Chapter 3 Lecture 2 Psychology of Negligence

We start now with observations of facts, not assumptions.For this purpose we may select phenomena which are frequently encountered but which have never been noticed.These phenomena are common in healthy people and have nothing to do with disease.What I am going to say is the common mistake of all.For example, you want to say something, but you use the wrong word [this is called "slip of the tongue" slip of the tongue]; and there are similar mistakes in writing [this is called "slip of the pen"]. Being ignored; another example is reading a wrong word [this is called "misreading"];There is also a group of faults due to temporary, though not permanent, forgetting, as when a person cannot remember the name of a familiar person he meets; Later, he remembered it again, which shows that he had only temporarily forgotten it.There is another kind of fault which does not have this transitory character, such as misplacing an object so that it cannot be found later.This is also a kind of forgetting, but it is slightly different from ordinary forgetting; because we are surprised and troubled by this kind of forgetting and cannot understand it.There are also certain faults, though also temporary, which are of the same kind, as when a man always knows that something is not true, and sometimes believes it to be true.There are many more phenomena like this.

These nouns of fault all start with "ver" in German, which shows the relationship between them.Most of them refer to temporary, unimportant actions without significant meaning in life.For example, missing objects are not really important.So these facts don't attract much attention.Not much interest either. If I now invite you to study these phenomena, you will perhaps object impatiently, "There are so many mysteries and mysteries in the world and in insanity that deserve explanation, that too much attention is paid to these insignificant mistakes. Power, it's so boring. If you could explain how a man with eyes and ears can see or hear things that are not there during the day, or explain how a man can suddenly believe that he is being persecuted by his dearest, or If one can justify with the most ingenious reason a phantasy which would strike any child as absurd, then one will be willing to pay attention to psychoanalysis. But if analysis can only explain why an orator misspells a word, or why a housewife misses If we don't know the reasons for such trivial things as keys, then our time and energy should be reserved for studying more important things."

My answer is: don't worry, your criticism is wrong.Of course, psychoanalysis cannot boast that it has never done trivial things. On the contrary, the materials it observes are often ridiculed by other sciences as trivial, ordinary, and unimportant events, and can even be said to be waste in the phenomenal world.But your criticism seems to think that every important event must often have important manifestations.But at a certain condition, at a certain moment, is it not possible for a very important event to be expressed by a trivial one?This is easy to illustrate.For example, the young men in the audience here, how do they know that they have won the favor of women?Do we have to wait for her to give you a clear declaration and a warm hug?Wouldn't you be content if she just waited for someone to look you in the dark, give you a sign, or shake your hand for a second?Or if you are a detective, investigating a murder case, can you expect the murderer to leave a photo of you with your name and address at the scene?Wouldn't you be satisfied that you already had the clues you were looking for?Therefore, tiny symbols have their considerable value, and we should not take them lightly; through these signals, it may be possible to discover important events.You think that the big questions of the world and of science have priority for our interest, and I certainly agree.Yet it will do you no good if you decide to work on big problems.How to proceed with the second step is inevitably at a loss.As far as scientific work is concerned, if there is a road in front of you, you should follow it.If you go forward without prejudice or prejudice, you may be able to connect events to each other, and small things to great things, by a little work.Fortunately, he embarked on the track of studying big problems.

