Part 17
In answer to this question my experiences leave me in the lurch. I can only urge against considering the demonstrated connections as rare, for as often as I have made the test in myself and with my patients it was always definitely demonstrated exactly as in the examples reported, or there were at least good reasons to assume this. One should not be surprised, however, when one does not succeed every time in finding the concealed meaning of the symptomatic action, as the amount of inner resistances ranging themselves against the solution must be considered a deciding factor. Also it is not always possible to explain every individual dream of one’s self or of patients. To substantiate the general validity of the theory, it is enough if one can penetrate only a certain distance into the hidden associations. The dream which proves refractory when the solution is attempted on the following day can often be robbed of its secret a week or a month later, when the psychic factors combating one another have been reduced as a consequence of a real change that has meanwhile taken place. The same applies to the solution of faulty and symptomatic actions. It would therefore be wrong to affirm of all cases which resist analysis that they are caused by another psychic mechanism than that here revealed; such assumption requires more than negative proofs; moreover, the readiness to believe in a different explanation of faulty and symptomatic actions, which probably exists universally in all normal persons, does not prove anything; it is obviously an expression of the same psychic forces which produced the secret, which therefore strives to protect and struggle against its elucidation.
On the other hand, we must not overlook the fact that the repressed thoughts and feelings are not independent in attaining expression in symptomatic and faulty actions. The technical possibility for such an adjustment of the innervations must be furnished independently of them, and this is then gladly utilized by the intention of the repressed material to come to conscious expression. In the case of linguistic faulty actions an attempt has been made by philosophers and philologists to verify through minute observations what structural and functional relations enter into the service of such intention. If in the determinations of faulty and symptomatic actions we separate the unconscious motive from its co-active physiological and psychophysical relations, the question remains open whether there are still other factors within normal limits which, like the unconscious motive, and in its place can produce faulty and symptomatic actions on the road of the relations. It is not my task to answer this question.
VI. Since the discussion of speech blunders we have been content to demonstrate that faulty actions have a concealed motive, and through the aid of psychoanalysis we have traced our way to the knowledge of their motivation. The general nature and the peculiarities of the psychic factors brought to expression in these faulty actions we have hitherto left almost without consideration; at any rate, we have not attempted to define them more accurately or to examine into their lawfulness. Nor will we now attempt a thorough elucidation of the subject, as the first steps have already taught us that it is more feasible to enter this structure from another side. Here we can put before ourselves certain questions which I will cite in their order. (1) What is the content and the origin of the thoughts and feelings which show themselves through faulty and chance actions? (2) What are the conditions which force a thought or a feeling to make use of these occurrences as a means of expression and place it in a position to do so? (3) Can constant and definite associations be demonstrated between the manner of the faulty action and the qualities brought to expression through it?
I shall begin by bringing together some material for answering the last question. In the discussion of the examples of speech blunders we found it necessary to go beyond the contents of the intended speech, and we had to seek the cause of the speech disturbance outside the intention. The latter was quite clear in a series of cases, and was known to the consciousness of the speaker. In the example that seemed most simple and transparent it was a similar sounding but different conception of the same thought, which disturbed its expression without any one being able to say why the one succumbed and the other came to the surface (Meringer and Mayers’ _Contaminations_).
In a second group of cases one conception succumbed to a motive which did not, however, prove strong enough to cause complete submersion. The conception which was withheld was clearly presented to consciousness.
Only of the third group can we affirm unreservedly that the disturbing thought differed from the one intended, and it is obvious that it may establish an essential distinction. The disturbing thought is either connected with the disturbed one through a thought association (disturbance through inner contradiction), or it is substantially strange to it, and just the disturbed word is connected with the disturbing thought through a surprising outer association, which is frequently unconscious.
In the examples which I have given from my psychoanalyses it is found that the entire speech is either under the influence of thoughts which have become active simultaneously, or under absolutely unconscious thoughts which betray themselves either through the disturbance itself, or which evince an indirect influence by making it possible for the individual parts of the unconsciously intended speech to disturb one another. The retained or unconscious thoughts from which the disturbances in speech emanate are of most varied origin. A general survey does not reveal any definite direction.
