examination of the above examples an impression has formed itself in us
which may be of a kind to repay further attention. We were considering
the general conditions under which slips of the tongue occur and then
the influences which determine the kind of distortion effected in the
slip, but so far we have not examined at all the result of the slip
itself, as an object of interest without regard to its origin. If we
bring ourselves to do this we shall in the end have to assert
courageously that in some of the examples the slip itself makes sense.
Now what does it mean when we say “it makes sense”? Well, it means that
the result of the slip may perhaps have a right to be regarded in itself
as a valid mental process following out its own purpose, and as an
expression having content and meaning. Hitherto we have only spoken of
errors, but now it appears as if the error could sometimes be quite a
proper act, except that it has intruded itself in the place of one more
expected or intended.
In certain cases the sense belonging to the slip itself appears obvious
and unmistakable. When the President in his opening speech closes the
session of Parliament, a knowledge of the circumstances under which the
slip was made inclines us to see a meaning in it. He expects no good
result from the session and would be glad to be able to disperse
forthwith; there is no difficulty in discovering the meaning, or
interpreting the sense, of this slip. Or when a lady, appearing to
compliment another, says: “I am sure _you_ must have _thrown_ this
delightful hat together” instead of “sewn it together” (_aufgepatzt_
instead of _aufgeputzt_), no scientific theories in the world can
prevent us from seeing in her slip the thought that the hat is an
amateur production. Or when a lady who is well known for her determined
character says: “My husband asked his doctor what sort of diet ought to
be provided for him. But the doctor said he needed no special diet, he
could eat and drink whatever _I_ choose,” the slip appears clearly as
the unmistakable expression of a consistent scheme.
Now supposing it should turn out that not only a few cases of slips of
the tongue and errors in general, but the great majority of them, have a
meaning, then the meaning of the error, to which we have hitherto paid
no attention, would become the point of greatest interest to us and
would justifiably drive all other points of view into the background.
All physiological and psycho-physiological conditions could then be
ignored and attention could be devoted to the purely psychological
investigation of the _sense_, that is, the meaning, the intention, in
the errors. With this in view, therefore, we shall soon consider further
material.
Before undertaking this, however, I should like to invite you to follow
up another clue with me. It often happens that a poet makes use of a
slip of the tongue or some other error as a means of artistic
expression. This fact in itself proves that he thinks the error, for
instance, a slip of the tongue, has a meaning; for he constructs it
intentionally. It could hardly happen that a poet accidentally made a
slip of the pen and then allowed his slip of the pen to stand as a slip
of the tongue of the character. He wishes to reveal something by means
of the slip and we may well enquire what that may be—whether perhaps he
wishes to indicate that the person in question is distracted or
overtired, or is expecting a headache. Of course we should not
exaggerate the importance of it if poets do make use of slips to express
their meaning. Slips might be in reality without meaning, accidents in
the mental world, or only occasionally have a meaning, and poets would
still be entitled to refine them by infusing sense into them for their
own purposes. However, it would not be surprising if more were to be
learned from poets about slips of the tongue than from philologists and
psychiatrists.
There is an example of a slip of this kind in Schiller’s _Wallenstein_
(Piccolomini, Act I, Scene 5). In the foregoing scene, young Max
Piccolomini had taken up Duke Wallenstein’s cause ardently, and had been
passionately describing the blessings of peace, which he had become
aware of in the course of a journey accompanying Wallenstein’s beautiful
daughter to the camp. As he leaves the stage, his father (Octavio) and
the courtier Questenberg are plunged in consternation. The fifth scene
continues:—
QUESTENBERG. Alas! and stands it so?
Friend, do we let him go
In this delusion? let him go from us?
Not call him back at once, not
Open his eyes here and now?
OCTAVIO (_recovering himself out of deep thought_).
He has now opened _mine_
And I see more than pleases me.
QUESTENBERG. What is it?
OCTAVIO. A curse upon this journey!
QUESTENBERG. But why so? What is it?
OCTAVIO. Come, come, friend! I must up
And follow the ill-omened clue at once
And see with mine own eyes—come with me now!
QUESTENBERG. What now? Where go you then?
OCTAVIO (_hastily_). _To her, herself!_
QUESTENBERG. _To_ ...
OCTAVIO (_corrects himself_). To the Duke! Come, let us go!
Octavio meant to say: “To him, to the Duke,” but his tongue slips and he
betrays (to us, at least) by the words “_to her_” that he has clearly
recognized the influence at work behind the famous young warrior’s
rhapsodies in favour of peace.
A still more impressive example was found by O. Rank in Shakespeare. It
occurs in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the famous scene in which the
fortunate suitor makes his choice among the three caskets; and I can
perhaps not do better than read to you now Rank’s short account of it.
