Talking With Chameleons: The Role of Language-Games and Setting: Commentary on Paper by Dana Amir

Abstract

In this paper I take up Dana Amir's concept of the “chameleon language” of perversion considering Wittgenstein's idea of the language-game and the necessity of taking up the context of communication. The setting of psychoanalysis represents a new context for the language of perversion, one that at first implicitly and later explicitly recognizes the bid for tenderness beneath the stealth. I suggest it is the analyst's willingness to risk vulnerability in this game, as much as the interpretation of perverse pacts, that fosters clinical change.