Part II
. I have compared the whole book with the original, and have discussed doubtful and difficult points with Professor Freud and Mrs. Riviere. Mrs. Riviere’s English translation will be its own recommendation: I can give the reader the assurance that it is a faithful and exact rendering.
ERNEST JONES.
_December 1921._
CONTENTS
PAGE PREFACE 5
_PART I_
LECTURE 1. INTRODUCTION 11 2. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS 19 3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_continuation_) 31 4. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_conclusion_) 47
_PART II_
DREAMS
5. DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT 67 6. PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION 82 7. MANIFEST CONTENT AND LATENT THOUGHTS 94 8. CHILDREN’S DREAMS 105 9. THE DREAM-CENSORSHIP 114 10. SYMBOLISM IN DREAMS 125 11. THE DREAM-WORK 143 12. EXAMPLES OF DREAMS AND ANALYSIS OF THEM 155 13. ARCHAIC AND INFANTILE FEATURES IN DREAMS 168 14. WISH-FULFILMENT 180 15. DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS 193
_PART III_
GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES
16. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY 207 17. THE MEANING OF SYMPTOMS 218 18. FIXATION UPON TRAUMATA: THE UNCONSCIOUS 231 19. RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION 242 20. THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN 255 21. DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS 269 22. ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION. ÆTIOLOGY 285 23. THE PATHS OF SYMPTOM-FORMATION 300 24. ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS 316 25. ANXIETY 328 26. THE THEORY OF THE LIBIDO: NARCISSISM 344 27. TRANSFERENCE 360 28. THE ANALYTIC THERAPY 375 INDEX 389
_PART I_
FIRST LECTURE INTRODUCTION
I do not know what knowledge any of you may already have of psycho-analysis, either from reading or from hearsay. But having regard to the title of my lectures—Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis—I am bound to proceed as though you knew nothing of the subject and needed instruction, even in its first elements.
One thing, at least, I may presuppose that you know—namely, that psycho-analysis is a method of medical treatment for those suffering from nervous disorders; and I can give you at once an illustration of the way in which psycho-analytic procedure differs from, and often even reverses, what is customary in other branches of medicine. Usually, when we introduce a patient to a new form of treatment we minimize its difficulties and give him confident assurances of its success. This is, in my opinion, perfectly justifiable, for we thereby increase the probability of success. But when we undertake to treat a neurotic psycho-analytically we proceed otherwise. We explain to him the difficulties of the method, its long duration, the trials and sacrifices which will be required of him; and, as to the result, we tell him that we can make no definite promises, that success depends upon his own endeavours, upon his understanding, his adaptability and his perseverance. We have, of course, good reasons, into which you will perhaps gain some insight later on, for adopting this apparently perverse attitude.
Now forgive me if I begin by treating you in the same way as I do my neurotic patients, for I shall positively advise you against coming to hear me a second time. And with this intention I shall explain to you how of necessity you can obtain from me only an incomplete knowledge of psycho-analysis and also what difficulties stand in the way of your forming an independent judgement on the subject. For I shall show you how the whole trend of your training and your accustomed modes of thought must inevitably have made you hostile to psycho-analysis, and also how much you would have to overcome in your own minds in order to master this instinctive opposition. I naturally cannot foretell what degree of understanding of psycho-analysis you may gain from my lectures, but I can at least assure you that by attending them you will not have learnt how to conduct a psycho-analytic investigation, nor how to carry out a psycho-analytic treatment. And further, if anyone of you should feel dissatisfied with a merely cursory acquaintance with psycho-analysis and should wish to form a permanent connection with it, I shall not merely discourage him, but I shall actually warn him against it. For as things are at the present time, not only would the choice of such a career put an end to all chances of academic success, but, upon taking up work as a practitioner, such a man would find himself in a community which misunderstood his aims and intentions, regarded him with suspicion and hostility, and let loose upon him all the latent evil impulses harboured within it. Perhaps you can infer from the accompaniments of the war now raging in Europe what a countless host that is to reckon with.
However, there are always some people to whom the possibility of a new addition to knowledge will prove an attraction strong enough to survive all such inconveniences. If there are any such among you who will appear at my second lecture in spite of my words of warning, they will be welcome. But all of you have a right to know what these inherent difficulties of psycho-analysis are to which I have alluded.
First of all, there is the problem of the teaching and exposition of the subject. In your medical studies you have been accustomed to use your eyes. You see the anatomical specimen, the precipitate of the chemical reaction, the contraction of the muscle as the result of the stimulation of its nerves. Later you come into contact with the patients; you learn the symptoms of disease by the evidence of your senses; the results of pathological processes can be demonstrated to you, and in many cases even the exciting cause of them in an isolated form. On the surgical side you are witnesses of the measures by which the patient is helped, and are permitted to attempt them yourselves. Even in psychiatry, demonstration of patients, of their altered expression, speech and behaviour, yields a series of observations which leave a deep impression on your minds. Thus a teacher of medicine acts for the most part as an exponent and guide, leading you as it were through a museum, while you gain in this way a direct relationship to what is displayed to you and believe yourselves to have been convinced by your own experience of the existence of the new facts.
But in psycho-analysis, unfortunately, all this is different. In psycho-analytic treatment nothing happens but an exchange of words between the patient and the physician. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and present impressions, complains, and expresses his wishes and his emotions. The physician listens, attempts to direct the patient’s thought-processes, reminds him, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of understanding or denial thus evoked. The patient’s unenlightened relatives—people of a kind to be impressed only by something visible and tangible, preferably by the sort of ‘action’ that may be seen at a cinema—never omit to express their doubts of how “mere talk can possibly cure anybody.” Their reasoning is of course as illogical as it is inconsistent. For they are the same people who are always convinced that the sufferings of neurotics are purely “in their own imagination.” Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even to-day words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give to another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair; by words the teacher imparts his knowledge to the student; by words the orator sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgements and decisions. Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow-creatures. Therefore let us not despise the use of words in psycho-therapy and let us be content if we may overhear the words which pass between the analyst and the patient.
But even that is impossible. The dialogue which constitutes the analysis will admit of no audience; the process cannot be demonstrated. One could, of course, exhibit a neurasthenic or hysterical patient to students at a psychiatric lecture. He would relate his case and his symptoms, but nothing more. He will make the communications necessary to the analysis only under the conditions of a special affective relationship to the physician; in the presence of a single person to whom he was indifferent he would become mute. For these communications relate to all his most private thoughts and feelings, all that which as a socially independent person he must hide from others, all that which, being foreign to his own conception of himself, he tries to conceal even from himself.
