Freud - Complete Works (236 page)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1337

   I have been able in a similar way
to derive my own fleeting experiences of
‘
déjà vu
’ from the emotional
constellation of the moment. ‘This would once more be an
occasion for wakening the (unconscious and unknown) phantasy which
was formed in me at this or that time as a wish to improve the
situation.’ - This explanation of
‘
déjà vu
’ has so far been taken
into consideration by only one observer. Dr. Ferenczi, to whom the
third edition of this book is indebted for so many valuable
contributions, writes to me on this subject as follows: "From
my own case, as well as that of others, I have convinced myself
that the unaccountable feeling of familiarity is to be traced to
unconscious phantasies of which one is unconsciously reminded in a
situation of the present time. With one of my patients what
happened was apparently something different, but in reality it was
quite analogous. This feeling returned to him very often, but it
regularly proved to have originated from a
forgotten (repressed)
portion of a dream of the preceding night
. It seems therefore
that "
déjà vu
" can derive not only
from day-dreams but from night-dreams as well.’

   I have later learnt that Grasset
(1904) has given an explanation of the phenomenon which comes very
close to my own.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1338

   In 1913 I wrote a short paper
describing another phenomenon that is very similar to
‘
déjà vu
’. This is
‘
déjà raconté
', the illusion
of having already reported something of special interest when it
comes up in the course of psycho-analytic treatment. On these
occasions the patient maintains with every sign of subjective
certainty that he has already recounted a particular memory a long
time ago. The physician is however sure of the contrary and is as a
rule able to convince the patient of his error. The explanation of
this interesting parapraxis is probably that the patient has felt
are urge to communicate this information and intended to do so, but
has failed to carry it into effect, and that he now takes the
memory of the former as a substitute for the latter, the carrying
out of his intention.

   A similar state of affairs, and
probably also the same mechanism, is to be seen in what Ferenczi
(1915) has called ‘supposed’ parapraxes. We believe
there is something - some object - that we have forgotten or
mislaid or lost; but we are able to convince ourselves we have done
nothing of the kind and that everything is as it should be. For
example, a woman patient returns to the doctor’s room, giving
as a reason that she wants to collect the umbrella she has left
behind there; but the doctor sees that she is in fact holding it in
her hand. There was therefore an impulse towards this parapraxis,
and the impulse was sufficient to serve as a substitute for its
actual execution. Except for this difference, the supposed
parapraxis is equivalent to the real one. It is, however, what one
might call cheaper.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1339

   (E)  When I recently had
occasion to report some examples of the forgetting of names, with
their analyses, to a colleague with a philosophical education, he
hastened to reply: ‘That’s all very well; but in my
case the forgetting of names happens differently.’ The matter
can obviously not be dealt with as easily as this; I do not suppose
that my colleague had ever before thought of analysing the
forgetting of a name, nor could he say how it happened differently
in his case. But his comment nevertheless touches on a problem
which many people will be inclined to put in the foreground. Does
the elucidation given here of parapraxes and chance actions apply
quite generally or only in certain cases? and if the latter, what
are the conditions under which it can be called in to explain
phenomena that might also have been brought about in another way?
In answering this question my experiences leave me in the lurch. I
can but utter a warning against supposing that a connection of the
kind here demonstrated is only rarely found; for every time I have
made the test on myself or on my patients, a connection has been
clearly shown to exist just as in the examples reported, or there
have at least been good grounds for supposing that it did. It is
not surprising if success in finding the hidden meaning of a
symptomatic act is not achieved every time, for the magnitude of
the internal resistances opposing the solution comes into account
as a deciding factor. Equally, it is not possible to interpret
every single dream of one’s own or of one’s patients;
to prove that the theory holds good in general it is enough if one
can penetrate a part of the way into the hidden connection. It
often happens that a dream which proves refractory during an
attempt to solve it the next day will allow its secret to be
wrested from it a week or a month later, after a real change has
come about in the meantime and has reduced the contending psychical
values. The same applies to the solving of parapraxes and
symptomatic acts. The example of misreading on
page 1194
(‘Across Europe in a
Tub’) gave me the opportunity of showing how a symptom that
is at first insoluble becomes accessible to analysis when the
real interest
in the repressed thoughts has passed
away.¹ As long as the possibility existed of my brother
obtaining the envied title before me, this misreading resisted
every one of my repeated efforts to analyse it; after it had turned
out to be unlikely that he would be preferred to me in this way,
the path that led to its solution was suddenly cleared. It would
therefore be incorrect to maintain that all the cases which resist
analysis are due to a mechanism other than the psychical mechanism
disclosed here. Such an assumption would need more than negative
evidence. Furthermore, the readiness to believe in a different
explanation of parapraxes and symptomatic acts, which is probably
to be found in all healthy people, is quite devoid of evidential
value; it is obviously a manifestation of the same mental forces
which produced the secret and which therefore also devote
themselves to preserving it and resist its elucidation.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] At this point
very interesting problems of an
economic
nature come in,
questions taking into consideration the fact that the psychical
processes aim at gaining pleasure and removing unpleasure. There is
already an economic problem in how it becomes possible by way of
substitutive associations to recapture a name that has been
forgotten through motives of unpleasure. An excellent paper by
Tausk (1913) gives good examples of how the forgotten name becomes
accessible once more if one succeeds in connecting it with a
pleasurably-toned association, which can counterbalance the
unpleasure to be expected from the reproduction of the
name.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1340

   On the other hand we must not
overlook the fact that repressed thoughts and impulses certainly do
not achieve expression in symptomatic acts and parapraxes by their
own unaided efforts. The technical possibility for such
side-slipping on the part of the innervations must be presented
independently; this will then be readily exploited by the intention
of the repressed to make itself felt consciously. In the case of
verbal parapraxes, detailed investigations by philosophers and
philologists have endeavoured to determine what are the structural
and functional relations that put themselves at the service of such
an intention. If we distinguish, among the determinants of
parapraxes and symptomatic acts, between the unconscious motive on
the one hand and the physiological and psycho-physical relations
that come to meet it on the other, it remains an open question
whether there are, within the range of normality, yet other factors
that can - like the unconscious motive, and in place of it - create
parapraxes and symptomatic acts along the lines of these relations.
It is not my task to answer this question.

