The medical Review of reviews 4 страница

3 If it were a question of one case only like that of my patient, one would shrug it aside. No one would dream of erecting upon a single observation a belief which implies taking such a decisive line. But you must believe me when I assure you that this is not the only case in my experience. I have collected a whole number of such prophecies and from all of them I gained the impression that the fortune-teller had merely brought to expression the thoughts, and more especially the secret wishes, of those who were questioning him, and that we were therefore justified in analysing these prophecies as though they were subjective products, phantasies or dreams of the people concerned. Not every case, of course, is equally convincing and in not every case is it equally possible to exclude more rational explanations; but, taking them as a whole, there remains a strong balance of probability in favour of thought-transference as a fact. The importance of the subject would justify me in producing all my cases to you; but that I cannot do, owing to the prolixity of description that would be involved and to the inevitable breach of the obligations of discretion. I will try so far as possible to appease my conscience in giving you a few more examples.

One day I was visited by a highly intelligent young man, a student preparing for his final examinations for a doctorate, but unable to take them since, as he complained, he had lost all interest and power of concentration and even any faculty for orderly memory. The previous history of this condition of quasi-paralysis was soon revealed: he had fallen ill after carrying out a great act of self-discipline. He had a sister, to whom he was attached by an intense but always restrained devotion, just as she was to him. ‘What a pity we can’t get married!’ they would often say to each other. A respectable man fell in love with the sister; she responded to his affection, but her parents did not assent to the union. In their difficulty the young couple turned to her brother, nor did he refuse his help. He made it possible for them to correspond with each other, and his influence eventually persuaded the parents to consent. In the course of the engagement, however, an occurrence took place whose meaning it was easy to guess. He went with his future brother-in-law on a difficult mountain-climb without a guide; they lost their way and were in danger of not returning safe and sound. Shortly after his sister’s marriage he fell into this condition of mental exhaustion.

The influence of psycho-analysis restored his ability to work and he left me in order to go in for his examinations; but after he had passed them successfully he came back to me for a short time in the autumn of the same year. It was then that he related a remarkable experience to me which he had had before the summer. In his University town there lived a fortune-teller who enjoyed great popularity. Even the Princes of the Royal House used to consult her before important undertakings. Her mode of operation was very simple. She asked to be given the date of the relevant person’s birth; she required to know nothing else about him, not even his name. She then proceeded to consult her astrological books, made long calculations and finally uttered a prophecy relating to the person in question. My patient decided to call upon her mystical arts in connection with his brother-in-law. He visited her and told her the relevant date. After carrying out her calculations she made her prophecy: ‘The person in question will die in July or August of this year of crayfish- or oyster-poisoning.’ My patient finished his story with the words: ‘It was quite marvellous!’

From the first I had listened with irritation. After this exclamation of his I went so far as to ask: ‘What do you see that’s so marvellous in this prophecy? Here we are in late autumn and your brother-in-law isn’t dead or you’d have told me long ago. So the prophecy hasn’t come true.’ ‘No doubt that’s so,’ he replied, ‘but here is what’s marvellous. My brother-in-law is passionately devoted to crayfish and oysters and in the previous summer - that’s to say, before my visit to the fortune-teller - he had an attack of oyster-poisoning of which he nearly died.’ What was I to say to this? I could only feel annoyed that this highly-educated man (who had moreover been through a successful analysis) should not have a clearer view of the position. I for my part, rather than believe that it is possible to calculate the onset of an attack of crayfish- or oyster-poisoning from astrological tables, prefer to suppose that my patient had not yet overcome his hatred for his rival, the repression of which had earlier led to his falling ill, and that the fortune-teller was simply giving expression to his own expectation: ‘a taste of that kind isn’t to be given up, and one day, all the same, it will be the end of him.’ I must admit that I cannot think of any other explanation for this case, unless, perhaps, that my patient was having a joke with me. But neither then nor at a later time did he give me grounds for such a suspicion, and he seemed to be meaning what he said seriously.

5 Here is another case. A young man in a position of consequence was involved in a liaison with a demi-mondaine which was characterized by a curious compulsion. He was obliged from time to time to provoke her with derisive and insulting remarks till she was driven to complete desperation. When he had brought her to that point, he was relieved, became reconciled with her and made her a present. But now he wanted to be free of her: the compulsion seemed to him uncanny. He noticed that this liaison was damaging his reputation; he wanted to have a wife of his own and to raise a family. But since he could not get free from this demi-mondaine by his own strength, he called analysis to his help. After one of these abusive scenes, when the analysis had already started, he got her to write something on a piece of paper, so as to show it to a graphologist. The report that he received from him was that the writing was that of someone in extreme despair, who would certainly commit suicide in the next few days. This did not, it is true, occur and the lady remained alive; but the analysis succeeded in loosening his bonds. He left the lady and turned to a young girl who he expected would be able to make him a good wife. Soon afterwards a dream appeared which could only hint at a dawning doubt as to the girl’s worthiness. He obtained a specimen of her writing too, took it to the same authority, and was given a verdict on her writing which confirmed his apprehensions. He therefore abandoned the idea of making her his wife.

