Autobiographical note 72 страница

Nor is it my purpose to exaggerate the differences, sufficiently large as they are, between the psycho-analytic and the popular view of parapraxes. I would rather call attention to cases in which these differences lose much of their sharpness. As regards the simplest and most inconspicuous examples of slips made by the tongue or the pen - in which, perhaps, words are merely contracted, or words and letters left out - the more complicated interpretations come to nothing. From the point of view of psycho-analysis we must maintain that some disturbance of intention has revealed its existence in these cases, but we cannot say from what the disturbance derived and what its aim was. In fact it has achieved nothing apart from demonstrating its existence. In such cases we can also see how a parapraxis is encouraged by phonetic resemblances and close psychological associations: this is a fact that we have never disputed. It is, however, a reasonable scientific demand that such rudimentary cases of slips of the tongue or slips of the pen should be judged on the basis of the more clearly marked cases, whose investigation yields such unambiguous conclusions as to the way in which parapraxes are caused.

1 (F) Since our discussion of slips of the tongue we have been content with demonstrating that parapraxes have a hidden motivation, and by the help of psycho-analysis we have traced our way to a knowledge of this motivation. We have so far left almost without consideration the general nature and the peculiarities of the psychical factors that find expression in parapraxes; at any rate we have not yet attempted to define them more closely and to test whether they conform to laws. Nor shall we attempt now to deal with the matter in a radical way, since the subject can better be explored from another angle, as our first steps will show us in a moment.¹ Here several questions can be raised which I will at least bring forward and describe in outline. (1) What is the content and origin of the thoughts and impulses which are indicated in erroneous and chance actions? (2) What are the determinants which compel a thought or an impulse to make use of such actions as a means of expression and which put it in a position to do so? (3) Is it possible to establish constant and unambiguous relations between the kind of parapraxis and the qualities of what is expressed by means of it?

I will begin by bringing together some material for answering the last question. In discussing the examples of slips of the tongue we found it necessary to go beyond the content of what was intended to be said, and were obliged to look for the cause of the speech-disturbance in something outside the intention. What this was was obvious in a number of cases, and was known to the speaker’s consciousness. In the examples that seemed simplest and most transparent it was another version of the same thought - one which sounded as if it had an equal right, and which disturbed the expression of the thought without its being possible to explain why the one version had succumbed and the other had won the day. (These are Meringer and Mayer’s ‘contaminations’.) In a second group of cases the motive for the defeat of one version was a consideration which, however, did not prove strong enough to withhold it completely (‘zum Vorschwein gekommen’). The version which was withheld was perfectly conscious too. Only of the third group can it be asserted unreservedly that the disturbing thought differed from the one intended, and only in their case can a distinction which is apparently essential be established. The disturbing thought is either connected with the disturbed thought by thought associations (disturbance as a result of internal contradiction), or it is unrelated to it in its nature and the disturbed word happens to be connected with the disturbing thought - which is often unconscious - by an unexpected external association. In the examples I have given from my psycho-analyses the entire speech is under the influence of thoughts which have become active but have at the same time remained entirely unconscious; either these are betrayed by the disturbance itself (‘Klapperschlange’ - ‘Kleopatra’) or they exercise an indirect influence by making it possible for the different parts of the consciously intended speech to disturb each other (‘Ase natmen’, where ‘Hasenauer Street’ and reminiscences of a Frenchwoman are in the background). The withheld or unconscious thoughts from which the disturbance in speech derives are of the most varied origin. This survey therefore does not enable us to generalize in any direction.

¹ [Footnote added 1924:] This book is of an entirely popular character; it merely aims, by an accumulation of examples, at paving the way for the necessary assumption of unconscious yet operative mental processes, and it avoids all theoretical considerations on the nature of this unconscious.2

A comparative examination of my examples of misreading and slips of the pen leads to the same conclusions. As with slips of the tongue, certain cases appear to owe their origin to a work of condensation which has no further motivation (e.g. the ‘Apfe’). It would however be satisfactory to learn whether special conditions may not have to be fulfilled if such a condensation, which is normal in dream-work but a fault in our waking thought, is to take place. No information on this problem can be obtained from the examples themselves. I should however refuse to conclude from this that there are in fact no conditions other than, for instance, a relaxation of conscious attention, since I know from other sources that it is precisely automatic activities which are characterized by correctness and reliability. I should prefer to stress the fact that here, as so often in biology, normal circumstances or those approaching the normal are less favourable subjects for investigation than pathological ones. I expect that what remains obscure in the elucidation of these very slight disturbances will be illuminated by the explanation of serious disturbances.

