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[Illustration: SCHWIND, _The Dream of the Prisoner_
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A General Introduction
to
Psychoanalysis
BY
PROF. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
WITH A PREFACE
BY
G. STANLEY HALL
PRESIDENT, CLARK UNIVERSITY
HORACE LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHER NEW YORK
Published, 1920, by
HORACE LIVERIGHT, INC.
_Printed in the United States of America_
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY EDWARD L. BERNAYS
PREFACE
Few, especially in this country, realize that while Freudian themes have
rarely found a place on the programs of the American Psychological
Association, they have attracted great and growing attention and found
frequent elaboration by students of literature, history, biography,
sociology, morals and aesthetics, anthropology, education, and religion.
They have given the world a new conception of both infancy and
adolescence, and shed much new light upon characterology; given us a new
and clearer view of sleep, dreams, reveries, and revealed hitherto
unknown mental mechanisms common to normal and pathological states and
processes, showing that the law of causation extends to the most
incoherent acts and even verbigerations in insanity; gone far to clear
up the _terra incognita_ of hysteria; taught us to recognize morbid
symptoms, often neurotic and psychotic in their germ; revealed the
operations of the primitive mind so overlaid and repressed that we had
almost lost sight of them; fashioned and used the key of symbolism to
unlock many mysticisms of the past; and in addition to all this,
affected thousands of cures, established a new prophylaxis, and
suggested new tests for character, disposition, and ability, in all
combining the practical and theoretic to a degree salutary as it is
rare.
These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost
conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the
difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its
main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school
of thought can do. These discourses are at the same time simple and
almost confidential, and they trace and sum up the results of thirty
years of devoted and painstaking research. While they are not at all
controversial, we incidentally see in a clearer light the distinctions
between the master and some of his distinguished pupils. A text like
this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all
other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It
presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful
popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and
growing number of students of psychoanalysis in this country but by the
yet larger number of those who wish to begin its study here and
elsewhere.
The impartial student of Sigmund Freud need not agree with all his
conclusions, and indeed, like the present writer, may be unable to make
sex so all-dominating a factor in the psychic life of the past and
present as Freud deems it to be, to recognize the fact that he is the
most original and creative mind in psychology of our generation. Despite
the frightful handicap of the _odium sexicum_, far more formidable today
than the _odium theologicum_, involving as it has done for him lack of
academic recognition and even more or less social ostracism, his views
have attracted and inspired a brilliant group of minds not only in
psychiatry but in many other fields, who have altogether given the world
of culture more new and pregnant _appercus_ than those which have come
from any other source within the wide domain of humanism.
A former student and disciple of Wundt, who recognizes to the full his
inestimable services to our science, cannot avoid making certain
comparisons. Wundt has had for decades the prestige of a most
advantageous academic chair. He founded the first laboratory for
experimental psychology, which attracted many of the most gifted and
mature students from all lands. By his development of the doctrine of
apperception he took psychology forever beyond the old associationism
which had ceased to be fruitful. He also established the independence of
psychology from physiology, and by his encyclopedic and always thronged
lectures, to say nothing of his more or less esoteric seminary, he
materially advanced every branch of mental science and extended its
influence over the whole wide domain of folklore, mores, language, and
primitive religion. His best texts will long constitute a thesaurus
which every psychologist must know.
Again, like Freud, he inspired students who went beyond him (the
Wurzburgers and introspectionists) whose method and results he could not
follow. His limitations have grown more and more manifest. He has little
use for the unconscious or the abnormal, and for the most part he has
lived and wrought in a preevolutionary age and always and everywhere
underestimated the genetic standpoint. He never transcends the
conventional limits in dealing, as he so rarely does, with sex. Nor does
he contribute much likely to be of permanent value in any part of the
wide domain of affectivity. We cannot forbear to express the hope that
Freud will not repeat Wundt's error in making too abrupt a break with
his more advanced pupils like Adler or the Zurich group. It is rather
precisely just the topics that Wundt neglects that Freud makes his chief
corner-stones, viz., the unconscious, the abnormal, sex, and affectivity
generally, with many genetic, especially ontogenetic, but also
phylogenetic factors. The Wundtian influence has been great in the past,
while Freud has a great present and a yet greater future.
In one thing Freud agrees with the introspectionists, viz., in
deliberately neglecting the "physiological factor" and building on
purely psychological foundations, although for Freud psychology is
mainly unconscious, while for the introspectionists it is pure
consciousness. Neither he nor his disciples have yet recognized the aid
proffered them by students of the autonomic system or by the
distinctions between the epicritic and protopathic functions and organs
of the cerebrum, although these will doubtless come to have their due
place as we know more of the nature and processes of the unconscious
mind.
