Freud - Complete Works (235 page)

  
¹
[‘With this second arrow I would have
transfixed - you, if I had struck my dear child; and
you
,
truly, I should
not
have missed.’]

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1330

   (D) Anyone who has had the
opportunity of studying the hidden mental impulses of human beings
by means of psycho-analysis can also say something new about the
quality
of the unconscious motives that find expression in
superstition. It can be recognized most clearly in neurotics
suffering from obsessional thinking or obsessional states - people
who are often of high intelligence - that superstition derives from
suppressed hostile and cruel impulses. Superstition is in large
part the expectation of trouble; and a person who has harboured
frequent evil wishes against others, but has been brought up to be
good and has therefore repressed such wishes into the unconscious,
will be especially ready to expect punishment for his unconscious
wickedness in the form of trouble threatening him from without.

   Though we admit that these
remarks of ours in no way exhaust the psychology of superstition,
we shall at least have to touch on the question of whether we are
to deny entirely that superstition has any real roots: whether
there are definitely no such things as true presentiments,
prophetic dreams, telepathic experiences, manifestations of
supernatural forces and the like. I am far from meaning to pass so
sweeping a condemnation of these phenomena, of which so many
detailed observations have been made even by men of outstanding
intellect, and which it would be best to make the subject of
further investigations. We may even hope that some portion of these
observations will then be explained by our growing recognition of
unconscious mental processes, without necessitating radical
alterations in the views we hold to-day. If the existence of still
other phenomena - those, for example, claimed by spiritualists -
were to be established, we should merely set about modifying our
‘laws’ in the way demanded by the new discovery,
without being shaken in our belief in the coherence of things in
the world.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1331

   In the compass of these
discussions the only answer I can give to the questions raised here
is a subjective one - that is, one in accordance with my personal
experience. To my regret I must confess that I am one of those
unworthy people in whose presence spirits suspend their activity
and the supernatural vanishes away, so that I have never been in a
position to experience anything myself which might arouse a belief
in the miraculous. Like every human being, I have had presentiments
and experienced trouble, but the two failed to coincide with one
another, so that nothing followed the presentiments, and the
trouble came upon me unannounced. During the days when I was living
alone in a foreign city - I was a young man at the time - I quite
often heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved
voice; I then noted down the exact moment of the hallucination and
made anxious enquiries of those at home about what had happened at
that time. Nothing had happened. To balance this, there was a later
occasion when I went on working with my patients without any
disturbance or foreboding while one of my children was in danger of
bleeding to death. Nor have I ever been able to regard any of the
presentiments reported to me by patients as veridical. - I must
however confess that in the last few years I have had a few
remarkable experiences which might easily have been explained on
the hypothesis of telepathic thought-transference.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1332

   Belief in prophetic dreams can
claim many adherents, because it can take support from the fact
that a number of things do in reality turn out in the future in the
way in which the wish had previously arranged them in the
dream.¹ But there is little that is surprising in that, and as
a rule, too, there are extensive differences between the dream and
its fulfilment, which the dreamer’s credulity prefers to
neglect. A good example of a dream which may justly be called
prophetic was once brought to me for detailed analysis by an
intelligent and truthful woman patient. Her story was that she had
once dreamt she met a former friend of hers and family doctor in
front of a certain shop in a certain street; and that when next
morning she went into the Inner Town she in fact met him at the
very spot named in the dream. I may observe that no subsequent
event proved the importance of this miraculous coincidence,²
which could not therefore be accounted for by what lay in the
future.

   Careful questioning established
that there was no evidence of her having had any recollection of
the dream on the morning after she dreamt it - that is, until after
her walk and the meeting. She could produce no objection to an
account of what happened which robbed the episode of anything
miraculous and left nothing but an interesting psychological
problem. She was walking along the street in question one morning
and met her old family doctor in front of a particular shop, and
thereupon, on seeing him, she felt convinced that she had dreamt
the night before of having this meeting at that precise spot.
Analysis was then able to show with great probability how she
arrived at this sense of conviction, which, according to general
rules, cannot fairly be denied a certain right to be considered
authentic. A meeting at a particular place, which has been expected
beforehand, amounts in fact to a
rendezvous
. The old family
doctor awakened her memory of former days, when meetings with a
third
person, also a friend of the doctor, had played a very
important part in her life. Since then she had continued her
relations with that gentleman and had waited for him in vain on the
day before the dream was supposed to have taken place. If I were
able to report the circumstances of the case in greater detail it
would be easy for me to show that her illusion, when she saw her
friend of former days, of having had a prophetic dream was
equivalent to some such remark as this; ‘Ah! doctor - you
remind me now of past times when I never had to wait in vain for N.
if we’d arranged a meeting.’

