Conversion Symptoms and Psychoanalysis in a Second Language

Abstract

Conversion symptoms involve a regression, where the patient appears to have lost access to previously available modes of verbal expression. Instead movements, sensations, postures, gestures, and visceral processes express emotions and unconscious wishes directly. Patients who are analyzed in a language other than their mother tongue, without access to the language of their early years, may rely on the body to express powerful affect and fantasies. A patient who displayed pseudoseizures on the couch is presented, looking specifically at how this man's conversion reaction may relate to the fact that the language of the analysis is not his mother tongue.

Key Words:

• Conversion
• mother-tongue
• second language
• nonverbal expression
• pseudoseizures