The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

For the King Missile album, see The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (album).

1901 book by Sigmund Freud

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)
Language| German
Subject| Freudian slip
Publication place| Germany
Part of a series of articles on

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's couch

Concepts

* Psychosexual development
* Psychosocial development (Erikson)
* Unconscious
* Preconscious
* Consciousness
* Psychic apparatus
* Id, ego and superego
* Ego defenses
* Projection
* Introjection
* Libido
* Drive
* Transference
* Countertransference
* Resistance
* Denial
* Dreamwork
* Cathexis

Important figures

* Abraham
* Adler
* Balint
* Bion
* Breuer
* Chodorow
* Erikson
* Fairbairn
* Ferenczi
* Freud (Anna)
* Freud (Sigmund)
* Fromm
* Guattari
* Horney
* Irigaray
* Jacobson
* Jones
* Jung
* Kohut
* Klein
* Kristeva
* Lacan
* Laing
* Laplanche
* Mahler
* Rank
* Reich
* Spielrein
* Stekel
* Strachey
* Sullivan
* Winnicott
* Žižek

Important works

* The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
* The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
* Three Essays on the Theory
of Sexuality (1905)

* Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)
* Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
* The Ego and the Id (1923)
* Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
* The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933)
* The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964)
* Anti-Oedipus (1972)
* The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Schools of thought

* Adlerian
* Ego psychology
* Jungian
* Lacanian
* Interpersonal
* Intersubjective
* Marxist
* Object relations
* Reichian
* Relational
* Self psychology

Training

* Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis

* British Psychoanalytic Council
* British Psychoanalytical Society
* Columbia University Center for
Psychoanalytic Training and Research

* International Psychoanalytical Association
* World Association of Psychoanalysis
* List of schools of psychoanalysis

See also

* Child psychoanalysis
* Depth psychology
* Psychodynamics
* Psychoanalytic theory

* Psychology portal

* v
* t
* e

Psychopathology of Everyday Life (German: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards,[1] it became perhaps the best-known of all Freud's writings.[2]

## Editorial history

[edit]

The Psychopathology was originally published in the Monograph for Psychiatry and Neurology in 1901,[3] before appearing in book form in 1904. It would receive twelve foreign translations during Freud's lifetime, as well as numerous new German editions,[4] 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".[5] 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.[6] A new English-language translation by Anthea Bell was published in 2003.

Among the most overtly autobiographical of Freud's works,[7] the Psychopathology was strongly linked by Freud to his relationship with Wilhelm Fliess.[8]

## Summary

[edit]

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:

"During the year 1898 I published a short essay on the Psychic Mechanism of Forgetfulness. I shall now repeat its contents and take it as a starting-point for further discussion. I have there undertaken a psychologic analysis of a common case of temporary forgetfulness of proper names, and from a pregnant example of my own observation I have reached the conclusion that this frequent and practically unimportant occurrence of a failure of a psychic function – of memory – admits an explanation which goes beyond the customary utilization of this phenomenon. 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.

Considering the numerous cases of such deviations, he concludes that the boundary between the normal and abnormal human psyche is unstable and that we are all a bit neurotic. Such symptoms are able to disrupt eating, sexual relations, regular work, and communication with others.

In the last chapter of his book, Freud deals with the problem of psychic determinism, for which he makes a case. He argues that "If one investigates, let us say, this seeming voluntary formation, for example, of a number of many digits uttered in unrestrained mirth, it always proves to be so strictly determined that the determination seems impossible". He then discusses a famous case of a name "arbitrarily chosen", the Dora's one. Analysing the motivation of his choice, it occurred to him that the nurse of his sister's children was named Dora. Then a slight recent event soon flashed into his mind which brought the looked-for determination. On his sister's dining-room he noticed a letter with the address "Miss Rosa W.". Flabbergasted, he was informed that the real name of Dora was in fact Rose, and that she had agreed to have her name changed in order to get the job, because Rosa would also refer to his sister".[9]

Freud's conclusion is that:

"The unconscious, at all events, knows no time limit. The most important as well as the most peculiar character of psychic fixation consists in the fact that all impressions are on the one hand retained in the same form as they were received, and also in the forms that they have assumed in their further development. This state of affairs cannot be elucidated by any comparison from any other sphere. By virtue of this theory every former state of the memory content may thus be restored, even though all original relations have long been replaced by newer ones."

## Influence and reception

[edit]

Sometimes called the Mistake Book (to go with the Dream Book and the Joke Book),[10] The Psychopathology of Everyday Life became one of the scientific classics of the 20th century.[11] Freud realised he was becoming a celebrity when he found his cabin-steward reading the Mistake Book on his 1909 visit to the States.[12] The Rat Man came to Freud for analysis as a result of reading the Psychopathology of Everyday Life.[13] The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan considered The Psychopathology of Everyday Life one of the three key texts for an understanding of the unconscious, alongside The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), and Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905).[14] Through its stress on what Freud called "switch words" and "verbal bridges",[15] The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is considered important for psychopathology.

