The Freudian Slip
© 1999, Chris Heller
The Freudian Slip
Perhaps the most infamous kind of slip, the Freudian slip is in itself subject to a wide degree of interpretation. Some people use the term to refer to any time a person means to say one word but actually says another. For example:"Jethro fell out of that tree and broke his sock." (arm)
Others use "Freudian slip" to refer to such errors in speech which come out sounding sexually suggestive, such as:
"Jethro fell out of that tree and broke his tallywhacker." (arm)
As it turns out, according to a 1980 Psychology Today article, Freud's actual notion of the slip said that any mistake, whether spoken or otherwise, hints at a person's subconscious.
While it's a bit hard to buy the concept that any little mistake a person makes is a window into his or her psyche, certainly people often do reveal something of themselves in their little errors. Probably the best theory is that some slips are Freudian and others are not; that is, sometimes a slip is just a slip.