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[[Language ]] is arguably omnipresent in [[psychoanalysis]], if for no [[other ]] [[reason ]] than that it is the essential tool of [[analytic ]] [[treatment]].

Apart from [[Freud]]'s early [[work ]] On [[Aphasia ]] (1891b), four passages in his writings may conveniently serve as vantage points from which to consider his approach to language. These are the beginning of chapter 6 of The [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams ]] (1900a), chapter 5 and chapter 8 of The [[Psychopathology ]] of Everyday [[Life ]] (1901b), and the last paragraph of "The [[Unconscious]]" (1915e). These passages point up the critical importance of taking language into account in connection with interpretation and with the way [[words ]] are invested with [[meaning]].

Chapter 6 of The [[Interpretation of Dreams ]] begins with a brief introduction where Freud asks how the [[relationship ]] between the [[manifest ]] [[content ]] of the [[dream ]] and its [[latent ]] content, which he also refers to as dream-[[thoughts]], can best be represented. He envisions four possible models, the first [[three ]] of which he rejects and the last of which he emphatically accepts. This relationship may thus be assimilated to that between two descriptions of the same facts in two different [[languages]], or in [[terms ]] of the [[translation ]] of a [[text ]] and its original, or again as analogous to the deciphering of [[hieroglyphics]]. None of these parallels [[satisfies ]] Freud, although he does not clearly [[state ]] why, and he eventually decides that the relationship is identical to that of the [[symbols ]] of a rebus to its deeper meaning. The [[word ]] "rebus," it is worth recalling, is a short [[form ]] of the expression "scribere in rebus," that is, "to write with [representations of] things," in contrast to "scribere in litteris," "to write with letters."

The rebus, however, is not a pictogram or a story in pictures, but a succession of small [[figures ]] with a meaning that can be deciphered, each [[figure ]] functioning either semantically or phonetically, so that a picture of a cat, for example, can denote either the word cat (assuming the pertinent language is [[English]]) or the sounds of the consonants and vowel that constitute that word. There are two points to [[remember ]] here: a rebus assumes a given language, and we never [[know ]] whether the figure functions as meaning or as sound. So, if the rebus is the prototype of the interpretable, the interpretable presupposes a specific language and the possibility that an element can have either a phonetic or a semantic [[value]]. Interpretation, for Freud, is therefore tied in its [[essence ]] to language.

The study of [[slips of the tongue ]] also involves a [[linguistic ]] phenomenon, but one of an entirely different [[nature]]: a word that, within the spoken sequence of words, is substituted for [[another ]] that it resembles phonetically but not semantically; sometimes it may even have the opposite meaning. For example, "Geiz", meaning "greed," replacing "Geist,""cleverness"or"wit.""Sie haben alle Geiz" (They are all greedy) is said instead of Sie haben alle Geist" (They are all witty). The [[speaker ]] may correct the first [[sentence ]] with the second but it is the first that truly expresses her [[thought ]] (Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901b, p. 64). The [[slip ]] is facilitated when a close phonetic likeness is combined with a great semantic distance, allowing a censored opinion to reveal itself in part. Sometimes a neologism is needed.

Later in the Psychopathology, Freud uses a [[parapraxis ]] of his own to illustrate the importance of language in the interpretation of [[bungled ]] actions. He relates how one evening he went to the suburbs of [[Vienna ]] to examine a [[patient ]] who was [[suffering ]] from the inability to use her legs in [[order ]] to settle a differential diagnosis as between [[hysteria ]] (curable) and myelitis (incurable). He did not [[enjoy ]] this type of work, because some [[time ]] earlier he had made a mistake in a similar [[case ]] and rebuked himself for [[being ]] an ass—or, in Hebrew, chamer. However, when he got to his staircase landing, he realized that he had put his reflex hammer in his pocket instead of his tuning fork. He then remembered that he had recently examined an imbecile child—"an ass"—who had grabbed this tuning fork and refused to let it go. The basis of his interpretation was the phonetic proximity between the [[German ]] hammer and chamer. (pp. 165-66).

In his metapsychological paper on "The Unconscious" (1915e), Freud describes quite another [[role ]] played by language. He [[notes ]] that while, in the most advanced forms of [[schizophrenia]], the [[subject ]] no longer cathects anything but himself, adopting a fully [[narcissistic ]] posture, during the early [[stages ]] he can still [[cathect ]] [[word-presentations ]] and so avoid thoroughgoing [[autism]].

See also: [[Action]]-language; Aphasia; Brain and psychoanalysis, the; "Claims of Psychoanalysis to [[Scientific ]] Interest"; Colloque sur l'[[inconscient]]; "Confusion of Tongues between [[Adults ]] and the [[Child]]"; [[Dementia]]; I; Ideational [[representation]]; [[Infans]]; [[Infantile ]] [[psychosis]]; Innervation; Interpretation; [[Lacan]], Jacques-MarieÉmile; [[Letter]], the; [[Linguistics ]] and psychoanalysis; [[Literature ]] and psychoanalysis; [[Metaphor]]; [[Metonymy]]; Multilingualism and psychoanalysis; Non-[[verbal ]] [[communication]]; [[Organic ]] psychosis; [[Preconscious]]; [[Psychanalyse]], La; [[Thing]]-presentation; [[Signifier]]; Signifier/signified; Slips of the tongue; Subject's [[desire]]; [[Symbolic]], the (Lacan); [[Symptom]]/sinthome; [[Technique ]] with adults, [[psychoanalytic]]; [[Want ]] of being/lack of being; Word [[association]].[[Bibliography]]