You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The central core of this fine volume consists of twelve chapters, plus and introduction by Tullio De Mauro and a preface by Otto Kernberg, on the subject of that interesting experiment which human nature and civilisation sometimes set up together when certain individuals who learned to speak several languages as children (multilingual people) or in later life (polyglots) come across analytical experience either as analysts or as patients. The book presents the results of a research project which has certainly taken a number of years, and, taking advantage of the fact that language is so central to analysis, extends its scope further to other problems which are vital to psychoanalytical practice and theory, as Kernberg points out so well in his introduction.
The book opens with a study of the myth of Babel, which is highly suggestive and rich in references to the most recent advances in psychoanalytic research, which provides immediate proof of the authors' competence and methodological rigour.
The authors are either polylingual or polyglot and thus start out by wondering if their own personal experience has been a disadvantage or a source of enrichment for them. Then they discuss their experience as analyst with polyglot or polylingual patients, on the basis of which they formulate some initial, provisional hypotheses — that the second language can be used as a defence, for example. Then they develop a more precise interest in the multilingual patient's mental organisation, and try to identify what his specific characteristics are, above all in relation to the organisation of the mind implicit in the psychoanalytic experience. They have also gone thoroughly into the problems related to the acquisition and use of language, much to the benefit of readers of the book, who will find an ample and informative critical review of the themes discussed and the literature on the subject.