method, that is, by which we establish the tendency that is interfered
with. We enquire of the speaker, who tells us then and there; after
making the slip he restores the word he originally intended. “O, it may
_stad_—no, it may _take_ another month.” Well, the interfering tendency
may be likewise supplied by him. We say, “Now why did you first say
stad?” He replies, “I meant to say it was a sad business”; and in the
other case in which “refilled” was said, the speaker informs you that he
first meant to say it was a filthy business, but controlled himself and
substituted another expression. The discovery of the disturbing tendency
is here as definitely established as that of the disturbed tendency. It
is not without intention that I have selected as examples cases which
owe neither their origin nor their explanation to me or to any supporter
of mine. Still, in both these cases, a certain intervention was
necessary in order to produce the explanation. One had to ask the
speaker why he made the slip, what explanation he could give. Without
that he might have passed it by without seeking to explain it. Being
asked, however, he gave as his answer the first idea that occurred to
him. And see now, this little intervention and the result of it
constitute already a psycho-analysis, a prototype of every
psycho-analytic investigation that we may undertake further.
Now, should I be too suspicious if I were to surmise that, at the very
moment at which psycho-analysis begins to dawn upon you, a resistance to
it instantly raises itself within your mind? Are you not eager to object
that information supplied by the person enquired of, who committed the
slip, is not completely reliable evidence. He naturally wishes, you
think, to meet your request to explain his slip, and so he says the
first thing that he can think of, if it will do at all. There is no
proof that that is actually how the slip arose. It may have been so, but
it may just as well have been otherwise. Something else also might have
occurred to him that would have met the case as well or even better.
It is remarkable how little respect you have, in your hearts, for a
mental fact! Imagine that someone had undertaken a chemical analysis of
a certain substance and had ascertained that one ingredient of it is of
a certain weight, so and so many milligrams. From this weight, thus
arrived at, certain conclusions may be drawn. Do you think now it would
ever occur to a chemist to discredit these conclusions on the ground
that the isolated substance might as well have had some other weight?
Everyone recognizes the fact that it actually had this weight and no
other, and builds further conclusions confidently on that fact. But when
it is a question of a mental fact, that it _was_ such an idea and no
other that occurred to the person when questioned, you will not accept
that as valid, but say that something else might as well have occurred
to him! The truth is that you have an illusion of a psychic freedom
within you which you do not want to give up. I regret to say that on
this point I find myself in sharpest opposition to your views.
Now you will break off here only to take up your resistance at another
point. You will continue: “We understand that it lies in the peculiar
technique of psycho-analysis to bring the person analysed to give the
solution of its problems. Let us take another example, that in which the
after-dinner speaker calls upon the company to _hiccough_ to the health
of their guest. The interfering tendency is, you say, in this case to
ridicule; this it is which opposes the intention to do honour. But this
is a mere interpretation on your part, based on observations made
independently of the slip. If in this case you were to question the
perpetrator of the slip he would not confirm your view that he intended
an insult; on the contrary, he would vehemently deny it. Why do you not
abandon your undemonstrable interpretation in the face of this flat
denial?”
Yes, this time you have lighted upon something formidable. I can picture
to myself that unknown speaker; he is probably an assistant of the guest
of honour, perhaps already a junior lecturer himself, a young man with
the brightest prospects. I will press him and ask whether he is sure he
did not perceive some feeling in himself antagonistic to the demand that
he should pay honour to his chief. A nice fuss there is! He becomes
impatient and suddenly bursts out at me: “Look here, enough of this
cross-examination, or I’ll make myself disagreeable! You will ruin my
career with your suspicions. I simply said “_aufstossen_” instead of
“_anstossen_,” because I’d already said “_auf_” twice before it. It’s
the thing that Meringer calls a perseveration, and there’s nothing else
to be read into it. Do you understand me? That’s enough.” H’m, this is a
startling reaction, a truly energetic repudiation. I see that there is
nothing more to be done with the young man, but I think to myself that
he betrays a strong personal interest in making out that his slip has no
meaning. You will perhaps agree too that he has no right to become so
uncivil over a purely theoretical investigation, but after all, you will
think, he must know what he wanted to say and what not.
O, so he must? That is perhaps still open to question.
Now you think you have me in a trap. “So that is your technique,” I hear
you say. “When the person who commits a slip gives an explanation which
fits your views then you declare him to be the final authority on the
subject. He says so himself! But if what he says does not suit your
book, then you suddenly assert that what he says does not count, one
need not believe it.”
Certainly that is so. But I can give you another instance of a similarly
monstrous procedure. When an accused man confesses to a deed the judge
believes him, but when he denies it the judge does not believe him. Were
it otherwise the law could not be administered, and in spite of
occasional miscarriages you will admit that the system, on the whole,
works well.
