ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud's thought would grow to encompass the ancient intuition that spirit and expression, discourse and intercourse, emerge in a space that is neither pure place nor pure idea. Both transitional spaces and speech exist between the force of will and the resistance of matter, between fantasy and reality, the invented and the given. The notion of angelic communication is a fantasy of transcending this in-between, third space. According to Freud, words are more than just sounds, more even than signs; in the form of speech, they inhabit a psychologically charged realm between science and magic. If not magic exactly, an indisputable mystery and majesty abound in the ineffable space between language and the world. How language works its magic is a question that has arisen time and again in philosophy and theology since at least the founding of the Symposium.
