Freud - Complete Works (215 page)
¹
Cf. the chapter on the dream-work in my
Interpretation of Dreams
.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1214
The possibility of
‘tendentious misprints’ has been discussed by Herbert
Silberer (1922).
(20) From time to time other
writers have drawn attention to misprints the tendentiousness of
which cannot easily be challenged. See, for example,
Storfer’s paper ‘The Political Demon of
Misprints’ (1914) and his short note (1915) which I reprint
here:
‘A political misprint is to
be found in the issue of März for April 25 of this year. A
dispatch from Argyrokastron reported some remarks made by
Zographos, the leader of the insurgent Epirotes in Albania (or, if
that is preferred, the President of the Independent Government of
the Epirus). It included the following phrase: "Believe me: a
self-governing Epirus would be in the most fundamental interest of
Prince Wied. He could fall down on it." Even without this
fatal misprint the Prince of Albania is no doubt well aware that
the acceptance of the support offered him by the Epirotes would
mean his downfall '.
(21) I myself recently read an
article in one of our Vienna daily papers, the title of which -
‘The Bukovina under
Rumanian
Rule’ - would have
at least to be called premature, since at the time Rumania had not
yet disclosed herself as an enemy. From the content of the article
it was quite clear that the word should have been
‘Russian’, not ‘Rumanian’; yet the censor,
too, seems to have found the phrase so little surprising that even
he overlooked this misprint,
It is hard to avoid suspecting a
‘political’ misprint on coming across the following
‘literal’ misprint in a circular from the celebrated
(formerly the Imperial and Royal) printing firm of Karl Prochaska
in Teschen:
‘By a decree of the Entente
Powers, fixing the frontier at the River Olsa, not only Silesia but
Teschen as well have been divided into two parts, of which one
zuviel
¹ to Poland and the other to
Czecho-Slovakia.’
¹
[‘Too much.’ The word should
have been the similarly pronounced ‘
zufiel
’,
‘fell to the share of’
.
]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1215
Theodor Fontane was once obliged
to take up arms in an amusing way against a misprint which was only
too full of meaning. On March 29, 1860, he wrote to the publisher
Julius Springer:
‘Dear Sir,
‘I seem to be fated
not to see my modest wishes fulfilled. A glance at the proof
sheets¹ which I enclose will tell you what I mean. What is
more, I have been sent only
one
set of proofs, although I
need two, for reasons which I have already given. And my request
that the first set should be returned to me for further revision -
with special regard to the English words and phrases
- has
not been carried out. I set great store by this. For instance, on
page 27 of the present sheets a scene between John Knox and the
Queen contains the words: "worauf Maria aasrief."²
In the face of such a fulminating mistake, it would be a relief to
know that it has really been removed. The unfortunate
"
aas
" for "
aus
" is made all the
worse by there being no doubt that she (the queen) must really have
called him that to herself.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Theodor Fontane.’
Wundt (1900, 374) gives an
explanation which deserves notice for the fact (which can easily be
confirmed) that we make slips of the pen more readily than slips of
the tongue. ‘In the course of normal speaking the inhibitory
function of the will is continuously directed to bringing the
course of ideas and the articulatory movements into harmony with
each other. If the expressive movement which follows the ideas is
retarded through mechanical causes, as is the case in writing . .
., such anticipations make their appearance with particular
ease.’
¹
The book in question was
Beyond the
Tweed: Sketches and Letters from Scotland
, which Julius
Springer published in 1860.
² [‘On which Mary
"
aasrief
"'‘: i. e., cried
‘
Aas
’ (literally, ‘carrion’;
colloquially, ‘filthy blackguard’). The word should
have been ‘
Ausrief
’ meaning simply ‘cried
out’.]
