In his writings, Freud considered the human psyche. He argued that it consists of conscious and unconscious parts that are constantly in conflict with each other. Because of this constant confrontation, neuroses begin to develop in a person. The desire for pleasure struggles with self-preservation.
After deep psychological research, Freud identified several groups of unconscious human behavior.
A reservation is when a person, wanting to say something, uses one word instead of another. The same thing can happen. It happens when they read the wrong text that is written or hear the wrong thing they say. Of course, hearing loss does not play any role in this case.
Freud believed that these erroneous actions indicate what is really troubling the person at the moment on a subconscious level.
It turns out that any erroneous action is an attempt to break out of the subconscious. Sometimes even the person himself does not realize what he really wants. The subconscious, with the help of random reservations or slips of the tongue, helps to clarify the situation.
Sigmund Freud believed that any reservation carries a hidden meaning. This was the reason for the appearance of the term “Freudian slip.” It should be remembered that each such mistake means a desire closed in the depths of the subconscious.
Freud believed that people have primal instincts. It so happened that man was forced all the time to suppress his primitive impulses. Society dictated its own rules that had to be observed. Thoughts and desires from time immemorial have been hiding in the depths of consciousness, but with the slightest weakening of the protective forces, they tend to break out.
The brightest Freudian slips
Some phrases of politicians and TV presenters became the most famous. For example, George W. Bush, during his tenure as President of the United States, regularly pleased the world community with numerous Freudian slips. So, about the situation in Iraq, he said: "It takes a long time to restore chaos."
Former Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin, speaking at an international forum, said: "The fight against corruption is the most important evil for Russia."
Another variant of a popular mistake is forgetting or confusing names. It often happens when a man calls his wife the name of another woman. According to Freud's theory, such behavior indicates that he thinks about the other, without even realizing it.
17.07.2015
Now it is very fashionable to talk about reservations. Usually in such cases mention is made of the father of psychoanalysis - Z. Freud. In general, if people really turned in their graves at every mention of their name, then Freud could be made into an uninterruptible energy generator, since he would rotate all the time. But jokes aside.
Examples of Freudian clauses
Sometimes this happens only because the person is tired or has not had enough sleep. A clause in this state can mean something, or it can be empty, i.e. without any particular meaning. Even Freud himself said: "Sometimes a cigar in a dream is just a cigar." True, this concerned mainly his own dreams. Such a free interpretation even became the subject of jokes.
But there are situations when the reservation cannot be considered accidental. Sometimes a man can say to a woman unconsciously: “I don’t love you” - a negative particle has imperceptibly stuck into the usual phrase of all people who love each other, and relationships can be considered ruined forever. Or, for example, a woman says admiringly to a man: “What a vile you are!”, And it should have been: “How impudent you are.”
Any reader can easily recall many such cases from his own life. Some clauses are funny, and some not so much, but few will argue about the fact of their existence.
Why do reservations happen?
A person makes a reservation, because some thoughts, feelings are not approved either by him or by society, therefore they are involuntarily forgotten by a person, i.e. relegated to the realm of the unconscious. But all these impulses and impulses of the human psyche do not die in the unconscious, on the contrary, they live and live there, sometimes breaking through into consciousness in the form of various kinds of oversights (slips of the pen, sedums, slips of the tongue).
And Freud is remembered in connection with this every time, because he was the first to analyze the phenomenon of spontaneous slips of the tongue in his work, which is not very fundamental in terms of volume, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
What to do with reservations?
This is a difficult question, because reservations are a spontaneous phenomenon. But if reservations suddenly cause trouble for a person, then it is better for him to reflect on why he allows them, and whether he is lying to himself. Usually, verbal or written oversights let you know that "not all is well in the Danish kingdom."
For example, if a woman makes a reservation with her beloved man, then it means that he is not so valuable to her. The opposite is also true: a man who makes a reservation in the presence of his lady of the heart also gives her some food for thought.
