Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
Part II - What is behind casual and careless actions
I had followed a golden rule that whenever a published fact, a new observation, or thought came upon me which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to be scape from memory than favorable ones. – Darwin
INTRODUCTION
In Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud continues to expand his theory about the unconscious, starting with The Interpretation of Dreams, this time by pointing out it has a relationship with mundane actions carried by people in daily life. Suppose dreams represent one door to access the unconscious and understand its effect on consciousness and behavior. In that case, slips, mistakes, and forgetfulness are the very manifestations that evidence the existence of an unconscious - they are another door.
The book is a grand collection of cases observed mostly but not only by Freud. At the time, a collective effort was to parse out such phenomena and build a broader understanding of psychopathologies. Freud was one of several others, including newly formed psychoanalysts and regular people, who collected such stories to strengthen the theory.
Part I focused on the phenomena of forgetfulness and slips. In this final Part II, I’ll cover other common mistakes, such as careless and symptomatic actions, as well as casual actions, ending with a personal perspective on the importance of adopting a curious attitude and discovering what is revealed behind these common facets in people.
The person abandons the slips as they learn to extend their own responsibility. – Ferenczi
FORGETTING IMPRESSIONS AND INTENTIONS
After opening the book with his explorations on forgetfulness (of names, words, and memories), Freud dissects slips (of the tongue, writing, and reading). He then comes back to wrap up the theme of forgetfulness with views on cases of forgetting impressions and intentions. The essence of the theory stays consistent with other kinds of forgetfulness in that an unpleasurable motive leads the individual to forget.
FORGETTING IMPRESSIONS
In examples observed in himself, Freud reports rather personal circumstances from his daily life, such as when he forgot something his wife had told him, later associating that with a momentary feeling of irritation toward her at the time. Another case was shared by a man who once couldn’t find a book gifted by his wife when the couple was going through many disagreements. Here, the man associates the book with his feelings about the rough phase the couple was going through. Wanting to forget the latter, he ends up forgetting the former.
Freud tells the case when he forgot the location of a shop well known to him, which happened to be in the same neighborhood where a former patient of his lived, who Freud had been avoiding. Here, Freud forgets the shop location along with the story of his former patient, whose treatment had had some mishaps.
Another sub-group comprises cases motivated by discontent. An example is the story of a patient of Freud who had forgotten his keys and wallet on the way to his last session before summer break, a product of his frustration toward Freud and the treatment interruption at a crucial moment for him. Another situation was described by psychoanalyst Ernest Jones when he reported losing his pipe several times whenever he felt guilty for already having smoked too much. Freud himself tells the story of when he forgot an insight given by his then-close friend (Wilhelm) Fliess, which Freud himself wished to have had first.
To go to court under oath does not mean one cannot forget. – Freud
A typical case of discontent associated with work is the one of a man who can’t find the paper sheets he needs for his job, realizing that it was his unwillingness to work that day the reason for the forgetful act. Even more commonly found are the stories of people who forgot the death causes of family members and close ones because of such personal hardship when losing someone that inflicted amnesia.
For Freud, these types of forgetfulness as symptomatic or intentional. He reasons that as individuals experience something challenging or burdensome, they resist the effect generated by them. The resistance blocks the remembrance of such events and their associated affects. However, it also displaces its target to something less relevant (such as an object) with which it associates. The object then represents the affect the individual wants to repress (forget).
Freud finishes by adding that forgetting impressions also included what he referred to as memory illusions, or instances when one believes to know something they don’t or when someone believes in knowing someone else when they don’t.
FORGETTING INTENTIONS
These are cases when someone forgets something they intended to do and ends up not doing it. Freud theorizes that something in the person did not want to do it, but the person could not honor this; therefore, forgetting is an expression of this “internal commitment,” a sign of unwillingness, reluctance, or resistance.
An intention is an impulse for an action already approved but with delayed execution. – Freud
When dealing with intentions, Freud distinguishes what he considers forgetting important intentions from others considered secondary, stating that when situations matter, people don’t forget. He uses well-rounded analogies to make his point, citing instances such as forgetting to go to work or meet a love partner at a restaurant. Failing such intentions would mean either something more severe psychically or that these have become unimportant, therefore under the effect of an unconscious wish. The wish manifests through the absence of will that the person isn’t aware of or can’t admit to themself (let alone to another party).
