COMBINED FAULTY ACTS

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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 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 ex-
perience: “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 pre-
sented at the theatre in F¿., and since that
time it regularly happened that I forgot the
meeting of the association. As I read their

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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 deter-
mined 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 astonish-
ment 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 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

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Combined Faulty Acts

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 falsi-
fied action persistently repeats itself, and at the
same time also changes its mode of action :—

Due to unknown motives, Jones ¹ 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 some-
thing in the face of opposition. “How per-
sistently 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 re-
quested 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

¹Loc. cit., p. 42.

²Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 9.

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

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 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 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 disagree-
able.) 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 for-
gotten 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

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Combined Faulty Acts

following fully analysed observation of Otto
Rank¹⁾:—

“A scrupulously orderly and pedantically pre-
cise man reported the following occurrence, which
he considered quite remarkable: One after-
noon 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 engage-
ment 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 engage-
ment to visit this lady the next day. Accord-
ingly, he promised to return her watch at that
time.

“But the following day when about to con-
summate 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 motiva-
tion.

¹⁾ Zentralb. f. Psychoanalyse, ii. 5.

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

tion, 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 painfully
and brought back to his memory all the dis-
agreeable episodes perpetrated by this relative
for many years.

“His symptomatic action therefore proves to
be manifoldly determined. First, it gives ex-
pression 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 un-
conscious path in the form of a symptomatic
action. Second, the forgetting expresses a senti-
ment 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

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Combined Faulty Acts

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 sub-
stitute 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 for-
getting 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

¹This 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.

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Psychopathology of Everyday Life

watch speaks for the fact that our man uncon
sciously 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 unconsciously performed symptomatic
action which proved to be a compromise for
mation 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, how
ever, be followed here 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

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Combined Faulty Acts

while dressing I actually missed it; while un-
dressing the night before the dream I had for-
gotten to take it out of my trousers pocket and
put it in its usual place. This forgetting was there-
fore 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 re-
quires 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 some-
thing other than the conscious counter-resolu-
tion to overcome the unknown motive; it requires
a psychic work which makes the unknown known
to consciousness.

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