The specificity of language in psychoanalysis

Abstract

The following article aims to discuss the conceptions of language proposed in Freud's work, considering the specificity of the notion of representation, and to point out its consequences in clinical practice. In the representation theory, it is possible to conceive a notion of language characterized by heterogeneity (representation of the word and representation of the thing) that its effect of meaning is produced through a complex of associations and their linkage to an intensive approach (instinctual representative). From this model, it is assumed that the language exceeds its semantic function and the representational system is not restricted to the field of rationality and verbalization.