Perversion the Social Relation

8oOctave Mannoniin the least likely to alter them now. After a short silence, the patientdeclared, in a rather satisfied tone, "Yes, I knew that you were jokingabout that pre-dinner drink. But all the same, Fm terribly pleased." Almostin the same breath, he added, "especially because my wife thinksyou meant it." A remark of this kind may well be called puzzling. Atthe time, I was very surprised to hear it; but, unfortunately, I too wasquite pleased, if not for the same reasons as my patient. My uppermostconcerns were technical, so that I was glad to see that he had slippedright back into the correct analytic situation, as his use of the formula "Iknow well, but all the same" sufficed to show. The fact that everythinghad so easily fallen back into place was, I realized, due to the state ofthe transference at the moment. I did not realize that my mistake hada deeper effect on me than on him; but, thanks to my curiosity to hearwhat would come next, my residual caution, and my satisfaction overthe technical aspect of things, the rest of the session was satisfactory andran smoothly. The incident was never spoken of again.But it was late, well after the hour when I usually received patients,and I had time for reflection. The expression my patient had used nowseemed odder than it had before; moreover, it reminded me of something—ofthe expression used by the patient of Freud's whose brotherin-lawhad not succumbed to shellfish poisoning. I had a rather hardtime locating the passage. It occurs in a short paper on telepathy. (I donot think that this is mere happenstance; telepathy poses a problem ofbelief.) I saw that what Freud had singled out for attention was the factthat the fortune-teller had guessed her client's unconscious—or rather,in this case, conscious—wish. After all, we go to people who practicedivination so that they can divine things about us. That, however, didnot apply to the case at hand. True, it was quite as if I had guessed mypatient's wish, even if I had not done so telepathically. But we cannotaccount for my patient's satisfaction in this way, or for Freud's, unlessit is so pleasant to hear someone divine one's wishes that one cannotbut be satisfied. No, the effect had not been called up by naming mypatient's desire, but by reinforcing a belief of his, just as his wife had.No doubt belief ultimately finds its explanation in desire: this is a truismthat we find even in La Fontaine's Fables, which, although it is acharming book, has never ranked as a very original one as far as psychologyis concerned. Freud's discovery was rather that desire acts at a