“Well, but are you a judge, and is the person who commits a slip to be
accused before you? Is a slip of the tongue a crime?”
Perhaps we need not reject even this comparison. But see now to what
deep-seated differences our attempt to investigate the apparently
harmless problems of errors has brought us, differences which at this
stage we do not know in the least how to reconcile. I suggest that we
should make a temporary compromise on the basis of the analogy with the
judge and the prisoner. You shall grant me that the meaning of an error
admits of no doubt when the subject of the analysis acknowledges it
himself. I, in turn, will admit that a direct proof for the suspected
meaning cannot be obtained if the subject refuses us the information,
and, of course, this applies also when the subject is not present to
give us the information. As also in legal proceedings, we are then
thrown back upon indications in order to form a decision, the truth of
which is sometimes more and sometimes less probable. At law, for
practical reasons, guilt has to be declared also on circumstantial
evidence. There is no such necessity here; but neither are we bound to
refrain from considering such evidence. It is a mistake to believe that
a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and
it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those
who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the
religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one.
Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists
mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of
probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to
certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack
of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of
mind.
But where shall we find a starting-point for our interpretations, and
the indications for our proof, in cases where the subject under analysis
says nothing to explain the meaning of the error? From various sources.
First, by analogy with similar phenomena not produced by error, as when
we maintain that the distortion of a name by mistake has the same
intention to ridicule behind it as intentional distortion of names. And
then, from the mental situation in which the error arose, from our
knowledge of the character of the person who commits it, and of the
feelings active in him before the error, to which it may be a response.
As a rule what happens is that we find the meaning of the error
according to general principles; and this, to begin with, is only a
conjecture, a tentative solution, proof being discovered later by an
examination of the mental situation. Sometimes it is necessary to await
further developments, which have been, so to speak, foreshadowed by the
error, before we can find confirmation of our conjecture.
I cannot easily give you evidence of this if I have to limit myself to
the field of slips of the tongue, although even here I have a few good
examples. The young man who offered to “insort” the lady is in fact very
shy; the lady whose husband may eat and drink what _she_ likes I know to
be one of those managing women who rule the household with a rod of
iron. Or take the following case: At a general meeting of a club a young
member made a violent attack in a speech, in the course of which he
spoke of the officers of the society as “_Lenders_ of the Committee,”
which appears to be a substitute for _Members_ of the Committee.[18] We
should conjecture that against his attack some interfering tendency was
active which was itself in some way connected with the idea of
_lending_. As a matter of fact an informant tells us that the speaker is
in constant money difficulties and was actually attempting to raise
money at the time. So the interfering tendency really is to be
translated into the thought: “Be more moderate in your opposition: these
are the people whom you want to lend you money.”
If I diverge into the field of other kinds of errors I can give you a
wide selection of examples of such circumstantial evidence.
If anyone forgets an otherwise familiar proper name and has difficulty
in retaining it in his memory—even with an effort—it is not hard to
guess that he has something against the owner of the name and does not
like to think of him; consider in the light of this the following notes
on the mental situation in which an error of this kind was made.
A Mr. Y. fell in love with a lady, who did not return the feeling and
shortly after married a Mr. X. Although Mr. Y. had already known Mr. X.
for some time, and even had business relations with him, he forgets his
name over and over again, so that he frequently has to ask someone the
man’s name when it is necessary to write to him.[19] Obviously Mr. Y.
wants to obliterate all knowledge of his fortunate rival. “Never thought
of shall he be.”
Another example: a lady inquires of a doctor about a common
acquaintance, calling her by her maiden name. She has forgotten the
married name. She admits that she strongly objected to the marriage and
dislikes the husband intensely.[20]
Later we shall have much to say in other connections in regard to the
forgetting of names; at the moment we are chiefly interested in the
‘mental situation’ in which the lapse of memory occurs.
The forgetting of resolutions can in general be referred to an opposing
current of feeling which is against carrying out the intention. It is
not only we psycho-analysts who hold this view, however; it is the
ordinary attitude of everyone in their daily affairs, which they only
deny in theory. The protégé whose patron apologizes for having forgotten
his request is not pacified by such an apology. He thinks immediately:
“It’s evidently nothing to him; he promised, but he doesn’t mean to do
it.” Forgetting is therefore criticized even in life, in certain
connections, and the difference between the popular and the
psycho-analytic conception of these errors seems to be dispelled.