It is impossible, therefore, for you to be actually present during a psycho-analytic treatment; you can only be told about it, and can learn psycho-analysis, in the strictest sense of the word, only by hearsay. This tuition at second hand, so to say, puts you in a very unusual and difficult position as regards forming your own judgement on the subject, which will therefore largely depend on the reliance you can place on your informant.
Now imagine for a moment that you were present at a lecture in history instead of in psychiatry, and that the lecturer was dealing with the life and conquests of Alexander the Great. What reason would you have to believe what he told you? The situation would appear at first sight even more unsatisfactory than in the case of psycho-analysis, for the professor of history had no more part in Alexander’s campaigns than you yourselves; the psycho-analyst at least informs you of matters in which he himself has played a part. But then we come to the question of what evidence there is to support the historian. He can refer you to the accounts of early writers who were either contemporaries or who lived not long after the events in question, such as Diodorus, Plutarch, Arrian, and others; he can lay before you reproductions of the preserved coins and statues of the king, and pass round a photograph of the mosaic at Pompeii representing the battle at Issus. Yet, strictly speaking, all these documents only prove that the existence of Alexander and the reality of his deeds were already believed in by former generations of men, and your criticism might begin anew at this point. And then you would find that not everything reported of Alexander is worthy of belief or sufficiently authenticated in detail, but I can hardly suppose that you would leave the lecture-room in doubt altogether as to the reality of Alexander the Great. Your conclusions would be principally determined by two considerations: first, that the lecturer could have no conceivable motive for attempting to persuade you of something which he did not himself believe to be true, and secondly, that all the available authorities agree more or less in their accounts of the facts. In questioning the accuracy of the early writers you would apply these tests again, the possible motives of the authors and the agreement to be found between them. The result of such tests would certainly be convincing in the case of Alexander, probably less so in regard to figures like Moses and Nimrod. Later on you will perceive clearly enough what doubts can be raised against the credibility of an exponent of psycho-analysis.
Now you will have a right to ask the question: If no objective evidence for psycho-analysis exists, and no possibility of demonstrating the process, how is it possible to study it at all or to convince oneself of its truth? The study of it is indeed not an easy matter, nor are there many people who have thoroughly learned it; still, there is, of course, some way of learning it. Psycho-Analysis is learnt first of all on oneself, through the study of one’s own personality. This is not exactly what is meant by introspection, but it may be so described for want of a better word. There is a whole series of very common and well-known mental phenomena which can be taken as material for self-analysis when one has acquired some knowledge of the method. In this way one may obtain the required conviction of the reality of the processes which psycho-analysis describes, and of the truth of its conceptions, although progress on these lines is not without its limitations. One gets much further by submitting oneself to analysis by a skilled analyst, undergoing the working of the analysis in one’s own person and using the opportunity to observe the finer details of the technique which the analyst employs. This, eminently the best way, is of course only practicable for individuals and cannot be used in a class of students.
The second difficulty you will find in connection with psycho-analysis is not, on the other hand, inherent in it, but is one for which I must hold you yourselves responsible, at least in so far as your medical studies have influenced you. Your training will have induced in you an attitude of mind very far removed from the psycho-analytical one. You have been trained to establish the functions and disturbances of the organism on an anatomical basis, to explain them in terms of chemistry and physics, and to regard them from a biological point of view; but no part of your interest has ever been directed to the mental aspects of life, in which, after all, the development of the marvellously complicated organism culminates. For this reason a psychological attitude of mind is still foreign to you, and you are accustomed to regard it with suspicion, to deny it a scientific status, and to leave it to the general public, poets, mystics, and philosophers. Now this limitation in you is undoubtedly detrimental to your medical efficiency; for on meeting a patient it is the mental aspects with which one first comes into contact, as in most human relationships, and I am afraid you will pay the penalty of having to yield a part of the curative influence at which you aim to the quacks, mystics, and faith-healers whom you despise.
I quite acknowledge that there is an excuse for this defect in your previous training. There is no auxiliary philosophical science that might be of service to you in your profession. Neither speculative philosophy nor descriptive psychology, nor even the so-called experimental psychology which is studied in connection with the physiology of the sense-organs, as they are taught in the schools, can tell you anything useful of the relations existing between mind and body, or can give you a key to comprehension of a possible disorder of the mental functions. It is true that the psychiatric branch of medicine occupies itself with describing the different forms of recognizable mental disturbances and grouping them in clinical pictures, but in their best moments psychiatrists themselves are doubtful whether their purely descriptive formulations deserve to be called science. The origin, mechanism, and interrelation of the symptoms which make up these clinical pictures are undiscovered: either they cannot be correlated with any demonstrable changes in the brain, or only with such changes as in no way explain them. These mental disturbances are open to therapeutic influence only when they can be identified as secondary effects of some organic disease.
This is the lacuna which psycho-analysis is striving to fill. It hopes to provide psychiatry with the missing psychological foundation, to discover the common ground on which a correlation of bodily and mental disorder becomes comprehensible. To this end it must dissociate itself from every foreign preconception, whether anatomical, chemical, or physiological, and must work throughout with conceptions of a purely psychological order, and for this very reason I fear that it will appear strange to you at first.
For the next difficulty I shall not hold you, your training or your mental attitude, responsible. There are two tenets of psycho-analysis which offend the whole world and excite its resentment; the one conflicts with intellectual, the other with moral and æsthetic, prejudices. Let us not underestimate these prejudices; they are powerful things, residues of valuable, even necessary, stages in human evolution. They are maintained by emotional forces, and the fight against them is a hard one.
The first of these displeasing propositions of psycho-analysis is this: that mental processes are essentially unconscious, and that those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic entity. Now I must ask you to remember that, on the contrary, we are accustomed to identify the mental with the conscious. Consciousness appears to us as positively the characteristic that defines mental life, and we regard psychology as the study of the content of consciousness. This even appears so evident that any contradiction of it seems obvious nonsense to us, and yet it is impossible for psycho-analysis to avoid this contradiction, or to accept the identity between the conscious and the psychic. The psycho-analytical definition of the mind is that it comprises processes of the nature of feeling, thinking, and wishing, and it maintains that there are such things as unconscious thinking and unconscious wishing. But in doing so psycho-analysis has forfeited at the outset the sympathy of the sober and scientifically-minded, and incurred the suspicion of being a fantastic cult occupied with dark and unfathomable mysteries.[1] You yourselves must find it difficult to understand why I should stigmatize an abstract proposition, such as “The psychic is the conscious,” as a prejudice; nor can you guess yet what evolutionary process could have led to the denial of the unconscious, if it does indeed exist, nor what advantage could have been achieved by this denial. It seems like an empty wrangle over words to argue whether mental life is to be regarded as co-extensive with consciousness or whether it may be said to stretch beyond this limit, and yet I can assure you that the acceptance of unconscious mental processes represents a decisive step towards a new orientation in the world and in science.