“A slip of the tongue which occurs in Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_
(Act III, Sc. 2) is exceedingly fine in the poetic feeling it shows and
in the brilliant way in which it is applied technically. Like the slip
in Wallenstein quoted by Freud in his _Psychopathology of Everyday
Life_, it shows that the poets well understand the mechanism and meaning
of such slips and assume that the audience will also understand them.
Portia, who by her father’s wish has been bound to the choice of a
husband by lot, has so far escaped all the unwelcome suitors by the luck
of fortune. Having at last found in Bassanio the suitor to whom she is
inclined, she fears that he too will choose the wrong casket. She would
like to tell him that even so he may rest assured of her love, but she
is prevented by her oath. In this inner conflict the poet makes her say
to her chosen suitor:
I pray you tarry; pause a day or two,
Before you hazard: for, in choosing wrong,
I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile:
There’s something tells me (but it is not love)
I would not lose you ...
... I could teach you
How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;
So will I never be; so may you miss me;
But if you do you’ll make me wish a sin,
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
They have o’erlooked me, and divided me;
_One half of me is yours, the other half yours,—
Mine own, I would say_; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.
Just that which she only meant to indicate subtly to him because she
should really have concealed it from him altogether, namely, that even
before the lot she was his and loved him, this the poet with exquisite
fineness of psychological feeling causes to come to expression in her
slip; and is able, by this artistic device, to relieve the unbearable
uncertainty of the lover as well as the suspense of the audience as to
the issue of the choice.”
And notice, at the end, how subtly Portia reconciles the two
declarations which are contained in the slip, how she resolves the
contradiction between them, and finally even justifies the slip.
... but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.
It has happened that other thinkers outside the field of medicine have
disclosed by an observation the meaning of some error and so anticipated
our efforts in this direction. You all know the witty satirist
Lichtenberg (1742–1799) of whom Goethe said: “Where he makes a joke, a
problem lies concealed.” And occasionally the solution of the problem is
revealed in the joke. Lichtenberg writes in his witty and satirical
_Notes_, “He always read ‘Agamemnon’ for ‘angenommen’ (verb meaning ‘to
take for granted’), so deeply versed was he in Homer.” This really
contains the whole theory of slips in reading.
At the next lecture we will see whether we can agree with the poets in
their conception of the meaning of psychological errors.
THIRD LECTURE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_continuation_)
At the last lecture it occurred to us to consider the error by itself
alone, apart from its relation to the intended act with which it had
interfered, and we perceived that in certain cases it seemed to betray a
meaning of its own. We said to ourselves that if this conclusion, that
the error has its own meaning, could be established on a larger scale,
that meaning would soon prove more interesting to us than the
investigation of the conditions under which errors arise.
Let us once more agree upon what we understand by the “meaning” of a
mental process. This is nothing else but the intention which it serves
and its place in a mental sequence. In most of the cases we examined we
could substitute for the word “meaning” the words “intention” and
“tendency.” Now was it only a deceptive appearance, or a poetic
glorification of the error, that led us to believe that we could see an
intention in it?
Let us still keep to the examples of slips of the tongue and review a
larger number of such manifestations. We then find whole categories of
cases in which the intention, the meaning, of the slip is quite obvious,
particularly so in those instances in which the opposite of what was
intended is said. The President says in his opening speech: “I declare
the session _closed_.” That is surely not ambiguous. The meaning and
intention of this slip is that he wants to close the session. One might
well say, “he said so himself”; we only take him at his word. Please do
not interrupt me with the objection that this is impossible, that we
know quite well that he wished to open the session, not to close it, and
that he himself whom we have just recognized as the best judge of his
intention will affirm that he meant to open it. In doing so you forget
that we agreed to consider the error by itself; its relation to the
intention which it disturbs will be discussed later. _You_ would be
guilty of an error in logic, by which you would conveniently dispose of
the whole problem under discussion, which in English is called “begging
the question.”
In other cases, where the form of the slip is not exactly the opposite
of what is intended, a contradictory sense may still often come to
expression. “I am not _inclined_ (_geneigt_) to appreciate my
predecessor’s merits.” “Inclined” is not the opposite of “in a position
to” (_geeignet_), but it is an open confession of a thought in sharpest
contradiction to the speaker’s duty to meet the situation gracefully.
In still other cases the slip simply adds a second meaning to the one
intended. The sentence then sounds like a contraction, an abbreviation,
a condensation of several sentences into one. Thus the determined lady
who said: “He may eat and drink whatever _I_ choose.” That is as if she
had said: “He can eat and drink what he chooses, but what does it matter
what he chooses? It is for me to do the choosing!” Slips of the tongue
often give this impression of abbreviation; for instance, when a
professor of anatomy at the end of his lecture on the nasal cavities
asks whether his class has thoroughly understood it and, after a general
reply in the affirmative, goes on to say: “I can hardly believe that
that is so, since persons who can thoroughly understand the nasal
cavities can be counted, even in a city of millions, on _one finger_ ...
