Freud - Complete Works (219 page)

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1239

   I am afraid all the examples I
have given up to now will seem merely commonplace. But after all it
can only suit my aim if I come upon things that are familiar to
everyone and that everyone understands in the same way, for my
whole purpose is to collect everyday material and turn it to
scientific use. I fail to see why the wisdom which is the
precipitate of men’s common experience of life should be
refused inclusion among the acquisitions of science. The essential
character of scientific work derives not from the special nature of
its objects of study but from its stricter method of establishing
the facts and its search for far-reaching correlations.

   Where intentions of some
importance are concerned, we have found in general that they are
forgotten when obscure motives rise against them. In the case of
rather less important intentions we can recognize a second
mechanism of forgetting: a counter-will is transferred to the
intention from some other topic, after an external association has
been formed between the other topic and the content of the
intention. Here is an example. I set store by high-quality blotting
paper and I decided one day to buy a fresh supply that afternoon in
the course of my walk to the Inner Town. But I forgot for four days
running, till I asked myself what reason I had for the omission. It
was easy to find after I had recalled that though I normally
write ‘Löschpapier
’ I usually
say
‘Fliesspapier
’. ‘Fliess’ is the name of
a friend in Berlin who had on the days in question given me
occasion for a worrying and anxious thought. I could not rid myself
of this thought, but the defensive tendency (cf. above,
p. 1230
) manifested itself by
transferring itself, by means of the verbal similarity, to the
indifferent intention which on account of its indifference offered
little resistance.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1240

   Direct counter-will and more
remote motivation are found together in the following example of
dilatoriness. I had written a short pamphlet
On Dreams
(1901
a
), summarizing the subject-matter of my
Interpretation of Dreams
, for the series
Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens
. Bergmann of Wiesbaden had sent me the
proofs, and had asked for them back by return of post, as the book
was to be issued before Christmas. I corrected the proofs the same
night and placed them on my desk so as to take them with me next
morning. In the morning I forgot about them, and only remembered
them in the afternoon when I saw the wrapper on my desk. In the
same way I forgot the proofs that afternoon, that evening and the
following morning, till I pulled myself together and took them to a
letter-box on the afternoon of the second day, wondering what could
be the reason for my procrastination. It was obvious that I did not
want to send them off, but I could not discover why. However, in
the course of the same walk I called in at my publisher’s in
Vienna - the firm that had published my
Interpretation of
Dreams
, I placed an order for something and then said, as if
impelled by a sudden thought: ‘I suppose you know I’ve
written the dream-book over again?’ - ‘Oh, you
can’t mean that!’ he said. ‘Don’t be
alarmed’, I replied; ‘it’s only a short essay for
the Löwenfeld-Kurella series.’ But he was still not
satisfied; he was worried that the essay would interfere with the
sales of the book. I disagreed with him and finally asked:
‘If I’d come to you before, would you have forbidden my
publishing it?’ - ‘No, I certainly
wouldn’t.’ Personally I believe I acted quite within my
rights and did nothing contrary to common practice; nevertheless it
seems certain that a misgiving similar to that expressed by the
publisher was the motive for my delay in sending back the proofs.
This misgiving goes back to an earlier occasion, on which a
different publisher raised difficulties when it seemed unavoidable
for me to introduce unaltered a few pages from are earlier work of
mine on children’s palsies published by another firm, into my
monograph on the same subject in Nothnagel’s
Handbuch
.
But in this case, as well, the reproach was not justified; this
time, too, I had loyally informed my first publisher (the same one
who published
The Interpretation of Dreams
) of my intention.
However, if this chain of memories is followed back still further,
it brings to light an even earlier occasion involving a translation
from the French, in which I really did infringe the rights of
property that apply to publications. I added notes to the text
which I translated, without asking the author’s permission,
and some years later had reason to suspect that the author was
displeased with my arbitrary action.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1241

   There is a proverb which reveals
the popular knowledge that the forgetting of intentions is not
accidental: ‘If one forgets to do a thing once, one will
forget to do it many times more.’

   Indeed, sometimes we cannot avoid
an impression that everything that can be said about forgetting and
about parapraxes is already familiar and self-evident to everyone.
It is sufficiently surprising that it is nevertheless necessary to
present to consciousness things that are so well-known. How often
have I heard people say: ‘Don’t ask me to do that,
I’m certain to forget it!’ There is surely nothing
mystical, then, if this prophecy is subsequently fulfilled. A
person who talks in this way senses an intention not to carry out
the request, and is merely refusing to admit it to himself.

   Much light is thrown, moreover,
on the forgetting of intentions by what may be called ‘the
forming of spurious intentions’. I once promised a young
author that I would write a review of his short work; but because
of internal resistances, which I knew about, I put off doing so,
till one day I yielded to pressure from him and promised it would
be done that same evening. I really had seriously meant to do it
then, but I had forgotten that I had set the evening aside for
preparing a specialist report that could not be deferred. After
this had shown me that my intention had been spurious, I gave up
the struggle against my resistances and refused the author’s
request.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1242

CHAPTER VIII

BUNGLED ACTIONS

I will quote another passage from the work by
Meringer and Mayer (1895, 98) which I have already mentioned:

   ‘Slips of the tongue are
not without their parallels. They correspond to the slips which
often occur in other human activities and which are known by the
somewhat foolish name of "oversights".’

