Freud - Complete Works (228 page)
I add here a brief and varied
collection of symptomatic acts found in healthy and neurotic
people:
An elderly colleague who was not
a good loser at cards had one evening paid up a largish sum of
money that he had lost. He did this without complaining but in a
peculiarly restrained mood. After his departure it was discovered
that he had left behind at his seat more or less everything he had
on him: spectacles, cigar-case and handkerchief. This no doubt
calls for the translation: ‘You robbers! You have well and
truly plundered me!’
A man suffering from occasional
sexual impotence, which originated from the intimacy of his
relations with his mother in childhood, related that he was in the
habit of decorating pamphlets and notes with the letter S, his
mother’s initial. He cannot bear letters from home coming in
contact with other profane correspondence on his desk, and is
therefore forced to put the former away separately.
A young lady suddenly flung open
the door of the consulting room though the woman who preceded her
had not yet left it. In apologizing she blamed her
‘thoughtlessness’; it soon turned out that she had been
demonstrating the curiosity that in the past had caused her to make
her way into her parents’ bedroom.
Girls who are proud of having
beautiful hair are able to manage their combs and hairpins in such
a way that their hair comes down in the middle of a
conversation.
Some men scatter small change out
of their trouser pockets while they are lying down during treatment
and in that way pay whatever fee they think appropriate for the
session.
People who forget to take away
articles they have brought to the physician’s house, such as
pince-nez, gloves and purses, are showing by this that they cannot
tear themselves away and would like to come back soon. Ernest Jones
says: ‘One can almost measure the success with which a
physician is practising psychotherapy, for instance, by the size of
the collection of umbrellas, handkerchiefs, purses, and so on, that
he could make in a month.’
The slightest actions of a
habitual nature which are performed with a minimum of attention,
such as winding up one’s watch before going to sleep,
switching off the light before leaving a room, etc., are subject
from time to time to disturbances that unmistakably demonstrate the
influence of unconscious complexes upon what would seem to be the
most fixed habits. Maeder, writing in the periodical
Coenobium
, tells of a house-physician who decided to go into
town one evening for an important engagement, although he was on
duty and was not supposed to leave the hospital. When he returned
he was surprised to find the light on in his room. He had forgotten
to turn it off when he went out, which was something that he had
never failed to do before. But he soon grasped the motive for his
forgetfulness. The chief resident medical officer in the hospital
would naturally have concluded from the light in the
house-physician’s room that he was at home.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1290
A man overburdened with worries
and subject to occasional depressions assured me that he regularly
found in the morning that his watch had run down whenever the
evening before life had seemed to be altogether too harsh and
unfriendly. By omitting to wind up his watch he was giving symbolic
expression to his indifference about living till the next day.
Another man, whom I do not know
personally, writes: ‘After fate had dealt me a hard blow,
life seemed so harsh and unfriendly that I imagined I had not
sufficient strength to live through the next day. I then noticed
that almost every day I forgot to wind up my watch. Previously I
had never failed to do so; it was something I did regularly before
going to bed, as an almost mechanical and unconscious act. But now
I only very rarely remembered to do it, and that was when I had
something important or specially interesting ahead of me. Should
this too be considered a symptomatic act? I could not explain it to
myself at all.’
If anyone takes the trouble, as
Jung (1907) and Maeder (1909) have done, to note the tunes that he
finds himself humming, unintentionally and often without noticing
he is doing so, he will pretty regularly be able to discover the
connection between the words of the song and a subject that is
occupying his mind.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1291
The subtler determinants, too, of
the expression of one’s thoughts in speaking or writing
deserve careful attention. We believe that in general we are free
to choose what words we shall use for clothing our thoughts or what
images for disguising them. Closer observation shows that other
considerations determine this choice, and that behind the form in
which the thought is expressed a glimpse may be had of a deeper
meaning - often one that is not intended. The images and turns of
phrase to which a person is particularly given are rarely without
significance when one is forming a judgement of him; and others
often turn out to be allusions to a theme which is being kept in
the background at the time, but which has powerfully affected the
speaker. In the course of some theoretical discussions I heard
someone at a particular time repeatedly using the expression:
‘If something suddenly shoots through one’s
head’. I happened to know that he had recently received news
that a Russian bullet had passed right through the cap hat his son
was wearing on his head.’
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1292
CHAPTER X
ERRORS
Errors of memory are distinguished from
forgetting accompanied by paramnesia by the single feature that in
the former the error (the paramnesia) is not recognized as such but
finds credence. The use of the term ‘error’, however,
seems to depend on yet another condition. we have remembered it
wrongly We speak of ‘being in error’ rather than of
‘remembering wrongly’ where we wish to emphasize the
characteristic of objective reality in the psychical material which
we are trying to reproduce - that is to say, where what we are
trying to remember is something different from a fact of our own
psychical life: something, rather, that is open to confirmation or
refutation by the memory of other people. The antithesis to an
error of memory in this sense is ignorance.