In order to form an opinion of the graphologist’s reports, especially the first one, we must know something of our subject’s secret history. In his early youth he had (in accordance with his passionate nature) fallen in love to the pitch of frenzy with a married woman who was still young but nevertheless older than he was. When she rejected him, he made an attempt at suicide which, there can be no doubt, was seriously intended. It was only by a hair’s breadth that he escaped death and he was only restored after a long period of nursing. But this wild action made a deep impression on the woman he loved; she granted him her favours, he became her lover and thenceforward remained secretly attached to her and served her with a truly chivalrous devotion. More than twenty years later, when they had both grown older - but the woman, naturally, more than he - the need was awakened in him to detach himself from her, to make himself free, to lead a life of his own, to set up a house and raise a family. And along with this feeling of satiety there arose in him his long-suppressed craving for vengeance on his mistress. As he had once tried to kill himself because she had spurned him, so he wished now to have the satisfaction of her seeking death because he left her. But his love was still too strong for it to be possible for this wish to become conscious in him; nor was he in a position to do her enough harm to drive her into death. In this frame of mind he took on the demi-mondaine as a sort of whipping-boy, to satisfy his thirst for revenge in corpore vili; and he allowed himself to practise upon her all the torments which he might expect would bring about with her the result he wished to produce on his mistress. The fact that the vengeance applied to the latter was betrayed by his making her into a confidante and adviser in his liaison instead of concealing his defection from her. The wretched woman, who had long fallen from giving to receiving favours, probably suffered more from his confidences than the demi-mondaine did from his brutalities. The compulsion of which he complained in regard to this substitutive figure, and which drove him to analysis, had of course been transferred on to her from his old mistress; it was from her that he wanted to free himself but could not. I am not an authority on handwriting and have no high opinion of the art of divining character from it; still less do I believe in the possibility of foretelling the writer’s future in this way. You can see, however, whatever one may think of the value of graphology, that there is no mistaking the fact that the expert, when he promised that the writer of the specimen presented to him would commit suicide in the next few days, had once again only brought to light a powerful secret wish of the person who was questioning him. Something of the same kind happened afterwards in the case of the second report. What was there concerned, however, was not an unconscious wish; it was the questioner’s dawning doubt and apprehension that found a clear expression from the graphologist’s mouth. Incidentally, my patient succeeded, with the help of analysis, in finding an object for his love outside the magic circle in which he had been spellbound.

7 Ladies and Gentlemen, - You have now heard how dream-interpretation and psycho-analysis in general assist occultism. I have shown you from examples that by their application occult facts have been brought to light which would otherwise have remained unknown. Psycho-analysis cannot give a direct answer to the question that no doubt interests you the most - whether we are to believe in the objective reality of these findings. But the material revealed by its help makes an impression which is at all events favourable to an affirmative reply. Your interest will not come to a stop at this point, however. You will want to know what conclusions are justified by the incomparably richer material in which psycho-analysis has no part. But I cannot follow you there: it lies outside my province. The only further thing I could do would be to report observations to you which have at least so much relation to analysis that they were made during psycho-analytic treatment and were even perhaps made possible by its influence. I will tell you one such example - the one which has left the strongest impression behind on me. I shall tell it at great length and shall ask for your attention to a large number of details, though even so I shall have to suppress much that would have greatly increased the convincing force of the observation. It is an example in which the fact came clearly to light and did not need to be developed by analysis. In discussing it, however, we shall not be able to do without the help of analysis. But I will tell you in advance that this example too of apparent thought-transference in the analytic situation is not exempt from all doubts and that it does not allow us to take up an unqualified position in support of the reality of occult phenomena.

