Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction: Freud, psychoanalysis and the spoken word -- Breuer, Freud, the talking ladies, and the monograph on aphasia -- Hysteria as asymbolic aphasia -- The function of the spoken word in the interpretation of dreams -- Pliable words, scenes, and the unconscious -- Freud's technique : translating unconscious scenarios into words -- Freud's theories : repression as gaps in consciousness and the words to fill them -- How did Freud talk with his patients? -- Conclusions