Freud - Complete Works (207 page)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1173

   There are other slips of the
tongue where we may assume that the true disturbing factor is some
similarity in sound to obscene words and meanings. Deliberate
distortion and deformation of words and expressions, which is so
dear to vulgar minds, has the sole purpose of exploiting innocent
occasions for hinting at forbidden topics; and this playing with
words is so frequent that there would be nothing remarkable in its
occurring even when not intended and against one’s wishes. To
this category no doubt belong such examples as
Eischeissweibchen
(for
Eiweissscheibchen
),¹
Apopos Fritz
(for
à propos
),²
Lokuskapitäl
(for
Lotuskapitäl
),³
etc.; and perhaps also the
Alabüsterbachse
(
Alabasterbüchse
)
⁴
of St. Mary Magdalen.
⁵
 -’Ich fordere Sie auf, auf das Wohl unseres Chefs
auf
zustossen’ can hardly be anything other than an
unintentional parody which is a perseveration of an intended one.
If I were the Principal who was being honoured at the ceremony to
which the speaker contributed this slip, I should probably reflect
on the cleverness of the Romans in permitting the soldiers of a
general who was enjoying a Triumph openly to express in the form of
satirical songs their inner criticisms of the man who was being
honoured. - Meringer relates that he himself once said to someone,
who by reason of being the eldest member of the company was
addressed familiarly by the honorific title of
‘
Senexl
’ or ‘
altes
Senexl
’: ‘
Prost
,
Senex
altesl!
’ He was himself shocked at this mistake (Meringer
and Mayer, 1895, 50). We can perhaps interpret his emotion if we
reflect how close ‘Altesl’ comes to the insulting
phrase ‘alter Esel’. There are powerful internal
punishments for any breach of the respect due to age (that is,
reduced to childhood terms, of the respect due to the father).

  
¹
[A meaningless term (literally:
‘egg-shit-female’), for ‘small slices of white of
egg’.]

  
²
[‘Apopos’ is a non-existent
word; but ‘Popo’ is the nursery word for
‘buttocks’.]

  
³
[A meaningless word, literally: ‘W.C.
capital’, for ‘lotus capital’, an architectural
term] ‘,

  
⁴
[A
non-existent word (though the middle part of it
‘Büste’ means ‘breast’), for
‘alabaster box’.]

  
⁵
Making slips of the tongue was a symptom of
a woman patient of mine which persisted until it was traced back to
the childhood joke of replacing ‘
ruinieren
[ruin]’ by ‘
urinieren
[urinate]’. -
[
Added
1924:] The temptation to employ the artifice of a
slip of the tongue for enabling improper and forbidden words to be
freely used forms the basis of Abraham’s observations on
parapraxes ‘with an overcompensating purpose’ (Abraham,
1922
a
). A woman patient was very liable to duplicate the
first syllable of proper names by stammering. She changed the name
‘Protagoras’ to ‘Protragoras’, shortly
after having said ‘A-alexander’ instead of
‘AIexander’. Inquiry revealed that in childhood she had
been especially fond of the vulgar joke of repeating the syllables
‘a’ and ‘po’ when they occurred at the
beginnings of words, a form of amusement which quite commonly leads
to stammering in children. [‘
A-a
’ and
‘
Popo
’ are the German nursery words for
‘faeces’ and ‘buttocks’.] On approaching
the name ‘Protagoras’ she became aware of the risk that
she might omit the ‘r’ in the first syllable and say
‘Po-potagoras’. As a protection against this danger she
held on firmly to this ‘r’, and inserted another
‘r’ in the second syllable. She acted in the same way
on other occasions, distorting the words ‘
Parterre
[ground floor]’ and ‘
Kondolenz
[condolence]’ so as to avoid ‘
Pater
(father)' and ‘
Kondom
[condom]’ which were
closely linked to them in her associations. Another of
Abraham’s patients confessed to an inclination to say
‘Angora’ every time for ‘angina’ - very
probably because of a fear of being tempted to replace
‘angina’ by ‘vagina’. These slips of the
tongue owed their existence therefore to the fact that a defensive
trend had retained the upper hand instead of the distorting one;
and Abraham justly draws attention to the analogy between this
process and the formation of symptoms in obsessional
neurosis.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1174

