Unconscious Manifestations In Everyday Life

Sigmund Freud,  father of psychoanalysis, noticed phenomena that other researchers in his time had not followed. One of them was unconscious manifestations in everyday life. He wrote the book  Daily Psychopathology  to describe his observations.

In this book, Freud identifies small daily phenomena that lie within what we call “irrational”. These are expressions that have no logic, so to speak. This is where certain behaviors such as  lapsus linguae,  Freudian miss and motivated forgetfulness are located.

One of the most interesting points in this topic is that these claims led to the collapse of the idea that reason (conscious processes) was the only thing that kept people going. The truth is that in our way of thinking, feeling and acting, there are influential aspects that do not go through our conscious mind.

It is important to note that Freud pointed out that the elements that do not pass through our consciousness are those we express voluntarily. In addition, he established that the content we usually ignore ends up exacerbating our suffering, leading to illness.

Lapsus linguae: One of the most common unconscious manifestations in everyday life

Lapsus linguae  is also known as speech or speech impediment. That’s when we want to say one thing, but end up saying something else. It almost always makes people laugh. But Freud’s clinical eye observed how these outcomes were more than just meaningless errors. Freudian misses are a path through which unconscious content and desires come to the surface.

Outcomes can come out both verbally and in writing. This is something that can happen to any person at any time. In fact, there have been several known outcomes, such as when Mariano Rajoy, former Spanish leader, said during a debate: “What we did, which you did not do, was deceive people.”

Another example is when Juan Manuel Santos, former president of the Republic of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2016, said this in a dispute: “It does not invalidate the number of votes cast in support of corruption.” In reality, he meant “votes cast in support of re-election.”

Through the previous examples you can see that  lapsus linguae  can bring a person’s guilt to the surface. They are a way to atone for a confession. This is one of the most unconscious manifestations in everyday life.

Motivated forgetfulness: Another good example of unconscious manifestations in everyday life

The content we have in mind is not always available. At least once before, we have all felt that part of our memory shut down just as we were searching for a specific memory. This happens especially with concrete elements such as words. It is strange that we forget something we should keep in mind or that is related to things we do often.

For example, when we “forget” a task that someone reminded us to do many times. Or when we forget the name of an employee we talk to every day. Another common example of this is when our mind becomes empty during a presentation after studying the information for several hours.

All these examples are, under the paradigm of psychoanalysis, unconscious manifestations. What happens is that there are factors that lead us to reject certain information because it is associated with desires, fears or other content that we have not processed. We forget the task we would not do in the first place, the name of a person we do not like so much or what to say until we disagree with someone.

Freudian misses

Freudian misses or blunders are similar to outcomes. But they have nothing to do with language, but rather the action itself. This happens in situations where we have to do something and end up doing the opposite without knowing why. The unconscious strikes our conscious mind because our hidden desires are stronger than those we recognize.

Here is an example of a Freudian miss. We are going to a very dreaded dental class with public transport. We are sure that we read the route correctly, but we end up very far from the destination because we went on the wrong bus or subway. The hypothesis is that our rejection of the dental class imposes on our unconscious desire not to go.

All unconscious manifestations like this can reveal what we carry deep within ourselves. They are not wrong. They simply bring the things inside us to the surface that long to come out somehow.