Freudian Slips – Glitch in the machine or key to countless possibilities?

Alexandra Xubersnak – FC&P New York Cocktail Party shoot: Is he envious of my ciggie? via Flickr

Parapraxis, the Freudian Slip

Parapraxis is an obscure word for a pretty common idea—The Freudian Slip. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was the first to try to analytically explain its occurrence.

In the Psychopathology of Everyday Life Freud says parapraxes are unintentional acts resulting from an unconscious wish, desire, attitude or thought.¹

This could involve forgetting names and sequences of words. But classic examples of parapraxes are slips of the pen or tongue.

Imagine a guest at a cocktail party accidentally saying, “I love your horse” instead of, “I love your house.”

For Freud, the hidden, unconscious meaning of the slip points to the person making it. From the above, the slip-maker could be an avid equestrian or, more in line with Freudian thinking, an intensely sexual person (the horse being a traditional symbol of virility).

miss_millions – my freudian slip(pers) via Flickr

Along with aggression, Freud attributed tremendous significance to the libido. The example for “Freudian slip” given at Wikipedia is even more directly related to sex, which again, for Freud is one of two innate drives.²

In general use, the term ‘Freudian slip’ has been debased to refer to any accidental slips of the tongue. Thus many examples are found in explanations and dictionaries which do not strictly fit the psychoanalytic definition.

For example: She: ‘What would you like—bread and butter, or cake?’ He: ‘Bed and butter.’³

Jung’s Challenge

Freud’s best student C. G. Jung was also keen on studying parapraxes. Becoming a luminary in his own right, Jung tried to explain parapraxes in relation to the shadow.

Jung’s idea of the shadow is both personal and collective. An irruption of shadow contents into daytime life could arise from an unresolved personal complex, the greater forces of the collective unconscious or some combination of the two.

Contrary to Freud’s theory, Jung says that slips do not necessarily point to the person making them. Not exclusively, at any rate. Jung believes that slips can involve an entire situation among several or many people, near or possibly across distance and time.

Freud recognizes the importance of others in the formation of the unconscious. But unlike Jung, he doesn’t talk about instantaneous, thematic connections across distance and time. So Jung arguably prefigures today’s transpersonal psychology, whereas Freud does not. In fact, Freud’s private letters ridicule Jung’s interest in parapsychology.⁴

Mankind the Information Processor

Like most things in life, there are even more alternative explanations for Freudian slips.

For many secular people accepting cognitive psychology⁵ there is no need for a personal unconscious or greater, transpersonal connectivity. A purely cognitive theory of parapraxes goes like this:

In contrast to psychoanalytic theorists, cognitive psychologists say that linguistic slips can represent a sequencing conflict in grammar production. From this perspective, slips may be due to cognitive underspecification that can take a variety of forms – inattention, incomplete sense data or insufficient knowledge. Secondly, they may be due to the existence of some locally appropriate response pattern that is strongly primed by its prior usage, recent activation or emotional change or by the situation calling conditions.

Some sentences are just susceptible to the process of banalisation: the replacement of archaic or unusual expressions with forms that are in more common use. In other words, the errors were due to strong habit substitution.⁶

Image via Wikipedia

Meaning, Wisdom and Everlasting Life

There may well be some truth to this. But cognitive psychologists tend to overlook the possibility that aspects of secular, holistic and theological explanations may actually work best together.⁷

Many researchers dismiss slips, mistakes and accidents as flukes brought on by stress, distraction, patterning, sleep deprivation or malnutrition. But people like Dr. Charles Brenner believe that parapraxes have profound implications:

In the mind, as in physical nature around us, nothing happens by chance, or in a random way.⁸

Perhaps one way of differentiating attitudes toward parapraxes is to ask whether we learn something of value from them. Are they just glitches in the machine or is something greater going on?