Listen then:- One autumn day in the year 1919, at about 10.45 a.m., Dr. David Forsyth, who had just arrived from London, sent in his card to me while I was working with a patient. (My respected colleague from London University will not, I feel sure, regard it as an indiscretion if in this way I betray the fact that he spent some months being initiated by me into the arts of psycho-analytic technique.) I only had time to greet him and to make an appointment to see him later. Dr. Forsyth had a claim to my particular interest; he was the first foreigner to come to me after I had been cut off by the war years and to bring a promise of better times. Soon afterwards, at eleven o’clock, Herr P., one of my patients, arrived - an intelligent and agreeable man, between forty and fifty years of age, who had originally come to me on account of difficulties with women. His case did not promise any therapeutic success; I had long before proposed our stopping the treatment, but he had wished to continue it, evidently because he felt comfortable in a well-tempered father-transference to me. At that period money played no part: there was too little of it about. The sessions which I spent with him were stimulating and refreshing for me as well, and consequently, in disregard of the strict rules of medical practice, analytic work was being carried on up to a foreseen time-limit.

That day P. returned to his attempts at having erotic relations with women and once again mentioned a pretty, piquante, penniless girl, with whom he felt he might succeed, if the fact of her being a virgin did not scare him off any serious attempt. He had often talked of her before but that day he told me for the first time that, though of course she had no notion of the true grounds of his impediment, she used to call him ‘Herr von Vorsicht’. I was struck by this information; Dr. Forsyth’s visiting card lay beside me, and I showed it to him.

These are the facts of the case. I expect they will seem to you paltry; but listen a little longer, there is more behind them.

When he was young, P. had spent some years in England and since then had retained a permanent interest in English literature. He possessed a rich English library and used to bring me books from it. I owe to him an acquaintance with such authors as Bennett and Galsworthy, of whom till then I had read little. One day he lent me a novel of Galsworthy’s with the title The Man of Property, whose scene is laid in the bosom of a family invented by the author, bearing the name of ‘Forsyte’. Galsworthy himself was evidently captivated by this creation of his, for in later volumes he repeatedly came back to the members of this family and finally collected all the tales relating to them under the title of The Forsyte Saga. Only a few days before the occurrence I am speaking of, he had brought me a fresh volume from this series. The name ‘Forsyte’, and everything typical that the author had sought to embody in it, had played a part, too, in my conversations with P. and it had become part of the secret language which so easily grows up between two people who see a lot of each other. Now the name ‘Forsyte’ in these novels differs little from that of my visitor ‘Forsyth’ and, as pronounced by a German, the two can scarcely be distinguished; and there is an English word with a meaning - ‘foresight’ - which we should also pronounce in the same way and which would be translated ‘Voraussicht’ or ‘Vorsicht’. Thus P. had in fact selected from his personal concerns the very name with which I was occupied at the same time as a result of an occurrence of which he was unaware.

That begins to look better, you will agree. But we shall, I think, receive a stronger impression of the striking phenomenon and even obtain an insight into its determinants, if we throw some analytic light upon two other associations brought up by P. during the same session.0

Firstly: One day of the previous week I had waited in vain for Herr P. at eleven o’clock, and had then gone out to visit Dr. Anton von Freund in his pension. I was surprised to find that Herr P. lived on another floor of the same building in which the pension was located. In connection with this I had later told P. that I had in a sense paid him a visit in his house; but I know definitely that I did not tell him the name of the person I visited in the pension. And now, shortly after mentioning ‘Herr von Vorsicht’ he asked me whether perhaps the Freud-Ottorego who was giving a course of lectures on English at the Volks universität’ was my daughter. And for the first time during our long period of intercourse he gave my name the distorted form to which I have indeed become habituated by functionaries, officials and compositors: instead of ‘Freud’ he said ‘Freund’.

Secondly: At the end of the same session he told me a dream, from which he had woken in a fright - a regular ‘Alptraum’, he said. He added that not long ago he had forgotten the English word for that, and when someone had asked him said that the English for ‘Alptraum’ was ‘a mare’s next’. This was nonsense, of course, he went on; ‘a mare’s nest’ meant something incredible, a cock-and-bull story: the translation of ‘Alptraum

’ was ‘nightmare’. The only element in common between this association and the previous one seemed to be the element ‘English’. I was however reminded of a small incident which had occurred about a month earlier. P. was sitting with me in the room when another visitor, a dear friend from London, Dr. Ernest Jones, unexpectedly came in after a long separation. I signed to him to go into the next room while I finished with P. The latter, however, had at once recognized him from his photograph hanging in the waiting-room, and even expressed a wish to be introduced to him. Now Jones is the author of a monograph on the Alptraum - the nightmare. I did not know whether P. was acquainted with it; he avoided reading analytic literature.