Citing an example of his, Freud recalls his tendency to forget to wish others happy birthday by saying that he believed this gesture to mistake the pretended sympathy for genuine. He observes that when his emotions were indeed tied to an event, such as the death of someone, he would never forget to send his condolences.
Through the antagonism between a conventional obligation and an unconfessed personal evaluation, we can explain the cases where we forget to do something we promised to do for someone’s benefit. – Freud
The problem lies in that while the person who forgets might take the forgetting as a genuine reason, the other person intimately concludes, “had (s)he cared about this, (s)he would not have forgotten it.” Forgetting is a sign of contempt, and those considered forgetful in reality show disregard or disdain.
Two topics are worthy of attention regarding forgetfulness: money and procrastination. Freud does not devote much thinking to these two in this book; in the case of money, he mentions an example of his forgetting to pay for a cigar as a case of how contracting debt is linked with thoughts about his budget. He says people tend to forget their wallets or forget to pay someone when the very act of paying for them is hard, or they believe the other person should be paying for any unclear reason.
Procrastination, on the other hand, has a reason for it, according to Freud. Delaying an intention already internally “approved” involves internal resistance that is not being honored, exemplified in the case when Freud was asked to write a review of someone’s work and kept forgetting to do it. Upon analyzing his internal reasons, Freud eventually decided to stop fighting his resistance and apologized to the author, denying him the review.
CARELESS AND SYMPTOMATIC ACTIONS
There’s much to be said about how mundane actions communicate something about the unconscious; Freud believed that something was being expressed through these actions against the individual’s will or knowledge.
He begins by framing careless and symptomatic actions almost the same because they were difficult to be differentiated. Both go against what the person wanted, as a deviation from what was originally intended, but also reveal an unconscious wish that urged the action. Therefore, for Freud, none of these actions were just ‘careless’; they were ways through which the individual expressed unconscious desire.
Some cases and stories demonstrate careless actions:
When a person shows up at the door of someone else’s house, which they are close with, and reaches for their keys in an attempt to open the door to a property which is not theirs, but certainly close enough that they feel home there. Another case is when someone leaves a place quickly and picks up the wrong item. The common assumption says the mistake was hindered by being in a hurry when in fact, being in a hurry should facilitate picking up the correct item. Other groups of careless actions involve breaking or dropping things. Such as the example of when Freud broke his pen’s inkwell after a comment made by his sister that the inkwell did not match the other objects on his desk; or the woman who would always let the milk boil and spill on the floor, ultimately being cleaned by her dog – a clear sign of an intentional act driven by the love for her pet.
Such careless actions denote the accomplishment of an unconscious purpose that disturbs the intentional act while being socially portrayed as incompetence or lack of skill. The individual who commits the action perceives it as a silly mistake, even if the consequences aren’t marginal. Freud argued that the best way to interpret the unconscious desire driving such actions is to ask oneself why the action happened in the first place. Similar to dreams, interpreting the action happens via free association with other thoughts that might have led to the action that can reveal ingrained ideas or representations that persist as a nuisance or a wish of the individual.
Inabilities skillfully serve unconfessed intentions. – Freud
SYMBOLISM
The role of the unconscious in leading to actions is fait accompli for Freud. As he gradually shifts his focus to break down how it happens, he discovers the early human characteristic of establishing a symbolic relation between actual objects and ideas. In all cases involving a forgotten, broken, or dropped object, Freud revealed that the object represented something else – a thought, an idea, a memory, or even a person. He says that “awkward actions do not have a constant meaning, but rather serve as a means of representation for this or that intention, depending on the circumstances.”
The symbolic relation plays a double-sided part in both assisting the interpretation and being a product of it (think ‘chicken and egg’): it helps interpret careless actions and forgetfulness and exists as a result of interpreting. For example, in the case of a man who wishes to not work on a given day and accidentally breaks a machine causing interruption of his work. Interestingly, he does not recall saying to a colleague that he wished they didn’t have to work that day. For Freud, this casual action is rather intentional and justified somewhere else within the person outside of consciousness. Sexual relations are, by far, the theme driving most accidental happenings. For example, when two people bump into each other while walking on the street, symbolizing a wish (at least one of them) disguised as a sexual attraction (in his career, Freud would increasingly explain most human behavior by resorting to early sexual drives or memories).