As little can you suspect how close is the connection between this first bold step on the part of psycho-analysis and the second to which I am now coming. For this next proposition, which we put forward as one of the discoveries of psycho-analysis, consists in the assertion that impulses, which can only be described as sexual in both the narrower and the wider sense, play a peculiarly large part, never before sufficiently appreciated, in the causation of nervous and mental disorders. Nay, more, that these sexual impulses have contributed invaluably to the highest cultural, artistic, and social achievements of the human mind.
In my opinion, it is the aversion from this conclusion of psycho-analytic investigation that is the most significant source of the opposition it has encountered. Are you curious to know how we ourselves account for this? We believe that civilization has been built up, under the pressure of the struggle for existence, by sacrifices in gratification of the primitive impulses, and that it is to a great extent for ever being re-created, as each individual, successively joining the community, repeats the sacrifice of his instinctive pleasures for the common good. The sexual are amongst the most important of the instinctive forces thus utilized: they are in this way sublimated, that is to say, their energy is turned aside from its sexual goal and diverted towards other ends, no longer sexual and socially more valuable. But the structure thus built up is insecure, for the sexual impulses are with difficulty controlled; in each individual who takes up his part in the work of civilization there is a danger that a rebellion of the sexual impulses may occur, against this diversion of their energy. Society can conceive of no more powerful menace to its culture than would arise from the liberation of the sexual impulses and a return of them to their original goal. Therefore society dislikes this sensitive place in its development being touched upon; that the power of the sexual instinct should be recognized, and the significance of the individual’s sexual life revealed, is very far from its interests; with a view to discipline it has rather taken the course of diverting attention away from this whole field. For this reason, the revelations of psycho-analysis are not tolerated by it, and it would greatly prefer to brand them as æsthetically offensive, morally reprehensible, or dangerous. But since such objections are not valid arguments against conclusions which claim to represent the objective results of scientific investigation, the opposition must be translated into intellectual terms before it can be expressed. It is a characteristic of human nature to be inclined to regard anything which is disagreeable as untrue, and then without much difficulty to find arguments against it. So society pronounces the unacceptable to be untrue, disputes the results of psycho-analysis with logical and concrete arguments, arising, however, in affective sources, and clings to them with all the strength of prejudice against every attempt at refutation.
But we, on the other hand, claim to have yielded to no tendency in propounding this objectionable theory. Our intention has been solely to give recognition to the facts as we found them in the course of painstaking researches. And we now claim the right to reject unconditionally any such introduction of practical considerations into the field of scientific investigation, even before we have determined whether the apprehension which attempts to force these considerations upon us is justified or not.
These, now, are some of the difficulties which confront you at the outset when you begin to take an interest in psycho-analysis. It is probably more than enough for a beginning. If you can overcome their discouraging effect, we will proceed further.
SECOND LECTURE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS
We shall now begin, not with postulates, but with an investigation. For this purpose we shall select certain phenomena which are very frequent, very familiar and much overlooked, and which have nothing to do with illness, since they may be observed in every healthy person. I refer to the errors that everyone commits: as when anyone wishes to say a certain thing but uses the wrong word (‘slip of the tongue’);[2] or when the same sort of mistake is made in writing (‘slip of the pen’),[3] in which case one may or may not notice it; or when anyone reads in print or writing something other than what is actually before him (‘misreading’);[4] or when anyone mis-hears[5] what is said to him, naturally when there is no question of any disease of the auditory sense-organ. Another series of such phenomena are those based on forgetting[6] something temporarily, though not permanently; as, for instance, when anyone cannot think of a name which he knows quite well and is always able to recognize whenever he sees it; or when anyone forgets to carry out some intention, which he afterwards remembers, and has therefore forgotten only for a certain time. This element of transitoriness is lacking in a third class, of which mislaying[7] things so that they cannot be found is an example. This is a kind of forgetfulness which we regard differently from the usual kind; one is amazed or annoyed at it, instead of finding it comprehensible. Allied to this are certain _mistakes_, in which the temporary element is again noticeable, as when one believes something for a time which both before and afterwards one knows to be untrue, and a number of similar manifestations which we know under various names.
Some inner relation between all these kinds of occurrences is indicated in German, by the use of the prefix “_ver_” which is common to all the words designating them.[8] These words almost all refer to acts of an unimportant kind, generally temporary and without much significance in life. It is only rarely that anything of the kind, such as the loss of some object, attains any practical importance. For this reason little attention is paid to such happenings and they arouse little feeling.
I am now going to ask you to consider these phenomena. But you will object, with annoyance: “There are so many tremendous puzzles both in the wide world and in the narrower life of the soul, so many mysteries in the field of mental disorder which demand and deserve explanation, that it really seems frivolous to waste labour and interest on these trifles. If you could explain to us how it is possible for anyone with sound sight and hearing, in broad daylight, to see and hear things which do not exist, or how anyone can suddenly believe that his nearest and dearest are persecuting him, or can justify with the most ingenious arguments a delusion which would seem nonsensical to any child, then we might be willing to take psycho-analysis seriously. But if psycho-analysis cannot occupy us with anything more interesting than the question why a speaker uses a wrong word or why a _Hausfrau_ mislays her keys and similar trivialities, then we shall find something better to do with our time and our interest.”
My reply is: Patience! Your criticism is not on the right track. It is true that psycho-analysis cannot boast that it has never occupied itself with trifles. On the contrary, the material of its observations is usually those commonplace occurrences which have been cast aside as all too insignificant by other sciences, the refuse, so to speak, of the phenomenal world. But in your criticism are you not confounding the magnitude of a problem with the conspicuous nature of its manifestations? Is it not possible, under certain conditions and at certain times, for very important things to betray themselves in very slight indications? I could easily cite many instances of this. What slight signs, for instance, convey to the young men in my audience that they have gained a lady’s favour? Do they expect an explicit declaration, a passionate embrace, or are they not content with a glance which is almost imperceptible to others, a fleeting gesture, a handshake prolonged by a second? Or suppose you are a detective engaged in the investigation of a murder, do you actually expect to find that the murderer will leave his photograph with name and address on the scene of the crime? Are you not perforce content with slighter and less certain traces of the person you seek? So let us not undervalue small signs: perhaps from them it may be possible to come upon the tracks of greater things. Besides, I think as you do that the larger problems of the world and of science have the first claim on our interest. But on the whole it avails little to form a definite resolution to devote oneself to the investigation of this or that great problem. One is then often at a loss how to set about the next step. In scientific work it is more profitable to take up whatever lies before one whenever a path towards its exploration presents itself. And then, if one carries it through thoroughly, without prejudice or pre-conceptions, one may, with good fortune and by virtue of the interrelationship linking each thing to every other (hence, also, the small to the great), find, even in the course of such humble labour, a road to the study of the great problems.