In my
Interpretation of
Dreams
(1900
a
) I was responsible for a number of
falsifications which I was astonished to discover after the book
was published. They concerned historical points and, in general,
points of fact. After closer examination I found that they did not
owe their origin to my ignorance, but are traceable to errors of
memory which analysis is able to explain.
(1) On
page 979
I refer to the town of
Marburg
- a name also found in Styria - as Schiller’s
birthplace. The error occurs in the analysis of a dream which I had
during a journey by night and from which I was woken by the guard
calling out the name of Marburg station. In the content of the
dream someone asked a question about a book by Schiller. In fact
Schiller was not born at the university town of Marburg [in Hesse]
but at
Marbach
in Swabia. Moreover I can assert that I have
always known this.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1293
(2) On
page 681
Hannibal’s
father is called
Hasrubal
. This error annoyed me especially,
but it furnished me with the strongest corroboration of my view of
such errors. There must be few readers of my book who are better
acquainted with the history of the house of Barca than its author,
who penned this error and who overlooked it in three sets of
proofs. The name of Hannibal’s
father
was
Hamilcar
Barca
-
Hasrubal
was the name of Hannibal’s
brother
, as well as of his brother-in-law and predecessor in
command.
(3) On pages
735
and
1043
I state that Zeus
emasculated his father Kronos and dethroned him. I was, however,
erroneously carrying this atrocity a generation forward; according
to Greek mythology it was Kronos who committed it on his father
Uranus.¹
How is it to be explained that my
memory provided me at these points with what was incorrect, while
otherwise - as the reader of the book can see for himself - it put
at my disposal the most out-of-the-way and unusual material? And
how, too, did I pass over these errors while I carefully went
through three sets of proofs - as if I had been struck blind?
Goethe said of Lichtenberg:
‘Where he makes a jest a problem lies concealed.’
Similarly it can be said of the passages in my book that I have
quoted here: where an error makes its appearance a repression lies
behind it - or more correctly, an insincerity, a distortion, which
is ultimately rooted in repressed material. In analysing the dreams
reported there I was compelled, by the very nature of the themes to
which the dream-thoughts related, on the one hand to break off the
analysis at some point before it had been rounded off, and on the
other hand to take the edge off some indiscreet detail by mild
distortion. I could not do otherwise, and I had in fact no other
choice if I wished to bring forward examples and evidence at all.
My awkward position was a necessary result of the peculiar
character of dreams, which consists in giving expression to
repressed material - in other words, to material that is
inadmissible to consciousness. (In spite of this it would seem that
enough was still left to give offence to some sensitive souls.) I
did not succeed, however, in carrying through the distortion or
concealment of the thoughts, whose continuation was known to me,
without leaving some trace of them behind. What I wanted to
suppress often succeeded against my will in gaining access to what
I had chosen to relate and appeared in it in the form of an error
that I failed to notice. Moreover, the same theme is at the bottom
of all the three examples I have given: the errors are derivatives
of repressed thoughts connected with my dead father.
¹
This was not a complete error. The Orphic
version of the myth makes Zeus repeat the process of emasculation
on his father Kronos. (See Roscher’s
Lexicon of
Mythology
.)
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1294
(1) Anyone who reads through the
dream-analysed on
p. 744
will in part find undisguisedly, and will in part be able to guess
from hints, that I have broken off at thoughts which would have
contained an unfriendly criticism of my father. In the continuation
of this train of thoughts and memories there in fact lies an
annoying story in which books play a part, and a business friend of
my father’s who bears the name of
Marburg
- the same
name that woke me when it was called out at Marburg station on the
Südbahn
. In the analysis I tried to suppress this Herr
Marburg from myself and from my readers; he took his revenge by
intruding where he did not belong and changing the name of
Schiller’s birthplace from
Marbach
to
Marburg
.
(2) The error of putting
Hasrubal
instead of
Hamilcar
, the brother’s
name instead of the father’s, occurred precisely in a context
that concerned the Hannibal-phantasies of my school years and my
dissatisfaction with my father’s behaviour towards the
`enemies of our people’. I could have gone on to tell how my
relationship with my father was changed by a visit to England,
which resulted in my getting to know my half-brother, the child of
my father’s first marriage, who lived there. My
brother’s eldest son is the same age as I am. Thus the
relations between our ages were no hindrance to my phantasies of
how different things would have been if I had been born the son not
of my father but of my brother. These suppressed phantasies
falsified the text of my book at the place where I broke off the
analysis, by forcing me to put the brother’s name for the
father’s.
(3) It is to the influence of the
memory of this same brother that I attribute my error in advancing
by a generation the mythological atrocities of the Greek pantheon.
One of my brother’s admonitions lingered long in my memory.
`One thing,’ he had said to me, `that you must not forget is
that as far as the conduct of your life is concerned you really
belong not to the second but to the third generation in relation to
your father.’ Our father had married again in later life and
was therefore much older than his children by his second marriage.
I made the error already described at the exact point in the book
at which I was discussing filial piety.
