In this second tome, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt continues his description of the German language’s s relationship to the establishment of psychoanalysis. Were Freud’s discoveries influenced by the grammatical structure of German, in which the best is always saved for last? While it is indeed often awkward, if not impossible, to translate everything that a language expresses, one can at least try to describe it, and to restitute its processes and usage. As if he had noticed the warning signs, Freud elaborates psychoanalysis at the very moment when the rise of Nazi barbarism is about to sully and degrade the German language. Linguistic purification, one of the obsessions of the pre-Nazi period, later accompanied genocide, the absolute crime, in the name of a fantasy of racial purity. The author’s linguistic experience and knowledge of German allow him to dig deeper into the relationship between psychoanalysis and the German language.

A language can not be separated from its usage, and Freud’s genius was to see what the German language – and languages in general – express, but it just so happens that German is one with the text and singularly assists Freud in his task. The very way in which the language unfolds seems to clear the way for Freud.
Freud saw what no one before him had seen, but it is as though the psychoanalytical breakthrough had taken uniquely German paths.