Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud - Chapter 11 - Combined Faulty Acts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of Psychopathology of every Day Life, translated by
A A brill combined faulty acts. Two of the last
mentioned examples, my error which transfers the Medici to Venice,
and that of the young man who knew how to
circumvent a command against a conversation on the telephone with

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his lady love, have really not been fully discussed, as
after careful consideration they may be shown to represent a
union of forgetting with an error. I can show the
same union still more clearly in certain other examples. A
a friend related to me the following experience. Some years ago,

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I consented to be elected to the committee of a
certain literary society, as I suppose the organization might sometime
be of use to me in assisting me in the
production of my drama. Although not much interested, I attended
the meetings regularly every Friday some months ago, so I
was definitely assured that one of my dramas would be

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presented at the theater in f And since that time
it regularly happened that I forgot the meeting of the association.
As I read their program announcements. I was ashamed of
my forgetfulness. I reproached myself, feeling that it was certainly
rude of me to stay away now when I no
longer needed them, and determined that I would certainly not

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forget the next Friday. Continually I reminded myself of this
resolution until the hour came and I stood before the
door of the meeting room. To my astonishment, it was locked.
The meeting was already over. I had mistaken my day.
It was already Saturday. B The next example is the

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combination of a symptomatic action with the case of mislaying.
It reached me by remote byways, but from a reliable source.
A woman traveled to Rome with her brother in law,
a renowned artist. The visitor was highly honored by the
German residence of Rome, and, among other things, received a
gold medal of antique origin. The woman was grieved that

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her brother in law did not sufficiently appreciate the value
of this beautiful gift. After she had returned home, she
discovered in unpacking that, without knowing how, she had brought
the medal home with her. She immediately notified her brother
in law of this by letter and informed him that
she would send it back to Rome the next day.
The next day, however, the medal was so aptly mislaid

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that it could not be found and could not be
sent back. And then it dawned on the woman that
her absent mindedness signified, namely that she wished to keep
the metal herself. C Here are some cases in which
the falsified action persistently repeats itself and at the same
time also changes its mode of action due to unknown motives.

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Jones left a letter for several days on his desk,
forgetting each time to post it. He ultimately posted it,
but it was returned to him from the dead letter
office because he forgot to address it. After addressing and
posting it a second time, it was again returned to him,
this time without a stamp. He was then forced to

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recognize the unconscious opposition to the sending of the letter.
D A short account by doctor Carl Weiss of Vienna
of a case of forgetting impressively describes the futile effort
to accomplish something in the face of opposition, how persistently
the unconscious activity can achieve its purpose if it has

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cause to prevent a resolution from being executed, and how
difficult it is to guard against this tendency will be
illustrated by the following incident. An acquaintance requested me to
lend him a book and bring it to him the
next day. I immediately promised it, but perceived a distinct
feeling of displeasure which I could not expect plain at

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the time. Later it became clear to me this acquaintance
had owed me for years a sum of money, which
he evidently had no intention of returning. I did not
give this matter any more thought, but I recalled at
the following forenoon with the same feeling of displeasure, and
at once said to myself, your unconscious will see to
it that you forget the book, but you don't wish

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to appear unobliging, and will therefore do everything not to
forget it. I came home, wrapped the book in paper,
and put it near me on the desk while I
wrote some letters. A little later, I went away, but
after a few steps I recollected that I had left
on the desk the letters which I wished to post
by the way. One of the letters was written to

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a person who urged me to undertake something disagreeable. I returned,
took the letters, and again left while in the street car.
It occurred to me that I had undertaken to purchase
something for my wife, and I was pleased at the
thought that it would be only a small package. The
association small package suddenly recalled book, and only then I

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noticed that I did not have the book with me.
Not only had I forgotten it when I left my
home the first time, but I had overlooked it again
when I got the letters near which it lay e.
A similar mechanism is shown in the following fully analyzed
observation of Otto Rank. A scrupulously orderly and pedantically precise

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man reported the following occurrence, which he considered quite remarkable.
One afternoon on the street, wishing to find out the time,
he discovered that he had left his watch at home,
an omission which to his knowledge had never occurred before.
As he had an engagement elsewhere and had not enough
time to return for his watch, he made use of

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a visit to a woman friend to borrow her watch
for the evening. This was the most convenient way out
of the dilemma, as he had a previous engagement to
visit this lady the next day. Accordingly, he promised to
return her watch at that time, but the following day,
when about to consummate this, he found to his surprise
that he had left the watch at home, his own

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watch he had with him. He then firmly resolved to
return the lady's property that same afternoon, and even followed
out his resolution, but on wishing to see the time
on leaving her, he found, to his chagrin and astonishment
that he had again forgotten to take his own watch.
The repetition of this faulty action seemed so pathologic to

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this order loving man that he was quite anxious to
know its psychologic motivation, and when questioned whether he experienced
anything disagreeable on the critical day of the first forgetting
and in what connection it had occurred, the motive was
promptly found. He related that he had conversed with his
mother after luncheon. Shortly before leaving the house. She told

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him that an irresponsible relative who had already caused him
much worry and loss of money, had pawned his the
relative's watch, and as it was needed in the house,
the relative had asked for money to redeem it. This
almost forced loan affected our man very painfully and brought
back to his memory all the disagreeable episodes perpetrated by

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this relative for many years. His symptomatic action therefore proves
to be manifoldly determined. First, it gives expression to a
stream of thought which runs perhaps as follows, I won't
allow my money to be extorted this way, and if
a watch is needed, I will leave my own at home.

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But as he needed it for the evening to keep
his appointment, this intention could only be brought about on
an unconscious path in the form of a symptomatic action. Second,
the forgetting expressed a sentiment something like the following. This
everlasting sacrificing of money for this good good for nothing
is bound to ruin me altogether, so that I will

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have to give up everything. Although the anger, according to
the report of this man, was only momentary, the repetition
of the same symptomatic action conclusively shows that in the
unconscious it continued to act more intensely, and may be
equivalent to the unconscious expression I cannot get this story
out of my head. That the lady's watch should later

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meet the same fate will not surprise us after knowing
this attitude of the unconscious. Yet there may be still
other special motives which favor the transference on the innocent
lady's watch. The nearest motive is probably that he would
have liked to keep it as a substitute for his
own sacrificed watch, and that hence he forgot to return

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it the next day. He also might have liked to
possess this watch as a souvenir of the lady. Moreover,
the forgetting of the lady's watch gave him the excuse
for calling on the admired one a second time, for
he was obliged to visit her in the morning in
reference to another matter, And with the forgetting of the watch,
he seemed to indicate that this visit, for which an

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appointment had been made so long ago, was too good
for him to be used simply for the return of
a watch. Twice forgetting his own watch, and thus making
possible the substitution of the lady's watch, speaks for the
fact that our man unconsciously endeavored to avoid carrying both
watches at the same time. He obviously thought of avoiding

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the appearance of superfluity, which would have stood out in
striking contrast to the want of the relative. But on
the other hand, he utilized this as a self admonition
against his apparent intention to marry this lady, reminding himself
that he was tied to his family mother by indissoluble obligations. Finally,

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another reason for the forgetting of the lady's watch may
be sought in the fact that the evening before he
a bachelor, was ashamed to be seen with a lady's
watch by his friends, so that he only looked at
it stealthily, and in order to evade the repetition of
this painful situation, he could not take the watch along,
but as he was obliged to return it. There resulted

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here too an unconsciously performed symptomatic action, which proved to
be a compromise formation between conflicting emotional feelings and a
dearly bought victory of the unconscious instances. In the same discussion,
Rank has also paid attention to the very interesting relation

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of faulty actions and dreams, which cannot, however, be followed
here without a comprehensive analysis of the dream with which
the faulty action is connected. I once dreamed at great
length that I had lost my pocket book in the
morning while dressing. I actually missed it while undressing the
night before the dream, I had forgotten to take it

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out of my trouser's pocket and put it in its
usual place. This forgetting was therefore not unknown to me.
Probably it was to give expression to an unconscious thought
which was ready to appear in the dreamed content. I
do not mean to assert that such cases of combined
faulty actions can teach anything new that we have not

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already seen in the individual cases. But this change in
form of the faulty action, which nevertheless attains the same result,
gives the plastic impression of a will working towards a
definite end, and in a far more energetic way, contradicts
the idea that the faulty action represents something fortuitous and

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requires no explanation. Not less remarkable is the fact that
the conscious intention thoroughly fails to check the success of
the faulty action. Despite all, my friend did not pay
his visit to the meeting of the Literary Society, and
the woman found it in possible to give up the medal.
That unconscious something which worked against these resolutions found another

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outlet after the first road was closed to it. It
requires something other than the conscious counter resolution to overcome
the unknown motive. It requires a psychic work which makes
the unknown known to consciousness. End of Chapter eleven,