ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with an exploration of how the use of language in clinical theory has evolved from monologue to discourse, from the couch to the circle. The monologue and dialogue are encompassed by and integral to group-analytic experience. The chapter explores the development from the original idea of the talking cure in S. Freud's work to the first emergence of the term 'free-floating discussion' in S. H. Foulkes own writing and its subsequent development. The chapter explains the term discourse to describe only this kind of group communication. It focuses on the relational theory to differentiate between one-person, two-person and three-person psychologies. D. Brown's paper gives a comprehensive account of how the metapsychology of psychoanalysis has been revised by object relations theory. The chapter talks about the 'discourse' in one of its colloquial meanings that describes the communication of thought by speech, the exchange between someone speaking, someone listening and something that is listened.
