You’re in bed with that special someone, your thoughts flee and you give free reign to your most perverse desires. As the passion escalates and it becomes almost unbearable, you cannot help but think of all the other bodies you shared your bed with. As your mind goes through those blurry faces, one thought prevails above all others: no one has ever made you feel this way before, until now. The words clog your throat and just as you are about to say their name, you say another. What happened? You were doing so well! Why did you call out your ex’s name just at that moment? Everything falls apart.
These slips of the tongue are usually known as lapsus or the tongue twister: parapraxis. This term can be tracked to the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud. We realize this is not a simple mistake, but an unchecked insight into our deepest desires. It has happened to all of us at least once and while we might think it’s just clumsiness, in reality these words reveal our deepest and darkest desires.
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What is a Freudian slip?
According to experts, the very system that prevents Freudian slips is the one to blame. Subconscious processes are constantly scouring our thoughts to isolate our innermost desires. When this occurs, instead of remaining quiet, the thought passes to the conscious brain and is then blurted out to your embarrassment. Others maintain that Freudian slips occur when there are many ideas and memories intertwined and there is pressure to pick one and in the rush a mistake is made.
It was 1988 and the then-vice president, George H. W. Bush, was on a visit to Idaho. He was giving a boring speech on agricultural policy and praising the many successes of President Reagan on television. Then he said: “We’ve had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve had some sex… uh… setbacks.” President George Bush Senior’s gaffe will be remembered for posterity.
When words betray you and you say something you shouldn’t, that is where Freud paid special attention to when he listened to his patients. True desires, he believed, could only be examined by these slips of the tongue. These lapsus are the breadcrumbs that lead to the workings of the unconscious mind.
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Types of Lapsus
1. Slips of the tongue or of the mind that reflect a latent behavior. This can be observed in the distortion of names or nicknames. When you switch one name for another you are letting the other person know that you are cataloguing them under the same group of semantics.
2. The distortion of a name or object that is insulting and the intention was the complete opposite. For example, when you tell your gym partner “you’re very fat-I mean, fit!”
3. Changing words or letters that transform an idea into something obscene or stupid. For instance, saying “pornography,” instead of “photography.”
4. A change of words that reflect a hidden desire that has come to the light. For instance, when you say, “I’m so glad tomorrow is Saturday,” when in fact it is Tuesday. This simply shows a yearning for the weekend to arrive.
5. Forgetting names can hide either resentment or disgust towards the other person.
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Conclusions
While some see these verbal errors as puzzles waiting to be solved, others believe there is no meaning waiting to be decoded. This is why it is hard to convince people to share their past lapses because for them they are just clumsy slips of the tongue.
There is one main problem: Freudian slips, as with many of his other theories and ideas, are extremely difficult to test out. Many contemporary linguists, psychologists and neuroscientists believe there is little evidence to support Freud’s theory that these mistakes are a window to the unconscious. At the end, what can we truly say about these lapsus? Not much, but one thing is for certain when we stumble, people view these mistakes as a glimpse of what is truly working behind the cogs and wheels of the mind.
