He there speaks of having ‘at last grasped a little thing that I have long suspected!?--the way in which a name sometimes escapes one and a quite wrong substitute occurs to one in its pl
TH E STA N D A R D E D IT IO N O F T H E CO M PLETE PSYCHO LO G ICAL W O RK S OF SIG M U N D F R E U D * VOLUM E VI TH E ST A N D A R D E D IT IO N O F T H E CO M PLETE PSYCHO LO G ICAL W O R K S O F SIGMUND FREUD Translatedfrom the German under the General Editorship o f JAMES STRACHEY In Collaboration with ANNA FREUD Assisted by ALIX STRACHEY and ALAN TYSON V O L U M E VI (1901) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life LONDON THE HOGARTH PRESS AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS PU B L ISH E D BY T H E H O O A R T H PRESS LIM ITED BY A R R A N G E M E N T W IT H E R N E S T B E N N LTD* LONDON • C L A R K E , IR W IN AND CO L T D TORONTO \ This Edition first Published in i9 Reprinted 1962,1964,1968,1971, i 973>l 975>l 97&and x9 ^ All rights reserved No part of this publica tion may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Hogarth Press Ltd TR A N SL A T IO N © ALAN TYSON i E D IT O R IA L M ATTER © A N G ELA R IC H A R D S AND T H E IN S T IT U T E OF P S Y C H O -A N A L Y S IS i P R IN T E D AND BOUND IN G R E A T B R IT A IN BY B U T L E R AND T A N N E R L T D , FRO M B CONTENTS VOLUME SIX TH E PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE (1901) Editor’s Introduction I The Forgetting o f Proper Names II T he Forgetting o f Foreign Words page ix III T he Forgetting o f Names and Sets o f Words 15 IV Childhood Memories and Screen Memories 43 V Slips o f the Tongue VI Misreadings and Slips o f the Pen 106 V II T he Forgetting o f Impressions and Intentions 134 V III Bungled Actions 162 XI Symptomatic and Chance Actions 191 X Errors 217 XI Combined Parapraxes 230 X II Determinism, B elief in Chance and SuperstitionSome Points o f V iew 239 Bibliography and Author Index List o f Abbreviations Index o f Parapraxes General Index Frontispiece Sigmund Freud in 1906 (Aet 50) By Permission o f Sigmund Freud Copyrights 53 T H E P S Y C H O P A T H O L O G Y OF EV E R Y D A Y LIFE Forgetting, Slips of the Tongue, Bungled Actions, Superstitions and Errors (1901) Nun 1st die Luft von solchem Spuk so voll, Dass niemand weiss, wie er ihn meiden soil Faust, Part II, Act V, Scene Now fills the air so many a haunting shape, That no one knows how best he may escape (Bayard Taylor’s translation) EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Z U R PSY C H O PA TH O LO G IE DES ALLTAGSLEBEN (Ober Vergessen, Versprechen, Vergreifen, Aberglaube und Irrtum) (a) G e r m a n E d it io n s : 1901 Monatsschr Psychiat Neurolog., 10 (1) [July], 1-32, and (2) [August], 95-143 1904 In book form, Berlin: Karger Pp 92 (Revised reprint.) 1907 2nd ed (Enlarged.) Same publishers Pp 132 1910 3rd ed (Enlarged.) Same publishers Pp 149 1912 4th ed (Enlarged.) Same publishers Pp 198 1917 5th ed (Enlarged.) Same publishers Pp iv + 232 1919 6th ed (Enlarged.) Leipzig and Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag Pp iv + 312 1920 7th ed (Enlarged.) Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: Same publishers Pp iv ■+■ 334 1922 8th ed Same publishers (Reprint of above.) 1923 9th ed Same publishers (Reprint of above.) 1924 10th ed (Enlarged.) Same publishers Pp 310 1924 G.S., 4, 1-310 1929 11th ed Same publishers (Reprint of 10th ed.) 1941 G.W., Pp iv + 322 (b) E n g l is h T r a n s l a t io n : Psychopathology o f Everyday Life 1914 London: Fisher Unwin; New York: Macmillan Pp vii + 342 (Tr and Introduction A A Brill.) 1938 London: Penguin Books (New York, 1939.) Pp 218 (Same trans.) x E D I T O R S IN T R O D U C T I O N 1938 In The Basic Writings o f Sigmund Freud, New York: Modem Library Pp 35-178 (Same trans.) 1949 London: Ernest Benn Pp vii + 239 (Same trans.) 