Lichtheim’s golden shot

Lichtheim belongs to the ranks of most famous aphasiologists, in particular because of a diagram often referred to as ‘Lichtheim’s House’. His single paper on aphasia has drawn the attention of the aphasiological community for many years and may be considered a golden shot. But it became, to Lichtheim’s own disappointment, famous for its schema rather than for the theoretical proposals formulated in that paper regarding various aphasia syndromes. In this paper, a translation is presented on the part of Lichtheim’s memoirs, dealing with his views on his work on aphasia. I also discuss his insertion of the conceptual center in the model and Wernicke’s response to that. Finally, I argue that it is surprising that Lichtheim’s contribution has had such a lasting impact.