If psychologists of the normal have hitherto been too little disposed to
recognize the precious contributions to psychology made by the cruel
experiments of Nature in mental diseases, we think that the
psychoanalysts, who work predominantly in this field, have been somewhat
too ready to apply their findings to the operations of the normal mind;
but we are optomistic enough to believe that in the end both these
errors will vanish and that in the great synthesis of the future that
now seems to impend our science will be made vastly richer and deeper on
the theoretical side and also far more practical than it has ever been
before.
G. STANLEY HALL.
Clark University,
April, 1920.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
_The Psychology of Errors_
PAGE
PREFACE G. Stanley Hall V
LECTURE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS 10
III. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS--(_Continued_) 23
IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS--(_Conclusion_) 41
PART TWO
_The Dream_
V. DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH 63
VI. HYPOTHESIS AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION 78
VII. MANIFEST DREAM CONTENT AND LATENT DREAM THOUGHT 90
VIII. DREAMS OF CHILDHOOD 101
IX. THE DREAM CENSOR 110
X. SYMBOLISM IN THE DREAM 122
XI. THE DREAM-WORK 141
XII. ANALYSES OF SAMPLE DREAMS 153
XIII. ARCHAIC REMNANTS AND INFANTILISM IN THE DREAM 167
XIV. WISH FULFILLMENT 180
XV. DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICISM 194
PART THREE
_General Theory of the Neuroses_
XVI. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY 209
XVII. THE MEANING OF THE SYMPTOMS 221
XVIII. TRAUMATIC FIXATION--THE UNCONSCIOUS 236
XIX. RESISTANCE AND SUPPRESSION 248
XX. THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN 262
XXI. DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS 277
XXII. THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION--ETIOLOGY 294
XXIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYMPTOMS 311
XXIV. ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS 328
XXV. FEAR AND ANXIETY 340
XXVI. THE LIBIDO THEORY AND NARCISM 356
XXVII. TRANSFERENCE 372
XXVIII. ANALYTICAL THERAPY 388
INDEX 403
PART I
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS
FIRST LECTURE
INTRODUCTION
I do not know how familiar some of you may be, either from your reading
or from hearsay, with psychoanalysis. But, in keeping with the title of
these lectures--_A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis_--I am obliged
to proceed as though you knew nothing about this subject, and stood in
need of preliminary instruction.
To be sure, this much I may presume that you do know, namely, that
psychoanalysis is a method of treating nervous patients medically. And
just at this point I can give you an example to illustrate how the
procedure in this field is precisely the reverse of that which is the
rule in medicine. Usually when we introduce a patient to a medical
technique which is strange to him we minimize its difficulties and give
him confident promises concerning the result of the treatment. When,
however, we undertake psychoanalytic treatment with a neurotic patient
we proceed differently. We hold before him the difficulties of the
method, its length, the exertions and the sacrifices which it will cost
him; and, as to the result, we tell him that we make no definite
promises, that the result depends on his conduct, on his understanding,
on his adaptability, on his perseverance. We have, of course, excellent
motives for conduct which seems so perverse, and into which you will
perhaps gain insight at a later point in these lectures.
Do not be offended, therefore, if, for the present, I treat you as I
treat these neurotic patients. Frankly, I shall dissuade you from coming
to hear me a second time. With this intention I shall show what
imperfections are necessarily involved in the teaching of psychoanalysis
and what difficulties stand in the way of gaining a personal judgment. I
shall show you how the whole trend of your previous training and all
your accustomed mental habits must unavoidably have made you opponents
of psychoanalysis, and how much you must overcome in yourselves in
order to master this instinctive opposition. Of course I cannot predict
how much psychoanalytic understanding you will gain from my lectures,
but I can promise this, that by listening to them you will not learn how
to undertake a psychoanalytic treatment or how to carry one to
completion. Furthermore, should I find anyone among you who does not
feel satisfied with a cursory acquaintance with psychoanalysis, but who
would like to enter into a more enduring relationship with it, I shall
not only dissuade him, but I shall actually warn him against it. As
things now stand, a person would, by such a choice of profession, ruin
his every chance of success at a university, and if he goes out into the
world as a practicing physician, he will find himself in a society which
does not understand his aims, which regards him with suspicion and
hostility, and which turns loose upon him all the malicious spirits
which lurk within it.
