Autobiographical note 65 страница

Similarly, falling, stumbling and slipping need not always be interpreted as purely accidental miscarriages of motor actions. The double meanings that language attaches to these expressions are enough to indicate the kind of phantasies involved, which can be represented by such losses of bodily equilibrium. I can recall a number of fairly mild nervous illnesses in women and girls which set in after a fall not accompanied by any injury, and which were taken to be traumatic hysterias resulting from the shock of the fall. Even at that time I had an impression that these events were differently connected and that the fall was already a product of the neurosis and expressed the same unconscious phantasies with a sexual content, which could be assumed to be the forces operating behind the symptoms. Is not the same thing meant by a proverb which runs: ‘When a girl falls she falls on her back’?

We can also count as bungled actions cases of giving a beggar a gold piece instead of a copper or small silver coin. The explanation of such mistakes is easy. They are sacrificial acts designed to appease fate, to avert harm, and so on. If a devoted mother or aunt, directly before going for a walk in the course of which she displays unwilling generosity of this kind, is heard to express concern over a child’s health, we can have no more doubts about the meaning of the apparently disagreeable accident. In this way our parapraxes make it possible for us to practise all those pious and superstitious customs that must shun the light of consciousness owing to opposition from our reason, which has now grown sceptical.

(f) There is no sphere in which the view that accidental actions are really intentional will command a more ready belief than that of sexual activity, where the border line between the two possibilities seems really to be a faint one. A good example from my own experience of a few years ago shows how an apparently clumsy movement can be most cunningly used for sexual purposes. In the house of some friends I met a young girl who was staying there as a guest and who aroused a feeling of pleasure in me which I had long thought was extinct. As a result I was in a jovial, talkative and obliging mood. At the time I also endeavoured to discover how this came about; a year before, the same girl had made no impression on me. As the girl’s uncle, a very old gentleman, entered the room, we both jumped to our feet to bring him a chair that was standing in the corner. She was nimbler than I was and, I think, nearer to the object; so she took hold of the chair first and carried it in front of her with its back towards her, gripping the sides of the seat with both hands. As I got there later, but still stuck to my intention of carrying the chair, I suddenly found myself standing directly behind her, and throwing my arms round her from behind; and for a moment my hands met in front of her waist. I naturally got out of the situation as rapidly as it had arisen. Nor does it seem to have struck anyone how dextrously I had taken advantage of this clumsy movement.

Occasionally, too, I have had to tell myself that the irritating and clumsy process of dodging someone in the street, when for several seconds one steps first to one side and then to the other, but always to the same side as the other person, till finally one comes to a standstill face to face with him (or her) - this ‘getting in someone’s way’, I have had to tell myself, is once more a repetition of an improper and provocative piece of behaviour from earlier times and, behind a mask of clumsiness, pursues sexual aims. I know from my psycho-analyses of neurotics that what is described as the naïveté of young people and children is frequently only a mask of this sort, employed so that they may be able to say or do something improper without feeling embarrassed.

Wilhelm Stekel has reported very similar self-observations. ‘I entered a house and offered my right hand to my hostess. In a most curious way I contrived in doing so to undo the bow that held her loose morning-gown together. I was conscious of no dishonourable intention; yet I carried out this clumsy movement with the dexterity of a conjurer.’

I have already been able again and again to produce evidence that creative writers think of parapraxes as having a meaning and a motive, just as I am arguing here. We shall not be surprised, therefore, to see from a fresh example how a writer invests a clumsy movement with significance, too, and makes it foreshadow later events.

Here is a passage from Theodor Fontane’s novel L’Adultera ‘ Melanie jumped up and threw one of the large balls to her husband as though in greeting. But her aim was not straight, the ball flew to one side and Rubehn caught it.’ On the return from the outing that led to this little episode a conversation between Melanie and Rubehn takes place which reveals the first signs of a budding affection. This affection blossoms into passion, so that Melanie finally leaves her husband and gives herself entirely to the man she loves. (Communicated by H. Sachs.)

