Freud - Complete Works (220 page)

   (
c
) For many years a
reflex hammer and a tuning fork have been lying side by side on my
writing table. One day I left in a hurry at the end of my
consulting hour as I wanted to catch a particular suburban train;
and in broad daylight I put the tuning fork in my coat pocket
instead of the hammer. The weight of the object pulling down my
pocket drew my attention to my mistake. Anyone who is not in the
habit of giving consideration to such minor occurrences will
doubtless explain and excuse the mistake by pointing to the haste
of the moment. Nevertheless I preferred to ask myself the question
why it actually was that I took the tuning fork instead of the
hammer. My haste could just as well have been a motive for picking
up the right object so as not to have to waste time in correcting
my mistake.

   ‘Who was the last person to
take hold of the tuning fork?’ was the question that sprang
to my mind at that point. It was an
imbecile
child, whom I
had been testing some days before for his attention to sensory
impressions; and he had been so fascinated by the tuning fork that
I had had some difficulty in tearing it away from him. Could the
meaning be, then, that I was an imbecile? It certainly seemed so,
for my first association to ‘hammer’ was
‘
Chamer
’ (Hebrew for ‘ass’).

  
¹
[The German ‘
versteigen
’
would, on the analogy of ‘
verlesen
’,
‘
verschreiben
’, etc., mean ‘to
mis-climb’; but its normal meaning is ‘to climb too
high’ or, figuratively, ‘to over-reach
oneself’.]

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1246

   But why this abusive language? At
this point we must look into the situation. I was hurrying to a
consultation at a place on the Western railway line, to visit a
patient who, according to the anamnesis I had received by letter,
had fallen from a balcony some months earlier and had since then
been unable to walk. The doctor who called me in wrote that he was
nevertheless uncertain whether it was a case of spinal injury or of
a traumatic neurosis - hysteria. That was what I was now to decide.
It would therefore be advisable for me to be particularly wary in
the delicate task of making a differential diagnosis. As it is, my
colleagues are of the opinion that I make a diagnosis of hysteria
far too carelessly where graver things are in question. But so far
this did not justify the abusive language. Why, of course! it now
occurred to me that the little railway station was at the same
place at which some years before I had seen a young man who had not
been able to walk properly after an emotional experience. At the
time I made a diagnosis of hysteria and I subsequently took the
patient on for psychical treatment. It then turned out that though
my diagnosis had not, it is true, been incorrect, it had not been
correct either. A whole number of the patient’s symptoms had
been hysterical, and they rapidly disappeared in the course of
treatment. But behind these a remnant now became visible which was
inaccessible to my therapy; this remnant could only be accounted
for by multiple sclerosis. It was easy for those who saw the
patient after me to recognize the organic affection. I could hardly
have behaved otherwise or formed a different judgement, yet the
impression left was that a grave error had been made; the promise
of a cure which I had given him could naturally not be kept.

   The error of picking up the
tuning fork instead of the hammer could thus be translated into
words as follows; ‘You idiot! you ass! Pull yourself together
this time, and see that you don’t diagnose hysteria again
where there’s an incurable illness, as you did years ago with
the poor man from that same place!’ And fortunately for this
little analysis, if not fortunately for my mood, the same man,
suffering from severe spastic paralysis, had visited me during my
consulting hour a few days before, and a day after the imbecile
child.

   It will be observed that this
time it was the voice of self-criticism which was making itself
heard in the bungled action. A bungled action is quite specially
suitable for use in this way as a self-reproach: the present
mistake seeks to represent the mistake that has been committed
elsewhere.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1247

   (
d
) Bungled actions can,
of course, also serve a whole number of other obscure purposes.
Here is a first example. It is very rare for me to break anything.
I am not particularly dextrous but a result of the anatomical
integrity of my nerve-muscle apparatus is that there are clearly no
grounds for my making clumsy movements of this kind, with their
unwelcome consequences. I cannot therefore recall any object in my
house that I have ever broken. Shortage of space in my study has
often forced me to handle a number of pottery and stone antiquities
(of which I have a small collection) in the most uncomfortable
positions, so that onlookers have expressed anxiety that I should
knock something down and break it. That however has never happened.
Why then did I once dash the marble cover of my plain inkpot to the
ground so that it broke?

   My inkstand is made out of a flat
piece of Untersberg marble which is hollowed out to receive the
glass inkpot; and the inkpot has a cover with a knob made of the
same stone. Behind this inkstand there is a ring of bronze
statuettes and terra cotta figures. I sat down at the desk to
write, and then moved the hand that was holding the pen-holder
forward in a remarkably clumsy way, sweeping on to the floor the
inkpot cover which was lying on the desk at the time.

   The explanation was not hard to
find. Some hours before, my sister had been in the room to inspect
some new acquisitions. She admired them very much, and then
remarked: ‘Your writing table looks really attractive now;
only the inkstand doesn’t match. You must get a nicer
one.’ I went out with my sister and did not return for some
hours. But when I did I carried out, so it seems, the execution of
the condemned inkstand. Did I perhaps conclude from my
sister’s remark that she intended to make me a present of a
nicer inkstand on the next festive occasion, and did I smash the
unlovely old one so as to force her to carry out the intention she
had hinted at? If that is so, my sweeping movement was only
apparently clumsy; in reality it was exceedingly adroit and
well-directed, and understood how to avoid damaging any of the more
precious objects that stood around.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1248

   It is in fact my belief that we
must accept this judgement for a whole series of seemingly
accidental clumsy movements. It is true that they make a show of
something violent and sweeping, like a spastic-atactic movement,
but they prove to be governed by an intention and achieve their aim
with a certainty which cannot in general be credited to our
conscious voluntary movements. Moreover they have both features -
their violence and their unerring aim - in common with the motor
manifestations of the hysterical neurosis, and partly, too, with
the motor performances of somnambulism. This fact indicates that
both in these cases and in the movements under consideration the
same unknown modification of the innervatory process is
present.