   I hope that readers will not
overlook the difference in value between these interpretations, of
which no proof is possible, and the examples that I have myself
collected and explained by means of an analysis. But if I still
secretly cling to my expectation that even apparently simple slips
of the tongue could be traced to interference by a half-suppressed
idea that lies outside the intended context, I am tempted to do so
by an observation of Meringer’s which is highly deserving of
attention. This author says that it is a curious fact that no one
is ready to admit having made a slip of the tongue. There are some
very sensible and honest people who are offended if they are told
they have made one. I would not venture to put it so generally as
does Meringer in saying ‘no one’. But the trace of
affect which follows the revelation of the slip, and which is
clearly in the nature of shame, has a definite significance. It may
be compared to the annoyance we feel when we cannot recall a
forgotten name, and to our surprise at the tenacity of an
apparently indifferent memory; and it invariably indicates that
some motive has contributed to the occurrence of the
interference.

   The twisting round of a name when
it is intentional amounts to an insult; and it might well have the
same significance in a whole number of cases where it appears in
the form of an unintentional slip of the tongue. The person who, as
Mayer reports, said ‘Freuder’ on one occasion instead
of ‘Freud’ because he had shortly before mentioned
Breuer’s name (Meringer and Mayer, 1895, 38), and who another
time spoke of the ‘Freuer-Breudian’ method of treatment
(ibid., 28), was probably a professional colleague - and one who
was not particularly enthusiastic about that method. In the chapter
below on slips of the pen I shall report an instance of the
distortion of a name which certainly cannot be explained in any
other way.¹

   In these cases the disturbing
factor which intervenes is a criticism which has to be set aside
since at the moment it does not correspond to the speaker’s
intention.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1907:] It can in
fact be observed that members of the aristocracy in particular are
prone to distort the names of the doctors they consult. We may
conclude from this that inwardly they despise them, in spite of the
courtesy they habitually show them. - [
Added
  1912:] I
quote here some pertinent observations on the forgetting of names
which comes from an account of our subject written in English by Dr
Ernest Jones, at that time in Toronto (Jones,
1911
b
):

  
‘Few people can avoid feeling a twinge of resentment when
they find that their name has been forgotten, particularly if it is
by some one with whom they had hoped or expected it would be
remembered. They instinctively realize that if they had made a
greater impression on the person’s mind he would certainly
have remembered them again, for the name is an integral part of the
personality. Similarly, few things are more flattering to most
people than to find themselves addressed by name by a great
personage where they could hardly have anticipated it. Napoleon,
like most leaders of men, was a master of this art. In the midst of
the disastrous Campaign of France, in 1814, he gave an amazing
proof of his memory in this direction. When in a town near Craonne
he recollected that he had met the mayor, De Bussy, over twenty
years ago in the La Fère regiment; the delighted De Bussy at
once threw himself into his service with extraordinary zeal.
Conversely there is no surer way of affronting some one than by
pretending to forget his name; the insinuation is thus conveyed
that the person is so unimportant in our eyes that we cannot be
bothered to remember his name. This device is often exploited in
literature. In Turgenev’s
Smoke
the following passage
occurs. "‘So you still find Baden entertaining,
M’sieu-Litvinov.’ Ratmirov always uttered
Litvinov’s surname with hesitation, every time, as though he
had forgotten it, and could not at once recall it. In this way, as
well as by the lofty flourish of his hat in saluting him, he meant
to insult his pride." The same author in his
Fathers and
Sons
writes: "The Governor invited Kirsanov and Bazarov to
his ball, and within a few minutes invited them a second time,
regarding them as brothers, and calling them Kisarov." Here
the forgetting that he had spoken to them, the mistake in the
names, and the inability to distinguish between the two young men,
constitute a culmination of disparagement. Falsification of a name
has the same significance as forgetting it; it is only a step
towards complete amnesia.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1175

