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First presented on November 19, 2016 at the Centre Léon Robin (CNRS-Univ. Paris-Sorbonne-ENS Ulm) within the “Pre-Socratic” seminar, this paper investigates the relationship between Empedocles and Freud. It first examines the comparison that Freud established with Empedocles. Second, based on the extant fragments of the Empedoclean corpus, it considers the similarities between their doctrines. Finally, it studies Empedocles’ poetic style. His poetics are still closely linked to the spoken word, typical of the oral tradition, and are fraught with corporeal and emotional dimensions. In this, we see the emergence of one of the key concepts of psychoanalysis: the relationship between logos and alogon, between that which can be rationally analyzed and that which can be intuited but that eludes the scope of logos.