In this book, Freud tells us that the acts of daily life that we consider irrelevant (forgetting a name, an appointment, ring the bell to enter) actually have a meaning and are manifestations of the unconscious. For Freud, forgetting is a spontaneous phenomenon. It may be a word or a sequence of words, and is defined as a malfunction of the mental faculty of memory: when we forget something, it means that we do not remember it. We then try to find it by searching it in our memory.
[...] These incidental and symptomatic acts are influenced by the circumstances in which they occur, by the thoughts of the moment. They are indicative of repressed desires. The review shows that psychoanalyst omissions or errors, apparently without particular purpose, are "motivated and committed for reasons that escape consciousness." Psychic life is, according to Freud, subject to determinism with which we tend to minimize the scope: everything is determined and can be explained by reasons unconscious and unsuspected by consciousness. We do not do anything by chance, all our choices are subject to an unconscious determinism. [...]
[...] The mistakes are where the action seems to consist and lacked the essential element of psychological disorder. They express a desire, pleasant or not, conscious or not. The blunders are, in cases where the action is completely absurd, without apparent purpose. Acts awkward and involuntary conscious intentions, are guided by a purpose that the deliberate actions of volunteers would not do well done. Accidental acts are always intentional even if they belong to the unconscious. In the collective superstitions, the awkwardness is often interpreted as the execution of punishment, as the price to pay for his mistakes or wrongdoing. [...]
[...] The failure of the function symbol (on memory) is due to the unconscious desire to hide what is repressed. However we also observed striking differences: the two phenomena do not occur in the same format: one on the names or words, second on the other memories, whether real or fictional. Then the forgetting is due to a stoppage of mnemonic functions, while the screen memories are caused by a malfunction thereof. Finally, when we forget something, we consider it lost, while the screen memory is created and remains in memory. [...]
[...] Freud admits that the omissions could be due to functional disorders of the brain, but he admits that this may be the only cause. He noted that forgetting is "collective amnesia". When someone forgets a name and asks his interlocutor for help there is a strong probability that one forgets, too. The project is defined as the conscious desire to achieve in a future more or less short, action. There's therefore a time lag between project design and execution, during which it may be modified or deleted altogether. [...]
[...] The slip must be understood as a manifestation of the unconscious, of what consciousness repressed. The slip can express a contradiction between what we think and what we had intended to say. It can then be interpreted as an involuntary and unexpected sincerity: it expresses what we did not intend to say. The person betrays his inner thoughts and hidden feelings. The more we think hard about what we do not want to say, more likely we are to confess through a slip. [...]
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