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ERRORS

ERRORS of memory are distinguished from forgetting and false recollec-
tions through one feature only, namely, that the error (false recollection)
is not recognized as such but finds credence. However, the use of the ex-
pression “error” seems to depend on still another condition. We speak of
“erring” instead of “falsely recollecting” where the character of the ob-
jective reality is emphasized in the psychic material to be reproduced—
that is, where something other than a fact of my own psychic life is to be
remembered, or rather something that may be confirmed or refuted
through the memory of others. The reverse of the error in memory in this
sense is formed by ignorance.

In my book The Interpretation of Dreams,¹ I was responsible for a
series of errors in historical, and above all, in material facts, which I was
astonished to discover after the appearance of the book. On closer ex-
amination, I found that they did not originate from my ignorance, but
could be traced to errors of memory explainable by means of analysis.

(a) On page 431 ¹ I indicated as Schiller’s birthplace the city of Mar-
burg, a name which recurs in Styria. The error is found in the analysis of a
dream during a night journey from which I was awakened by the con-
ductor calling out the name of the station Marburg. In the contents of
the dream, inquiry is made concerning a book by Schiller. But Schiller
was not born in the university town of Marburg but in the Swabian city of
Marbach. I maintain that I always knew this.

(b) On page 260, Hannibal’s father is called Hasdrubal. This error
was particularly annoying to me, but it was most corroborative of my
conception of such errors. Few readers of the book are better posted on
the history of the Barcides than the author who wrote this error and over
looked it in three proofs. The name of Hannibal’s father was Hamilcar

¹Translated by A. A. Brill. The Macmillan Company, New York; Allen & Unwin,
London; included in the present volume, pp. 180–549.

²This and succeeding page references to The Interpretation of Dreams are to this
volume.

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Barca; Hasdrubal was the name of Hannibal’s brother as well as that of
his brother-in-law and predecessor in command.

(c) On pages 303 and 547, I assert that Zeus emasculates his father
Kronos and hurls him from the throne. This horror I have erroneously
advanced by a generation; according to Greek mythology, it was Kronos
who committed this on his father Uranos.¹

How is it to be explained that my memory furnished me with false
material on these points, while it usually places the most remote and un-
usual material at my disposal, as the readers of my books can verify?
And, what is more, in three carefully executed proof-readings, I passed
over these errors as if struck blind.

Goethe said of Lichtenberg: “Where he cracks a joke, there lies a con-
cealed problem.” Similarly we can affirm of these passages cited from my
book: back of every error is a repression. More accurately stated: the
error conceals a falsehood, a disfigurement which is ultimately based on
repressed material. In the analysis of the dreams there reported, I was
compelled by the very nature of the theme to which the dream thoughts
related, on the one hand, to break off the analysis in some places before it
had reached its completion, and on the other hand, to remove an indis-
creet detail through a slight disfigurement of its outline. I could not act
differently, and had no other choice if I was at all to offer examples and
illustrations. My constrained position was necessarily brought about by
the peculiarity of dreams, which give expression to repressed thoughts, or
to material which is incapable of becoming conscious. In spite of this, it is
said that enough material remained to offend the more sensitive souls.
The disfigurement or concealment of the continuing thoughts known to
me could not be accomplished without leaving some trace. What I wished
to repress has often against my will obtruded itself on what I have taken
up, and evinced itself in the matter as an unnoticeable error. Indeed, each
of the three examples given is based on the same theme: the errors are
the results of repressed thoughts which occupy themselves with my de-
ceased father.

(ad a) Whoever reads through the dream analyzed on page 431 will
find some parts unveiled; in some parts he will be able to divine through
allusions that I have broken off the thoughts which would have contained
an unfavorable criticism of my father. In the continuation of this line of
thoughts and memories, there lies an annoying tale, in which books and a
business friend of my father, named Marburg, play a part; it is the same
name, the calling out of which in the southern railway station had aroused
me from sleep. I wished to suppress this Mr. Marburg in the analysis
from myself and my readers: he avenged himself by intruding where he

¹This is not a perfect error. According to the orphic version of the myth, the emascu-
lation was performed by Zeus on his father Kronos.

144

my patient’s journey, looking upon it as an unnecessary interruption to
the treatment, and as a material loss to the physician. Thereupon, I made
a quick survey of the library for the books.

One was Venedig als Kunststätte, and besides this, I imagined I had an
historic work of a similar order. Certainly there was Die Mediceer (The
Medici). I took them and brought them in to him; then, embarrassed, I
confessed my error. Of course, I really knew that the Medici had nothing
to do with Venice, but for a short time, it did not appear to me at all in-
correct. Now I was compelled to practise justice; as I had so frequently
interpreted my patient’s symptomatic actions, I could save my prestige
only by being honest and admitting to him the secret motives of my
averseness to his trip.

It may cause general astonishment to learn how much stronger is the
impulse to tell the truth than is usually supposed. Perhaps it is a result of
my occupation with psychoanalysis that I can scarcely lie any more. As
often as I attempt a distortion, I succumb to an error or some other faulty
act, which betrays my dishonesty, as was manifest in this and in the pre-
ceding examples.

