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XI

COMBINED FAULTY ACTS

Two of the last-
mentioned examples, my error which transfers
the Medici to Venice and that of the young man who knew
how to circumvent a command against a conversation on
the telephone with his lady love, have really not been fully
discussed, as after careful consideration they may be shown
to represent a union of forgetting with an error. I can show
the same union still more clearly in certain other examples.

(a) A friend related to me the following experience:
“Some years ago I consented to be elected to the committee
of a certain literary society, as I supposed the organization
might some time be of use to me in assisting me in the
production of my drama. Although not much interested,
I attended the meetings regularly every Friday. Some
months ago I was definitely assured that one of my dramas
would be presented at the theatre in F., and since that time
it regularly happened that I forgot the meeting of the
association. As I read their programme announcements I
was ashamed of my forgetfulness. I reproached myself,
feeling that it was certainly rude of me to stay away now
when I no longer needed them, and determined that I would
certainly not forget the next Friday. Continually I reminded
myself of this resolution until the hour came and I stood
before the door of the meeting-
room. To my astonishment
it was locked; the meeting was already over. I had mistaken
my day; it was already Saturday !

(b) The next example is the combination of a symptomatic
action with a case of mislaying; it reached me by remote
byways, but from a reliable source.

A woman travelled to Rome with her brother-
in-
law, a
renowned artist. The visitor was highly honoured by the

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German residents of Rome, and among other things received
a gold medal of antique origin. The woman was grieved
that her brother-in-law did not sufficiently appreciate the
value of this beautiful gift. After she had returned home she
discovered in unpacking that—without knowing how—she
had brought the medal home with her. She immediately
notified her brother-in-law of this by letter, and informed
him that she would send it back to Rome the next day.
The next day, however, the medal was so aptly mislaid that
it could not be found and could not be sent back, and then
it dawned on the woman what her “absent-
mindedness”
signified—namely, that she wished to keep the medal herself.

(c) Here are some cases in which the falsified action
persistently repeats itself, and at the same time also changes
its mode of action:—

Due to unknown motives, Jones¹ left a letter for several
days on his desk, forgetting each time to post it. He
ultimately posted it, but it was returned to him from the
Dead-
letter Office because he forgot to address it. After
addressing and posting it a second time it was again returned
to him, this time without a stamp. He was then forced to
recognize the unconscious opposition to the sending of the
letter.

(d) A short account by Dr. Karl Weiss (Vienna)² of a
case of forgetting impressively describes the futile effort to
accomplish something in the face of opposition. “How
persistently the unconscious activity can achieve its purpose
if it has cause to prevent a resolution from being executed,
and how difficult it is to guard against this tendency, will
be illustrated by the following incident: An acquaintance
requested me to lend him a book and bring it to him the
next day. I immediately promised it, but perceived a distinct
feeling of displeasure which I could not explain at the time.
Later it became clear to me: this acquaintance had owed
me for years a sum of money which he evidently had no

¹ Loc. cit., p. 42. ² Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 9.

170

intention of returning. I did not give this matter any more
thought, but I recalled it the following forenoon with the
same feeling of displeasure, and at once said to myself:
‘Your unconscious will see to it that you forget the book,
but you don’t wish to appear unobliging and will therefore
do everything not to forget it.’ I came home, wrapped the
book in paper, and put it near me on the desk while I wrote
some letters.

“A little later I went away, but after a few steps I recol-
lected that I had left on the desk the letters which I wished
to post. (By the way, one of the letters was written to a
person who urged me to undertake something disagreeable.)
I returned, took the letters, and again left. While in the
street-
car it occurred to me that I had undertaken to purchase
something for my wife, and I was pleased at the thought
that it would be only a small package. The association,
‘small package,’ suddenly recalled ‘book’—and only then
I noticed that I did not have the book with me. Not only
had I forgotten it when I left my home the first time, but
I had overlooked it again when I got the letters near which
it lay.”

(e) A similar mechanism is shown in the following fully
analysed observation of Otto Rank¹:—

“A scrupulously orderly and pedantically precise man
reported the following occurrence, which he considered
quite remarkable: One afternoon on the street wishing to
find out the time, he discovered that he had left his watch
at home, an omission which to his knowledge had never
occurred before. As he had an engagement elsewhere and
had not enough time to return for his watch, he made use
of a visit to a woman friend to borrow her watch for the
evening. This was the most convenient way out of the
dilemma, as he had a previous engagement to visit this
lady the next day. Accordingly, he promised to return her
watch at that time.

¹ Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 5.

