Freud - Complete Works (225 page)

   ‘The first memory that
occurred to him was the fact that when a medical student he had
been struck by the habit his hospital interne had of always
carrying in his hand a straight stethoscope on his ward visits,
although he never used it. He greatly admired this interne, and was
much attached to him. Later on, when he himself became an interne,
he contracted the same habit, and would feel very uncomfortable if
by mistake he left his room without having the instrument to swing
in his hand. The aimlessness of the habit was however shown, not
only by the fact that the only stethoscope he ever used was a
binaural one, which he carried in his pocket, but also in that it
was continued when he was a surgical interne and never needed any
stethoscope at all. The significance of these observations
immediately becomes clear if we refer to the phallic nature of this
symbolic action.

  
¹
Ernest Jones (1910
a
).

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1274

   ‘He next recalled the fact
that in his early childhood he had been struck by the family
doctor’s habit of carrying a straight stethoscope inside his
hat; he found it interesting that the doctor should always have his
chief instrument handy when he went to see patients and only had to
take off his hat (i. e. a part of his clothing) and "pull it
out". As a small child he had been strongly attached to this
doctor; and a brief self-analysis enabled him to discover that at
the age of three and a half he had had a double phantasy concerning
the birth of a younger sister - namely that she was the child,
firstly, of himself and his mother, and secondly, of the doctor and
himself. Thus in this phantasy he played both a masculine and a
feminine part. He further recalled having been examined by the same
doctor when he was six, and distinctly recollected the voluptuous
sensation of feeling the doctor’s head near him pressing the
stethoscope into his chest, and the rhythmic to-and-fro respiratory
movement. At the age of three he had had a chronic chest affection
which necessitated repeated examination, although he could not in
fact still remember it.

   ‘At the age of eight he was
impressed by being told by an older boy that it was the
doctor’s custom to get into bed with his women patients.
There certainly was some real basis for this rumour; at all events
the women of the neighbourhood, including the subject’s own
mother, were very attached to the young and handsome doctor. The
subject had himself on several occasions experienced sexual
temptations in regard to his women patients; he had twice fallen in
love with one and finally had married one. It can hardly be doubted
that his unconscious identification with the doctor was the chief
motive for his adoption of the medical profession. Other analyses
lead us to suppose that this is undoubtedly the commonest motive
(though it is hard to determine just how common). In the present
case it was doubly determined: firstly by the superiority of the
doctor on several occasions over the father, of whom the son was
very jealous, and secondly by the doctor’s knowledge of
forbidden topics and his opportunities for sexual satisfaction.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1275

   ‘Then came a dream which I
have already published elsewhere (Jones 1910
b
); it was
plainly of a homosexual-masochistic nature. In this dream a man who
was a substitutive figure for the doctor attacked the subject with
a "sword". The sword reminded him of a passage in the
Völsung Nibelungen Saga, where Sigurd places a naked sword
between himself and the sleeping Brünhilde. The same episode
occurs in the Arthurian legend which our subject also knows
well.

   ‘The meaning of the
symptomatic act now becomes clear. Our doctor placed his straight
stethoscope between himself and his women patients exactly as
Sigurd placed his sword between himself and the woman he was not to
touch. The act was a compromise-formation: it satisfied two
impulses. It served to satisfy in his imagination the suppressed
wish to enter into sexual relations with any attractive woman
patient, but at the same time it served to remind him that this
wish could not become a reality. It was, so to speak, a charm
against yielding to temptation.

   ‘I might add that the
following lines from Lord Lytton’s
Richeleau
made a
great impression on the boy:

                                               
Beneath the rule of men entirely great

                                               
The pen is mightier than the sword. . . .
¹

and that he has become a prolific writer and
uses an exceptionally large fountain pen. When I asked him why he
needed it he gave the characteristic response: "I have so much
to express."

   ‘This analysis again
reminds us what profound insight is afforded into mental life by
"innocent" and "meaningless" acts, and how
early in life the tendency to symbolization develops.’

  
¹
Compare Oldham’s: ‘I wear my
pen as others do their sword.’

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1276

   I can quote a further instance
from my psychotherapeutic experience in which eloquent testimony
was borne by a hand playing with a lump of bread-crumb. My patient
was a boy of not yet thirteen; for almost two years he had been
severely hysterical and I finally took him for psycho-analytic
treatment after a lengthy stay in a hydropathic institution had
brought no success. I was going on the assumption that he must have
had sexual experiences and be tormented by sexual questions, which
was likely enough at his age; but I refrained from helping him with
explanations as I wished to put my hypotheses once again to the
test. I was therefore naturally curious as to the way in which he
would bring out what I was looking for. One day it struck me that
he was rolling something between the fingers of his right hand; he
would thrust it in his pocket and continue playing with it there,
and then take it out again, and so on. I did not ask what he had in
his hand; but he suddenly opened his hand and showed me. It was
bread-crumb kneaded into a lump. At the next session he again
brought along a similar lump and this time, while we were talking,
he modelled figures out of it which excited my interest; he did
this with incredible rapidity, with his eyes closed. They were
undoubtedly little men, with a head, two arms and two legs, like
the crudest prehistoric idols, and with an appendage between the
legs which he drew out into a long point. He had hardly completed
this when he kneaded the figure together again; later he allowed it
to remain, but drew out a similar appendage from the surface of the
back and other parts of the body in order to disguise the meaning
of the first one. I wanted to show him I had understood him, but at
the same time I wanted to prevent him from pretending that he had
not thought of anything while he was engaged in making these
figures. With this in mind I suddenly asked him if he remembered
the story of the Roman king who gave his son’s envoy an
answer in dumb-show in his garden. The boy failed to recall it,
although he must have learnt it so much more recently than I. He
asked whether it was the story of the slave and the answer that was
written on his shaven head. No, I answered, that is from Greek
history, and I told him the story. King Tarquinius Superbus had
made his son Sextus find his way secretly into a hostile Latin
city. The son, who had meanwhile collected a following in the city,
sent a messenger to the king asking what steps he should take next.
The king did not answer, but went into his garden, had the question
repeated to him there, and then silently struck off the heads of
the tallest and finest poppies. All that the messenger could do was
to report this to Sextus, who understood his father and arranged
for the most distinguished citizens in the city to be removed by
assassination.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1277