However, there are always enough individuals who are interested in
anything which may be added to the sum total of knowledge, despite such
inconveniences. Should there be any of this type among you, and should
they ignore my dissuasion and return to the next of these lectures, they
will be welcome. But all of you have the right to know what these
difficulties of psychoanalysis are to which I have alluded.
First of all, we encounter the difficulties inherent in the teaching and
exposition of psychoanalysis. In your medical instruction you have been
accustomed to visual demonstration. You see the anatomical specimen, the
precipitate in the chemical reaction, the contraction of the muscle as
the result of the stimulation of its nerves. Later the patient is
presented to your senses; the symptoms of his malady, the products of
the pathological processes, in many cases even the cause of the disease
is shown in isolated state. In the surgical department you are made to
witness the steps by which one brings relief to the patient, and are
permitted to attempt to practice them. Even in psychiatry, the
demonstration affords you, by the patient's changed facial play, his
manner of speech and his behavior, a wealth of observations which leave
far-reaching impressions. Thus the medical teacher preponderantly plays
the role of a guide and instructor who accompanies you through a museum
in which you contract an immediate relationship to the exhibits, and in
which you believe yourself to have been convinced through your own
observation of the existence of the new things you see.
Unfortunately, everything is different in psychoanalysis. In
psychoanalysis nothing occurs but the interchange of words between the
patient and the physician. The patient talks, tells of his past
experiences and present impressions, complains, confesses his wishes and
emotions. The physician listens, tries to direct the thought processes
of the patient, reminds him of things, forces his attention into certain
channels, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of
understanding or denial which he calls forth in the patient. The
uneducated relatives of our patients--persons who are impressed only by
the visible and tangible, preferably by such procedure as one sees in
the moving picture theatres--never miss an opportunity of voicing their
scepticism as to how one can "do anything for the malady through mere
talk." Such thinking, of course, is as shortsighted as it is
inconsistent. For these are the very persons who know with such
certainty that the patients "merely imagine" their symptoms. Words were
originally magic, and the word retains much of its old magical power
even to-day. With words one man can make another blessed, or drive him
to despair; by words the teacher transfers his knowledge to the pupil;
by words the speaker sweeps his audience with him and determines its
judgments and decisions. Words call forth effects and are the universal
means of influencing human beings. Therefore let us not underestimate
the use of words in psychotherapy, and let us be satisfied if we may be
auditors of the words which are exchanged between the analyst and his
patient.
But even that is impossible. The conversation of which the
psychoanalytic treatment consists brooks no auditor, it cannot be
demonstrated. One can, of course, present a neurasthenic or hysteric to
the students in a psychiatric lecture. He tells of his complaints and
symptoms, but of nothing else. The communications which are necessary
for the analysis are made only under the conditions of a special
affective relationship to the physician; the patient would become dumb
as soon as he became aware of a single impartial witness. For these
communications concern the most intimate part of his psychic life,
everything which as a socially independent person he must conceal from
others; these communications deal with everything which, as a harmonious
personality, he will not admit even to himself.
You cannot, therefore, "listen in" on a psychoanalytic treatment. You
can only hear of it. You will get to know psychoanalysis, in the
strictest sense of the word, only by hearsay. Such instruction even at
second hand, will place you in quite an unusual position for forming a
judgment. For it is obvious that everything depends on the faith you are
able to put in the instructor.
Imagine that you are not attending a psychiatric, but an historical
lecture, and that the lecturer is telling you about the life and martial
deeds of Alexander the Great. What would be your reasons for believing
in the authenticity of his statements? At first sight, the condition of
affairs seems even more unfavorable than in the case of psychoanalysis,
for the history professor was as little a participant in Alexander's
campaigns as you were; the psychoanalyst at least tells you of things in
connection with which he himself has played some role. But then the
question turns on this--what set of facts can the historian marshal in
support of his position? He can refer you to the accounts of ancient
authors, who were either contemporaries themselves, or who were at least
closer to the events in question; that is, he will refer you to the
books of Diodor, Plutarch, Arrian, etc. He can place before you pictures
of the preserved coins and statues of the king and can pass down your
rows a photograph of the Pompeiian mosaics of the battle of Issos. Yet,
strictly speaking, all these documents prove only that previous
generations already believed in Alexander's existence and in the reality
of his deeds, and your criticism might begin anew at this point. You
will then find that not everything recounted of Alexander is credible,
or capable of proof in detail; yet even then I cannot believe that you
will leave the lecture hall a disbeliever in the reality of Alexander
the Great. Your decision will be determined chiefly by two
considerations; firstly, that the lecturer has no conceivable motive for
presenting as truth something which he does not himself believe to be
true, and secondly, that all available histories present the events in
approximately the same manner. If you then proceed to the verification
of the older sources, you will consider the same data, the possible
motives of the writers and the consistency of the various parts of the
evidence. The result of the examination will surely be convincing in the
case of Alexander. It will probably turn out differently when applied
to individuals like Moses and Nimrod. But what doubts you might raise
against the credibility of the psychoanalytic reporter you will see
plainly enough upon a later occasion.
