in what way can one establish the existence of the two mutually
antagonistic tendencies? You probably do not suspect how significant
this question is. It is true, is it not, that one of the two tendencies,
the tendency which suffers the interference, is always unmistakable? The
person who commits the error is aware of it and acknowledges it. It is
the other tendency, what we call the interfering tendency, which causes
doubt and hesitation. Now we have already learned, and you have surely
not forgotten, that these tendencies are, in a series of cases, equally
plain. That is indicated by the effect of the slip, if only we have the
courage to let this effect be valid in itself. The president who said
the opposite of what he meant to say made it clear that he wanted to
open the meeting, but equally clear that he would also have liked to
terminate it. Here the meaning is so plain that there is nothing left to
be interpreted. But the other cases in which the interfering tendency
merely distorts the original, without bringing itself to full
expression--how can one guess the interfering meaning from the
distortion?
By a very sure and simple method, in the first series of cases, namely,
by the same method by which one establishes the existence of the
meaning interfered with. The latter is immediately supplied by the
speaker, who instantly adds the originally intended expression. "It may
_stake_--no, it may _take_ another month." Now we likewise ask him to
express the interfering meaning; we ask him: "Now, why did you first say
_stake_?" He answers, "I meant to say--'This is a _sorry_ business.'"
And in the other case of the tongue slip--_re-filed_--the subject also
affirms that he meant to say "It is a _fil-thy_ business," but then
moderated his expression and turned it into something else. Thus the
discovery of the interfering meaning was here as successful as the
discovery of the one interfered with. Nor did I unintentionally select
as examples cases which were neither related nor explained by me or by a
supporter of my theories. Yet a certain investigation was necessary in
both cases in order to obtain the solution. One had to ask the speaker
why he made this slip, what he had to say about it. Otherwise he might
perhaps have passed it by without seeking to explain it. When
questioned, however, he furnished the explanation by means of the first
thing that came to his mind. And now you see, ladies and gentlemen, that
this slight investigation and its consequence are already a
psychoanalysis, and the prototype of every psychoanalytic investigation
which we shall conduct more extensively at a later time.
Now, am I unduly suspicious if I suspect that at the same moment in
which psychoanalysis emerges before you, your resistance to
psychoanalysis also raises its head? Are you not anxious to raise the
objection that the information given by the subject we questioned, and
who committed the slip, is not proof sufficient? He naturally has the
desire, you say, to meet the challenge, to explain the slip, and hence
he says the first thing he can think of if it seems relevant. But that,
you say, is no proof that this is really the way the slip happened. It
might be so, but it might just as well be otherwise, you say. Something
else might have occurred to him which might have fitted the case just as
well and better.
It is remarkable how little respect, at bottom, you have for a psychic
fact! Imagine that someone has decided to undertake the chemical
analysis of a certain substance, and has secured a sample of the
substance, of a certain weight--so and so many milligrams. From this
weighed sample certain definite conclusions can be drawn. Do you think
it would ever occur to a chemist to discredit these conclusions by the
argument that the isolated substance might have had some other weight?
Everyone yields to the fact that it was just this weight and no other,
and confidently builds his further conclusions upon that fact. But when
you are confronted by the psychic fact that the subject, when
questioned, had a certain idea, you will not accept that as valid, but
say some other idea might just as easily have occurred to him! The
trouble is that you believe in the illusion of psychic freedom and will
not give it up. I regret that on this point I find myself in complete
opposition to your views.
Now you will relinquish this point only to take up your resistance at
another place. You will continue, "We understand that it is the peculiar
technique of psychoanalysis that the solution of its problems is
discovered by the analyzed subject himself. Let us take another example,
that in which the speaker calls upon the assembly 'to _hiccough_ the
health of their chief.' The interfering idea in this case, you say, is
the insult. It is that which is the antagonist of the expression of
conferring an honor. But that is mere interpretation on your part, based
on observations extraneous to the slip. If in this case you question the
originator of the slip, he will not affirm that he intended an insult,
on the contrary, he will deny it energetically. Why do you not give up
your unverifiable interpretation in the face of this plain objection?"
Yes, this time you struck a hard problem. I can imagine the unknown
speaker. He is probably an assistant to the guest of honor, perhaps
already a minor official, a young man with the brightest prospects. I
will press him as to whether he did not after all feel conscious of
something which may have worked in opposition to the demand that he do
honor to the chief. What a fine success I'll have! He becomes impatient
and suddenly bursts out on me, "Look here, you'd better stop this
cross-examination, or I'll get unpleasant. Why, you'll spoil my whole
career with your suspicions. I simply said '_auf_-gestossen' instead of
'_an_-gestossen,' because I'd already said '_auf_' twice in the same
sentence. It's the thing that Meringer calls a perservation, and there's
no other meaning that you can twist out of it. Do you understand me?