It is from this point of view that I hope to enlist your interest in considering the apparently trivial errors made by normal people. I propose now that we question someone who has no knowledge of psycho-analysis as to how he explains these occurrences.
His first answer is sure to be: “Oh, they are not worth any explanation; they are little accidents.” What does the man mean by this? Does he mean to maintain that there are any occurrences so small that they fail to come within the causal sequence of things, that they might as well be other than they are? Anyone thus breaking away from the determination of natural phenomena, at any single point, has thrown over the whole scientific outlook on the world (_Weltanschauung_). One may point out to him how much more consistent is the religious outlook on the world, which emphatically assures us that “not one sparrow shall fall to the ground” except God wills it. I think our friend would not be willing to follow his first answer to its logical conclusion; he would give way and say that if he were to study these things he would soon find some explanation of them. It must be a matter of slight functional disturbances, of inaccuracies of mental performance, the conditions of which could be discovered. A man who otherwise speaks correctly may make a slip of the tongue, (1) when he is tired or unwell, (2) when he is excited, or (3) when his attention is concentrated on something else. It is easy to confirm this. Slips of the tongue do indeed occur most frequently when one is tired, or has a headache, or feels an attack of migraine coming on. Forgetting proper names very often occurs in these circumstances; many people are habitually warned of the onset of an attack of migraine by the inability to recall proper names. In excitement, too, one mixes up words or even things, one performs actions erroneously[9]; and the forgetting of intentions, as well as a number of other undesigned acts, comes to the fore when one is distracted, in other words, when the attention is concentrated on other things. A familiar instance of such distraction is the professor in _Fliegende Blätter_ who forgets his umbrella and takes the wrong hat, because he is thinking of the problems which are to be the subject of his next book. We all know from our own experience how one can forget to carry out intentions or promises when something has happened in the interval that absorbs one very deeply.
This seems so entirely comprehensible and also irrefutable. It is perhaps not very interesting or not so much so as we expected. Let us look at this explanation of errors more closely. The various conditions which have been cited as necessary for the occurrence of these phenomena are not all similar in kind. Illness and disorders of the circulation afford a physiological basis for an affection of the normal functions; excitement, tiredness, and distraction are conditions of a different kind which could be described as psycho-physiological. These last could easily be converted into a theory. Fatigue, as well as distraction, and perhaps also general excitement, cause a dissipation of the attention from which it may follow that the act in question has insufficient attention devoted to it. It can then very easily be disturbed and inexactly performed. Slight illness or a change in the distribution of blood in the central organ of the nervous system can have the same effect, by these conditions affecting the determining factor, the distribution of attention, in a similar way. In all cases it would be a question of the effects of a disturbance of the attention from organic or psychical causes.
But all this doesn’t seem to promise much of interest for a psycho-analytic investigation. We might feel tempted to give up the topic. To be sure, a closer inspection of the facts shows that they are not all in accord with the ‘attention’ theory of errors of this sort, or at least that not everything can be directly deduced from it. We find that such errors and such forgetfulness also take place when people are not fatigued or excited, but are in every way in their normal condition; unless, just because of the errors, we were subsequently to attribute to them a condition of excitement which they themselves did not acknowledge. Nor can the matter be quite so simple as that the successful performance of an act will be ensured by an intensification of attention, or endangered by a diminution of it. For a great number of
## actions may be carried out in a purely automatic way with very little
attention and yet quite successfully. In walking, a man may perhaps scarcely know where he is going but keep to the right road and stop at his destination without having gone astray. At least, this is what usually happens. A practised pianist strikes the right notes without thinking of them. He may of course also make an occasional mistake, but if automatic playing increased the danger of errors the virtuoso, whose constant practice has made his playing entirely automatic, would be the most exposed to this danger. Yet we see, on the contrary, that many acts are most successfully carried out when they are not the objects of
## particularly concentrated attention, and that mistakes may occur just on
occasions when one is most eager to be accurate, that is, when a distraction of the necessary attention is most certainly not present. One could then say that this is the effect of the ‘excitement,’ but we do not understand why the excitement does not rather intensify the concentration on the end so much desired. So that if in an important speech anyone says the opposite of what he intends, it can hardly be explained according to the psycho-physiological or the attention theory.
There are also many other minor features in connection with these errors which we do not understand and which are not rendered more comprehensible by these explanations. For instance, when one has temporarily forgotten a name one is annoyed, one is determined to recall it and cannot desist from the attempt. Why is it that despite this annoyance the person so often cannot succeed, as he wishes, in directing his attention to the word which, as he says, is “on the tip of his tongue,” and which he instantly recognizes when it is supplied to him? Or, to take another example, there are cases in which the errors multiply, link themselves together or act as substitutes for one another. The first time, one forgets an appointment; the next time, after having made a special resolution not to forget it, one discovers that one has made a mistake in the day or hour. Or one tries by devious ways to remember a forgotten word, and in the course of so doing loses track of a second name which would have been of use in finding the first. If one then pursues the second name, a third gets lost, and so on. It is notorious that the same thing happens with misprints, which are of course errors on the part of the compositor. A stubborn error of this sort is said once to have crept into a Social-Democratic newspaper, where, in the account of a festivity, the following words were printed: “Amongst those present was His Highness, the Clown Prince.” The next day a correction was attempted. The paper apologized and said: “The sentence should of course have read, ‘the Crow-Prince.’” Again, in a war-correspondent’s account of meeting a famous general whose infirmities were pretty well known, a reference to the general was printed as “this battle-scared veteran.” Next day an apology appeared which read “the words of course should have been ‘the bottle-scarred veteran!’”[10] We like to attribute these occurrences to a devil in the type-setting machine or to some malevolent goblin—figurative expressions which at least imply something more than a psycho-physiological theory of the misprint.
