Parapraxsis
Freud continued his self-analysis in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and like in most of his works, he explored his personal experiences to understand others. In this instance he chose to examine his forgetfulness, bungled intentions, and slips of the tongue, that so many of us suffer on a daily basis. These he called Parapraxes.
Despite criticisms from psychologists, his book became popular and was his first vehicle to spread ideas of psychoanalysis to a wider audience.
Signorelli, Botticelli, and Boltraffio.
Freud begins by looking at the forgetting of words including names, and their sometimes incorrect recall. Despite the then current psychological interpretations that these are only accidents because both the words and names sound similar, Freud felt there was more to explore. “There is no doubt that there are cases of name-forgetting that proceed in a much simpler way…besides the simple forgetting of proper names, there is another forgetting which is motivated by repression.” Freud recounts a detailed analysis of a conversation with a stranger on a holiday trip from Ragusa, modern day Dubrovnik, to a small town near Herzegovina. Freud struggled to remember the name of a master who made frescoes of the Last Judgement in the Orvieto Cathedral in Italy. The name was Signorelli, but instead Freud recalled Botticelli and Boltraffio. When the correct name was given to him by an outsider, he discovered how the displacement caused him to bring up the wrong names.
There were two subjects that interfered with his recall of the correct name. One was a conversation about Turks that brought up the topic of sexuality. Freud recounts, “before I asked my travelling companion if he had been in Orvieto, we had been discussing the the customs of the Turks living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had related what I heard from a colleague who was practicing medicine among them, namely, that they show full confidence in the physician and complete submission to fate. When one is compelled to inform them that there is no help for the patient, they answer: ‘Herr (Sir), what can I say? I know that if he could be saved, you would save him.’ In these sentences alone we can find the words and names: Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Herr, which may be inserted in an association series between Signorelli, Botticelli, and Boltraffio.”
The second subject was death. Freud continued, “I assume that the stream of thoughts concerning the customs of the Turks in Bosnia, etc., was able to disturb the next thought, because I withdrew my attention from it before it came to an end. For I recalled that I wished to relate a second anecdote which was next to the first in my memory. These Turks value sexual pleasure above all else, and sexual disturbances merge into an utter despair which strangely contrasts with their resignation at the peril of losing their lives. One of my colleague’s patients once told him: ‘For you know Sir (Herr), if that ceases, life no longer has any charm.'”
“I refrained from imparting this characteristic feature because I did not wish to touch upon a delicate theme in conversation with a stranger. But I went still further; I also deflected my attention from the continuation of the thought which might have associated itself in me with the theme ‘Death and Sexuality.’ I was at the time under the after-effects of a message which I had received a few weeks before, during a brief sojourn in Trafoi. A patient whom I had spent much effort had ended his life on account of an incurable sexual disturbance. I know positively that this sad event, and everything connected with it, did not come to my conscious recollection on that trip in Herzegovina. However, the agreement between Trafoi and Boltraffio forces me to assume that this reminiscence was at the time brought into activity despite all the intentional deviation of my attention.”
I can no longer conceive the forgetting of the name Signorelli as an accidental occurrence. I must recognize in this process the influence of a motive. There were motives which actuated the interruption in the communication of my thoughts (concerning the customs of the Turks, etc.), which later influenced me to exclude from my consciousness the thoughts connected with them, and which might have led to the message concerning the incident in Trafoi – that is, I wanted to forget something, I repressed something. To be sure, I wished to forget something other than the name of the master of Orvieto; but this other thought brought about an associative connection between itself and this name, so that my act of volition missed the aim, and I forgot the one against my will, while I intentionally wished to forget the other…The substitutive names no longer seem so thoroughly unjustified as they seemed before this explanation. They remind me as much of what I wished to forget as of what I wished to remember [a compromise], and show me that my object to forget something was neither a perfect success nor a failure.”
Complexes
These emotional associations Freud described as a complex, a concept he borrowed from Jung’s association experiments. “It has become customary to speak of an ideational content of this kind, which is able to influence the reaction to the stimulus-word, as a ‘complex’. This influence works either by the stimulus-word touching the complex directly or by the complex succeeding in making a connection with the word through intermediate links. Such a determination of the reaction is a very remarkable fact; you will find undisguised astonishment expressed at it in the literature of the subject. But its truth admits of no doubt. For as a rule you can lay bare the particular complex at work, and so explain reactions which could not otherwise be understood, by asking the subject himself to give the reasons for his reaction. Examples like those given by Jung are well calculated to make us doubt the occurrence of chance or of what is alleged to be arbitrary in mental events.”
Freud singles out in particular the main complex out of which all other complexes are related. He says, “the self-reference complex (personal, family or professional) proves to be the most effective of the disturbing complexes.” Through thought associations, names are overwhelmed by stronger complexes causing an avoidance of that name, or subject, because of its association. Freud says, “in general, one may distinguish two principle cases of name-forgetting; when the name itself touches something unpleasant, or when it is brought into connection with other associations which are [are also unpleasant].” [See: ‘The Ratman’: https://rumble.com/v1gu9qj-case-studies-the-ratman-freud-and-beyond.html]
Condensation
As the mind avoids these unpleasant thoughts, Freud brings up his dream theory of condensation to explain the odd combinations and associations that appear in slips, bungled actions, and mistakes. He says, “now, in my Interpretation of Dreams, I have shown the part played by the process of condensation in the origin of the so-called manifest contents of the dream from the latent thoughts of the dream. Any similarity of objects or of word-presentations between two elements of the unconscious material is taken as a cause for the formation of a third, which is a composite or compromise formation. This element represents both components in the dream content, and in view of this origin, it is frequently endowed with numerous contradictory individual determinants. The formation of substitutions and contaminations in speech-mistakes is, therefore, the beginning of that work of condensation, which we find taking a most active part in the construction of the dream.”
Willpower and Intentions
Agreeing with Wilhelm Wundt, Freud found Wilhelm’s description of slips in speech instructive in that there is a tiring of willpower in the subject, and a strain in holding the intention to control speech, leading to these slips. Freud also added that the intrusive thoughts imposed themselves during these opportunities, hence a slip. You become slightly tired and go a little unconscious and then the forces of repression can’t keep the wish from imposing itself on consciousness. Freud uses an example of a President of the Austrian House of Deputies who declared the session “closed” when he was trying to open the session. For Freud, the president was acting on a wish or preference that the session be closed.
Now not every case is a Freudian slip and Freud agreed that in accelerated speech, there may be instances where word substitutions are just accidents, but in cases where the similarities between words aren’t obvious, the substitute words can betray underlying emotions and show a person’s true opinion. Freud translates an example of disappointment betrayed by a slip:
“A wealthy but not very generous host invited his friends for an evening dance. Everything went well until about 11:30pm, when there was an intermission, presumably for supper. To the great disappointment of most of the guests, there was no supper; instead they were regaled with thin sandwiches and lemonade. As it was close to Election Day, the conversation centered on the different candidates; and as the discussion grew warmer, one of the guests, an ardent admirer of the Progressive Party candidate, remarked to the host: ‘You may say what you please about Teddy, but there is one thing – he can always be relied upon, he always gives you a square meal,’ wishing to say square deal. The assembled guests burst into a roar of laughter, to the great embarrassment of the speaker and the host, who fully understood each other.”
Free will or Determinism?
Even if we decide, that we don’t want to be embarrassed again and make an intention to never repeat similar mistakes in the future, Freud says, “the suggested intention slumbers in the person concerned until the time for its execution approaches. Then it awakes and excites action.” With single resolutions, unless they are supported by more resolutions, like a meditation, the original resolution is forgotten and the subject drifts into a current of habit. Freud says, “forgetting resolutions…ultimately depends on unadmitted motives, a counter-will.” These counter-wills are resistances related to other desires, obligations, or ambivalence. In a busy world there are many wishes and aversions that overwhelm a single intention; the reader gets the sense that the age-old debate of free-will and determinism is being brought up again, and the latter is where Freud lands. People do make plans and meet them to a certain extent, but for Freud, predictions and resolutions for humans are fraught with detours. He says, “the belief in prophetic dreams numbers many adherents, because it can be supported by the fact that some things really so happen in the future as they were previously foretold by the wish of the dream. But in this, there is little to be wondered at, as many far-reaching deviations may be regularly demonstrated between a dream and the fulfillment which the credulity of the dreamer prefers to neglect…There is nothing arbitrary or undetermined in the psychic life. By assuming that a part of our psychic function is unexplainable through purposive ideas, we ignore the realms of determinism in our mental life.”
Unconscious theft
These driftings can even allow people to think that they are more original than they are, and create a sense of agency in the choices they make. To set the stage to understand this, the reader has to look at the main crux of this book which is to view forgetting “in all cases is proved to be founded on a motive of displeasure.” But behind the displeasure there is also a wish for a particular outcome. Freud recounts an example that shows the power of the wish in forgetting, can meld with an avoidance of topics that remind the subject of their immoral actions they took to satisfy the wish. This would be like an elicit wish to steal something or an idea and the repression of the painful guilt in the aftermath of the theft. A form of unconscious entitlement. In one of Freud’s many congresses with his confidant Wilhelm Fliess, Freud did exactly that when he asserted that a theory of bi-sexuality in every person was needed, and then Fliess retorted that it was originally his idea. Later on, to himself, Freud thought of the question “who benefits?” He did. Eventually he was able to remember the prior conversation that Fliess reminded him of, clearing up his forgetting.
Tension between the individual and society
Freud leaves us with an unsettling insight to our non-willed aspects in our lives and even if we don’t want to get to know these aspects and choose to pursue more even repression, the unconscious will respond. Even a normal person who isn’t a psychopath will find inner resistances creating a mutiny to captain the ship of intentions. Freud says, “even in healthy persons, egotistic, jealous and hostile feelings and impulses, burdened by the pressure of moral education, often utilize the path of faulty actions to express in some way their undeniably existing force which is not recognized by the higher psychic instances. Allowing these faulty and chance actions to continue, corresponds, in great part, to a comfortable toleration of the unmoral.” This is an early development of themes that Freud will return to later and culminate in his Civilization and Its Discontents, published towards the end of his career.
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393006117/
The Psychical Mechanism Of Forgetfulness (1898b): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781473319981/
Psycho-Analysis And The Establishment Of The Facts In Legal Proceedings (1906c): The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,9():97-114
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/