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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 186 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 186 pagesAbout this book
What if the name you forget and the word you say by mistake point to thoughts you keep hidden?
In Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Sigmund Freud turns small lapses into questions worth asking. A name refuses to come. A key lands somewhere strange. An appointment disappears from memory. Drawing on his own life, friends, and patients, he argues that these familiar mistakes can reveal hidden thoughts rather than mere chance.
Freud begins with a name he cannot remember, then explores slips of speech, reading errors, lost objects, and childhood memories. His plain language welcomes readers who are not doctors. The appeal lies in watching him follow each clue—and deciding for yourself whether the connections he draws make his case.
What you’ll discover
- A name beyond reach Follow Freud's own forgotten name into his argument about the hidden causes of ordinary lapses.
- Words with rival intentions Explore his claim that slips of the tongue can express an intention competing with our words.
- Childhood scenes that linger Consider why a trivial early memory stays vivid while other stretches of childhood remain blank.
- The things we misplace Look at lost objects and forgotten promises through Freud's questions about wishes and motives.
- A case to question Weigh vivid personal examples while keeping their anecdotal nature firmly in view.
Who will love it
For readers who love puzzles of the mind, anyone who has laughed at their own slip of the tongue, and anyone drawn to psychology and the small details of daily life.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Forgotten names can follow hidden thoughts
- A blank can reveal an inner objection
- Small memories can conceal charged events
- Speech can expose a withheld thought
- Wishes can redirect reading and writing
- Forgetting can express an unwanted opinion
- Clumsy movements can carry a purpose
- Apparently free choices have hidden connections
- Follow the error toward its motive
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Psychopathology of Everyday Life
by Sigmund Freud · 1901
A forgotten painter's name, a misread sign and a torn banknote each point to a thought you do not know you have.
Challenging2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“the first exploration of the way in which hidden states of the brain participate in driving thought and behavior”
In short
Why can you not recall a name you know perfectly well? Freud opens with one such blank, the name of the painter of the great frescoes at Orvieto, and shows that the failure is not random.
Psychopathology of Everyday Life at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 30 min3 h 35 min fast, 5 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 64,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1901by Sigmund Freud
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A forgotten name often follows a hidden path
Freud cannot recall the name of the artist who painted the frescoes at Orvieto. Two wrong names keep arriving, Botticelli and Boltraffio, and he rejects both. When another person supplies Signorelli, he knows it is right at once.
The name was as familiar to him as Botticelli, and the setting was harmless, a carriage ride through Herzegovina with a stranger. The answer lies in the talk just before. Freud had told the stranger how Turkish patients in Bosnia accept death calmly, but he withheld a delicate anecdote about despair over a sexual failure. He also pushed away the painful news of a patient who took his own life, which had reached him at Trafoi.
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A forgotten painter's name, a misread sign and a torn banknote each point to a thought you do not know you have.
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Details
- First published
- 1901
- Language
- English
- Level
- Challenging
- Paperback
- 186 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 186 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 312 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 312 pages · 6 × 9 in
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Cite this edition
Freud, Sigmund. Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/psychopathology-of-everyday-life.
Freud, S. (2026). Psychopathology of everyday life. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/psychopathology-of-everyday-life (Original work published 1901)
Freud, Sigmund. Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/psychopathology-of-everyday-life.
@book{freud2026psychopathology,
author = {Freud, Sigmund},
title = {Psychopathology of Everyday Life},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/psychopathology-of-everyday-life},
note = {First published 1901}
}
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What is Psychopathology of Everyday Life about?
It is about the small mistakes of daily life, such as forgotten names, slips of the tongue, misread words, lost objects and clumsy acts. Freud argues that each mistake has a hidden motive that careful questioning can uncover.
What is a Freudian slip?
It is a slip of the tongue or pen that expresses a thought the speaker means to hold back. Freud gives many cases, such as a man saying closed when he meant opened, because he wished the session were over.
What is the story of Signorelli in this book?
Freud cannot recall the name of the painter of the frescoes at Orvieto and thinks of Botticelli and Boltraffio instead. He traces the lapse to a painful topic he had just avoided in conversation, and uses it as his first model.
The author
Sigmund Freud
1856–1939 · Austrian founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Born in Freiberg, now Příbor in the Czech Republic, he lived and worked in Vienna before moving to London in 1938. He wrote The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905).
More by Sigmund Freud
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