It is from this point of view that I hope that you will be interested in studying these small mistakes of normal people.I would now like to ask those who do not understand psychoanalysis how to explain these phenomena. His first answer must be: "These little things are not worth explaining." What did he mean by this sentence?Does he think that small things can be one and the other, and can't be causally connected with other events?Whoever denies the causal law of natural phenomena in this way, in any way, will inevitably throw the scientific cosmology into the sky.Religious views are not so absurd, because according to religious teachings, if it is not God's will, even "a tiny bird will not fall to the ground without a reason."I think our friend will not insist on his first answer; he will concede that if he studies these phenomena, he will immediately obtain a considerable explanation.It must be due to a slight insanity, or laxity of mind, which can be found.A person who speaks well on weekdays, but now makes a mistake, must be the result of one being tired or uncomfortable, two being excited, and three being focused on other things.This is easily verifiable.Fatigue, headaches, or periodic migraines often make people say the wrong things.Forgetting the proper noun often occurs in such cases; many people predict that a migraine is about to attack because they cannot remember the proper name.When a person is excited, he often makes typos or does wrong things; when his attention is distracted or his attention is concentrated on other things, he often forgets some unplanned things and many things he wants to do.The professor in Bratt's play can be used as an example.He took someone else's hat for forgetting his own umbrella while thinking about the second volume.We know from our own experience that a man forgets his plans or promises when he is absorbed in other things.

These words, which seem perfectly intelligible and irrefutable, perhaps do not arouse much interest, nor do they satisfy our expectations.Let us examine this theory of negligence more closely.The conditions under which the negligence occurs which these people speak of are not of the same kind.Diseases and disorders of the circulatory system are the physiological basis for the disturbance of normal functions; excitement, fatigue, and troubles, etc., can be regarded as psychophysiological causes, which are easily reduced to theories.Fatigue, annoyance, and general excitement can cause attention to scatter, so that concentration cannot be engaged in the action, making it easy for things to be disturbed and not completed accurately.If the blood circulation of the nerve center is faulty or changed, the same result can be caused, and the distraction of attention will still be caused.In short, disturbance of attention, whether organic or psychological, is the chief cause of all faults.

This explanation, however, is of little help to the study of psychoanalysis, so we shall discard it.To be honest, after a more in-depth study of this issue, it can be seen that this "attention" statement does not fully correspond to the facts, or at least cannot infer everything from it.We know that there are many people who do not feel tired or excited, and everything is normal, but such mistakes and forgetting can also occur; unless because of them, we attribute them afterwards to their own unwillingness. A state of excitement recognized.At the same time, this problem is not so simple, because if the attention is strengthened, things may not necessarily succeed; if the attention is weakened, things may not necessarily fail.There are many actions that are purely automatic and can be successful without attention.For example, when walking, you may not know where you are going, but you can reach your destination without going the wrong way.That's at least what we're used to.A luthier who is good at playing the piano can get into tune without thinking.He may, of course, make occasional mistakes, but if automatic playing increases the danger of error, the luthier who, through constant practice, makes his playing entirely automatic, is the most in danger of falling into it.However, we know that there are many movements that are very successful when no special concentration is given, and sometimes the desire for success does not dare to distract the attention a little, but leads to mistakes.You may say that it is the result of excitement, but why it does not promote the concentration of attention on the end for which it was intended, is beyond our power to understand.Therefore, if a person reverses what he wants to say in an important conversation, it will be difficult to explain it with psychophysiological or attentional theory.

There are many other secondary features about these faults, which these theories cannot explain.For example, a person who temporarily forgets someone's name is very upset, and he can't help trying to remember it.Why is it that although he feels annoyed, he can't always prompt him to grasp the word that is already on the tip of his tongue and can be remembered immediately when someone mentions it?Or take another example.Sometimes errors increase, interlock with each other, or replace each other.For example, a person forgets an appointment the first time; the second time, he tries very hard to remember, only to find that he has misremembered the date or the hour.Another example is that a person wants to remember a forgotten word in various ways, but when thinking about it, he completely forgets the second word that can be the clue of the first word.If he thus pursues the second word, the third is forgotten, and so on.The same goes for typographical errors.This mistake is said to have been made once in a certain "Social-Democratic" paper.The newspaper recorded a festival banquet and said: "His Highness, the Clown Prince" was corrected the next day, and the newspaper apologized and said: "The wrong sentence should be corrected as 'His Highness the Rooster'" His Highness, the Clown Prince.Another example is that a certain general is quite famous for his cowardice.A military reporter interviewed the general, and in the correspondence he referred to the general as this battle-scared veteran (meaning a soldier who is afraid of the battle).The next day, he apologized, saying yesterday's words should be corrected as the bottle-scarred veteran.These mistakes are said to be the result of the monster in the typesetting machine-the meaning of this metaphor is beyond the scope of psychophysiology.