I do not know if you are aware of the fact that slips of the tongue can be provoked, called forth by suggestion, as it were. An anecdote will serve to illustrate this. Once when a novice on the stage was entrusted with the important part in _The Maid of Orleans_ of announcing to the King: “The Constable sends back his sword,” the principal player, during the rehearsal, played the joke of several times repeating to the timid beginner, instead of the text, the following: “The _Komfortabel_ sends back his steed.”[11] At the performance the unfortunate actor actually made his début with this perverse announcement, though he had been amply warned against so doing, or perhaps just because he had been.
All these little characteristics of errors are not much illuminated by the theory of diverted attention. But that does not necessarily prove the theory wrong. There may be something missing, a link, by the addition of which the theory might be made completely satisfactory. But many of the errors themselves can be considered from another aspect.
Let us select slips of the tongue, as the type of error best suited to our purpose. We might equally well choose slips of the pen or of reading. Now we must first remind ourselves that, so far, we have only enquired when and under what conditions the wrong word is said, and have received an answer on that point only. Interest may be directed elsewhere, though, and the question raised why just this particular slip is made and no other: one can consider the nature of the mistake. You will see that so long as this question remains unanswered, and the _effect_ of the mistake is not explained, the phenomenon remains a pure accident on the psychological side, even if a physiological explanation has been found for it. When it happens that I make a mistake in a word I could obviously do this in an infinite number of ways, in place of the right word substitute any one of a thousand others, or make innumerable distortions of the right word. Now, is there anything which forces upon me in a specific instance just this one special slip, out of all those which are possible, or does that remain accidental and arbitrary, and can nothing rational be found in answer to this question?
Two authors, Meringer and Mayer (a philologist and a psychiatrist) did indeed in 1895 make an attempt to approach the problem of slips of the tongue from this side. They collected examples and first treated them from a purely descriptive standpoint. This of course does not yet furnish any explanation, but it may lead the way to one. They differentiated the distortions which the intended phrase suffered through the slip into: interchanges (in the positions of words, syllables or letters), anticipations, perseverations, compoundings (contaminations), and substitutions. I will give you examples of these authors’ main categories. As an instance of an interchange (in the position of words) someone might say “The Milo of Venus” instead of “The Venus of Milo.” The well-known slip of the hotel-boy who, knocking at the bishop’s door, nervously replied to the question “Who is it?” “The Lord, my boy!” is another example of such an interchange in the position of words.[12] In the typical Spoonerism the position of certain letters is interchanged, as when the preacher said: “How often do we feel a half-warmed fish within us!”[12] It is a case of anticipation if anyone says: “The thought lies heartily...” instead of: “The thought lies heavily on my heart.” A perseveration is illustrated by the well-known ill-fated toast, “Gentlemen, I call upon (_auf_) you
_hiccough_ (= _auf_zustossen) to (_auf_) to the health of our Chief.” (drink) (= _anz_ustossen)
And when a member of the House of Commons referred to another as the “honourable member for Central _Hell_,” instead of “Hull,” it was a case of perseveration; as also when a soldier said to a friend “I wish there were a thousand of our men _mortified_ on that hill, Bill,” instead of “fortified.” In one case the _ell_ sound has perseverated from the previous words “m_e_mber for C_e_ntra_l_,” and in the other the _m_ sound in “_m_en” has perseverated to form “mortified.”[12] These three types of slip are not very common. You will find those cases much more frequent in which the slip happens by a compounding or contraction, as for example when a gentleman asks a lady if he may _insort_ her on her way (_begleit-digen_); this contraction is made up of _begleiten_ = to escort, and _beleidigen_ = to insult. (And by the way, a young man addressing a lady in this way will not have much success with her.) A substitution takes place when a poor woman says she has an “incurable _infernal_ disease,”[13] or in Mrs. Malaprop’s mind when she says, for instance, “few gentlemen know how to value the _ineffectual_ qualities in a woman.”[13]
The explanation which the two authors attempt to formulate as the basis of their collection of examples is peculiarly inadequate. They hold that the sounds and syllables of a word have different values and that the innervation of the sounds of higher value can interfere with those of lower value. They obviously base this conclusion on the cases of anticipation and perseveration which are not at all frequent; in other forms of slips of the tongue the question of such sound priorities, even if they exist, does not enter at all; for the most frequent type of slip is that in which instead of a certain word one says another which resembles it, and this resemblance is considered by many people sufficient explanation of it. For instance, a professor may say in his opening lecture, “I am not inclined (_geneigt_ instead of _geeignet_ = fitted) to estimate the merits of my predecessor.” Or another professor says, “In the case of the female genital, in spite of the _tempting_ ... I mean, the _attempted_ ...” (_Versuchungen_ instead of _Versuche_).
The commonest and also the most noticeable form of slip of the tongue, however, is that of saying the exact opposite of what one meant to say. These cases are quite outside the effect of any relations between sounds or confusion due to similarity, and in default one may therefore turn to the fact that opposites have a strong conceptual connection with one another and are psychologically very closely associated. There are well-known examples of this sort. For instance, the President of our Parliament once opened the session with the words “Gentlemen, I declare a quorum present and herewith declare the session _closed_.”
Any other common association may work in a way as insidious as the association of opposites and may on occasion lead to results as inopportune. So there is a story to the effect that, at a festivity in honour of the marriage of a child of H. Helmholtz with a child of the well-known inventor and captain of industry, W. Siemens, the famous physiologist Dubois-Reymond was asked to speak. He concluded his doubtless brilliant speech with the toast “Success to the new partnership, Siemens and _Halske_!” which was of course the name of the old firm. The association of the two names must have been as familiar to a resident in Berlin as “Crosse & Blackwell” to a Londoner.
So the effect of word associations must be taken into account, as well as that of sound-values and similarities between words. But even that is not enough. In one type of case, before we can arrive at an adequate explanation of the slip we must consider some phrase which had been said, or perhaps only thought, previously. Again, that is, a case of perseveration, as Meringer insists, but arising in a more distant source.—I must confess that altogether I have the impression that we are further than ever from comprehension of slips of the tongue.
However, I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that in the course of our examination of the above examples an impression has formed itself in us which may be of a kind to repay further attention. We were considering the general conditions under which slips of the tongue occur and then the influences which determine the kind of distortion effected in the slip, but so far we have not examined at all the result of the slip itself, as an object of interest without regard to its origin. If we bring ourselves to do this we shall in the end have to assert courageously that in some of the examples the slip itself makes sense. Now what does it mean when we say “it makes sense”? Well, it means that the result of the slip may perhaps have a right to be regarded in itself as a valid mental process following out its own purpose, and as an expression having content and meaning. Hitherto we have only spoken of errors, but now it appears as if the error could sometimes be quite a proper act, except that it has intruded itself in the place of one more expected or intended.