It has also occasionally happened
that friends and patients, whose dreams I have reported, or have
alluded to in the course of my dream-analyses, have drawn my
attention to the fact that the details of the events experienced by
us together have been inaccurately related by me. These again could
be classified as historical errors. After being put right I have
examined the various cases and here too I have convinced myself
that my memory of the facts was incorrect only where I had
purposely distorted or concealed something in the analysis. Here
once again we find
an unobserved error taking the place of an
intentional concealment or repression
.
These errors that derive from
repression are to be sharply distinguished from others which are
based on genuine ignorance. Thus, for example, it was ignorance
which made me think during an excursion to the Wachau that I had
come to the home of Fischhof, the revolutionary leader. The two
places merely have the same name: Fischhof’s Emmersdorf is in
Carinthia. I, however, knew no better.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1295
(4) Here is another instructive
error that put me to shame, an example of what might be called
temporary ignorance. One day a patient reminded me to give him the
two books on Venice that I had promised him, as he needed them in
preparing for a journey at Easter. ‘I have them ready,’
I replied, and went to the library to fetch them. The truth,
however, was that I had forgotten to look them out, for I did not
entirely approve of my patient’s journey, which I saw as an
unnecessary interruption of the treatment and a material loss to
the physician. I therefore took a hasty look round the library for
two books I had had my eye on. One was ‘Venice, City of
Art’; but besides this I thought I must own a historical work
in a similar series. Quite right, there it was: ‘The
Medici’. I took it and brought it to my waiting patient, only
ashamedly to acknowledge the error. In reality I of course knew
that the Medici have nothing to do with Venice, but for a short
time it did not strike me as in any way incorrect. I now had to be
fair; as I had so frequently confronted my patient with his own
symptomatic acts I could only vindicate my authority in his eyes by
being honest and showing him the motives (which I had kept secret)
for my disapproval of his journey.
It may, in general, seem
astonishing that the urge to tell the truth is so much stronger
than is usually supposed. Perhaps, however, my being scarcely able
to tell lies any more is a consequence of my occupation with
psycho-analysis. As often as I try to distort something I succumb
to an error or some other parapraxis that betrays my insincerity,
as can be seen in this last example and in the previous ones.
Of all parapraxes errors seem to
have the least rigid mechanism. That is to say, the occurrence of
an error is a quite general indication that the mental activity in
question has had to struggle with a disturbing influence of some
sort or other; but the particular form that the error takes is not
determined by the quality of the concealed disturbing idea. We may
add here retrospectively that the same thing can be assumed to be
true of many simple cases of slips of the tongue and pen. Every
time we make a slip in talking or writing we may infer that there
has been a disturbance due to mental processes lying outside our
intention; but it must be admitted that slips of the tongue and of
the pen often obey the laws of resemblance, of indolence or of the
tendency to haste, without the disturbing element succeeding in
imposing any part of its own character on the resulting mistake in
speech or writing. It is the compliance of the linguistic material
which alone makes the determining of the mistakes possible, and at
the same time sets the limits up to which the determining can
go.
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life
1296
To avoid confining myself
entirely to my own errors, I shall report a few examples that might
indeed have been included just as well among slips of the tongue
and bungled actions; this is, however, a matter of indifference,
since all these forms of parapraxis are equivalent to one
another.
(5) I forbade a patient to
telephone to the girl he was in love with - but with whom he
himself wanted to break off relations - since each conversation
served only to renew the struggle about giving her up. He was to
write his final decision to her though there were difficulties
about delivering letters to her. He called on me at one
o’clock to tell me he had found a way of getting round these
difficulties, and amongst other things asked if he might quote my
authority as a physician. At two o’clock he was occupied in
composing the letter that was to end the relationship, when he
suddenly broke off and said to his mother who was with him:
‘Oh! I’ve forgotten to ask the professor if I may
mention his name in the letter.’ He rushed to the telephone,
put through his call and said into the instrument: ‘May I
speak to the professor, please, if he’s finished
dinner?’ In answer he got an astonished: ‘Adolf, have
you gone mad?’ It was the same voice which by my orders he
should not have heard again. He had simply ‘made an
error’, and instead of the physician’s number he had
given the girl’s.
(6) A young lady was to pay a
visit in the
Habsburgergasse
to a friend, a lady who had
recently been married. She spoke about it while the family were at
table, but said in error that she had to go to the
Babenbergergasse
. Some of those at the table laughingly drew
her attention to her error - or slip of the tongue (according to
choice) - which she had not noticed. In fact two days before this
the republic had been proclaimed in Vienna; the black and yellow
had vanished and been replaced by the colours of the old Ostmark -
red, white and red - and the Hapsburgs had been deposed. Our
speaker introduced the change of dynasty into her friend’s
address. In Vienna there is indeed a very well known
Babenberger
strasse
, but no Viennese would speak of it as a
‘
Gasse
’.¹
¹
[In Vienna two terms are used for
‘street’: ‘
Strasse
’ for the more
important streets and ‘
Gasse
’ for the minor
ones.]