The invisible scriptwriter

The analytic experience confronts us with a disturbing truth: we are not the sovereign authors of our discourse. Far from being ventriloquists who consciously manipulate their words, we are more like puppets repeating borrowed voices without knowing it. The discourse we believe our own is woven with threads of borrowed words, echoes of others who inhabit us without our notice.

The unconscious operates as an anonymous scriptwriter who writes our most intimate lines. Each slip of the tongue, each failed act, each dream reveals the presence of this hidden author who speaks through us. We don't choose the words that mark us: they choose us, emerging from a place we don't control, following a logic that exceeds us.

What we call "speaking for oneself" is actually a complex network of inherited voices, signifiers that preceded us, words that named us before we could name. The illusion of originality is precisely that: an illusion that analysis comes to disturb, revealing that we are spoken more than we speak.