Imagine a hostess receiving a guest with the words: “What, is it to-day
you were coming? I quite forgot that I had asked you for to-day”; or a
young man confessing to his beloved that he had forgotten all about the
appointment they had arranged on the last occasion. He will never admit
it; he will rather invent on the spur of the moment the most wildly
improbable hindrances which prevented his coming and made it impossible
for him to communicate with her from that day to this. We all know that
in military service the excuse of having forgotten is worthless and
saves no one from punishment; the system is recognized as justifiable.
Here everyone is suddenly agreed that a certain mistake has a meaning
and what that meaning is. Why are they not consistent enough to extend
their insight to other errors and then openly acknowledge it? There is
naturally also an answer to this.
If the meaning of forgetting resolutions is so little open to doubt in
the minds of people in general you will be the less surprised to find
that writers employ such mistakes in a similar sense. Those of you who
have seen or read Shaw’s _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ will recall that Cæsar,
when departing in the last scene, is pursued by the feeling that there
was something else he intended to do which he had now forgotten. At last
it turns out what it is: to say farewell to Cleopatra. By this small
device the author attempts to ascribe to the great Cæsar a feeling of
superiority which he did not possess and to which he did not at all
aspire. You can learn from historical sources that Cæsar arranged for
Cleopatra to follow him to Rome and that she was living there with her
little Cæsarion when Cæsar was murdered, whereupon she fled the city.
The cases of forgetting resolutions are as a rule so clear that they are
of little use for our purpose, which is to discover in the mental
situation indications of the meaning of the error. Let us turn,
therefore, to a particularly ambiguous and obscure form of error, that
of losing and mislaying objects. It will certainly seem incredible to
you that the person himself could have any purpose in losing things,
which is often such a painful accident. But there are innumerable
instances of this kind: A young man loses a pencil to which he was much
attached. A few days before he had had a letter from his brother-in-law
which concluded with these words: “I have neither time nor inclination
at present to encourage you in your frivolity and idleness.”[21] Now the
pencil was a present from this brother-in-law. Had it not been for this
coincidence we could not of course have maintained that the loss
involved any intention to get rid of the gift. Similar cases are very
numerous. One loses objects when one has quarrelled with the giver and
no longer wants to be reminded of him, or again, when one has tired of
them and wants an excuse to provide oneself with something different and
better. Dropping, breaking, and destroying things of course serves a
similar purpose in regard to the object. Can it be considered accidental
when, just before his birthday, a child loses and damages his
possessions, for instance, his watch and his schoolbag?
Anyone who has experienced often enough the annoyance of not being able
to find something which he has himself put away will certainly be
unwilling to believe that he could have had any intention in so doing.
And yet cases are not at all rare in which the circumstances attendant
on the act of mislaying point to a tendency to put the object aside
temporarily or permanently. Perhaps the best example of this kind is the
following.
A young man told me this story: “A few years ago there were
misunderstandings between me and my wife; I thought her too cold, and
though I willingly acknowledged her excellent qualities we lived
together without affection. One day, on coming in from a walk, she
brought me a book which she had bought me because she thought it would
interest me. I thanked her for her little attention, promised to read
the book, put it among my things and never could find it again. Months
passed by and occasionally I thought of this derelict book and tried in
vain to find it. About six months later my dear mother, who lived some
distance away, fell ill. My wife left our house to go and nurse her
mother-in-law, who became seriously ill, giving my wife an opportunity
of showing her best qualities. One evening I came home full of
enthusiasm and gratitude towards my wife. I walked up to my writing desk
and opened a certain drawer in it, without a definite intention but with
a kind of somnambulistic sureness, and there before me lay the lost book
which I had so often looked for.”
With the disappearance of the motive the inability to find the mislaid
object also came to an end.
I could multiply this collection of examples indefinitely; but I will
not do so now. In my _Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_ (first
published in 1901) you will find plenty of examples for the study of
errors.[22] All these examples demonstrate the same thing over and over
again; they make it probable to you that mistakes have a meaning and
they show you how the meaning can be guessed or confirmed from the
attendant circumstances. I restrict myself rather to-day, because our
intention here was limited to studying these phenomena with a view to
obtaining an introduction to psycho-analysis. There are only two groups
of occurrences into which I must still go, the accumulated and combined
errors, and the confirmation of our interpretations by subsequent
events.
Accumulated and combined errors are certainly the finest flowers of the
species. If we were only concerned to prove that errors had a meaning,
we should have limited ourselves to them at the outset, for the meaning
in them is unmistakable, even to the dullest intelligence, and strong
enough to impress the most critical judgement. The repetition of the
occurrences betrays a persistence which is hardly ever an attribute of
chance, but which fits well with the idea of design. Further, the
exchanging of one kind of mistake for another shows us what is the most
important and essential element in the error; and that is, not its form,
or the means of which it makes use, but the _tendency_ which makes use
of it and can achieve its end in the most various ways. Thus I will give
you a case of repeated forgetting: Ernest Jones relates that he once
allowed a letter to lie on his writing desk for several days for some
unknown reason. At last he decided to post it, but received it back from
the dead-letter office, for he had forgotten to address it. After he had
addressed it he took it to post but this time without a stamp. At this
point he finally had to admit to himself his objection to sending the
letter at all.
