The Freudian Slip

In this work - republished now with a new and major introductory essay by Perry Anderson - Sebastiano Timpanaro submits the whole field of psychoanalysis to a sustained and serious Marxist critique. Timpanaro develops his criticisms of Freud through the highly novel and expert perspective of a classical philologist. Using the techniques of textual criticism, he reconsiders the most famous cases of "slips" analyzed by Freud in "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life", and argues that, in virtually every case, Freud's explanations of them are arbitrary or unnecessary. Timpanaro then goes on to claim that an attack on the theory of "slips" inevitably threatens the status of psychoanalysis as a whole. His book ends with an interpretation of the cultural and historical destiny of Freud's work within early 20th-century thought. This new edition of Timpanaro's study also includes his essay, "Freud's 'Roman Phobia'", originally published in "New Left Review".