The (Body ‐) ‘Thing’ Phenomenon and Primitive States of Being: ‘The Words to Say It’

Using Marie Cardinal's autobiographical novel The Words to Say It (1975), I explore how a somatic disturbance mysteriously located in utero represents an ‘après‐coup’, a second time experience of ‘what is already there’. The titles of both the book and this paper suggest that words hold a transformative power – an emotional re‐education for the fragmented subject. The ‘Thing’ refers on the one hand to the author's distressing illness: her continuous menstrual bleeding, for which there is no medical explanation. In order not to succumb to her ‘madness’, Marie decides to start psychoanalysis. From being utterly prostrated in darkness, Marie painfully remembers, repeats and reconstructs a piece of her early history (a ‘truth’) she had forgotten. Eventually, as the flow of words replaces the flow of blood, Marie ‘learns to name her ghost’ and is rewarded with a new sense of ‘self’. On the other hand, the ‘thing’ refers to the Freudian concept of thing‐presentation and word‐presentation. It concerns the processes by which an unconscious ‘thing’ which couldn't be symbolized becomes conscious once represented in words. The paper is inspired by French psychoanalysis.

Source: British Journal of Psychotherapy - January 22, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Leila Barnes Tags: Literary Practice Source Type: research