ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role that language plays in bringing to life the truth of the patient’s lived experience in the analytic session. Particular forms of discourse enable the patient to experience with the analyst the truth that the patient had previously been unable to experience, much less put into words, on his own. Three forms of discourse are explored—direct discourse, tangential discourse, and discourse of non sequiturs. These are not simply vehicles for communicating the truth, but rather are integral aspects of the truth of what is happening at any given moment of a session. The truth experienced and expressed in the analytic discourse lies as much in the breaks (the disjunctions) in that discourse as in its manifest narrative.
