Freud - Complete Works (213 page)
¹
Compare the scene in
Julius Caesar
,
III, 3:
CINNA
Truly,
my name is Cinna.
A CITIZEN
Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.
CINNA
I am Cinna the poet . . .
I am not Cinna the conspirator.
ANOTHER CITIZEN
. It is no matter, his
name’s Cinna; pluck but
his name out of his heart, and turn him going.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1203
(3) This assertion is very neatly
confirmed by a self-observation of Storfer’s (1914), in which
the author exposes with commendable frankness the motives that
prompted him to recollect the name of a supposed rival wrongly and
then to write it down in a distorted form:
‘In December, 1910, I saw a
book by Dr. Eduard
Hitschmann
in the window of a bookshop in
Zurich. Its subject was Freud’s theory of the neuroses and it
was new at the time. Just then I was at work on the manuscript of a
lecture on the basic principles of Freud’s psychology, which
I was shortly to give before a University society. In the
introductory part of the lecture which I had already written, I had
referred to the historical development of Freud’s psychology
from his researches in an applied field, to certain consequent
difficulties in giving a comprehensive account of its basic
principles, and also to the fact that no general account of them
had yet appeared. When I saw the book (whose author was till then
unknown to me) in the shop window, I did not at first think of
buying it. Some days later, however, I decided to do so. The book
was no longer in the window. I asked the bookseller for it and gave
the author’s name as "Dr Eduard
Hartmann
".
The bookseller corrected me: "I think you mean
Hitschmann
", and brought me the book.
‘The unconscious motive for
the parapraxis was obvious. I had so to speak given myself the
credit for having written a comprehensive account of the basic
principles of psycho-analytic theory, and obviously regarded
Hitschmann’s book with envy and annoyance since it took some
of the credit away from me. I told myself, on the lines of
The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
, that the changing of the name
was an act of unconscious hostility. At the time I was satisfied
with this explanation.
‘Some weeks later I noted
down this parapraxis. On this occasion I raised the further
question of why Eduard Hitschmann had been altered precisely to
Eduard
Hart
mann. Could I have been brought to the name of
the well-known philosopher merely because it was similar to the
other one? My first association was the memory of a pronouncement
which I once heard from Professor Hugo von Meltzl, an enthusiastic
admirer of Schopenhauer, and which ran roughly as follows:
"Eduard von Hartmann is a botched Schopenhauer, a Schopenhauer
turned inside out." The affective trend by which the
substitutive-formation for the forgotten name was determined was
therefore: "No, there will probably not be much in this
Hitschmann and his comprehensive account; he probably stands to
Freud as Hartmann does to Schopenhauer."
‘I had, as I say, noted
down this case of determined forgetting with the forgotten word
replaced by a substitute.
‘Six months later I came
upon the sheet of paper on which I had made the note. I then
observed that instead of Hitschmann I had throughout written
Hintsch
mann.’¹
¹
[‘
Hintsch
’ is a dialect
word for ‘asthma’ or, more generally,
‘pest’.]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1204
(4) Here is what seems to be a
more serious slip of the pen: I might perhaps equally well have
included it among ‘bungled actions’:
I intended to draw the sum of 300
kronen from the Post Office Savings Bank, which I wanted to send to
an absent relative for purposes of medical treatment. At the same
time I noticed that my account stood at 4, 380 kronen and decided
to bring it down on this occasion to the round sum of 4,000 kronen
which was not to be touched in the near future. After I had duly
written out the cheque and cut off the figures corresponding to the
sum, I suddenly noticed that I had not asked for 380 kronen as I
intended, but for exactly 438 kronen and I took alarm at the
unreliability of my conduct. I soon realized that my alarm was not
called for; I was not now any poorer than I had been before. But it
took me a good deal of reflection to discover what influence had
disturbed my first intention, without making itself known to my
consciousness. To begin with I started on the wrong line; I tried
subtracting 380 from 438, but I had no idea afterwards what to do
with the difference. Finally a thought suddenly struck me which
showed me the true connection. Why, 438 was
ten per cent
of
the total account, 4, 380 kronen! Now a ten per cent discount is
given by
booksellers
. I recalled that a few days earlier I
had picked out a number of medical books in which I was no longer
interested in order to offer them to a bookseller for precisely 300
kronen. He thought the price I was asking was too high, and
promised to give me a definite answer within the next few days. If
he accepted my offer he would replace the exact sum which I was to
spend on the invalid. There is no doubt that I regretted this
expenditure. My affect on perceiving my error can be understood
better as a fear of growing poor as a result of such expenditures.
But both these feelings, my regret at the expenditure and my
anxiety over becoming poor that was connected with it, were
entirely foreign to my consciousness; I did not have a feeling of
regret when I promised the sum of money, and would have found the
reason for it laughable. I should probably not have believed myself
in any way capable of such an impulse had I not become fairly
familiar, through my psycho-analytic practice with patients, with
the part played by the repressed in mental life, and had I not had
a dream a few days before which called for the same
solution.¹
¹
This is the one which I took as the
specimen dream in my short work
On Dreams
(1901
a
).
