Freud and Aphasia: An Historical Analysis
OTTO M. MARX M.D.1
1 Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, 700 Harrison Avenue, Boston, Mass. 02118
Freud's monograph on aphasia has been acknowledged for its importance in the history of aphasia and its relevance for the development of psychoanalytic concepts. This author attributes to it a new significance as a final statement of late 19th-century neurology. Although Freud's own presentation on aphasia was limited by the absence of a neurophysiology upon which he could draw, he pointed out the illogicality of constructing an anatomical model on the basis of a psychological concept, thus identifying one of the major fallacies inherent in the principal psychophysical formulations of the time.