The man did not notice that I remained standing before the table, being unable to take the seat, but his wife noticed it, and quickly nudged her husband and whispered: “Why, you have covered the gentleman’s place with your coat.”
These as well as other similar experiences have caused me to think that the actions executed unintentionally must inevitably become the source of misunderstanding in human relations. The perpetrator of the act, who is unaware of any associated intention, takes no account of it, and does not hold himself responsible for it. On the other hand, the second party, having regularly utilized even such acts as those of his partner to draw conclusions as to their purpose and meaning, recognizes more of the stranger’s psychic processes than the latter is ready either to admit or believe that he has imparted. He becomes indignant when these conclusions drawn from his symptomatic actions are held up to him; he declares them baseless because he does not see any conscious intention in their execution, and complains of being misunderstood by the other. Close examination shows that such misunderstandings are based on the fact that the person is too fine an observer and understands too much. The more “nervous” two persons are the more readily will they give each other cause for disputes, which are based on the fact that one as definitely denies about his own person what he is sure to accept about the other.
And this is, indeed, the punishment for the inner dishonesty to which people grant expression under the guise of “forgetting,” of erroneous actions and accidental emotions, a feeling which they would do better to confess to themselves and others when they can no longer control it. As a matter of fact it can be generally affirmed that every one is continually practising psychoanalysis on his neighbours, and consequently learns to know them better than each individual knows himself. The road following the admonition γνῶθι σεαυτὁν leads through the study of one’s own apparently casual commissions and omissions.
X
ERRORS
Errors of memory are distinguished from forgetting and false recollections through one feature only, namely, that the error (false recollection) is not recognized as such but finds credence. However, the use of the expression “error” seems to depend on still another condition. We speak of “erring” instead of “falsely recollecting” where the character of the objective 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,[61] 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 examination 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 361 I indicated as Schiller’s birthplace the city of Marburg, 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 conductor 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 Marbach. I maintain that I always knew this.
(b) On page 165 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 Barkides than the author who wrote this error and overlooked it in three proofs. The name of Hannibal’s father was Hamilcar Barkas; Hasdrubal was the name of Hannibal’s brother as well as that of his brother-in-law and predecessor in command.
(c) On pages 217 and 492 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.[62]