The Wolf Man's drama remains incomplete for its hero. But once set in motion, its action cannot be stopped; it must proceed in us inevitably to its final outcome. And here our dissatisfaction, spurred on by a providential deus ex machina, expounds, imagines, dreams. An irresistible force pulls us: to save the analysis of the Wolf-Man, to save ourselves. With time the fourth act opens within us, stretches before us, and in us comes to fulfillment, bringing salvation.

1. AN IMPROMPTU WALK THROUGH A VERBARIUM: CRYPTONYMS AND WHAT THEY HIDE The authors arrived at this very juncture in the process of their writing, and planned to take up Freud's text again with their point of view-incorporationin mind, when it occurred to them to consult a Russian dictionary. This gesture, performed out of conscientiousness, brought an extra load of unforeseen work, but also a host of altogether unexpected insights. First, it enabled the authors to refine their hypotheses about the genesis and working of incorporation in general and about the specific incorporation of which the Wolf Man was both actor and victim. But even more, it brought home the fact that someone could be driven to take on the same attitude toward words as toward things, namely, objects of love, and that such word-objects could upset a topography to the point where incorporation would seem a self-therapeutic measure.