The battlefield of speech

Contemporary clinical practice reveals an uncomfortable truth: there is no neutrality in speech. Every word we pronounce is a position taken, a way of locating ourselves in the social field. When we speak, we don't just communicate: we establish power relations, defend symbolic territories, construct or destroy realities. Language is never innocent: it's a battlefield where each phrase can be both an act of resistance and of submission.

Analysands who come to consultation usually believe their symptoms are purely personal, until they discover that their way of speaking (or staying silent) reproduces social discourses that run through them. Their words are trenches where they take refuge or from which they fire. Each session is a potential small revolution, where worn-out words can acquire new meanings, where imposed silences can transform into cries of freedom.

The true analytic act consists in making visible this political dimension of speech. It's not just about interpreting symptoms, but helping the subject discover how their discourse positions them in the world. Each intervention by the analyst is also a political act: it can reinforce existing power structures or open spaces for new ways of speaking and being.