actions in normal and neurotic persons. An elderly colleague who
does not like to lose at cards had to pay one evening a large sum of
money in consequence of his losses; he did this without complaint,
but with a peculiar constrained temper. After his departure it was
discovered that he had left at this place practically everything he
had with him, spectacles, cigar-case, and handkerchief. That would
be readily translated into the words: “You robbers, you have nicely
plundered me.” A man who suffers from occasional sexual impotence,
which has its origin in the intimacy of his infantile relations to
his mother, relates that he is in the habit of embellishing pamphlets
and notes with an S, the initial of his mother’s name. He cannot
bear the idea of having letters from home come in contact with other
unsanctified correspondence, and therefore finds it necessary to keep
the former separate. A young woman suddenly flings open the door of the
consulting-room while her predecessor is still present. She excused
herself on the ground of “thoughtlessness”; it soon came to light that
she demonstrated her curiosity which caused her at an earlier time to
intrude into the bedroom of her parents. Girls who are proud of their
beautiful hair know so well how to manipulate combs and hairpins, that
in the midst of conversation their hair becomes loosened. During the
treatment (in a reclining position) some men scatter change from their
pockets and thus pay for the hour of treatment; the amount scattered is
in proportion to their estimation of the work. Whoever forgets articles
in the doctor’s office, such as eyeglasses, gloves, handbags, generally
indicates that he cannot tear himself away and is anxious to return
soon. Ernest Jones says: “One can almost measure the success with
which a physician is practising psychotherapy, for instance, by the
size of the collection of umbrellas, handkerchiefs, purses, and so on,
that he could make in a month. The slightest habits and acts performed
with a minimum of attention, such as the winding of a clock before
retiring to sleep, the putting out of lights before leaving the room,
and similar actions, are occasionally subject to disturbances which
clearly demonstrate the influence of the unconscious complex, and what
is thought to be the strongest ‘habits.’”
In the journal _Cœnobium_, Maeder relates about a hospital physician
who, on account of an important matter, desired to get to the city
that evening, although he was on duty and had no right to leave the
hospital. On his return he noticed to his surprise that there was a
light in his room. On leaving the room he had forgotten to put it out,
something that had never happened before. But he soon grasped the
motive of this forgetting. The hospital superintendent who lived in
the same house must have concluded from the light in the room that he
was at home. A man overburdened with worries and subject to occasional
depressions assured me that he regularly forgot to wind his watch
on those evenings when life seemed too hard and unfriendly. In this
omission to wind his watch he symbolically expressed that it was a
matter of indifference to him whether he lived to see the next day.
Another man who was personally unknown to me wrote: “Having been struck
by a terrible misfortune, life appeared so harsh and unsympathetic,
that I imagined that I had not sufficient strength to live to see
the next day. I then noticed that almost every day I forgot to wind
my watch, something that I never omitted before. I had been in the
habit of doing it regularly before retiring in an almost mechanical
and unconscious manner. It was only very seldom that I thought of
it, and that happened when I had something important for the next
day which held my interest. ‘Should this be considered a symptomatic
action? I really cannot explain it.’” Whoever will take the trouble,
like Jung (_The Psychology of Dementia Præcox_, translated by Peterson
and Brill), or Maeder (“Une voie nouvelle en Psychologie--Freud et
son ecole,” _Cœnobium_, Lugano, 1906), to pay attention to melodies
which one hums to himself aimlessly and unconsciously, will regularly
discover the relation of the melody’s text to a theme which occupies
the person at that time.]
[Footnote 60: “Das Verlieren als Symptom-handlung,” _Zentralb. f.
Psychoanalyse_, i. 10-11.]
[Footnote 61: Translated by A. A. Brill. The Macmillan Company, New
York; George Allen Company, London.]
[Footnote 62: This is not a perfect error. According to the orphic
version of the myth the emasculation was performed by Zeus on his
father Kronos.]
[Footnote 63: _Loc. cit._, p. 191.]
[Footnote 64: Nouvelles contributions, etc., _Arch. de Psych._, vi.
1908.]
[Footnote 65: _Loc. cit._, p. 42.]
[Footnote 66: _Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse_, ii. 9.]
[Footnote 67: _Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse_, ii. 5.]
[Footnote 68: This continued action in the unconscious manifested
itself once in the form of a dream which followed the faulty action,
another time in the repetition of the same or in the omission of a
correction.]
[Footnote 69: Alfred Adler, “Drei Psychoanalysen von Zahlen einfällen
und obsedierenden Zahlen,” _Psych. Neur. Wochenschr._, No. 28, 1905.]
[Footnote 70: As an explanation of _Macbeth_, No. 17 of the U. L., I
was informed by Dr. Adler that in his seventeenth year this man had
joined an anarchistic society whose aim was regicide. Probably this
is why he forgot the content of the play _Macbeth_. The same person
invented at that time a secret code in which numbers substituted
letters.]
[Footnote 71: For the sake of simplicity I have omitted some of the not
less suitable thoughts of the patients.]
[Footnote 72: _Loc. cit._, p. 36.]
[Footnote 73: “Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Zahlentraumes,” _Zentralb.
f. Psychoanalyse_, i. 12.]
[Footnote 74: “Unconscious Manipulation of Numbers” (_ibid._, ii. 5,
1912).]
[Footnote 75: This is another excellent example showing how a conscious
intention was powerless to counteract an unconscious resistance.]