Comparative examinations of examples of mistakes in reading and writing lead to the same conclusions. Isolated cases, as in speech blunders, seem to owe their origin to an unmotivated work of condensation (_e.g._, the _Apel_). But we should be pleased to know whether special conditions must not be fulfilled in order that such condensation, which is considered regular in the dream-work and faulty in our waking thoughts, should take place. No information concerning this can be obtained from the examples themselves. But I merely refuse from this to draw the conclusion that there are no such conditions, as, for instance, the relaxation of conscious attention; for I have learned elsewhere that automatic actions are especially characterized by correctness and reliability. I would rather emphasize the fact that here, as so frequently in biology, it is the normal relations, or those approaching the normal, that are less favourable objects for investigation than the pathological. What remains obscure in the explanation of these most simple disturbances will, according to my expectation, be made clear through the explanation of more serious disturbances.
Also mistakes in reading and writing do not lack examples in which more remote and more complicated motivation can be recognized.
There is no doubt that the disturbances of the speech functions occur more easily and make less demand on the disturbing forces than other psychic acts.
But one is on different ground when it comes to the examination of forgetting in the literal sense--_i.e._, the forgetting of past experiences. (To distinguish this forgetting from the others we designate _sensu strictiori_ the forgetting of proper names and foreign words, as in Chapters I and II, as “slips”; and the forgetting of resolutions as “omissions.”) The principal conditions of the normal process in forgetting are unknown.[82] We are also reminded of the fact that not all is forgotten which we believe to be. Our explanation here deals only with those cases in which the forgetting arouses our astonishment, in so far as it infringes the rule that the unimportant is forgotten, while the important matter is guarded by memory. Analysis of these examples of forgetting which seem to demand a special explanation shows that the motive of forgetting is always an unwillingness to recall something which may evoke painful feelings. We come to the conjecture that this motive universally strives for expression in psychic life, but is inhibited through other and contrary forces from regularly manifesting itself. The extent and significance of this dislike to recall painful impressions seems worthy of the most painstaking psychologic investigation. The question as to what special conditions render possible the universally resistant forgetting in individual cases cannot be solved through this added association.
A different factor steps into the foreground in the forgetting of resolutions; the supposed conflict resulting in the repression of the painful memory becomes tangible, and in the analysis of the examples one regularly recognizes a counter-will which opposes but does not put an end to the resolution. As in previously discussed faulty acts, we here also recognize two types of the psychic process: the counter-will either turns directly against the resolution (in intentions of some consequence) or it is substantially foreign to the resolution itself and establishes its connection with it through an outer association (in almost indifferent resolutions).
The same conflict governs the phenomena of erroneously carried-out actions. The impulse which manifests itself in the disturbances of the action is frequently a counter-impulse. Still oftener it is altogether a strange impulse which only utilizes the opportunity to express itself through a disturbance in the execution of the action. The cases in which the disturbance is the result of an inner contradiction are the most significant ones, and also deal with the more important activities.
The inner conflict in the chance or symptomatic actions then merges into the background. Those motor expressions which are least thought of, or are entirely overlooked by consciousness, serve as the expression of numerous unconscious or restrained feelings. For the most part they represent symbolically wishes and phantoms.
The first question (as to the origin of the thoughts and emotions which find expression in faulty actions) we can answer by saying that in a series of cases the origin of the disturbing thoughts can be readily traced to repressed emotions of the psychic life. Even in healthy persons egotistic, jealous and hostile feelings and impulses, burdened by the pressure of moral education, often utilize the path of faulty actions to express in some way their undeniably existing force which is not recognized by the higher psychic instances. Allowing these faulty and chance actions to continue corresponds in great part to a comfortable toleration of the unmoral. The manifold sexual currents play no insignificant part in these repressed feelings. That they appear so seldom in the thoughts revealed by the analyses of my examples is simply a matter of coincidence. As I have undertaken the analyses of numerous examples from my own psychic life, the selection was partial from the first, and aimed at the exclusion of sexual matters. At other times it seemed that the disturbing thoughts originated from the most harmless objection and consideration.