I mean, on the fingers of one hand.” The abbreviated sentence has its
own meaning: it says that there is only one person who understands the
subject.
In contrast to these types in which the slip plainly discloses its
meaning are others in which the slip of the tongue conveys nothing
intelligible, and therefore directly controverts our expectations. The
mis-pronunciation by mistake of proper names, or the enunciation of
meaningless sounds, is such a frequent occurrence that this alone would
appear to dispose at once of the question whether all errors have a
meaning. Yet closer inspection of such examples discloses the fact that
it is easily possible to understand such distortions; indeed, that the
difference between these unintelligible cases and the previous more
comprehensible ones is not so very great.
The owner of a horse, on being asked how it was, replied: “O, it may
_stad_—it may _take_ another month.”[14] Asked what he really meant to
say, he answered that he was thinking it was a _sad_ business, and the
words “sad” and “take” together gave rise to _stad_. (Meringer and
Mayer.)
Another man was relating some objectionable incidents and went on: “and
then certain facts were _refilled_.”[15] He explained that he meant to
say these facts were “filthy.” “Revealed” and “filthy” together combine
to form _refilled_. (Meringer and Mayer.)
You will recall the case of the young man who offered to “insort” an
unknown lady. We took the liberty of resolving this word into “insult”
and “escort,” and were quite convinced of this interpretation without
requiring proof of it.[16] From these examples you can see that even
these more obscure cases can be explained as the concurrence, or
_interference_, of two different intentions of speech with one another;
the differences arise only in that in the first type of slip the one
intention has entirely excluded the other, as when the opposite is said;
while in the second type the one intention only succeeds in distorting
or modifying the other, from which arise combinations of a more or less
senseless appearance.
We believe that we have now discovered the secret of a large number of
slips of the tongue. If we keep this clear in mind we shall be able to
comprehend still further groups hitherto entirely mysterious.
Although, for instance, in a case of distortion of a name we cannot
suppose that it is always a matter of a contest between two similar
but different names, yet the second intention is easily perceived.
Distortions of names are common enough apart from slips of the tongue;
they are attempts to liken the name to something derogatory or
degrading, a common form of abuse, which educated persons soon learn
to avoid but nevertheless do not willingly give up. It may be dressed
up as a joke, although one of a very low order. To quote one gross and
ugly example of such a distortion of a name, the name of the President
of the French Republic, _Poincaré_, has lately been transformed into
“_Schweinskarré_.” It is not going much further to assume that some
such abusive intention may also be behind distortions of names
produced by a slip of the tongue. In pursuing our idea, similar
explanations suggest themselves for cases of slips where the effect is
comic or absurd. In the case of the member of parliament who referred
to the “honourable member for Central Hell,” the sober atmosphere of
the House is unexpectedly disturbed by the intrusion of a word that
calls up a ludicrous and unflattering image; we are bound to conclude
from the analogy with certain offensive and abusive expressions that
an impulse has interposed here, to this effect: “You needn’t be taken
in. I don’t mean a word of this. To hell with the fellow!” The same
applies to slips of the tongue which transform quite harmless words
into obscene and indecent ones.[17]
We are familiar with this tendency in certain people intentionally to
convert harmless words into indecent ones for the sake of the amusement
obtained; it passes for wit, and in fact when one hears of a case one at
once asks whether it was intended as a joke or occurred unintentionally
as a slip of the tongue.
Well, we seem to have solved the riddle of errors with comparatively
little trouble! They are not accidents; they are serious mental acts;
they have their meaning; they arise through the concurrence—perhaps
better, the mutual interference—of two different intentions. But now I
can well understand that you want to overwhelm me with a flood of
questions and doubts, which must be answered and resolved before we can
enjoy this first result of our efforts. I certainly do not want to press
any hasty conclusions upon you. Let us coolly consider everything in
turn.
What would you like to say? Whether I think that this explanation
accounts for all cases of slips of the tongue or only for a certain
number? Whether this conception can be extended to the many other types
of errors, to misreading, slips of the pen, forgetting, wrongly
performed actions, mislaying things and so on? What part the factors of
fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness and distraction of attention play
in regard to the mental nature of errors? Besides this, it is clearly
seen that of the two competing meanings in the slip one is always
manifest, but not always the other. How is one to arrive at the latter?
And if one believes that one has guessed it, how is one to find proof
that this is not merely a probability but the only true meaning? Is
there anything else you wish to ask? If not, then I myself will
continue. I will remind you that we are not really greatly concerned
with errors in themselves, but that we wished to learn from a study of
them something of value from the point of view of psycho-analysis.
