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≪La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
Ehomme y passe à travers des forèts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec de regards familiers.
Gomme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons ser épondent≫.
The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which the notion of isomorphic structures might be applied in clinical practice. In mineralogy, isomorphism defines the phenomenon whereby two substances with analogous physical or chemical properties crystallize in the same form. In a wider sense, the term is used for a type of experience which establishes different subjects or phenomena as belonging to the same group of relations. In mathematics, isomorphism is described as a biunivocal correspondence and refers, as an initial example, to the correlation between the fingers of one hand and those of the other. In clinical practice, one can see analysands creating isomorphisms between objects that may be very dissimilar but between which the Unconscious has found an emotionally significant correspondence.
The following is an initial example of the concrete meaning I aim to give to the term. Chiara is a 25-year-old girl who grew up in an extremely pathological family environment where she was subjected to painful emotional deprivation. During her session a few days ago she mentioned an experience from the previous evening, which had struck her as particularly intense. From her garden she had heard the squeaking of a tiny blackbird chick which her cats had discarded on the ground. She had had to call her brother to pick it up, because at first she did not feel capable of