Sometimes reservations are good. For example, someone can confess their love in this way. But more often than not, the slip reveals some kind of deception: a discrepancy between what the person says and what is actually there.
"Sometimes a cigar in a dream is just a cigar"
And yet, at the end of the article, we will return to its beginning and say that sometimes a reservation may not lead anywhere, but simply be the result of fatigue or overstrain. Freud's doctrine of the unconscious is a great force that turned almost everything in the world upside down. But it turns impressionable people into paranoids who see symbols and secret signs everywhere.
And there is one more moment. Finally - the following situation. A married couple quarrels and one of the participants makes an offensive slip of the tongue, according to Freud, while the other clings to it. On this wave, the latter inflates the fire of scandal to the sky, the tension grows until the carriage of married life crashes against the rocks of turmoil.
And now, attention, a question! If one makes a reservation, and the other purposefully unwinds a tangle of scandal from one, albeit offensive, clause, maybe the other one really needs this for some reason?
“After a month of separation, my friend finally had to return from a business trip,” says 38-year-old Larisa. - I sent him an SMS: “I'm looking forward to it! Come back soon." About an hour later, my ex-husband rang at the door. Turns out I got the wrong number…”
New technologies, in theory, should facilitate communication. But it is precisely because of them that we increasingly find ourselves in an awkward position. A new kind of communication allows us to act spontaneously and does not require preliminary thinking about what we write. And we get into the habit of not rereading messages before hitting send, preferring to act quickly. As a result, the number of slips, "accidents", and oversights is growing.
E-mail, chat rooms, endless messaging - we selflessly indulge in these activities at almost any moment of our lives. The possibility of instant contact gives the impression of its lightness and simplicity. We no longer have this intermediate stage - pens, paper, we are no longer obliged to honor the rules of spelling. There is an impression of freedom, we do not feel restrictions, and this state to some extent resembles a childish feeling of omnipotence.
“We act impulsively, and when we lose control of ourselves, we unconsciously do what we would consciously want to avoid,” says Jungian analyst Lev Khegai. “In oral speech, these would be reservations, but in writing there are typos and typos.”
Misprints at lightning speed expose the most secret thoughts and desires, flaunt what we tried to hide from ourselves
Virtual media has another attractive feature: we feel more relaxed, it seems that we can say whatever we want without fear of consequences. After all, the person with whom we communicate is not next to us. This means that we do not have to refine or polish what we say: without seeing his reaction, we can surrender to our imagination, plunge into fantasies and no longer follow where this may lead us.
Hidden Desires
The example of Larisa, who is still thinking about her ex-husband, or the story of a girl in love who was in such a hurry to answer the long-awaited offer of a date that in the response SMS instead of “in an hour” it turned out to be written “through the penis”, show what a predicament we can be led to these unintentional oversights.
In contrast to the dreams that remain in the sphere of our intimate life, such typographical errors reveal with lightning speed the most secret thoughts and desires, expose what we more or less unconsciously tried to hide even from ourselves.
Electronic means of communication seem to push us to make mistakes: having become accustomed in the virtual space to the fact that we can be anonymous and go unpunished, we involuntarily transfer this habit to personal communication, as if forgetting that we are authorized and can be recognized.
“I sent my friend a description of my intimate experiences, but it turned out that the whole forum sees it,” 29-year-old Irina is horrified. “By the time I figured out how to close this message from prying eyes, everyone had already read it!”
Did it happen by accident or not? “An inexperienced user, not knowing the codes that “close” the message, of course, can make such a mistake,” comments psychoanalyst Marina Harutyunyan. - Before sending a very personal message, it would be worth reading them. But behind this mistake, perhaps, was Irina's unconscious desire for someone else to find out about her experiences - for example, their culprit, her partner.
“Such involuntary erroneous actions can also satisfy the need for demonstrativeness, publicity,” adds Lev Khegay. “Perhaps Irina needed the attention of others, and the publication of her personal story helped her achieve this.”
