What Would Freud Say About That?

We have all said and heard someone say something that is considered to be a "Freudian slip." We attach that phrase to what are often embarrassing slips of the tongue. Though sometimes we just accidentally use the wrong word, in the Freudian cases we interpret them to be more revealing of some unconscious thought.

In the cartoon example above "another" becomes "your mother" - mothers and fathers being big in Freud's view of psychology. In another example, a man saying that he was unhappy and felt a "need to change my wife" when he meant to say "a need to change my life," it would be easy to psychoanalyze his slip as meaning much more than a linguistic error.

Freud wrote:

"In the same way that psycho-analysis makes use of dream interpretation, it also profits by the study of the numerous little slips and mistakes which people make—symptomatic actions, as they are called [...] I have pointed out that these phenomena are not accidental, that they require more than physiological explanations, that they have a meaning and can be interpreted, and that one is justified in inferring from them the presence of restrained or repressed impulses and intentions. [Freud, An Autobiographical Study (1925)]

Freud believed that it was our unconscious mind that unlocked our behaviors and, like dreams, slips of the tongue revealed those hidden thoughts. he never called them "Freudian slips" but referred to these mistakes as Fehlleistungen meaning "faulty actions", "faulty functions" or "misperformances" in German.

Freud's English translator used the term parapraxes  and also the phrase "symptomatic action," both of which are still used today. (more on the word origins)

A Freudian slip of the tongue is an error that is popularly believed to carry hidden meanings. But Freud’s original use of the term ‘parapraxis’ actually included a wider range of common mistakes in behavior. He cataloged and analyzed errors in reading and writing, forgetting someone’s name, mislaying an object, or failing to perform a particular action.

Not all of Freud's theories are still accepted. there are many psychologists and linguists that believe that many cases of Freudian slips are really more indicators of the way language is formed in the brain rather than unconscious thoughts slipping out.

Even in his own time, an Austrian linguist, Rudolf Meringer, had also collected verbal mistakes, but concluded that in most cases they occurred from mixing up letters, not the full words.

In order to produce speech, the brain uses the semantic, lexical and phonological networks and speech requires via the interaction of all three networks. When these interactions malfunction, you get a slip or error.

There are many examples of Freudian slips, but the most famous ones usually come from the most famous people.

Then Vice-President, George H.W Bush gave a speech on live television in 1988 and said “We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex… uh… setbacks” The audience did think there was something else going on in his mind.

UK journalist Jim Naughtie on the BBC Radio accidentally pronounced then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s surname as cunt.

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to President Bush, said at a White House dinner party: “As I was telling my husb — as I was telling President Bush...”

Pope Francis was delivering a sermon at the Vatican in 2014, when he accidentally said cazzo instead of caso. Unfortunately, the latter means "example" while the former translates as "fuck."

Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech about education and said “Our national interest ought to be to encourage the breast - the best - and brightest.”

So, are all these examples evidence of the unconscious speaking out? Ot are they examples of a linguistic misfire?  I tend to side on believing that Freudian slips do not reveal our innermost or darkest secrets, but rather a way in which our brain sometimes mis-processes language. But some of these examples are hard not to consider as being a bit more than just simple mistakes.