Language Plurality and Practices of Translation in Sigmund Freud's Work: Another Chapter in the History of Multilingualism in the German-Speaking Lands

abstract: By bringing together various examples of multilingualism in Freud's work, this article addresses the question of how experiences of linguistic diversity and translation might have affected the development of psychoanalytic language thinking. In a historical perspective, by conceiving of humans as essentially polyphonic and every language as ambiguous, Freud's theory stands in remarkable opposition to the romantic conception of a unique mother tongue and the long-standing cultural devaluation of multilingualism in the German-speaking lands. It therefore deserves to be reassessed and integrated into current research on the history of cultural and literary forms of multilingualism.