Freud - Complete Works (237 page)

   In misreading and slips of the
pen there are also plenty of examples in which we can discern a
more remote and complicated motivation. ‘Across Europe in a
Tub’ is a disturbance in reading which is explained as being
due to the influence of a remote thought, foreign in its essence,
arising from a repressed impulse of jealousy and ambition, and
utilizing the ‘switch-word’
‘
Beförderung
’ to form a connection with the
indifferent and innocent topic that was being read. In the case of
‘Burckhard’ the name itself forms a
‘switch-word’ of this kind.

   There is no doubt that
disturbances in the functions of speech occur more readily, and
make smaller demands on the disturbing forces, than do those in
other psychical activities.

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   One is on different ground when
it comes to examining forgetting in its proper sense - that is, the
forgetting of past experiences. (To distinguish them from
forgetting in the stricter sense, we might speak of the forgetting
of proper names and of foreign words, described in Chapter I and
II, as ‘slipping the memory’, and the forgetting of
intentions as ‘omissions’.) The basic determinants of
the
normal
process of forgetting are unknown.¹ We are
also reminded that not everything is forgotten that we believe to
be. Our explanation has here to do only with cases where the
forgetting causes us surprise, in so far as it breaks the rule that
unimportant things are forgotten but important ones are preserved
by memory. Analysis of the examples of forgetting that seem to
require a special explanation reveals that the motive for
forgetting is invariably an unwillingness to remember something
which can evoke distressing feelings. We come to suspect that this
motive aims at manifesting itself quite generally in mental life,
but is prevented from putting itself into effect at all regularly
by other forces which work against it. The extent and the
significance of this unwillingness to remember distressing
impressions would seem to deserve the most careful psychological
examination; moreover we cannot separate from this wider context
the question of what special conditions make this forgetting, that
is universally aimed at, possible in individual cases.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1907:] I may perhaps
put forward the following suggestions as regards the mechanism of
forgetting in its proper sense. Mnemic material is subject in
general to two influences, condensation and distortion. Distortion
is the work of the dominant trends in mental life, and is directed
above all against the memory traces which have remained affectively
operative and which show considerable resistance to condensation.
The traces that have grown indifferent succumb unresistingly to the
process of condensation; yet it can be observed that in addition to
this, the distorting trends feed on the indifferent material if
they have remained unsatisfied at the place at which they sought to
manifest themselves. As these processes of condensation and
distortion continue for long periods, during which every fresh
experience acts in the direction of transforming the mnemic
content, it is generally thought that it is time which makes memory
uncertain and indistinct. It is highly probable that there is no
question at all of there being any direct function of time in
forgetting. - In the case of
repressed
memory-traces it can
be demonstrated that they undergo no alteration even in the course
of the longest period of time. The unconscious is quite timeless.
The most important as well as the strangest characteristic of
psychical fixation is that all impressions are preserved, not only
in the same form in which they were first received, but also in all
the forms which they have adopted in their further developments.
This is a state of affairs which cannot be illustrated by
comparison with another sphere. Theoretically every earlier state
of the mnemic content could thus be restored to memory again, even
if its elements have long ago exchanged all their original
connections for more recent ones.

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1344

   In the forgetting of intentions
another factor comes into the foreground. The conflict, which could
only be
surmised
in the repression of what was distressing
to remember, here becomes tangible, and in the analysis of the
examples a counter-will can regularly be recognized which opposes
the intention without putting an end to it. As in the parapraxes
already described, two types of psychical process can be recognized
here. Either the counter-will is turned directly against the
intention (in cases where the latter’s purpose is of some
importance), or it is unrelated in its nature to the intention
itself and establishes its connection with it by means of an
external
association (in the case of intentions that are
almost indifferent).

   The same conflict governs the
phenomena of bungled actions. The impulsion which manifests itself
in disturbing the action is often a counter-impulsion, but still
more often it is an entirely unrelated one, which merely takes the
opportunity of achieving expression by disturbing the action while
it is being carried out. The cases where the disturbance results
from an internal contradiction are the more significant ones; they
also involve the more important actions.

   In chance actions or in
symptomatic actions the internal conflict becomes less and less
important. These motor manifestations, to which consciousness
attaches little value, or which it overlooks entirely, thus serve
to express a wide variety of unconscious or withheld impulses; for
the most part they are symbolic representations of phantasies or
wishes.

   In regard to the first question -
as to what is the origin of the thoughts and impulses which find
expression in parapraxes - we can say that in a number of cases it
is easy to show that the disturbing thoughts are derived from
suppressed impulses in mental life. In healthy people, egoistic,
jealous and hostile feelings and impulsions, on which the pressure
of moral education weighs heavily, make frequent use of the pathway
provided by parapraxes in order to find some expression for their
strength, which undeniably exists but is not recognized by higher
mental agencies. Acquiescence in these parapraxes and chance
actions is to a large extent equivalent to a compliant tolerance of
the immoral. Among these suppressed impulses no small part is
played by the various sexual currents. That these particular ones
should in fact appear so rarely among the thoughts disclosed by
analysis in my examples is an accident of my material. Since the
examples I have analysed are to a great extent taken from my own
mental life, the selection was partial from the first and aimed at
excluding sexual matters. At other times it appears to be from
perfectly innocent objections and considerations that the
disturbing thoughts arise.

