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Dear Sirs,
Dr Norman questions the use he can have as a psychoanalyst from knowledge that is formulated in other disciplines ‘… I am not able to see the other discipline's good reasons behind the determination of their concepts’. My view is the contrary—but it does not take much imagination on the topic we are discussing about infants and language to see that it raises serious troubles for him if he could not see the good reasons that are accumulated within the discipline of philosophy of language and mind. They are well spelled out in Cavell and in the literature she refers to.
A hundred years have passed since Freud gave his contributions on mind, language and the unconscious. A hundred years have also passed since the language turn within philosophy. One of Freud's important mentors was the philosopher Franz Brentano who tried to make a steady ground for psychology and mentality by underlining the importance of intentionality, in the sense of being mentally directed to some-thing, as constitutional