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] See my paper
on ‘Dreams and Telepathy’ (1922
a
).

  
²
[The German
‘
Zusammentreffen
’
means both ‘coincidence’ and
meeting’.]

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1333

   The ‘remarkable
coincidence’ of meeting a person we were at that very moment
thinking about is a familiar one. I have observed a simple and
easily explained example of it in myself, which is probably a good
model for similar occurrences. A few days after I had been awarded
the title of professor - which carries considerable authority with
it in countries under monarchical rule - my thoughts, while I was
walking through the Inner Town, suddenly turned to a childish
phantasy of revenge directed against a particular married couple.
Some months earlier they had called me in to see their little
daughter, who had developed an interesting obsessional symptom
following upon a dream. I took a great interest in the case, whose
genesis I thought I understood. My offer of treatment was however
declined by her parents and I was given to understand that they
thought of changing over to a foreign authority who effected cures
by hypnotism. My present phantasy was that after the total failure
of that attempt the parents begged me to start my treatment, saying
that now they had complete confidence in me, and so on. I however
answered: ‘Yes,
now
you have confidence in me - now
that I too have become a professor. The title has done nothing to
alter my capacities; if you could not make use of me as a
university lecturer you can do without me as a professor as
well.’ - At this point my phantasy was interrupted by a loud
‘Good day to you, Professor!’ and I looked up and saw
walking past me the very married couple on whom I had just taken my
revenge by rejecting their offer. Immediate reflection destroyed
the impression of something miraculous. I had been walking towards
the couple along a wide, straight and almost deserted street; when
I was about twenty paces from them I had glanced up for a moment
and caught a glimpse of their impressive figures and recognized
them, but had set the perception aside - on the pattern of a
negative hallucination - for the emotional reasons which then took
effect in the phantasy that arose with apparent spontaneity.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1334

   Here is another ‘resolution
of an apparent presentiment’, this time from Otto Rank
(1912):

   ‘Some time ago I myself
experienced an unusual variation of the "remarkable
coincidence" of meeting someone one was at the very moment
thinking about. Shortly before Christmas I was on my way to the
Austro-Hungarian Bank to get some change in the form of ten new
silver kronen for giving as presents. While I was absorbed in
ambitious phantasies which had to do with the contrast between my
small assets and the piles of money stored in the bank building, I
turned into a narrow street in which the bank stood. I saw a car
standing at the door and many people going in and out. I said to
myself: No doubt the cashiers will have time even for my few
kronen. In any case I shall be quick about it. I shall put down the
banknote I want changed and say "Let me have
gold
please". I immediately noticed my error - I should, of course,
have asked for
silver
- and awoke from my phantasies. I was
now only a few steps from the entrance and saw a young man coming
towards me whom I thought I recognized, but as I am short-sighted I
was not yet able to identify him for certain. As he drew nearer I
recognized him as a school-friend of my
brother’s
called
Gold
. Gold’s
brother
was a well-known
writer from whom I had expected considerable help at the beginning
of my literary career. This help, however, had not been forthcoming
and in consequence I failed to win the material success I had hoped
for, which had been the subject of my phantasy on the way to the
bank. While I was absorbed in my phantasies therefore, I must have
unconsciously perceived the approach of Herr Gold; and this was
represented in my consciousness (which was dreaming of material
success) in such a form that I decided to ask for gold at the
counter, instead of the less valuable silver. On the other hand,
however, the paradoxical fact that my unconscious is able to
perceive an object which my eyes can recognize only later seems
partly to be explained by what Bleuler terms "complexive
preparedness". This was, as we have seen, directed to material
matters and had from the beginning, contrary to my better
knowledge, directed my steps to the building where only gold and
paper money is changed.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1335