We have now reached the answer to the second question--that is, what psychologic conditions are responsible for the fact that a thought must seek expression, not in its complete form but, as it were, in parasitic form, as a modification and disturbance of another. From the most striking examples of faulty actions it is quite obvious that this determinant should be sought in a relation to conscious capacity, or in the more or less firmly pronounced character of the “repressed” material. But an examination of this series of examples shows that this character consists of many indistinct elements. The tendency to overlook something because it is wearisome, or because the concerned thought does not really belong to the intended matter--these feelings seem to play the same rôle as motives for the suppression of a thought (which later depends for expression on the disturbance of another), as the moral condemnation of a rebellious emotional feeling, or as the origin of absolutely unconscious trains of thought. An insight into the general nature of the condition of faulty and chance actions cannot be gained in this way.
However, this investigation gives us one single significant fact; the more harmless the motivation of the faulty act the less obnoxious, and hence the less incapable of consciousness, the thought to which it gives expression is; the easier also becomes the solution of the phenomenon after we have turned our attention toward it. The simplest cases of speech blunders are immediately noticed and spontaneously corrected. Where one deals with motivation through actually repressed feelings the solution requires a painstaking analysis, which may sometimes strike against difficulties or turn out unsuccessful.
One is therefore justified in taking the result of this last investigation as an indication of the fact that the satisfactory explanation of the psychologic determinations of faulty and chance actions is to be acquired in another way and from another source. The indulgent reader can therefore see in these discussions the demonstration of the surfaces of fracture in which this theme was quite artificially evolved from a broader connection.
VII. Just a few words to indicate the direction of this broader connection. The mechanism of the faulty and chance actions, as we have learned to know it through the application of analysis, shows in the most essential points an agreement with the mechanism of dream formation, which I have discussed in the chapter “The Dream Work” of my book on the interpretation of dreams. Here, as there, one finds the condensation and compromise formation (“contaminations”); in addition the situation is much the same, since unconscious thoughts find expression as modifications of other thoughts in unusual ways and through outer associations. The incongruities, absurdities, and errors in the dream content by virtue of which the dream is scarcely recognized as a psychic achievement originate in the same way--to be sure, through freer usage of the existing material--as the common error of our everyday life; _here, as there, the appearance of the incorrect function is explained through the peculiar interference of two or more correct actions_.
An important conclusion can be drawn from, this combination: the peculiar mode of operation, whose most striking function we recognize in the dream content, should not be adjudged only to the sleeping state of the psychic life when we possess abundant proof of its activity during the waking state in the form of faulty actions. The same connection also forbids us assuming that these psychic processes which impress us as abnormal and strange are determined by deep-seated decay of psychic activity or by morbid state of function.[83]
The correct understanding of this strange psychic work which allows the faulty actions to originate like the dream pictures will only be possible after we have discovered that the psychoneurotic symptoms, particularly the psychic formations of hysteria and compulsion neurosis, repeat in their mechanisms all the essential features of this mode of operation. The continuation of our investigation would therefore have to begin at this point.
There is still another special interest for us in considering the faulty, chance, and symptomatic actions in the light of this last analogy. If we compare them to the function of the psychoneuroses and the neurotic symptoms, two frequently recurring statements gain in sense and support--namely, that the border-line between the nervous, normal, and abnormal states is indistinct, and that we are all slightly nervous. Regardless of all medical experience, one may construe various types of such barely suggested nervousness, the _formes frustes_ of the neuroses. There may be cases in which only a few symptoms appear, or they may manifest themselves rarely or in mild forms; the extenuation may be transferred to the number, intensity, or to the temporal outbreak of the morbid manifestation. It may also happen that just this type, which forms the most frequent transition between health and disease, may never be discovered. The transition type, whose morbid manifestations come in the form of faulty and symptomatic actions, is characterized by the fact that the symptoms are transformed to the least important psychic activities, while everything that can lay claim to a higher psychic value remains free from disturbance. When the symptoms are disposed of in a reverse manner--that is, when they appear in the most important individual and social activities in a manner to disturb the functions of nourishment and sexual relations, professional and social life--such disposition is found in the severe cases of neuroses, and is perhaps more characteristic of the latter than the multiformity or vividness of the morbid manifestations.
