Westchester psychoanalyst Marvin Lifschitz’s play, “Freudian Slips,” will be given its world premiere at the Abingdon Theatre Company, with previews starting Jan. 24 and opening night set for Feb. 1.

Directed by Tom Bloom, “Freudian Slips” is a comedy about love, life and, of course, Sigmund Freud. It will run through Feb. 15 at the Abingdon’s Dorothy Strelsin Theatre, at 312 W. 36th St., 1st Floor (between 8th and 9th Avenues).

The cast features Sue Brady, Warren Kelley, Joel Leffert, Jason Marr, Allen Lewis Rickman, Margi Sharp, and David Smilow. Lara Fabian is the set designer, Travis McHale is the lighting designer, Neville Bean and Nancy Nichols are costume designers, and Margaret Pine is the composer and sound designer.

Performances are Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. The official opening night performance is Feb. 1 at 5 p.m.

Tickets are $20. Call SmartTix 212.868.4444 or go to www.smarttix.com.

Here’s a story I wrote about Lifschitz and “Freudian Slips,” in September 2007:

Croton-on-Hudson psychologist becomes a playwright at 70

Marvin Lifschitz, a Croton-on-Hudson psychologist, is doing something he’s dreamed about since he was a kid inventing stories on his Jersey City stoop: At 70, Lifschitz is a first-time playwright.

His play deals with someone near and dear to the analyst’s heart: Sigmund Freud.

Lifschitz’s comical farce, “Freudian Slips,” finds the good doctor and father of psychoanalysis in a bad spot: He’s passed out at a conference and wakes up in the office of psychologist Thomas Buxton, discussing his feelings.

It’s Freud’s turn on the couch, an event Lifschitz says never happened in real life.

In a Manhattan penthouse tomorrow, Lifschitz and his play take a crucial step, when a handful of actors present a handful of scenes to prospective investors.

It’s the business side of playwriting, trying to convince backers that what you have to say is worthy of their financial support.

Lifschitz is hoping to present a fully staged, 15-performance workshop of “Freudian Slips,” with the help of the Manhattan-based Salamander Repertory Company. They’ve raised $15,000 of the $35,000 it will take to mount the production: Tomorrow’s gathering is designed to stir interest in the venture.

It’s a stressful situation, trying to find people to support what you’re doing, but Lifschitz, a mild-mannered fellow with an easy laugh and calming manner, knows it’s all part of the experience.

“It’s within our grasp,” he says. “And, since Salamander Rep is a not-for-profit theater, anything people invest is tax-deductible.”

The backer’s reading is the latest step in the development of “Freudian Slips,” a process that started years ago.

Lifschitz has had a lifelong love of theater and movies, but it wasn’t until his divorce from his first wife in the early 1970s that he first put pen to paper.

“I was very blue and sad, and I started writing,” he says. That play was called “The Adventures of Sidney Layman.”

He says his training in Gestalt therapy – which involves role playing and relationships – helped him to write dialogue.

Creating something new got him through the divorce, he says, but he soon put the play away.

The real beginning of “Freudian Slips” came at the end of Long Island 10 years ago, when Lifschitz was on vacation in Montauk and he realized that Freud needed to be the play’s central character. Sidney Layman is still in the play, but the action now centers around Freud himself.

There were drafts and new drafts, readings and revisions.

After a reading at the Triad Theater in 2002, it came to the attention of Joel Leffert, the artistic director of Salamander Repertory Theatre, who soon became its champion – and, since he’s an actor, too – its Freud.

Lifschitz, who describes his method of analysis as not strictly Freudian, says he hopes the play will achieve several things, not the least of which is to humanize Freud, who falls in love with a patient in the play.

Another goal is to defend, in a way, the profession of psychoanalysis itself. In the age of HMOs and managed care, Lifschitz says it bears repeating that psychological healing takes time. In the play, Freud’s chief rival, Dr. Otto Brotto, says all problems can be identified in six words.

But “Freudian Slips” is a comedy first and foremost, with some wild scenes involving jealous lovers, seduction, a dead body and even gunfire.

The playwright says that hearing actors speak his words “is a fantastic, wonderful feeling.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m watching a play from another playwright. It doesn’t feel like I wrote it. I sit there and listen and say, ‘Did I do that?’ Yes I did.”

While that experience is affirming and a big boost for his ego, Lifschitz has learned to check his ego at the door – a tall order, even for a not-so-strict Freudian – when it comes to rewriting.

“I can re-write things,” he says. “I can’t be selfish. I have to give up my creative babies for the better of the play,” he says.

Lifschitz isn’t putting all his eggs in Freud’s basket. He’s written a second play, “Eternal Life,” about a man who figures out how to cheat death.

An analysis of that play will have to wait.

Photo by Stuart Bayer/The Journal News: Marvin Lifschitz in his Croton home in September 2007.