What if we made a mistake?
- Don't blame yourself. Our reservations and unsuccessful actions can offend someone. But by apologizing and making excuses, we partly acknowledge responsibility for the mistake, while there may not be any reason to feel guilty. And sometimes, in the depths of our souls, there is relief that we finally told the truth, confessed what we were silent about.
- Wait a bit before talking about it. It is better to first think for a while about what our oversight could mean, and then we can calmly return to this topic. In addition, our interlocutor also needs time to think about this unexpected truth, to ask himself some questions, to question something.
- Laugh. Humor helps to survive a moment of awkwardness with minimal losses, it gives relaxation, relieves tension, and facilitates the perception of what happened.
Aggression in search of a way out
Embarrassing behavior also exposes our aggressive impulses. We gossip about a friend by e-mail and “accidentally” send him a letter. Or we hang up the phone badly and loudly express our annoyance at the person on the other end of the wire ...
Consciousness obliges us to strict censorship, forbidding us to show negative feelings in public and private life. But the unconscious sometimes rebels, prompting us to speak frankly against our will. More often this happens in difficult moments for us, when we can not cope with our feelings.
“The more important the essence of the subject is for us, the higher the risk of a sudden slip of the tongue, an oversight associated with it,” continues the psychoanalyst. “The more we try to control ourselves, the more active our unconscious becomes.”
That's why these misfires often crop up in our work emails, creating a sea of awkwardness just where we're trying so hard to appear perfect.
New technologies increase the potential for such misses, but at the same time reveal the truth that we do not notice.
It turns out that new technologies provoke us? “No,” says Lev Khegay, “before they appeared, our unconscious behaved the same way. The only difference is that before we "didn't notice" that the one we were scolding was standing next to us. But with the advent of new means of communication, we began to communicate more intensively and, accordingly, make more mistakes. Our contemporary who forgets to delete messages from his new lover on his mobile phone is not much different from the unfaithful husband of the last century who forgot love notes in his jacket pocket.
The Power of Self-Revelation
36-year-old Vera sent a short congratulation to her friend: “Happy birthday!” “Congratulating a person, we, of course, are only talking about the good,” Lev Khegay explains, “but if we have long-standing grievances, unresolved conflicts, they can suddenly erupt at the most inopportune moment. Yes, such an error can be just a typo, and if the relationship is good, the recipient of the SMS need not worry. And if this is not the first time this happens, then you can think: is it by chance? And maybe talk frankly with each other.”
“I receive SMS from a friend,” says Marina Harutyunyan. - Question: "Are you on the vomit?" Such a message can be considered as a manifestation of one of the protective mechanisms of the psyche, projection: my girlfriend works very hard, without days off. Of course, she herself knew that she was tired, she just did not know to what extent: to the point of nausea.
The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, wrote that "behind every unsuccessful action is a successful action." New technologies increase the potential for such mistakes, but at the same time help us live in harmony with ourselves - they reveal the truth that we do not notice.
If we have a deep desire to be exposed, it is impossible to carry it with us for a long time.
Social networks increase the risk of erroneous actions by offering to post a variety of information about yourself. So, often on Facebook and Odnoklassniki, high school students post their photos from parties for friends and “forget” that their parents will probably see them. Drunk, made up, half-dressed ... and adults are horrified.
“Teenagers seem to throw off that ideal image of an exemplary child that adults want to see,” Lev Khegay explains. “Through social media, they spontaneously communicate to their parents that they cannot and do not want to be perfect.” And they declare their need to be accepted for who they are.
The secret, as you know, always becomes clear. “If we have a deep desire to be exposed, it is impossible to carry it with us for a long time,” the analyst adds. - The feeling of guilt that it causes is getting stronger every day: dreaming about what is taboo, not accepted, indecent. This feeling can be interpreted as a desire for punishment... whether it will actually come or not. But in any case, the situation from fantasy will become real and will be able to be resolved.
