ABSTRACT
In On Aphasia Sigmund Freud described asymbolic aphasia, a functional disturbance that results from the intrapsychic disruption in linking representations to words that can articulate the experiences. In Studies on Hysteria, he presented other cases besides that of Frau Emmy of such a disruption in which he tacitly used the model from On Aphasia. Freud based the model for hysteria on three pillars: the preexisting model of the speech apparatus, clinical data from the psychical processes he observed in his patients, and new concepts he was creating to help connect the first two. Although he never explicitly acknowledged using the model of On Aphasia to build his model of hysterical pathology and his analytic technique to treat it. The chapter concludes that Freud conceived of hysteria as a functional aphasia - asymbolic aphasia - in which sectors of the patient's representations are severed from their connection to words and to other representations.
