Some Analogies between Thinking in Children, Aphasia, and the Subconscious Mind

In this essay, which represents a culmination of her clinical research in Geneva, Spielrein offers detailed observations of a toddler’s verbal expression to illustrate “crossing,” or the persistence of subconscious thought in early speech, which Spielrein then compares to disturbances of adult vocalization in aphasia. In so doing, she illustrates the primacy of the symbolic unconscious substrate of conscious thought and makes the important claim: “It is only the collaboration of subconscious thought with conscious thought that can engender a creative work in this world; conscious thought must grasp what the unconscious offers it, and use it.”