Messages to yourself
We are concerned about the impression our blunder has on others. But such misfires also tell us something important about us.
“I always carefully monitor what I write and send,” says 38-year-old Boris. - Then one day I sent an incomplete email by mistake. It was still a draft, by which it was possible to follow the course of my thoughts, doubts, contradictory assumptions ... My addressee did not even notice this, and I almost collapsed from shame. This made me think that, it turns out, I still have a strong fear of being not up to par ... "
When we are very tired, or want to sleep, or our attention is scattered, then the devil of the unconscious pushes us by the arm.
How we interpret the slips or slips of others can reveal our own projections and anxieties. “When the boss misrepresents my name and writes “Ana”, I react very painfully,” Anna, 34, admits. “But in a letter from any other person, I would take that as a typo.”
The unconscious shows up only when we want to know something about it, it only talks to those who really want it.
“Our missteps introduce us to our own feelings,” says Lev Khegay. “When we are very tired, or want to sleep, or our attention is distracted - in a word, when the control of consciousness is weakened, then the devil of the unconscious pushes us under the arm.” Sometimes it seems dangerous - and this is no coincidence. After all, he makes us see what we turned away from, what we hid not only from others, but also from ourselves.
Tricks of the unconscious
Mistakes, misprints, reservations, lost things - it seems that this happens to us only because we get tired, become inattentive. The creator of the theory of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was the first to prove that this is a manifestation of our unconscious intentions, behind which is the desire to be free from feelings of guilt, remorse or fear.
“It will certainly seem incredible to you that some intention of ours is involved in the loss, which we often perceive as an unfortunate accident,” wrote Freud. “But there are many observations that can be made, such as the following. A young man has lost an expensive pencil for him. The day before, he had received a letter from his brother-in-law, which ended with the words: "I have no desire to indulge your frivolity and laziness." The pencil was a gift from this brother-in-law.
Without such a coincidence, of course, we could not argue that the intention to get rid of this thing is involved in the loss of the pencil. Similar cases are very common. Objects are lost when you quarrel with the one who gave them and whom it is unpleasant to remember, or when you stop liking the things themselves and you are looking for an excuse to replace them with other, better ones.
The expression "Freudian slip" has been in common use for a hundred years, and all over the world. It characterizes any mechanical action, slip of the tongue of men, women.
Although the official science for the classification of all such phenomena has a concept called "parapraxis".
Freudian clause meaning of expression
The famous expression "Freudian slip" indicates that an error has occurred, which is the result of unconscious processes that the human brain performs.
The meaning of the phrase refers to all kinds of slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, mechanical actions - according to science, such manifestations give out and characterize the feelings, thoughts of a person that a person keeps in himself, and in some cases does not even know about their existence.
This meaning of the phrase "Freudian slip" concerns everyone - men, women. An example of life is filled with situations when people call spouses the names of former partners.
Often people ask the question: what does a Freudian slip mean? This is expression means that the following error occurred:
1. A slip of the pen, a slip of the tongue, a stonecrop, a slip of the tongue;
2. The so-called action by mistake;
4. Forgetting is when one's own thought, impression, someone else's speech (words from there), proper names are forgotten.
The scientist himself broke the “blunders” into these groups of mistakes of men and women.
Where did the term Freudian slip come from?
Once a patient of a scientist, reciting a passage from the Aeneid, accidentally missed one word. The doctor was interested in this, he found out that the patient had a negative associated with this word and suggested that the brain subconsciously blocked this particular part of the text - this laid the foundation for the study “Psychopathology of Everyday Life”, which described what a reservation and other errors are. Which gave rise to the catchphrase.
Freudian slip translation into English
It is interesting that in English the expression sounds like Freudian slip - literally, the word slip means slip, slip, slip, slip. That is, the literal translation will be: slipping according to Freud. Although the English meaning of the phrase itself has the same meaning as the Russian version.
