Freud - Complete Works (521 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3159

   But must he? Perhaps that may
still be the question.

   Now, however, you think you have
me at your mercy. ‘So that’s your technique’, I
hear you say. ‘When a person who has made a slip of the
tongue says something about it that suits you, you pronounce him to
be the final decisive authority on the subject. "He says so
himself!". But when what he says doesn’t suit your book,
then all at once you say he’s of no importance -
there’s no need to believe him.

   That is quite true. But I can put
a similar case to you in which the same monstrous event occurs.
When someone charged with an offence confesses his deed to the
judge, the judge believes his confession; but if he denies it, the
judge does not believe him. If it were otherwise, there would be no
administration of justice, and in spite of occasional errors we
must allow that the system works.

   ‘Are you a judge, then? And
is a person who has made a slip of the tongue brought up before you
on a charge? So making a slip of the tongue is an offence, is
it?’¹

   Perhaps we need not reject the
comparison. But I would ask you to observe what profound
differences of opinion we have reached after a little investigation
of what seemed such innocent problems concerning the parapraxes -
differences which at the moment we see no possible way of smoothing
over. I propose a provisional compromise on the basis of the
analogy with the judge and the defendant. I suggest that you shall
grant me that there can be no doubt of a parapraxis having a sense
if the subject himself admits it.
I
will admit in return
that we cannot arrive at a direct proof of the suspected sense if
the subject refuses us information, and equally, of course, if he
is not at hand to give us the information. Then, as in the case of
the administration of justice, we are obliged to turn to
circumstantial evidence, which may make a decision more probable in
some instances and less so in others. In the law courts it may be
necessary for practical purposes to find a defendant guilty on
circumstantial evidence. We are under no such necessity; but
neither are we obliged to disregard the circumstantial evidence. It
would be a mistake to suppose that a science consists entirely of
strictly proved theses, and it would be unjust to require this.
Only a disposition with a passion for authority will raise such a
demand, someone with a craving to replace his religious catechism
by another, though it is a scientific one. Science has only a few
apodeictic propositions in its catechism: the rest are assertions
promoted by it to some particular degree of probability. It is
actually a sign of a scientific mode of thought to find
satisfaction in these approximations to certainty and to be able to
pursue constructive work further in spite of the absence of final
confirmation.

  
¹
[The German words are on the same pattern:
‘
Versprechen
’ and
‘
Vergehen
’.]

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   But if the subject does not
himself give us the explanation of the sense of a parapraxis, where
are we to find the starting-points for our interpretation - the
circumstantial evidence? In various directions. In the first place
from analogies with phenomena apart from parapraxes: when, for
instance, we assert that distorting a name when it occurs as a slip
of the tongue has the same insulting sense as a deliberate twisting
of a name. Further, from the psychical situation in which the
parapraxis occurs, the character of the person who makes the
parapraxis, and the impressions which he has received before the
parapraxis and to which the parapraxis is perhaps a reaction. What
happens as a rule is that the interpretation is carried out
according to general principles: to begin with there is only a
suspicion, a suggestion for an interpretation, and we then find a
confirmation by examining the psychical situation. Sometimes we
have to wait for subsequent events as well (which have, as it were,
announced themselves by the parapraxis) before our suspicion is
confirmed.

   I cannot easily give you
illustrations of this if I limit myself to the field of slips of
the tongue, though even there some good instances are to be found.
The young man who wanted to ‘
begleitdigen
’ a
lady was certainly a timid character. The lady whose husband could
eat and drink what
she
wanted is known to me as one of those
energetic women who wear the breeches in their home. Or let us take
the following example: At the General Meeting of the
‘Concordia’ a young member made a speech of violent
opposition, in the course of which he addressed the committee as
‘
Vorschussmitglieder
[lending members]’, a word
which seems to be made up of ‘
Vorstand
[directors]’ and ‘
Ausschuss
[committee]’.
We shall suspect that some disturbing purpose was at work in him,
acting against his violent opposition, based on something connected
with a loan. And in fact we learnt from our informant that the
speaker was constantly in financial difficulties and just at that
time had applied for a loan. The disturbing intention could
therefore be replaced by the thought: ‘Moderate your
opposition; these are the same people who will have to sanction
your loan.’

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3161

   But I can give you a large
selection of circumstantial evidence of this kind if I pass over to
the wide field of the other parapraxes.

   If anyone forgets a proper name
which is familiar to him normally or if, in spite of all his
efforts, he finds it difficult to keep it in mind, it is plausible
to suppose that he has something against the person who bears the
name so that he prefers not to think of him. Consider, for
instance, what we learn in the following cases about the psychical
situation in which the parapraxis occurred.

   ‘A Herr Y. fell in love
with a lady, but he met with no success, and shortly afterwards she
married a Herr X. Thereafter, Herr Y., in spite of having known
Herr X. for a long time and even having business dealings with him,
forgot his name over and over again, so that several times he had
to enquire what it was from other people when he wanted to
correspond with Herr X.’ Herr Y. evidently wanted to know
nothing of his more fortunate rival: ‘never thought of shall
he be.’¹

   Or: A lady enquired from her
doctor for news of a common acquaintance, but called her by her
maiden name. She had forgotten her friend’s married name. She
admitted afterwards that she had been very unhappy about the
marriage and disliked her friend’s husband.²

   We shall have a good deal to say
about forgetting names in other connections; for the moment we are
principally interested in the psychical situation in which the
forgetting occurs.

