The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards, it became perhaps the best-known of all Freud's writings. The Psychopathology was originally published in the Monograph for Psychiatry and Neurology in 1901, before appearing in book form in 1904. It would receive twelve foreign translations during Freud's lifetime, as well as numerous new German editions, with fresh material being added in almost every one. James Strachey objected that "Almost the whole of the basic explanations and theories were already present in the earliest edition...the wealth of new examples interrupts and even confuses the mainstream of the underlying argument". However, in such a popular and theory-light text, the sheer wealth of examples helped make Freud's point for him in an accessible way. A new English-language translation by Anthea Bell was published in 2003. Among the most overtly autobiographical of Freud's works, the Psychopathology was strongly linked by Freud to his relationship with Wilhelm Fliess.