185

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 considera-
tion 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 com-
mittee 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

186

meeting was already over. I had mistaken my day; it was
already Saturday!

(b) The next example is the combination of a sympto-
matic 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
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.

¹⁾ Loc. cit., p. 42.

187

(d) A short account by Dr. Karl Weiss (Vienna)¹⁾ 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 intention of returning. I did
not give this matter any more thought, but I recalled it
the following forenoon with the same feeling of displeas-
ure, 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
recollected 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 dis-
agreeable). I returned, took the letters, and again left.
While in the street-car it occurred to me that I had under-
taken 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

¹⁾Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. ¶.

188

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 Rank:¹⁾

“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.

“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 patho-
logic 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

¹⁾Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 5.

189

COMBINED FAULTY ACTS

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 painfully and
brought back to his memory all the disagreeable episodes
perpetrated by this relative for many years.

“His symptomatic action therefore proves to be manif-
oldly 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 something 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 symptomatic action conclusively shows that
in the unconscious it continued to act more intensely,
and may be equivalent to 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

¹⁾This continued 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.

190

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 avoiding 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 situa-
tion he could not take the watch along. But as he was
obliged to return it, there resulted here, too, an uncon-
sciously performed symptomatic action which proved to
be a compromise formation between conflicting emo-
tional feelings and a dearly bought victory of the uncon-
scious 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

191

COMBINED FAULTY ACTS

without a comprehensive 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 unknown 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
something 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 unknown known to consciousness.