Freudian slip

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

Slips of the tongue and the pen are the classical parapraxes, but psychoanalytic theory also embraces such phenomena as misreadings, mishearings, temporary forgettings, and the mislaying and losing of objects.

History

The Freudian slip is named after Sigmund Freud, who in his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, described and analyzed a large number of seemingly trivial, bizarre, or nonsensical errors and slips.

Freud never named an idea, discovery, or concept after himself, instead calling his therapies psychoanalysis. (Today, after countless revisions by those in the field, it is now called psychodynamic.) It is unknown who first coined the term "Freudian slip" and since has been used around the world in various pop-culture referencing and everyday living.

The process of analysis is often quite lengthy and complex, as was the case with many of the dreams in his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). An obstacle that faces the non-German reader is that Freud's emphasis on 'slips of the tongue' leads to the inclusion of a great deal of material that is extremely resistant to translation.

As in the study of dreams, Freud submits his discussion with the intention of demonstrating the existence of unconscious mental processes in the healthy:

Freud, himself, referred to these slips as Fehlleistungen (meaning "faulty actions", "faulty functions" or "misperformances" in German); the Greek term parapraxes (plural of "parapraxis", from the Greek παρά [para] and πρᾶξις [praxis], meaning "another action" in English) was the creation of his English translator, as is the form "symptomatic action".

Popularity

Popularisation of the term has resulted in its being applied to any slip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, often in an attempt by the user to humorously assign hidden motives or an air of sexual innuendo to the mistake. This has brought about a dilution of the original technical meaning, with the word "Freudian" being applied to interpretations and explanations that have no essential connection with genuine psychoanalytic thought.

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.^[1]

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.^[1]

In general use, the term 'Freudian slip' has been debased to refer to any accidental slips of the tongue.^[2] Thus many examples are found in explanations and dictionaries which do not strictly fit the psychoanalytic definition.

For example: She: 'What would you like—bread and butter, or cake?' He: 'Bed and butter.'^[2]

In the above, the man may be presumed to have a sexual feeling or intention that he wished to leave unexpressed, not a sexual feeling or intention that was dynamically repressed. His sexual intention was therefore secret, rather than unconscious, and any 'parapraxis' would inhere in the idea that he unconsciously wished to express that intention, rather than in the sexual connotation of the substitution.

See also

• Cognition
• Lapsus
• Pun
• Spoonerism
• Malapropism
• Tip of the tongue

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.
• 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

External links

• Der Mensch determiniert durch unbewusste Motivierung. Erläutert in der Psychopathologie des Alltags von S. Freud. Erläuterte kritische Zusammenfassung der Psychopathologie mit Erläuterung Freud’scher Versprecher (German)