Freud - Complete Works (753 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4653

   If it were a question of
one
case only like that of my patient, one would shrug it
aside. No one would dream of erecting upon a single observation a
belief which implies taking such a decisive line. But you must
believe me when I assure you that this is not the only case in my
experience. I have collected a whole number of such prophecies and
from all of them I gained the impression that the fortune-teller
had merely brought to expression the thoughts, and more especially
the secret wishes, of those who were questioning him, and that we
were therefore justified in analysing these prophecies as though
they were subjective products, phantasies or dreams of the people
concerned. Not every case, of course, is equally convincing and in
not every case is it equally possible to exclude more rational
explanations; but, taking them as a whole, there remains a strong
balance of probability in favour of thought-transference as a fact.
The importance of the subject would justify me in producing all my
cases to you; but that I cannot do, owing to the prolixity of
description that would be involved and to the inevitable breach of
the obligations of discretion. I will try so far as possible to
appease my conscience in giving you a few more examples.

   One day I was visited by a highly
intelligent young man, a student preparing for his final
examinations for a doctorate, but unable to take them since, as he
complained, he had lost all interest and power of concentration and
even any faculty for orderly memory. The previous history of this
condition of quasi-paralysis was soon revealed: he had fallen ill
after carrying out a great act of self-discipline. He had a sister,
to whom he was attached by an intense but always restrained
devotion, just as she was to him. ‘What a pity we can’t
get married!’ they would often say to each other. A
respectable man fell in love with the sister; she responded to his
affection, but her parents did not assent to the union. In their
difficulty the young couple turned to her brother, nor did he
refuse his help. He made it possible for them to correspond with
each other, and his influence eventually persuaded the parents to
consent. In the course of the engagement, however, an occurrence
took place whose meaning it was easy to guess. He went with his
future brother-in-law on a difficult mountain-climb without a
guide; they lost their way and were in danger of not returning safe
and sound. Shortly after his sister’s marriage he fell into
this condition of mental exhaustion.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4654

   The influence of psycho-analysis
restored his ability to work and he left me in order to go in for
his examinations; but after he had passed them successfully he came
back to me for a short time in the autumn of the same year. It was
then that he related a remarkable experience to me which he had had
before the summer. In his University town there lived a
fortune-teller who enjoyed great popularity. Even the Princes of
the Royal House used to consult her before important undertakings.
Her mode of operation was very simple. She asked to be given the
date of the relevant person’s birth; she required to know
nothing else about him, not even his name. She then proceeded to
consult her astrological books, made long calculations and finally
uttered a prophecy relating to the person in question. My patient
decided to call upon her mystical arts in connection with his
brother-in-law. He visited her and told her the relevant date.
After carrying out her calculations she made her prophecy:
‘The person in question will die in July or August of this
year of crayfish- or oyster-poisoning.’ My patient finished
his story with the words: ‘It was quite
marvellous!’

   From the first I had listened
with irritation. After this exclamation of his I went so far as to
ask: ‘What do you see that’s so marvellous in this
prophecy? Here we are in late autumn and your brother-in-law
isn’t dead or you’d have told me long ago. So the
prophecy hasn’t come true.’ ‘No doubt
that’s so,’ he replied, ‘but here is what’s
marvellous. My brother-in-law is passionately devoted to crayfish
and oysters and in the previous summer - that’s to say,
before
my visit to the fortune-teller - he had an attack of
oyster-poisoning of which he nearly died.’ What was I to say
to this? I could only feel annoyed that this highly-educated man
(who had moreover been through a successful analysis) should not
have a clearer view of the position. I for my part, rather than
believe that it is possible to calculate the onset of an attack of
crayfish- or oyster-poisoning from astrological tables, prefer to
suppose that my patient had not yet overcome his hatred for his
rival, the repression of which had earlier led to his falling ill,
and that the fortune-teller was simply giving expression to his own
expectation: ‘a taste of that kind isn’t to be given
up, and one day, all the same, it will be the end of him.’ I
must admit that I cannot think of any other explanation for this
case, unless, perhaps, that my patient was having a joke with me.
But neither then nor at a later time did he give me grounds for
such a suspicion, and he seemed to be meaning what he said
seriously.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4655

   Here is another case. A young man
in a position of consequence was involved in a
liaison
with
a
demi-mondaine
which was characterized by a curious
compulsion. He was obliged from time to time to provoke her with
derisive and insulting remarks till she was driven to complete
desperation. When he had brought her to that point, he was
relieved, became reconciled with her and made her a present. But
now he wanted to be free of her: the compulsion seemed to him
uncanny. He noticed that this
liaison
was damaging his
reputation; he wanted to have a wife of his own and to raise a
family. But since he could not get free from this
demi-mondaine
by his own strength, he called analysis to his
help. After one of these abusive scenes, when the analysis had
already started, he got her to write something on a piece of paper,
so as to show it to a graphologist. The report that he received
from him was that the writing was that of someone in extreme
despair, who would certainly commit suicide in the next few days.
This did not, it is true, occur and the lady remained alive; but
the analysis succeeded in loosening his bonds. He left the lady and
turned to a young girl who he expected would be able to make him a
good wife. Soon afterwards a dream appeared which could only hint
at a dawning doubt as to the girl’s worthiness. He obtained a
specimen of her writing too, took it to the same authority, and was
given a verdict on her writing which confirmed his apprehensions.
He therefore abandoned the idea of making her his wife.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4656