   Thus I am by no means the first
to surmise that there is sense and purpose behind the minor
functional disturbances in the daily life of healthy
people.¹

   If slips in speaking - which is
clearly a motor function - can be thought of in this way, it is a
short step to extend the same expectation to mistakes in our other
motor activities. I have here formed two groups of cases. I use the
term ‘bungled actions’
[‘
Vergreifen
’] to describe all the cases in
which a wrong result - i.e. a deviation from what was intended -
seems to be the essential element. The others, in which it is
rather the whole action which seems to be inappropriate, I call
‘symptomatic and chance actions’. But no sharp line can
be drawn between them, and we are indeed forced to conclude that
all the divisions made in this study have no significance other
than a descriptive one and run counter to the inner unity in this
field of phenomena. It is clear that the psychological
understanding of ‘bungled actions’ will not be
conspicuously helped if we class them under the heading of
‘ataxia’ or, in particular, of ‘cortical
ataxia’. Let us rather try to trace the individual examples
back to their particular determinants. For this purpose I shall
once more make use of self-observations, though in my case the
occasions for these are not particularly frequent.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1910:] A second
publication by Meringer has later shown me how great an injustice I
did to that author when I credited him with any such
understanding.

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1243

   (
a
) In former years I
visited patients in their homes more frequently than I do at
present; and on numerous occasions when I was at the front door,
instead of knocking or ringing the bell, I pulled my own latch key
out of my pocket, only to thrust it back again in some confusion.
When I consider the patients at whose houses this happened, I am
forced to think that the parapraxis - taking out my key instead of
ringing the bell - was in the nature of a tribute to the house
where I made the mistake. It was equivalent to the thought
‘Here I feel I am at home’, for it only occurred at
places where I had taken a liking to the patient. (Of course I
never ring my own door bell.)

   Thus the parapraxis was a
symbolic representation of a thought which was not after all really
intended to be accepted seriously and consciously; for a nerve
specialist is in fact well aware that his patients remain attached
to him only so long as they expect to be benefited by him, and that
he in turn allows himself to feel an excessively warm interest in
them only with a view to giving them psychical help.

   Numerous self-observations made
by other people show that handling a key in this significantly
incorrect way is certainly not a peculiarity of mine.

   Maeder (1906) describes what is
an almost identical repetition of my experiences: ‘II est
arrivé à chacun de sortir son trousseau, en arrivant
à la porte d’un ami particulièrement cher, de
se surprendre pour ainsi dire, en train d’ouvrir avec sa
clé comme chez soi. C’est un retard, puisqu’il
faut sonner malgré tout, mais c’est une preuve
qu’on se sent - ou qu’on voudrait se sentir - comme
chez soi, auprès de cet ami.’¹

 
 
¹
[‘Everyone
has had the experience of taking out his bunch of keys on reaching
the door of a particularly dear friend, of catching himself, as it
were, in the act of opening it with his key just as if he was at
home. This causes a delay, as he has to ring the bell in the long
run, but it is a sign that he feels - or would like to feel - at
home with this friend.’]

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1244

   Jones (1911
b
, 509):
‘The use of keys is a fertile source of occurrences of this
kind, of which two examples may be given. If I am disturbed in the
midst of some engrossing work at home by having to go to the
hospital to carry out some routine work, I am very apt to find
myself trying to open the door of my laboratory there with the key
of my desk at home, although the two keys are quite unlike each
other. The mistake unconsciously demonstrates where I would rather
be at the moment.

   ‘Some years ago I was
acting in a subordinate position at a certain institution, the
front door of which was kept locked, so that it was necessary to
ring for admission. On several occasions I found myself making
serious attempts to open the door with my house key. Each one of
the permanent visiting staff, to which I aspired to be a member,
was provided with a key, to avoid the trouble of having to wait at
the door. My mistakes thus expressed my desire to be on a similar
footing, and to be quite "at home" there.’

   Dr. Hanns Sachs reports a similar
experience: ‘I always have two keys on me, one for the door
of my office and one for my flat. They are not at all easily
confused with each other, for the office key is at least three
times as big as the flat key. Moreover, I carry the former in my
trouser pocket and the latter in my waistcoat pocket. Nevertheless
it often happened that I noticed as I stood at the door that I had
got out the wrong key on the stairs. I determined to make a
statistical experiment. Since I stood in front of both the doors
every day in more or less the same emotional state, the confusion
between the two keys was bound to show a regular tendency, if,
indeed, it was true that it had some psychical determinant. My
observation of later instances then showed that I quite regularly
took out my flat key at the door of the office, whereas the
opposite happened only once. I came home tired, knowing that a
guest would be waiting for me there. When I reached the door I made
an attempt to unlock it with the office key - which was of course
much too large.’

The Psychopathology Of Everyday Life

1245

   (
b
) There is a house where
twice every day for six years, at regular hours, I used to wait to
be let in outside a door on the second floor. During this long
period it has happened to me on two occasions, with a short
interval between them, that I have gone a floor too high - i.e. I
have ‘
climbed too high
’.¹ On the first
occasion I was enjoying an ambitious day-dream in which I was
‘climbing ever higher and higher’. On this occasion I
even failed to hear that the door in question had opened as I put
my foot on the first step of the third flight. On the other
occasion, I again went too far while I was deep in thought; when I
realized it, I turned back and tried to catch hold of the phantasy
in which I had been absorbed. I found that I was irritated by a
(phantasied) criticism of my writings in which I was reproached
with always ‘going too far’. This I had now replaced by
the not very respectful expression ‘climbing too
high’.