Language, communication and therapeutic interaction

Abstract

The impact of language on human development and experience is of central concern to psychotherapists and philosophers alike. However, there has been an over‐valuation of the linguistic dimension in much recent thought I argue that postmodernism's use of language to define the human subject is reductive since it does not account sufficiently for nonverbal and bodily experience in communication and therapeutic interaction. By drawing on the work of existential‐phenomenological theorists such as Ludwig Binswanger, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, and Jean‐Paul Sartre, I argue that it is possible to achieve a conception of personal agency and interpersonal interaction that accounts both for the central‐ity of language and for the significance of the nonverbal dimension. I examine case material in order to demonstrate the clinical implications of an existentialist perspective on language.