Actions of self-harm can be explained by an unconscious self-reproach and take the form of symptoms, sometimes ultimately leading to suicide, which Freud sees as an impulse (in German, Trieb) that overcame contrary forces. The cases of a woman who survives a fall from a horse after feeling guilt toward her husband; a police officer who survives a run-over by a carriage after being ditched by his wife; and a man who survives after accidentally shooting himself in the temporal all can be seen as self-harm that occasionally ends up in death or suicide.
CASUAL ACTIONS
Freud states that causal actions differ from careless acts because they do not rely on a conscious intention and therefore do not require an excuse. Casual actions are discrete, appear out of nowhere, and cannot be framed as a lack of care or skill by someone. Although Freud sees casual actions as symptomatic because they express something that, in principle, the individual is not aware of, he acknowledges being difficult to infer the influence of the unconscious in symptomatic acts, making them hard to distinguish from careless actions.
Examples of casual actions would be tics and other distracted activities, such as doodling, messing with the hands, or playing with objects such as coins or clips – with objects here again carrying a symbolism that can be interpreted in the person’s narratives. Casual actions such as playing with objects such as rings or humming a song can be made aware to the individual and thus reveal an unconscious thought. Not rarely, however, it is difficult for the person who committed such action (slip, for that matter) to vehemently reject or at least neglect observations followed by conclusions by another person about their actions/slips by stating those don’t have any ground or are a product of misunderstanding by the other.
In all cases, the indifference with which we take the damage produced proves the existence of an unconscious intention in carrying out the act. – Freud
A PERSONAL TAKE
Three things are worthy of pointing out about The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. First, the somewhat underestimated truth that shows up through slips, careless actions, and forgetfulness. These phenomena are unfortunately more often dismissed than they should, and sadly, when brought to light, they tend to cause more discomfort or skepticism than insights about one’s desire and self-inflicted burden by neglecting it. This only reveals the resistance offered by conscious ideas that ultimately impede the individual from pursuing what (s)he really (unconsciously) wants. If embraced with an open mind, these mundane phenomena can elucidate the mysteries of why people tend to repeat mistakes in their lives or get into trouble more often than not.
Second, it is apparent throughout the book that Freud was not alone in pointing out these pathologies of everyday life. This is evidenced first by his deference to the field of Literature, crediting novelists and playwrights for being the pioneers in making the truths in slips explicit to the public in romances and plays. If not anything else, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is an extensive collection of stories offered by people, including the author himself, some of which, in becoming aware of Freud’s work, contributed by sharing their cases supporting the theory. Other evidence of a collective effort are cases presented by former doctors and newly formed psychoanalysts – namely Ludwig Jekels (Austrian physician and psychoanalyst), Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian physician and psychoanalyst, who became one of Freud’s earliest followers), Ernest Jones (a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst, lifelong friend and colleague of Freud, later became his official biographer).
Lastly, despite the two points made above, Freud’s stance as a doctor is still noticeable as he is not yet fully into the role of a psychoanalyst. This is made clear in the numerous passages where Freud attempts to guess or clarify for patients the causes for their slips, careless actions, or forgetfulness, typical of someone (a doctor) that is supposed to know what happens inside of another individual. Although he begins to leave traces of his transition to psychoanalysis, for example, referring to patients as analysands for the first time, Freud seems to be trying to validate his assumptions, as he indicates when saying, “I was curious about how what I looked for would manifest in that patient,” letting his biases dictate what he found.
It is undeniable, however, that Freud continued to disposition himself from the medical field at the time, as he steadily developed a new kind of praxis built upon invaluable rapport with his patients, encouraging them to reach unprecedented depths and confess (a word often used by Freud) their most secretive intimacies, finally contributing to the improvement of their condition.
The more nervous two people are, the more easily they provide each other with an occasion for discord, whose motivation each one rejects for themselves as decisively as they judge it to be true for the other.
This is the punishment for the inner insincerity of only allowing impulses to be expressed under the pretext of slips, forgetfulness, careless acts, and non-intentionality, which would be better to confess to oneself and others if they cannot be controlled. It is possible to affirm, quite generally, that each one continually makes a psychic analysis of the other and therefore learns to know them more than themselves.
The path to follow the admonition ‘know thyself’ passes through the study of one’s own seemingly casual acts and omissions. – Freud
With care,
Gui