ABSTRACT

Freud presented Breuer's case in 1909 as part of the Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis at Clark University in Massachusetts. His 'speech apparatus' is the first of the many theoretical constructs upon which Freud would build his progressive understanding of how the mind is structured and how it functions. The function of the apparatus being what it is, to associate, Freud's thesis is just what people have come to expect: all aphasias are based on the interruption of associations. The author concurs with Forrester that Freud's work on aphasia is the sine qua non of the birth of psychoanalytic theory: a theory of the power of words in the formation of symptoms. The meaning of the psychoanalytic terms introduced in the monograph evolved with newer discoveries but their original source in On Aphasia colors their later meaning and links them to the Freudian conception of the talking cure.