ADVERTISEMENTS:
Forgetting as an Indication of Everyday Psychopathology!
The ingenious insight of Sigmund Freud into core of human brain did not leave any stone untouched. Freud’s discovery which is unchallenged and un-parallel in the history of psychology encompasses the normals as well as abnormals.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It was while tracing back the abnormal to the normal state Freud found how faint a line of demarcation was between the normal and the abnormal person and how the psycho-pathogenic mechanisms so glaringly observed in the psychoneuroses and psychoses would usually be demonstrated in lower degree in normal people.
This led Freud to the study of faulty action of everyday life in terms of the concept of everyday psychopathology of life. This concept of Freud ultimately shacked the pride and vanity of normal human beings who thought themselves so gentle and kind. Freud showed to the world that there lurcks in all of us those wishes, desires, urges and impulses which we have been loath to recognize in ourselves.
The study of the problem of psychopathology of everyday life is of special significance as this phenomena proves that there is no water tight compartment between the normal and the abnormal. Freud’s discovery of everyday psychopathology of life reflects that before Freud, the common belief was that slip of tongue, common forgetting and everyday mistakes which all of us often meet, but consider being incidental and causing less, having definite cause, meaning and economy.
The realm of psychic determinism is thus applicable here. Freud in his book “Everyday psychopathology of life” remarks that these little mistakes of everyday life which we meet more often than not, are the manifestations of the unconscious aspects of our aggressive and erotic urges similar to the mechanism of dream. It is obvious that these symptoms are neurotic in that they represent flaws in the normal functioning of human mind.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The concept of psychic determinism lies at the root of all these behaviour which we call purposeless. It seeks to explain the fact that every action must have a definite cause behind it. Therefore, Adler first pointed out that when a person is asked to choose a number out of many, the number actually selected by him is always connected with some mental process of considerable importance and this can be brought to the surface by means of free association.
The force of unconscious, which overshadows nineteenth part of mind according to Freud is so dynamic that besides expressing itself in dream, art and literature it also seeks expression in our day to day activity.
Freud therefore stated that such repressed unconscious and motivated desires express themselves through slip of tongue, common forgetting, slip of pen and many other related phenomena observed in our day to day life. Behind all these, says Freud, lied eventually the force of repression and unconscious motivation.
The question now arises why and how we forget many incidents and experiences of our life which we should have remembered and strangely we remember many painful experiences which we ought to have forgotten this goes against the, conception that unpleasant experiences are quickly forgotten due to the operation of the mechanism of repression.
Though the general principle does not change, certain unpleasant, shocking experiences due to their strength and intensity and due to the phenomena of psychic determinism are remembered for the entire life. Psychopathology of everyday life explains many of such forgetting’s and remembering’s.
Forgetting as an indication of everyday psychopathology may be divided into two clear-cut groups:
1. Forgetting to Carry Out Intended Purpose:
There are innumerable examples to explain this type of forgetting observed in our day to day life. A person who has formerly invited another, but finally forgot to invite him has certainly no desire to invite. A lady once forgot to keep her appointment with her dress maker to try on her bridal gown, the day before the wedding. Why? because she did not want to marry.
A common incident which very often, many of us meet is the forgetting to post letters. Sometimes one leaves a letter on one’s desk for several days forgetting each time to take it. In such cases there may be some secret opposition in sending the letter. The author once forget to post a letter to her friend whom she did not like. It is an accepted fact that one usually does not forget to post a letter to his dear friend or beloved in which his mind is in full harmony about sending.
Earnest Jones gives an interesting example regarding a patient who, on many occasions, forgot to shave the right side of his face. Analysis indicated that it was determined by a number of unconscious processes one of which was sex.
2. Forgetting Due to Repression:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The next aspect of forgetting due to repression is forgetting a given memory. The inability to recall a known name comes under this category. Many a times people forget their old familiar names. Sometimes one is not able to recall the name of a person with whom he has worked for 4-5 months. Earnest Jones gives a similar incident of a doctor who forget the surname of her present lover.
The following example shows how fine are the threads connecting unconscious mental processes. A lady was unable to recall the Christian name of her friends, but could only recall the surname. Analysis showed that her sister had a similar name whom she disliked. Falsification of a name has the same significance of forgetting it.
It is only a step towards amnesia. A sexual desire attached to a particular lady may lead one to forget her married name. Very often we forget the name of people towards whom we are particularly aggressive, although we might have suppressed this aggression.
In order to explain the cause of forgetting names, Freud holds that the process which should lead to the reproduction of lost names is displaced and thus brings an incorrect substitute. A faulty recollection shows a certain disposition to forget the original material.
Sometimes due to some disagreeable experiences a given name is not recalled. But it would be erroneous if we generalise every act of forgetting in that manner. Incidentally, some people are found having the general inability to remember other people’s name.
This may indicate an excessively high estimation of one’s own name and hence a corresponding indifference to other peoples name. This indicates a strong ego complex attached to one’s own name. Failure to remember thus according to Freudians may otherwise be regarded not wanting to remember.
Slip of Tongue:
Slip of tongue according to Freud is another indication of psychopathology of everyday life. The words uttered by mistake according to Freud is the manifestation of a second repressed thought and thus arises outside the train of thought that the speaker intends to express. When one intending to say ‘aggravating’ says “aggravoking” it indicates the one being intrude by the other. Slip of tongue sometimes arises due to aggression, hostility and the like.
A violent opponent of Freud in a meeting said “As is well known Breur and I have demonstrated “instead of saying “Breur and Freud have demonstrated”, thus revealing his envy of Freud’s originality. Another interesting example provokes laughter. A freelance lady journalist while speaking on Bernard Shaw’s work said “I think very highly of all my writing instead of saying all his writings. This sort of slip of tongue is purely unconscious.
In his Psychopathology of everyday life, Freud further stated that sometimes a patient calls a particular person as his aunt, but after sometimes he calls her mother. In this way they identify these people with each other which signifies the reoccurrence of some of their emotional lives.
Freud again holds, even the simple cases of speech blunder will be traced to a disturbance caused by a half repressed idea outside of the intended content. Many a times such mistakes have the root of emotion behind it;
A women patient weighed down by financial burden told Freud “PI do not give me big pills because I cannot sallow them”, of course she meant to say ‘bills’. Thus, it is the inner conflict which largely betrays us through the disturbance of speech.
Slip of pen is another case of everyday Psychopathology which specially the educated mass meet more often than not. Many people continue to write the date of previous year in January. Not all such mistakes are due to the fixation of habit. Sometimes they signify the discrimination to accept the fact that they are becoming old. An old friend wrote a letter to a lady “I hope you are all well and unhappy,” because of his dislike at the thought of her being happy with someone else.
A failure to see something is because we do not want to see it due to obvious reasons. Misplacing or leaving things here and there is an example of everyday psychopathology. A professor who made his lectures boring, one day forgot to bring his notebook to the class. Most of the psychoanalysts have constant experience that patients leave articles on the consultation room and have to return to get them back.
Many accidents occur in similar way. We are more apt to mislay bills rather than cheque. When a husband repeatedly misplaces his wedding ring or when a wife forgets to wear her ‘Mangal Sutra’ it may suggest keeping other factors constant, some sort of marital discord.
Accident to one’s own persons are very frequently done due to unconscious aggression. In the book “Man against himself’ Menninger has been able to show that behind suicide there is deep underlying unconscious motivation.
Mannerisms of dress, fingering etc. all have their logical meaning though they are done unconsciously. Thus there are plenty of cases of everyday psychopathology of life which we meet everyday and at every moment in our day to day life.
In everyone of us, there are various repressed thoughts which constantly try to come into expression in the shape of meaningless blunders, the significance of which necessarily escapes us.
However, extreme cases of everyday psychopathology are more often found in mental patients than in normal people. Interpretations of such cases have proved to be of greatest significance in psychoanalysis.
Though according to lay men, the various concepts of everyday psychopathology may be due to inattention, absence mindedness and so on having no definite causes, psychoanalysis shows that there is not only a definite psychic cause for their occurrence, but this has always a logical meaning and strictly be called a motive, which is unconscious and preconscious and at the same time repressed.
Those incidents which we ignore thinking to be meaningless, trivial, really are significant and interesting. Freud’s discovery of psychopathology of everyday life is thus a landmark by its pregnant illustrations and justified examples. Freud has successfully shown that tinges of pathology are also evident in what we call the everyday activity of normal human beings.