Embracing figures of speech: The transformative potential of spoken language

Abstract

The author draws on H. Loewald's theory of language and therapeutic action to elaborate two related senses in which psychoanalytic work requires embracing figures of speech. First, an inherent but frequently unacknowledged capacity of language is to embrace different modes of experience, particularly verbal and sensorimotor experience. Second, the figures or participants of the psychoanalytic conversation must and do embrace each other, with speech. Speech bridges separate individuals, thus enabling interpersonal connection. Examining the operation of spoken language in psychoanalytic treatment with case material, the author illustrates the clinical utility of mobilizing the transformative capacities of the spoken word and concludes that elucidation of these intrapsychic and interpersonal bridging capacities of language explicates the therapeutic action of the talking cure.