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≪My teacher tells me — and he is the first person who has dared say such a thing — that I have what Herder would call an ≪idiotic≫ style, that is, one which is both correct and individual. This incredible fact has quite rightly amazed me, and I do not miss an opportunity to spread the good news (the first of its kind) to the four winds. For example, I am communicating it to you, who had no idea that you were in correspondence with a German stylist. Now — not as someone who has an interest in the matter, but solely as a friend — I would advice you to keep, collect and conserve these letters. You never know!≫ (my translation)
The present paper aims to cast light on what I consider to be one of the fundamental aspects of Sigmund Freud's work: the style of his writings. The discussion will focus on specific characteristics of his figurative language: the way he employs similitudes and metaphors, the uses to which he puts them, and the stylistic effects of this resort to analogy.
It could, with some justification, be asked what interest a study of this kind might have for present-day psychoanalysis. However, the truth is that, even some seven decades after his death at the age of 83, Freud's writings remain much more than the initial phase in the elaboration of an area of scientific study; for many psychoanalysts, they have never been truly surpassed and must therefore be returned to constantly. The actual reasons for this return can be a cause of disagreement. Some claim that, given the flourishing development of analysis since Freud, such a return is nothing but a ritual reverence for the past. Others put forward the most varied arguments to show