...what in common parlance might be called 'innocent mistakes'. But for psychoanalysis 'there is nothing innocent about forgetting, slips of the tongue, jokes, indeed all forms of parapraxis - those bungled actions that point elsewhere even as they can be observed as interfering with daily life' (Britzman, 1998: 68). Anna Freud explains:
Examining the small mistakes in the everyday life of human beings, such as forgetting, losing, or misplacing things, misreading or mishearing, psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that such errors are always based on an intent of the person who makes them ... Psychoanalytic investigation established that, generally speaking, we forget nothing except what we wish to forget for some good reason or other, though that reason is usually quite unknown to us. (A. Freud, 1974: 81-82)
And Ehrman and Dornyei expand on this noting that, according to the psychoanalytic principle of psychic determinism, 'behaviour is meaningful and not random or accidental ...' and 'individuals ... [unconsciously] give each other messages about their feelings and wishes' (Ehrman & Dornyei, 1998: 11)
(p. 105)
Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 105.
