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Mind as text: Freud's "typographical" model of the mind
Adele Tutter1,2
1Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Center for Psychoanalytic Teaching and Research, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, USA.
Abstract:
All publications in Freud's fin de siècle society were subject to strict governmental censorship specifically tasked with distinguishing "real" academic scholarship from subversive "fictions" masquerading as such. Cures that relied on suggestion also became a target of mistrust. This contextualization, alongside the examination of Freud's literary references and a variety of other literary texts, encourages the conjecture that realistic concerns over the risks of censorship and obscenity charges informed a proto-model of the topographical model, in which Freud conceptualized the mind as a subversive "manuscript" that must undergo "censorship" before it can be "published": a "typographical" model of the mind.