Part 5

It is remarkable how little respect you have, in your hearts, for a mental fact! Imagine that someone had undertaken a chemical analysis of a certain substance and had ascertained that one ingredient of it is of a certain weight, so and so many milligrams. From this weight, thus arrived at, certain conclusions may be drawn. Do you think now it would ever occur to a chemist to discredit these conclusions on the ground that the isolated substance might as well have had some other weight? Everyone recognizes the fact that it actually had this weight and no other, and builds further conclusions confidently on that fact. But when it is a question of a mental fact, that it was such an idea and no other that occurred to the person when questioned, you will not accept that as valid, but say that something else might as well have occurred to him! The truth is that you have an illusion of a psychic freedom within you which you do not want to give up. I regret to say that on this point I find myself in sharpest opposition to your views.

Now you will break off here only to take up your resistance at another point. You will continue: “We understand that it lies in the peculiar technique of psycho-analysis to bring the person analysed to give the solution of its problems. Let us take another example, that in which the after-dinner speaker calls upon the company to hiccough to the health of their guest. The interfering tendency is, you say, in this case to ridicule; this it is which opposes the intention to do honour. But this is a mere interpretation on your part, based on observations made independently of the slip. If in this case you were to question the perpetrator of the slip he would not confirm your view that he intended an insult; on the contrary, he would vehemently deny it. Why do you not abandon your undemonstrable interpretation in the face of this flat denial?”

Yes, this time you have lighted upon something formidable. I can picture to myself that unknown speaker; he is probably an assistant of the guest of honour, perhaps already a junior lecturer himself, a young man with the brightest prospects. I will press him and ask whether he is sure he did not perceive some feeling in himself antagonistic to the demand that he should pay honour to his chief. A nice fuss there is! He becomes impatient and suddenly bursts out at me: “Look here, enough of this cross-examination, or I’ll make myself disagreeable! You will ruin my career with your suspicions. I simply said “aufstossen” instead of “anstossen,” because I’d already said “auf” twice before it. It’s the thing that Meringer calls a perseveration, and there’s nothing else to be read into it. Do you understand me? That’s enough.” H’m, this is a startling reaction, a truly energetic repudiation. I see that there is nothing more to be done with the young man, but I think to myself that he betrays a strong personal interest in making out that his slip has no meaning. You will perhaps agree too that he has no right to become so uncivil over a purely theoretical investigation, but after all, you will think, he must know what he wanted to say and what not.

O, so he must? That is perhaps still open to question.

Now you think you have me in a trap. “So that is your technique,” I hear you say. “When the person who commits a slip gives an explanation which fits your views then you declare him to be the final authority on the subject. He says so himself! But if what he says does not suit your book, then you suddenly assert that what he says does not count, one need not believe it.”

Certainly that is so. But I can give you another instance of a similarly monstrous procedure. When an accused man confesses to a deed the judge believes him, but when he denies it the judge does not believe him. Were it otherwise the law could not be administered, and in spite of occasional miscarriages you will admit that the system, on the whole, works well.

“Well, but are you a judge, and is the person who commits a slip to be accused before you? Is a slip of the tongue a crime?”

Perhaps we need not reject even this comparison. But see now to what deep-seated differences our attempt to investigate the apparently harmless problems of errors has brought us, differences which at this stage we do not know in the least how to reconcile. I suggest that we should make a temporary compromise on the basis of the analogy with the judge and the prisoner. You shall grant me that the meaning of an error admits of no doubt when the subject of the analysis acknowledges it himself. I, in turn, will admit that a direct proof for the suspected meaning cannot be obtained if the subject refuses us the information, and, of course, this applies also when the subject is not present to give us the information. As also in legal proceedings, we are then thrown back upon indications in order to form a decision, the truth of which is sometimes more and sometimes less probable. At law, for practical reasons, guilt has to be declared also on circumstantial evidence. There is no such necessity here; but neither are we bound to refrain from considering such evidence. It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind.

But where shall we find a starting-point for our interpretations, and the indications for our proof, in cases where the subject under analysis says nothing to explain the meaning of the error? From various sources. First, by analogy with similar phenomena not produced by error, as when we maintain that the distortion of a name by mistake has the same intention to ridicule behind it as intentional distortion of names. And then, from the mental situation in which the error arose, from our knowledge of the character of the person who commits it, and of the feelings active in him before the error, to which it may be a response. As a rule what happens is that we find the meaning of the error according to general principles; and this, to begin with, is only a conjecture, a tentative solution, proof being discovered later by an examination of the mental situation. Sometimes it is necessary to await further developments, which have been, so to speak, foreshadowed by the error, before we can find confirmation of our conjecture.

I cannot easily give you evidence of this if I have to limit myself to the field of slips of the tongue, although even here I have a few good examples. The young man who offered to “insort” the lady is in fact very shy; the lady whose husband may eat and drink what she likes I know to be one of those managing women who rule the household with a rod of iron. Or take the following case: At a general meeting of a club a young member made a violent attack in a speech, in the course of which he spoke of the officers of the society as “Lenders of the Committee,” which appears to be a substitute for Members of the Committee. We should conjecture that against his attack some interfering tendency was active which was itself in some way connected with the idea of lending. As a matter of fact an informant tells us that the speaker is in constant money difficulties and was actually attempting to raise money at the time. So the interfering tendency really is to be translated into the thought: “Be more moderate in your opposition: these are the people whom you want to lend you money.”

