The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism (Radical Thinkers)

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.

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.