In certain cases the sense belonging to the slip itself appears obvious and unmistakable. When the President in his opening speech closes the session of Parliament, a knowledge of the circumstances under which the slip was made inclines us to see a meaning in it. He expects no good result from the session and would be glad to be able to disperse forthwith; there is no difficulty in discovering the meaning, or interpreting the sense, of this slip. Or when a lady, appearing to compliment another, says: “I am sure _you_ must have _thrown_ this delightful hat together” instead of “sewn it together” (_aufgepatzt_ instead of _aufgeputzt_), no scientific theories in the world can prevent us from seeing in her slip the thought that the hat is an amateur production. Or when a lady who is well known for her determined character says: “My husband asked his doctor what sort of diet ought to be provided for him. But the doctor said he needed no special diet, he could eat and drink whatever _I_ choose,” the slip appears clearly as the unmistakable expression of a consistent scheme.
Now supposing it should turn out that not only a few cases of slips of the tongue and errors in general, but the great majority of them, have a meaning, then the meaning of the error, to which we have hitherto paid no attention, would become the point of greatest interest to us and would justifiably drive all other points of view into the background. All physiological and psycho-physiological conditions could then be ignored and attention could be devoted to the purely psychological investigation of the _sense_, that is, the meaning, the intention, in the errors. With this in view, therefore, we shall soon consider further material.
Before undertaking this, however, I should like to invite you to follow up another clue with me. It often happens that a poet makes use of a slip of the tongue or some other error as a means of artistic expression. This fact in itself proves that he thinks the error, for instance, a slip of the tongue, has a meaning; for he constructs it intentionally. It could hardly happen that a poet accidentally made a slip of the pen and then allowed his slip of the pen to stand as a slip of the tongue of the character. He wishes to reveal something by means of the slip and we may well enquire what that may be—whether perhaps he wishes to indicate that the person in question is distracted or overtired, or is expecting a headache. Of course we should not exaggerate the importance of it if poets do make use of slips to express their meaning. Slips might be in reality without meaning, accidents in the mental world, or only occasionally have a meaning, and poets would still be entitled to refine them by infusing sense into them for their own purposes. However, it would not be surprising if more were to be learned from poets about slips of the tongue than from philologists and psychiatrists.
There is an example of a slip of this kind in Schiller’s _Wallenstein_ (Piccolomini, Act I, Scene 5). In the foregoing scene, young Max Piccolomini had taken up Duke Wallenstein’s cause ardently, and had been passionately describing the blessings of peace, which he had become aware of in the course of a journey accompanying Wallenstein’s beautiful daughter to the camp. As he leaves the stage, his father (Octavio) and the courtier Questenberg are plunged in consternation. The fifth scene continues:—
QUESTENBERG. Alas! and stands it so? Friend, do we let him go In this delusion? let him go from us? Not call him back at once, not Open his eyes here and now?
OCTAVIO (_recovering himself out of deep thought_). He has now opened _mine_ And I see more than pleases me.
QUESTENBERG. What is it?
OCTAVIO. A curse upon this journey!
QUESTENBERG. But why so? What is it?
OCTAVIO. Come, come, friend! I must up And follow the ill-omened clue at once And see with mine own eyes—come with me now!
QUESTENBERG. What now? Where go you then?
OCTAVIO (_hastily_). _To her, herself!_
QUESTENBERG. _To_ ...
OCTAVIO (_corrects himself_). To the Duke! Come, let us go!
Octavio meant to say: “To him, to the Duke,” but his tongue slips and he betrays (to us, at least) by the words “_to her_” that he has clearly recognized the influence at work behind the famous young warrior’s rhapsodies in favour of peace.
A still more impressive example was found by O. Rank in Shakespeare. It occurs in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the famous scene in which the fortunate suitor makes his choice among the three caskets; and I can perhaps not do better than read to you now Rank’s short account of it.
“A slip of the tongue which occurs in Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_ (Act III, Sc. 2) is exceedingly fine in the poetic feeling it shows and in the brilliant way in which it is applied technically. Like the slip in Wallenstein quoted by Freud in his _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, it shows that the poets well understand the mechanism and meaning of such slips and assume that the audience will also understand them. Portia, who by her father’s wish has been bound to the choice of a husband by lot, has so far escaped all the unwelcome suitors by the luck of fortune. Having at last found in Bassanio the suitor to whom she is inclined, she fears that he too will choose the wrong casket. She would like to tell him that even so he may rest assured of her love, but she is prevented by her oath. In this inner conflict the poet makes her say to her chosen suitor:
I pray you tarry; pause a day or two, Before you hazard: for, in choosing wrong, I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile: There’s something tells me (but it is not love) I would not lose you ... ... I could teach you How to choose right, but then I am forsworn; So will I never be; so may you miss me; But if you do you’ll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes, They have o’erlooked me, and divided me; _One half of me is yours, the other half yours,— Mine own, I would say_; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
Just that which she only meant to indicate subtly to him because she should really have concealed it from him altogether, namely, that even before the lot she was his and loved him, this the poet with exquisite fineness of psychological feeling causes to come to expression in her slip; and is able, by this artistic device, to relieve the unbearable uncertainty of the lover as well as the suspense of the audience as to the issue of the choice.”
And notice, at the end, how subtly Portia reconciles the two declarations which are contained in the slip, how she resolves the contradiction between them, and finally even justifies the slip.
... but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
It has happened that other thinkers outside the field of medicine have disclosed by an observation the meaning of some error and so anticipated our efforts in this direction. You all know the witty satirist Lichtenberg (1742–1799) of whom Goethe said: “Where he makes a joke, a problem lies concealed.” And occasionally the solution of the problem is revealed in the joke. Lichtenberg writes in his witty and satirical _Notes_, “He always read ‘Agamemnon’ for ‘angenommen’ (verb meaning ‘to take for granted’), so deeply versed was he in Homer.” This really contains the whole theory of slips in reading.
At the next lecture we will see whether we can agree with the poets in their conception of the meaning of psychological errors.
THIRD LECTURE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_continuation_)
At the last lecture it occurred to us to consider the error by itself alone, apart from its relation to the intended act with which it had interfered, and we perceived that in certain cases it seemed to betray a meaning of its own. We said to ourselves that if this conclusion, that the error has its own meaning, could be established on a larger scale, that meaning would soon prove more interesting to us than the investigation of the conditions under which errors arise.
Let us once more agree upon what we understand by the “meaning” of a mental process. This is nothing else but the intention which it serves and its place in a mental sequence. In most of the cases we examined we could substitute for the word “meaning” the words “intention” and “tendency.” Now was it only a deceptive appearance, or a poetic glorification of the error, that led us to believe that we could see an intention in it?