But the common character of the mildest as well as the severest cases, to which the faulty and chance actions contribute, lies _in the ability to refer the phenomena to unwelcome, repressed, psychic material, which, though pushed away from consciousness, is nevertheless not robbed of all capacity to express itself_.
INDEX
Actions-- Accidental, 192 Chance, 215 Symbolic, 210 Symptomatic, 178, 215, 235 Collection of, 238 Examples, 216, 217 Grouping of, 219
Adler, 283, 287
Amnesia, 139 Infantile, 62 Temporary, 35
Analysis of-- Aliquis, 18 Castelvetrano, 50 Ode to Apollo, 29 Signorelli, 4 Young, 44
Anticipations, 72
Association, 11
Auditifs, 63
Awkwardness, accidental, 209
Bed-wetting, 150
Behaviour of paranoiacs, 304
Bernheim, 161
Bleuler, 38, 120, 303, 319
Blood miracle, 20
Blunders, speech, 74
Boileau, quoted from, 114
Brantôme, 93
Breaking of objects, 184, 186, 187, 189
Brill, 19, 29, 32, 101, 102, 103, 130, 147, 169, 170, 197, 241, 249, 258, 293, 316
Chance, 277
Chance numbers, 282, 283
Charcot, 63, 157
Child, intellectual accomplishments of, 62
Childhood activities, trace of, 62
Combined faulty acts, 265 Examples of, 266, 267
Complex-- Ambition, 100 Family, 40 Œdipus, 198 Personal, 38, 49 Professional, 40 Self-reference, 52
Compromise formation, examples of, 81
Consciousness, 10 Bringing hidden ideas to, 19
Contaminations, 72
Contradiction from repression, 26
Counter-will, 170 In resolutions, 170
Damaging things, 190, 191
Darwin, 154
Dattner, B., 129, 232, 233, 239
Daudet, 156
Death and sexuality, 7
_Déjà vu_-- Explanation of, 321 Phenomenon of, 320
Delusions, formation of, 155
Denials, 149
Determinant, inner, 13
Determinism, 277 In mental life, 278 Psychic, 302
Displacement, 4, 10, 57 Retro-active, 58
Disturbance of newly emerging theme, 6
Don Quixote, 202
Dream, prophetic, 312
Element, suppressed, 11
Erroneously carried-out actions, 177, 278, 332 As an expression of self-reproach, 184 Examples of, 178, 179, 180
Errors, 249 Examples of, 250, 251, 253 Of memory, 249 Mechanism of, 256
Examples arbitrarily chosen, 279, 281
Fall, 191
False recollection, 4
Faulty acts, 192 Actions, 326
Faulty actions-- Explanation of, 322 In relation to nervousness, 337 The psychoneurotic symptom, 337 Memory, mechanism of, 10 Relation to the dream, 335
Ferenczi, 33, 43, 46, 98, 204, 324
Folk-lore, 154
Forebodings, 312
Fore-sounds, influence of, 78
Forget, disposition to, 11 Tendency to, 17
Forgetfulness, 168 Due to disturbances of pain, 27 Excusing power of, 165 Psychic mechanism of, 3 Temporary, of proper names, 3, 29, 45
Forgetting-- As a spontaneous process, 135 Defensive tendency of, 153 Examples of, 139, 140, 141, 148, 149 Intentional, 8 Mechanism of, 52, 330 Of experiences, 138 Of foreign words, 17 Of impressions, 135, 138 Of intentions, 159 Of knowledge, 139 Of names, 29, 39, 40, 155, 324 Of resolutions, 135, 173, 332 Pain motive of, 155 Preference for proper names, 3, 4, 11 Psychologic analysis of, 136 Purposive, 24 The order of words, 29, 33, 34 Through neglect, 163
Free will, 303
Freud, 43, 300
Gross, Hans, 154, 304
Hallucination, 313
Henri V. and C., 61
Hitschman, 301
Identification, 100
Impotence, psychic, 34
Injury, self-inflicted, 199, 201
