ABSTRACT
The question regarding the significance of choice of language by bilingual clients and its potentially unconscious dimension has been of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts ever since early case studies by Freud, particularly the case of Anna O (Freud & Breuer, 1895). Following the emigration of many psychoanalysts from Germany and central Europe to non-German speaking countries, conducting psychotherapy with clients who spoke a different language from their therapists became a common situation in the emigrant psychoanalytic community. Today, with the increase in global migration, encounters in therapy where therapist and client have access to more than one language are becoming increasingly common. Such situations present both therapist and client with choices, and those choices are likely to have an impact on the nature of the therapeutic interaction.
