The Babel Of The Unconscious: Mother Tongue And Foreign Languages In The Psychoanalytic Dimension.: By J. Amati-Mehler, S. Argentieri, and J. Canestri. Translated by J. Whitelaw-Cucco from La Babele Dell'Inconscio: Lingua Madre e lingue stranieri nella dimensione psicoanalitica (Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 1990). Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1993, 322 pp.

Words are central to psychoanalysis. Freud based his topographical distinction between unconscious and preconscious on the difference between word- and thing-presentations. Words are also the medium of the therapy. The arrangement of verbalized free association constitutes the pathway to analysts' and patients' access to the content and affect of pathogenic unconscious fantasy/memory complexes. Given the centrality of words, it may come as a shock to realize that this book is the first to explore the significance of multilingualism (the ability to speak more than one language in childhood) and polyglotism (the ability to speak languages acquired after childhood) in psychoanalysis. In addition, the authors' excellent literature review makes clear that very few analysts have considered this topic at all. Yet the questions confronted in this book seem vital to individual cases, as well as providing a new and potentially fruitful access to fundamental psychoanalytic topics: the relation of the language in which words were first registered to the language spoken by the patient and the analyst in the analysis, the import of choice