At this point you have a right to raise the question, "If there is no
such thing as objective verification of psychoanalysis, and no
possibility of demonstrating it, how can one possibly learn
psychoanalysis and convince himself of the truth of its claims?" The
fact is, the study is not easy and there are not many persons who have
learned psychoanalysis thoroughly; but nevertheless, there is a feasible
way. Psychoanalysis is learned, first of all, from a study of one's
self, through the study of one's own personality. This is not quite what
is ordinarily called self-observation, but, at a pinch, one can sum it
up thus. There is a whole series of very common and universally known
psychic phenomena, which, after some instruction in the technique of
psychoanalysis, one can make the subject matter of analysis in one's
self. By so doing one obtains the desired conviction of the reality of
the occurrences which psychoanalysis describes and of the correctness of
its fundamental conception. To be sure, there are definite limits
imposed on progress by this method. One gets much further if one allows
himself to be analyzed by a competent analyst, observes the effect of
the analysis on his own ego, and at the same time makes use of the
opportunity to become familiar with the finer details of the technique
of procedure. This excellent method is, of course, only practicable for
one person, never for an entire class.
There is a second difficulty in your relation to psychoanalysis for
which I cannot hold the science itself responsible, but for which I must
ask you to take the responsibility upon yourselves, ladies and
gentlemen, at least in so far as you have hitherto pursued medical
studies. Your previous training has given your mental activity a
definite bent which leads you far away from psychoanalysis. You have
been trained to reduce the functions of an organism and its disorders
anatomically, to explain them in terms of chemistry and physics and to
conceive them biologically, but no portion of your interest has been
directed to the psychic life, in which, after all, the activity of this
wonderfully complex organism culminates. For this reason psychological
thinking has remained strange to you and you have accustomed yourselves
to regard it with suspicion, to deny it the character of the scientific,
to leave it to the laymen, poets, natural philosophers and mystics. Such
a delimitation is surely harmful to your medical activity, for the
patient will, as is usual in all human relationships, confront you first
of all with his psychic facade; and I am afraid your penalty will be
this, that you will be forced to relinquish a portion of the therapeutic
influence to which you aspire, to those lay physicians, nature-cure
fakers and mystics whom you despise.
I am not overlooking the excuse, whose existence one must admit, for
this deficiency in your previous training. There is no philosophical
science of therapy which could be made practicable for your medical
purpose. Neither speculative philosophy nor descriptive psychology nor
that so-called experimental psychology which allies itself with the
physiology of the sense organs as it is taught in the schools, is in a
position to teach you anything useful concerning the relation between
the physical and the psychical or to put into your hand the key to the
understanding of a possible disorder of the psychic functions. Within
the field of medicine, psychiatry does, it is true, occupy itself with
the description of the observed psychic disorders and with their
grouping into clinical symptom-pictures; but in their better hours the
psychiatrists themselves doubt whether their purely descriptive account
deserves the name of a science. The symptoms which constitute these
clinical pictures are known neither in their origin, in their mechanism,
nor in their mutual relationship. There are either no discoverable
corresponding changes of the anatomical organ of the soul, or else the
changes are of such a nature as to yield no enlightenment. Such psychic
disturbances are open to therapeutic influence only when they can be
identified as secondary phenomena of an otherwise organic affection.
Here is the gap which psychoanalysis aims to fill. It prepares to give
psychiatry the omitted psychological foundation, it hopes to reveal the
common basis from which, as a starting point, constant correlation of
bodily and psychic disturbances becomes comprehensible. To this end, it
must divorce itself from every anatomical, chemical or physiological
supposition which is alien to it. It must work throughout with purely
psychological therapeutic concepts, and just for that reason I fear
that it will at first seem strange to you.
I will not make you, your previous training, or your mental bias share
the guilt of the next difficulty. With two of its assertions,
psychoanalysis offends the whole world and draws aversion upon itself.
One of these assertions offends an intellectual prejudice, the other an
aesthetic-moral one. Let us not think too lightly of these prejudices;
they are powerful things, remnants of useful, even necessary,
developments of mankind. They are retained through powerful affects, and
the battle against them is a hard one.
