. . . I could teach you
How to choose right, but then I am forsworn,
So will I never be: so may you miss me;
But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin
That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes.
They have o’erlook’d me, and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say: but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
Just that, therefore, which she meant merely to indicate faintly to him or really to conceal from him entirely, namely that even before the choice of the lot she was his and loved him, this the poet — with admirable psychological delicacy of feeling — makes apparent by her slip; and is able, by this artistic device, to quiet the unbearable uncertainty of the lover, as well as the equal suspense of the audience as to the issue of the choice.”
Notice, at the end, how subtly Portia reconciles the two declarations which are contained in the slip, how she resolves the contradiction between them and finally still manages to keep her promise:
“ . . . but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.”
Another thinker, alien to the field of medicine, accidentally disclosed the meaning of errors by an observation which has anticipated our attempts at explanation. You all know the clever satires of Lichtenberg (1742–1749), of which Goethe said, “Where he jokes, there lurks a problem concealed.” Not infrequently the joke also brings to light the solution of the problem. Lichtenberg mentions in his jokes and satiric comments the remark that he always read “Agamemnon” for “angenommen,”9 so intently had he read Homer. Herein is really contained the whole theory of misreadings.
At the next session we will see whether we can agree with the poets in their conception of the meaning of psychological errors.
1. “Fehl-leistungen.”
2. In the German, the correct announcement is, “Connetable schickt sein Schwert zurück.” The novice, as a result of the suggestion, announced instead that “Komfortabel schickt sein Pferd zurück.”
3. “Aufstossen” instead of “anstossen.”
4. “Begleit-digen” compounded of “begleiten” and “beleidigen.”
5. “Briefkasten” instead of “Brütkasten.”
6. “Geneigt” instead of “geeignet.”
7. “Versuchungen” instead of “Versuche.”
8. “Aufgepatzt” instead of “aufgeputzt.”
9. “Angenommen” is a verb, meaning “to accept.”
THIRD LECTURE
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS —(CONTINUED)
At the last session we conceived the idea of considering the error, not in its relation to the intended act which it distorted, but by itself alone, and we received the impression that in isolated instances it seems to betray a meaning of its own. We declared that if this fact could be established on a larger scale, then the meaning of the error itself would soon come to interest us more than an investigation of the circumstances under which the error occurs.
Let us agree once more on what we understand by the “meaning” of a psychic process. A psychic process is nothing more than the purpose which it serves and the position which it holds in a psychic sequence. We can also substitute the word “purpose” or “intention” for “meaning” in most of our investigations. Was it then only a deceptive appearance or a poetic exaggeration of the importance of an error which made us believe that we recognized a purpose in it?
Let us adhere faithfully to the illustrative example of slips of the tongue and let us examine a larger number of such observations. We then find whole categories of cases in which the intention, the meaning of the slip itself, is clearly manifest. This is the case above all in those examples in which one says the opposite of what one intended. The president said, in his opening address, “I declare the meeting closed.” His intention is certainly not ambiguous. The meaning and purpose of his slip is that he wants to terminate the meeting. One might point the conclusion with the remark “he said so himself.” We have only taken him at his word. Do not interrupt me at this point by remarking that this is not possible, that we know he did not want to terminate the meeting but to open it, and that he himself, whom we have just recognized as the best judge of his intention, will affirm that he meant to open it. In so doing you forget that we have agreed to consider the error entirely by itself. Its relation to the intention which it distorts is to be discussed later. Otherwise you convict yourself of an error in logic by which you smoothly conjure away the problem under discussion; or “beg the question,” as it is called in English.
In other cases in which the speaker has not said the exact opposite of what he intended, the slip may nevertheless express an antithetical meaning. “I am not inclined to appreciate the merits of my predecessor.” “Inclined” is not the opposite of “in a position to,” but it is an open betrayal of intent in sharpest contradiction to the attempt to cope gracefully with the situation which the speaker is supposed to meet.
In still other cases the slip simply adds a second meaning to the one intended. The sentence then sounds like a contradiction, an abbreviation, a condensation of several sentences. Thus the lady of energetic disposition, “He may eat and drink whatever I please.” The real meaning of this abbreviation is as though the lady had said, “He may eat and drink whatever he pleases. But what does it matter what he pleases! It is I who do the pleasing.” Slips of the tongue often give the impression of such an abbreviation. For example, the anatomy professor, after his lecture on the human nostril, asks whether the class has thoroughly understood, and after a unanimous answer in the affirmative, goes on to say: “I can hardly believe that is so, since the people who understand the human nostril can, even in a city of millions, be counted on one finger— I mean, on the fingers of one hand.” The abbreviated sentence here also has its meaning: it expresses the idea that there is only one person who thoroughly understands the subject.
In contrast to these groups of cases are those in which the error does not itself express its meaning, in which the slip of the tongue does not in itself convey anything intelligible; cases, therefore, which are in sharpest opposition to our expectations. If anyone, through a slip of the tongue, distorts a proper name, or puts together an unusual combination of syllables, then this very common occurrence seems already to have decided in the negative the question of whether all errors contain a meaning. Yet closer inspection of these examples discloses the fact that an understanding of such a distortion is easily possible, indeed, that the difference between these unintelligible cases and the previous comprehensible ones is not so very great.
A man who was asked how his horse was, answered, “Oh, it may stake— it may take another month.” When asked what he really meant to say, he