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   We have now reached the moment
for answering the second question - that is, what psychological
determinants are responsible for a thought being compelled to seek
expression not in its complete form but in a kind of parasitic
form, as a modification and disturbance of another thought. The
most striking examples of parapraxes make it seem probable that
these determinants must be looked for in a relation to
admissibility to consciousness: in the question, that is, of the
greater or less degree to which they bear the marked character of
being ‘repressed’. But if we follow this character
through the series of examples, it dissolves into ever vaguer
indications. The inclination to dismiss something as a waste of
time, or the consideration that the thought in question is not
properly relevant to the matter in hand, appear, as motives for
pushing back a thought (which is then left to find expression by
disturbing another thought), to play the same part as does the
moral condemnation of an insubordinate emotional impulse or as does
derivation from totally unconscious trains of thought. Insight into
the general nature of how parapraxes and chance actions are
determined cannot be gained along these lines. One single fact of
significance emerges from these enquiries. The more innocent the
motivation of a parapraxis, and the less objectionable - and
therefore the less inadmissible to consciousness - the thought
finding expression in it, the easier it is to explain the
phenomenon, once one’s attention has been turned to it. The
slightest cases of slips of the tongue are noticed immediately, and
spontaneously corrected. Where the motivation comes from really
repressed impulses, the case has to be elucidated by careful
analysis, which may itself at times come up against difficulties or
prove unsuccessful.

   We are therefore no doubt
justified in taking the result of this last enquiry as evidence
that the satisfactory explanation of the psychological determinants
of parapraxes and chance actions is to be looked for along other
lines and by a different approach. The indulgent reader may
accordingly see in these discussions signs of the broken edges
where this subject has been somewhat artificially detached from a
wider context.

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   (G) A few words should be said to
indicate at least in what direction this wider context lies. The
mechanism of parapraxes and chance actions, as we have come to know
it by our employment of analysis, can be seen to correspond in its
most essential points with the mechanism of dream-formation which I
have discussed in the chapter on the ‘dream-work’ in my
Interpretation of Dreams
. In both cases we find
condensations and compromise-formations (contaminations). We have
the same situation: by unfamiliar paths, and by the way of external
associations, unconscious thoughts find expression as modifications
of other thoughts. The incongruities, absurdities and errors of the
dream-content, which result in the dream being scarcely recognized
as the product of psychical activity, originate in the same way,
though it is true with a freer use of the means at hand, as our
common mistakes in everyday life. In both cases
the appearance
of an incorrect function is explained by the peculiar mutual
interference between two or several correct functions
.

   An important conclusion can be
drawn from this conformity. The peculiar mode of working, whose
most striking achievement we see in the content of dreams, cannot
be attributed to the sleeping state of mental life if we possess
such abundant evidence in the form of parapraxes that it operates
during our waking life as well. The same connection also forbids
our assuming that these psychical processes, which strike us as
abnormal and strange, are determined by a deep-seated decay in
mental activity or by pathological states of functioning.¹

  
¹
See
The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
),
p. 1034-5
.

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1347

   We shall not be able to form a
correct picture of the strange psychical work which brings about
the occurrence of both parapraxes and dream images until we have
learnt that psychoneurotic symptoms, and especially the psychical
formations of hysteria and obsessional neurosis, repeat in their
mechanism all the essential features of this mode of working. This
is therefore the starting-point for the continuation of our
researches. For us, however, there is yet another special interest
in considering parapraxes, chance actions and symptomatic actions
in the light of this last analogy. If we compare them to the
products of the psychoneuroses, to neurotic symptoms, two
frequently repeated statements - namely, that the borderline
between the normal and the abnormal in nervous matters is a fluid
one, and that we are all a little neurotic - acquire meaning and
support. Without any medical experience we can construct various
types of nervous illness of this kind which are merely hinted at -
formes frustres
¹ - of the neuroses: cases in which the
symptoms are few, or occur rarely or not severely - in other words,
cases whose comparative mildness is located in the number,
intensity and duration of their pathological manifestations. But we
might perhaps never arrive by conjecture at precisely the type that
appears most frequently to form the transition between health and
illness. For the type we are considering, whose pathological
manifestations are parapraxes and symptomatic acts, is
characterized by the fact that the symptoms are located in the
least important psychical functions, while everything that can lay
claim to higher psychical value remains free from disturbance.
Where the symptoms are distributed in the reverse way - that is,
where they make their appearance in the most important individual
and social functions and are able to disturb nutrition, sexual
intercourse, professional work and social life - this is the mark
of severe cases of neurosis and is more characteristic of them
than, for example, are the variety and vigour of their pathological
manifestations.

   But there is one thing which the
severest and the mildest cases all have in common, and which is
equally found in parapraxes and chance actions:
the phenomena
can be traced back to incompletely suppressed psychical material,
which, although pushed away by consciousness, has nevertheless not
been robbed of all capacity for expressing itself
.