For me, thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett move through life like horses with blinkers. They see themselves and their world as nothing more than a complex outcome of biochemical processes originally formed by chance. Not unlike robots equipped with sophisticated AI, Dawkins and Dennett may learn how to avoid the next bump in the road after stumbling over the first one. And they may learn how to maximize pleasurable activity.

The full human being, however, is so much more. From life’s lessons we acquire enhanced spiritual meaning and wisdom, which far surpasses the mere avoidance of stumbling blocks and pursuit of ephemeral pleasures.

Image via Wikipedia

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¹ Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 2002 [1901].

² Freud postulates innate drives for sex and aggression, which later came to include Sabina Spielrein‘s thanatos, or death instinct.

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip

⁴ See my PhD, p. 283-284.

⁵ Usually seen as somewhat flimsy science, even among scientists.

⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip

⁷ Just as Intelligent Design attempts to fuse Darwinism and Creationism, several explanations may better approximate reality than only one.

⁸ Charles Brenner, M.D. Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor Books, 1957, p.2. This worldview matches my own and perhaps the meaning of the ancient Greek word Kairos – things happening “at the right time.” Kairos in the New Testament (composed in Greek) means at “the appointed time in the purpose of God.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos

Related » Parapraxes, Accidents and Necessary Mistakes

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Reversal – Beyond the clever machine

In psychoanalytic theory, reversal is a Freudian defense mechanism.

A broader idea than turning against the self, reversal takes place when the ego converts an instinctual impulse into behavior appearing as its opposite. The miser becomes a philanthropist, the pervert a prude, the hater a lover.¹

Remember that Freud bases most everything on the instincts of life (eros) and death (thanatos). So reversal involves aspects and combinations of both waking and dreaming life:

The expression reversal into the opposite refers to the transformation of an idea, a representation, a logical figure, a dream image, a symptom, an affect, or the like into its opposite.²

Freud’s entire model is predicated on the belief that the psyche behaves like a clever machine or, in more contemporary terms, an adaptable computer program. For Freud, a variety of internal attempts are made to reduce anxiety and increase overall functioning. Sometimes the “program” works well. Other times it gets buggy (neurosis) or caught in a downward spiral where the machine crashes (psychosis), requiring a reboot.

Reversal is just another example of the clever machine trying to make things optimal, given its paradoxical life/death nature.

My main critique of this view is that all of the regulating is done within the machine. Even dreams that play with, combine or synthesize different moments in space-time are seen as originating from within the neurological system (mainly brain processes).

Compare this view to most religious and mystical traditions and it seems to fall short. A recent example, given the time of year, is how the three wise men in the New Testament are told in a dream to not return to King Herod³ after they find the Christ child. So the three wise men go home another way (Matt 2:12).

Granted, this is a religious story and we have no way of publicly demonstrating its truth. But it does suggest possibilities: Dreams could come from God or otherworldly agents beyond the clever machine. The brain could simply be reading a story, just like a media player plays a video or a radio plays a station. Not many would say a video player actually directs a movie or the radio writes the tune.⁴

Being a materialist atheist, Freud would not have seriously considered this perspective. And  I think that this, despite his obvious genius, was his greatest shortcoming.

—

¹ We see this with some religious people who talk about love but underneath harbor hateful, violent thoughts that sometimes erupt into deadly action.

² See http://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/reversal-opposite

³ Beforehand, Herod lies to the wise men, saying he wants to honor instead of kill Jesus.

⁴ Freud’s student Carl Jung mentions the latter analogy, well before the idea of “channeling” becomes mainstream.

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Regression – Childish vs. Contemplative

Jenn Vargas – coloring time via Flickr

In Freudian psychoanalytic theory regression is a defense mechanism in which the ego partially or fully revisits an earlier phase of libidinal¹ development.

This process is generally viewed as a backward step, one brought on by unresolved anxiety that challenges ‘normal’ functioning. It is also maladaptive because the person re-experiences anxiety clustered around an infantile stage of psychological development. In very real sense, one becomes fixated at an earlier developmental stage and aspects of the world are interpreted though the lens of an anxious child.