[Footnote 76: These conceptions of strict determinism in seemingly
arbitrary actions have already borne rich fruit for psychology--perhaps
also for the administration of justice. Bleuler and Jung have in
this way made intelligible the reaction in the so-called association
experiments, wherein the test person answers to a given word with one
occurring to him (stimulus-word reaction), while the time elapsing
between the stimulus word and answer is measured (reaction-time).
Jung has shown in his _Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien_, 1906,
what fine reagents for psychic occurrences we possess in this
association-experiment. Three students of criminology, H. Gross, of
Prague, and Wertheimer and Klein, have developed from these experiments
a technique for the diagnosis of facts (_Tatbestands-Diagnostik_) in
criminal cases, the examination of which is now tested by psychologists
and jurists.]
[Footnote 77: Proceeding from other points of view, this interpretation
of the trivial and accidental by the patient has been designated as
“delusions of reference.”]
[Footnote 78: For example, the fantasies of the hysterical regarding
sexual and cruel abuse which are made conscious by analysis often
correspond in every detail with the complaints of persecuted
paranoiacs. It is remarkable but not altogether unexpected that we also
meet the identical content as reality in the contrivances of perverts
for the gratification of their desires.]
[Footnote 79: Which naturally has nothing of the character of
perception.]
[Footnote 80: _Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse_, ii. 5.]
[Footnote 81: Thus far this explanation of _Déjà vu_ has been
appreciated by only one observer. Dr. Ferenczi, to whom the third
edition of this book is indebted for so many contributions, writes to
me concerning this: “I have been convinced, through myself as well as
others, that the inexplicable feeling of familiarity can be referred
to unconscious fantasies of which we are unconsciously reminded in an
actual situation. With one of my patients the process was apparently
different, but in reality it was quite analogous. This feeling returned
to him very often, but showed itself regularly as originating in a
forgotten (repressed) portion of a dream of the preceding night. Thus
it appears that the _Déjà vu_ can originate not only from day dreams
but also from night dreams.”]
[Footnote 82: I can perhaps give the following outline concerning the
mechanism of actual forgetting. The memory material succumbs in general
to two influences, condensation and disfigurement. Disfigurement is
the work of the tendencies dominating the psychic life, and directs
itself above all against the affective remnants of memory traces which
maintain a more resistive attitude towards condensation. The traces
which have grown indifferent merge into a process of condensation
without opposition; in addition it may be observed that tendencies of
disfigurement also feed on the indifferent material, because they have
not been gratified where they wished to manifest themselves. As these
processes of condensation and disfigurement continue for long periods
during which all fresh experiences act upon the transformation of the
memory content, it is our belief that it is time that makes memory
uncertain and indistinct. It is quite probable that in forgetting
there can really be no question of a direct function of time. From the
repressed memory traces it can be verified that they suffer no changes
even in the longest periods. The unconscious, at all events, knows no
time limit. The most important as well as the most peculiar character
of psychic fixation consists in the fact that all impressions are on
the one hand retained in the same form as they were received, and also
in the forms that they have assumed in their further development. This
state of affairs cannot be elucidated by any comparison from any other
sphere. By virtue of this theory every former state of the memory
content may thus be restored, even though all original relations have
long been replaced by newer ones.]
[Footnote 83: Cf. here _The Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 483.
Macmillan: New York; and Allen: London.]
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON
Transcriber’s Note
Original copyright information has been retained, but this book is in
the public domain in the country of publication.
In the printed version of this text, footnotes were positioned at the
bottom of each page.
In the printed version, each chapter began with a page containing
only its title, followed by a blank page. The chapter title was then
repeated at the start of the chapter text. The first occurrences of the
chapter titles have been removed, and the table of contents has been
changed to reflect this.
In this text file, _italics_ are indicated by underscores.
The following changes were made by the transcriber:
Title page, “A. A Brill” changed to “A. A. Brill”.
Page 35, “‘Man created God in His own image.” changed to “‘Man created God
in His own image.’”
Page 48, “tyranically” changed to “tyrannically”.
Page 93, end-quote added after “adultérer”.
Page 117, ““Music Phantoms,”” changed to ““Music Phantoms”,”.
Page 147, “f” was skipped in the list of case studies in the printed
text; this has been corrected.
Page 170, “had suddenly became” changed to “had suddenly become”.
Page 179, “Il est arrivé a” changed to “Il est arrivé à”.
Page 233 appears to introduce a list of examples with the numeral “I.”,
but there are no following terms before the chapter ends. This was
probably an error, but has been left uncorrected here.
Page 236, “hereuse” changed to “heureuse”.
Page 266, end-quote added after “Saturday!”.
Missing comma inserted after “187” in index entry for “Breaking of
objects”.
Missing comma inserted after “3” in index entry for “Forgetfulness,
Temporary, of proper names”.
Standardised indentation of “Psychology of” under index entry for
“Speech Blunders”.
Footnotes 1 and 9, “Monatschrift” changed to “Monatsschrift”.
Footnote 34, “Geistesund Nervenkranken” changed to “Geistes- und
Nervenkranken”; “Jenseits von Gut und Bosen” changed to “Jenseits von
Gut und Böse”, and “Haupstuck” changed to “Hauptstück”.
Footnote 42, the concluding end-quote has been added.
Footnote 58, “Contribution a la psychologie” changed to “Contribution à
la psychologie”.
Footnote 59, end-quotes added after “habits” and “explain it”.
Footnote 81, “Ferençzi” changed to “Ferenczi”.