7 (g) The effects produced by the parapraxes of normal people are as a rule of the most harmless kind. Precisely for this reason it is an especially interesting question whether mistakes of considerable importance which may be followed by serious consequences - for example, mistakes made by a doctor or a chemist -(are in any way open to the approach presented here.

As I very rarely find myself undertaking medical treatment, I can report only one example from my personal experience of a bungled action of a medical kind. There is a very old lady whom I have been visiting twice a day for some years. On my morning visit my medical services are limited to two actions. I put a few drops of eye-lotion into her eye and give her a morphine injection. Two bottles are always prepared for me: a blue one with the collyrium and a white one with the morphine solution. During the two operations my thoughts are no doubt usually busy with something else; by now I have performed them so often that my attention behaves as if it were at liberty. One morning I noticed that the automaton had worked wrong. I had put the dropper into the white bottle instead of the blue one and had put morphine into the eye instead of collyrium. I was greatly frightened and then reassured myself by reflecting that a few drops of a two per cent solution of morphine could not do any harm even in the conjunctival sac. The feeling of fright must obviously have come from another source.

In attempting to analyse this small mistake I first thought of the phrase ‘sich an der Alten vergreifen’,¹ which provided a short cut to the solution. I was under the influence of a dream which had been told me by a young man the previous evening and the content of which could only point to sexual intercourse with his own mother.² The strange fact that the legend finds nothing objectionable in Queen Jocasta’s age seemed to me to fit in well with the conclusion that in being in love with one’s own mother one is never concerned with her as she is in the present but with her youthful mnemic image carried over from one’s childhood. Such incongruities always appear when a phantasy that fluctuates between two periods is made conscious and so becomes definitely attached to one of the two periods. While absorbed in thoughts of this kind I came to my patient, who is over ninety, and I must have been on the way to grasping the universal human application of the Oedipus myth as correlated with the Fate which is revealed in the oracles; for at that point I did violence to or committed a blunder on ‘the old woman’. Here again the bungled action was a harmless one; of the two possible errors, using the morphine solution for the eye or the eye lotion for the injection, I had chosen by far the more harmless one. This still leaves the question open of whether we may admit the possibility of an unconscious intention in mistakes that can cause serious harm, in the same way as in the cases which I have discussed.

Here then my material leaves me in the lurch, as might be expected, and I have to fall back on conjectures and inferences. It is well known that in the severer cases of psychoneurosis instances of self-injury are occasionally found as symptoms and that in such cases suicide can never be ruled out as a possible outcome of the psychical conflict. I have now learnt and can prove from convincing examples that many apparently accidental injuries that happen to such patients are really instances of self-injury. What happens is that an impulse to self-punishment, which is constantly on the watch and which normally finds expression in self-reproach or contributes to the formation of a symptom, takes ingenious advantage of an external situation that chance happens to offer, or lends assistance to that situation until the desired injurious effect is brought about. Such occurrences are by no means uncommon in cases even of moderate severity, and they betray the part which the unconscious intention plays by a number of special features - e. g by the striking composure that the patients retain in what is supposed to be an accident.³

¹ [‘To do violence to the old woman.’ The German word ‘vergreifen’ means both ‘to make a blunder’ and ‘to commit an assault’.]

² The ‘Oedipus dream’, as I am in the habit of calling it, because it contains the key to the understanding of the legend of King Oedipus. In the text of Sophocles a reference to such a dream is put into Jocasta’s mouth. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), p. 739 ff..

³ In the present state of our civilization self-injury which does not have total self-destruction as its aim has no other choice whatever than to hide itself behind something accidental or to manifest itself by imitating the onset of a spontaneous illness. Formerly self-injury was a customary sign of mourning; at other periods it could express trends towards piety and renunciation of the world.