The first of these displeasing assertions of psychoanalysis is this,
that the psychic processes are in themselves unconscious, and that those
which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the total
psychic life. Recollect that we are, on the contrary, accustomed to
identify the psychic with the conscious. Consciousness actually means
for us the distinguishing characteristic of the psychic life, and
psychology is the science of the content of consciousness. Indeed, so
obvious does this identification seem to us that we consider its
slightest contradiction obvious nonsense, and yet psychoanalysis cannot
avoid raising this contradiction; it cannot accept the identity of the
conscious with the psychic. Its definition of the psychic affirms that
they are processes of the nature of feeling, thinking, willing; and it
must assert that there is such a thing as unconscious thinking and
unconscious willing. But with this assertion psychoanalysis has
alienated, to start with, the sympathy of all friends of sober science,
and has laid itself open to the suspicion of being a fantastic mystery
study which would build in darkness and fish in murky waters. You,
however, ladies and gentlemen, naturally cannot as yet understand what
justification I have for stigmatizing as a prejudice so abstract a
phrase as this one, that "the psychic is consciousness." You cannot know
what evaluation can have led to the denial of the unconscious, if such a
thing really exists, and what advantage may have resulted from this
denial. It sounds like a mere argument over words whether one shall say
that the psychic coincides with the conscious or whether one shall
extend it beyond that, and yet I can assure you that by the acceptance
of unconscious processes you have paved the way for a decisively new
orientation in the world and in science.
Just as little can you guess how intimate a connection this initial
boldness of psychoanalysis has with the one which follows. The next
assertion which psychoanalysis proclaims as one of its discoveries,
affirms that those instinctive impulses which one can only call sexual
in the narrower as well as in the wider sense, play an uncommonly large
role in the causation of nervous and mental diseases, and that those
impulses are a causation which has never been adequately appreciated.
Nay, indeed, psychoanalysis claims that these same sexual impulses have
made contributions whose value cannot be overestimated to the highest
cultural, artistic and social achievements of the human mind.
According to my experience, the aversion to this conclusion of
psychoanalysis is the most significant source of the opposition which it
encounters. Would you like to know how we explain this fact? We believe
that civilization was forged by the driving force of vital necessity, at
the cost of instinct-satisfaction, and that the process is to a large
extent constantly repeated anew, since each individual who newly enters
the human community repeats the sacrifices of his instinct-satisfaction
for the sake of the common good. Among the instinctive forces thus
utilized, the sexual impulses play a significant role. They are thereby
sublimated, i.e., they are diverted from their sexual goals and directed
to ends socially higher and no longer sexual. But this result is
unstable. The sexual instincts are poorly tamed. Each individual who
wishes to ally himself with the achievements of civilization is exposed
to the danger of having his sexual instincts rebel against this
sublimation. Society can conceive of no more serious menace to its
civilization than would arise through the satisfying of the sexual
instincts by their redirection toward their original goals. Society,
therefore, does not relish being reminded of this ticklish spot in its
origin; it has no interest in having the strength of the sexual
instincts recognized and the meaning of the sexual life to the
individual clearly delineated. On the contrary, society has taken the
course of diverting attention from this whole field. This is the reason
why society will not tolerate the above-mentioned results of
psychoanalytic research, and would prefer to brand it as aesthetically
offensive and morally objectionable or dangerous. Since, however, one
cannot attack an ostensibly objective result of scientific inquiry with
such objections, the criticism must be translated to an intellectual
level if it is to be voiced. But it is a predisposition of human nature
to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find
arguments against it. Society thus brands what is unpleasant as untrue,
denying the conclusions of psychoanalysis with logical and pertinent
arguments. These arguments originate from affective sources, however,
and society holds to these prejudices against all attempts at
refutation.
However, we may claim, ladies and gentlemen, that we have followed no
bias of any sort in making any of these contested statements. We merely
wished to state facts which we believe to have been discovered by
toilsome labor. And we now claim the right unconditionally to reject the
interference in scientific research of any such practical
considerations, even before we have investigated whether the
apprehension which these considerations are meant to instil are
justified or not.
These, therefore, are but a few of the difficulties which stand in the
way of your occupation with psychoanalysis. They are perhaps more than
enough for a beginning. If you can overcome their deterrent impression,
we shall continue.
