The author reflects on the epistemological functions of theoretical texts in psychoanalysis. He draws the conclusions that the theoretical text is to be considered as a linguistic product of thought's creativity aiming to transmit the sense constructions concerning mental or somatic events; has to identify the unconscious roots of, and to ascribe the symbolic significance to, the observed and chosen phenomena through the invention of a clinical-conceptual vocabulary and the construction of a logical discourse; exposes the ways and the processes through which thinking gives a sense to emotional experiences, produces presentations of them, affectually invests perceptions and builds knowledge; sets out from the study of individual cases, but it goes beyond them trying to discover their common stable elements; does not intend to arrange cognitions in a system of objective truths; explains the deformations of symbols through various stages of analysis.