style="font-size:15px;"> Not call him back immediately, not openHis eyes upon the spot?
OCTAVIO.
(Recovering himself out of a deep study) He has now opened mine, And I see more than pleases me.
Q.
What is it?
OCTAVIO.
A curse on this journey!
Q.
But why so? What is it?
OCTAVIO.
Come, come along, friend! I must follow up
The ominous track immediately. Mine eyes
Are opened now, and I must use them. Come!
(Draws Q. on with him.)
Q.
What now? Where go you then?
OCTAVIO.
(Hastily.) To her herself
Q.
To —
OCTAVIO.
(Interrupting him and correcting himself.) To the duke. Come, let us go —.
Octavio meant to say, “To him, to the lord,” but his tongue slips and through his words “to her” he betrays to us, at least, the fact that he had quite clearly recognized the influence which makes the young war hero dream of peace.
A still more impressive example was found by O. Rank in Shakespeare. It occurs in the Merchant of Venice, in the famous scene in which the fortunate suitor makes his choice among the three caskets; and perhaps I can do no better than to read to you here Rank’s short account of the incident:
“A slip of the tongue which occurs in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene II, is exceedingly delicate in its poetic motivation and technically brilliant in its handling. Like the slip in Wallenstein quoted by Freud (Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 2d ed., p. 48), it shows that the poets well know the meaning of these errors and assume their comprehensibility to the audience. Portia, who by her father’s wish has been bound to the choice of a husband by lot, has so far escaped all her unfavored suitors through the fortunes of chance. Since she has finally found in Bassanio the suitor to whom she is attached, she fears that he, too, will choose the wrong casket. She would like to tell him that even in that event he may rest assured of her love, but is prevented from so doing by her oath. In this inner conflict the poet makes her say to the welcome suitor:
PORTIA:
I pray you tarry; pause a day or two,
Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong
I lose your company; therefore, forbear a while:
There’s something tells me, (but it is not love)
I would not lose you: . . .
. . . 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
