In an iconoclastic work of great verve, Sebastiano Timpanaro submits the whole field of psychoanalysis to one of its most sustained and serious Marxist critiques.

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 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life 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.