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1216
Observation of the conditions
under which misreadings occur gives rise to a doubt which I should
not like to leave unmentioned, because it can, I think, become the
starting-point for a fruitful investigation. Everyone knows how
frequently the reader finds that in
reading aloud
his
attention wanders from the text and turns to his own thoughts. As a
result of this digression on the part of his attention he is often
unable, if interrupted and questioned, to give any account of what
he has read. He has read, as it were, automatically, but almost
always correctly. I do not think that under such conditions
mistakes in reading show a noticeable increase. There is in fact a
whole series of functions which we are accustomed to assume will be
performed most exactly when done automatically - that is, with
scarcely any conscious attention. From this it seems to follow that
the factor of attention in mistakes in speaking, reading and
writing must be determined in a different way from that described
by Wundt (cessation or diminution of attention). The examples which
we have subjected to analysis have not really justified us in
assuming that there was a quantitative lessening of attention; we
found something which is perhaps not quite the same thing: a
disturbance
of attention by an alien thought which claims
consideration.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1217
Between ‘slips of the
pen’ and ‘forgetting’ may be inserted the case of
someone who forgets to append a signature. An unsigned cheque comes
to the same thing as a forgotten cheque. For the significance of a
forgetting of a similar kind I will cite a passage from a novel,
which Dr. Hanns Sachs came upon:
‘A very instructive and
transparent example of the sureness with which imaginative writers
know how to employ the mechanism of parapraxes and symptomatic acts
in the psycho-analytic sense is contained in John
Galsworthy’s novel
The Island Pharisees
. The story
centres round the vacillations of a young man of the well-to-do
middle-class between his strong social sympathy and the
conventional attitudes of his class. Chapter XXVI portrays the way
in which he reacts to a letter from a young ne’er-do-well, to
whom - prompted by his original attitude to life - he had supplied
help on two or three occasions. The letter contains no direct
request for money, but paints a picture of great distress which can
have no other meaning. Its recipient at first rejects the idea of
throwing this money away on a hopeless case instead of using it to
support charitable causes. "To give a helping hand, a bit of
himself, a nod of fellowship to any fellow-being irrespective of a
claim, merely because he happened to be down, was sentimental
nonsense! The line must be drawn! But in the muttering of this
conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty. ‘Humbug! You
don’t want to part with your money, that’s
all!’"
‘Thereupon he wrote a
friendly letter, ending with the words: "I enclose a cheque.
Yours sincerely, Richard Shelton."
‘"Before he had
written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the candle
distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and put it
out he had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed." The
letter was posted in fact just as it was.
‘There is however an even
subtler motivation for the lapse of memory than the break-through
of the selfish purpose, which, had apparently been surmounted, of
avoiding giving away the money.
‘At the country seat of his
future parents-in-law, surrounded by his fiancée, her family
and their guests, Shelton felt isolated; his parapraxis indicates
that he longed for his protégé who, as a result of
his past and of his view of life, forms a complete contrast to the
irreproachable company, uniformly moulded by one and the same set
of conventions, that surround him. And in fact this person, who can
no longer keep his place without being supported, does in fact
arrive some days later to get an explanation of why the promised
cheque was not there.’
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1218
CHAPTER VII
THE
FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS AND INTENTIONS
If anyone should feel inclined to
over-estimate the state of our present knowledge of mental life, a
reminder of the function of memory is all that would be needed to
force him to be more modest. No psychological theory has yet
succeeded in giving a connected account of the fundamental
phenomenon of remembering and forgetting; in fact, the complete
analysis of what can actually be observed has so far scarcely been
begun. To-day forgetting has perhaps become more of a puzzle than
remembering, ever since we have learnt from the study of dreams and
pathological phenomena that even something we thought had been
forgotten long ago may suddenly re-emerge in consciousness.
There are, it is true, a few
indications already in our possession which we expect to be
accepted generally. We assume that forgetting is a spontaneous
process which may be regarded as requiring a certain length of
time. We lay stress on the fact that forgetting involves a certain
selection taking place from among the impressions presented to us,
and similarly from among the details of each impression or
experience. We know some of the conditions enabling what would
otherwise have been forgotten to be retained in the memory and to
be re-awakened. Nevertheless, on countless occasions in daily life
we can observe how imperfect and unsatisfactory our understanding
of these conditions is. Thus we may listen to two people who were
in receipt of the same external impressions - who took a journey
together, for example - exchanging recollections at some later
date. What has remained firm in the memory of one of them has often
been forgotten by the other, as if it had never happened; and this
is true even where there is no justification for assuming that the
impression was psychically of greater importance for the one than
for the other. A whole quantity of factors determining the choice
of what is to be remembered are obviously still beyond our ken.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1219
With the aim of making a small
contribution to our knowledge of the determinants of forgetting I
make it my practice to submit to a psychological analysis those
cases in which I myself forget something. I am as a rule only
concerned with a certain group of these cases, namely those in
which the forgetting surprises me because I should have expected to
know the thing in question. I may add that I am not in general
inclined to forget things (things I have experienced, that is, not
things I have learned!), and that for a short period of my youth
some unusual feats of memory were not beyond me. When I was a
schoolboy I took it as a matter of course that I could repeat by
heart the page I had been reading; and shortly before I entered the
University I could write down almost verbatim popular Iectures on
scientific subjects directly after hearing them. In the period of
tension before my final medical examination I must have made use
once more of what remained of this faculty, for in some subjects I
gave the examiners, as though it were automatically, answers which
faithfully followed the words of the textbook that I had skimmed
through only once in the greatest haste.
