ABSTRACT
The plasticity of words allow for surprising and highly unpredictable utterances. Freud explores the dynamic organization of the words people say and the complex unconscious procedures involved in verbal errors, parapraxes. Self-referential hearing of words about others points to an ongoing descriptively unconscious function of words when the sense of oneself is compared with the sense of the other person. Freud's comparison implies the non-conscious creation of a mental scene to establish similarities and differences between himself and the other person. This is what Freud demonstrates to everyone, the so-called normal people, that they harbor unconscious intentions and that their memories, words, actions, and errors may surprise them by giving them away. He also demonstrates how such intentions function as motives for what people actually say and do, but also to describe the mechanisms that bring about such unintended utterances or actions. The motives always arise from a conflict between conscious and repressed intentions.
