Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 4 Psychology of Negligence (3)
Gentlemen, in the last lecture we discussed only negligence itself and not its relation to the voluntary act interfered with; we know that in some cases negligence seems to have meaning.If this conclusion holds true, it would be much more interesting to study the meaning of negligence than to study the conditions which give rise to it.

How to explain the "meaning" of psychological effects, our views must first be unified.In my view, "meaning" can be said to be the "intention" it expresses or the place it has in the mental process.According to many facts we have observed, "meaning" can almost always be replaced by "intention" or "inclination".Now we think that the expression of intention is hidden in the fault. Is it because of the expression, or is the poet exaggerating the poetic quality of the fault?

Let us still take the slip of the tongue as an example, and study more manifestations of this phenomenon, from which we can see that, especially in those cases where what is said is reversed, its meaning or intention is obvious.For example, if the Speaker of the National Assembly said "the meeting is adjourned" in his address, it is easy to understand the meaning or intention he intended to express "the adjournment".You could also say, "That's what he means." We just hit the nail on the head.Please don't protest and think that this is impossible, because we all know that he wants to hold a meeting and not adjourn it, so we think that what he wants to say is "a meeting", and his intention is naturally the one he knows best.If you say this, you forget that our original intention is to "discuss only negligence", and the relationship between negligence and the intention it disturbs will be explained later, and you will make a logical mistake of "swapping arguments" and deal with us arbitrarily. issue under discussion.

In other cases, although the slips of the tongue are not all reversed, they still express contradictory thoughts.For example, "I don't want to (geneigt) evaluate the merits of the former professor". "Unwilling" and "unworthy" are not opposite to each other, but the meaning expressed and the attitude the speaker should have are extremely opposite.

In other cases, a slip of the tongue simply adds a second meaning to the intended meaning.The wrong sentence seems to be condensed from several sentences.For example, the pompous lady's remark, "He will only eat what I choose," seems to imply: "Of course his diet is at his own disposal, but it is of no use what he wants, I can decide! "Slips of the tongue thus often leave a condensed impression.For another example, when the professor of anatomy talked about the structure of the nasal cavity, he asked the students if they could fully understand it. There are only a handful of cities—oh, no, no, I mean a handful of them.” The meaning of this condensed sentence means that he is the only one who fully understands this issue.

In addition to some obvious slips of the tongue, others are not easy to understand and thus directly conflict with our expectations.For example, some very common slips of the tongue, mispronounced special words, or mixed with some meaningless sounds, just based on these examples, you can answer the question "Are all mistakes meaningful".A more careful study of these instances now reveals the fact that "it is not difficult to ascertain the cause of such errors."To be honest, these seemingly obscure facts are not so different from the obvious ones that preceded them.

Once a person asked the horse owner how the horse was, and the horse owner said: "Oh! It may take another month" (It may take another month). The owner said he thought it was a sad business, and that "stad" was a mix of "sad" and "take".

Another man said of a reproducible matter: "So certain facts are 'refilled' again." What he meant was that those things were "refilled" but mixed with "discovery" ( revealed) and "dirty" became "refilled".

Remember a lady who was "sent off" by that unknown boy?We used to think it was a mixture of "insult" and "escort", now we don't need evidence to know the credibility of this argument.It follows from the above facts that even if they are not so obvious, they can always be found to be the conflict or mixture of two different speech intentions.They differ in that the first group is the conflict of two intentions, while the second is one intention distorted or altered, resulting in a hybrid glyph, meaningful or even meaningless.

By now, I believe most of the mysteries of slips of the tongue are well understood.If we can understand this, we can also solve another set of slips of the tongue that were once incomprehensible.For example, noun form substitutions are similar to slips of the tongue. Although not all of them are caused by two similar noun substitutions, the second intention is easy to understand.The most common inflection of nouns is not actually the cause of a slip of the tongue, it is used to disparage someone, it is a common method of swearing, and the learned person wants to insult someone without demeaning himself, and disguises it as A joke, even if it's not a noble joke.In one somewhat vulgar instance, the French president was once misrepresented as a "pig-like" (Schweinskarre).Of course we could go further and assume that it was a slip of the tongue that deformed the noun that ultimately produced the ironic intention.If this assumption is true, the same can be said for the comical noun inflections caused by slips of the tongue.Another example is the example of "Honorary Members of the Central Hell". The solemn atmosphere of the venue was disturbed by this ridiculous and unpleasant noun deformation.These expressions with hidden ironic intentions make us have to determine the deep meaning behind them: "Don't be fooled! My word is meaningless, and all nonsense go to hell!" Others transform harmless words into irony and derogation The slip of the tongue also applies to this explanation.

