ABSTRACT
One major challenge of the clinical enterprise is how to use words in a way that touches primary, sensorial, non-verbal experiences. How could the symbolic language reach those ancient layers of the human psyche, which had not yet gone through symbolization and were not verbally encoded? And how could the “primary psyche” put itself into words, by which to tell about its conditions?
This chapter illustrates a clinical vignette of an adolescent patient, showing how therapist and patient establish a psychic language in which the somatic characteristics of the body play a central role. The opportunity of alleviating the patient’s loneliness is associated with the option of creating a shared language; one that was not only informatively correct, but a living language, permitting us to speak our minds, communicate with each other and touch upon deep emotions. Learning her private language and exposing her to the therapist’s language, was a process of establishing a living connection by which an experience of vitality could emerge both inside and outside the therapeutic sessions.