If I diverge into the field of other kinds of errors I can give you a wide selection of examples of such circumstantial evidence.

If anyone forgets an otherwise familiar proper name and has difficulty in retaining it in his memory—even with an effort—it is not hard to guess that he has something against the owner of the name and does not like to think of him; consider in the light of this the following notes on the mental situation in which an error of this kind was made.

A Mr. Y. fell in love with a lady, who did not return the feeling and shortly after married a Mr. X. Although Mr. Y. had already known Mr. X. for some time, and even had business relations with him, he forgets his name over and over again, so that he frequently has to ask someone the man’s name when it is necessary to write to him. Obviously Mr. Y. wants to obliterate all knowledge of his fortunate rival. “Never thought of shall he be.”

Another example: a lady inquires of a doctor about a common acquaintance, calling her by her maiden name. She has forgotten the married name. She admits that she strongly objected to the marriage and dislikes the husband intensely.

Later we shall have much to say in other connections in regard to the forgetting of names; at the moment we are chiefly interested in the ‘mental situation’ in which the lapse of memory occurs.

The forgetting of resolutions can in general be referred to an opposing current of feeling which is against carrying out the intention. It is not only we psycho-analysts who hold this view, however; it is the ordinary attitude of everyone in their daily affairs, which they only deny in theory. The protégé whose patron apologizes for having forgotten his request is not pacified by such an apology. He thinks immediately: “It’s evidently nothing to him; he promised, but he doesn’t mean to do it.” Forgetting is therefore criticized even in life, in certain connections, and the difference between the popular and the psycho-analytic conception of these errors seems to be dispelled. Imagine a hostess receiving a guest with the words: “What, is it to-day you were coming? I quite forgot that I had asked you for to-day”; or a young man confessing to his beloved that he had forgotten all about the appointment they had arranged on the last occasion. He will never admit it; he will rather invent on the spur of the moment the most wildly improbable hindrances which prevented his coming and made it impossible for him to communicate with her from that day to this. We all know that in military service the excuse of having forgotten is worthless and saves no one from punishment; the system is recognized as justifiable. Here everyone is suddenly agreed that a certain mistake has a meaning and what that meaning is. Why are they not consistent enough to extend their insight to other errors and then openly acknowledge it? There is naturally also an answer to this.

If the meaning of forgetting resolutions is so little open to doubt in the minds of people in general you will be the less surprised to find that writers employ such mistakes in a similar sense. Those of you who have seen or read Shaw’s Cæsar and Cleopatra will recall that Cæsar, when departing in the last scene, is pursued by the feeling that there was something else he intended to do which he had now forgotten. At last it turns out what it is: to say farewell to Cleopatra. By this small device the author attempts to ascribe to the great Cæsar a feeling of superiority which he did not possess and to which he did not at all aspire. You can learn from historical sources that Cæsar arranged for Cleopatra to follow him to Rome and that she was living there with her little Cæsarion when Cæsar was murdered, whereupon she fled the city.

The cases of forgetting resolutions are as a rule so clear that they are of little use for our purpose, which is to discover in the mental situation indications of the meaning of the error. Let us turn, therefore, to a particularly ambiguous and obscure form of error, that of losing and mislaying objects. It will certainly seem incredible to you that the person himself could have any purpose in losing things, which is often such a painful accident. But there are innumerable instances of this kind: A young man loses a pencil to which he was much attached. A few days before he had had a letter from his brother-in-law which concluded with these words: “I have neither time nor inclination at present to encourage you in your frivolity and idleness.” Now the pencil was a present from this brother-in-law. Had it not been for this coincidence we could not of course have maintained that the loss involved any intention to get rid of the gift. Similar cases are very numerous. One loses objects when one has quarrelled with the giver and no longer wants to be reminded of him, or again, when one has tired of them and wants an excuse to provide oneself with something different and better. Dropping, breaking, and destroying things of course serves a similar purpose in regard to the object. Can it be considered accidental when, just before his birthday, a child loses and damages his possessions, for instance, his watch and his schoolbag?

Anyone who has experienced often enough the annoyance of not being able to find something which he has himself put away will certainly be unwilling to believe that he could have had any intention in so doing. And yet cases are not at all rare in which the circumstances attendant on the act of mislaying point to a tendency to put the object aside temporarily or permanently. Perhaps the best example of this kind is the following.

