dard metaphysical platitudes. He had a Pisgah sight of the Der-
ridean promised land but was unable to arrive there.
Derrida begins his discussion on the very borderline of
the Freudian corpus, the Project for a Scientific Psychology.The
Project,left in fragmentary form and never published by Freud
himself, was written in 1895 , an important year for its author.
In the 1890 s Freud, along with his colleague Josef Breuer, un-
covered the dramatic facts about hysteria: the ways in which
hysterics “suffer from reminiscences.” In May 1895 Freud and
Breuer published their groundbreaking Studies on Hysteria,a
collection of case studies marked by Freud’s brilliant detective
work and unrivaled storytelling abilities.
Studies on Hysteriais breathless, suspenseful in its narra-
tive drive. With the exhilaration of discovery, Freud and
Breuer come upon the thought of the “talking cure,” as it was
named by the “founding patient” of psychoanalysis, Bertha
Pappenheim (called “Anna O.” in Studies on Hysteria). Instead
of subjecting patients to crude, random treatments—dousing
them with water or forcing them to exercise were two popular
options espoused by Freud’s predecessors—Freud talked to
them. Freudian analysis was a reciprocal process, a bringing of
repressed thoughts to patients’ attention with the help of the
patients themselves. Their inner disquiet and outward rest-
lessness spurred inquiry: a humane dialogue that Freud, the
new Socrates, encouraged. This process marked the great rev-
olution in the treatment of neurosis: the birth of therapy as we
know it. With the talking cure, Freud, like Socrates (and like
Saussure), asserted the power of conversation over ossified
methods of research that rely solely on writing.
A few months after the publication ofStudies on Hyste-
ria,Freud took offin a new direction. In September 1895 ,he
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 105