The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
Cover of the German edition
|
|
| Author | Sigmund Freud |
|---|---|
| Original title | Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens |
| Translator | A. A. Brill (first version) |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Subject | Freudian slip |
Psychopathology of Everyday Life (German: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards.The Psychopathology of Everyday Life became perhaps the best-known of all Freud's writings.
The Psychopathology was originally published in the Monograph for Psychiatry and Neurology in 1901, before appearing in book form in 1904. It would receive twelve foreign translations during Freud's lifetime, as well as numerous new German editions, with fresh material being added in almost every one. James Strachey objected that "Almost the whole of the basic explanations and theories were already present in the earliest edition...the wealth of new examples interrupts and even confuses the mainstream of the underlying argument". However, in such a popular and theory-light text, the sheer wealth of examples helped make Freud's point for him in an accessible way. A new English-language translation by Anthea Bell was published in 2003.
Among the most overtly autobiographical of Freud's works, the Psychopathology was strongly linked by Freud to his relationship with Wilhelm Fliess.
Studying the various deviations from the stereotypes of everyday behavior, strange defects and malfunctions, as well as seemingly random errors, the author concludes that they indicate the underlying pathology of the psyche, the symptoms of psychoneurosis.
Freud writes in his introduction:
If an average psychologist should be asked to explain how it happens that we often fail to recall a name which we are sure we know, he would probably content himself with the answer that proper names are more apt to be forgotten than any other content of memory. He might give plausible reasons for this "forgetting preference" for proper names, but he would not assume any deep determinant for the process.
Freud believed that various deviations from the stereotypes of everyday conduct - seemingly unintended reservation, forgetting words, random movements and actions - are a manifestation of unconscious thoughts and impulses. Explaining "wrong actions" with the help of psychoanalysis, just as the interpretation of dreams, can be effectively used for diagnosis and therapy.
...
Wikipedia