Some people deliberately change harmless words into vulgar ones for entertainment. This is a familiar situation for everyone.Some people take it as a joke, but the truth is, hearing such examples, one naturally wonders whether it was a deliberate joke or an unintentional slip of the tongue.

We seem to have unraveled the mystery of the error without much effort.Negligence is not an effect without a cause, but a very important psychological process, which is the result of two kinds of intentions working together, or mixing or interfering.I believe that you will have many questions to question me, so let us solve all these questions, so that everyone can have the power of faith in the results of our efforts.Of course, I will not deceive you with perfunctory and hasty behavior, let us calmly discuss these events one by one.

So what questions will you have?First of all, you will ask me whether this theory can only explain a few fusions, or can all slips of the tongue be explained by it?Second, can this concept cover multiple types of negligence such as misreading, clerical errors, forgetting, doing wrong things and losing property?Again, what place do fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness, and inattention really occupy in the psychology of faults?Again, in a negligence there are two competing intentions, one of which is usually obvious, and the other mostly hidden.How, then, can we fathom the hidden meaning?Besides, do you have any other questions?If not, then it's time for me to ask questions.Here I would like to remind everyone that the purpose of our analysis of negligence is to understand the negligence, and to analyze the essence of psychoanalysis by understanding it.I would therefore like to ask: what purpose or disposition interferes with the other intention?What is the relationship between the disturbed and the disturbed?So once the mystery of the fault has been unraveled, we have to start working on a new goal.

Does that explain all the slips of the tongue?I think the answer is yes.The reason is that, if we study a case of a slip of the tongue, this is the conclusion we arrive at.However, we still cannot prove that this process drives all slips of the tongue.Nevertheless, that is all right, since this layer of theory is, so to speak, insignificant for our purposes.But even if the cases of slips of the tongue which we can explain are a small number, the conclusions which we are about to use to illustrate the utility of psychoanalysis are still valid, and the cases of slips of the tongue which we can explain are not a small number.Another doubt is whether this theory is compatible with other kinds of faults, and we can also answer in advance in the affirmative.When we study mistakes such as clerical errors and mistakes in the future, we will also convince you.For the sake of convenience of description, we temporarily put aside this issue, and then analyze it after a more thorough study of slips of the tongue.

Disorders of the circulatory system, exhaustion, excitement, absent-mindedness, and inattention have all been regarded by some scholars as important factors, so what do these matter to us now?If the mental journey of negligence is indeed as described above, this question needs a more thorough answer.Remember, I am in no way denying these factors.To tell the truth, psychoanalysis' claims in other respects are probably beyond doubt; it has only to add some fresh material to what has been said before.What psychoanalysis now adds is precisely the most important part of what was previously neglected.Experience of everyday life may also convince you that slips of the tongue are a matter of course for those physiological tendencies arising from discomfort, circulatory disturbances, and fatigue.After affirming these, what are we going to explain?None of these are necessary for negligence, slips of the tongue can also occur in good health and normal circumstances.So physical discomfort can only be supplementary, merely providing some convenience to the special psychic mechanism that produces the slip of the tongue.I have used a metaphor before, but for the time being I will not use it because I can't find a better one.For example, when I was walking in a nearby quiet place in the dark, a gangster robbed me of my money and watch, and of course I couldn’t see the robber’s face. My money and my watch." The police chief might say to me: "As a matter of fact, you seem to believe too much in extreme mechanistic views. Your complaint should be that a thief who couldn't see a face took advantage of the darkness and solitude. , and stole your money. In my opinion, the most important thing now is to catch the thief. After the thief is caught, it may be possible to get back the stolen goods."

