The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

by Sigmund Freud

varied psychic value of phonetics.

Whether or not the initial sound of the name

it is surely not true that in the case of the forgetting of the word it first returns to consciousness;

The speech disturbance which manifests a speech-blunder may in the first place be caused by the influence of another component of same speech

the disturbance could be brought about analogously to the process in the case Signorelli,

"complicated psychic influences,"

Where the word disturbances

cannot reduced to sound disturbances,

t...

have w...

hesitation sought the cause of the mistake in speech outside of intended context, and proved this state of affai...

of interchanging of words, especially for such cases where one word is substituted by another of opposite meaning.

that we frequently interchange contrasting words; they are already associated in our speech consciousness; they lie very close together and are easily incorrectly evoked.

may

the influence of fore-sounds, after-sounds, words from

as well as through the effect of words outside the s...

we shall next wish to discover whether we can definitely separate the two classe...

Wundt,

The uninhibited stream of sound and word associations stimulated by spoken sounds belongs here in the first place as a positive determinant.

the relaxation or suppression of the influences of the will

Whether that play of association manifests itself in the fact that a coming sound is anticipated or a preceding sound reproduced, or whether a familiar practised sound becomes intercalated between others, or finally, whether it manifests itself in the fact that altogether d...

speech disturbance simply and solely to what Wundt calls "contact effect of sound."

single unconscious thought, which comes to light through the special blunder, and can only be brought to consciousness through a searching analysis, or it is a general psychic motive, which directs against the entire speech.

Schlesinger. This speech-blunder may depend on the tendency to facilitate articulation.

Mistakes in speech are in a great measure contagious;

"I don't like to owe money to any one, especially to doctors; I prefer to pay right away." Instead of he said play. His last voluntary remarks and his mistake put me on my guard, but after a few more uncalled-for remarks he set me at ease by taking money from his pocket. He counted four paper dollars and was very chagrined and surprised because he had no more money with him, and promised to send me a cheque for the balance. I was sure that his mistake betrayed him, that he was only playing with me, but there was nothing to be done. At the end of a few weeks I sent him a bill for the balance, and the letter was returned to me by the post-office authorities marked "Not

and go far beyond the contact effect of the sounds. If I accept as certain "these more remote psychic influences," following Wundt's expression, there is still nothing to detain me from conceding also that in accelerated speech, with a certain amount of diverted attention, the causes of speech-blunder may be easily limited to the definite law of Meringer and Mayer. However, in a number of examples gathered by these authors a more complicated solution is apparent.

we may assume that the disturbing factor is the of striking against obscene words and meanings.

But the emotional trace which clings to the demonstration of the mistake, which manifestly belongs to the nature of shame, has its significance.

more significant cases it is a self-criticism, an internal contradiction against one's own utterance, which causes the speech-blunder, and even forces a contrasting substitution for the one intended.