that it was in 1882 that I saw him in hospital, it must have been seventeen years. I told my wife this and she remarked: "Oughtn’t you to be on the retired list too, then?" "Heaven forbid!" I exclaimed. After this conversation I sat down to write to you. But the earlier train of thought went on in my mind, and with good reason. I had miscalculated; I have a fixed point in my memory to prove it. I celebrated my majority, i. e. my twenty-fourth birthday, under military arrest (having been absent without leave). So that was in 1880, or nineteen years ago. That gives you the "24" in 2467. Now take my present age - 43 - add 24, and you have 67. In other words, in answer to the question whether I meant to retire too, my wish gave me another twenty-four years’ work. I was obviously annoyed at having failed to get very far myself during the period in which I have followed Colonel M.’s career; and yet I was celebrating a kind of triumph over his career being at an end, while I still have everything in front of me. So one can say with justice that not even the number 2467 which I threw out unthinkingly was without its determinants from the unconscious.’

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