Not surprisingly, regression can contribute to negative personality characteristics. In the extreme, we get the paranoid, the grandiose, the manipulator, the pathological liar, or some combination thereof.

That’s the down side of regression.

However, consciously chosen regression – for example, creative play, reading childhood books or listening to old records – need not be maladaptive. Returning to earlier pastimes and pleasures in a controlled way can be therapeutic. It helps to integrate the total personality and possibly leads to increased awareness, experience and wisdom.

As a personal example, one of my favorite controlled regressions is listening to music from different periods of my childhood and young teen years. When I listen to my old favorites now, it’s almost like I psychologically ‘travel’ and connect with aspects of my former self. This can lead to an increased appreciation of where I was at within a given era. But this isn’t something I do on a regular schedule. For me, the right time to revisit and reflect simply arises, and discerning that time is more an art than a science. And when the time isn’t right, old tunes just sound like old tunes… stale, small and uninspiring.²

Embed from Getty Images

Hanging man artwork, in Husova street, central Prague, Czech Republic, a work by David Cerny intended to depict Sigmund Freud.

In a nutshell, the main difference between healthy and unhealthy regression depends on whether one

• consciously participates in opportunities to remember, feel and reflect

or

• unconsciously plays out old neuroses, over and over like a broken record

I touched on this in a piece influenced by the late, great sociologist Max Weber, “Childish or Childlike?”

But not all childish people are necessarily fixated to something from early childhood. This is just a theory. Some believers in reincarnation, for instance, believe that we can be fixated to trauma occurring in past lives. On the other hand, geneticists would probably say that some people are simply born sensitive or anxious, and their anxiety and the resulting distortion of ‘reality’ has little or nothing to do with early childhood or past lives. Meanwhile, philosophers ask “what is reality?”

My point is that we should consider various perspectives but never get caught up in a single one, because that’s a kind of fixation too.

Embed from Getty Images

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¹ Libido commonly refers to sexual energy or the supposed “sex drive” but for Sigmund Freud and his followers, the meaning is far more nuanced. See

• https://earthpages.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/libido/
• https://earthpages.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/stages-of-psychosexual-development/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido#Psychological_perspectives

See also

• Freud’s Psychosexual Stage Theory

² Or as The Bard put it, “stale, flat and unprofitable.”

Reaction Formation – A neurotic response to fear

Freud Quiere Bailar + OU. Póster del concert a Sidecar. 31, Gener, 2008 by Wookie Sidecar via Flickr

In Sigmund Freud‘s psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defense mechanism in which a repressed, socially unacceptable impulse is expressed in an exaggerated, opposite way. The original impulse, perceived as bad or anxiety producing, remains unresolved in its unconscious, infantile form. This feeds the flames of a neuroses.

An example of a reaction formation would be the LGBT hater who represses his or her own LGBT fantasies. Another would be the disordered criminal who denigrates the so-called “mentally ill.”

Reaction formation isn’t always a lifelong sentence. With increased personal maturity it may lead to the successful sublimation of the original, fearful impulse. Sublimation, according to Freudian theory, means redirecting something negative into a socially acceptable channel.¹

A socially acceptable response to a fearful impulse would be, for instance, the mother who sublimates sexual desire for her son into buying him fine clothing.

Sigmund Freud (Wikipedia)

However, some maintain that this is not the best solution. Different thinkers each have unique solutions. But generally, they say that the optimal solution is to resolve socially unacceptable impulses through analysis, prayer or other spiritual techniques for purification. In other words, become conscious of the impulse to transcend it.