Instead of a number of cases I will give a detailed report of only a single example from my medical experience. A young married woman broke her leg below the knee in a carriage accident, so that she was bed-ridden for weeks; what was striking was the absence of any expressions of pain and the calmness with which she bore her misfortune. This accident introduced a long and severe neurotic illness of which she was finally cured by psycho-analysis. In treating her I learnt of the circumstances surrounding the accident and of certain events that had preceded it. The young woman was staying with her very jealous husband on the estate of a married sister, in company with her numerous other sisters and brothers with their husbands and wives. One evening in this intimate circle she showed off one of her accomplishments: she gave an accurate performance of the can-can, which was received with hearty applause by her relatives but with scanty satisfaction by her husband, who afterwards whispered to her: ‘Carrying on like a tart again!’ The remark struck home - we will not enquire whether it was only on account of the dancing display. She spent a restless night. Next morning she felt a desire to go for a drive. She selected the horses herself, refusing one pair and asking for another. Her youngest sister wanted her baby and its nurse to go in the carriage with her; my patient vigorously opposed this. During the drive she showed signs of nerves; she warned the coachman that the horses were growing skittish, and when the restless animals were really causing a moment’s difficulty she jumped out in a fright and broke her leg, while the others who stayed in the carriage were unharmed. Although after learning these details we can hardly remain in doubt that this accident was really contrived, we cannot fail to admire the skill which forced chance to mete out a punishment that fitted the crime so well. For it had now been made impossible for her to dance the can-can for quite a long time.

As regards self-injuries of my own, there is little that I can report in uneventful times; but in extraordinary circumstances I find that I am not incapable of them. When a member of my family complains to me of having bitten his tongue, pinched a finger, or the like, he does not get the sympathy he hopes for, but instead the question: ‘Why did you do that?’ I myself once gave my thumb a most painful pinch when a youthful patient told me during the hour of treatment of his intention (not of course to be taken seriously) of marrying my eldest daughter. I knew that at the time she was lying critically ill in a sanatorium.

One of my boys, whose lively temperament used to make it difficult to nurse him when he was ill, had a fit of anger one day because he was ordered to spend the morning in bed, and threatened to kill himself, a possibility that was familiar to him from the newspapers. In the evening he showed me a swelling on one side of his chest which he had got by bumping against a door-handle. To my ironical question as to why he had done it and what he meant by it, the eleven-year-old child answered as though it had suddenly dawned on him: ‘That was my attempt at suicide that I threatened this morning.’ I do not think, by the way, that my views on self-injury were accessible to my children at the time.

Anyone who believes in the occurrence of half-intentional self-injury - if I may use a clumsy expression - will be prepared also to assume that in addition to consciously intentional suicide there is such a thing as half-intentional self-destruction (self-destruction with an unconscious intention), capable of making skilful use of a threat to life and of disguising it as a chance mishap. There is no need to think such self-destruction rare. For the trend to self-destruction is present to a certain degree in very many more human beings than those in whom it is carried out; self-injuries are as a rule a compromise between this instinct and the forces that are still working against it, and even where suicide actually results, the inclination to suicide will have been present for a long time before in lesser strength or in the form of an unconscious and suppressed trend.

Even a conscious intention of committing suicide chooses its time, means and opportunity; and it is quite in keeping with this that an unconscious intention should wait for a precipitating occasion which can take over a part of the causation and, by engaging the subject’s defensive forces, can liberate the intention from their pressure.¹ The views I am putting forward here are far from being idle ones. I have learned of more than one apparently chance mishap (on horseback or in a carriage) the details of which justify a suspicion that suicide was unconsciously allowed to come about. For example, an officer, riding in a race with some fellow-officers, fell from his horse and was so severely injured that he died some days later. His behaviour on regaining consciousness was striking in some ways; and his previous behaviour had been even more remarkable. He had been deeply depressed by the death of his beloved mother, had had fits of sobbing in the company of his fellow officers, and to his trusted friends had spoken of being weary of life. He had wanted to leave the service to take part in a war in Africa which had not interested him previously;² formerly a dashing rider, he now avoided riding whenever possible. Finally, before the race, from which he could not withdraw, he expressed gloomy forebodings; with the view that we hold in these matters, it will not remain a surprise to us that these forebodings turned out to be justified. I shall be told that it is not to be wondered at if a person in such a state of nervous depression cannot manage a horse as well as on normal days. I quite agree; but the mechanism of the motor inhibition produced by this state of ‘nerves’ should, I think, be looked for in the intention of self-destruction that I am insisting on.