171

“But the following day when about to consummate this
he found to his surprise that he had left the watch at home;
his own watch he had with him. He then firmly resolved
to return the lady’s property that same afternoon, and even
followed out his resolution. But on wishing to see the time
on leaving her he found to his chagrin and astonishment
that he had again forgotten to take his own watch.

“The repetition of this faulty action seemed so pathologic
to this order-
loving man that he was quite anxious to know
its psychologic motivation, and when questioned whether
he experienced anything disagreeable on the critical day of
the first forgetting, and in what connection it had occurred,
the motive was promptly found. He related that he had
conversed with his mother after luncheon, shortly before
leaving the house. She told him that an irresponsible relative,
who had already caused him much worry and loss of money,
had pawned his (the relative’s) watch, and, as it was needed
in the house, the relative had asked for money to redeem
it. This almost “forced” loan affected our man very pain-
fully and brought back to his memory all the disagreeable
episodes perpetrated by this relative for many years.

“His symptomatic action therefore proves to be manifoldly
determined. First, it gives expression to a stream of thought
which runs perhaps as follows: ‘I won’t allow my money
to be extorted this way, and if a watch is needed I will leave
my own at home.’ But as he needed it for the evening to
keep his appointment, this intention could only be brought
about on an unconscious path in the form of a symptomatic
action. Second, the forgetting expresses a sentiment some-
thing like the following: ‘This everlasting sacrificing of
money for this good-
for-
nothing is bound to ruin me
altogether, so that I will have to give up everything.’
Although the anger, according to the report of this man,
was only momentary, the repetition of the same sympto-
matic action conclusively shows that in the unconscious it
continued to act more intensely, and may be equivalent to

172

the conscious expression: ‘I cannot get this story out of
my head.¹ That the lady’s watch should later meet the
same fate will not surprise us after knowing this attitude
of the unconscious.’

“Yet there may be still other special motives which favour
the transference on the ‘innocent’ lady’s watch. The nearest
motive is probably that he would have liked to keep it as
a substitute for his own sacrificed watch, and that hence he
forgot to return it the next day. He also might have liked
to possess this watch as a souvenir of the lady. Moreover,
the forgetting of the lady’s watch gave him the excuse for
calling on the admired one a second time; for he was obliged
to visit her in the morning in reference to another matter,
and with the forgetting of the watch he seemed to indicate
that this visit for which an appointment had been made so
long ago was too good for him to be used simply for the
return of a watch.

“Twice forgetting his own watch and thus making possible
the substitution of the lady’s watch speaks for the fact that
our man unconsciously endeavoured to avoid carrying both
watches at the same time. He obviously thought of avoid-
ing the appearance of superfluity which would have stood
out in striking contrast to the want of the relative; but, on
the other hand, he utilized this as a self-admonition against
his apparent intention to marry this lady, reminding himself
that he was tied to his family (mother) by indissoluble
obligations.

“Finally, another reason for the forgetting of the lady’s
watch may be sought in the fact that the evening before he,
a bachelor, was ashamed to be seen with a lady’s watch
by his friends, so that he only looked at it stealthily, and
in order to evade the repetition of this painful situation he

¹This outlined action in the unconscious manifested itself
once in the form of a dream which followed the faulty action,
another time in the repetition of the same or in the omission of a
correction.

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could not take the watch along. But as he was obliged to
return it, there resulted here, too, an unconsciously per-
formed symptomatic action which proved to be a com-
promise formation between conflicting emotional feelings
and a dearly bought victory of the unconscious instance.”

In the same discussion Rank has also paid attention to
the very interesting relation of “faulty actions and dreams,”
which cannot, however, be followed here without a com-
prehensive analysis of the dream with which the faulty action
is connected. I once dreamed at great length that I had lost
my pocket-book. In the morning while dressing I actually
missed it; while undressing the night before the dream, I
had forgotten to take it out of my trousers pocket and put
it in its usual place. This forgetting was therefore not un-
known to me; probably it was to give expression to an
unconscious thought which was ready to appear in the
dream content.

I do not mean to assert that such cases of combined
faulty actions can teach anything new that we have not
already seen in the individual cases. But this change in
form of the faulty action, which nevertheless attains the
same result, gives the plastic impression of a will working
towards a definite end, and in a far more energetic way
contradicts the idea that the faulty action represents some-
thing fortuitous and requires no explanation. Not less
remarkable is the fact that the conscious intention thoroughly
fails to check the success of the faulty action. Despite all,
my friend did not pay his visit to the meeting of the literary
society, and the woman found it impossible to give up the
medal. That unconscious something which worked against
these resolutions found another outlet after the first road
was closed to it. It requires something other than the
conscious counter-resolution to overcome the unknown
motive; it requires a psychic work which makes the un-
known known to consciousness.