ABSTRACT
The analyst shows the direction of psychic reality through his own convictions, and in particular through his conviction that language can touch. The dichotomization of the analyst as internal object had enabled Berthe to differentiate between the various affects she felt towards her father—sensuality and affection, sexual excitement and its quieting, fear and trust, as well as love and hate. When faced with patients suffering because they cannot find a way to resolve their conflicts, the psychoanalyst tries to help them to symbolize and to transfer to the psychic level what they tend to place on the concrete level of action. Actions that touch are reserved for a concrete real world limited to certain persons, and are of value precisely because of this limitation; words that touch belong to the fantasy world, which transcends the bounds of the quantifiable.