Let us still keep to the examples of slips of the tongue and review a larger number of such manifestations. We then find whole categories of cases in which the intention, the meaning, of the slip is quite obvious,
## particularly so in those instances in which the opposite of what was
intended is said. The President says in his opening speech: “I declare the session _closed_.” That is surely not ambiguous. The meaning and intention of this slip is that he wants to close the session. One might well say, “he said so himself”; we only take him at his word. Please do not interrupt me with the objection that this is impossible, that we know quite well that he wished to open the session, not to close it, and that he himself whom we have just recognized as the best judge of his intention will affirm that he meant to open it. In doing so you forget that we agreed to consider the error by itself; its relation to the intention which it disturbs will be discussed later. _You_ would be guilty of an error in logic, by which you would conveniently dispose of the whole problem under discussion, which in English is called “begging the question.”
In other cases, where the form of the slip is not exactly the opposite of what is intended, a contradictory sense may still often come to expression. “I am not _inclined_ (_geneigt_) to appreciate my predecessor’s merits.” “Inclined” is not the opposite of “in a position to” (_geeignet_), but it is an open confession of a thought in sharpest contradiction to the speaker’s duty to meet the situation gracefully.
In still other cases the slip simply adds a second meaning to the one intended. The sentence then sounds like a contraction, an abbreviation, a condensation of several sentences into one. Thus the determined lady who said: “He may eat and drink whatever _I_ choose.” That is as if she had said: “He can eat and drink what he chooses, but what does it matter what he chooses? It is for me to do the choosing!” Slips of the tongue often give this impression of abbreviation; for instance, when a professor of anatomy at the end of his lecture on the nasal cavities asks whether his class has thoroughly understood it and, after a general reply in the affirmative, goes on to say: “I can hardly believe that that is so, since persons who can thoroughly understand the nasal cavities can be counted, even in a city of millions, on _one finger_ ... I mean, on the fingers of one hand.” The abbreviated sentence has its own meaning: it says that there is only one person who understands the subject.
In contrast to these types in which the slip plainly discloses its meaning are others in which the slip of the tongue conveys nothing intelligible, and therefore directly controverts our expectations. The mis-pronunciation by mistake of proper names, or the enunciation of meaningless sounds, is such a frequent occurrence that this alone would appear to dispose at once of the question whether all errors have a meaning. Yet closer inspection of such examples discloses the fact that it is easily possible to understand such distortions; indeed, that the difference between these unintelligible cases and the previous more comprehensible ones is not so very great.
The owner of a horse, on being asked how it was, replied: “O, it may _stad_—it may _take_ another month.”[14] Asked what he really meant to say, he answered that he was thinking it was a _sad_ business, and the words “sad” and “take” together gave rise to _stad_. (Meringer and Mayer.)
Another man was relating some objectionable incidents and went on: “and then certain facts were _refilled_.”[15] He explained that he meant to say these facts were “filthy.” “Revealed” and “filthy” together combine to form _refilled_. (Meringer and Mayer.)
You will recall the case of the young man who offered to “insort” an unknown lady. We took the liberty of resolving this word into “insult” and “escort,” and were quite convinced of this interpretation without requiring proof of it.[16] From these examples you can see that even these more obscure cases can be explained as the concurrence, or _interference_, of two different intentions of speech with one another; the differences arise only in that in the first type of slip the one intention has entirely excluded the other, as when the opposite is said; while in the second type the one intention only succeeds in distorting or modifying the other, from which arise combinations of a more or less senseless appearance.
We believe that we have now discovered the secret of a large number of slips of the tongue. If we keep this clear in mind we shall be able to comprehend still further groups hitherto entirely mysterious. Although, for instance, in a case of distortion of a name we cannot suppose that it is always a matter of a contest between two similar but different names, yet the second intention is easily perceived. Distortions of names are common enough apart from slips of the tongue; they are attempts to liken the name to something derogatory or degrading, a common form of abuse, which educated persons soon learn to avoid but nevertheless do not willingly give up. It may be dressed up as a joke, although one of a very low order. To quote one gross and ugly example of such a distortion of a name, the name of the President of the French Republic, _Poincaré_, has lately been transformed into “_Schweinskarré_.” It is not going much further to assume that some such abusive intention may also be behind distortions of names produced by a slip of the tongue. In pursuing our idea, similar explanations suggest themselves for cases of slips where the effect is comic or absurd. In the case of the member of parliament who referred to the “honourable member for Central Hell,” the sober atmosphere of the House is unexpectedly disturbed by the intrusion of a word that calls up a ludicrous and unflattering image; we are bound to conclude from the analogy with certain offensive and abusive expressions that an impulse has interposed here, to this effect: “You needn’t be taken in. I don’t mean a word of this. To hell with the fellow!” The same applies to slips of the tongue which transform quite harmless words into obscene and indecent ones.[17]
We are familiar with this tendency in certain people intentionally to convert harmless words into indecent ones for the sake of the amusement obtained; it passes for wit, and in fact when one hears of a case one at once asks whether it was intended as a joke or occurred unintentionally as a slip of the tongue.
Well, we seem to have solved the riddle of errors with comparatively little trouble! They are not accidents; they are serious mental acts; they have their meaning; they arise through the concurrence—perhaps better, the mutual interference—of two different intentions. But now I can well understand that you want to overwhelm me with a flood of questions and doubts, which must be answered and resolved before we can enjoy this first result of our efforts. I certainly do not want to press any hasty conclusions upon you. Let us coolly consider everything in turn.
What would you like to say? Whether I think that this explanation accounts for all cases of slips of the tongue or only for a certain number? Whether this conception can be extended to the many other types of errors, to misreading, slips of the pen, forgetting, wrongly performed actions, mislaying things and so on? What part the factors of fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness and distraction of attention play in regard to the mental nature of errors? Besides this, it is clearly seen that of the two competing meanings in the slip one is always manifest, but not always the other. How is one to arrive at the latter? And if one believes that one has guessed it, how is one to find proof that this is not merely a probability but the only true meaning? Is there anything else you wish to ask? If not, then I myself will continue. I will remind you that we are not really greatly concerned with errors in themselves, but that we wished to learn from a study of them something of value from the point of view of psycho-analysis. Therefore I will put this question: What sort of purposes or tendencies are these which thus interfere with other intentions, and what is the relation between the interfering tendency and the other? Thus, as soon as we have found the answer to the riddle, our efforts begin again.
