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The following incident seems to me to afford a particularly lucid illustration of the difference between the psycho-analytical point of view and superstition.
It is an example taken from my own life. I married when I was still a student in my last year. The wedding took place in a provincial town, far away from my home, Moscow, where my parents and sisters lived. They did not know my bride and were not present at my marriage. We were to travel to Moscow, a journey of nearly twenty-four hours, arrive there at midday and, after spending a few hours with my family, leave on the same day to travel abroad. Our tickets and sleeping berths had already been booked for Berlin. At one of the stations on the way, about two hours from Moscow, I got out of the train to walk up and down the platform; my wife remained in the carriage. Suddenly, I do not know why, I had an impulse to walk through the station to the street and from there have a look at the town. I obeyed my impulse, calculating that the train would stop at least ten minutes. When I returned to the platform after a few minutes, the train had already gone. All I could see of it was the last coach! My situation was by no means pleasant. Fortunately a goods train ran half an hour later, which took me to Moscow and, on the whole, everything passed off satisfactorily. But my old nurse shook her head and kept on saying, 'No good will come of this marriage.' Of course I laughed at her, convinced that all these superstitions were nonsense. My wife and I were separated after five months.
The town where I had so inauspiciously got out of the train later on played a large part in my life. For someone with whom my fate was afterwards closely connected lived there.
According to Freud my behaviour, that is, the fact that I left the train, that I showed an interest in the town, and that I gave the train