9. Parapraxes

Part three Freud's astounding claimsepisode nine parapraxis. So when Freud and Joseph Briar collaboratedsuccessfully up until the publication of their work studies on hysteriapublished in 1895. The book was relatively well-received. Nevertheless, it wasnot long before the two authors had parted ways.

[00:00:24] One reason is that as youthought more about the causes and potential treatment of hysterical symptoms,Freud found himself placing more and more emphasis on sexual causes, who wasbecoming convinced that frustrated sexual urges were at the root of a greatvariety of hysterical symptoms. Brighter on the other hand, found thesuggestion, limiting and wished to remain open to the possibility of a widevariety of possible causes that troubled his patients at the same time for, Iwas losing faith in the power of hypnosis to reveal the unconscious sources ofhis patient's behavior.

[00:00:53] Whereas Broyer was convinced ofthe therapeutic power of the method. After his break with Broyer Freudundertook to analyze his own unconscious mind. An important result of thisprocess was that he began to develop his own revolutionary theory of theunconscious and its relation to the rest of the human mind.

[00:01:09] Explaining important aspects ofthis theory can be challenging. Part of the reason is that so many people takethemselves to know what Fred thought without having read reflected on this workwith care. As Tony soprano says to his therapist, Dr. Melfi, let me tell yousomething. I had a semester and a half of college, so I understand Freud.

[00:01:26] I understand therapy as aconcept. We don't know what Tony soprano did during that semester and a half ofcollege. Maybe he immersed himself in psychoanalytic theory. But in my own experience,surprisingly few people have bothered to read Freud's work, but instead rely ona cartoon version thereof. So in what follows, I'll try to give you a highaltitude overview in the hope that it will provoke you to encounter some ofFreud's writings personally, for that purpose in this and the following severalepisodes, I will focus on Freud's classic introductory lectures onpsychoanalysis, which is the transcript of lectures that he delivered Vinettabetween 1916 and 1917.

[00:02:01] Fred published many othervolumes, some even more famous than this one, but I found this text to be idealfor introducing people to the essential elements of thought the work is alsouseful for displaying both the explanatory power of Freud's new theory, as wellas its limitations.

[00:02:21] In the introductory lectures,Freud makes a novel suggestion. There may be aspects of my own behavior thatare best accounted for, I suppose, and that they have unconscious causes suchbehavior is knowable, not by introspection, but rather in a way I could use tolearn about anybody else's behavior, namely, any third personal way, just as Ican hear you talking, I can hear myself doing so.

[00:02:41] And if there is a mirror hand,yeah. I can even watch my own behavior just as I can watch yours. Freud'sinitial conjecture about the value of taking a third personal approach to one'sbehavior concerns, what he calls parapraxis slips of the tongue, misplacingobjects, forgetting things and other seemingly trivial, everyday errors.

[00:02:59] For instance, you keep onmisplacing a piece of jewelry that someone gave you as a gift or in your job.As a server in a restaurant, you've caught yourself more than once bringing thebill to the mail of the table, rather than to the female diner with no priorindication of who was supposed to pay. Fred gives many similar examples,including one, in which a speaker proposing a toast at a ceremonial occasioncalls on his audience to hiccup, to ALF's Tossin the health and the chief.

[00:03:24] Whereas he presumably intendedto ask his audience to toast. On's Tossin the health of the chief. Similarly aninternet search with terms such as hilarious Friday and slips on the news willdeliver many hours of I'm using clips in which newscasters. Now the public figurestripped over the words with quite embarrassing results, such as a famous case,in which mayor Richard Daley of Chicago remarks that policemen isn't there tocreate disorder.

[00:03:47] A policeman is there to preservedisorder. Many examples of Freud's parapraxis are now of course, calledFreudian slips, a concept so familiar to contemporary culture that there's evena lingerie shop in Eugene, Oregon, by that name, it's not part of common senseto explain someone's behavior in terms of this idea of a Freudian slip.

[00:04:04] The idea here is that thebehavior was not just a mistake, but had a source that is itself psychologicaland yet not readily available to introspection. For instance, maybe youpersisted and forgetting to respond to a message from your old friend, becausesomething about the prospect of reestablishing contact with him seemedunsavory.

[00:04:21] Maybe some part of you now feelsthat he's not the kind of person you want to be associating with any longer. Inthe case of the Freud offers, perhaps the speaker proposing a toast to thechief was unknowingly ambivalent towards his boss. And just possibly mayRichard Daley harbored without knowing it some unsavory ideas for what theChicago police should be doing.

[00:04:45] Yeah. Such explanations for, Iwill urge are no different in principle from others. We offer in the sciences.Modern science is driven by a basic principle, known as inference to the bestexplanation. Given a range of otherwise puzzling phenomena, the bestexplanation to account for those phenomenon is one that we are justified inaccepting what counts as best here.

[00:05:05] Presumably the best explanationof a range of phenomena will be one that's internally coherent rather thanself-contradictory externally coherent in the sense of being consistent withother theories that are already established and simpler than the other accountsof the phenomenon that are available.

[00:05:19] Fraud is in effect, suggestingthat parapraxis can be accounted for, with a similar strategy. We start withthe pattern of observable behavior, misplacing an object, delivering bills tomale, rather than female diners, et cetera. And then ask what would bestexplain such behavior, knowing that simplicity is a virtue in any theory, inthe sense that all else being equal, the simpler our account of a phenomenon,the better.

[00:05:41] Freud first considers the ideathat these everyday mistakes are mere errors with no particularly interestingpsychological cause after all, sometimes we just do trip on the edge of a rug,breaking glass, put a slip of paper in the wrong person's hand and make otherkinds of performance goofs. Fred will reply that this style of explanation willnot account for patterns of error, perhaps tripping on the rugs edge is a one-offcase.

[00:06:03] Yet I keep on misplacing thattoe ring that you gave me. You deliver checks to male diners more often thannot over long period of time. And yet another person continues to call you bythe wrong name. So patterns of behavior, which remember are all available tothird person observation, call off for explanation, going deeper than the merefact that we occasionally make mistakes.

[00:06:24] Here's where Freud we'll pauseit. Psychological causes of which we're not aware. These are not the same ascauses of which we're not aware. A single case of stepping on your littlebrother's homework might be due to its being where it should not have been. Atleast when you stepped on it, you were not aware of its location on the livingroom floor.

[00:06:40] And there's no reason why heshould have been. On the other hand, Freud suggests a pattern of mistakes isbetter explained by something, having a more general reach, a prime example ofwhich would be for instance, a feeling of animosity towards your sibling, suchanimosity, and might take the form of jealousy, resentment, or anger.

[00:06:56] But what matters for us now isthat animosity is always a psychological phenomenon and at least until it issatisfied or otherwise relieved, we'll keep affecting what you do. Fear mightbe of a particular thing such as the enraged dog rushing toward me. On theother hand, fear may also be about a class of things such as spiders Heights orclosed spaces.

[00:07:14] That one can't leave at will.This is why even if a person, honestly, and in good faith has no awareness. Ifyou think fearful of such closed spaces, she might nevertheless, continuallyavoid subways airplanes in the Lake. It might take some painstaking work tofigure out what underlies this pattern of behavior. .