¹ After all, the case is no different from that of a sexual assault upon a woman, where the man’s attack cannot be repelled by her full muscular strength because a portion of her unconscious impulses meets the attack with encouragement. It is said, as we know, that a situation of this kind paralyses a woman’s strength; all we need do is to add the reasons for this paralysis. To that extent the ingenious judgement delivered by Sancho Panza as governor of his island is psychologically unjust (Don Quixote, Part 2, Chapter 45). A woman dragged a man before the judge alleging he had robbed her of her honour by violence. In compensation Sancho gave her a full purse of money which he took from the accused; but after the woman’s departure he gave him permission to pursue her and snatch his purse back again from her. The two returned struggling, the woman priding herself on the fact that the villain had not been able to take the purse from her. Thereupon Sancho declared: ‘If you had defended your honour with half the determination with which you have defended this purse, the man could not have robbed you of it.’

² It is evident that conditions on a field of battle are such as to come to the help of a conscious intention to commit suicide which nevertheless shuns the direct way. Compare the words of the Swedish captain concerning the death of Max Piccolomini in Wallensteins Tod: ‘They say he wanted to die.’2

S. Ferenczi of Budapest has handed over to me for publication the analysis of an ostensibly accidental injury by shooting, which he explains as an unconscious attempt at suicide. I can only declare my agreement with his view of the matter:

‘J. Ad., twenty-two years old, a journeyman carpenter, consulted me on January 18, 1908. He wanted to find out from me whether the bullet that penetrated his left temple on March 20, 1907 could or should be removed by operation. Apart from occasional, not too severe, headaches he felt perfectly well, and the objective examination revealed nothing at all apart from the characteristic powder-blackened bullet scar on the left temple, so I advised against an operation. When asked about the circumstances of the case he explained that he had injured himself accidentally. He was playing with his brother’s revolver, thought it was not loaded, pressed it with his left hand against his left temple (he is not left-handed,) put his finger on the trigger and the shot went off. There were three bullets in the six-shooter. I asked him how the idea of taking up the revolver came to him. He replied that it was the time of his medical examination for military service; the evening before, he took the weapon with him to the inn because he was afraid of brawls. At the examination he was found unfit because of varicose veins; he was very ashamed of this. He went home and played with the revolver, but had no intention of hurting him self - and then the accident happened. When questioned further whether he was otherwise satisfied with life, he sighed in answer and told the story of his love for a girl who also loved him but left him all the same. She emigrated to America simply out of desire for money. He wanted to follow her, but his parents prevented him. His sweetheart left on January 20, 1907; two months, that is, before the accident. In spite of all these suspicious factors the patient stuck to his point that the shooting was an "accident". I was however firmly convinced that his negligence in failing to make sure the weapon was not loaded before playing with it, as well as his self-inflicted injury, were psychically determined. He was still labouring under the depressing effects of his unhappy love affair and obviously wanted to "forget it all" in the army. When he was deprived of this hope as well, he took to playing with the revolver - i. e. to an unconscious attempt at suicide. His holding the revolver in his left and not his right hand is strong evidence that he was really only "playing" - that is, that he did not consciously wish to commit suicide.’

Another analysis of an apparently accidental self-inflicted injury, which its observer (Van Emden, 1911) has passed on to me, recalls the proverb: ‘He who digs a pit for others falls in it himself.’