Since then the command that I
have over my store of memories has steadily deteriorated; yet right
up to the most recent times I have convinced myself over and over
again that with the aid of a certain device I can remember far more
than I would otherwise have believed possible. When, for instance,
a patient in my consulting hour claims that I have seen him before
and I can recall neither the fact nor the time, I help myself by
guessing: that is to say, I quickly think of a number of years,
counting back from the present. In cases where records or more
definite information from the patient enable me to check what has
come to my mind, they show that I have rarely been more than half a
year out in ten.¹ I have a similar experience when I meet a
distant acquaintance and out of politeness enquire after his small
children. If he describes their progress I try to think at random
of the child’s present age. I afterwards check my estimate by
what the father tells me; and at the most I am wrong by a month, or
with older children by three months, although I am unable to say on
what my estimate was based. I have latterly grown so bold that I
always produce my estimate spontaneously without running any risk
of offending the father by exposing my ignorance about his
offspring. In this way I extend my conscious memory by invoking my
unconscious memory, which is in any case far more extensive.
¹
In the course of the subsequent
consultation the details of the previous visit usually emerge into
my consciousness.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1220
I shall accordingly cite some
striking
examples of forgetting: most of which I observed in
myself. I distinguish the forgetting of impressions and experiences
- ie., of knowledge - from the forgetting of intentions - i.e.,
from omission to do things. I can state in advance the invariable
result of the entire series of observations:
in every case the
forgetting turned out to be based on a motive of
unpleasure
.
(A)
THE FORGETTING OF IMPRESSIONS AND
KNOWLEDGE
(1) One summer holiday my wife
made me greatly annoyed though the cause was innocent enough. We
were sitting at table d’hôte opposite a gentleman from
Vienna whom I knew and who no doubt remembered me too. However, I
had reasons of my own for not renewing the acquaintance. My wife,
who had heard no more than his distinguished name, revealed too
plainly that she was listening to his conversation with his
neighbours, for from time to time she turned to me with questions
that took up the thread of their discussion. I became impatient and
finally irritated. Some weeks later I was complaining to a relative
about this behaviour on my wife’s part but was unable to
recall a single word of the gentleman’s conversation. As I am
normally rather apt to harbour grievances and can forget no detail
of an incident that has annoyed me, my amnesia in the present case
was probably motivated by consideration for my wife. A short time
ago I had a similar experience. I wished to have a good laugh with
an intimate friend over a remark made by my wife only a few hours
before, but was prevented from doing so by the singular fact that I
had utterly forgotten what she had said. I had first to ask my wife
to remind me what it was. It is easy to understand my forgetfulness
here as being analogous to the typical disturbance of judgement to
which we are subject where those nearest to us are concerned.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1221
(2) I had undertaken to get a
lady who was a stranger to Vienna a small strong-box for her
documents and money. When I offered my services I had in my
mind’s eye an unusually vivid picture of a shop-window in the
Inner Town in which I was sure I had seen boxes of the kind. I
could not, it was true, recall the name of the street, but I felt
sure that I would find the shop if I walked through the town, since
my memory told me I had passed it on countless occasions. To my
chagrin I had no success in finding the shop-window with the
strong-boxes, though I walked all over the Inner Town in every
direction. I decided that the only course left was to look up the
firms of safe-manufacturers in a trades directory, so as to be able
to identify the shop on a second walk round the town. Such extreme
measures, however, did not prove necessary; among the addresses
given in the directory was one which I immediately recognized as
the one I had forgotten. It was true that I had passed the
shop-window innumerable times - every time, in fact, that I had
visited the M. family, who have lived for many years in the same
building. Our intimate friendship later gave place to a total
estrangement; after that, I fell into the habit - the reasons for
which I never considered - of also avoiding the neighbourhood and
the house. On my walk through the town in search of the shop-window
with the strong-boxes I had passed through every street in the
district but this one, which I had avoided as if it were forbidden
territory. The motive of unpleasure responsible in the present case
for my failure to find my way is easy to recognize. The mechanism
of forgetting, however, is not so simple here as in the preceding