A young man told me this story: “A few years ago there were misunderstandings between me and my wife; I thought her too cold, and though I willingly acknowledged her excellent qualities we lived together without affection. One day, on coming in from a walk, she brought me a book which she had bought me because she thought it would interest me. I thanked her for her little attention, promised to read the book, put it among my things and never could find it again. Months passed by and occasionally I thought of this derelict book and tried in vain to find it. About six months later my dear mother, who lived some distance away, fell ill. My wife left our house to go and nurse her mother-in-law, who became seriously ill, giving my wife an opportunity of showing her best qualities. One evening I came home full of enthusiasm and gratitude towards my wife. I walked up to my writing desk and opened a certain drawer in it, without a definite intention but with a kind of somnambulistic sureness, and there before me lay the lost book which I had so often looked for.”

With the disappearance of the motive the inability to find the mislaid object also came to an end.

I could multiply this collection of examples indefinitely; but I will not do so now. In my Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life (first published in 1901) you will find plenty of examples for the study of errors. All these examples demonstrate the same thing over and over again; they make it probable to you that mistakes have a meaning and they show you how the meaning can be guessed or confirmed from the attendant circumstances. I restrict myself rather to-day, because our intention here was limited to studying these phenomena with a view to obtaining an introduction to psycho-analysis. There are only two groups of occurrences into which I must still go, the accumulated and combined errors, and the confirmation of our interpretations by subsequent events.

Accumulated and combined errors are certainly the finest flowers of the species. If we were only concerned to prove that errors had a meaning, we should have limited ourselves to them at the outset, for the meaning in them is unmistakable, even to the dullest intelligence, and strong enough to impress the most critical judgement. The repetition of the occurrences betrays a persistence which is hardly ever an attribute of chance, but which fits well with the idea of design. Further, the exchanging of one kind of mistake for another shows us what is the most important and essential element in the error; and that is, not its form, or the means of which it makes use, but the tendency which makes use of it and can achieve its end in the most various ways. Thus I will give you a case of repeated forgetting: Ernest Jones relates that he once allowed a letter to lie on his writing desk for several days for some unknown reason. At last he decided to post it, but received it back from the dead-letter office, for he had forgotten to address it. After he had addressed it he took it to post but this time without a stamp. At this point he finally had to admit to himself his objection to sending the letter at all.

In another case, taking up a thing by mistake is combined with mislaying it. A lady travelled to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous artist. The visitor was much fêted by the Germans living in Rome and received, among other things, a present of an antique gold medal. The lady was vexed because her brother-in-law did not appreciate the fine specimen highly enough. After her sister had arrived she returned home and discovered, upon unpacking, that she had brought the medal with her—how, she did not know. She wrote at once to her brother-in-law telling him that she would send the stolen property back to him the next day. But the next day the medal was so cleverly mislaid that it could not be discovered and could not be returned, and then it began to dawn upon the lady what her “absent-mindedness” had meant, namely, that she wanted to keep the work of art for herself.

I have already given you an example of a combination of forgetfulness with an error, in the case in which someone forgets an appointment, and a second time, with the firm intention of not forgetting it again, appears at an hour which is not the appointed one. A quite analogous case was told me from his own experience by a friend who pursues literary as well as scientific interests. He said: “Some years ago I accepted election to the Council of a certain literary society because I hoped that the society might at some time be useful to me in getting a play of mine produced; and, although not much interested, I attended the meetings regularly every Friday. A few months ago I received an assurance that my play would be produced at a theatre in F. and since then it has invariably happened that I forget to attend the meetings of the society. When I read your writings on this subject, I reproached myself with my meanness in staying away now that these people can no longer be of use to me and determined on no account to forget on the following Friday. I kept reminding myself of my resolution until I carried it out and stood at the door of the meeting-room. To my amazement it was closed and the meeting was already over! I had made a mistake in the day of the week and it was then Saturday!”

It would be tempting to collect more of these examples, but I will pass on and, instead, let you glance at those cases in which interpretation has to wait for confirmation in the future.

The main condition in these cases is, as we might expect, that the mental situation at the time is unknown or cannot be ascertained. At the moment, therefore, our interpretation is no more than a supposition to which we ourselves would not ascribe too much weight. Later, however, something happens which shows us how well justified our previous interpretation was. I was once the guest of a young married couple and heard the young wife laughingly describe her latest experience, how the day after the return from the honeymoon she had called for her sister and gone shopping with her as in former times, while her husband went to his business. Suddenly she noticed a man on the other side of the street and, nudging her sister, said, “Look, there goes Mr. K.” She had forgotten that this man had been her husband for some weeks. A shudder went over me as I heard the story, but I dared not draw the inference. Several years later the little incident came back to my mind after this marriage had come to a most unhappy end.

Maeder tells a story of a lady who had forgotten to try on her wedding-dress the day before the wedding, to the despair of the dressmaker, and remembered it only late in the evening. He connects it with the fact that soon after the marriage she was divorced by her husband. I know a woman now divorced from her husband who, in managing her money-affairs, frequently signed documents with her maiden name, many years before she really resumed it. I know of other women who lost their wedding-rings on the honeymoon and know, too, that the course of the marriage lent meaning to this accident. And now one striking example more, with a better ending. It is told of a famous German chemist that his marriage never took place because he forgot the hour of the ceremony and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough to let the matter rest with one attempt, and died unmarried at a ripe age.