   We must also include in the
category of the miraculous and the ‘uncanny’ the
peculiar feeling we have, in certain moments and situations, of
having had exactly the same experience once before or of having
once before been in the same place, though our efforts never
succeed in clearly remembering the previous occasion that announces
itself in this way. I am aware that I am merely following loose
linguistic usage when I call what arises in a person at such
moments a ‘feeling’. What is no doubt in question is a
judgement, and, more precisely, a perceptual judgement; but these
cases have nevertheless a character quite of their own, and we must
not leave out of account the fact that what is looked for is never
remembered. I do not know whether this phenomenon of
‘
déjà vu
’ has ever been seriously
offered in proof of an individual’s previous psychical
existence; but psychologists have certainly turned their attention
to it and have endeavoured to solve the problem in a whole variety
of speculative ways. None of the attempted explanations which they
have brought forward seems to me to be correct, because none of
them takes into consideration anything other than the concomitant
manifestations and the conditions which favour the phenomenon.
Those psychical processes which according to my observations are
alone responsible for the explanation of
‘
déjà vu
’ - namely, unconscious
phantasies - are still generally neglected by psychologists even
to-day.

   It is in my view wrong to call
the feeling of having experienced something before an illusion. It
is rather that at such moments something is really touched on which
we have already experienced once before, only we cannot consciously
remember it because it has never been conscious. To put it briefly,
the feeling of ‘
déjà vu
’
corresponds to the recollection of an unconscious phantasy. There
exist unconscious phantasies (or day-dreams) just as there exist
conscious creations of the same kind which everybody knows from his
own experience.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1336

   I know that the subject would
merit the most exhaustive treatment; but I shall here do no more
than give the analysis of a single case of
‘
déjà vu
’ where the feeling was
characterized by especial intensity and persistence. A lady who is
now thirty-seven claimed to have a most distinct memory of having
at the age of twelve and a half paid her first visit to some school
friends in the country. When she entered the garden, she had an
immediate feeling of having been there before. This feeling was
repeated when she went into the reception rooms, so that she felt
she knew in advance what room would be the next one, what view
there would be from it, and so on. But the possibility that this
feeling of familiarity could have owed its origin to an earlier
visit to the house and garden, perhaps one in her earliest
childhood, was absolutely ruled out and was disproved as a result
of her questioning her parents. The lady who reported this was not
in search of any psychological explanation, but saw the occurrence
of this feeling as a prophetic indication of the significance for
her emotional life which these same school friends later acquired.
However, a consideration of the circumstances in which the
phenomenon occurred in her shows us the way to another view of the
matter. At the time when she paid the visit she knew that these
girls had an only brother, who was seriously ill. During the visit
she actually set eyes on him, though he looked very ill and she
said to herself that he would die soon. Now, her own only brother
had been dangerously ill with diphtheria a few months earlier;
during his illness she had spent several weeks away from her
parents’ house, staying with a relative. She believed that
her brother had been with her on this visit to the country; she
even thought it had been his first considerable journey after his
illness; but her memory was remarkably uncertain on these points
while of all the other details, and in particular of the dress she
was wearing that day, she had an ultra-clear picture. Anyone who is
well-informed will find no difficulty in concluding from these
hints that the expectation that her brother would die had at that
time played an important part in the girl’s thoughts and
either had never become conscious or, after the favourable
termination of the illness, had succumbed to energetic repression.
If things had turned out otherwise, she would have had to wear a
different dress - mourning. She found an analogous situation in the
home of her friends, whose only brother was in danger of dying
soon, as in fact he did shortly after. She ought to have remembered
consciously that she herself had lived through this situation a few
months before: instead of remembering it - which was prevented by
repression - she transferred her feeling of remembering something
to her surroundings, the garden and the house, and fell a victim to
the ‘
fausse reconnaissance
’ of having seen all
this exactly the same once before. From the fact that repression
occurred we may conclude that her former expectation of her
brother’s death had not been far removed from a wishful
phantasy. She would then have been the only child. In her later
neurosis she suffered most severely from a fear of losing her
parents, behind which, as usual, analysis was able to reveal the
unconscious wish with the same content.