SECOND LECTURE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS
We begin with an investigation, not with hypotheses. To this end we
choose certain phenomena which are very frequent, very familiar and very
little heeded, and which have nothing to do with the pathological,
inasmuch as they can be observed in every normal person. I refer to the
errors which an individual commits--as for example, errors of speech in
which he wishes to say something and uses the wrong word; or those which
happen to him in writing, and which he may or may not notice; or the
case of misreading, in which one reads in the print or writing something
different from what is actually there. A similar phenomenon occurs in
those cases of mishearing what is said to one, where there is no
question of an organic disturbance of the auditory function. Another
series of such occurrences is based on forgetfulness--but on a
forgetfulness which is not permanent, but temporary, as for instance
when one cannot think of a name which one knows and always recognizes;
or when one forgets to carry out a project at the proper time but which
one remembers again later, and therefore has only forgotten for a
certain interval. In a third class this characteristic of transience is
lacking, as for example in mislaying things so that they cannot be found
again, or in the analogous case of losing things. Here we are dealing
with a kind of forgetfulness to which one reacts differently from the
other cases, a forgetfulness at which one is surprised and annoyed,
instead of considering it comprehensible. Allied with these phenomena is
that of erroneous ideas--in which the element of transience is again
prominent, inasmuch as for a while one believes something which, before
and after that time, one knows to be untrue--and a number of similar
phenomena of different designations.
These are all occurrences whose inner connection is expressed in the
use of the same prefix of designation.[1] They are almost all
unimportant, generally temporary and without much significance in the
life of the individual. It is only rarely that one of them, such as the
phenomenon of losing things, attains to a certain practical importance.
For that reason also they do not attract much attention, they arouse
only weak affects.
It is, therefore, to these phenomena that I would now direct your
attention. But you will object, with annoyance: "There are so many
sublime riddles in the external world, just as there are in the narrower
world of the psychic life, and so many wonders in the field of psychic
disturbances which demand and deserve elucidation, that it really seems
frivolous to waste labor and interest on such trifles. If you can
explain to us how an individual with sound eyes and ears can, in broad
daylight, see and hear things that do not exist, or why another
individual suddenly believes himself persecuted by those whom up to that
time he loved best, or defend, with the most ingenious arguments,
delusions which must seem nonsense to any child, then we will be willing
to consider psychoanalysis seriously. But if psychoanalysis can do
nothing better than to occupy us with the question of why a speaker used
the wrong word, or why a housekeeper mislaid her keys, or such trifles,
then we know something better to do with our time and interest."
My reply is: "Patience, ladies and gentlemen. I think your criticism is
not on the right track. It is true that psychoanalysis cannot boast that
it has never occupied itself with trifles. On the contrary, the objects
of its observations are generally those simple occurrences which the
other sciences have thrown aside as much too insignificant, the waste
products of the phenomenal world. But are you not confounding, in your
criticism, the sublimity of the problems with the conspicuousness of
their manifestations? Are there not very important things which under
certain circumstances, and at certain times, can betray themselves only
by very faint signs? I could easily cite a great many instances of this
kind. From what vague signs, for instance, do the young gentlemen of
this audience conclude that they have won the favor of a lady? Do you
await an explicit declaration, an ardent embrace, or does not a glance,
scarcely perceptible to others, a fleeting gesture, the prolonging of a
hand-shake by one second, suffice? And if you are a criminal lawyer, and
engaged in the investigation of a murder, do you actually expect the
murderer to leave his photograph and address on the scene of the crime,
or would you, of necessity, content yourself with fainter and less
certain traces of that individual? Therefore, let us not undervalue
small signs; perhaps by means of them we will succeed in getting on the
track of greater things. I agree with you that the larger problems of
the world and of science have the first claim on our interest. But it is
generally of little avail to form the definite resolution to devote
oneself to the investigation of this or that problem. Often one does not
know in which direction to take the next step. In scientific research it
is more fruitful to attempt what happens to be before one at the moment
and for whose investigation there is a discoverable method. If one does
that thoroughly without prejudice or predisposition, one may, with good
fortune, and by virtue of the connection which links each thing to every
other (hence also the small to the great) discover even from such modest
research a point of approach to the study of the big problems."
Thus would I answer, in order to secure your attention for the
consideration of these apparently insignificant errors made by normal
people. At this point, we will question a stranger to psychoanalysis and
ask him how he explains these occurrences.
