Freud - Complete Works (210 page)
‘In a soliloquy about her
sorrow Clara speaks as follows: "‘If some noble
gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aid me! Oh! to be
caught out of this prison of thorns and brambles. I cannot tear my
own way out. I am a coward. A beckoning of a finger would change
me, I believe. I could fly bleeding and through hootings to a
comrade . . . Constantia met a soldier. Perhaps she prayed and her
prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh, how I love her for it!
His name was Harry Oxford . . . She did not waver, she cut the
links, she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl, what do you think
of me? But I have no Harry Whitford; I am alone . . .’ The
sudden consciousness that she had put another name for Oxford
struck her a buffet, drowning her in crimson."
‘The fact that both
men’s names end in "ford" evidently renders the
confounding of them more easy, and would by many be regarded as an
adequate cause for this, but the real underlying motive for it is
plainly indicated by the author. In another passage the same
lapsus
occurs, and is followed by the spontaneous hesitation
and sudden change of subject that one is familiar with in
psycho-analysis and in Jung’s association experiments when a
half-conscious complex is touched. Sir Willoughby patronisingly
says of Whitford: "‘False alarm. The resolution to do
anything unaccustomed is quite beyond poor old Vernon.’"
Clara replies: "‘But if Mr Oxford -
Whitford, . . . your swans, coming sailing up the
lake, how beautiful they look when they are indignant! I was going
to ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for someone
else will naturally be discouraged?’ Sir Willoughby stiffened
with sudden enlightenment."
‘In still another passage,
Clara by another
lapsus
betrays her secret wish that she was
on a more intimate footing with Vernon Whitford. Speaking to a boy
friend, she says: "‘Tell Mr. Vernon - tell Mr.
Whitford.’"'¹
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] Other
instances of slips of the tongue which the writer intends to be
taken as having a meaning and usually as being self-revealing can
be found in Shakespeare’s Richard II (Act II, Scene 2), and
in Schiller’s
Don Carlos
(Act. II, Scene 8; a slip
made by Princess Eboli). There would doubtless be no difficulty in
extending this list.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1188
The view of slips of the tongue
which is advocated here can meet the test even in the most trivial
examples. I have repeatedly been able to show that the most
insignificant and obvious errors in speaking have their meaning and
can be explained in the same way as the more striking instances. A
woman patient who was acting entirely against my wishes in planning
a short trip to Budapest, but who was determined to have her own
way, justified herself by telling me that she was going for only
three days; but she made a slip of the tongue and actually said
‘only three
weeks
’. She was betraying the fact
that, to spite me, she would rather spend three weeks than three
days there in the company which I considered unsuitable for her. -
One evening I wanted to excuse myself for not having fetched my
wife home from the theatre, and said: ‘I was at the theatre
at ten past ten.’ I was corrected: ‘You mean ten
to
ten.’ Of course I meant ten to ten.
After
ten o’clock would have been no excuse. I had been told that
the theatre bills said the performance ended before ten. When I
reached the theatre I found the entrance-hall in darkness and the
theatre empty. The performance had in fact ended earlier and my
wife had not waited for me. When I looked at the clock it was only
five to ten. But I decided to make my case out more favourable when
I got home and to say it had been ten to ten. Unfortunately, my
slip of the tongue spoilt my plan and revealed my disingenuousness,
by making me confess more than there was to confess.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1189
This leads on to those
speech-disturbances which cannot any longer be described as slips
of the tongue because what they affect is not the individual word
but the rhythm and execution of a whole speech: disturbances like,
for instance, stammering and stuttering caused by embarrassment.
But here too, as in the former cases, it is a question of an
internal conflict, which is betrayed to us by the disturbance in
speech. I really do not think that anyone would make a slip of the
tongue in an audience with his Sovereign, in a serious declaration
of love of in defending his honour and name before a jury - in
short, on all those occasions in which a person is heart and soul
engaged. Even in forming an appreciation of an author’s style
we are permitted and accustomed to apply the same elucidatory
principle which we cannot dispense with in tracing the origins of
individual mistakes in speech. A clear and unambiguous manner of
writing shows us that here the author is at one with himself; where
we find a forced and involved expression which (to use an apt
phrase) is aimed at more than one target, we may recognize the
intervention of an insufficiently worked-out, complicating thought,
or we may hear the stifled voice of the author’s
self-criticism.¹
Since this book first appeared
friends and colleagues who speak other languages have begun to turn
their attention to slips of the tongue which they have been able to
observe in countries where their language is spoken. As was to be
expected they have found that the laws governing parapraxes are
independent of the linguistic material; and they have made the same
interpretations that have been exemplified here in instances coming
from speakers of the German language. Of countless examples I
include only one:
Brill (1909) reports of himself:
‘A friend described to me a nervous patient and wished to
know whether I could benefit him. I remarked: "I believe that
in time I could remove all his symptoms by psycho-analysis because
it is a
durable
case" - wishing to say
"
curable
"
!
’
¹
[
Footnote added
1910:]
Ce qu’on conçoit bien
S’announce clairement
Et les mots pour le dire
Arrivent aisément.
[What is well thought out
Presents itself with clarity,
And the words to express it
Come easily.]
