a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

which carries me forward on this path. These sound and word relationships
therefore serve also only to facilitate the tongue slip, just as the bodily
dispositions facilitate them; they cannot give the explanation for the word
itself. Just consider, for example, the fact that in an enormously large number
of cases, my lecturing is not disturbed by the fact that the words which I use
recall others by their sound resemblance, that they are intimately associated
with their opposites, or arouse common associations. We might add here the
observation of the philosopher Wundt, that slips of the tongue occur when, in
consequence of bodily fatigue, the tendency to association gains the upper
hand over the intended speech. This would sound very plausible if it were not
contradicted by experiences which proved that from one series of cases of
tongue-slips bodily stimuli were absent, and from another, the association
stimuli were absent.
However, your next question is one of particular interest to me, namely: in
what way can one establish the existence of the two mutually antagonistic
tendencies? You probably do not suspect how significant this question is. It is
true, is it not, that one of the two tendencies, the tendency which suffers the
interference, is always unmistakable? The person who commits the error is
aware of it and acknowledges it. It is the other tendency, what we call the
interfering tendency, which causes doubt and hesitation. Now we have
already learned, and you have surely not forgotten, that these tendencies are,
in a series of cases, equally plain. That is indicated by the effect of the slip, if
only we have the courage to let this effect be valid in itself. The president
who said the opposite of what he meant to say made it clear that he wanted
to open the meeting, but equally clear that he would also have liked to
terminate it. Here the meaning is so plain that there is nothing left to be
interpreted. But the other cases in which the interfering tendency merely
distorts the original, without bringing itself to full expression—how can one
guess the interfering meaning from the distortion?
By a very sure and simple method, in the first series of cases, namely, by the
same method by which one establishes the existence of the meaning
interfered with. The latter is immediately supplied by the speaker, who
instantly adds the originally intended expression. "It may stake—no, it may
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