   Conversely, replacing one name by
another, assuming some one else’s name, identification by
means of a slip over a name, must signify an appreciative feeling
which has for some reason to remain in the background for the time
being . An experience of this kind from his schooldays is described
by Sándor Ferenczi:

   ‘When I was in the first
form at the
Gymnasium
I had, for the first time in my life,
to recite a poem in public (i.e. in front of the whole class). I
was well prepared and was dismayed at being interrupted at the very
start by a burst of laughter. The teacher subsequently told me why
I had met with this strange reception. I gave the title of the poem
"Aus der Ferne " quite correctly, but instead of
attributing it to its real author I gave my own name. The
poet’s name is Alexander (Sándor ) Petöfi. The
exchange of names was helped by our having the same first name; but
the real cause was undoubtedly the fact that at that time I
identified myself in my secret wishes with the celebrated
hero-poet. Even consciously my love and admiration for him bordered
on idolatry. The whole wretched ambition-complex is of course to be
found as well behind this parapraxis.’

   A similar identification by means
of an exchange of names was reported to me by a young doctor. He
had timidly and reverently introduced himself to the famous Virchow
as ‘Dr. Virchow’. The professor turned to him in
surprise and asked: ‘Ah! is your name Virchow too?’ I
do not know how the ambitious young man justified the slip of the
tongue he had made - whether he relied upon the flattering excuse
that he felt himself so small beside the great name that his own
could not fail to slip away from him, or whether he had the courage
to admit that he hoped one day to become as great a man as Virchow,
and to beg the Professor not to treat him so contemptuously on that
account. One of these two thoughts - or perhaps both of them
simultaneously - may have confused the young man while he was
introducing himself.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1176

   From motives of an extremely
personal nature I must leave it open whether a similar
interpretation is applicable to the following case as well. At the
International Congress at Amsterdam in 1907 my theory of hysteria
was the subject of lively discussion. In a diatribe against me one
of my most vigorous opponents repeatedly made slips of the tongue
which took the form of putting himself in my place and speaking in
my name. For example, he said: ‘It is well known that Breuer
and
I
have proved . . .’ where he could
only have meant ‘ . . . Breuer and
Freud 
. . .’ My opponent’s name
bears not the least resemblance to my own. This example, together
with many other cases where a slip of the tongue results in one
name replacing another, may serve to remind us that such slips can
entirely dispense with the assistance afforded by similarity in
sound and can come about with no more support than is provided by
hidden factors in the subject-matter.

   In other, far more significant,
cases it is self-criticism, internal opposition to one’s own
utterance, that obliges one to make a slip of the tongue and even
to substitute the opposite of what one had intended. One then
observes in astonishment how the wording of an assertion cancels
out its own intention, and how the slip has exposed an inner
insincerity.¹ The slip of the tongue here becomes a mode of
mimetic expression - often, indeed, for the expression of something
one did not wish to say: it becomes a mode of self-betrayal. This
was the case, for instance, when a man who did not care for what is
called normal sexual intercourse in his relations with women broke
into a conversation about a girl who was said to be a flirt, with
the words: ‘If she had to do with me, she’d soon give
up her
koëttieren
.’ There is no doubt that it can
only have been another word, namely ‘
koitieren
’,
whose influence was responsible for making this change in the word
that was intended, ‘
kokettieren
’ [to flirt,
coquette]. - Or take the following case: ‘We have an uncle
who for months past had been very much offended because we never
visited him. We took his move to a new house as an occasion for
paying him a long overdue visit. He seemed very glad to see us, and
as we were leaving he said with much feeling: "I hope from now
on I shall see you still
more seldom
than in the
past."'