Wrong words can also be caused by being suggested.Now tell a story to illustrate.There is a new actor who plays an important part in The Maid of Orleans, and he is supposed to report to the king, "The Constable sends back hiss Word" [meaning "The Constable sent back his sword"].During the rehearsal, the main character joked, several times repronouncing the text to "The Komfortabelsendsbackhissteed" to the timid newcomer. [meaning "the single carriage sent the horse back"].During the performance, although the unfortunate new actor was repeatedly warned not to make mistakes, or because of the warnings, he actually reported the wrong thing.

These peculiarities of negligence are by no means explained by the theory of distraction; yet we do not need to disprove the theory on this account, for it may be complete if a certain link is added.There are, however, many faults which can be considered in another light. We choose tongue slip as the most appropriate representative.Of course, clerical errors and reading errors can also be used as examples.But we must remember that we have been discussing only where and under what circumstances something is wrong; and no answer has been sought so far.We can also ask why only this particular error and not others?This requires consideration of the nature of the fault.It should be noted that as long as this question remains unanswered and the consequences of the error unexplained, the psychological aspect remains a purely accidental phenomenon even though the physiological theory has been proposed.For example, if I mispronounce a word, I can say it in countless ways, and I can use more than a thousand other words to replace the correct one, or there can be many variations of the correct one.Is there a reason for this particular error among many possible errors?Or just by chance?Is there a reasonable answer to this question?

In 1895, Mellinger and Meyer, a linguist and a psychiatrist, tried to study tongue slips from this aspect.They collected many examples and discussed them purely from a narrative point of view.This is of course not an explanation, but it can thus lead to an explanation.They divided confusion into five types: "inversion" of words and syllables, inversion of letters, "pre-presentation", "continuation of speech", "mixing", and "substitution".Now try to illustrate with examples.For example, "the owner of the yellow dog" is mistaken for "the owner's yellow dog". This is an example of "inversion" in terms of the position of the word.Another example is a waiter in a hotel knocking on the door of the archbishop. The bishop asked who knocked, and the waiter panicked and replied: "My servant, your excellency is here." This can also be regarded as a good example of inversion.As for the "mixing" of letters in the sentence, it is as the missionary said: "HoWoftendo wefeelahhalf-Warmedfishwithinus".Another example is that someone wants to say that he is passive unrequited love this time, that is, unrestrained unrequited love, but he is wrong, this time he is being loved, this is a condensed example.As for speech persistence, it occurs because the syllables already spoken interfere with the syllables to be spoken.For example, "Gentlemen, please drink aufzustossen to wish the health of our leader" is mistakenly read as: "Sirs, please burp aufzustossen to wish the health of the leader".