Therefore I will put this question: What sort of purposes or tendencies
are these which thus interfere with other intentions, and what is the
relation between the interfering tendency and the other? Thus, as soon
as we have found the answer to the riddle, our efforts begin again.
Very well then; is this the explanation of all cases of slips of the
tongue? I am very much inclined to think so, and for this reason,
because whenever one examines an instance of it this type of solution
may be found. Still, one cannot prove that a slip of the tongue cannot
come to pass without the agency of this mechanism. It may be so: for our
purposes it is a matter of indifference, theoretically; for the
conclusions which we wish to draw by way of an introduction to
psycho-analysis remain valid, even if only a small proportion of the
total incidence of slips of the tongue comes under our explanation, and
this is certainly not so. The next question, whether this explanation
extends to other forms of errors, may be answered by way of anticipation
in the affirmative. You can convince yourselves of it when we turn to
consider examples of slips of the pen, of wrongly performed acts, and so
on. I propose, however, for technical reasons that we should postpone
doing this until we have investigated the slip of the tongue itself more
thoroughly.
The question what significance those factors, which some writers have
placed in the foreground, can now have for us—such factors as
disturbances of the circulation, fatigue, excitement, distraction,
disturbances of attention—demands a more exhaustive reply if we assume
the mental mechanism of slips described above. You will notice that we
do not deny these factors. Indeed, in general it doesn’t often happen
that psycho-analysis contests anything which is maintained in other
quarters; as a rule, psycho-analysis only adds something new to what has
been said; and it does certainly happen on occasion that what has
hitherto been overlooked, and is now supplied by psycho-analysis, is the
most essential part of the matter. The influence of such physiological
predispositions as arise in slight illness, circulatory disturbances and
conditions of fatigue, upon the occurrence of slips of the tongue is to
be admitted without more ado; everyday personal experience may convince
you of it. But how little is explained by this admission! Above all,
these are not necessary conditions of errors. Slips of the tongue may
just as well occur in perfect health and normal conditions. These bodily
factors, therefore, are merely contributory; they only favour and
facilitate the peculiar mental mechanism which produces slips of the
tongue. I once used an illustration for this state of things which I
will repeat here, as I know of no better. Just suppose that on some dark
night I am walking in a lonely neighbourhood and am assaulted by a rogue
who seizes my watch and money, whereupon, since I could not see the
robber’s face clearly, I make my complaint at the police-station in
these words: “Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my
valuables.” The police officer might reply to me: “You seem to carry
your support of the extreme mechanistic point of view too far for the
facts. Suppose we put the case thus: Under cover of darkness and
encouraged by the loneliness of the spot, some unknown thief has made
away with your valuables. It appears to me that the essential thing to
be done is to look about for the thief. Perhaps we shall then be able to
take the plunder from him again.”
Psycho-physiological factors such as excitement, absent-mindedness,
distraction of attention, obviously provide very little in the way of
explanation. They are mere phrases; they are screens, and we should not
be deterred from looking behind them. The question is rather what has
here called forth the excitement or the particular diversion of
attention. The influence of sound-values, resemblances between words,
and common associations connecting certain words, must also be
recognized as important. They facilitate the slip by pointing out a path
for it to take. But if there is a path before me does it necessarily
follow that I must go along it? I also require a motive to determining
my choice and, further, some force to propel me forward. These
sound-values and word associations are, therefore, just like the bodily
conditions, the facilitating causes of slips of the tongue, and cannot
provide the real explanation of them. Consider for a moment the enormous
majority of cases in which the words I am using in my speech are not
deranged on account of sound-resemblance to other words, intimate
associations with opposite meanings, or with expressions in common use.
It yet remains to suppose, with the philosopher Wundt, that a slip of
the tongue arises when the tendency to associations gains an ascendance
over the original intention owing to bodily fatigue. This would be quite
plausible if experience did not controvert it by the fact that in a
number of cases the bodily, and in another large group the associative,
predisposing causes are absent.
Particularly interesting to me, however, is your next question, namely,
by what means the two mutually disturbing tendencies may be ascertained.
You probably do not suspect how portentous this question is. You will
agree that one of these tendencies, the one which is interfered with, is
always unmistakable; the person who commits the slip knows it and
acknowledges it. Doubt and hesitation only arise in regard to the other,
what we have called the interfering, tendency. Now we have already
heard, and you will certainly not have forgotten, that in a certain
number of cases this other tendency is equally plain. It is evident in
the result of the slip if only we have the courage to let the slip speak
for itself. The President who said the opposite of what he meant—it is
clear that he wishes to open the session, but equally clear that he
would also like to close it. That is so plain that it needs no
interpreting. But in the other cases, in which the interfering tendency
merely distorts the original without itself coming to full
expression,—how can the interfering tendency be detected in the
distortion?