Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 5 Psychology of Negligence (4)
Of course, your rebuttal this time seems eloquent and powerful.I can imagine the unknown speaker, who is either an assistant to some distinguished guest, or a young lecturer, or a promising young man.If I want to ask him, if I don’t seem to respect his leader that much in my heart, there will definitely be a quarrel, and he will be impatient, and will angrily say to me: "You have asked enough questions, don’t you want to talk about it again, don’t worry about it. Blame me for being rude. You're ruining my career by saying that. I just said 'auf' twice before I said 'anstossen' instead of 'aufstossen'. It's just a slip of the tongue for 'detain', Melinger As I said, there was absolutely no malice. Do you understand? You are enough!" The reaction was surprising, and the resistance was indeed powerful.I understand that I needn't doubt him any more, but it seems to me that in saying the error was harmless he seemed too aggressive to be thrown into a rage over purely scientific research.Perhaps you agree with this, but you insist that the person knows what to say and what not to say.

Must he know?I'm afraid this is also a question!

Now, you think you have refuted me.I hear you say: "That's your technique! If the account of the wrongdoer agrees with your theory, you declare him to be the last witness to the doubt, because he himself said so. Suppose his explanation If it doesn't match your point of view, you immediately declare that what he said is unfounded, so that people don't have to believe it."

And indeed it is.I can cite another similar example.For example, in court, if the defendant pleads guilty, the judge will believe him; if the defendant pleads not guilty, the judge will not believe him.Otherwise, the law cannot be enforced.Although mistakes are inevitable at times, you have to admit that the function of this legal system is effective.

"Oh? But are you a judge? Are you the accused? Are slips of the tongue a crime?"

You don't have to contradict this metaphor, you know we have differences of opinion on the question of negligence, and we still don't know how to reconcile these conflicts until now.Therefore, I use the comparison between judge and criminal as the basis for a temporary settlement.If the analysand affirms the significance of the fault, you must admit it beyond doubt.I myself admit that if the person being analyzed refuses to speak out and meet, then no direct evidence can be obtained.Therefore, we have to temporarily serve as the judge of the case and use other evidence to help inference.In court, circumstantial evidence may also be used for the purpose of judgment.Psychoanalysis does not require this, but evidence of this kind may be considered.If you believe that science consists only of proven propositions, you are mistaken; if you demand science on that basis, you are inevitably unfair.Only those who desire authority and even want to replace religious dogmas with scientific dogmas are making such demands.In fact, only a handful of sciences have been established as dogma.It is mostly a statement of varying degrees of probability.It is the nature of the scientist to be satisfied with something close to the truth, and to continue to prove it, but still to carry out creative work.

If the analysand is unwilling to explain the meaning of the fault, where do we go for the starting point of explanation and the basis of proof?We can start from the following: First, we can base on those similar phenomena that are not caused by negligence, such as a person changing his style by mistake and changing his style intentionally, both conceal the intention to make fun of.Second, it can also be based on the psychological situation in which the fault occurred, the character of the faulter, and the emotions before the fault, and the fault may be the reaction of these emotions.Generally speaking, we inquire about the meaning of the fault on the basis of general principles; at first this was only a guesswork or provisional interpretation until the later development of the psychological situational approach.However, sometimes it is necessary to study the significance of the fault before it can be further expressed, so as to confirm whether our observation is correct or not.

If it is limited to slips of the tongue, I am afraid it is not easy to provide you with such evidence, although I can also give a few good examples.The young man who wanted to "disgrace" a certain lady was actually very shy; the lady who said that her husband wanted to eat what she liked, I knew her to be strict and shrewd in housekeeping.Let’s take another example. In a meeting of a certain club, a young member violently attacked others in his speech, calling the members of the committee moneylenders, that is, the word “members” was replaced by “lenders”.As far as I can guess, there was a meddling tendency in his head, related to money-lending, that was active in his mind when he was lashing out at people.Indeed, I learned that this orator was often in a pinch of money, and at this time he was contemplating getting into debt.Therefore, the meddling tendency here can be translated as the thought: "You protest a little softer, these are the people you want to borrow money from."

If I could discuss other types of negligence, I could give many examples of this circumstantial evidence.

If a man forgets a well-known proper name, and cannot remember it for long, even with great effort, we may judge that he does not like it, and therefore does not want to remember it.With this in mind, it is time to discuss the psychological situation of negligence.

