The talking cure: psychoanalysis and the ambiguity of language

Abstract

While Breuer and Freud in their pioneer work Studies on hysteria chose the term catharsis for their newly developed method, Freud soon came to acknowledge the word “a central function”. Psychoanalysis was foremost a talking cure. In the present text the author examines the function of the word and the speech in the talking cure. The text starts by discussing the function of the word from the point of view of the unconscious. The special language of the unconscious as Freud observed it in the dream work and in the symptoms of the hysterics may be described by using the tropes and figures known from classical rhetoric, the important point being that the dream, although being of visual or pictorial character has to be read as a picture-script. From here follows a discussion of the talking cure, the free associations and the evenly suspended attention with the aim of demonstrating how psychoanalysis has developed its method so as to capture the very specific language of the unconscious. The text ends up by pointing to the creative force being part of the talking cure.