Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder

ABSTRACT

Amidst today’s growing interest in nonverbal modalities, I highlight the value of language with some seriously disordered patients, using excerpts from a case. Drawn upon theories in philosophy and psychoanalysis, language is viewed broadly as entailing semantic and phonetic aspects, yielding a range of expressivity serving concreteness, expulsiveness, and/or symbolic thought. I apply these theories to fragmented psyches and illustrate how language can reveal, and instantiate, disparate entities of self and object, including psychotic forms, that beset such minds, helping the analyst forge a cohering container. Citing Ogden, I also describe how talking itself can become an experiential mode of transformation, if the analyst finds the genre of talking that promotes dreaming and the patient’s own discovery of meaning.

This article is referred to by:

The Therapist’s Voice: Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder”

Does Talking Cure, or are We Searching for a Cure for the Way We Talk? Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ A comprehensive history of the differing perspectives on the relationship between verbal and nonverbal domains goes beyond my clinical focus. Stern (2019) provides such a review in his extensive study of the issue.

² Among authors whose integrative stance on the verbal-nonverbal relation is not solely grounded in development, see: Ogden (1997), Zeddies (2002), and Harris (2014).

³ Taylor (1985) himself finds that he resorts to visual terms to describe the workings of language, including, among several others, the term, “reveal” (p. 219). He (Taylor, 2016) uses “portrayal” (p. 236), but to specifically refer to forms of expressivity found in works of art, as in music, dance, novels.

⁴ Ogden (2016a) says that William James advocated verbs in conveying psychic events, since the latter are always changing.

⁵ This heading refers to Winnicott’s (1965) article of the same title.

⁶ She refused residential care several times in this period.

⁷ “Sexy Beast” is a British film (2000), in which Ray Winstone plays a retired gangster, forced by a malevolent, former associate, played by Ben Kingsley, to commit one more robbery.

⁸ Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is a soldier on a team in outer space who battles monster creatures, and rescues a girl who survived these creatures’ attack, in the second movie in the series, “Aliens” (1986).

⁹ Claire had provided emergency contacts early on, and signed releases of confidentiality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Director

Lisa Director, Ph.D., is Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology and Clinical Consultant at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is a faculty member and supervisor at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and is in private practice in New York.