I should like to begin by putting before you an investigation of what analytic understanding can be arrived at of the background of P.’s associations and of the motives for them. P. was placed similarly to me in relation to the name ‘Forsyte’ or ‘Forsyth’; it meant the same to him, and it was entirely to him that I owed my acquaintance with the name. The remarkable fact was that he brought the name into the analysis unheralded, only the briefest time after it had become significant to me in another sense owing to a new event - the London doctor’s arrival. But the manner in which the name emerged in his analytic session is perhaps not less interesting than the fact itself. He did not say, for instance: ‘The name "Forsyte", out of the novels you are familiar with, has just occurred to me.’ He was able, without any conscious relation to that source, to weave the name into his own experiences and to produce it thence - a thing that might have happened long before but had not happened till then. What he did say now was: ‘I’m a Forsyth too: that’s what the girl calls me.’ It is hard to mistake the mixture of jealous demand and melancholy self-depreciation which finds its expression in this remark. We shall not be going astray if we complete it in some such way as this: ‘It’s mortifying to me that your thoughts should be so intensely occupied with this new arrival. Do come back to me; after all I’m a Forsyth too though it’s true I’m only a Herr von Vorsicht, as the girl says.’ And thereupon his train of thought, passing along the associative threads of the element ‘English’ went back to two earlier events, which were able to stir up the same feelings of jealousy. ‘A few days ago you paid a visit to my house - not, alas, to me but to a Herr von Freund.’ This thought caused him to distort the name ‘Freud’ into ‘Freund’. The ‘Freud-Ottorego’ from the lecture-syllabus must come in here because as a teacher of English she provided the manifest association. And now came the recollection of another visitor a few weeks before, of whom he was no doubt equally jealous, but for whom he also felt he was no match, for Dr. Jones was able to write a monograph on the nightmare whereas he was at best only able to produce such dreams himself. His mention of his mistake about the meaning of ‘a mare’s nest’ comes into this connection, for it can only mean to say: ‘After all I’m not a genuine Englishman any more than I’m a genuine Forsyth.’

Now I cannot describe his feelings of jealousy as either out of place or unintelligible. He had been warned that his analysis, and at the same time our contact, would come to an end as soon as foreign pupils and patients returned to Vienna; and that was in fact what happened shortly afterwards. What we have so far achieved, however, has been a piece of analytic work - the explanation of three associations brought up by him in the same session and nourished by the same motive: and this has not much to do with the other question of whether these associations could or could not have been made without thought-transference. This question arises in the case of each of the three associations and thus falls into three separate questions: Could P. have known that Dr. Forsyth had just paid me his first visit? Could he know the name of the person I had visited in his house? Did he know that Dr. Jones had written a monograph on the nightmare? Or was it only my knowledge about these things that was revealed in his associations? It will depend on the reply to these separate questions whether my observation allows of a conclusion favourable to thought-transference.

Let us leave the first question aside for a while; the other two can be dealt with more easily. The case of my visit to his pension makes a particularly convincing impression at first sight. I am certain that in my short, joking reference to my visit to his house I mentioned no name. I think it is most unlikely that P. made enquiries at the pension as to the name of the person concerned; I believe rather that the existence of that person remained entirely unknown to him. But the evidential value of this case is totally destroyed by a chance circumstance. The man whom I had visited at the pension was not only called ‘Freund’; he was a true friend to us all. He was Dr. Anton von Freund whose donation had made the foundation of our publishing house possible. His early death, together with that of our colleague Karl Abraham a few years later, are the gravest misfortunes which have befallen the growth of psycho-analysis. It is possible, therefore, that I had said to Herr P.: ‘I visited a friend in your house’ and with this possibility the occult interest of his second association vanishes.

The impression made by the third association evaporates equally quickly. Could P. know that Jones had published a monograph on the nightmare if he never read any analytic literature? Yes, he could. He possessed books from our publishing house and could in any case have seen the titles of the new publications advertised on the wrappers. This cannot be proved, but neither can it be disproved. We can reach no decision, therefore, along this path. To my regret, this observation of mine suffers from the same weakness as so many similar ones: it was written down too late and was discussed at a time when I was no longer seeing Herr P. and could not question him further.

