You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Style has rarely been the subject of psychoanalytic investigation. Only a few analytic studies—Kris, Gombrich, Rosen and D. Shapiro's valuable book on “Neurotic Styles”—delved into the problem, and fewer still have raised the question of the bearing which style has on the psychoanalytic “meaning” of the art work. In the main, the investigation of artistic and linguistic style has been left to art critics, art historians, philologists, literary and linguistic critics.
Still, we can note some auspicious beginnings among medical writers, psychiatrists and analysts. We have Lester S. King's “Scientific Writing” which presents fascinating, if somewhat sketchy analyses of Macaulay's Carlyle's and Samuel Johnson's styles. Attention should also be drawn to the paper “The Analysis of Metaphor” by Harold M. Voth (J. Amer. Psa. Assn., 18, No. 3, July, ). Voth offers case material which shows that the analysis of a patient's language, style and his special use of metaphor can lead directly “to the deepest roots of the personality, and provide an excellent opportunity for linking these roots to the transference, to the patient's personality, to his life experience and to the working-through process” (p. 621)1
In this context, Walter Schönau's recent publication on Freud's prose2 occupies a special place. It is the first thorough examination of Freud's prose, of the literary and linguistic elements of his style, an examination which is based on careful research and meticulous attention to detail, executed with scholarly knowledge and with genuine devotion.
Some studies of Freud's literary style have appeared before