In misreading and slips of the pen there are also plenty of examples in which we can discern a more remote and complicated motivation. ‘Across Europe in a Tub’ is a disturbance in reading which is explained as being due to the influence of a remote thought, foreign in its essence, arising from a repressed impulse of jealousy and ambition, and utilizing the ‘switch-word’ ‘Beförderung’ to form a connection with the indifferent and innocent topic that was being read. In the case of ‘Burckhard’ the name itself forms a ‘switch-word’ of this kind.

There is no doubt that disturbances in the functions of speech occur more readily, and make smaller demands on the disturbing forces, than do those in other psychical activities.3

One is on different ground when it comes to examining forgetting in its proper sense - that is, the forgetting of past experiences. (To distinguish them from forgetting in the stricter sense, we might speak of the forgetting of proper names and of foreign words, described in Chapter I and II, as ‘slipping the memory’, and the forgetting of intentions as ‘omissions’.) The basic determinants of the normal process of forgetting are unknown.¹ We are also reminded that not everything is forgotten that we believe to be. Our explanation has here to do only with cases where the forgetting causes us surprise, in so far as it breaks the rule that unimportant things are forgotten but important ones are preserved by memory. Analysis of the examples of forgetting that seem to require a special explanation reveals that the motive for forgetting is invariably an unwillingness to remember something which can evoke distressing feelings. We come to suspect that this motive aims at manifesting itself quite generally in mental life, but is prevented from putting itself into effect at all regularly by other forces which work against it. The extent and the significance of this unwillingness to remember distressing impressions would seem to deserve the most careful psychological examination; moreover we cannot separate from this wider context the question of what special conditions make this forgetting, that is universally aimed at, possible in individual cases.

¹ [Footnote added 1907:] I may perhaps put forward the following suggestions as regards the mechanism of forgetting in its proper sense. Mnemic material is subject in general to two influences, condensation and distortion. Distortion is the work of the dominant trends in mental life, and is directed above all against the memory traces which have remained affectively operative and which show considerable resistance to condensation. The traces that have grown indifferent succumb unresistingly to the process of condensation; yet it can be observed that in addition to this, the distorting trends feed on the indifferent material if they have remained unsatisfied at the place at which they sought to manifest themselves. As these processes of condensation and distortion continue for long periods, during which every fresh experience acts in the direction of transforming the mnemic content, it is generally thought that it is time which makes memory uncertain and indistinct. It is highly probable that there is no question at all of there being any direct function of time in forgetting. - In the case of repressed memory-traces it can be demonstrated that they undergo no alteration even in the course of the longest period of time. The unconscious is quite timeless. The most important as well as the strangest characteristic of psychical fixation is that all impressions are preserved, not only in the same form in which they were first received, but also in all the forms which they have adopted in their further developments. This is a state of affairs which cannot be illustrated by comparison with another sphere. Theoretically every earlier state of the mnemic content could thus be restored to memory again, even if its elements have long ago exchanged all their original connections for more recent ones.

In the forgetting of intentions another factor comes into the foreground. The conflict, which could only be surmised in the repression of what was distressing to remember, here becomes tangible, and in the analysis of the examples a counter-will can regularly be recognized which opposes the intention without putting an end to it. As in the parapraxes already described, two types of psychical process can be recognized here. Either the counter-will is turned directly against the intention (in cases where the latter’s purpose is of some importance), or it is unrelated in its nature to the intention itself and establishes its connection with it by means of an external association (in the case of intentions that are almost indifferent).

The same conflict governs the phenomena of bungled actions. The impulsion which manifests itself in disturbing the action is often a counter-impulsion, but still more often it is an entirely unrelated one, which merely takes the opportunity of achieving expression by disturbing the action while it is being carried out. The cases where the disturbance results from an internal contradiction are the more significant ones; they also involve the more important actions.

In chance actions or in symptomatic actions the internal conflict becomes less and less important. These motor manifestations, to which consciousness attaches little value, or which it overlooks entirely, thus serve to express a wide variety of unconscious or withheld impulses; for the most part they are symbolic representations of phantasies or wishes.

