Psychopathology of Everyday Life
by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
- Free to read
- 5 hours to read
- 13 chapters
- Reading level: 10th to 12th grade
"Psychopathology of Everyday Life" by Sigmund Freud is a work published in 1901. It explores how seemingly trivial mental lapses—forgotten names, slips of the tongue, random errors—reveal hidden workings of the unconscious mind. Freud argues these everyday mistakes aren't accidents but meaningful symptoms of unconscious thoughts and impulses. Through numerous examples, he suggests the boundary between normal and neurotic behavior is surprisingly fluid, making a case that we are all, in some measure, influenced by forces beyond our conscious awareness.
- Memory
- Psychology, Pathological
- Psychoanalysis
- Repression (Psychology)
- Paragrammatism
- Association of ideas
Read the opening
Chapter I
FORGETTING OF PROPER NAMES
During the year 1898 I published a short essay On the Psychic Mechanism of Forgetfulness.[1] 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.
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About this edition
This free edition of Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #67332, released 2022-02-06. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Psychiatry/Psychology.
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