Freudian slip

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A Freudian slip, or parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of some unconscious ('dynamically repressed') wish, conflict, or train of thought. The concept is thus part of classical psychoanalysis.

Slips of the tongue and the pen are the classic parapraxes.

History

The Freudian slip is named after Sigmund Freud, who in his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, described and analysed a large number of seemingly trivial, bizarre or nonsensical errors and slips. The process of analysis is often quite lengthy and complex, as was the case with many of the dreams in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). As in the study of dreams, Freud submits his discussion with the intention of demonstrating the existence of unconscious mental proceses in the healthy.

Freud himself referred to the phenomenon as Fehlleistung (literally meaning "faulty action" or "misperformance" in German); the Greek term parapraxis (from the Greek παρά + πράξις, meaning "another action" in English) was the creation of his English translator, as is the form 'symptomatic action'.

Some errors, such as a woman accidentally calling her husband by the name of another man she's thinking about, seem to represent relatively clear cases of Freudian slips. In other cases, the error might appear to be trivial or bizarre, but may show some deeper meaning on analysis. As a common pun goes, "A Freudian slip is when you mean one thing, but you say your mother."

Popularity

Popularisation of the term has diluted its technical meaning in some contexts to include any slip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, often in an attempt by the user to humorously assign hidden motives or sexual innuendo to the mistake.

Alternative explanations of 'slips of the tongue'

In contrast to Freud and his followers, cognitive psychologists claim that linguistic slips can represent a sequencing conflict in grammar production. From this perspective, slips may be due to cognitive underspecification that can take a variety of forms – inattention, incomplete sense data or insufficient knowledge. Secondly, they may be due to the existence of some locally appropriate response pattern that is strongly primed by its prior usage, recent activation or emotional change or by the situation calling conditions (MacMahon, 1995). Some sentences are just susceptible to the process of banalisation: the replacement of archaic or unusual expressions with forms that are in more common use. In other words, the errors were due to strong habit substitution (MacMahon, 1995)

Inducing Freudian slips in a laboratory setting

Support for hypothesis

The advantage of studying speech errors like the Freudian slips is that one can be certain that influences were unconscious because the effects are counter to the person's conscious purpose. Similarly, one way of demonstrating the existence of unintended or unconscious influences of memory is to place those influences in opposition to consciously controlled, or intentional, use of memory (Jacoby, 1992)

Bernard J. Baars and Warren Motley (1985) performed a sexual attraction and fear of shock study. Participants included three groups of male students. The conditions of the experiment were as follows:

1. Situation causing anxiety about shock
2. Situation causing anxiety about sex
3. No anxiety about either one of the above (this was used as a control)

The task was to silently read pairs of words on the computer screen. When a buzzer went off, participants then had to read them out loud.

Results

• Condition 1- made twice as many shock-related slips as Condition 2.
• Condition 2- made twice as many sex-related slips as Condition 3.

These results suggest that Freudian slips are possible. (Baars, 1992)

Follow-up study

After the sexual attraction and fear of shock study, a follow-up attempt at systematic replication was made.

It tested food-related slips with overweight eaters. There were 26 subjects (11 males and 15 females) of whom approximately half appeared overweight. Participants were divided by weight.

The task elicited food-related spoonerisms,

Examples:

1. kurger bing - Burger King
2. geet oodies - eat goodies
3. dood ghinner - good dinner

There were 49 food-related spoonerisms.

In addition, a bowl of candy was located in front of, and within reach of, the subjects. After hearing the spoonerisms, the subjects were given an extensive self- report questionnaire about impulse control, embedded within which were questions about overreacting and weight control. Results did not replicate the sexual attraction and fear of shock study because only the correlation between the conflict score and single food-related slips was significant.

See also

• Cognition
• Tip of the tongue
• Speech error
• Spoonerism
• Lapsus
• Pun

External links

• Parapraxes, Accidents and Necessary Mistakes

References

• Bloom, J. (2007, October). Lecture. Presented at New School University, New York, New York.
• Baars et al. (1992). Some caveats on testing the Freudian Slip Hypothesis, Experimental Slips and Human Error: Exploring the Architecture of Volition.
• Freud, Sigmund. (1991 [1915]) Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition, pp50-108
• Jacoby L. L., & Kelley, C. M. (1992). A process-dissociation framework for investigating unconscious influences: Freudian slips, projective tests, subliminal perception and signal detection theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 174–179.
• MacMahon, B. (1995) - Language and Communication,15, 4, 289-328.
• Motley, M. T. (1985). Slips of the tongue. Scientific American, 253, 116-127
• Smith, D.J. Speech Errors, Speech Production Models, and Speech Pathology, (2003), Online. Internet. http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html