''On Aphasia'' is a work on
aphasia by
Sigmund Freud, the founder of
psychoanalysis. 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 had very little to offer
dynamic psychology
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate t ...
on the topic.
In ''On Aphasia'', Freud put forth his earliest thoughts on
psychology. 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
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...
and
language 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.]
See also
*
Sigmund Freud
**
Sigmund Freud bibliography
References
1891 non-fiction books
Books by Sigmund Freud
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