Part 3

The explanation which the two authors attempt to formulate as the basis of their collection of examples is peculiarly inadequate. They hold that the sounds and syllables of a word have different values and that the innervation of the sounds of higher value can interfere with those of lower value. They obviously base this conclusion on the cases of anticipation and perseveration which are not at all frequent; in other forms of slips of the tongue the question of such sound priorities, even if they exist, does not enter at all; for the most frequent type of slip is that in which instead of a certain word one says another which resembles it, and this resemblance is considered by many people sufficient explanation of it. For instance, a professor may say in his opening lecture, “I am not inclined (_geneigt_ instead of _geeignet_ = fitted) to estimate the merits of my predecessor.” Or another professor says, “In the case of the female genital, in spite of the _tempting_ ... I mean, the _attempted_ ...” (_Versuchungen_ instead of _Versuche_).

The commonest and also the most noticeable form of slip of the tongue, however, is that of saying the exact opposite of what one meant to say. These cases are quite outside the effect of any relations between sounds or confusion due to similarity, and in default one may therefore turn to the fact that opposites have a strong conceptual connection with one another and are psychologically very closely associated. There are well-known examples of this sort. For instance, the President of our Parliament once opened the session with the words “Gentlemen, I declare a quorum present and herewith declare the session _closed_.”

Any other common association may work in a way as insidious as the association of opposites and may on occasion lead to results as inopportune. So there is a story to the effect that, at a festivity in honour of the marriage of a child of H. Helmholtz with a child of the well-known inventor and captain of industry, W. Siemens, the famous physiologist Dubois-Reymond was asked to speak. He concluded his doubtless brilliant speech with the toast “Success to the new partnership, Siemens and _Halske_!” which was of course the name of the old firm. The association of the two names must have been as familiar to a resident in Berlin as “Crosse & Blackwell” to a Londoner.

So the effect of word associations must be taken into account, as well as that of sound-values and similarities between words. But even that is not enough. In one type of case, before we can arrive at an adequate explanation of the slip we must consider some phrase which had been said, or perhaps only thought, previously. Again, that is, a case of perseveration, as Meringer insists, but arising in a more distant source.—I must confess that altogether I have the impression that we are further than ever from comprehension of slips of the tongue.

However, I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that in the course of our 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.