In regard to the first question - as to what is the origin of the thoughts and impulses which find expression in parapraxes - we can say that in a number of cases it is easy to show that the disturbing thoughts are derived from suppressed impulses in mental life. In healthy people, egoistic, jealous and hostile feelings and impulsions, on which the pressure of moral education weighs heavily, make frequent use of the pathway provided by parapraxes in order to find some expression for their strength, which undeniably exists but is not recognized by higher mental agencies. Acquiescence in these parapraxes and chance actions is to a large extent equivalent to a compliant tolerance of the immoral. Among these suppressed impulses no small part is played by the various sexual currents. That these particular ones should in fact appear so rarely among the thoughts disclosed by analysis in my examples is an accident of my material. Since the examples I have analysed are to a great extent taken from my own mental life, the selection was partial from the first and aimed at excluding sexual matters. At other times it appears to be from perfectly innocent objections and considerations that the disturbing thoughts arise.

We have now reached the moment for answering the second question - that is, what psychological determinants are responsible for a thought being compelled to seek expression not in its complete form but in a kind of parasitic form, as a modification and disturbance of another thought. The most striking examples of parapraxes make it seem probable that these determinants must be looked for in a relation to admissibility to consciousness: in the question, that is, of the greater or less degree to which they bear the marked character of being ‘repressed’. But if we follow this character through the series of examples, it dissolves into ever vaguer indications. The inclination to dismiss something as a waste of time, or the consideration that the thought in question is not properly relevant to the matter in hand, appear, as motives for pushing back a thought (which is then left to find expression by disturbing another thought), to play the same part as does the moral condemnation of an insubordinate emotional impulse or as does derivation from totally unconscious trains of thought. Insight into the general nature of how parapraxes and chance actions are determined cannot be gained along these lines. One single fact of significance emerges from these enquiries. The more innocent the motivation of a parapraxis, and the less objectionable - and therefore the less inadmissible to consciousness - the thought finding expression in it, the easier it is to explain the phenomenon, once one’s attention has been turned to it. The slightest cases of slips of the tongue are noticed immediately, and spontaneously corrected. Where the motivation comes from really repressed impulses, the case has to be elucidated by careful analysis, which may itself at times come up against difficulties or prove unsuccessful.

We are therefore no doubt justified in taking the result of this last enquiry as evidence that the satisfactory explanation of the psychological determinants of parapraxes and chance actions is to be looked for along other lines and by a different approach. The indulgent reader may accordingly see in these discussions signs of the broken edges where this subject has been somewhat artificially detached from a wider context.6 (G) A few words should be said to indicate at least in what direction this wider context lies. The mechanism of parapraxes and chance actions, as we have come to know it by our employment of analysis, can be seen to correspond in its most essential points with the mechanism of dream-formation which I have discussed in the chapter on the ‘dream-work’ in my Interpretation of Dreams. In both cases we find condensations and compromise-formations (contaminations). We have the same situation: by unfamiliar paths, and by the way of external associations, unconscious thoughts find expression as modifications of other thoughts. The incongruities, absurdities and errors of the dream-content, which result in the dream being scarcely recognized as the product of psychical activity, originate in the same way, though it is true with a freer use of the means at hand, as our common mistakes in everyday life. In both cases the appearance of an incorrect function is explained by the peculiar mutual interference between two or several correct functions.

An important conclusion can be drawn from this conformity. The peculiar mode of working, whose most striking achievement we see in the content of dreams, cannot be attributed to the sleeping state of mental life if we possess such abundant evidence in the form of parapraxes that it operates during our waking life as well. The same connection also forbids our assuming that these psychical processes, which strike us as abnormal and strange, are determined by a deep-seated decay in mental activity or by pathological states of functioning.¹

