''On Aphasia'' is a work on

aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

, the founder of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

. The monograph was Freud's first book, published in 1891. In the treatise, Freud challenges the main authorities of the time by asserting that their manner of understanding aphasias was no longer tenable. At the turn of the century, neuroscientists had attempted to localize psychological processes in discrete cortical regions—a position which Freud rejected because

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

had very little to offer dynamic psychology on the topic. In ''On Aphasia'', Freud put forth his earliest thoughts on

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

. Up until that time, Freud had been preoccupied with neurophysiology. The work antedates his writings on psychoanalytic thought. Freud exposed the major fallacy purported by the classical German school of psychology (including writers such as Meynert, Wernicke, Lichtheim) which had held a "localizationist" stance, namely conflating psychological and physiological concepts, specifically on the subject of aphasias. Because Freud had focused on speech and

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

loss in this early work, he had a nuanced conception of speech, even speculating on language acquisition. Freud continued to write on the subject, though somewhat briefly, in his work ''The Unconscious'', published in 1915, in Appendix C as ''Words and Things''. However, Freud and other psychoanalysts who conceived of language acquisition as an aspect of pure brain activity typically overlook the interpersonal, social, and systemic elements of language acquisition and word meaning.Wilson, Arnold, and Lissa Weinstein. "Language, thought, and interiorization: a Vygotskian and psychoanalytic perspective." ''Contemporary Psychoanalysis'' 26, no. 1 (1990): 24-40.

References

1891 non-fiction books Books by Sigmund Freud {{psych-book-stub

See also

References