1958 London: Collins Pp viii + 180 (Same trans.) The present, entirely new, translation is by Alan Tyson Only one other of Freud’s works, the Introductory Lectures (1916-17), rivals this one in the number of German editions it has passed through and the number of foreign languages into which it has been translated.1 In almost every one of its numer ous editions fresh material was included in the book, and in this respect it might be thought to resemble The Interpretation of Dreams and the Three Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality, to both of which Freud made constant additions throughout his life But the cases have in fact no similarity In these other two books the fresh material consisted for die most part of important enlargements or corrections of clinical findings and theoretical conclusions In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life almost the whole of the basic explanations and theories were already present in the earliest editions;2 the great mass of what was added later consisted merely in extra examples and illustra tions (partly produced by Freud himself but largely by his friends and pupils) to throw further light upon what he had already discussed No doubt he felt particular pleasure both in the anecdotes themselves and in being presented with such widespread confirmation of his views But the reader cannot help feeling sometimes that the wealth of new examples inter rupts and even confuses the main stream of the underlying argument (See, for instance, pp 67-80 and 194 n.) Here, as in the case of Freud’s books on dreams and on jokes but perhaps to a still greater degree, the translator has to face Besides the English version of 1914, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was during Freud’s lifetime translated into Russian (1910), Polish (1912), Dutch (1916), French (1922), Spanish (1922), Hungarian (1923), Japanese (1930, two versions), Serbo-Croat (1937), Czech (1938), as well as Portuguese and Swedish (dates unspecified) * A few new points of theory were discussed in the later editions of the last chapter of the book E D I T O R ’S I N T R O D U C T I O N xi the fact that a large proportion of the material to be dealt with depends on a play upon words which is totally untranslatable In the previous version the problem was dealt with in a drastic fashion by Brill; he omitted every example which in volved terms that could not be rendered into English and inserted a certain number of examples of his own which illus trated similar points to the omitted ones This was no doubt an entirely justifiable procedure in the circumstances At the date at which Brill made his version, Freud’s work was almost un known in English-speaking countries, and it was important not to put up unnecessary obstacles to the circulation of this book which had been designed by Freud himself expressly for the general reader (cf p 272, footnote) How well Brill succeeded in this aim is shown by the fact that by 1935 sixteen printings of his translation had been issued, and many more were to follow His own examples, too, were for the most part excellent and two or three of them were in fact included by Freud in later editions of the German original Nevertheless there are obvious objections to perpetuating this situation, especially in any edition intended for more serious students of Freud’s writings In some instances, for example, the omission of a piece of Freud’s illustrative material inevitably brought with it the omission of some im portant or interesting piece of theoretical comment Moreover, though Brill announced in his preface his intention ‘to modify or substitute some of the author’s cases’, in the text itself these substitutions are not as a rule explicitly indicated and the reader may sometimes be uncertain whether he is reading Freud or Brill Brill’s translation, it must be added, was made from the German edition of 1912 and has remained unaltered in all the later reprints Thus it entirely passes over the very numerous additions to the text made by Freud during the ten or more subsequent years The total effect of the omissions due to these different causes is a startling one O f the 305 pages of text of the latest edition, as printed in the Gesammelte Werke, between 90 and 100 (almost one third of the book, that is) have never hitherto appeared in English The completeness of the present translation must, therefore, be weighed against the undoubted loss of readability caused by the Standard Edition policy of dealing with play upon words by the pedestrian method of giving the original German phrases