A freudian slip indeed

The official story is that David Benson-Pope knew nothing at all about his staff’s phone call to his Ministry CEO about Madeleine Setchell.

Yet in an interview this morning on Radio NZ (audio file go to 2:45), he said:

It turned out that the rumour we’d heard …

The interviewer seized on this, and DBP claimed he meant we in referring to the whole office, but excluding him!

He then said in response to questions later from journalists “his use of the word “we” had been a Freudian slip” (quote from NZPA).

Now a Freudian slip is where you say something you didn’t mean to, because of your subconscious mind. The example given is when you call your wife by your mistress’ name.

So Benson-Pope is right that it was a Freudian slip – one which revealed the truth as Freudian slips often do.