This article addresses psychic representation and its relation with language on Freud's initial studies. It presents an overview of Freudian theory of implicit representation in the monograph on aphasias and discusses the understanding of these concepts under a contemporary perspective of language. It defends that, since its beginning, the theory of psychic representation goes beyond the language structure because this is secondary to the investigation of the meaning of unconscious production and drives. The conclusion is that addressing the psychic representation under the perspective of language is necessary but insufficient for the study of the freudian metapsychology.
psychoanalysis; Freud; language; mental representation