¹ See The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), p. 1034-5.7

We shall not be able to form a correct picture of the strange psychical work which brings about the occurrence of both parapraxes and dream images until we have learnt that psychoneurotic symptoms, and especially the psychical formations of hysteria and obsessional neurosis, repeat in their mechanism all the essential features of this mode of working. This is therefore the starting-point for the continuation of our researches. For us, however, there is yet another special interest in considering parapraxes, chance actions and symptomatic actions in the light of this last analogy. If we compare them to the products of the psychoneuroses, to neurotic symptoms, two frequently repeated statements - namely, that the borderline between the normal and the abnormal in nervous matters is a fluid one, and that we are all a little neurotic - acquire meaning and support. Without any medical experience we can construct various types of nervous illness of this kind which are merely hinted at - formes frustres¹ - of the neuroses: cases in which the symptoms are few, or occur rarely or not severely - in other words, cases whose comparative mildness is located in the number, intensity and duration of their pathological manifestations. But we might perhaps never arrive by conjecture at precisely the type that appears most frequently to form the transition between health and illness. For the type we are considering, whose pathological manifestations are parapraxes and symptomatic acts, is characterized by the fact that the symptoms are located in the least important psychical functions, while everything that can lay claim to higher psychical value remains free from disturbance. Where the symptoms are distributed in the reverse way - that is, where they make their appearance in the most important individual and social functions and are able to disturb nutrition, sexual intercourse, professional work and social life - this is the mark of severe cases of neurosis and is more characteristic of them than, for example, are the variety and vigour of their pathological manifestations.

But there is one thing which the severest and the mildest cases all have in common, and which is equally found in parapraxes and chance actions: the phenomena can be traced back to incompletely suppressed psychical material, which, although pushed away by consciousness, has nevertheless not been robbed of all capacity for expressing itself.

¹ [‘Blurred forms.’]8

FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF HYSTERIA (1905 [1901])

In 1895 and 1896 I put forward certain views upon the pathogenesis of hysterical symptoms and upon the mental processes occurring in hysteria. Since that time several years have passed. In now proposing, therefore, to substantiate those views by giving a detailed report of the history of a case and its treatment, I cannot avoid making a few introductory remarks, for the purpose partly of justifying from various standpoints the step I am taking, and partly of diminishing the expectations to which it will give rise.

No doubt it was awkward that I was obliged to publish the results of my enquiries without there being any possibility of other workers in the field testing and checking them, particularly as those results were of a surprising and by no means gratifying character. But it will be scarcely less awkward now that I am beginning to bring forward some of the material upon which my conclusions were based and make it accessible to the judgement of the world. I shall not escape blame by this means. Only, whereas before I was accused of giving no information about my patients, now I shall be accused of giving information about my patients which ought not to be given. I can only hope that in both cases the critics will be the same, and that they will merely have shifted the pretext for their reproaches; if so I can resign in advance any possibility of ever removing their objections.

Even if I ignore the ill-will of narrow-minded critics such as these, the presentation of my case histories remains a problem which is hard for me to solve. The difficulties are partly of a technical kind, but are partly due to the nature of the circumstances themselves. If it is true that the causes of hysterical disorders are to be found in the intimacies of the patients’ psycho-sexual life, and that hysterical symptoms are the expression of their most secret and repressed wishes, then the complete elucidation of a case of hysteria is bound to involve the revelation of those intimacies and the betrayal of those secrets. It is certain that the patients would never have spoken if it had occurred to them that their admissions might possibly be put to scientific uses; and it is equally certain that to ask them themselves for leave to publish their case would be quite unavailing. In such circumstances persons of delicacy, as well as those who were merely timid, would give first place to the duty of medical discretion and would declare with regret that the matter was one upon which they could offer science no enlightenment. But in my opinion the physician has taken upon himself duties not only towards the individual patient but towards science as well; and his duties towards science mean ultimately nothing else than his duties towards the many other patients who are suffering or will some day suffer from the same disorder. Thus it becomes the physician’s duty to publish what he believes he knows of the causes and structure of hysteria, and it becomes a disgraceful piece of cowardice on his part to neglect doing so, as long as he can avoid causing direct personal injury to the single patient concerned. I think I have taken every precaution to prevent my patient from suffering any such injury. I have picked out a person the scenes of whose life were laid not in Vienna but in a remote provincial town, and whose personal circumstances must therefore be practically unknown in Vienna. I have from the very beginning kept the fact of her being under my treatment such a careful secret that only one other physician - and one in whose discretion I have complete confidence - can be aware that the girl was a patient of mine. I have waited for four whole years since the end of the treatment and have postponed publication till hearing that a change has taken place in the patient’s life of such a character as allows me to suppose that her own interest in the occurrences and psychological events which are to be related here may now have grown faint. Needless to say, I have allowed no name to stand which could put a non-medical reader upon the scent; and the publication of the case in a purely scientific, and technical periodical should, further, afford a guarantee against unauthorized readers of this sort. I naturally cannot prevent the patient herself from being pained if her own case history should accidentally fall into her hands. But she will learn nothing from it that she does not already know; and she may ask herself who besides her could discover from it that she is the subject of this paper.

