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Was einst des Knaben Spiel und Freude war,Wird nun dem Mann zur Arbeit und Gefahr.(What once to the boy were games and pleasure, For the man are toil and danger without measure.)
I cannot dreame that there should be at the last day any such Judiciall proceeding, or calling to the Barre, as indeed … the literall commentators doe conceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may bee understood.
—Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
Sigmund Freud, we are so often told, is probably the most influential writer of the twentieth century. No other author has been returned to, time and again, for renewed inspiration or calumny, by writers in an ever-expanding universe of disciplines that has come to include nearly the whole of the humanities and social sciences. Like a fountain of magnificent riddles or a shallow grave of final origins, Freud has been rediscovered and stumbled upon time and again. It was the fate of the twentieth century not to let him rest in peace.
Perhaps it is for this reason, too, that the question of Freudian language is not yet resolved, and seems more unresolvable than ever. Where does this language fit in with Western society's larger discourse of “truth”? The commentary grows thick, the