Another example is that a member of the parliament called another member "honourable member for Central Hell", which means an honorary member in the central hell, and mistakenly called Hull as Hell; another example is a soldier who said to a friend: "I wish we had a thousand people defeated on the mountain." ", mistaking for-tified guards for mortified defeats; these are examples of "voice persistence".As far as the first example is concerned, the sound of ell is continued from the previous word "member for Central". In the second example, the sound of m in the word "men" is continued to form mor-tified.These three examples are not very common.The more common example is "hybrid".For example, a man asks a lady if he can "send" her begleit-digen along the way; the word "send" is a mixture of the words "to escort" begleiten and "to insult" beleidigen.But the young man must know that if he is so reckless, he will have little hope of success with women.Another example is a poor woman who said that she has an incurable ghost disease incu-rable infernaldisease translation note: infernal may be an internal mistake, internaldisease means internal disease; another example is a lady who said: "Men rarely know what women have" Useless 'the value of ineffectual qualities' Annotation: ineffec-tual or affectional means emotional; these can be called "replacement". Mellinger and Meyer's explanations for these examples are not perfect. They think that the sound and syllable of a word have unequal sound value, and the sound with higher sound value can interfere with the lower sound value.This conclusion is obviously based on "uncommon foreshadowing" and "speech persistence"; as far as other tongue errors are concerned, even if there is a high or low sound value, it is not a problem.The most frequent slip of the tongue is that of substituting one word for another similar word; and many think that this resemblance is sufficient for the explanation.For example, when a certain professor started his lecture, he said: "I don't want to" geneigt evaluate the merits of the former professor,——"I don't want to" is the mistake of "unworthy" geeignet. The most common and most noticeable slip of the tongue, however, is to say what was meant to be said backwards.These examples are not the result of confusion due to the similarity of sound, so that some people think that opposite words are strongly connected with each other, so there are very close psychological associations.There are many examples of this.For example, once the Speaker of the National Assembly said at the beginning of the meeting: "Gentlemen, today there is a quorum, so I declare the meeting adjourned." Any other association can sometimes be equally at work with unpleasant results.Once, the child of Helmholtz married the child of the industrial leader and inventor Siemens. During the banquet, the famous physiologist Dubois-Lemon was invited to give a speech.His speech was of course beautiful. At the end, he raised his glass to celebrate and said: "May Siemens and Halske have a happy union for a hundred years." It turns out that Siemens and Halske is the name of an old company, and all Berliners are familiar with it, just as Londoners are familiar with "Crosse and Black Well". Therefore, attention must be paid to the similarity between words and the value of sound-values, and the association of words must also be paid attention to.But this is not enough. In a certain type of instance, if we want to fully explain the error, we have to study together the sentences that have been said or thought before.According to Mellinger, these examples are all "speech persistence", but the origin is more remote. —I have to confess, then, that I have the impression that slips of the tongue are even more inexplicable. But in studying the examples given above, we have another impression worth noting.We have discussed the common conditions which cause slips of the tongue, but have not studied the consequences of slips of the tongue.Once the results of tongue slips are studied, it will be found that some tongue slips have meaning in themselves.That is to say, the result of tongue slip can be regarded as a purposeful psychological process, a content and meaningful expression.We used to speak only of errors or faults, and now it seems that such faults are also sometimes a legitimate action, but they come suddenly to replace those more expected actions. In some instances, the significance of negligence seems obvious.The Speaker declared the session closed at the beginning, and we may guess its significance as soon as we know the circumstances which gave rise to the error.He thinks that this session will definitely not have a good result, and it is better to end the session happily; so the meaning of this mistake is not difficult to guess.Another example is that a lady praised another lady and said: "I know this lovely hat must be twisted into cufgepatzt by you." By mistakenly "embroidered into" aufgeputzt into "twisted", she implied that this hat belonged to laymen work.Another example is a lady who is famous for her stubbornness. She said: "My husband asked the doctor to order the food. The doctor said that he doesn't need to have special food. He just needs to eat and drink what I choose." The meaning of this mistake is also easy to understand. . Assuming now that most slips of the tongue, and slips in general, have significance, the significance of slips, which we have not noticed