A casa em chamas e o salto do leão: Freud e a dicotomia continuidade-descontinuidade

This article aims to comprehend the role of certain analogies, similes and metaphors within Freudian theory, especially in his 1937 essay, Die endliche und die unendliche Analyse. There, figures emerge that do not participate in real “reasonings by analogy”, but make discontinuous cuts in the text. The idea is to study them according to the continuity-discontinuity dichotomy, according to the category of what ends (endlich) and what ends not (unendlich). Images, in opposition to concepts, enter the text precisely in the demarcation of boundaries: between the analytical and the unanalysable, between the psychic and the biological, between analysis and life.