"The vocabulary of psychoanalysis" is a difficult and demanding text. It is neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia. It does not play the role of an intermediary between the body of Freudian theory and the reader who seeks a kind of summary or introduction. The possible lexicographic, encyclopedic, academic, or pedagogical-university dimension, which the inexperienced reader may be seeking, takes a back seat compared to the dimension of critical reading, and indeed the fertilization of Freud's thought, as it unfolds through the systematic reading of all his texts. Of course, each lemma includes a strict, concise definition of each of the approximately three hundred terms anthologized in the "Vocabulary," as well as a historical presentation. However, the main article consists of a critical analysis of the term, which presupposes a minimal familiarity with Freudian metapsychology and with the clinical and theoretical thought that accompanies it. The text takes a position within the field of parallel or conflicting currents that characterize contemporary psychoanalysis."