‘Frau X., who comes of a good middle-class family, is married with three children. She suffers from her nerves, it is true, but has never needed any energetic treatment as she is sufficiently able to cope with life. One day she incurred a facial disfigurement which was somewhat striking at the time though it was only temporary. It happened as follows. She stumbled on a heap of stones in a street under repair and struck her face against the wall of a house. The whole of her face was scratched; her eyelids became blue and oedematous and as she was afraid that something might happen to her eyes she had the doctor called in. After she had been reassured on that score, I asked her: ‘But why did you in fact fall in that way?’ She replied that, directly before this, she had warned her husband, who had been suffering for some months from a joint affection and therefore had difficulty in walking, to take great care in that street, and it had been a fairly frequent experience of hers to find in cases of the kind that in some remarkable way the very thing happened to her that she had warned someone else against.

‘I was not satisfied that this was what had determined her accident and asked if perhaps she had something more to tell me. Yes, just before the accident she had seen an attractive picture in a shop on the other side of the street; she had quite suddenly desired it as an ornament for the nursery and therefore wanted to buy it immediately. She walked straight towards the shop, without looking at the ground, stumbled over the heap of stones and in falling struck her face against the wall of the house without making even the slightest attempt to shield herself with her hands. The intention of buying the picture was immediately forgotten and she returned home as fast as possible. - "But why didn’t you keep a better look-out?" I asked. "Well," she answered, "perhaps it was a punishment - on account of that episode I told you about in confidence." - "Has it gone on worrying you so much then?" - "Yes - I regretted it very much afterwards; I considered myself wicked, criminal and immoral, but at the time I was almost crazy with my nerves."

‘The reference was to an abortion which she had had carried out with her husband’s consent, as, owing to their financial circumstances, the couple did not wish to be blessed with any further children. This abortion had been started by a woman quack but had had to be completed by a specialist.

‘"I often reproach myself by thinking ‘You really had your child killed’ and I was afraid such a thing couldn’t go unpunished. Now that you’ve assured me there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, my mind’s quite at rest: I’ve been sufficiently punished now in any case."

‘This accident was therefore a self-punishment, firstly to atone for her crime, but secondly also to escape from an unknown punishment of perhaps much greater severity of which she had been in continual dread for months. In the moment that she dashed towards the shop to buy the picture, the memory of the whole episode with all its fears, which had already been fairly strongly active in her unconscious when she had warned her husband, became overwhelming and might perhaps have been expressed in some words like these: "Why do you need an ornament for the nursery? - you had your child destroyed! You’re a murderess. The great punishment’s just coming down on you for certain!"

‘This thought did not become conscious; but instead of it she used the situation, at what I might call this psychological moment, for punishing herself unobtrusively with the help of the heap of stones which seemed suitable for the purpose. This is the reason why she did not even put out her hands as she fell and also why she was not seriously frightened. The second and probably less important determinant of her accident was no doubt self-punishment for her unconscious wish to be rid of her husband, who, incidentally, had been an accomplice in the crime. This wish was betrayed by her entirely superfluous warning to him to keep an eye open for the heap of stones in the street, since her husband walked with great care precisely because he was bad on his legs.’¹

¹ [Footnote added 1920:] A correspondent writes to me as follows on the subject of ‘self-punishment by means of parapraxes’: ‘If one studies the way people behave in the street one has a chance of seeing how often men who turn round to look back at passing women - not an unusual habit - meet with a minor accident. Sometimes they will sprain an ankle - on a level pavement; sometimes they will bump into a lamp post or hurt themselves in some other way.’

When the details of the case are considered one will also be likely to feel that Stärcke (1916) is right in regarding an apparently accidental self-injury by burning as a ‘sacrificial act’:

‘A lady whose son-in-law had to leave for Germany for military service scalded her foot in the following circumstances. Her daughter was expecting her confinement soon and reflections on the perils of war naturally did not put the family into a very cheerful mood. The day before his departure she had asked her son-in-law and daughter in for a meal. She herself prepared the meal in the kitchen after having first - strangely enough - changed her high, laced boots with arch-supports, which were comfortable for walking and which she usually wore indoors as well, for a pair of her husband’s slippers that were too large and were open at the top. While taking a large pan of boiling soup off the fire she dropped it and in this way scalded one foot fairly badly - especially the instep, which was not protected by the open slipper. - Everyone naturally put this accident down to her understandable "nerves". For the first few days after this burnt offering she was particularly careful with anything hot, but this did not prevent her some days later from scalding her wrist with hot gravy.’¹

