Freudian Slip

In an iconoclastic work of great verve—with an introductory essay by Perry Anderson—Sebastiano Timpanaro submits the whole field of psychoanalysis to one of its most sustained and serious Marxist critiques.

Using textual criticism, Timpanaro reconsiders the most famous cases of the '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. His book ends with a remarkable interpretation of the cultural and historical destiny of Freud's work within early twentieth-century thought. This edition of Timpanaro's compelling study also includes his essay 'Freud's Roman Phobia', originally published in New Left Review.

"An elegantly written work by a cultivated Italian scholar [with] impressive breadth of knowledge." Contemporary Psychology

“A firework display of erudition.”—Perry Anderson.

“A firework display of erudition.”—Perry Anderson.

Philology cross-examines Freud in this sustained critique of psychoanalysis and its foundational notion of the slip. Challenging virtually every account of linguistic error in Freud's work as arbitrary and constrained, Sebastiano Timpanaro advances an alternative picture keyed to the dynamics of "banalization," "disimprovement," and contextual play borrowed from the field of literary criticism. Underscored with a Marxist defense of science against the professed materialism of the psychoanalytic "individual drama," Timpanaro's analysis demands a strong reassessment of the Freudian legacy and a renewed debate over its value for the Left.

"A firework display of erudition. Sebastiano Timpanaro ... is one of the purest and most original minds of the second half of the century."--Perry Anderson

Sebastiano Timpanaro was born in Parma in 1923 and died in 2000. He studied classical philology at the University of Florence. His works include On Materialism and Freudian Slip, as well as major studies of Leopardi and Edmondo De Amicis.Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. He teaches history at UCLA and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.