Understanding Vocalization in Primitive Mental States: Bellowing, Blaring, and Blathering

This exposé confirms Grotstein's statement that there remains “unmined psychoanalytic gold in those primitive hills.” Scrutiny of a number of case examples of three unusual vocalizations—bellowing, blaring, and blathering—reveals the presence of primitive mental states marked by a failed striving for mystical oneness, akin to the oceanic feeling. These evacuative phenomena are characterized by the stripping away of sense from ordinary words to the point that they become unrecognizable semantically and unusable for laying down memories and thinking thoughts. Clifford Scott and Wilfred Bion wrote extensively about psychotic modes of functioning, associated with such vocalizations, and have given us clues about ways to listen to severely disturbed individuals prone to express themselves in such bewildering ways. For Scott, the analyst's attention is drawn to oscillations—slow or rapid—between progressive and regressive movements linked to primary antithetical forces such as persecution and megalomania. An emphasis on words as objects in themselves signals another kind of listening—along the path of destruction that words take when subjected to the overwhelming force of vocal musculature. This is one of several post-Cartesian trends in psychoanalytic listening relevant to the treatment of psychotic or near-psychotic individuals.

A partir d'un regard de cas cliniques qui démontrent des vocalisations étranges et inusitées comme le hurlement, le beuglement, et le babillement, on peut mieux apprécier certains états primitifs qui font état d'aspirations mystiques échouées. Ces phénomènes, reliés á l'évacuation, se caractérisent par des manifestations vocales, dénuées de sens, qui ne se prêtent pas á un