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Roberta II: All we need to designate things is one single word: cat. Cats are called cat, food: cat, insects: cat, chairs: cat, you: cat, me …
Jack: In order to say: I'm terribly sleepy, let's go to sleep, let's go to sleep …
Roberta II: Cat, cat, cat, cat.
Jack: And Jack, and Roberta?
Roberta II: Cat, cat.
Jack: Oh yes! It's easy to talk now … In fact, it's scarcely worth the bother …
—Eugene Ionesco, Jack or the Submission, A Naturalistic Comedy. (1958, p. 109).
IN THIS PAPER, WE PROPOSE a new and potentially fruitful integration. We suggest that Lev Vygotsky's analysis of the ontogenesis of speaking and thinking1 enhances our understanding of psychoanalytic perspectives on language and the acquisition of psychic structure during the preoedipal period. But first we must explicate our reading of Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist who lived at the same time as Freud, and highlight those aspects of his work that address the theory of psychoanalysis. In our discussion, we will