On the psychopathology of everyday life
A study by Sigmund Freud published in 1904 is on the psychopathology of everyday life . The subtitle in the first editions reads About forgetting, promising, grasping, superstition and error , in later editions one also finds “superstition” instead of “superstition”.
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In his study, Freud expounded his theory that a large number of everyday mistakes , such as promising, forgetting, prescribing, grasping, misplacing objects and other wrongdoings and errors are expressions of unconscious intentions. At first glance, it is only a matter of accidental or senseless mistakes or oversights , but in fact it is a matter of meaningful mechanisms of the unconscious .
The psychopathology of everyday life is less a Freudian discovery than the application of the method of psychoanalysis to a known phenomenon. Among other things, Freud was able to draw on a wealth of material in the literature. For example, in Fontane's L'Adultera, a young woman wants to toss her husband a ball, but "accidentally" throws it to a young man standing next to him whom she has - unconsciously - chosen and who later becomes her lover. Freud cites passages in the works of Shakespeare and Schiller on the psychological significance of slip of the tongue . Likewise, from time immemorial, forgetting or incorrectly remembering names and facts have been assumed to be understandable motives.
Using psychoanalytic methodology, Freud also uncovered less obvious psychological motives for failures. When analyzing accidents, he sometimes comes to the conclusion that it is an unconscious attempt at self-harm.
The book On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life belongs to a basic work of psychoanalysis up to the present day.
The revelation of affects through slip of the tongue, which one actually wants to conceal, but which often break out in comical ways, is called Freudian slip of the tongue .
criticism
The Italian classical philologist Sebastiano Timpanaro gave an in- depth criticism of Freud's theory of failures from a text-critical perspective in his 1974 book Il lapsus freudiano: Psicoanalisi e critica testuale ( German : Freud's failure: psychoanalysis and text criticism ).
literature
expenditure
- Sigmund Freud: On the psychopathology of everyday life. (About forgetting, promising, grasping, superstition and error). S. Karger, Berlin 1904 (Reprint: Outlook Verlagsgesellschaft, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3864034589 )
- Sigmund Freud: Collected works, arranged chronologically. Vol. 4. On the psychopathology of everyday life. Edited by Anna Freud. Imago, London and S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1941
- Sigmund Freud: On the psychopathology of everyday life. About forgetting, promising, grasping, superstition and error. With an introduction by Ricardo Steiner. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-90178-4
Secondary literature
- Sebastiano Timpanaro: Il lapsus freudiano: Psicoanalisi e critica testuale . La Nuova Italia, Florence 1974. English translation: The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism . Trans. V. Kate Soper. NLB, London 1976; Verso, London 1985, ISBN 978-1-84467-674-3 .