Synthesized answer
The provided passages offer examples of everyday "mistakes" and attempt to explain them. One example involves forgetting names, which is compared to being robbed in a dark, lonesome place. The explanation is not that the lonesomeness and darkness *caused* the robbery, but rather that they *favored* it or provided *cover* for unknown malefactors [3]. This suggests that certain conditions can facilitate or influence the occurrence of these errors, rather than being their direct cause.
Another example discusses the interchange of keys, where the author often took out the house key before the office door, despite the keys being distinct in size and pocket placement [2, 4]. This is presented as a psychically determined tendency, implying that internal mental processes, rather than just the physical characteristics of the keys or doors, play a role [4]. The passages suggest that these everyday phenomena have underlying psychological explanations rather than simply being random brain disturbances [3]. However, the specific "key concepts" are not explicitly defined in their own words, and the passages focus on illustrating these concepts through anecdotes and analogies.
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
hen one is compelled to inform them that there is no help for the patient, they answer: “_Sir_ (Herr), what can I say? I know that if he could be saved you would save him.” In these sentences alone we can find the words and names: _Bosnia_, _Herzegovina_, and _Herr_ (sir), which may be inserted in an association series between _Signorelli_, _Botticelli_, and _Boltraffio_. (_c_) I assume that the stream of thoughts concerning the customs of the Turks in Bosnia, etc., was able to disturb the next thought, because I withdrew my attention from it before it came to an end. For I recalled…
e the office door. Only on one occasion was this reversed: I came home tired, knowing that I would find there a guest. I made an attempt to unlock the door with the, naturally too big, office key.” (_b_) At a certain time twice a day for six years I was accustomed to wait for admission before a door in the second story of the same house, and during this long period of time it happened twice (within a short interval) that I climbed a story higher.
disturbances of the brain, and spare himself the trouble of searching for psychologic explanations for these phenomena? Not at all; that would mean to interchange the mechanism of a process, which is the same in all cases, with its variations. But instead of an analysis I shall cite a comparison which will settle the argument. Let us assume that I was so reckless as to take a walk at night in an uninhabited neighbourhood of a big city, and was attacked and robbed of my watch and purse. At the nearest police-station I report the matter in the following words: “I was in this or that…
by Dr. Hans Sachs of Vienna: “I always carry two keys with me, one for the door of my office and one for my residence. They are not by any means easily interchanged, as the office key is at least three times as big as my house key. Besides, I carry the first in my trouser pocket and the other in my vest pocket. Yet it often happened that I noticed on reaching the door that while ascending the stairs I had taken out the wrong key. I decided to undertake a statistical examination; as I was daily in about the same emotional state when I stood before both doors, I thought that the…
ined to attribute no deeper motive to this mistake, but to explain it through a number of similarities in both persons. However, he easily convinced himself that here the interchange of names bespoke a sort of boast--that is, he was acquainting each of his Italian patients with the fact that neither was the only resident of Triest who came to Vienna in search of his medical advice. (_r_) Two women stopped in front of a drug-store, and one said to her companion, “If you will wait a few _moments_ I’ll soon be back,” but she said _movements_ instead. She was on her way to buy some…