Occasion." "Knowing the worst that could happen is essential for control," psychologist Daniel Wegner wrote. "But, sometimes, this sensitivity backfires, becoming part of a perverse psychological process that makes the worst occur." He wrote in the review that the problem of saying the wrong thing has been written about by luminaries such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Edgar Allan Poe, who called it the "imp of the perverse." And the problem isn't just with speech; it afflicts athletes, too, who, instead of saying the wrong thing, will do the wrong thing. Former New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch made a series of well-publicized throwing errors and former pitcher Rick Ankiel actually restarted his career as a hitter,...