Psychophysiological factors such as excitement, distraction, inattention, etc., obviously cannot explain anything.They are nouns, or they are, so to speak, curtains which we must open to see behind them.What we should be asking is: what exactly is causing the excitement or distraction?The phonetic value, the similarity of words, the association of some of the same words, etc. give opportunities for mistakes to take advantage of, and these are of course important.However, even if there is a road ahead, who can guarantee that I will definitely take this road?So there must still be motives that compel me to take this path.Therefore, these associations between sound values ​​and words are only prone to slips of the tongue, just like physical discomfort, still cannot really explain the occurrence of slips of the tongue.In speeches, many of the countless words I have used are similar to other words or have similar pronunciations, or have conflicting meanings or have a common expression. However, I rarely use them wrong.The philosopher Wundt believes that the exhaustion of the body causes the original intention to be controlled by the tendency of association, and it is easy to produce slips of the tongue.This seems reasonable, but it is contrary to life experience. From the perspective of most instances, slips of the tongue are not caused by physical discomfort or association.

I'm particularly interested in your next question: what might be the measure of the two mutually confounding tendencies?You may not be aware of the importance of this issue.Of the two tendencies, the most easily recognizable is the interfered with; the guilty are aware of it and admit it.It is the tendency to intervene, the other, that is in question.You must remember that we have said before that this tendency is sometimes evident, and that we can find its nature in the results of errors, if we only have the courage to admit our mistakes.The speaker said it was against his original intention. It was obvious that he wanted to hold the meeting, but it was also obvious that he wanted to break up the meeting in his bones.It is clear at a glance and needs no further words.As for other examples, the interfering tendency only changes the appearance of the original tendency, but does not fully expose itself. What method should we use to detect this kind of interfering tendency from this deformation?
For a particular set of instances, the method of determination is simple and secure; in other words, we can measure the propensity to interfere in the same way as we measure the propensity to be interfered.After the speaker used the typo, we questioned him, and he recovered the words he originally intended to say. "Ah! It's been miserable—no, it's got a month to go." The meddling tendencies can also be added by him.We can ask him why he said "tragedy", and he explained: "I want to say this is a tragedy." Looking at another example, the speaker uttered the word "fa dirty", and he explained He'd meant to say it was a nasty thing, but the inclination was reined in, and another expression was substituted.The tendency to interfere is as obvious as the tendency to be interfered with.The origin and explanation of these examples are not something we can make up out of thin air, and I have chosen them for a reason.We must ask the speaker how the error occurred, and whether he can explain it clearly.If we don't ask, the speaker may just ignore it without looking for a reason.Yet upon questioning, his first thought was clearly stated.Please note that this small help and its result formed the rudiment of the psycho-analysis we are going to study.

I don’t know if I am worrying unfoundedly. I am worried that you have just clarified the concept of psychoanalysis, and you will inevitably resist it in your heart.Aren't you going to protest that what the wrongdoers say to us is not solid evidence?You must have taken it for granted that he complied with your request for explanation, so he immediately told you the first thought that came to his mind.However, whether the fault was caused by it, we have no reliable proof.Maybe, maybe not quite, maybe he would think of other explanations.

Apparently you have paid too little attention to the psychological fact that if one studies a substance by chemical analysis, it turns out that the weight of a certain component is several milligrams.From this found weight he draws a conclusion.Do you think then that the chemist doubts his conclusions because the separated substances may have other weights?Everyone knows that that substance has only one weight and nothing else, so building a theory on this basis is beyond doubt.As far as the psychological fact is concerned, when someone is cross-examined, he thinks this and not some other thought, and you don't believe him, or thinks he has other thoughts.In fact, these are the illusions of psychological freedom in your heart, but you don't want to give up.So I'm going to say sorry, but I'm the exact opposite of you on this point.

You will now make another protest and think: "We know that psychoanalysis has a special technique that enables the analysand to solve psychoanalytic problems. For example, the speaker at the banquet asked everyone to burp to bless the guests. Do you think The tendency to interfere is entertainment, which obviously conflicts with the original intention of respecting the guests. However, this is just your interpretation based on your observations that have nothing to do with this slip of the tongue. If you use these to check the person who made the mistake, he not only does not think He meant insulting, and he would vehemently deny it. Do you still insist on this unprovable explanation when others deny it so vehemently?"

(End of this chapter)