Of all faulty actions, the mechanism of the error seems to be the most
superficial. That is, the occurrence of the error invariably indicates that
the mental activity concerned had to struggle with some disturbing in-
fluence, although the nature of the error need not be determined by the
quality of the disturbing idea, which may have remained obscure. It is
not out of place to add that the same state of affairs may be assumed in
many simple cases of lapses in speaking and writing. Every time we com-
mit a lapse in speaking or writing, we may conclude that through mental
processes, there has come a disturbance which is beyond our intention. It
may be conceded, however, that lapses in speaking and writing often
follow the laws of similarity and convenience, or the tendency to accelera-
tion, without allowing the disturbing element to leave a trace of its own
character in the error resulting from the lapses in speaking or writing. It
is the responsiveness of the linguistic material which at first makes pos-
sible the determination of the error, but it also limits the same.

In order not to confine myself exclusively to personal errors, I will re-
late a few examples which could just as well have been ranged under
“Lapses in Speech” or under “Erroneously Carried-out Actions,” but as
all these forms of faulty action have the same value, they may as well be
reported here.

(a) I forbade a patient to speak on the telephone to his lady-love,
with whom he himself was willing to break off all relations, as each con-
versation only renewed the struggling against it. He was to write her his
final decision, although there were some difficulties in the way of deliver-
ing the letter to her. He visited me at one o’clock to tell me that he had

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ERRORS

found a way of avoiding these difficulties, and among other things, he
asked me whether he might refer to me in my professional capacity.

At two o’clock, while he was engaged in composing the letter of re-
fusal, he interrupted himself suddenly and said to his mother, “Well, I
have forgotten to ask the Professor whether I may use his name in the
letter.” He hurried to the telephone, got the connection and asked the
question, “May I speak to the Professor after his dinner?” In answer, he
got an astonished “Adolf, have you gone crazy!” The answering voice
was the very voice which, at my command, he had listened to for the last
time. He had simply “made a mistake,” and in place of the physician’s
number had called up that of his beloved.

(b) During a summer vacation, a school teacher, a poor but excellent
young man, courted the daughter of a summer resident, until the girl fell
passionately in love with him, and even prevailed upon her family to
countenance the matrimonial alliance, in spite of the difference in posi-
tion and race. One day, however, the teacher wrote his brother a letter in
which he said: “Pretty, the lass is not at all, but she is very amiable, and
so far so good. But whether I can make up my mind to marry a Jewess I
cannot yet tell.” This letter got into the hands of the fiancée, who put an
end to the engagement, while at the same time, his brother was wondering
at the protestations of love directed to him. My informer assured me that
this was really an error and not a cunning trick.

I am familiar with another case in which a woman who was dissatisfied
with her old physician, and still did not openly wish to discharge him,
accomplished this purpose through the interchange of letters. Here, at
least, I can assert confidently that it was error and not conscious cunning
that made use of this familiar comedy-
motive.

(c) Brill¹ tells of a woman who, inquiring about a mutual friend, er-
roneously called her by her maiden name. Her attention having been
directed to this error, she had to admit that she disliked her friend’s hus-
band and had never been satisfied with her marriage.

A similar trick was played by me quite recently. I had promised my
oldest brother to pay him a long-
due visit at a seashore in England; as
the time was short, I felt obliged to travel by the shortest route and with-
out interruption. I begged for a day’s sojourn in Holland, but he thought
that I could stop there on my return trip. Accordingly, I journeyed from
Munich through Cologne to Rotterdam—Hook of Holland—where I was
to take the steamer at midnight to Harwich. In Cologne, I had to change
cars; I left my train to go into the Rotterdam express, but it was not to
be found. I asked various railway employees, was sent from one platform
to another, got into an exaggerated state of despair, and could easily

¹Loc. cit., p. 191.

146

reckon that during this fruitless search, I had probably missed my con-
nection.

After this was corroborated, I pondered whether or not I should spend
the night in Cologne. This was favored by a feeling of piety, for according
to an old family tradition, my ancestors were once expelled from this city
during a persecution of the Jews. But eventually I came to another de-
cision; I took a later train to Rotterdam, where I arrived late at night and
was thus compelled to spend a day in Holland. This brought me the ful-
fillment of a long-fostered wish—the sight of the beautiful Rembrandt
paintings at The Hague and in the Royal Museum at Amsterdam. Not
before the next forenoon, while collecting my impressions during the
railway journey in England, did I definitely remember that only a few
steps from the place where I got off at the railroad station in Cologne, in-
deed, on the same platform, I had seen a large sign, “Rotterdam—Hook
of Holland.” There stood the train in which I should have continued my
journey.

If one does not wish to assume that, contrary to my brother’s orders, I
had really resolved to admire the Rembrandt pictures on my way to him,
then the fact that despite clear directions, I hurried away and looked for
another train must be designated as an incomprehensible “blinding.”
Everything else—my well-acted perplexity, the emergence of the pious
intention to spend the night in Cologne—was only a contrivance to hide
my resolution until it had been fully accomplished.

One may possibly be disinclined to consider the class of errors which I
have here explained as very numerous or particularly significant. But I
leave it to your consideration whether there is no ground for extending
the same points of view also to the more important errors of judgment, as
evinced by people in life and science. Only for the most select and most
balanced minds does it seem possible to guard the perceived picture of
external reality against the distortion to which it is otherwise subjected in
its transit through the psychic individuality of the one perceiving it.