ABSTRACT
Freud says ‘betrayal oozes out of every pore’ – and yet all we see is perspiration! We need to train our eyes to see things that are right there before them. Here is one significant way we fail to see the unconscious at work: we tend to assume that if we are in a relatively sophisticated situation – say, an adult conversation – that all the elements of that situation will be sophisticated. One would think that the use of language to assert beliefs, express desires, fears and hopes would be a bastion of propositional thought. For unlike pushing and pulling on sticks and stones, unlike jumping-awayand-cringing, we use language to express our thoughts. But consider Freud’s description of Mr R’s attempt to say a prayer:
At the time of the revival of his piety he made up prayers for himself
which took up more and more time and eventually lasted for an hour
and a half. The reason for this was that he found, like an inverted
Balaam, that something always inserted itself into his pious
phrases and turned them into their opposite. E.g., if he said ‘May
God protect him’ an evil spirit would hurriedly insinuate a ‘not.’ On
one such occasion the idea occurred to him of cursing instead, for in
that case, he thought, the contrary words would be sure to creep in.