   Nor is it my purpose to
exaggerate the differences, sufficiently large as they are, between
the psycho-analytic and the popular view of parapraxes. I would
rather call attention to cases in which these differences lose much
of their sharpness. As regards the simplest and most inconspicuous
examples of slips made by the tongue or the pen - in which,
perhaps, words are merely contracted, or words and letters left out
- the more complicated interpretations come to nothing. From the
point of view of psycho-analysis we must maintain that
some
disturbance of intention has revealed its existence in these cases,
but we cannot say from what the disturbance derived and what its
aim was. In fact it has achieved nothing apart from demonstrating
its existence. In such cases we can also see how a parapraxis is
encouraged by phonetic resemblances and close psychological
associations: this is a fact that we have never disputed. It is,
however, a reasonable scientific demand that such rudimentary cases
of slips of the tongue or slips of the pen should be judged on the
basis of the more clearly marked cases, whose investigation yields
such unambiguous conclusions as to the way in which parapraxes are
caused.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1341

   (F) Since our discussion of slips
of the tongue we have been content with demonstrating that
parapraxes have a hidden motivation, and by the help of
psycho-analysis we have traced our way to a knowledge of this
motivation. We have so far left almost without consideration the
general nature and the peculiarities of the psychical factors that
find expression in parapraxes; at any rate we have not yet
attempted to define them more closely and to test whether they
conform to laws. Nor shall we attempt now to deal with the matter
in a radical way, since the subject can better be explored from
another angle, as our first steps will show us in a moment.¹
Here several questions can be raised which I will at least bring
forward and describe in outline. (1) What is the content and origin
of the thoughts and impulses which are indicated in erroneous and
chance actions? (2) What are the determinants which compel a
thought or an impulse to make use of such actions as a means of
expression and which put it in a position to do so? (3) Is it
possible to establish constant and unambiguous relations between
the kind of parapraxis and the qualities of what is expressed by
means of it?

   I will begin by bringing together
some material for answering the last question. In discussing the
examples of slips of the tongue we found it necessary to go beyond
the content of what was intended to be said, and were obliged to
look for the cause of the speech-disturbance in something outside
the intention. What this was was obvious in a number of cases, and
was known to the speaker’s consciousness. In the examples
that seemed simplest and most transparent it was another version of
the same thought - one which sounded as if it had an equal right,
and which disturbed the expression of the thought without its being
possible to explain why the one version had succumbed and the other
had won the day. (These are Meringer and Mayer’s
‘contaminations’.) In a second group of cases the
motive for the defeat of one version was a consideration which,
however, did not prove strong enough to withhold it completely
(‘
zum Vorschwein gekommen
’). The version which
was withheld was perfectly conscious too. Only of the third group
can it be asserted unreservedly that the disturbing thought
differed from the one intended, and only in their case can a
distinction which is apparently essential be established. The
disturbing thought is either connected with the disturbed thought
by thought associations (disturbance as a result of internal
contradiction), or it is unrelated to it in its nature and the
disturbed word happens to be connected with the disturbing thought
- which is
often
unconscious - by an unexpected
external
association. In the examples I have given from my
psycho-analyses the entire speech is under the influence of
thoughts which have become active but have at the same time
remained entirely unconscious; either these are betrayed by the
disturbance itself (‘
Klapperschlange
’ -
‘
Kleopatra
’) or they exercise an indirect
influence by making it possible for the different parts of the
consciously intended speech to disturb each other (‘
Ase
natmen
’, where  ‘
Hasenauer
Street’ and reminiscences of a Frenchwoman are in the
background). The withheld or unconscious thoughts from which the
disturbance in speech derives are of the most varied origin. This
survey therefore does not enable us to generalize in any
direction.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] This book is
of an entirely popular character; it merely aims, by an
accumulation of examples, at paving the way for the necessary
assumption of
unconscious yet operative
mental processes,
and it avoids all theoretical considerations on the nature of this
unconscious.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1342

   A comparative examination of my
examples of misreading and slips of the pen leads to the same
conclusions. As with slips of the tongue, certain cases appear to
owe their origin to a work of condensation which has no further
motivation (e.g. the ‘
Apfe
’ ). It would however
be satisfactory to learn whether special conditions may not have to
be fulfilled if such a condensation, which is normal in dream-work
but a fault in our waking thought, is to take place. No information
on this problem can be obtained from the examples themselves. I
should however refuse to conclude from this that there are in fact
no conditions other than, for instance, a relaxation of conscious
attention, since I know from other sources that it is precisely
automatic activities which are characterized by correctness and
reliability. I should prefer to stress the fact that here, as so
often in biology, normal circumstances or those approaching the
normal are less favourable subjects for investigation than
pathological ones. I expect that what remains obscure in the
elucidation of these very slight disturbances will be illuminated
by the explanation of serious disturbances.