ABSTRACT
An historical antecedent of free association and free speech, the notion of parrhesia foreshadowed later Enlightenment thought about the natural rights of man to self expression, and subtended the evolution of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis as well as the Founding Fathers' vision of democracy. The privileged status of speech in both psychoanalysis and democracy exposes inviolable linkages between a truth-telling telos and the sovereignty of the subject and citizen to claim a freedom from subjugation. Democracy was founded in a social space that totally excluded women from any form of political participation, suppressed women's voices, and practically imprisoned their bodies. The idea, or ideal, of becoming revealed between private and public was not Freud's invention; it is implicit in the Greek conception of the polis, which anticipated the bridging between free speech and freedom of assembly that undergirds the First Amendment.
