Freud and the Spoken Word

There is extensive literature on Freud and language; however, there is very little that looks at Freud’s use of the spoken word. In Freud and the Spoken Word: Speech as a key to the unconscious , Ana-María Rizzuto contends that Freud’s focus on the intrapsychic function and meaning of patients’ words allowed him to use the new psychoanalytic method of talking to gain access to unconscious psychic life. In creating the first ‘talking therapy’, Freud began a movement that still underpins how psych