His first answer is sure to be, "Oh, they are not worth an explanation;
they are merely slight accidents." What does he mean by this? Does he
mean to assert that there are any occurrences so insignificant that they
fall out of the causal sequence of things, or that they might just as
well be something different from what they are? If any one thus denies
the determination of natural phenomena at one such point, he has
vitiated the entire scientific viewpoint. One can then point out to him
how much more consistent is the religious point of view, when it
explicitly asserts that "No sparrow falls from the roof without God's
special wish." I imagine our friend will not be willing to follow his
first answer to its logical conclusion; he will interrupt and say that
if he were to study these things he would probably find an explanation
for them. He will say that this is a case of slight functional
disturbance, of an inaccurate psychic act whose causal factors can be
outlined. A man who otherwise speaks correctly may make a slip of the
tongue--when he is slightly ill or fatigued; when he is excited; when
his attention is concentrated on something else. It is easy to prove
these statements. Slips of the tongue do really occur with special
frequency when one is tired, when one has a headache or when one is
indisposed. Forgetting proper names is a very frequent occurrence under
these circumstances. Many persons even recognize the imminence of an
indisposition by the inability to recall proper names. Often also one
mixes up words or objects during excitement, one picks up the wrong
things; and the forgetting of projects, as well as the doing of any
number of other unintentional acts, becomes conspicuous when one is
distracted; in other words, when one's attention is concentrated on
other things. A familiar instance of such distraction is the professor
in _Fliegende Blaetter_, who takes the wrong hat because he is thinking
of the problems which he wishes to treat in his next book. Each of us
knows from experience some examples of how one can forget projects which
one has planned and promises which one has made, because an experience
has intervened which has preoccupied one deeply.
This seems both comprehensible and irrefutable. It is perhaps not very
interesting, not as we expected it to be. But let us consider this
explanation of errors. The conditions which have been cited as necessary
for the occurrence of these phenomena are not all identical. Illness and
disorders of circulation afford a physiological basis. Excitement,
fatigue and distraction are conditions of a different sort, which one
could designate as psycho-physiological. About these latter it is easy
to theorize. Fatigue, as well as distraction, and perhaps also general
excitement, cause a scattering of the attention which can result in the
act in progress not receiving sufficient attention. This act can then be
more easily interrupted than usual, and may be inexactly carried out. A
slight illness, or a change in the distribution of blood in the central
organ of the nervous system, can have the same effect, inasmuch as it
influences the determining factor, the distribution of attention, in a
similar way. In all cases, therefore, it is a question of the effects of
a distraction of the attention, caused either by organic or psychic
factors.
But this does not seem to yield much of interest for our psychoanalytic
investigation. We might even feel tempted to give up the subject. To be
sure, when we look more closely we find that not everything squares
with this attention theory of psychological errors, or that at any rate
not everything can be directly deduced from it. We find that such errors
and such forgetting occur even when people are not fatigued, distracted
or excited, but are in every way in their normal state; unless, in
consequence of these errors, one were to attribute to them an excitement
which they themselves do not acknowledge. Nor is the mechanism so simple
that the success of an act is assured by an intensification of the
attention bestowed upon it, and endangered by its diminution. There are
many acts which one performs in a purely automatic way and with very
little attention, but which are yet carried out quite successfully. The
pedestrian who scarcely knows where he is going, nevertheless keeps to
the right road and stops at his destination without having gone astray.
At least, this is the rule. The practiced pianist touches the right keys
without thinking of them. He may, of course, also make an occasional
mistake, but if automatic playing increased the likelihood of errors, it
would be just the virtuoso whose playing has, through practice, become
most automatic, who 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 the mistakes occur just at the point where one is most anxious
to be accurate--where a distraction of the necessary attention is
therefore surely least permissible. One could then say that this is the
effect of the "excitement," but we do not understand why the excitement
does not intensify the concentration of attention on the goal that is so
much desired. If in an important speech or discussion anyone says the
opposite of what he means, then that can hardly be explained according
to the psycho-physiological or the attention theories.
There are also many other small phenomena accompanying these errors,
which are not understood and which have not been rendered comprehensible
to us by these explanations. For instance, when one has temporarily
forgotten a name, one is annoyed, one is determined to recall it and is
unable to give up the attempt. Why is it that despite his annoyance the
individual cannot succeed, as he wishes, in directing his attention to
the word which is "on the tip of his tongue," and which he instantly
recognizes when it is pronounced to him? Or, to take another example,
there are cases in which the errors multiply, link themselves together,
substitute for each other. 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 means 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 this second name, a third gets
lost, and so on. It is notorious that the same thing can happen in the
case of misprints, which are of course to be considered as errors of the
typesetter. A stubborn error of this sort is said to have crept into a
Social-Democratic paper, where, in the account of a certain festivity
was printed, "Among 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 Clown Prince.'" One
likes to attribute these occurrences to the printer's devil, to the
goblin of the typesetting machine, and the like--figurative expressions
which at least go beyond a psycho-physiological theory of the misprint.