That's all." H'm, this is a surprising reaction, a really energetic
denial. I see that there is nothing more to be obtained from the young
man, but I also remark to myself that he betrays a strong personal
interest in having his slip mean nothing. Perhaps you, too, agree that
it is not right for him immediately to become so rude over a purely
theoretical investigation, but, you will conclude, he really must know
what he did and did not mean to say.
Really? Perhaps that's open to question nevertheless.
But now you think you have me. "So that is your technique," I hear you
say. "When the person who has committed a slip gives an explanation
which fits your theory, then you declare him the final authority on the
subject. 'He says so himself!' But if what he says does not fit into
your scheme, then you suddenly assert that what he says does not count,
that one need not believe him."
Yet that is certainly true. I can give you a similar case in which the
procedure is apparently just as monstrous. When a defendant confesses to
a deed, the judge believes his confession. But if he denies it, the
judge does not believe him. Were it otherwise, there would be no way to
administer the law, and despite occasional miscarriages you must
acknowledge the value of this system.
Well, are you then the judge, and is the person who committed the slip a
defendant before you? Is a slip of the tongue a crime?
Perhaps we need not even decline this comparison. But just see to what
far-reaching differences we have come by penetrating somewhat into the
seemingly harmless problems of the psychology of errors, differences
which at this stage we do not at all know how to reconcile. I offer you
a preliminary compromise on the basis of the analogy of the judge and
the defendant. You will grant me that the meaning of an error admits of
no doubt when the subject under analysis acknowledges it himself. I in
turn will admit that a direct proof for the suspected meaning cannot be
obtained if the subject denies us the information; and, of course, that
is also the case when the subject is not present to give us the
information. We are, then, as in the case of the legal procedure,
dependent on circumstances which make a decision at one time seem more,
and at another time, less probable to us. At law, one has to declare a
defendant guilty on circumstantial evidence for practical reasons. We
see no such necessity; but neither are we forced to forego the use of
these circumstances. It would be a mistake to believe that a science
consists of nothing but conclusively proved theorems, and any such
demand would be unjust. Only a person with a mania for authority, a
person who must replace his religious catechism with some other, even
though it be scientific, would make such a demand. Science has but few
apodeictic precepts in its catechism; it consists chiefly of assertions
which it has developed to certain degrees of probability. It is actually
a symptom of scientific thinking if one is content with these
approximations of certainty and is able to carry on constructive work
despite the lack of the final confirmation.
But where do we get the facts for our interpretations, the circumstances
for our proof, when the further remarks of the subject under analysis do
not themselves elucidate the meaning of the error? From many sources.
First of all, from the analogy with phenomena extraneous to the
psychology of errors; as, for example, when we assert that the
distortion of a name as a slip of the tongue has the same insulting
significance as an intentional name distortion. We get them also from
the psychic situation in which the error occurred, from our knowledge of
the character of the person who committed the error, from the
impressions which that person received before making the error, and to
which he may possibly have reacted with this error. As a rule, what
happens is that we find the meaning of the error according to general
principles. It is then only a conjecture, a suggestion as to what the
meaning may be, and we then obtain our proof from examination of the
psychic situation. Sometimes, too, it happens that we have to wait for
subsequent developments, which have announced themselves, as it were,
through the error, in order to find our conjecture verified.
I cannot easily give you proof of this if I have to limit myself to the
field of tongue slips, although even here there are a few good examples.
The young man who wished to "_inscort_" the lady is certainly shy; the
lady whose husband may eat and drink whatever _she_ wants I know to be
one of those energetic women who know how to rule in the home. Or take
the following case: At a general meeting of the Concordia Club, a young
member delivers a vehement speech in opposition, in the course of which
he addresses the officers of the society as: "Fellow committee
lenders." We will conjecture that some conflicting idea militated in him
against his opposition, an idea which was in some way based on a
connection with money lending. As a matter of fact, we learn from our
informant that the speaker was in constant money difficulties, and had
attempted to raise a loan. As a conflicting idea, therefore, we may
safely interpolate the idea, "Be more moderate in your opposition, these
are the same people who are to grant you the loan."
But I can give you a wide selection of such circumstantial proof if I
delve into the wide field of other kinds of error.