I am aware that - in this city, at least - there are many physicians who (revolting though it may seem) choose to read a case history of this kind not as a contribution to the psychopathology of the neuroses, but as a roman à clef designed for their private delectation. I can assure readers of this species that every case history which I may have occasion to publish in the future will be secured against their perspicacity by similar guarantees of secrecy, even though this resolution is bound to put quite extraordinary restrictions upon my choice of material.

Now in this case history - the only one which I have hitherto succeeded in forcing through the limitations imposed by medical discretion and unfavourable circumstances - sexual questions will be discussed with all possible frankness, the organs and functions of sexual life will be called by their proper names, and the pure-minded reader can convince himself from my description that I have not hesitated to converse upon such subjects in such language even with a young woman. Am I then, to defend myself upon this score as well? I will simply claim for myself the rights of the gynaecologist - or rather, much more modest ones - and add that it would be the mark of a singular and perverse prurience to suppose that conversations of this kind are a good means of exciting or of gratifying sexual desire. For the rest, I feel inclined to express my opinion on this subject in a few borrowed words:

‘It is deplorable to have to make room for protestations and declarations of this sort in a scientific work; but let no one reproach me on this account but rather accuse the spirit of the age, owing to which we have reached a state of things in which no serious book can any longer be sure of survival.’ (Schmidt, 1902, Preface.)

I will now describe the way in which I have overcome the technical difficulties of drawing up the report of this case history. The difficulties are very considerable when the physician has to conduct six or eight psychotherapeutic treatments of the sort in a day, and cannot make notes during the actual session with the patient for fear of shaking the patient’s confidence and of disturbing his own view of the material under observation. Indeed, I have not yet succeeded in solving the problem of how to record for publication the history of a treatment of long duration. As regards the present case, two circumstances have come to my assistance. In the first place the treatment did not last for more than three months; and in the second place the material which elucidated the case was grouped around two dreams (one related in the middle of the treatment and one at the end). The wording of these dreams was recorded immediately after the session, and they thus afforded a secure point of attachment for the chain of interpretations and recollections which proceeded from them. The case history itself was only committed to writing from memory after the treatment was at an end, but while my recollection of the case was still fresh and was heightened by my interest in its publication. Thus the record is not absolutely - phonographically - exact, but it can claim to possess a high degree of trustworthiness. Nothing of any importance has been altered in it except in some places the order in which the explanations are given; and this has been done for the sake of presenting the case in a more connected form.

I next proceed to mention more particularly what is to be found in this paper and what is not to be found in it. The title of the work was originally ‘Dreams and Hysteria’, for it seemed to me peculiarly well-adapted for showing how dream-interpretation is woven into the history of a treatment and how it can become the means of filling in amnesias and elucidating symptoms. It was not without good reasons that in the year 1900 I gave precedence to a laborious and exhaustive study of dreams (The Interpretation of Dreams) over the publications upon the psychology of the neuroses which I had in view. And incidentally I was able to judge from its reception with what an inadequate degree of comprehension such efforts are met by other specialists at the present time. In this instance there was no validity in the objection that the material upon which had based my assertions had been withheld and that it was therefore impossible to become convinced of their truth by testing and checking them. For every one can submit his own dreams to analytic examination, and the technique of interpreting dreams may be easily learnt from the instructions and examples which I have given. I must once more insist, just as I did at that time, that a thorough investigation of the problems of dreams is an indispensable prerequisite for any comprehension of the mental processes in hysteria and the other psychoneuroses, and that no one who wishes to shirk that preparatory labour has the smallest prospect of advancing even a few steps into this region of knowledge. Since, therefore, this case history presupposes a knowledge of the interpretation of dreams, it will seem highly unsatisfactory to any reader to whom this presupposition does not apply. Such a reader will find only bewilderment in these pages instead of the enlightenment he is in search of, and he will certainly be inclined to project the cause of his bewilderment on to the author and to pronounce his views fantastic. But in reality this bewildering character attaches to the phenomena of the neurosis itself; its presence there is only concealed by the physician’s familiarity with the facts, and it comes to light again with every attempt a explaining them. It could only be completely banished if we could succeed in tracing back every single element of a neurosis to factors with which we were already familiar. But everything tends to show that, on the contrary, we shall be driven by the study of neuroses to assume the existence of many new thing which will later on gradually become the subject of more certain knowledge. What is new has always aroused bewilderment and resistance.

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