According to Freud, failure acts are not chance events, but serious mental acts; they have a meaning; they arise from the concurrent action, or perhaps the mutually opposing action, of two intentions. Freud's first mention of a failure act is in a letter to Fliess, August 26, 1898, where it refers to the German term "fehlleistung", that is, "failed operation".

Hence, it was necessary to translate the German terms by "flawed act". Flawed acts can be classified as follows: a) Lapses of the tongue; b) Forgetfulness; c) Mistakes in action; and d) Mistakes.

It is important to clarify that failure acts can also happen in combination with each other, that is, more than one type of failure act being manifested together in the subject.

Table of Contents

• Lapses of language and the fallible acts
  • Forgetfulness and the acts of failure
  • Misunderstanding in the action
• Mistakes and the failed acts
• Final considerations
  • Failure to Act and the Unconscious

Lapses of language and the fallible acts

The lapses of speech, reading and writing have valid points of view and observations to all the above, which, according to Freud, is not surprising, considering the close kinship between these functions. A speech lapse consists of a slip, mistake, or flawed operation in language, that is, committed verbally by a subject. A speech slip happens when, for example, a subject uses one word instead of another that he had in mind until then.

Writing lapses are very similar to speech lapses, since, according to Freud, it can happen, for example, that a person who intends to say something uses, instead of one word, another word; or that he does the same thing while writing, may or may not realize what he has done.

Reading lapses, on the other hand, differ markedly from speech and writing lapses when compared to the psychic situation of each. So, in this specific case, d evanted to one of the two competing tendencies being replaced by sensory stimulation, will tend to resist less.

Forgetfulness and the acts of failure

Forgetfulness belongs to the second group among the three groups classified by Freud as a failure/parapraxia. It can occur temporarily or permanently, depending on the situation.

Forgetfulness is classified as: forgetting proper names, forgetting foreign words, forgetting names and word sequences, - forgetting impressions; forgetfulness of intentions; - childhood memories and cover-up memories; and misplacements and losses.

Misunderstanding in action

The flawed act, according to Freud, is the symbolic representation of a thought that, in truth, was not intended to be admitted seriously and consciously. Flawed acts are characterized by unintentional acts - on a conscious level - but which come to say something, and when investigated, one realizes that they were intentional, but at an unconscious level (a way for the unconscious content to make itself present in the most diverse situations, even when it is not the moment deemed appropriate, or the will of the conscious self for that content to appear).

These flawed or careless acts, not unlike other mistakes and misunderstandings, often appear as means to satisfy the person in question's own desires, even though he denies that they exist within himself; so they are usually seen by her, and also by others, as accidental acts.

Some acts that appear to be clumsy and accidental, in reality can be extremely skillful and consequential, because they are governed by an unconscious intention and, most of the time, achieve their objective in a precise manner.

Mistakes and the failed acts

According to Freud, memory errors (or else memory illusions) are not recognized as errors per se, on the contrary: they are given credit as something true. However, where an error appears, a recalcitrance is hidden. A mistake that often goes unnoticed is the substitution of something that is hidden in the unconscious.

Freud points out that these errors, which come from the recalcitrance, must be distinguished from errors that are based on a true one. Some of the errors and flawed acts are more important than they appear. In fact, it is through errors and flawed acts that the greatest truths of the human being are spoken, even without the subject realizing it, or without consciously wanting to let that truth be told or shown.

It is something that goes beyond the sphere of the Self and the wills of the Self; they appear because they appear, because the forces of the unconscious act all the time in human beings, govern actions, behavior, and thoughts.

Final considerations

Failure acts are very common phenomena and can be easily observed in every person. The great value of the failure act is that it can appear and manifest in any person, without absolutely implying illness. There are some conditions for a situation to be classified as a failure act. Since the failure act occurs in any subject, without the implication of any illness, It is necessary that this faulty act does not exceed certain dimensions; it can be a disturbance of a momentary and temporary character; besides that, usually when the person realizes the failure, a priori he doesn't recognize any motivation for it, and it is commonly tried to explain it by 'inattention' or 'causality'.

Since the fallible acts are the manifestation of what exceeds the conscious I, it is verified that the un-known ("unknown", "unacknowledged") which was opposed to the conscious intentions of the act (which became flawed), found another way out (a counter-will that turns directly against the intention itself, or by unusual ways through external associations) after it was barred the first way.

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The first way is often barred, because the disturbing thoughts come from suppressed motions of the soul life, which are not exposed to the conscious self, usually for moral reasons. Although the repressed material is not accessible to the consciousness in the first instance, it must be considered that the faulty acts, Casual and symptomatic acts are not only created by the very existence of the repressed thoughts or motions, In other words, one can conclude that even when something is not consciously recognized, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Failure to Act and the Unconscious

The unconscious (the repressed fantasies and desires) governs the human being's acts and conduct, even when he does not want to be revealed in this or that way. The deepest truth of being - that which escapes the conscious self - always appears in some form.

Through this study it was possible to verify the importance of small actions, and sometimes impasses, of everyday life; for it is in these small acts that people also manifest themselves, express themselves, and declare themselves. Even when a psychic material has been (incompletely) suppressed, Despite being repelled by consciousness, it still has the ability to somehow express itself.

Finally, besides highlighting the importance of each little act, the study carried out confirms not only the existence of the unconscious, but also its action in the daily life of every human being, manifesting itself not only to those who have some disturbance of the "normal"/"pathological" order. Everyone of the human species is subject to impositions and influences from his own unconscious, at any time.

This text about failed acts according to Freud was written by Paulo Cesar, IBPC student, student of psychology and pedagogy - contacts Email: [email protected]