Let’s start with what Freud actually wrote about slips and lapses: ‘A suppression of a previous intention to say something is the indispensable condition for the occurrence of a slip of the tongue’. So, a slip is a product of both local opportunity and a struggle between two mental forces: some underlying need or wish and the desire to keep it hidden. Freud also thought that every mistake we make has a meaning, even things as absent-mindedness and distraction.

Classic Example from Freud

In Freud’s book he describes a situation where he met a young man. The man tried to quote a line from Virgil, but didn’t do it accurately. When the young man noticed that he quoted the wrong line he wanted to explain to Freud why he did it wrong. After Freud quoted the right line he asked by the young man had forgotten the word ‘aliquis’ (someone). The young man explained that he was distracted because the words ‘a’ (fluid) and ‘liquis’ (saint of the blood). He told Freud that he was worried that his girlfriend didn’t got her period on time. This is exactly what Freud meant, there was an explanation for the mistake. Other researches don’t agree with Freud though and tried to explain the slip in various ways.

Another example from Freud

Another example of Freud was a story that his friend William Stekel told him. Stekel was saying goodbye to a patient of him at a house call. The extended his hand to the woman and discovered that instead of shaking her hand he was loosening her dressing gown. Freud explained this mistake as if Stekel has unconscious desires for this woman, but other explanations can be that he was so used to undoing bows of jackets and dresses for medical examination.

What are the conditions for provoking a AM error?

With these examples in mind, there are two necessary conditions for provoking a absent-minded error:

• Cognitive under-specification, inattention, incomplete sense of date or insufficient knowledge.
• The existence of some locally appropriate response pattern that is primed by prior usage or activation.

Freudian slips do occur, of course in some cases there is a reason behind a mistake. But they do not occur frequently. Everyday slips and lapses have more banal origins. For a slip to be Freudian, they have to be less familiar than the intended word or action. So the definition of slips from Freud that slips represent minor eruptions of unconscious processing, it true. But we don’t use the psychoanalytic meaning of unconscious, it as seen as not directly accessible, automatic.