   While I was speaking, the boy
stopped kneading and, as I was on the point of describing what the
king did in his garden and had reached the words ‘silently
struck’, he made a lightning movement and tore the head off
his little man. He had therefore understood me and had seen that he
had been understood by me. I could now question him directly, I
gave him the information he needed, and in a short time we had
brought the neurosis to an end.

   The symptomatic acts that can be
observed in almost inexhaustible abundance in healthy people no
less than in sick ones have more than one claim to our interest. To
the doctor they often serve as valuable clues which enable him to
get his bearings in new or unfamiliar situations; to the observer
of human nature they often betray everything - and at times even
more than he cares to know. A person who is familiar with their
significance may at times feel like King Solomon who, according to
oriental legend, understood the language of animals. One day I was
to examine a young man, whom I did not know, at his mother’s
house. As he came towards me I was struck by a large stain on his
trousers - made by albumen, as I could tell from its peculiar stiff
edges. After a moment’s embarrassment the young man
apologized and said that he had felt hoarse and so had swallowed a
raw egg; some of the slippery white of egg had probably fallen on
his clothes. He was able to confirm this by pointing to the
egg-shell, which was still visible in the room on a small plate. In
this way the suspicious stain was given an innocent explanation;
but when his mother had left us alone I thanked him for making my
diagnosis so very much easier, and without more ado took as the
basis of our discussion his confession that he was suffering from
the troubles arising from masturbation. Another time I was paying a
visit to a lady who was as rich as she was miserly and foolish, and
who was in the habit of giving the doctor the task of working
through a host of complaints before the simple cause of her
condition could he reached. When I entered she was sitting at a
small table and was busy arranging silver florins in little piles.
On rising she knocked some of the coins on to the floor. I helped
her to pick them up, and soon cut short her account of her
sufferings by asking: ‘Has your noble son-in-law robbed you
of so much money then?’ She denied this angrily, only to go
on very soon afterwards to tell the sad story of the agitation
which her son-in-law’s extravagance had caused her. She has
not however sent for me since. I cannot claim that one always makes
friends of those to whom one shows the meaning of their symptomatic
acts.

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1278

   Dr. J. E. G. van Emden (The
Hague) reports another case of ‘confession through a
parapraxis’. ‘In making out my bill, the waiter in a
small restaurant in Berlin announced that the price of a particular
dish had been increased by ten pfennigs, owing to the war. When I
asked why this was not shown on the menu he replied that that must
just be an oversight - the price had certainly gone up. He pocketed
the money clumsily and dropped a ten pfennig coin on the table
right in front of me.

   ‘"Now I know for
certain that you’ve charged me too much. Would you like me to
enquire at the cash desk?"

   ‘"Excuse
me . . . one moment, please," and he had
gone.

   ‘Needless to say, I allowed
him his retreat, and, after he had apologized a couple of minutes
later for having for some unknown reason confused my dish with
another one, I let him keep the ten pfennigs as a reward for his
contribution to the psychopathology of everyday life.’

   Anyone who cares to observe his
fellow men while they are at table will be able to observe the
neatest and most instructive symptomatic acts.

   Thus Dr. Hanns Sachs relates:
‘I happened to be present when an elderly couple, relatives
of mine, took their evening meal. The lady suffered from a gastric
complaint and had to observe a very strict diet. A piece of roast
meat had just been set before the husband, and he asked his wife,
who was not allowed to join in this course, to pass him the
mustard. His wife opened the cupboard, reached inside, and put her
little bottle of stomach drops on the table in front of her
husband. There was of course no resemblance between the
barrel-shaped mustard pot and the little bottle of drops which
might have accounted for her picking up the wrong one; yet the wife
did not notice her confusion of the two until her husband
laughingly called her attention to it. The meaning of the
symptomatic act needs no explanation.’

   I owe to Dr. B. Dattner, of
Vienna, an excellent example of this kind which the observer made
very skilful use of:

   ‘I was lunching in a
restaurant with my colleague H., a doctor of philosophy. He spoke
of the hardships of probationary students, and mentioned
incidentally that before he had finished his studies he was given
the post of secretary to the ambassador, or, more precisely, the
minister plenipotentiary and extraordinary, of Chile. "But
then the minister was transferred and I did not present myself to
his successor." While he was uttering the last sentence he
raised a piece of cake to his mouth, but let it drop from the knife
in apparent clumsiness. I immediately grasped the hidden meaning of
this symptomatic act, and, as it were casually, interjected to my
colleague, who was unfamiliar with psycho-analysis: "You
certainly allowed a tasty morsel to slip from you there." He
did not, however, notice that my words could apply equally well to
his symptomatic act, and repeated my exact words with a peculiarly
charming and surprising liveliness just as if my remark had taken
the words out of his mouth: "Yes, that was certainly a tasty
morsel that I allowed to slip from me", and went on to
unburden himself by means of a detailed description of the
clumsiness which had lost him this well-paid position.