Other theorists say it’s impossible to eradicate sexual desires, appropriate or not. At best one can just “put them in the right place,” within the psyche. But this essentially medical, psychiatric view is at odds with accounts from saints like Faustina Kowalska who wrote about the divine gift of celibacy.²

Reaction formation has also been discussed in the context of hostage taking and other oppressive situations like the holocaust. Here the victim actually comes to like or even love their oppressor.³ This seems to be a desperate attempt to make good of a lousy situation where one or more creeps exercise physical, economic or cultic power over a victim who, deep down, really doesn’t like it.⁴

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¹ Wikipedia says this is an unconscious process but it need not be. Many people are aware, for instance, that they redirect their anger and frustration into something positive, like housecleaning or other undesirable tasks. One “attacks” the problem.

² See also http://www.religious-vocation.com

³  The concept of reaction formation has been used to explain responses to external threats as well as internal anxieties. In the phenomenon described as Stockholm Syndrome, a hostage or kidnap victim ‘falls in love’ with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them. Similarly paradoxical reports exist of powerless and vulnerable inmates of Nazi camps creating ‘favourites’ among the guards and even collecting objects discarded by them. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_formation

⁴ In a less extreme sense, one could ask how many wives, husbands and priests would continue in their “loving” relationship or vocation if it didn’t bring economic security. That might sound cynical but I think, in some cases, it’s a realistic question.

Related  » Reversal

References

• Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, pp. 136-137.

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Sadism – Another one of those old “disorders” turned “alternative”

The drawing dates to 1760, when the Sade was nearly 20 years old. It’s the only known authentic portrait of the Marquis. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sadism is a Freudian term denoting a sexual perversion in which erotic pleasure is gained by inflicting pain on another.¹

The term is derived from the surname of the French nobleman Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), who candidly wrote about the alleged pleasures of pain and sex in works like The Philosophy in the Bedroom.

The term “Sadistic Personality Disorder” was included as an appendix in the American psychiatric manual for mental disorders (DSM III) but disappeared in subsequent manuals (DSM-IV, DSM-IV-TR, DSM-5).

Wikipedia explains:

The current version of the American Psychiatric Association‘s manual, DSM-5, excludes consensual BDSM from diagnosis as a disorder when the sexual interests cause no harm or distress. Section F65 of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) indicates that “mild degrees of sadomasochistic stimulation are commonly used to enhance otherwise normal sexual activity”. The diagnostic guidelines for the ICD-10 state that this class of diagnosis should only be made “if sadomasochistic activity is the most important source of stimulation or necessary for sexual gratification”.²

Sigmund Freud originally uploaded by wordscraft

Here we have another example, along with homosexuality, of a preference and associated behavior once pejoratively described by psychiatrists as a “disorder”only to be later designated as “normal.”

It doesn’t take rocket science to see that social and political factors come into play here. Some regard this historical change as evidence that psychiatry is a pseudo-science. Others maintain that psychiatry’s willingness to change is scientific and evidence of its strength.

Strength or weakness, one thing seems clear. Psychiatry reflects and informs the status quo. It is both an indicator of, and influence upon, social attitudes, beliefs and practices at a given point in history.

Lasting innovation in psychological theory is usually spearheaded by individuals holding fast to a vision,³ those willing to withstand the inherent inertia of a social institution that seems to follow and, by virtue of its legal power, shape how everyday people tend to see themselves.

—

¹ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, p. 145.

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadomasochism

³ From a theological perspective, it probably helps if God is on the innovator’s side, this being a perspective usually dismissed by the worldly wise.

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The Future of an Illusion – Freud and Beyond

Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar. Español: Sigmund Freud, fundador del psicoanálisis, fumando. Česky: Zakladatel psychoanalýzy Sigmund Freud kouří doutník. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Future of an Illusion is Sigmund Freud’s work of 1927 where he states his psychoanalytic view of religion. Freud is a staunch materialist who sees all religious ideas as illusory:

Freud defines religion as an illusion, consisting of “certain dogmas, assertions about facts and conditions of external and internal reality which tells one something that one has not oneself discovered, and which claim that one should give them credence.” Religious concepts are transmitted in three ways and thereby claim our belief. “Firstly because our primal ancestors already believed them; secondly, because we possess proofs which have been handed down to us from antiquity, and thirdly because it is forbidden to raise the question of their authenticity at all.” Psychologically speaking, these beliefs present the phenomena of wish fulfillment, “fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind.”¹

When I was a teenager I probably would have agreed with Freud on many points. But when I first realized that there’s more to life than sex, aggression, society and internalized norms, I came to disagree with Freud. I remember thinking how his reductive thinking could literally be dangerous to a spiritual seeker. I also recall talking with an employee in a spiritual bookstore who said, “Freud will drive you crazy, Jung won’t.” This was when I was beginning my PhD program and purchasing some core books by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who figured prominently in my doctoral thesis.

Today, my view of Freud is not entirely negative. After converting to Catholicism I realized, from direct observation and interaction with some Catholics, that religion and neurosis, perhaps even psychosis, can coexist. While I was converting to Catholicism, the elderly priest who guided our RCIA suggested that “some insane people hide out in religion.”

Embed from Getty Images

I thought he was being a bit harsh at the time. But recently a Catholic parishioner whom I’ve known on and off for over a decade has started cursing and swearing at others in the Mass. Just the other day I was the recipient of her verbal attack, which was unsettling, to put it mildly.

Funnily enough, this person seems to be convinced that she knows better than everyone else. It was okay for her to swear in Church—I just didn’t understand. And after I gently suggested that she need not swear at people in the Mass, she said I was a %$%$#@$#@!

Not too holy. More like angry and conflicted.

This just goes to show that Freud and the RCIA priest weren’t entirely wrong. Some religious people really are quite borderline. And they do seem to hide out in Church instead of getting the help or spiritual direction they need.

So these days I can see that Freud, indeed, had something to say. However, I still disagree with Freud’s ideas in the sense that spiritual influences, as I see it, qualitatively differ from biochemical and social influences.

Embed from Getty Images

For me, the main questions concerning religion and psychology are:

• Is one’s approach to religion healthy or unhealthy?
• Could excessive prayers and countless Rosaries be a way of avoiding unresolved complexes?

With regard to the second point, I think in some instances this might be so.

Like myself, Jung didn’t reject Freudian ideas outright but came to see Freud’s view of religion and, especially spirituality, as lacking. At one time a key player in the Freudian school, Jung eventually went his own way and expanded Freud’s reductive view of spirituality with concepts like archetype, synchronicity and numinosity.

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¹ Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, New York: W.W. Norton, 1961, p. 38. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_an_Illusion

Superego

Freud’s id, ego and super-ego and the level of consciousness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Sigmund Freud‘s psychoanalytic theory, the superego is the conscious or unconscious element of the ego that is formed from the child’s internalization of parental values, beliefs and prohibitions.

Because the superego is internalized in childhood, its moral injunctions are partially based on imagined rather than actual parental demands.

Model of the human psyche according to Sigmund Freud. The id, ego and superego are shown (Photo credit: Wikipedia).

A common mistake among popular psychologists is to equate the superego with the conscience.

Although influencing moral attitudes, the superego differs from the conscience. Internal conflicts can arise between the superego and the conscience or between the superego and more recently acquired attitudes and beliefs.

Later in his career Freud talks about a “cultural superego,” as he becomes a budding sociologist. Wikipedia explains:

In Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), he also discusses the concept of a “cultural super-ego”. Freud suggested that the demands of the super-ego “coincide with the precepts of the prevailing cultural super-ego. At this point the two processes, that of the cultural development of the group and that of the cultural development of the individual, are, as it were, always interlocked.”^[32] Ethics are a central element in the demands of the cultural super-ego, but Freud (as analytic moralist) protested against what he called “the unpsychological proceedings of the cultural super-ego … the ethical demands of the cultural super-ego. It does not trouble itself enough about the facts of the mental constitution of human beings.”¹

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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego#Super-ego

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