Examples of clauses according to Freud
Most often, the phrases of well-known politicians are widely known, for example, recently the world was pleased with the expression of President Putin "borderless Russia" - the meaning of this phrase will probably be of interest to NATO analysts.
One US senator, after the death of bin Laden, managed to say: "Obama is dead, and I do not regret it" - confusing the name of the terrorist Osama and the surname Obama.
Former US leader Bush Jr. publicly stated: "We had triumphs and had sex ..."
Interpretation of Freudian slips - what does a Freudian slip really mean
Those who wish to take this expression “in service” need to understand that the meaning of this phrase today is only ironic, that is, psychoanalysis and Freudian slip are not the same concept and it has no academic meaning.
In addition, modern science tends not to pay much attention to slips of the tongue, calling it a “failure” of the brain of men and women. For example, the same expression of President Bush Jr. is explained by the fact that the semantic, lexical and phonological sequence of speech was violated, because of which he distorted the meaning of one word.
And this does not mean at all that he needs to be taken to a psychiatrist. Another example: if the clause contains the name of the former partner, spouse, then this may simply mean fatigue, the deconcentration caused by it, and not any hidden unconscious process.
Modern colleagues of a scientist in such a situation will say the following: you need to listen to the feelings with which the reservation was made, so a person will understand an order of magnitude more and learn to trust himself and people.
Freudian slips in men
One well-known scientist pointed out that each person has a slip of the tongue approximately once in 1,000 words, that is, each speaker makes up to several dozen mistakes every day.
At the same time, science, on the basis of the vast majority of them, is not able to reveal what any person (man, woman) is capable of. This means that it is impossible to simply determine what lies behind the mistakes: stupidity or confirmation that a person is harmless.
It is completely impossible to understand (in most situations) what his desire is and what he strives to do at the moment. It is not clear to scientists and what can be hidden in the minds of men, women, inherent only to them.
This means that most of the errors are not even worth analyzing. For example, for women, the question of what are the Freudian slips of a man in love is relevant.
But they do not differ in originality, that is, such a person is oversaturated with motivation, which leads to forgetting words, often a lover trying to impress a girl, tells her something and forgets where he started his speech, sometimes, out of place, some vulgar phrases sound .
But exactly the same mistakes are made in other cases, when men are oversaturated with information, motivation.
Therefore, according to one such sign, it is impossible to understand what is happening, but everything quickly becomes clear if you watch the lover in the presence of his passion for a while.
He will try to be near her most of the time, trying to touch her (pat on the shoulder, in any other way), some thing may be broken, he will not find room for his hands, etc. All this in a complex means that a person is really in love.
Freudian slips in women examples
Many are interested in what this or that error means in men or women. The accidentally dropped phrases of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rise are considered a classic oversight - she was asked some question, and she began to answer: “I have repeatedly said that my husband ...”, then stopped and started again: “I have repeatedly said that President Bush ... ".
The fact that this woman was not married then gives a special piquancy to the situation. But here you can think whatever you want, and there are radically opposite opinions and not one idea has no confirmation. Some say it's fantasy, others say it's just hard work and fatigue.
Women have another classic mistake, so they can hide something in the most inappropriate place at a tense moment. For example, the keys to the car you are currently driving are in the freezer.
Some experts will say according to Freud: this means that she was alarmed by something and instinctively tried to save something from danger (for example, a child who is now going to fly somewhere far away) and they will offer to come to them for an appointment.
But other psychologists will only laugh at this, point out that there are problems with organization, fatigue, and so on. That is, the concept of oversights is rather ambiguous and challenging the statements of the great scientist began immediately after the publication of his research and the appearance of the legendary phrase, which is by no means a medical or scientific term.