In another case, taking up a thing by mistake is combined with mislaying
it. A lady travelled to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous artist.
The visitor was much fêted by the Germans living in Rome and received,
among other things, a present of an antique gold medal. The lady was
vexed because her brother-in-law did not appreciate the fine specimen
highly enough. After her sister had arrived she returned home and
discovered, upon unpacking, that she had brought the medal with her—how,
she did not know. She wrote at once to her brother-in-law telling him
that she would send the stolen property back to him the next day. But
the next day the medal was so cleverly mislaid that it could not be
discovered and could not be returned, and then it began to dawn upon the
lady what her “absent-mindedness” had meant, namely, that she wanted to
keep the work of art for herself.[23]
I have already given you an example of a combination of forgetfulness
with an error, in the case in which someone forgets an appointment, and
a second time, with the firm intention of not forgetting it again,
appears at an hour which is not the appointed one. A quite analogous
case was told me from his own experience by a friend who pursues
literary as well as scientific interests. He said: “Some years ago I
accepted election to the Council of a certain literary society because I
hoped that the society might at some time be useful to me in getting a
play of mine produced; and, although not much interested, I attended the
meetings regularly every Friday. A few months ago I received an
assurance that my play would be produced at a theatre in F. and since
then it has invariably happened that I _forget_ to attend the meetings
of the society. When I read your writings on this subject, I reproached
myself with my meanness in staying away now that these people can no
longer be of use to me and determined on no account to forget on the
following Friday. I kept reminding myself of my resolution until I
carried it out and stood at the door of the meeting-room. To my
amazement it was closed and the meeting was already over! I had made a
mistake in the day of the week and it was then Saturday!”
It would be tempting to collect more of these examples, but I will pass
on and, instead, let you glance at those cases in which interpretation
has to wait for confirmation in the future.
The main condition in these cases is, as we might expect, that the
mental situation at the time is unknown or cannot be ascertained. At the
moment, therefore, our interpretation is no more than a supposition to
which we ourselves would not ascribe too much weight. Later, however,
something happens which shows us how well justified our previous
interpretation was. I was once the guest of a young married couple and
heard the young wife laughingly describe her latest experience, how the
day after the return from the honeymoon she had called for her sister
and gone shopping with her as in former times, while her husband went to
his business. Suddenly she noticed a man on the other side of the street
and, nudging her sister, said, “Look, there goes Mr. K.” She had
forgotten that this man had been her husband for some weeks. A shudder
went over me as I heard the story, but I dared not draw the inference.
Several years later the little incident came back to my mind after this
marriage had come to a most unhappy end.
Maeder tells a story of a lady who had forgotten to try on her
wedding-dress the day before the wedding, to the despair of the
dressmaker, and remembered it only late in the evening. He connects it
with the fact that soon after the marriage she was divorced by her
husband. I know a woman now divorced from her husband who, in managing
her money-affairs, frequently signed documents with her maiden name,
many years before she really resumed it. I know of other women who lost
their wedding-rings on the honeymoon and know, too, that the course of
the marriage lent meaning to this accident. And now one striking example
more, with a better ending. It is told of a famous German chemist that
his marriage never took place because he forgot the hour of the ceremony
and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough
to let the matter rest with one attempt, and died unmarried at a ripe
age.
Perhaps the idea has also come to you that in these examples mistakes
seem to have replaced the omens or portents of the ancients. And indeed,
certain kinds of portents were nothing but errors, for instance, when
anyone stumbled or fell down. It is true that another group of omens
bore the character of objective events rather than of subjective acts.
But you would not believe how difficult it is sometimes to decide
whether a specific instance belongs to the first category or to the
second. The act knows so often how to disguise itself as a passive
experience.
Everyone of us who can look back over a fairly long experience of life
would probably say that he might have spared himself many
disappointments and painful surprises, if he had had the courage and
resolution to interpret as omens the little mistakes which he noticed in
his intercourse with others, and to regard them as signs of tendencies
still in the background. For the most part one does not dare to do this;
one has an impression that one would become superstitious again by a
circuitous scientific path. And then, not all omens come true, and our
theories will show you how it is that they need not all come true.
FOURTH LECTURE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_conclusion_)