   The forgetting of intentions can
in general be traced to an opposing current of thought, which is
unwilling to carry out the intention. But this view is not only
held by us psycho-analysts; it is the general opinion, accepted by
everyone in their daily lives and only denied when it comes to
theory. A patron who gives his
protégé
the
excuse of having forgotten his request fails to justify himself.
The
protégé
immediately thinks: ‘It
means nothing to him; it’s true he promised, but he
doesn’t really want to do it.’ For that reason
forgetting is banned in certain circumstances of ordinary life; the
distinction between the popular and the psycho-analytic view of
these parapraxes seems to have disappeared. Imagine the lady of the
house receiving her guest with the words: ‘What? have you
come to-day? I’d quite forgotten I invited you for
to-day.’ Or imagine a young man confessing to his
fiancée
that he had forgotten to keep their last
rendez-vous
. He will certainly not confess it; he will
prefer to invent on the spur of the moment the most improbable
obstacles which prevented his appearing at the time and afterwards
made it impossible for him to let her know. We all know too that in
military affairs the excuse of having forgotten something is of no
help and is no protection against punishment, and we must all feel
that that is justified. Here all at once everyone is united in
thinking that a particular parapraxis has a sense and in knowing
what that sense is. Why are they not consistent enough to extend
this knowledge to the other parapraxes and to admit them fully?
There is of course an answer to this question too.

  
¹
From Jung.

  
²
From Brill.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Since laymen have so little doubt
about the sense of this forgetting of intentions, you will be the
less surprised to find writers employing this sort of parapraxis in
the same sense. Any of you who have seen or read Bernard
Shaw’s
Caesar and Cleopatra
will remember that in the
last scene Caesar, as he is leaving Egypt, is haunted by the idea
that there is something else he had intended to do but has
forgotten. In the end it turns out what this was: he had forgotten
to say good-bye to Cleopatra. The dramatist is seeking by this
little contrivance to ascribe to the great Caesar a superiority
which he did not in fact possess and which he never desired. For
historical sources will tell you that Caesar made Cleopatra follow
him to Rome, that she was living there with her little Caesarion
when Caesar was murdered, and that she thereupon fled from the
city.

   Cases of forgetting an intention
are in general so clear that they are not of much use for our
purpose of obtaining circumstantial evidence of the sense of a
parapraxis from the psychical situation. Let us therefore turn to a
particularly ambiguous and obscure kind of parapraxis - to losing
and mislaying. You will no doubt find it incredible that we
ourselves can play an intentional part in what is so often the
painful accident of losing something. But there are plenty of
observations like the following one. A young man lost a pencil of
his of which he had been very fond. The day before, he had received
a letter from his brother-in-law which ended with these words:
‘I have neither the inclination nor the time at present to
encourage you in your frivolity and laziness.’ The pencil had
actually been given to him by this brother-in-law. Without this
coincidence we could not, of course, have asserted that a part was
played in the loss by an intention to get rid of the thing.¹
Similar cases are very common. We lose an object if we have
quarrelled with the person who gave it to us and do not want to be
reminded of him; or if we no longer like the object itself and want
to have an excuse for getting another and better one instead. The
same intention directed against an object can also play a part, of
course, in cases of dropping, breaking or destroying things. Can we
regard it as a matter of chance when a schoolchild immediately
before his birthday loses, ruins or smashes some of his personal
belongings, such as his satchel or his watch?

   Nor will anyone who has
sufficiently often experienced the torment of not being able to
find something that he himself has put away feel inclined to
believe that there is a purpose in mislaying things. Yet instances
are far from rare in which the circumstances attendant on the
mislaying point to an intention to get rid of the object
temporarily or permanently.

  
¹
From Dattner.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Here is the best example,
perhaps, of such an occasion. A youngish man told me the following
story: ‘Some years ago there were misunderstandings between
me and my wife. I found her too cold, and although I willingly
recognized her excellent qualities we lived together without any
tender feelings. One day, returning from a walk, she gave me a book
which she had bought because she thought it would interest me. I
thanked her for this mark of "attention", promised to
read the book and put it on one side. After that I could never find
it again. Months passed by, in which I occasionally remembered the
lost book and made vain attempts to find it. About six months later
my dear mother, who was not living with us, fell ill. My wife left
home to nurse her mother-in-law. The patient’s condition
became serious and gave my wife an opportunity of showing the best
side of herself. One evening I returned home full of enthusiasm and
gratitude for what my wife had accomplished. I walked up to my
desk, and without any definite intention but with a kind of
somnambulistic certainty opened one of the drawers. On the very top
I found the long-lost book I had mislaid. With the extinction of
the motive the mislaying of the object ceased as well.

   Ladies and Gentlemen, I could
multiply this collection of examples indefinitely; but I will not
do so here. You will in any case find a profusion of case material
for the study of parapraxes in my
Psychopathology of Everyday
Life
(first published in 1901).¹ All these examples lead
to the same result: they make it probable that parapraxes have a
sense, and they show you how that sense is discovered or confirmed
by the attendant circumstances. I will be briefer to-day, because
we have adopted the limited aim of using the study of these
phenomena as a help towards a preparation for psycho-analysis.
There are only two groups of observations into which I need enter
more fully here: accumulated and combined parapraxes and the
confirmation of our interpretations by subsequent events.