And you should know that a person can know anything, hide and attach importance to this only in cases where it carries a potential danger to another person or something really bad happens, for example, if a husband reaches for oil and instead of the phrase: “Darling, please pass the oil,” it will sound: “You ruined my whole life!”
The expression "Freudian slip" is firmly rooted in colloquial speech. It is usually used to indicate the hidden motives and thoughts behind the mispronounced word.
When using this phrase in an ironic or humorous context, many people do not even think about its origin and true meaning.
Origin of expression
Sigmund Freud is a prominent scientist in the field psychology and psychiatry, originally from Austria. Freud's worldwide fame was brought about by the development of psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory that has had a tremendous impact not only on the development of psychology and medicine, but also on the development of other sciences - anthropology, sociology.
Furthermore, psychoanalysis has influenced literature in many ways and art of the last century.
According to the theory of psychoanalysis, people's life experience and behavior are largely determined by internal unconscious drives. When a person tries to realize them, a protective mechanism is triggered, which consists in psychological resistance.
Freud claimed that conscious and unconscious The components of the human psyche are constantly in conflict with each other. Many natural desires and inclinations contradict the norms and rules accepted in society.
A person consciously suppresses his “wrong” instincts and impulses, forcing them into the subconscious. However, periodically the subconscious signals where the roots of a particular problem are located and what should be paid attention to. Reservations are one of such eloquent signals of the psyche.
The essence of reservations in the interpretation of Z. Freud
Freud was the first scholar to consider and describe slips of the tongue scientifically in his work The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in 1901.
A Freudian slip is a broad concept that covers not only various speech errors. The scientist created a whole scientific theory, highlighting three categories of reservations:
- Errors in oral and written speech: reservations in the process of conversation or reading aloud, typos, overheard.
- Forgetting names, titles, any words. This also includes erroneous actions. For example, a person absolutely does not remember where he put any necessary thing. As a result, this item may be found in an unusual or completely inappropriate place for it (keys in the refrigerator, a notebook in a cupboard with dishes, etc.).
- Facial expressions and gestures that do not correspond to the occasion and place.
Subconscious motives and aspirations, as a rule, are at such a “depth” that a person does not notice their presence. Reservations and other erroneous actions, according to Z. Freud, "signal" to the mind about the presence of hidden psychological problems associated with unsatisfied suppressed desire.
Famous Freudian slips
Thanks to the media and the World Wide Web celebrity remarks- politicians, journalists, public figures - instantly become the property of society. They are happily picked up and quoted. Below are the most famous examples of Freudian slips.
George W. Bush, as president of the United States, commented on the situation in Iraq as follows: "It takes time to restore chaos."
On one of major international forums ex-Prime Minister A. Kudrin said that the fight against corruption is the main evil (meaning - business) for Russia.
Speaking on television, Senator Ted Kennedy misspoke, saying "better people" instead (" best") the word "breast"- "breast". At the same time, he even involuntarily made an appropriate gesture with his hand, depicting something rounded. Despite the fact that the politician immediately recovered, his reputation was damaged.
M. Morgun, a TV journalist for the local Vesti channel, once called the State Duma a “government fool.” The phrase has become winged among the townsfolk.
But not only public figures "delight" the public with such blunders. There are many widely known everyday slips of unknown authorship.
“The victim got off (“got off”) with a slight fright.” “Now the artist who is screwed up (“adored”) by us will perform.” “Reptile (“glad”) to see you!”.
The most common speech error in everyday life is forgetting names or confusion with them. For example, if a man called his wife by a strange name, then, most likely, his thoughts are occupied by a woman who bears this name. Forgetting names and surnames may indicate that this person is not interesting and does not mean anything to a person.
In the academic world disputes about the viability of theories Z. Freud does not subside even today. This scientific concept has many fans and opponents.
Be that as it may, but, perhaps, no scientific theory has such widely known like psychoanalysis. The concept of "Freudian slip" broke out of classrooms and textbooks, becoming a popular catchphrase.