Intention, 159
Intentions-- Forgetting of, 160 Secondary, 163
Interchangings, 72
Jones, E., 31, 51, 97, 109, 127, 129, 148, 151, 155, 163, 179, 221, 239, 267, 290, 292
Jung, C. G., 32, 43, 292
Keys, 179, 180
Lapses in reading, 117, 278 In speech, 117, 256, 278 In writing, 120, 278
Lapsus calami, 122
Maeder, 179, 236, 258
Mayer and Meringer, 71, 177
Memories-- Childhood, 57, 61, 211 Concealing, 57, 58, 64 Cause of, 58 Formation of, 59, 60 Painful, 154
Memory-- Control of, 137 Disturbance, examples of, 155, 157 Psychologic theory of, 135 Reproduction, 10 Tenaciousness of, 136
Meyer, 278
Military service, 161
Mishandling, 192 As a sacrifice, 192
Mislaying-- Analysis of, 145, 146 Examples of, 146, 147 Significance of, 143
Misstep, 191
Mistakes in reading, 71, 117 Examples of, 117, 118 In speech, 71 In writing, 117 Of importance, 195, 197 Of normal persons, 194
Moteurs, 63
Motives, unknown, 277
Motor insufficiency, 209
Name-- Incorrect substitutive, 12 Reproduction of lost, 4
Names-- Causes of forgetting of, 52 Distortion of, 97 Escaped, 4 Falsification of, 99 Forgetting of, 4 Substitutive, 4, 13, 98
Negative hallucination, 316
Neologism, analysis of, 293
Nietzsche, 153
Œdipus Complex, 198 Legend, 196
Omissions in writing, 129
Paranoiac interpretation, 306
Personality, over-estimation of, 30
Peterson, 32, 240, 298
Phonetic laws, 95
Phonetics, psychic value of, 72
Pick, A., 152
Playful actions, 227 Occupations, 220
Post-hypnotic suggestion, 161
Potwin, 61
Printers’ errors, 124, 125
Prophetic dream, analysis of, 313
Psychic-- Action, faulty, 277 Apparatus, 153 Determinism, 302 Function, failure of, 3
Psycho-analysis, 65
Psychology of the unconscious, 309
Rank, O., 105, 108, 242, 269, 272, 318
Recollection-- Faulty, 12, 155 Substitutive, 23
Remember, inability to, 8
Reminiscences, childhood, 61
Repressed material, character of, 334
Repression, motivated by, 12, 13
Reproduction-- Disturbance of, 25 Faulty, 29
Resistances, 152
Riklin, 38
Robitsek, Alf., 93
Sachs, 180, 231, 234
Self-betrayal, 101 Examples of, 102
Self-criticism, 184
Self-mutilations, 198
Self-reference, 41
Shakespeare, quoted from, 109, 122
Speech blunders, 74 Psychology of, 329 Disturbance, 75 Lapses in, 177, 256 Mistakes in, 71 Examples of, 81, 82 Showing identification, 94 Substitutions in, 77
Stekel, W., 88, 126, 194
Substitutive formation, 60
Suicide, unconscious, 202
Supernatural forces, 312
Superstition, 306 Motivation of, 309 Origin of, 311 Unconscious motives of, 311
Superstitious beliefs, 277 Person, 308
Suppression, process of, 11
Symptomatic actions, 215, 326
Telepathic experiences, 312
Telepathy, nature of, 316
Traditions, 154
Traumatic hysteria, 192
Unconscious activity, 188 Material, 76 Skill, 147
Van Emden, 206
Visuels, 63
Weiss, 267
Wertheimer and Klein, 304
Wisdom, 169
Word-forgetting without substitutive recollection, 23
Words, disfigurement of, 96
Wundt, 79, 130
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Monatsschrift f. Psychiatrie._]
[Footnote 2: This is the usual way of bringing to consciousness hidden ideas. Cf. _The Interpretation of Dreams_, pp. 83-4, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Company, New York, and Allen, London.]