Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, noticed phenomena that, for other scientists of the time, went unnoticed, such as the manifestation of the unconscious in everyday life, from his observations was born a book that became a classic on the subject: On the psychopathology of daily life.
In this work, Freud identifies small everyday phenomena that are part of this part that we call “irrational”. These are expressions that break logic, so to speak. There are behaviors such as selective forgetfulness, failures, flawed acts and others.
- One of the most interesting aspects of Freud and this particular issue is that these claims have nullified the idea that human beings can be driven solely by reason.
- The treatment of the conscious.
- The fact is that in the way we think.
- Feel and act.
- There are agents of influence that do not go through our consciousness.
The important thing about all this is that Freud showed that these elements that do not cross our consciousness are those that are expressed involuntarily, and he also explained that it was these ignored contents that eventually made suffering more chronic and ultimately made us sick.
“If you close the door to all mistakes, the truth will also be omitted. “Rabindranath Tagore.
Forfeitures are unintentional errors of language. We want to say one thing and end up saying another. This confusion is almost always fun and doesn’t attract much attention. However, Freud’s clinical eye has seen much more than meaningless mistakes. the ways in which unconscious desires or content are manifested.
Seizures can be pronounced or written. There are well-known shortcomings, such as when Mariano Rajoy, a former Spanish president, said during a debate: “What we have done, what you have not done, is deceive people. “
Or when former President Juan Manuel Santos, Nobel Peace Prize laureate 2016, excelled in a discussion: “This does not invalidate the number of votes cast in favor of corruption,” he meant “votes cast in favor of re-election. “
In the examples above, there is a confession of guilt, loss would be a way of seeking atonement through confession, it would be a way of expressing the unconscious in everyday life.
The contents of our brief are not always available, we all feel that part of this large warehouse was closed just when we had to look for a souvenir, this happens mostly with specific elements, as in the case of words.
What may seem strange is forgetting something that should be fresh and impacting what we do often, happens when you forget to do a task you were asked for, or when you forget the name of a colleague we see every day. Also in these situations where we have a target in the middle of a presentation for which we prepare properly.
All these examples would be, under the paradigm of psychoanalysis, manifestations of the unconscious, what is happening is that there is a factor that leads us to reject certain content because it is associated with desires, fears or aspects of which we are not aware.
We forgot the task we didn’t want to do, the name of someone we have unrecognized difficulties with, or the speech we’re going to talk to about things we don’t agree with.
Failed acts are similar to failures, but they have nothing to do with language, but with the action itself, they are situations in which we were going to do one thing, but we ended up doing another without knowing why, the unconscious would overcome consciousness because hidden desire is stronger than recognized desire.
A flawed act occurs when, for example, we go somewhere by public transport, surely we have read the route well, but we are too far from our destination because we lost the bus or metro line. Rejection of the dentist appointment causes an unconscious desire not to go.
All these manifestations of the unconscious in everyday life reveal the depths of ourselves, in fact, they are not failures, but expressions of things that we carry in us and that we struggle to get out.