Mr. Y fell in love with a certain lady, who had no feelings for him, and soon this lady married Mr. X.Although Mr. Y has known Mr. X for a long time, and they have business contacts, but now Mr. Y has forgotten Mr. X's name many times, and whenever he writes to him, he has to ask others.Obviously, Mr. Y wanted to forget about that lucky rival and never miss him.

Again, a woman asks the doctor about a girlfriend they both know.She used her girlfriend's name before she got married, and she couldn't remember her surname after she got married.She admitted that she was very opposed to the marriage and hated her girlfriend's husband very much.

We will discuss the specific names of forgetting in detail later, but now we should pay attention to the psychological situation that produces forgetting.

The "plan" is forgotten, probably because an opposite emotion prevents the "plan" from being carried out.This view is not only agreed by psychoanalysts, but also by ordinary people in daily life, but they refuse to admit it in theory.The patron forgets the sponsored person's request, and even if the patron apologizes, the sponsored person will not be appeased by it.In the opinion of the patron, the patron obviously felt that he was insignificant, and agreed to the request, but had no intention of fulfilling it.Thus, even in everyday life, forgetting can sometimes lead to resentment.Psychoanalysts and the layman also have little disagreement about the concept of negligence.If a man were to tell his lover that he had completely forgotten their last appointment, he would not admit it, but would invent all sorts of things, even nonsense, in a split second, which would prevent him from keeping the appointment, and until Now he can't even give her news.We all understand that in the military, forgetting is no excuse for getting away with it; it is a recognized fair system.That being the case, everyone is willing to admit that the fault is meaningful and understand its significance.But why did they not attribute this knowledge to other faults and openly admit it?There will naturally be a considerable answer to this question.

Now that the meaning of forgetting the "plan" is so firmly believed, it is no wonder that writers have borrowed it to express a similar meaning.If you have read "Caesar and Cleopatra" by Bernard Shaw, you should remember that when Caesar said goodbye in the last scene, he felt deeply disturbed and felt that he had forgotten one thing to do.In the end, I finally remembered that I hadn't said goodbye to Klipeotra.Borrowing the technique of forgetting, the author wants to express Caesar's conceit. In fact, Caesar neither had such feelings nor had such desires.Through history, we know that Caesar went to Rome with Cleopatra, and when Caesar was assassinated, Cleopatra and her children were still living in Rome, and they fled the city later.

The meaning of these forgotten instances of "plans" is so easily understood that they are of little use to us.Our aim is to find clues to the meaning of the fault in the psychological situation.We are now dealing with the less well-understood negligence—the loss of things.People think that losing things can only cause trouble, and certainly don't believe that things are lost for a purpose, and there are many such examples.For example, a certain youth lost a favorite pencil.A few days ago, he received a letter from his brother-in-law, writing at the end: "Now, I don't have the time and interest to encourage you to wander around." And the pencil was given to him by the brother-in-law.Of course, if there was no such incident in the early stage, we cannot say that the lost property means abandoning the gift.There are countless similar facts.Someone loses something, either because he quarreled with the giver and doesn't want to remember him, or because he hates the old and hopes to use it as an excuse to acquire a new one.Another example is the loss, destruction or damage of objects, all of which are used to achieve this purpose.A child breaking his watch or schoolbag the day before his birthday certainly cannot be regarded as an accident.

If he has ever been disturbed by a lost property, he will not believe that the mistake was intentional.However, we can sometimes perceive a sense of temporary or permanent abandonment through the context of negligence.Perhaps this is the best example.

A young man told me his story: "A few years ago, my wife and I often had misunderstandings. I thought she was too cold. Although I recognized her good qualities, we were cold and lacked affection. One day Wife came back from a walk and bought me a book, she wanted to please me. I appreciated her concern and promised to read it. I put it somewhere and never found it again. After a few months, I occasionally Will think of it, but still can't find it. About half a year later, my mother was sick, she lived far away from us, and my wife went to nurse the sick mother, and the mother's condition worsened, and the wife's good qualities were revealed. One night, I was full of When I returned home with thanks to my wife, when I walked to the desk and opened the drawer, although I was not very clear, I felt somewhat inexplicable confidence—the book I could not find appeared in front of me.”

Once the motivation is gone, the lost property can be found.

I could cite countless examples like this, but I don't want to give any more.In my Psychopathology of Everyday Life, first published in 1901, you will find many examples of negligence.They are both used to prove the same fact.Through these examples, we can know that negligence and mistakes have their own intentions, and we can also understand how to discover or prove its meaning from the negligence situation.Therefore, I do not want to quote too much today, our purpose now is to treat these studies as an introduction to psychoanalysis.Now all I have to say are two points: one is that there were repeated and mixed mistakes, and the other is that our interpretation is corroborated by subsequent facts.

