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In 1885 Philipp Wegener published his book, The Life of Speech, which may be regarded as the first study to approach language as a
system of communication for transmitting thought, feelings, needs, and strivings from one human being to another. Since linguistics in the 1880's was concerned mainly with the physiological aspect of speech production on the one hand, and the formal structure of words and sentences on the other, Wegener can be regarded as the pioneer of the study of language from the psychological point of view. His assumptions regarding the ability of language to convey needs and wishes and his attempts to follow the developmental path of language from its beginnings in early childhood, as well as from the dawn of human history, contain some basic concepts which are so close to the conceptual world of psychoanalysis that the reader gains the impression that Freud read this book and integrated its views into his own formulations of language.
Abse's translation from the original German into English is supplemented by a long introduction which discusses the relevance of Wegener's ideas for psychoanalysis today, especially for the understanding of such mental disorders as hysteria and schizophrenia. This "Introduction" (comprising 110 pages) is much more than a scholarly discussion of Wegener's ideas and may be regarded as a worth-while independent study of language and psychoanalysis, leaning loosely on Wegener's basic assumptions.
Abse presents theoretical and clinical material to support Wegener's central assumption that "the purpose of speech is always to influence the mind or judgment of a person in a way that seems valuable to the speaker" (p. 174). The origin of speech is in children's attempts to influence those who care for them, to inform them about their pressing needs, to convey their feelings or to indicate how they want their wishes to be fulfilled. At first, this is done through "sentences" composed of a single word. An adult example wo