All Shook Up

In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud lent his name to the parapraxis—the slip of the tongue—attributing this "verbal leakage" to a failure of the ego to repress a worrisome thought.

Psychologists today acknowledge the doctor was onto something when he identified the Freudian slip.

A parapraxis could indeed represent a failure of the ego to censor our unruly unconscious.

But what about the visual parapraxis?

The slip of the eye, which, although common, has no name in psychology.

My wife's frequent slips of the eye are a daily source of mirth in our home.

I could list them here, but I'd need a month. 

On occasion, I have slips of the eye, as well.

Yesterday, for example, I misread the ad headline "Learn to paint expressively" as "Learn to paint Elvis Presley."

Misreadings aren't the same as mondegreens, mishearings of song lyrics (for example, hearing Elvis sing "A midget like a man on a fuzzy tree" instead of "I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree.")

Misreadings, psychologists believe, can be due to any number of causes, including stress, distraction, exhaustion, bias, and good-old Freudian ego-failure.

My theory is that misreadings are a form of dissociation, those brief out-of-body experiences we all suffer (for example, when we daydream).

Misreadings, in fact, may constitute a form of Ganser syndrome, also known as "balderdash syndrome."

Balderdash syndrome is characterized by episodes of "pseudodementia," where you show show signs of dementia—including speech and language problems—even though you don't in fact have dementia.

In other words, when you're all shook up.

What slip of the eye did you last have?