   In order to form an opinion of
the graphologist’s reports, especially the first one, we must
know something of our subject’s secret history. In his early
youth he had (in accordance with his passionate nature) fallen in
love to the pitch of frenzy with a married woman who was still
young but nevertheless older than he was. When she rejected him, he
made an attempt at suicide which, there can be no doubt, was
seriously intended. It was only by a hair’s breadth that he
escaped death and he was only restored after a long period of
nursing. But this wild action made a deep impression on the woman
he loved; she granted him her favours, he became her lover and
thenceforward remained secretly attached to her and served her with
a truly chivalrous devotion. More than twenty years later, when
they had both grown older - but the woman, naturally, more than he
- the need was awakened in him to detach himself from her, to make
himself free, to lead a life of his own, to set up a house and
raise a family. And along with this feeling of satiety there arose
in him his long-suppressed craving for vengeance on his mistress.
As he had once tried to kill himself because she had spurned him,
so he wished now to have the satisfaction of her seeking death
because he left her. But his love was still too strong for it to be
possible for this wish to become conscious in him; nor was he in a
position to do her enough harm to drive her into death. In this
frame of mind he took on the
demi-mondaine
as a sort of
whipping-boy, to satisfy his thirst for revenge
in corpore
vili
; and he allowed himself to practise upon her all the
torments which he might expect would bring about with her the
result he wished to produce on his mistress. The fact that the
vengeance applied to the latter was betrayed by his making her into
a confidante and adviser in his
liaison
instead of
concealing his defection from her. The wretched woman, who had long
fallen from giving to receiving favours, probably suffered more
from his confidences than the
demi-mondaine
did from his
brutalities. The compulsion of which he complained in regard to
this substitutive figure, and which drove him to analysis, had of
course been transferred on to her from his old mistress; it was
from her that he wanted to free himself but could not. I am not an
authority on handwriting and have no high opinion of the art of
divining character from it; still less do I believe in the
possibility of foretelling the writer’s future in this way.
You can see, however, whatever one may think of the value of
graphology, that there is no mistaking the fact that the expert,
when he promised that the writer of the specimen presented to him
would commit suicide in the next few days, had once again only
brought to light a powerful secret wish of the person who was
questioning him. Something of the same kind happened afterwards in
the case of the second report. What was there concerned, however,
was not an unconscious wish; it was the questioner’s dawning
doubt and apprehension that found a clear expression from the
graphologist’s mouth. Incidentally, my patient succeeded,
with the help of analysis, in finding an object for his love
outside the magic circle in which he had been spellbound.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4657

   Ladies and Gentlemen, - You have
now heard how dream-interpretation and psycho-analysis in general
assist occultism. I have shown you from examples that by their
application occult facts have been brought to light which would
otherwise have remained unknown. Psycho-analysis cannot give a
direct answer to the question that no doubt interests you the most
- whether we are to believe in the objective reality of these
findings. But the material revealed by its help makes an impression
which is at all events favourable to an affirmative reply. Your
interest will not come to a stop at this point, however. You will
want to know what conclusions are justified by the incomparably
richer material in which psycho-analysis has no part. But I cannot
follow you there: it lies outside my province. The only further
thing I could do would be to report observations to you which have
at least so much relation to analysis that they were made during
psycho-analytic treatment and were even perhaps made possible by
its influence. I will tell you one such example - the one which has
left the strongest impression behind on me. I shall tell it at
great length and shall ask for your attention to a large number of
details, though even so I shall have to suppress much that would
have greatly increased the convincing force of the observation. It
is an example in which the fact came clearly to light and did not
need to be developed by analysis. In discussing it, however, we
shall not be able to do without the help of analysis. But I will
tell you in advance that this example too of apparent
thought-transference in the analytic situation is not exempt from
all doubts and that it does not allow us to take up an unqualified
position in support of the reality of occult phenomena.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4658

   Listen then:- One autumn day in
the year 1919, at about 10.45 a.m., Dr. David Forsyth, who had just
arrived from London, sent in his card to me while I was working
with a patient. (My respected colleague from London University will
not, I feel sure, regard it as an indiscretion if in this way I
betray the fact that he spent some months being initiated by me
into the arts of psycho-analytic technique.) I only had time to
greet him and to make an appointment to see him later. Dr. Forsyth
had a claim to my particular interest; he was the first foreigner
to come to me after I had been cut off by the war years and to
bring a promise of better times. Soon afterwards, at eleven
o’clock, Herr P., one of my patients, arrived - an
intelligent and agreeable man, between forty and fifty years of
age, who had originally come to me on account of difficulties with
women. His case did not promise any therapeutic success; I had long
before proposed our stopping the treatment, but he had wished to
continue it, evidently because he felt comfortable in a
well-tempered father-transference to me. At that period money
played no part: there was too little of it about. The sessions
which I spent with him were stimulating and refreshing for me as
well, and consequently, in disregard of the strict rules of medical
practice, analytic work was being carried on up to a foreseen
time-limit.

   That day P. returned to his
attempts at having erotic relations with women and once again
mentioned a pretty, piquante, penniless girl, with whom he felt he
might succeed, if the fact of her being a virgin did not scare him
off any serious attempt. He had often talked of her before but that
day he told me for the first time that, though of course she had no
notion of the true grounds of his impediment, she used to call him
‘Herr von Vorsicht’. I was struck by this information;
Dr. Forsyth’s visiting card lay beside me, and I showed it to
him.