before, must call special attention; and all other points have to be relegated to a secondary position.Physiological and psychophysiological conditions can be neglected, and all attention can be devoted to a purely psychological study of the meaning and intention of a fault.We can now use this point of view for a further discussion of negligent material. But before discussing it, there is another clue that I want you to pay attention to. Poets often use tongue slips and other mistakes as tools for literary expression.This proves that he considers the slip or slip of the tongue to be meaningful; for it is what he intended to do.He will never make an occasional slip of the pen, and let this slip of the tongue become a slip of the tongue of the characters in the play.He wanted to use this mistake to express a deep meaning, and we can also study its intention - did he mean that the character in the play was distracted, or overtired, or had a headache?Of course, if poets really want to use mistakes to express their meaning, we don't have to pay too much attention to it.Mistakes may actually have no profound meaning, but are just an accidental event in the spirit, or have only accidental meaning, but poets can still use literary techniques to give meaning to mistakes in order to achieve literary goals.Therefore, it is better to ask poets than linguists and psychiatrists to study tongue slips. An instance of this error is found in Schiller's Wallenstein Bicolomini, Act I, Scene 5.In the previous scene, the young Piccolomini had accompanied Wallenstein's beautiful daughter to the camp, so he enthusiastically supported Duke Wallenstein and advocated peace.After he withdraws, his father Octavio and the courtier Questenberg can't help but be alarmed.Scene 5 has the following dialogue: Questenberg: Oh, is that so?Friend, shall we let him be deceived?Shall we just let him leave us, not call him back, not open his eyes here and now? Octavio: Take heart from your contemplation.He has opened my eyes, and I can see clearly. Questenberg: See what? Ostavio: What a damn trip! Questenberg: Why?What exactly do you mean? Ostavio: Friends, come on!I have to immediately follow this unfortunate omen and see what happened with my own eyes—come with me! Questenberg: What?Where are you going? Ostavio: Go to her hastily.to her herself. Questenberg: To... Ostavio: Corrected myself to the Duke.Come, come with me. Ostavio wanted to say "to the Duke", but he made a mistake. From the words "to her", it can be seen that he also has a crush on the Duke's daughter. Ranke gets a more impressive example in Shakespeare's plays.This is exemplified in the scene in the play where the lucky suitor Bassanio chooses the three chests of treasure.I'd better read Ranke's short review right now: "The slip of the tongue in Shakespeare's famous play, Act III, Scene 2, is the best both for the poetic emotion it expresses and for its technical dexterity. The similarity with the slip of tongue in Wallenstein quoted in "The Psychopathology of Life" also shows that the poet is well aware of the structure and meaning of this slip, and assumes that the general audience can understand it. The choice of a husband must be purely by chance. She escaped all the suitors she didn't like by good luck. Bassanio was her favorite, and he also came to propose marriage. She was afraid that he also chose the wrong box. She wants to tell him that even if he chooses wrong, she can still win her love, but she can't because of her vow to her father. Shakespeare makes her speak to Bassanio in the following words in the midst of this inner conflict: I ask you to wait a moment!Wait a day or two before venturing out!By choosing the wrong one, I lose your companion; so I beg you to wait!I feel like I don't want to lose you, but that's not love. ...I may be able to tell you how to choose, but I am bound by my oath to do so, so you may not be able to choose me.But the thought that you might choose the wrong one made me want to break the oath.Don't look at me, your eyes have conquered me, and divided me in two; one half is yours, and the other half is yours--but I should say mine, and if it is mine, then of course it is Yours, so everything is yours now. She wanted to tell him secretly that before he chose the box, she already belonged to him and loved him very much, but this level should not be said.Therefore, the poet uses tongue slips to express Poxia's emotions, which can not only reassure Bassanio a little, but also make the audience wait patiently for the result of choosing the box. " Notice how at the end Posia deftly reconciles what she said wrong with what she righted, and keeps them from contradicting each other, and how she conceals her mistakes. "...Since it is mine, it is of course yours, so everything belongs to you." Some scholars outside of medicine, whose observations revealed the meaning of negligence, seem to be the precursors of our theory.You all know that Lichtenberg 1742-1799 was a funny satirist. Goethe said: "If he tells a joke, there is a problem hidden behind the joke. Sometimes, he also hints the solution to the problem in the joke. "He once satirized someone and said: "He often pronounces the verb angenommon, which means 'to assume', as Aga-memnon, because he is too familiar with Homer." This sentence can indeed be used as an explanation for misreading. . In our next lecture we shall examine whether the poet's view of mental error is agreeable.