Indeed, the faults of repetition and compounding are the best representatives of faults.If we want only to prove that the faults have a meaning, let them be our guide, for even the stupidest person can understand their meaning, and the most critical person can be sure of it.The meaning of repeated mistakes is obvious, and it is by no means unprovoked.And speaking of the transformation of one kind of fault into another, it is more possible to see the most important and fundamental element of the fault; this element is not the form, nor the method it uses, but the tendency to use the fault to achieve the goal.Let's talk about a few examples of repeated forgetting.Jones said that once he left a written letter on the table for several days. For some reason, when he decided to mail it, he forgot to fill in the recipient's name and address, which caused the letter to be returned.After filling in the name and address, I forgot to paste the stamp.So, he had to admit that he didn't want to post the letter in his heart.

In another instance, a woman took someone else's item by mistake and then lost it.A certain lady traveled to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous painter. A German who believed in the Roman Catholic Church entertained them and presented them with a simple and elegant gold medal.The lady was upset because her brother-in-law wasn't interested in the giveaway.When her sister arrived, she returned home.She actually brought the gold medal back to the country, but she didn't know how to bring it back.She immediately wrote to her brother-in-law explaining the matter.However, on the second day, the gold medal was suddenly lost and could not be found, making it impossible for her to send it back as promised.Thus, she understood that her omission was intentional, that she wanted it to be her own.

So far I have given you an example of both forgetting and fault.You will no doubt remember that a man forgets an appointment, and the next day he resolves not to forget again, and yet he forgets the exact moment of the appointment.There is another similar example, a friend who loves both literature and art and science.He told me from his own experience: "A few years ago, a certain literary society elected me as a reviewer. At that time, I thought it might help my script to be performed in the F theater. After that, I forgot to attend the meeting many times. After seeing your research work on this issue, I blame myself and think that those people are no longer helpful to me, so I don't come to the meeting, which is a bit too mean. So, anyway, I will attend it in the next week The five-day meeting, and reminded myself many times, and then fulfilled the promise. When I went outside the venue, I was surprised to find that the door was closed and the meeting had ended. It turned out that today is Saturday, and I misremembered the date by one day.”

I would have collected more examples of this kind, but now, as I proceed to the following discussion, I would rather leave you to look at those that will prove to be in the future.

Or the gist of these instances is something we can guess, and their psychological context is unknown or even undeterminable.Therefore, our previous explanation is still a hypothesis, not convincing.It's just that something else happens later that can be used to justify the previous explanation.Once, when I visited a newlywed couple, the young wife smiled and told her recent experience: On the first day after returning from honeymoon, she invited her sister to go shopping together, while her husband went to work.Suddenly she saw a man opposite, she put her elbow to her sister and said softly, "Look, that's Mr. K." It turned out that she had forgotten that this man was her newly married husband.This story disturbed me deeply and made me afraid to think about it.Years later, when their marriage unfortunately broke up, I couldn't help but think of this little story.

Mette also told a story about a lady who forgot to try on her wedding dress the day before her wedding, which made the dressmaker very anxious, and it was late at night when he remembered.Not long after the marriage, her husband abandoned her.Mette thinks the bride's forgetting to try on the gown has a lot to do with it.A lady I know who is divorced from her husband often signs her maiden surname when dealing with money. After many years, people really call her Miss.There are a few other women I know who lost their wedding rings on their honeymoon, and I know of whose weddings resulted in the loss of rings.So far, I haven't been able to find an example with a happy ending.In Germany, there was a chemist who did not go to church when he got married, but went to the laboratory instead. He forgot about the wedding, and later, he never married again.

Perhaps you will think that the faults in these examples are what the ancients called omens.In fact, the symptoms are really mistakes, such as slipping or falling.Other signs are of course objective events, not subjective actions.However, you may not believe that it is sometimes not so simple to determine which type of a special case belongs to.That's because active behavior is often disguised to appear passive.

If we look back on our past life experience, we must think that perhaps we can avoid a lot of disappointment and pain, as long as we have the courage and determination to regard some small mistakes as omens, and see some tendencies when they are not obvious. Signal.Usually, we lack such courage and determination, and we are afraid of being ridiculed as superstitious by others.What's more, omens don't always come true; what we often say will explain to you why they don't always come true.

(End of this chapter)