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Only an astronomical metaphor suffices. In the field of Freudian studies, a star has just been born. Thanks to computer technology and the dedication of several researchers, we now have the Konkordanz, a complete alphabetical arrangement of every key word in the German edition of Freud's works, the Gesammelte Werke. The Konkordanz is indispensable for analysts and scholars who seek greater precision in tracing the development and disappearance of Freud's concepts and imagistic as well as metaphorical associations, and especially those figurative associations in which his theories are embedded. It follows that every creditable psychoanalytic society and any serious large library devoted to the history of thought should have a copy of the Konkordanz. While the cost of the Konkordanz is not negligible ($980), its informed use affords priceless advantages.
An immediate practical advantage of the Konkordanz is that, when checking a lapse of memory, one may quickly trace a word back to its forgotten source. A much greater, comprehensive advantage is that it provides an assured base for one to study Freud's terms and concepts in both a historical and developmental sense. Clinicians and researchers in the various disciplines influenced by Freud can now acquire a greater understanding of his contribution. Furthermore, they have a powerful instrument to dispel a morass of interpretive errors hitherto rampant in the psychoanalytic and academic circles and to make a wealth of new discoveries about Freud's psychic processes, both conscious and unconscious. In such a venture, we must engage neither in an infinite, trivialising exegesis nor welcome the illusion that since Freud wrote an essentially scientific discourse, its reductionistically called aesthetic features are peripheral and insignificant. Irrespective of conveying a distinct message from text to text, Freud's discourse, by virtue of its being typically composed under the pressure of an inner urgency, constantly conveys