Strachey's English translation is criticized by the psychologist Louis Breger, who writes that Strachey translates the word for slips or mistakes as "parapraxis" when the English "blunder" or "faulty action" would have been more appropriate, and uses the Latinisms "id" and "ego" where "it" and "I" would have better captured Freud's language.[16] The philosopher Michel Onfray argues that The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is not scientific.[17] Jacques Bénesteau writes that Freud added lies in each edition.[18] The philosopher Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and the psychologist Sonu Shamdasani write that Freud's coupling of an analysis of his dreams and childhood memories had a precedent in Belgian psychologist Joseph Delboeuf's Sleep and Dreams, one of the major themes of which is the capacity of dreams to recall forgotten memories.[19]

## See also

[edit]

* Double entendre
* Doublespeak
* Introduction to Psychoanalysis
* Lapsus
* Signorelli parapraxis

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Peter Gay, Freud (1989) pp. 125-6
2. ^ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) p. 315
3. ^ Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 11
4. ^ Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 465
5. ^ Quoted in Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 10
6. ^ Peter Gay, Reading Freud (1990) p. 76
7. ^ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 23
8. ^ Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 126
9. ^ S. Freud: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Standard Edition, Vol. VI, pp. 240-241
10. ^ Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 10
11. ^ A. Kukla/J. Walmsley, Mind (2006) p. 186
12. ^ Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 209
13. ^ Sigmund Freud, Case Studies II (PFL 9) p. 40
14. ^ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (1996) p. 170
15. ^ Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1989) p. 70 and p. 349
16. ^ Breger, Louis (2000). Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 378. ISBN 0-471-31628-8.
17. ^ Michel Onfray, Apostille au crépuscule. Pour une psychanalyse non freudienne Grasset, Paris, 2010 p.140-141
18. ^ Mensonges freudiens: histoire d'une désinformation séculaire. by Jacques Bénesteau, Éditions Mardaga, 2002
19. ^ Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel; Shamdasani, Sonu (2012). The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-521-72978-9.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Sigmund Freud, Richard Wollheim, Publisher: Cambridge University Press (March 23, 1981), ISBN 978-0-521-28385-4
* Sebastiano Timpanaro, The Freudian Slip (1974)

## External links

[edit]

* Full text in archive.org
* Psychopathology of Everyday Life public domain audiobook at LibriVox

* v
* t
* e

Sigmund Freud

Books|

* On Aphasia (1891)
* Studies on Hysteria (1895)
* The Interpretation of Dreams (including On Dreams) (1899)
* The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
* Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)
* Totem and Taboo (1913)
* Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1916–17)
* The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1917)
* Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)
* The Ego and the Id (1923)
* The Question of Lay Analysis (1926)
* The Future of an Illusion (1927)
* Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
* Moses and Monotheism (1939)

Essays|

* "The Aetiology of Hysteria" (1896)
* Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
* Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva (1907)
* Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming (1908)
* Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood (1910)
* On Narcissism (1914)
* The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914)
* Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work (1915)
* Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1916)
* Mourning and Melancholia (1918)
* Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
* Medusa's Head (1922)
* Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928)

Case studies|

* "Dora" (Ida Bauer)
* Emma Eckstein
* Herbert Graf ("Little Hans")
* Irma's injection
* "Anna O." (Bertha Pappenheim)
* "Rat Man"
* Sergei Pankejeff ("Wolfman")
* Daniel Paul Schreber

Original
concepts|

* Psychoanalysis
* Id, ego and superego
* Libido
* Preconscious
* Ego ideal
* censorship
* Free association
* Transference
* Psychosexual development
* Oral stage
* Anal stage
* Phallic stage
* Latency stage
* Genital stage
* Oedipus complex
* Father complex
* Deferred obedience
* Reality principle
* Seduction theory

Related|

* Bibliography
* complete works
* Archives
* Vienna home and museum
* London home and museum
* 1971 statue
* Interment
* Freudian slip
* Humor
* Inner circle
* Neo-Freudianism
* Views on homosexuality
* Religious views

Cultural
depictions|

* Freud: The Secret Passion (1962 film)
* The Visitor (1993 play)
* Mahler on the Couch (2010 film)
* A Dangerous Method (2011 film)
* Freud (2020 TV series)
* Freud's Last Session (2023 film)

Family|

* Martha Bernays (wife)
* Anna Freud (daughter)
* Ernst L. Freud (son)
* Clement Freud (grandson)
* Lucian Freud (grandson)
* Walter Freud (grandson)
* Amalia Freud (mother)
* Jacob Freud (father)
* Edward Bernay (nephew)
* Jofi (dog)

Authority control databases

National|

* France
* BnF data

Other|

* MusicBrainz release group

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template