Freud - Complete Works (223 page)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1263

   Another analysis of an apparently
accidental self-inflicted injury, which its observer (Van Emden,
1911) has passed on to me, recalls the proverb: ‘He who digs
a pit for others falls in it himself.’

   ‘Frau X., who comes of a
good middle-class family, is married with three children. She
suffers from her nerves, it is true, but has never needed any
energetic treatment as she is sufficiently able to cope with life.
One day she incurred a facial disfigurement which was somewhat
striking at the time though it was only temporary. It happened as
follows. She stumbled on a heap of stones in a street under repair
and struck her face against the wall of a house. The whole of her
face was scratched; her eyelids became blue and oedematous and as
she was afraid that something might happen to her eyes she had the
doctor called in. After she had been reassured on that score, I
asked her: ‘But why did you in fact fall in that way?’
She replied that, directly before this, she had warned her husband,
who had been suffering for some months from a joint affection and
therefore had difficulty in walking, to take great care in that
street, and it had been a fairly frequent experience of hers to
find in cases of the kind that in some remarkable way the very
thing happened to her that she had warned someone else against.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1264

   ‘I was not satisfied that
this was what had determined her accident and asked if perhaps she
had something more to tell me. Yes, just before the accident she
had seen an attractive picture in a shop on the other side of the
street; she had quite suddenly desired it as an ornament for the
nursery and therefore wanted to buy it immediately. She walked
straight towards the shop, without looking at the ground, stumbled
over the heap of stones and in falling struck her face against the
wall of the house without making even the slightest attempt to
shield herself with her hands. The intention of buying the picture
was immediately forgotten and she returned home as fast as
possible. - "But why didn’t you keep a better
look-out?" I asked. "Well," she answered,
"perhaps it was a
punishment
- on account of that
episode I told you about in confidence." - "Has it gone
on worrying you so much then?" - "Yes - I regretted it
very much afterwards; I considered myself wicked, criminal and
immoral, but at the time I was almost crazy with my
nerves."

   ‘The reference was to an
abortion which she had had carried out with her husband’s
consent, as, owing to their financial circumstances, the couple did
not wish to be blessed with any further children. This abortion had
been started by a woman quack but had had to be completed by a
specialist.

   ‘"I often reproach
myself by thinking ‘You really had your child killed’
and I was afraid such a thing couldn’t go unpunished. Now
that you’ve assured me there’s nothing wrong with my
eyes, my mind’s quite at rest: I’ve been
sufficiently punished
now in any case."

   ‘This accident was
therefore a self-punishment, firstly to atone for her crime, but
secondly also to escape from an unknown punishment of perhaps much
greater severity of which she had been in continual dread for
months. In the moment that she dashed towards the shop to buy the
picture, the memory of the whole episode with all its fears, which
had already been fairly strongly active in her unconscious when she
had warned her husband, became overwhelming and might perhaps have
been expressed in some words like these: "Why do
you
need an ornament for the nursery? - you had your child destroyed!
You’re a murderess. The great punishment’s just coming
down on you for certain!"

   ‘This thought did not
become conscious; but instead of it she used the situation, at what
I might call this psychological moment, for punishing herself
unobtrusively with the help of the heap of stones which seemed
suitable for the purpose. This is the reason why she did not even
put out her hands as she fell and also why she was not seriously
frightened. The second and probably less important determinant of
her accident was no doubt self-punishment for her
unconscious
wish to be rid of her husband, who,
incidentally, had been an accomplice in the crime. This wish was
betrayed by her entirely superfluous warning to him to keep an eye
open for the heap of stones in the street, since her husband walked
with great care precisely because he was bad on his
legs.’¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] A
correspondent writes to me as follows on the subject of
‘self-punishment by means of parapraxes’: ‘If one
studies the way people behave in the street one has a chance of
seeing how often men who turn round to look back at passing women -
not an unusual habit - meet with a minor accident. Sometimes they
will sprain an ankle - on a level pavement; sometimes they will
bump into a lamp post or hurt themselves in some other
way.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1265

   When the details of the case are
considered one will also be likely to feel that Stärcke (1916)
is right in regarding an apparently accidental self-injury by
burning as a ‘sacrificial act’:

   ‘A lady whose son-in-law
had to leave for Germany for military service scalded her foot in
the following circumstances. Her daughter was expecting her
confinement soon and reflections on the perils of war naturally did
not put the family into a very cheerful mood. The day before his
departure she had asked her son-in-law and daughter in for a meal.
She herself prepared the meal in the kitchen after having first -
strangely enough - changed her high, laced boots with
arch-supports, which were comfortable for walking and which she
usually wore indoors as well, for a pair of her husband’s
slippers that were too large and were open at the top. While taking
a large pan of boiling soup off the fire she dropped it and in this
way scalded one foot fairly badly - especially the instep, which
was not protected by the open slipper. - Everyone naturally put
this accident down to her understandable "nerves". For
the first few days after this burnt offering she was particularly
careful with anything hot, but this did not prevent her some days
later from scalding her wrist with hot gravy.’¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] In a very
large number of cases like these of injury or death in accidents
the explanation remains a matter of doubt. The outsider will find
no occasion to see in the accident anything other than a chance
occurrence, while someone who is closely connected with the victim
and is familiar with intimate details has reason to suspect the
unconscious intention behind the chance occurrence. The following
account by a young man whose fiancée was run over in the
street gives a good example of the kind of intimate knowledge that
I mean and of the type of accessory details in question:

  
‘Last September I made the acquaintance of a Fräulein
Z., aged 34. She was in well-to-do circumstances, and had been
engaged before the war, but her fiancé had fallen in action
in 1916 while serving as an officer. We came to know and become
fond of each other, not at first with any thought of marrying, as
the circumstances on both sides, in particular the difference in
our ages (I myself was 27), seemed to rule that out. As we lived
opposite each other in the same street and met every day, our
relationship took an intimate turn in course of time. Thus the idea
of marriage came more into view and I finally agreed to it myself.
The betrothal was planned for this Easter; Fräulein Z.,
however, intended first to make a journey to her relatives at M.,
but this was suddenly prevented by a railway strike that had been
called as a result of the Kapp Putsch. The gloomy prospects that
the workers’ victory and its consequences appeared to hold
out for the future had their effect for a brief time on our mood,
too, but especially on Fräulein Z., always a person of very
changeable moods, since she thought she saw new obstacles in the
way of our future. On Saturday, March 20, however, she was in an
exceptionally cheerful frame of mind - a state of affairs that took
me quite by surprise and carried me along with her, so that we
seemed to see everything in the rosiest colours. A few days before,
we had talked of going to church together some time, without
however having fixed a definite date. At 9. 15 the next morning,
Sunday, March 21, she telephoned to ask me to fetch her to church
straight away; but I refused, as I could not have got ready in
time, and had, besides, work I wanted to finish. Fräulein Z.
was noticeably disappointed; she then set out alone, met an
acquaintance on the stairs at her house and walked with him for the
short distance along the Tauentzienstrasse to the Rankestrasse, in
the best of humour and without referring at all to our
conversation. The gentleman bade her good-bye with a joking remark.
Fräulein Z. had only to cross the Kurfürstendamm where it
widened out and one could have a clear view along it; but, close to
the pavement, she was run over by a horse-drawn cab. (Contusion of
the liver, which led to her death a few hours later.) - We had
crossed at that point hundreds of times before; Fräulein Z.
was exceedingly careful, and very often prevented me from being
rash; on this morning there was almost no traffic whatever, the
trams, omnibuses, etc. were on strike. Just about that time there
was almost
absolute quiet
; even if she did not see the cab
she must at all events have heard it! Everybody supposed it was an
"accident". My first thought was: "That’s
impossible - but on the other hand there can be no question of its
having been intentional." I tried to find a psychological
explanation. After some considerable time I thought I had found it
in your
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
. In particular,
Fräulein Z. showed at various times a certain leaning in the
direction of suicide and even tried to induce me to think the same
way - thoughts from which I have often enough dissuaded her; for
example, only two days before, after returning from a walk, she
began, without any external reason at all, to talk about her death
and the provisions for dealing with her estate. (She had not, by
the way, done anything about this! - an indication that these
remarks definitely did not have any intention behind them.) If I
may venture on an opinion, I should regard this calamity not as an
accident, nor as an effect of a clouding of consciousness, but as
an intentional self-destruction performed with an unconscious
purpose, and disguised as a chance mishap. This view of mine is
confirmed by remarks which Fräulein Z. made to her relatives,
both earlier, before she knew me, and also more recently, as well
as by remarks to me up to within the last few days; so that I am
tempted to regard the whole thing as an effect of the loss of her
former fiancé, whom in her eyes nothing could
replace.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1266

   If a furious raging against
one’s own integrity and one’s own life can be hidden in
this way behind apparently accidental clumsiness and motor
inefficiency, it is not a very large step to find it possible to
transfer the same view to mistakes that seriously endanger the
lives and health of other people. What evidence I have to show that
this view is a valid one is drawn from my experience with
neurotics, and thus does not wholly meet the demands of the
situation. I will give an account of a case in which something that
was not strictly a faulty action but that rather deserves the name
of a symptomatic or chance action gave me the clue which
subsequently made it possible to resolve the patient’s
conflict. I once undertook the task of bringing an improvement to
the marriage of a very intelligent man, whose disagreements with
his fondly attached young wife could undoubtedly be shown to have a
real basis, but could not, as he himself admitted, be completely
accounted for in that way. He was continually occupied with the
thought of a divorce, which he then dismissed once more because of
his warm love for his two small children. In spite of this he
constantly returned to his intention and made no attempt to find a
way of making the situation tolerable to himself. Such inability to
deal with a conflict is taken by me as proof that unconscious and
repressed motives have lent a hand in strengthening the conscious
ones which are struggling against each other, and I undertake in
such cases to end the conflict by psychical analysis. One day the
man told me of a small incident which had frightened him extremely.
He was romping with his elder child, who was by far his favourite;
he was swinging him high in the air and down again, and once he
swung him so high while he was standing at a particular spot that
the top of the child’s head almost struck the heavy gas
chandelier that was hanging there.
Almost
, but not quite -
or perhaps just! No harm came to the child, but it was made giddy
with fright. The father stood horrified with the child in his arms,
and the mother had a hysterical attack. The peculiar adroitness of
this imprudent movement and the violence of the parents’
reaction prompted me to look for a symptomatic act in this accident
- one which aimed at expressing an evil intention directed against
the beloved child. I was able to remove the contradiction between
this and the father’s contemporary affection for his child by
shifting the impulse to injure it back to the time when this child
had been the only one and had been so small that its father had not
yet had any reason to take an affectionate interest in it. It was
then easy for me to suppose that, as he was getting little
satisfaction from his wife, he may at that time have had a thought
or formed a decision of this kind: ‘If this little creature
that means nothing at all to me dies, I shall be free and able to
get a divorce.’ A wish for the death of the creature that he
now loved so dearly must therefore have persisted unconsciously.
From this point it was easy to find the path by which this wish had
become unconsciously fixated. A powerful determinant was in fact
provided by a memory from the patient’s childhood: namely
that the death of a small brother, for which his mother blamed his
father’s negligence, had led to violent quarrels between the
parents and threats of a divorce. The subsequent course of my
patient’s marriage, as well as my therapeutic success,
confirmed my conjecture.