If anyone forgets an otherwise familiar proper name, or has difficulty
in retaining it in his memory despite all efforts, then the conclusion
lies close at hand, that he has something against the bearer of this
name and does not like to think of him. Consider in this connection the
following revelation of the psychic situation in which this error
occurs:
"A Mr. Y. fell in love, without reciprocation, with a lady who soon
after married a Mr. X. In spite of the fact that Mr. Y. has known Mr. X.
a long time, and even has business relations with him, he forgets his
name over and over again, so that he found it necessary on several
occasions to ask other people the man's name when he wanted to write to
Mr. X."[12]
Mr. Y. obviously does not want to have his fortunate rival in mind under
any condition. "Let him never be thought of."
Another example: A lady makes inquiries at her doctor's concerning a
mutual acquaintance, but speaks of her by her maiden name. She has
forgotten her married name. She admits that she was much displeased by
the marriage, and could not stand this friend's husband.[13]
Later we shall have much to say in other relations about the matter of
forgetting names. At present we are predominantly interested in the
psychic situation in which the lapse of memory occurs.
The forgetting of projects can quite commonly be traced to an
antagonistic current which does not wish to carry out the project. We
psychoanalysts are not alone in holding this view, but this is the
general conception to which all persons subscribe the daily affairs, and
which they first deny in theory. The patron who makes apologies to his
protege, saying that he has forgotten his requests, has not squared
himself with his protege. The protege immediately thinks: "There's
nothing to that; he did promise but he really doesn't want to do it."
Hence, daily life also proscribes forgetting, in certain connections,
and the difference between the popular and the psychoanalytic conception
of these errors appears to be removed. Imagine a housekeeper who
receives her guest with the words: "What, you come to-day? Why, I had
totally forgotten that I had invited you for to-day"; or the young man
who might tell his sweetheart that he had forgotten to keep the
rendezvous which they planned. He is sure not to admit it, it were
better for him to invent the most improbable excuses on the spur of the
moment, hindrances which prevented him from coming at that time, and
which made it impossible for him to communicate the situation to her. We
all know that in military matters the excuse of having forgotten
something is useless, that it protects one from no punishment; and we
must consider this attitude justified. Here we suddenly find everyone
agreed that a certain error is significant, and everyone agrees what its
meaning is. Why are they not consistent enough to extend this insight to
the other errors, and fully to acknowledge them? Of course, there is
also an answer to this.
If the meaning of this forgetting of projects leaves room for so little
doubt among laymen, you will be less surprised to find that poets make
use of these errors in the same sense. Those of you who have seen or
read Shaw's _Caesar and Cleopatra_ will recall that Caesar, when
departing in the last scene, is pursued by the idea that there was
something more he intended to do, but that he had forgotten it. Finally
he discovers what it is: to take leave of Cleopatra. This small device
of the author is meant to ascribe to the great Caesar a superiority
which he did not possess, and to which he did not at all aspire. You can
learn from historical sources that Caesar had Cleopatra follow him to
Rome, and that she was staying there with her little Caesarion when
Caesar was murdered, whereupon she fled the city.
The cases of forgetting projects are as a rule so clear that they are of
little use for our purpose, i.e., discovering in the psychic situation
circumstantial evidence of the meaning of the error. Let us, therefore,
turn to a particularly ambiguous and untransparent error, that of losing
and mislaying objects. That we ourselves should have a purpose in losing
an object, an accident frequently so painful, will certainly seem
incredible to you. But there are many instances similar to the
following: A young man loses the pencil which he had liked very much.
The day before he had received a letter from his brother-in-law, which
concluded with the words, "For the present I have neither the
inclination nor the time to be a party to your frivolity and your
idleness."[14] It so happened that the pencil had been a present from
this brother-in-law. Without this coincidence we could not, of course,
assert that the loss involved any intention to get rid of the gift.
Similar cases are numerous. Persons lose objects when they have fallen
out with the donors, and no longer wish to be reminded of them. Or
again, objects may be lost if one no longer likes the things themselves,
and wants to supply oneself with a pretext for substituting other and
better things in their stead. Letting a thing fall and break naturally
shows the same intention toward that object. Can one consider it
accidental when a school child just before his birthday loses, ruins or
breaks his belongings, for example his school bag or his watch?
He who has frequently experienced the annoyance of not being able to
find something which he has himself put away, will also be unwilling to
believe there was any intent behind the loss. And yet the examples are
not at all rare in which the attendant circumstances of the mislaying
point to a tendency temporarily or permanently to get rid of the object.
Perhaps the most beautiful example of this sort is the following: A
young man tells me: "A few years ago a misunderstanding arose in my
married life. I felt my wife was too cool and even though I willingly
acknowledged her excellent qualities, we lived without any tenderness
between us. One day she brought me a book which she had thought might
interest me. I thanked her for this attention, promised to read the
book, put it in a handy place, and couldn't find it again. Several
months passed thus, during which I occasionally remembered this mislaid
book and tried in vain to find it. About half a year later my beloved
mother, who lived at a distance from us, fell ill. My wife left the
house in order to nurse her mother-in-law. The condition of the patient
became serious, and gave my wife an opportunity of showing her best
side. One evening I came home filled with enthusiasm and gratitude
toward my wife. I approached my writing desk, opened a certain drawer
with no definite intention but as if with somnambulistic certainty, and
the first thing I found is the book so long mislaid."