Boileau:
Art poétique
.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1190
In conclusion, for the benefit of
readers who are prepared to make a certain effort and to whom
psycho-analysis is not unfamiliar, I will add an example which will
enable them to form some picture of the mental depths into which
the pursuit even of a slip of the tongue can lead. It has been
reported by Jekels (1913).
‘On December 11, a lady of
my acquaintance addressed me (in Polish) in a somewhat challenging
and overbearing manner, as follows: "Why did I say to-day that
I have twelve fingers?" At my request she gave an account of
the scene in which the remark was made. She had got ready to go out
with her daughter to pay a visit, and had asked her daughter - a
case of dementia praecox then in remission - to change her blouse;
and this she in fact did, in the adjoining room. On re-entering,
the daughter found her mother busy cleaning her nails, and the
following conversation ensued:
‘Daughter: "There!
I’m ready now and you’re not!"
‘Mother: "Yes, but you
have only one blouse and I have
twelve nails
."
‘Daughter:
"What?"
‘Mother (impatiently):
"Well, of course I have; after all, I have
twelve
fingers
."
‘A colleague who heard the
story at the same time as I did asked what occurred to her in
connection with
twelve
. She answered equally quickly and
definitely: "Twelve means nothing to me - it is not the date
of anything (of importance).
‘To
finger
she gave
the following association after a little hesitation: "Some of
my husband’s family were born with six fingers on their feet
(Polish has no specific word for ‘toe’). When our
children were born they were immediately examined to see if they
had six fingers." For external reasons the analysis was not
continued that evening.
‘Next morning, December 12,
the lady visited me and told me with visible excitement: "What
do you suppose has happened? For about the last twenty years I have
been sending congratulations to my husband’s elderly uncle on
his birthday which is to-day, and I have always written him a
letter on the 11th. This time I forgot about it and had to send a
telegram just now."
‘I myself remembered, and I
reminded the lady, how positive she had been the evening before in
dismissing my colleague’s question about the number twelve -
which was in fact very well fitted to remind her of the birthday -
by remarking that the twelfth was not a date of importance to
her.
‘She then admitted that
this uncle of her husband’s was a wealthy man from whom she
had in fact always expected to inherit something, quite especially
in her present straitened financial circumstances. Thus, for
instance, it was he, or rather his death, that had immediately
sprung to her mind a few days before when an acquaintance of hers
had predicted from cards that she would receive a large sum of
money. It flashed through her mind at once that the uncle was the
only person from whom money could possibly come to her or her
children; and this same scene also instantly reminded her of the
fact that this uncle’s wife had once promised to remember the
lady’s children in her will. But in the meanwhile she had
died intestate; had she perhaps given her husband appropriate
instructions?
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1191
‘The death-wish against the
uncle must clearly have emerged with very great intensity, for she
said to the friend who made the prophecy: "You encourage
people to make away with others." In the four or five days
that elapsed between the prophecy and the uncle’s birthday
she was constantly looking at the obituary columns in the
newspapers from the town where the uncle lived. Not surprisingly,
therefore, in view of the intensity of her wish for his death, the
event and the date of the birthday he was about to celebrate were
so strongly suppressed that not only was a resolution which had
been carried out for years forgotten in consequence, but even my
colleague’s question failed to bring them to
consciousness.
‘In the slip "twelve
fingers" the suppressed "twelve" had broken through
and had helped to determine the parapraxis. I say
"
helped
to determine", for the striking
association to "finger" leads us to suspect the existence
of some further motivations. It also explains why the
"twelve" had falsified precisely this most innocent
phrase, "ten fingers". The association ran: "Some
members of my husband’s family were born with six fingers on
their feet." Six toes are a sign of a particular abnormality.
Thus six fingers mean
one
abnormal child and twelve fingers
two
abnormal children. And that was really the fact in this
case. The lady had married at a very early age; and the only legacy
left her by her husband, a highly eccentric and abnormal person who
took his own life shortly after their marriage, were two children
whom the doctors repeatedly pronounced to be abnormal and victims
of a grave hereditary taint derived from their father. The elder
daughter recently returned home after a severe catatonic attack;
soon afterwards, the younger daughter, now at the age of puberty,
also fell ill from a serious neurosis.
‘The fact that the
children’s abnormality is here linked with the death-wish
against the uncle, and is condensed with this far more strongly
suppressed and psychically more powerful element, enables us to
assume the existence of a second determinant for the slip of the
tongue, namely a
death-wish against abnormal children
.
‘But the special
significance of twelve as a death wish is already indicated by the
fact that the uncle’s birthday was very intimately associated
in the lady’s mind with the idea of his death. For her
husband had taken his life on the 13th - one day, that is, after
the uncle’s birthday; and the uncle’s wife had said to
the young widow: "Yesterday he was sending his
congratulations, so full of warmth and kindness - and
to-day . . .!"
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1192
‘I may add that the lady
had real enough reasons as well for wishing her children dead; for
they brought her no pleasure at all, only grief and severe
restrictions on her independence, and she had for their sake
renounced all the happiness that love might have brought her. On
this occasion she had in fact gone to exceptional lengths to avoid
putting the daughter with whom she was going to pay the visit in a
bad mood; and it may be imagined what demands this makes on
anyone’s patience and self-denial where the case is one of
dementia praecox, and how many angry impulses have to be suppressed
in the process.