Understanding the Unconscious Me

In "The Interpretation of Language," Theodore Thass-Thienemann does for language what Freud did for the dream. He clarifies the rich symbolic and unconscious meaning of language that derives from our distant past, and shows how language has been shaped and changed over the centuries by anxiety which causes repression or distortion of the original meaning. The work is in two volumes. This is Volume II, "Understanding the Unconscious Meaning of Language." It is the application of the fundamental principles described in the first book to language behavior. This book is intended to be a pilot study, and the interpretation of language that follows is aimed not only at those who are familiar with the vicissitudes of clinical psychology. The psychological interpretation of language concerns everyone whose work is in the field of psychology or who deals professionally with verbal material: such as the writer, the teacher of English, the preacher of the Bible, or the copywriter in marketing and advertising. They are all practitioners and "lay analysts" in the effective use of their mother tongue. This study is written for those who can appreciate the great strides made by psychoanalysis in the understanding of the motivation of behavior - consequently in the understanding of language.