   Another self-observation,
reported by Frau Lou Andreas-Salomé, may give a convincing
demonstration of how obstinate persistence in an act of
‘clumsiness’ serves unavowed purposes in a far from
clumsy way:

   ‘Just at the time when milk
had become scarce and expensive I found that I let it boil over
time and time again, to my constant horror and vexation. My efforts
to get the better of this were unsuccessful, though I cannot by any
means say that on other occasions I have proved absent minded or
inattentive. I should have had more reason to be so after the death
of my dear white terrier (who deserved his name of
"Druzhok" - the Russian for "Friend" - as much
as any human being ever did). But - lo and behold! - never since
his death has even a drop of milk boiled over. My first thought
about this ran: "That’s lucky, for the milk spilt over
on to the hearth or floor wouldn’t even be of any use!"
And in the same moment I saw my "Friend" before my eyes,
sitting eagerly watching the cooking, his head cocked a little to
one side, his tail wagging expectantly, waiting in trustful
confidence for the splendid mishap that was about to occur. And now
everything was clear to me, and I realized too that I had been even
more
fond of him than I myself was aware.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1249

   In the last few years, during
which I have been collecting such observations, I have had a few
more experiences of smashing or breaking objects of some value, but
the investigation of these cases has convinced me that they were
never the result of chance or of unintentional clumsiness on my
part. One morning, for example, when I was passing through a room
in my dressing-gown with straw slippers on my feet, I yielded to a
sudden impulse and hurled one of my slippers from my foot at the
wall, causing a beautiful little marble Venus to fall down from its
bracket. As it broke into pieces, I quoted quite unmoved these
lines from Busch:

                                                               
‘Ach! die Venus ist perdü -

                                                               
Klickeradoms! - von Medici!’
¹

   This wild conduct and my calm
acceptance of the damage are to be explained in terms of the
situation at the time. One of my family was gravely ill, and
secretly I had already given up hope of her recovery. That morning
I had learned that there had been a great improvement, and I know I
had said to myself: ‘So she’s going to live after
all!’ My attack of destructive fury served therefore to
express a feeling of gratitude to fate and allowed me to perform a
‘
sacrificial act
’ - rather as if I had made a
vow to sacrifice something or other as a thank-offering if she
recovered her health! The choice of the Venus of Medici for this
sacrifice was clearly only a gallant act of homage towards the
convalescent; but even now it is a mystery to me how I made up my
mind so quickly, aimed so accurately and avoided hitting anything
else among the objects so close to it.

   Another case of breaking
something, for which I once again made use of a pen-holder that
slipped from my hand, likewise had the significance of a sacrifice;
but on this occasion it took the form of a propitiatory sacrifice
to avert evil. I had once seen fit to reproach a loyal and
deserving friend on no other grounds than the interpretation I
placed on certain indications coming from his unconscious. He was
offended and wrote me a letter asking me not to treat my friends
psycho-analytically. I had to admit he was in the right, and wrote
him a reply to pacify him. While I was writing this letter I had in
front of me my latest acquisition, a handsome glazed Egyptian
figure. I broke it in the way I have described, and then
immediately realized that I had caused this mischief in order to
avert a greater one. Luckily it was possible to cement both of them
together - the friendship as well as the figure - so that the break
would not be noticed.

  
¹
[‘Oh! the Venus! Lost is
she!

      
Klickeradoms! of Medici!’]

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1250

   A third breakage was connected
with less serious matters; it was only the disguised
‘execution’ - to borrow an expression from
Vischer’s
Auch Einer
- of an object which no longer
enjoyed my favour. For some time I used to carry a stick with a
silver handle. On one occasion the thin metal got damaged, through
no fault of mine, and was badly repaired. Soon after the stick came
back, I used the handle in a mischievous attempt to catch one of my
children by the leg - with the natural result that it broke, and I
was thus rid of it.

   The equanimity with which we
accept the resulting damage in all these cases can no doubt be
taken as evidence that there is an unconscious purpose behind the
performance of these particular actions.

   In investigating the reasons for
the occurrence of even so trivial a parapraxis as the breaking of
an object, one is liable to come across connections which, besides
relating to a person’s present situation, lead deep into his
prehistory. The following analysis by Jekels (1913) may serve as an
example:

   ‘A doctor had in his
possession an earthenware flower vase which, though not valuable,
was of great beauty. It was among the many presents - including
objects of value - which had been sent to him in the past by a
(married) woman patient. When a psychosis became manifest in her,
he restored all the presents to her relatives - except for this far
less expensive vase, with which he could not bear to part,
ostensibly because it was so beautiful. But this embezzlement cost
a man of his scrupulousness a considerable internal struggle. He
was fully aware of the impropriety of his action, and only managed
to overcome his pangs of conscience by telling himself that the
vase was not in fact of any real value, that it was too awkward to
pack, etc. - Some months later he was on the point of getting a
lawyer to claim and recover the arrears (which were in dispute) of
the fees for the treatment of this same patient. Once again the
self-reproaches made their appearance; and he suffered some
momentary anxiety in case the relatives discovered what could be
called his embezzlement and brought it against him during the legal
proceedings. For a while indeed the first factor (his
self-reproaches) was so strong that he actually thought of
renouncing all claims on a sum of perhaps a hundred times the value
of the vase - a compensation, as it were, for the object he had
appropriated. However, he at once got the better of the notion and
set it aside as absurd.