The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud

To be classified with phenomena capable of explanation in this way, a psychic slip must fulfil the following conditions.Ī) It must not go beyond a certain point, a point that is established by our judgement and complies with our ideas of what is ‘within the range of normality’.ī) It must have the character of a brief and temporary disturbance. The following statement may be made as the general conclusion to be drawn from the various discussions above: certain inadequacies in our psychic performance – the character they all share will be more closely defined below – and certain actions performed apparently unintentionally prove, when methods of psychoanalytical investigation are applied to them, to be well motivated and determined by factors of which the conscious mind is unaware. If you come to a chapter that seems to be driving the same point home too many times, save yourself the effort and flip through to the end of the chapter to see if there are any concluding remarks, then move on. Many chapters contain endless examples (as many as fifty) these could easily have been reduced to one or two. Top Tip before you read the book for yourself: This book could easily have an abridged version.

I hope it prompts you to explore this psychology great further for yourself.įor my other Freud Book Summaries and Guides, see: In this article, I have compiled chapter summaries for Freud’s book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) – including key quotes and my personal observations. However, it took Freud with his newfound understanding of the unconscious to fully explore this concept giving rise to what we have come to know as a “Freudian Slip”. The idea that a person’s behaviours and expressions inadvertently give away underlying thoughts or motives is not new. Published Date - Thursday, 19 January 2023.In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we hear the famous line “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”, implying that the Player Queen’s protestations of love and fidelity are too excessive to be believed. Few will finish this book without starting to take a fresh look at their own behavior, their own small slips of the tongue and faulty actions - perhaps with the same wry smile Freud seems to wear! In many cases, the book is really a kind of wry autobiography, a psychoanalyst's analysis of himself. The book is personal many of the incidents he analyzes come directly from his own life and behavor.

By turning the spotlight of his ideas about the nature and function of the unconscious mind onto simple and easily understandable incidents that we have all experienced, such as slips of the tongue, sudden inexplicable clumsy actions, forgetfulness, and the like, he shows us, often in rather humorous ways, just how our unconscious minds have a powerful influence on everything we say and do.

Sigmund Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life is surely the most approachable and enjoyable of all his works.

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud