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Slips Exercise
by Thad Curtz

The goal of this exercise is to help you explore your current notions about the sorts of incidents that Freud categorizes and analyzes as "faulty actions" (Freudian slips). Divide up into groups of six. Each group should have three pairs - one pair to act out the pair of parts in each of the three scenes which follow.

First read through the scenarios individually. Then get somebody in your group to read each of them out loud. Then divide up into pairs and work out which pair is going to do each scene, and which person is going to play each part. Then sit for a couple more minutes quietly to let each person think about the situation.

Then you can have the first pair do the first scene. A member of the group who is not acting should be the timer for each scene; after three minutes the timer should tap twice on the table or making some other small signal that you agree on ahead of time . Each pair can continue in their roles for as long after that as the scene feels interesting, but do not drop out of character until three minutes are up. Sometimes the most important and interesting things to say show up when you are sure that you have nothing left to say and are just hanging on. After each scene the whole group should talk about the incident and what you think about the issues about interpreting human actions that are involved in it for up to ten minutes. Do each of the remaining scenes in the same way.

Scene 1:

John is seventeen and has recently gotten his driver's license. His father says that he can't use the family car on the weekend unless he gets home by six every night and sets the table for dinner. On Friday, he's all ready to leave to pick up his girlfriend for the Halloween dance, in fact he's already late; but when he asks his father for the keys, his father says "No". He wasn't home to do the table on Wednesday. They have a big fight about it, and his father finally lets him have the car, but only if he agrees to do the dishes for the next two weeks too. As he's going out the door he says, "You bastard" over his shoulder, but there's no response. He backs down the driveway and runs into a telephone pole across the street, damaging the car pretty badly and giving himself a whiplash which keeps him in bed for a couple of weeks. The damage is covered by insurance, and his father says that if John had just skidded or something and banged the car up it would be fine to have the insurance pay for it, but that now John will have to pay for every penny of the repairs himself before he can use the car again, because he did it on purpose.

One partner be the father, whose position is that John ought to be held responsible because he meant to do it; the other be the kid and argue that he shouldn't have to pay for the repairs himself, because it really was an accident.

Scene 2:

Mary and John are seniors in high school. They have been going together for a couple of years, but they have only been sleeping together for six months, more or less since they traded class rings. John's been admitted to the University of Washington; Mary's been admitted there too, and she's also been offered a scholarship at Radcliffe. They both agree that they don't want to get married yet, so John has been taking the new male contraceptive pill, which is 99.5% effective if you take it every day. One day around Christmas time Mary's period is ten days late, and she just happens to be wearing John's good sports coat, which he only wears on special occasions, and she finds a couple of birth control pills in the pocket. They are the ones that John took with him when he went to Seattle in November for a weekend, all dressed up, to look for a place to live at the U.

Act out the conversation between them about this discovery.

Scene 3:

Susan is sitting around the house studying for her chemistry final; it's Friday afternoon and the test is on Monday at eight in the morning. Her boyfriend Steve calls up and says that he has heard her friend Bill might have a couple of tickets to this fantastic all-day rock concert at which the Rolling Stones are going to play, because Bill's plans to go didn't work out. It's in Wenatchee, starting at dawn on Sunday. ""If you see Bill," he says, "make sure you ask him about it so we can go, because I can't find out where the hell he is." Later that day, she has to stop studying, right in the middle of this really hard chapter, and rush out to Safeway to get something quick to fix for dinner because it's her night to cook for her whole house. While she's standing in line she's picks up a copy of Cosmopolitan , which she never buys, to see what's actually in one of the articles listed on the cover. Her really cute friend Bill comes up and startles her by saying "Hi" when she doesn't realize he's there. She kind of shoves the magazine under her arm, and he doesn't say anything about it, but she forgets to ask him about the tickets. That night, as she's cleaning up the kitchen, Steve comes by and says, "God, I've tried everything and I can't find Bill. If he had any tickets, they're sure gone by now. I just wish you'd seen him!" Whereupon, Susan says actually, she did see him, just for a minute, at the grocery store.

Start this conversation there.