Some Afterthoughts – or Looking Back

The relationship of “psychoanalysis and language” was in the center of many theoretical and clinical discussions ever since Freud (1916/17) had declared: Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic treatment but an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and presents impressions, complains, confesses his wishes and his emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the patient’s processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reaction of understanding or rejection which he in this way provokes in him (p. 17).