Freud - Complete Works (221 page)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1251

   ‘While he was still in this
mood he happened to be putting some fresh water in the vase; and
despite the extreme infrequency with which he broke anything and
the good control that he had over his muscular apparatus, he made
an extraordinarily "clumsy" movement - one that was not
in the least organically related to the action he was carrying out
- which knocked the vase off the table, so that it broke into some
five or six largish pieces. What is more, this was after he had
made up his mind on the previous evening, though not without
considerable hesitation, to put precisely this vase, filled with
flowers, on the dining-room table before his guests. He had
remembered it only just before it got broken, had noticed with
anxiety that it was not in his living-room and had himself brought
it in from the other room. After his first moments of dismay he
picked up the pieces and by putting them together was just deciding
that it would still be possible to make an almost complete repair
of the vase, when the two or three larger fragments slipped from
his hand; they broke into a thousand splinters, and with that
vanished all hope for the vase.

   ‘There is no doubt that
this parapraxis had the current purpose of assisting the doctor in
his law-suit, by getting rid of something which he had kept back
and which to some extent prevented his claiming what had been kept
back from him.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1252

   ‘But apart from this direct
determinant, every psycho-analyst will see in the parapraxis a
further and much deeper and more important
symbolic
determinant; for a vase is an unmistakable symbol of a woman.

   ‘The hero of this little
story had lost his young, beautiful and dearly-loved wife in a
tragic manner. He fell ill of a neurosis whose main theme was that
he was to blame for the misfortune ("he had broken a lovely
vase"). Moreover, he had no further relations with women and
took a dislike to marriage and lasting love-relationships, which
unconsciously he thought of as being unfaithful to his dead wife
but which he consciously rationalized in the idea that he brought
misfortune to women, that a woman might kill herself on his
account, etc. (Hence his natural reluctance to keep the vase
permanently!)

   ‘In view of the strength of
his libido it is therefore not surprising that the most adequate
relationships appeared to him to be those - transient from their
very nature - with married women (hence his keeping back of another
person’s vase).

   ‘This symbolism is neatly
confirmed by the two following factors. Because of his neurosis he
entered psycho-analytic treatment. In the course of the session in
which he gave an account of breaking the "earthenware"
vase, he happened much later to be talking once more about his
relations with women and said he thought he was quite unreasonably
hard to please; thus for example he required women to have
"unearthly beauty". This is surely a very clear
indication that he was still dependent on his (dead, i. e.,
unearthly) wife and wanted to have nothing to do with "earthly
beauty"; hence the breaking of the earthenware
("earthly") vase.

   ‘And at the exact time when
in the transference he formed a phantasy of marrying his
physician’s daughter, he made him a present of a vase, as
though to drop a hint of the sort of return present he would like
to have.

   ‘Probably the symbolic
meaning of the parapraxis admits of a number of further variations
- for example, his not wanting to fill the vase, etc. What strikes
me, however, as more interesting is the consideration that the
presence of several, at the least of two, motives (which probably
operated separately out of the preconscious and the unconscious) is
reflected in the doubling of the parapraxis - his knocking over the
vase and then letting it fall from his hands.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1253

   (
e
) Dropping, knocking
over and breaking objects are acts which seem to be used very often
to express unconscious trains of thought, as analysis can
occasionally demonstrate, but as may more frequently be guessed
from the superstitious or facetious interpretations popularly
connected with them. The interpretations attached to salt being
spilt, a wine-glass being knocked over, a dropped knife sticking in
the ground, etc., are well known. I shall not discuss till later
the question of what claims such superstitious interpretations have
to being taken seriously. Here I need only remark that individual
clumsy actions do not by any means always have the same meaning,
but serve as a method of representing one purpose or another
according to circumstances.

   Recently we passed through a
period in my house during which an unusually large amount of glass
and china crockery was broken; I myself was responsible for some of
the damage. But the little psychical epidemic could easily be
explained: these were the days before my eldest daughter’s
wedding. On such festive occasions it used to be the custom
deliberately to break some utensil and at the same time utter a
phrase to bring good luck. This custom may have the significance of
a sacrifice and it may have another symbolic meaning as well.

   When servants drop fragile
articles and so destroy them, our first thought is certainly not of
a psychological explanation, yet it is not unlikely that here, too,
obscure motives play their part. Nothing is more foreign to
uneducated people than an appreciation of art and works of art. Our
servants are dominated by a mute hostility towards the
manifestations of art, especially when the objects (whose value
they do not understand) become a source of work for them. On the
other hand people of the same education and origin often show great
dexterity and reliability in handling delicate objects in
scientific institutions, once they have begun to identify
themselves with their chief and to consider themselves an essential
part of the staff.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1254

   I insert here a communication
from a young technician which gives us some insight into the
mechanism of a case of material damage:

   ‘Some time ago I worked
with several fellow-students in the laboratory of the technical
college on a series of complicated experiments in elasticity, a
piece of work which we had undertaken voluntarily but which was
beginning to take up more time than we had expected. One day as I
returned to the laboratory with my friend F., he remarked how
annoying it was to him to lose so much time on that particular day
as he had so much else to do at home. I could not help agreeing
with him and added half jokingly, referring to an incident the week
before: "Let us hope that the machine will go wrong again so
that we can stop work and go home early." - In arranging the
work it happened that F. was given the regulation of the valve of
the press; that is to say, he was, by cautiously opening the valve,
to let the fluid under pressure flow slowly out of the accumulator
into the cylinder of the hydraulic press. The man conducting the
experiment stood by the manometer and when the right pressure was
reached called out a loud "stop!". At the word of command
F. seized the valve and turned it with all his might - to the left!
(All valves without exception are closed by being turned to the
right.) This caused the full pressure of the accumulator to come
suddenly on to the press, a strain for which the connecting-pipes
are not designed, so that one of them immediately burst - quite a
harmless accident to the machine, but enough to oblige us to
suspend work for the day and go home. - It is characteristic, by
the way, that when we were discussing the affair some time later my
friend F. had no recollection whatever of my remark, which I
recalled with certainty.’

   Similarly, falling, stumbling and
slipping need not always be interpreted as purely accidental
miscarriages of motor actions. The double meanings that language
attaches to these expressions are enough to indicate the kind of
phantasies involved, which can be represented by such losses of
bodily equilibrium. I can recall a number of fairly mild nervous
illnesses in women and girls which set in after a fall not
accompanied by any injury, and which were taken to be traumatic
hysterias resulting from the shock of the fall. Even at that time I
had an impression that these events were differently connected and
that the fall was already a product of the neurosis and expressed
the same unconscious phantasies with a sexual content, which could
be assumed to be the forces operating behind the symptoms. Is not
the same thing meant by a proverb which runs: ‘When a girl
falls she falls on her back’?

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1255

   We can also count as bungled
actions cases of giving a beggar a gold piece instead of a copper
or small silver coin. The explanation of such mistakes is easy.
They are sacrificial acts designed to appease fate, to avert harm,
and so on. If a devoted mother or aunt, directly before going for a
walk in the course of which she displays unwilling generosity of
this kind, is heard to express concern over a child’s health,
we can have no more doubts about the meaning of the apparently
disagreeable accident. In this way our parapraxes make it possible
for us to practise all those pious and superstitious customs that
must shun the light of consciousness owing to opposition from our
reason, which has now grown sceptical.

   (
f
) There is no sphere in
which the view that accidental actions are really intentional will
command a more ready belief than that of sexual activity, where the
border line between the two possibilities seems really to be a
faint one. A good example from my own experience of a few years ago
shows how an apparently clumsy movement can be most cunningly used
for sexual purposes. In the house of some friends I met a young
girl who was staying there as a guest and who aroused a feeling of
pleasure in me which I had long thought was extinct. As a result I
was in a jovial, talkative and obliging mood. At the time I also
endeavoured to discover how this came about; a year before, the
same girl had made no impression on me. As the girl’s uncle,
a very old gentleman, entered the room, we both jumped to our feet
to bring him a chair that was standing in the corner. She was
nimbler than I was and, I think, nearer to the object; so she took
hold of the chair first and carried it in front of her with its
back towards her, gripping the sides of the seat with both hands.
As I got there later, but still stuck to my intention of carrying
the chair, I suddenly found myself standing directly behind her,
and throwing my arms round her from behind; and for a moment my
hands met in front of her waist. I naturally got out of the
situation as rapidly as it had arisen. Nor does it seem to have
struck anyone how dextrously I had taken advantage of this clumsy
movement.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1256

   Occasionally, too, I have had to
tell myself that the irritating and clumsy process of dodging
someone in the street, when for several seconds one steps first to
one side and then to the other, but always to the same side as the
other person, till finally one comes to a standstill face to face
with him (or her) - this ‘getting in someone’s
way’, I have had to tell myself, is once more a repetition of
an improper and provocative piece of behaviour from earlier times
and, behind a mask of clumsiness, pursues sexual aims. I know from
my psycho-analyses of neurotics that what is described as the
naïveté
of young people and children is
frequently only a mask of this sort, employed so that they may be
able to say or do something improper without feeling
embarrassed.

   Wilhelm Stekel has reported very
similar self-observations. ‘I entered a house and offered my
right hand to my hostess. In a most curious way I contrived in
doing so to undo the bow that held her loose morning-gown together.
I was conscious of no dishonourable intention; yet I carried out
this clumsy movement with the dexterity of a conjurer.’

   I have already been able again
and again to produce evidence that creative writers think of
parapraxes as having a meaning and a motive, just as I am arguing
here. We shall not be surprised, therefore, to see from a fresh
example how a writer invests a clumsy movement with significance,
too, and makes it foreshadow later events.

   Here is a passage from Theodor
Fontane’s novel
L’Adultera
‘    
  Melanie jumped up and threw one of the large balls to her
husband as though in greeting. But her aim was not straight, the
ball flew to one side and Rubehn caught it.’ On the return
from the outing that led to this little episode a conversation
between Melanie and Rubehn takes place which reveals the first
signs of a budding affection. This affection blossoms into passion,
so that Melanie finally leaves her husband and gives herself
entirely to the man she loves. (Communicated by H. Sachs.)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1257

   (
g
) The effects produced
by the parapraxes of normal people are as a rule of the most
harmless kind. Precisely for this reason it is an especially
interesting question whether mistakes of considerable importance
which may be followed by serious consequences - for example,
mistakes made by a doctor or a chemist -(are in any way open to the
approach presented here.