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1205
(5) I quote the following case
from Wilhelm Stekel, and can also vouch for its authenticity:
‘A simply incredible
example of a slip of the pen and misreading occurred in the editing
of a widely-read weekly periodical. The proprietors in question had
been publicly described as "venil"; and an article in
defence and vindication was clearly called for. One was in fact
prepared: it was written with great warmth and feeling. The
editor-in-chief read the article, while the author naturally read
it several times in manuscript and then once more in galley-proof;
everyone was perfectly satisfied. Suddenly the printer’s
reader came forward and pointed out a small mistake which had
escaped everyone’s notice. There it was, plainly enough:
"Our readers will bear witness to the fact that we have always
acted in the most
self-seeking
manner for the good of the
community." It is obvious that it should have read: "in
the most
unself-seeking
manner". But the true thoughts
broke though the emotional statement with elemental
force.’
(6) A reader of the
Pester
Lloyd
, Frau Kata Levy of Budapest, recently came across a
similar unintended display of candour in a telegram from Vienna
which appeared in the paper on October 11, 1918:
‘In view of the complete
mutual confidence which has prevailed between ourselves and our
German allies throughout the war, it may be taken for certain that
the two Powers would reach a unanimous decision in all
circumstances. It is unnecessary to state specifically that active
and
interrupted
co-operation between the allied diplomatists
is taking place at the present stage as well.’
Only a few weeks later it was
possible to express one’s opinion more frankly about this
‘mutual confidence’, and there was no longer any need
to take refuge in a slip of the pen (or misprint).
(7) An American living in Europe
who had left his wife on bad terms felt that he could now effect a
reconciliation with her, and asked her to come across the Atlantic
and join him on a certain date. ‘It would be fine,’ he
wrote, ‘if you could come on the
Mauretania
as I
did.’ He did not however dare to send the sheet of paper
which had this sentence on it. He preferred to write it out again.
For he did not want her to notice how he had had to correct the
name of the ship. He had first written
‘
Lusitania
’.
This slip of the pen needs no
explanation: its interpretation is perfectly plain. But a happy
chance enables a further point to be added. Before the war his wife
paid her first visit to Europe after the death of her only sister.
If I am not mistaken, the
Mauretania
is the surviving
sister-ship of the
Lusitania
, which was sunk in the war.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1206
(8) A doctor had examined a child
and was making out a prescription for it, which included the word
‘
alcohol
’. While he was occupied in doing so the
child’s mother pestered him with stupid and unnecessary
questions. He privately determined not to let this make him angry,
and actually succeeded in keeping his temper, but made a slip of
the pen in the course of the interruptions. Instead of
alcohol
the word
achol
¹ could be read on the
prescription.
(9) The following example, which
Ernest Jones reports about A. A. Brill, has a similar
subject-matter, and I therefore insert it here. Although by custom
a total abstainer, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a friend
to drink a little wine. Next morning an acute headache gave him
cause to regret having yielded in this way. He had occasion to
write the name of a patient called
Ethel
; instead he wrote
Ethyl
.² It was no doubt of some relevance that the lady
in question used to drink more than was good for her.
¹
Approximately: ‘No
choler.’
²
I.e. ethyl alcohol.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1207
(10) Since a slip of the pen on
the part of a doctor who is writing a prescription possesses a
significance which goes far beyond the practical importance of
ordinary parapraxes, I take the opportunity of reporting in full
the only analysis published up to now of such a slip made by a
doctor:
From Dr. Eduard Hitschmann
(1913
b
): ‘A colleague tells me that several times over
a period of years he had made an error in prescribing a certain
drug for women patients of an advanced age. On two occasions he
prescribed ten times the correct dose; only later did he suddenly
realize this and was obliged, in the greatest anxiety in case he
had harmed his patient and put himself in a very unpleasant
position, to take the most hurried steps to recall the
prescription. This singular symptomatic act deserves to be
clarified by a more precise description of the individual instances
and by an analysis.
‘First instance: In
treating a poor woman bordering on extreme old age who was
suffering from spastic constipation the doctor prescribed
belladonna suppositories ten times too strong. He left the
out-patients’ department, and his error suddenly sprang to
his mind about an hour later while he was at home reading the paper
and having lunch; he was overcome by anxiety, rushed first to the
out-patients’ department to obtain the patient’s
address and hastened from there to her home, which was a long way
off. He was delighted to find that the old woman had not yet had
the prescription made up, and he returned home much relieved. The
excuse that he gave himself on this occasion was the not
unjustified one that the talkative head of the out-patients’
department had looked over his shoulder while he was writing the
prescription and had distracted him.
‘Second instance: The
doctor was obliged to tear himself away from a consultation with a
flirtatious and provocatively attractive patient in order to pay a
professional visit to an elderly spinster. He took a taxi, not
having much time to spare for the visit; for he was due to keep a
secret rendezvous with a girl he was in love with, at a certain
time, near her house. Here, too, belladonna was indicated because
of troubles analogous to those in the first instance. Once again he
made the mistake of prescribing a quantity ten times too strong.
The patient raised a question that was of some interest but
irrelevant to the matter in hand; the doctor, however, showed
impatience, though his words denied it, and left the patient, so
that he appeared at the rendezvous in very good time. Some twelve
hours later, at about seven o’clock in the morning, the
doctor woke up; the thought of his slip of the pen and a feeling of
anxiety came almost simultaneously to his consciousness, and he
sent a hasty message to the patient in the hope that the medicine
had not yet been collected from the chemist’s, and asked for
the prescription to be sent back in order to be revised. On
receiving it however he found that the prescription had already
been made up; with a somewhat stoical resignation and an optimism
born of experience he went to the chemist, where the dispenser
reassured him by explaining that he had naturally (or perhaps by
mistake too?) made up the drug in a smaller dose.