ABSTRACT
It was Anna O., the famous patient of Breuer and Freud, who first referred to the psychoanalytic method as a “talking cure.” Language continues to be central to the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis because it is through language that we communicate and express ourselves. Contemporary theory asserts that the human being, or subject, exists not only in relationship to others, but also within language itself. In recent discussions of the role of language in clinical theory and practice, the traditional view of the subject as a “speaker” of language has given way to the postmodern notion that the human subject is dependent upon the language that it speaks. Postmodernism not only highlights the ambivalence of meaning in language, but also demonstrates that understanding is mediated by the symbolic world of culture and tradition in which we exist. While the rise of postmodernism has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of human experience, its account of language and subjectivity is open to question. As a result of postmodernism’s overriding emphasis on language, prelinguistic, nonverbal, and bodily realms of experience have been pushed to the margins of theoretical and clinical discourse. In fact, for some postmodernists, there is nothing prior to or outside of language
In an attempt to address this development, this chapter begins with a brief examination of the work of Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst whose work underlies much of the current focus on language. Lacan recognizes the reality of nonverbal and bodily experience, yet in line with poststructuralism he privileges the symbolic realm. My aim is to assess the role of the linguistic dimension in recent theory and practice in terms of Lacan’s assertion that the human subject is an “effect of the signifier.” Following this examination, I turn to the existentialphenomenological tradition as an alternative approach for understanding the relationship between language and subjectivity.