Let us go back to the first event, which even taken by itself supports the apparent fact of thought-transference. Could P. know that Dr. Forsyth had been with me a quarter of an hour before him? Could he have any knowledge at all of his existence or of his presence in Vienna? We must not give way to an inclination to deny both questions flatly. I can see a way that leads to a partly affirmative answer. I may after all have told Herr P. that I was expecting a doctor from England for instruction in analysis, as a first dove after the Deluge. This might have happened in the summer of 1919, for Dr. Forsyth had made arrangements with me by letter some months before his arrival. I may even have mentioned his name, though that seems to me most improbable. In view of the other connection which the name carried for both of us, a discussion of it must inevitably have followed, of which something would have remained in my memory. Nevertheless such a discussion may have taken place and I may have totally forgotten it afterwards, so that it became possible for the emergence of ‘Herr von Vorsicht’ in the analytic session to strike me as a miracle. If one regards oneself as a sceptic, it is a good plan to have occasional doubts about one’s scepticism too. It may be that I too have a secret inclination towards the miraculous which thus goes half way to meet the creation of occult facts.

If we have thus got one miraculous possibility out of the way, there is another waiting for us, and the most difficult of all. Assuming that Herr P. knew that there was a Dr. Forsyth and that he was expected in Vienna in the autumn, how is it to be explained that he became receptive to his presence on the very day of his arrival and immediately after his first visit? One might say it was chance - that is, leave it unexplained. But it was precisely in order to exclude chance that I discussed P.’s other two associations, in order to show you that he was really occupied with jealous thoughts about people who visited me. Or one might, not to neglect the most extreme possibility, experiment with the hypothesis that P. had observed a special excitement about me (which, to be sure, I myself knew nothing of) and drew his conclusion from it. Or Herr P. (though he arrived a quarter of an hour after the Englishman left) met him on the short stretch of street which they both had to pass along, recognized him by his characteristically English appearance and, being in a permanent state of jealous expectation, thought: ‘Ah, so that’s Dr. Forsyth with whose arrival my analysis is to come to an end! And he’s probably just come straight from the Professor.’ I cannot carry these rationalistic speculations any further. We are once again left with a non liquet; but I must confess that I have a feeling that here too the scales weigh in favour of thought-transference. Moreover, I am certainly not alone in having been in the position of experiencing ‘occult’ events like this in the analytic situation. Helene Deutsch published some similar observations in 1926 and studied the question of their being determined by the transference relations between patient and analyst.

4 I am sure you will not feel very well satisfied with my attitude to this problem - with my not being entirely convinced but prepared to be convinced. You may perhaps say to yourselves: ‘Here’s another case of a man who has done honest work as a scientist all through his life and has grown feeble-minded, pious and credulous in his old age.’ I am aware that a few great names must be included in this class, but you should not reckon me among them. At least I have not become pious, and I hope not credulous. It is only that, if one has gone about all one’s life bending in order to avoid a painful collision with the facts, so too in one’s old age one still keeps one’s back ready to bow before new realities. No doubt you would like me to hold fast to a moderate theism and show myself relentless in my rejection of everything occult. But I am incapable of currying favour and I must urge you to have kindlier thoughts on the objective possibility of thought-transference and at the same time of telepathy as well.

You will not forget that here I am only treating these problems in so far as it is possible to approach them from the direction of psycho-analysis. When they first came into my range of vision more than ten years ago, I too felt a dread of a threat against our scientific Weltanschauung, which, I feared, was bound to give place to spiritualism or mysticism if portions of occultism were proved true. To-day I think otherwise. In my opinion it shows no great confidence in science if one does not think it capable of assimilating and working over whatever may perhaps turn out to be true in the assertions of occultists. And particularly so far as thought-transference is concerned, it seems actually to favour the extension of the scientific - or, as our opponents say, the mechanistic - mode of thought to the mental phenomena which are so hard to lay hold of. The telepathic process is supposed to consist in a mental act in one person instigating the same mental act in another person. What lies between these two mental acts may easily be a physical process into which the mental one is transformed at one end and which is transformed back once more into the same mental one at the other end. The analogy with other transformations, such as occur in speaking and hearing by telephone, would then be unmistakable. And only think if one could get hold of this physical equivalent of the psychical act! It would seem to me that psycho-analysis, by inserting the unconscious between what is physical and what was previously called ‘psychical’, has paved the way for the assumption of such processes as telepathy. If only one accustoms oneself to the idea of telepathy, one can accomplish a great deal with it - for the time being, it is true, only in imagination. It is a familiar fact that we do not know how the common purpose comes about in the great insect communities: possibly it is done by means of a direct psychical transference of this kind. One is led to a suspicion that this is the original, archaic method of communication between individuals and that in the course of phylogenetic evolution it has been replaced by the better method of giving information with the help of signals which are picked up by the sense organs. But the older method might have persisted in the background and still be able to put itself into effect under certain conditions - for instance, in passionately excited mobs. All this is still uncertain and full of unsolved riddles; but there is no reason to be frightened by it.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23