¹ [Footnote added 1924:] In a very large number of cases like these of injury or death in accidents the explanation remains a matter of doubt. The outsider will find no occasion to see in the accident anything other than a chance occurrence, while someone who is closely connected with the victim and is familiar with intimate details has reason to suspect the unconscious intention behind the chance occurrence. The following account by a young man whose fiancée was run over in the street gives a good example of the kind of intimate knowledge that I mean and of the type of accessory details in question:

‘Last September I made the acquaintance of a Fräulein Z., aged 34. She was in well-to-do circumstances, and had been engaged before the war, but her fiancé had fallen in action in 1916 while serving as an officer. We came to know and become fond of each other, not at first with any thought of marrying, as the circumstances on both sides, in particular the difference in our ages (I myself was 27), seemed to rule that out. As we lived opposite each other in the same street and met every day, our relationship took an intimate turn in course of time. Thus the idea of marriage came more into view and I finally agreed to it myself. The betrothal was planned for this Easter; Fräulein Z., however, intended first to make a journey to her relatives at M., but this was suddenly prevented by a railway strike that had been called as a result of the Kapp Putsch. The gloomy prospects that the workers’ victory and its consequences appeared to hold out for the future had their effect for a brief time on our mood, too, but especially on Fräulein Z., always a person of very changeable moods, since she thought she saw new obstacles in the way of our future. On Saturday, March 20, however, she was in an exceptionally cheerful frame of mind - a state of affairs that took me quite by surprise and carried me along with her, so that we seemed to see everything in the rosiest colours. A few days before, we had talked of going to church together some time, without however having fixed a definite date. At 9. 15 the next morning, Sunday, March 21, she telephoned to ask me to fetch her to church straight away; but I refused, as I could not have got ready in time, and had, besides, work I wanted to finish. Fräulein Z. was noticeably disappointed; she then set out alone, met an acquaintance on the stairs at her house and walked with him for the short distance along the Tauentzienstrasse to the Rankestrasse, in the best of humour and without referring at all to our conversation. The gentleman bade her good-bye with a joking remark. Fräulein Z. had only to cross the Kurfürstendamm where it widened out and one could have a clear view along it; but, close to the pavement, she was run over by a horse-drawn cab. (Contusion of the liver, which led to her death a few hours later.) - We had crossed at that point hundreds of times before; Fräulein Z. was exceedingly careful, and very often prevented me from being rash; on this morning there was almost no traffic whatever, the trams, omnibuses, etc. were on strike. Just about that time there was almost absolute quiet; even if she did not see the cab she must at all events have heard it! Everybody supposed it was an "accident". My first thought was: "That’s impossible - but on the other hand there can be no question of its having been intentional." I tried to find a psychological explanation. After some considerable time I thought I had found it in your Psychopathology of Everyday Life. In particular, Fräulein Z. showed at various times a certain leaning in the direction of suicide and even tried to induce me to think the same way - thoughts from which I have often enough dissuaded her; for example, only two days before, after returning from a walk, she began, without any external reason at all, to talk about her death and the provisions for dealing with her estate. (She had not, by the way, done anything about this! - an indication that these remarks definitely did not have any intention behind them.) If I may venture on an opinion, I should regard this calamity not as an accident, nor as an effect of a clouding of consciousness, but as an intentional self-destruction performed with an unconscious purpose, and disguised as a chance mishap. This view of mine is confirmed by remarks which Fräulein Z. made to her relatives, both earlier, before she knew me, and also more recently, as well as by remarks to me up to within the last few days; so that I am tempted to regard the whole thing as an effect of the loss of her former fiancé, whom in her eyes nothing could replace.’6

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