With the cessation of the motive, the inability to find the mislaid
object also came to an end.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could increase this collection of examples
indefinitely. But I do not wish to do so here. In my _Psychopathology of
Everyday Life_ (first published in 1901), you will find only too many
instances for the study of errors.[15]
All these examples demonstrate the same thing repeatedly: namely, they
make it seem probable that errors have a meaning, and show how one may
guess or establish that meaning from the attendant circumstances. I
limit myself to-day because we have confined ourselves to the purpose of
profiting in the preparation for psychoanalysis from the study of these
phenomena. I must, however, still go into two additional groups of
observations, into the accumulated and combined errors and into the
confirmation of our interpretations by means of subsequent developments.
The accumulated and combined errors are surely the fine flower of their
species. If we were interested only in proving that errors may have a
meaning, we would limit ourselves to the accumulated and combined errors
in the first place, for here the meaning is unmistakable, even to the
dullest intelligence, and can force conviction upon the most critical
judgment. The accumulation of manifestations betrays a stubbornness such
as could never come about by accident, but which fits closely the idea
of design. Finally, the interchange of certain kinds of error with each
other shows us what is the important and essential element of the error,
not its form or the means of which it avails itself, but the purpose
which it serves and which is to be achieved by the most various paths.
Thus I will give you a case of repeated forgetting. Jones recounts that
he once allowed a letter to lie on his writing desk several days for
reasons quite unknown. Finally he made up his mind to mail it; but it
was returned from the dead letter office, for he had forgotten to
address it. After he had addressed it he took it to the post office, but
this time without a stamp. At this point he finally had to admit to
himself his aversion against sending the letter at all.
In another case a mistake is combined with mislaying an object. A lady
is traveling to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous artist. The
visitor is much feted by the Germans living in Rome, and receives as a
gift, among other things, a gold medal of ancient origin. The lady is
vexed by the fact that her brother-in-law does not sufficiently
appreciate the beautiful object. After she leaves her sister and reaches
her home, she discovers when unpacking that she has brought with
her--how, she does not know--the medal. She immediately informs her
brother-in-law of this fact by letter, and gives him notice that she
will send the medal back to Rome the next day. But on the following day,
the medal has been so cleverly mislaid that it can neither be found nor
sent, and at this point it begins to dawn upon the lady that her
"absent-mindedness" means, namely, that she wants to keep the object for
herself.[16]
I have already given you an example of a combination of forgetfulness
and error in which someone first forgot a rendezvous and then, with the
firm intention of not forgetting it a second time, appeared at the wrong
hour. A quite analogous case was told me from his own experience, by a
friend who pursues literary interests in addition to his scientific
ones. He said: "A few years ago I accepted the election to the board of
a certain literary society, because I hoped that the society could at
some time be of use to me in helping obtain the production of my drama,
and, despite my lack of interest, I took part in the meetings every
Friday. A few months ago I received the assurance of a production in the
theatre in F., and since that time it happens regularly that I forget
the meetings of that society. When I read your article on these things,
I was ashamed of my forgetfulness, reproached myself with the meanness
of staying away now that I no longer need these people and determined to
be sure not to forget next Friday. I kept reminding myself of this
resolution until I carried it out and stood before the door of the
meeting room. To my astonishment, it was closed, the meeting was already
over; for I had mistaken the day. It was already Saturday."
It would be tempting enough to collect similar observations, but I will
go no further; I will let you glance instead upon those cases in which
our interpretation has to wait for its proof upon future developments.
The chief condition of these cases is conceivably that the existing
psychic situation is unknown to us or inaccessible to our inquiries. At
that time our interpretation has only the value of a conjecture to which
we ourselves do not wish to grant too much weight. Later, however,
something happens which shows us how justified was our interpretation
even at that time. I was once the guest of a young married couple and
heard the young wife laughingly tell of a recent experience, of how on
the day after her return from her honeymoon she had hunted up her
unmarried sister again in order to go shopping with her, as in former
times, while her husband went to his business. Suddenly she noticed a
gentleman on the other side of the street, and she nudged her sister,
saying, "Why look, there goes Mr. K." She had forgotten that this
gentleman was her husband of some weeks' standing. I shuddered at this
tale but did not dare to draw the inference. The little anecdote did not
occur to me again until a year later, after this marriage had come to a
most unhappy end.