I do not know if you are acquainted with the fact that one can provoke
slips of the tongue, can call them 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 role in _The Maid of Orleans_ of
announcing to the King, "Connetable sheathes his sword," the star played
the joke of repeating to the frightened beginner during the rehearsal,
instead of the text, the following, "Comfortable sends back his
steed,"[2] and he attained his end. In the performance the unfortunate
actor actually made his debut with this distorted announcement; even
after he had been amply warned against so doing, or perhaps just for
that reason.
These little characteristics of errors are not exactly illuminated by
the theory of diverted attention. But that does not necessarily prove
the whole theory wrong. There is perhaps something missing, a complement
by the addition of which the theory would be made completely
satisfactory. But many of the errors themselves can be regarded from
another aspect.
Let us select slips of the tongue, as best suited to our purposes. We
might equally well choose slips of the pen or of reading. But at this
point, we must make clear to ourselves the fact that so far we have
inquired only as to when and under what conditions one's tongue slips,
and have received an answer on this point only. One can, however, direct
one's interest elsewhere and ask why one makes just this particular slip
and no other; one can consider what the slip results in. You must
realize that as long as one does not answer this question--does not
explain the effect produced by the slip--the phenomenon in its
psychological aspect remains an accident, even if its physiological
explanation has been found. When it happens that I commit a slip of the
tongue, I could obviously make any one of an infinite number of slips,
and in place of the one right word say any one of a thousand others,
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 the 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. That, of course, does not yet
furnish any explanation, but may open the way to one. They
differentiated the distortions which the intended phrase suffered
through the slip, into: interchanges of positions of words, interchanges
of parts of words, perseverations, compoundings and substitutions. I
will give you examples of these authors' main categories. It is a case
of interchange of the first sort if someone says "the Milo of Venus"
instead of "the Venus of Milo." An example of the second type of
interchange, "I had a blush of rood to the head" instead of "rush of
blood"; a perseveration would be the familiar misplaced toast, "I ask
you to join me in hiccoughing the health of our chief."[3] These three
forms of slips are not very frequent. You will find those cases much
more frequent in which the slip results from a drawing together or
compounding of syllables; for example, a gentleman on the street
addresses a lady with the words, "If you will allow me, madame, I should
be very glad to _inscort_ you."[4] In the compounded word there is
obviously besides the word "escort," also the word "insult" (and
parenthetically we may remark that the young man will not find much
favor with the lady). As an example of the substitution, Meringer and
Mayer cite the following: "A man says, 'I put the specimens in the
letterbox,' instead of 'in the hot-bed,' and the like."[5]
The explanation which the two authors attempt to formulate on the basis
of this collection of examples is peculiarly inadequate. They hold that
the sounds and syllables of words have different values, and that the
production and perception of more highly valued syllables can interfere
with those of lower values. They obviously base this conclusion on the
cases of fore-sounding and perseveration which are not at all frequent;
in other cases of slips of the tongue the question of such sound
priorities, if any exist, does not enter at all. The most frequent cases
of slips of the tongue are those in which instead of a certain word one
says another which resembles it; and one may consider this resemblance
sufficient explanation. For example, a professor says in his initial
lecture, "I am not _inclined_ to evaluate the merits of my
predecessor."[6] Or another professor says, "In the case of the female
genital, despite many _temptations_ ... I mean many attempts ...
etc."[7]
The most common, and also the most conspicuous form of slips of the
tongue, however, is that of saying the exact opposite of what one meant
to say. In such cases, one goes far afield from the problem of sound
relations and resemblance effects, and can cite, instead of these, the
fact that opposites have an obviously close relationship to each other,
and have particularly close relations in the psychology of association.
There are historical examples of this sort. A president of our House of
Representatives once opened the assembly with the words, "Gentlemen, I
declare a quorum present, and herewith declare the assembly _closed_."
Similar, in its trickiness, to the relation of opposites is the effect
of any other facile association which may under certain circumstances
arise most inopportunely. Thus, for instance, there is the story which
relates that on the occasion of a festivity in honor of the marriage of
a child of H. Helmholtz with a child of the well-known discoverer and
captain of industry, W. Siemon, the famous physiologist Dubois-Reymond
was asked to speak. He concluded his undoubtedly sparkling toast with
the words, "Success to the new firm--Siemens and--Halski!" That, of
course, was the name of the well-known old firm. The association of the
two names must have been about as easy for a native of Berlin as "Weber
and Fields" to an American.