example. My aversion naturally applied not to the safe-manufacturer
but to another person, whom I did not want to think about; and from
this latter person it was then transferred to this occasion where
it produced the forgetting. The case of
‘Burckhard’ was very similar; my grudge against
one person of this name induced me to make a slip in writing the
same name when it referred to someone else. The part there played
by identity of name in establishing a connection between two
essentially different groups of thoughts was able to be replaced in
the example of the shop-window by spatial contiguity, inseparable
proximity. This latter case was, incidentally, more firmly knit;
there was a second connection there, one involving its
subject-matter, for money played a part among the reasons for my
estrangement from the family living in the building.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1222
(3) I was requested by the firm
of B. and R. to pay a professional visit to one of their staff. On
my way there I was possessed by the thought that I must repeatedly
have been in the building where their firm had its premises. It was
as if I had noticed their plate on a lower storey while I was
paying a professional visit on a higher one. I could however recall
neither what house it was nor whom I had visited there. Although
the whole matter was of no importance or consequence, I
nevertheless turned my mind to it and finally discovered in my
usual roundabout way, by collecting the thoughts that occurred to
me in connection with it, that the premises of the firm of B. and
R. were on the floor below the Pension Fischer, where I have
frequently visited patients. At the same time I also recalled the
building that housed the offices and the pension. It was still a
puzzle to me what motive was at work in this forgetting. I found
nothing offensive to my memory in the firm itself or in the Pension
Fischer or the patients who lived there. Moreover, I suspected that
nothing very distressing could be involved; otherwise I would
hardly have succeeded in recovering in a roundabout way what I had
forgotten, without resorting to external assistance as I had in the
previous example. It finally occurred to me that while I was
actually on my way to this new patient, a gentleman whom I had
difficulty in recognizing had greeted me in the street. I had seen
this man some months before in an apparently grave condition and
had passed sentence on him with a diagnosis of progressive
paralysis; but later I heard he had recovered, so that my judgement
must have been wrong. Unless, that is, there had been a remission
of the type that is also found in dementia paralytica - in which
case my diagnosis would be justified after all! The influence that
made me forget where the offices of B. and R. were came from my
meeting with this person, and my interest in solving the problem of
what I had forgotten was transferred to it from this case of
disputed diagnosis. But the associative link (for there was only a
slender internal connection - the man who recovered contrary to
expectation was also an official in a large firm which used to
recommend patients to me) was provided by an identity of names. The
physician with whom I had seen the supposed case of paralysis was
also called Fischer, like the pension which was in the building and
which I had forgotten.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1223
(4) Mislaying something is really
the same as forgetting where it has been put. Like most people who
are occupied with writing and books I know my way about on my
writing-table and can lay my hands straight away on what I want.
What appears to other people as disorder is for me order with a
history behind it. Why, then, did I recently mislay a
book-catalogue, which had been sent to me, so that it was
impossible to find it? I had in fact intended to order a book,
Über die Sprache
, which was advertised in it, since it
was by an author whose witty and lively style I like and whose
insight in psychology and knowledge of the history of civilization
I have learnt to value. I believe that this is precisely why I
mislaid the catalogue. For it is my habit to lend books by this
author to my acquaintances for their enlightenment, and a few days
previously one of them had remarked as he returned a copy:
‘His style reminds me very much of your own, and his way of
thinking, too, is the same as yours.’ The speaker did not
know what he was touching on by that remark. Years before, when I
was younger and in greater need of outside contacts, an elder
colleague to whom I had praised the writings of a well-known
medical author had made almost the same comment: ‘It’s
just your style and your manner.’ Prompted by this remark I
had written a letter to the author seeking closer relations with
him, but had been put in my place by a chilly answer. Perhaps still
earlier discouraging experiences as well lie concealed behind this
one, for I never found the mislaid catalogue and was in fact
deterred by this omen from ordering the advertised book, although
the disappearance of the catalogue formed no real hindrance since I
could remember the names of both book and author.