Very well then; is this the explanation of all cases of slips of the tongue? I am very much inclined to think so, and for this reason, because whenever one examines an instance of it this type of solution may be found. Still, one cannot prove that a slip of the tongue cannot come to pass without the agency of this mechanism. It may be so: for our purposes it is a matter of indifference, theoretically; for the conclusions which we wish to draw by way of an introduction to psycho-analysis remain valid, even if only a small proportion of the total incidence of slips of the tongue comes under our explanation, and this is certainly not so. The next question, whether this explanation extends to other forms of errors, may be answered by way of anticipation in the affirmative. You can convince yourselves of it when we turn to consider examples of slips of the pen, of wrongly performed acts, and so on. I propose, however, for technical reasons that we should postpone doing this until we have investigated the slip of the tongue itself more thoroughly.
The question what significance those factors, which some writers have placed in the foreground, can now have for us—such factors as disturbances of the circulation, fatigue, excitement, distraction, disturbances of attention—demands a more exhaustive reply if we assume the mental mechanism of slips described above. You will notice that we do not deny these factors. Indeed, in general it doesn’t often happen that psycho-analysis contests anything which is maintained in other quarters; as a rule, psycho-analysis only adds something new to what has been said; and it does certainly happen on occasion that what has hitherto been overlooked, and is now supplied by psycho-analysis, is the most essential part of the matter. The influence of such physiological predispositions as arise in slight illness, circulatory disturbances and conditions of fatigue, upon the occurrence of slips of the tongue is to be admitted without more ado; everyday personal experience may convince you of it. But how little is explained by this admission! Above all, these are not necessary conditions of errors. Slips of the tongue may just as well occur in perfect health and normal conditions. These bodily factors, therefore, are merely contributory; they only favour and facilitate the peculiar mental mechanism which produces slips of the tongue. I once used an illustration for this state of things which I will repeat here, as I know of no better. Just suppose that on some dark night I am walking in a lonely neighbourhood and am assaulted by a rogue who seizes my watch and money, whereupon, since I could not see the robber’s face clearly, I make my complaint at the police-station in these words: “Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables.” The police officer might reply to me: “You seem to carry your support of the extreme mechanistic point of view too far for the facts. Suppose we put the case thus: Under cover of darkness and encouraged by the loneliness of the spot, some unknown thief has made away with your valuables. It appears to me that the essential thing to be done is to look about for the thief. Perhaps we shall then be able to take the plunder from him again.”
Psycho-physiological factors such as excitement, absent-mindedness, distraction of attention, obviously provide very little in the way of explanation. They are mere phrases; they are screens, and we should not be deterred from looking behind them. The question is rather what has here called forth the excitement or the particular diversion of attention. The influence of sound-values, resemblances between words, and common associations connecting certain words, must also be recognized as important. They facilitate the slip by pointing out a path for it to take. But if there is a path before me does it necessarily follow that I must go along it? I also require a motive to determining my choice and, further, some force to propel me forward. These sound-values and word associations are, therefore, just like the bodily conditions, the facilitating causes of slips of the tongue, and cannot provide the real explanation of them. Consider for a moment the enormous majority of cases in which the words I am using in my speech are not deranged on account of sound-resemblance to other words, intimate associations with opposite meanings, or with expressions in common use. It yet remains to suppose, with the philosopher Wundt, that a slip of the tongue arises when the tendency to associations gains an ascendance over the original intention owing to bodily fatigue. This would be quite plausible if experience did not controvert it by the fact that in a number of cases the bodily, and in another large group the associative, predisposing causes are absent.
## Particularly interesting to me, however, is your next question, namely,
by what means the two mutually disturbing tendencies may be ascertained. You probably do not suspect how portentous this question is. You will agree that one of these tendencies, the one which is interfered with, is always unmistakable; the person who commits the slip knows it and acknowledges it. Doubt and hesitation only arise in regard to the other, what we have called the interfering, tendency. Now we have already heard, and you will certainly not have forgotten, that in a certain number of cases this other tendency is equally plain. It is evident in the result of the slip if only we have the courage to let the slip speak for itself. The President who said the opposite of what he meant—it is clear that he wishes to open the session, but equally clear that he would also like to close it. That is so plain that it needs no interpreting. But in the other cases, in which the interfering tendency merely distorts the original without itself coming to full expression,—how can the interfering tendency be detected in the distortion?
In one group of cases by a very safe and simple method, by the same method, that is, by which we establish the tendency that is interfered with. We enquire of the speaker, who tells us then and there; after making the slip he restores the word he originally intended. “O, it may _stad_—no, it may _take_ another month.” Well, the interfering tendency may be likewise supplied by him. We say, “Now why did you first say stad?” He replies, “I meant to say it was a sad business”; and in the other case in which “refilled” was said, the speaker informs you that he first meant to say it was a filthy business, but controlled himself and substituted another expression. The discovery of the disturbing tendency is here as definitely established as that of the disturbed tendency. It is not without intention that I have selected as examples cases which owe neither their origin nor their explanation to me or to any supporter of mine. Still, in both these cases, a certain intervention was necessary in order to produce the explanation. One had to ask the speaker why he made the slip, what explanation he could give. Without that he might have passed it by without seeking to explain it. Being asked, however, he gave as his answer the first idea that occurred to him. And see now, this little intervention and the result of it constitute already a psycho-analysis, a prototype of every psycho-analytic investigation that we may undertake further.
Now, should I be too suspicious if I were to surmise that, at the very moment at which psycho-analysis begins to dawn upon you, a resistance to it instantly raises itself within your mind? Are you not eager to object that information supplied by the person enquired of, who committed the slip, is not completely reliable evidence. He naturally wishes, you think, to meet your request to explain his slip, and so he says the first thing that he can think of, if it will do at all. There is no proof that that is actually how the slip arose. It may have been so, but it may just as well have been otherwise. Something else also might have occurred to him that would have met the case as well or even better.
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.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20]
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.”[21] 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.[22] 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.[23]
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.
Perhaps the idea has also come to you that in these examples mistakes seem to have replaced the omens or portents of the ancients. And indeed, certain kinds of portents were nothing but errors, for instance, when anyone stumbled or fell down. It is true that another group of omens bore the character of objective events rather than of subjective acts. But you would not believe how difficult it is sometimes to decide whether a specific instance belongs to the first category or to the second. The act knows so often how to disguise itself as a passive experience.
Everyone of us who can look back over a fairly long experience of life would probably say that he might have spared himself many disappointments and painful surprises, if he had had the courage and resolution to interpret as omens the little mistakes which he noticed in his intercourse with others, and to regard them as signs of tendencies still in the background. For the most