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In 1923, in “The Ego and the Id”, Freud states that “In essence a word is after all the mnemic residue of a word that has been heard” (Essential Works vol. 3, The Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 226). This assertion opens a perspective on the understanding of the meaning of words, which contains more than just the logical connexions built through semantic sedimentations and kept within the pages of dictionaries, including the history of their usage experience in the dynamic of word meanings as well.
While psychoanalysis is a therapy through words, building the psychanalytic process begins with the first interactions, the first forms tied to the use of space, time, the relation and the analyst that the patient has at their disposal. All these experiences, composed of minuscule signs that translate through movements of the body, facial expressions, silence and non-silence, allow us, should we focus on them, to open a doorway to an area where the word, and even figurability, are still unclear, without outline - they are diluted and find themselves mixed-up in a mass of affects without form. It is the universe of the archaic …, where we find both the time and space of experiences that unfolded before the acquirement of language.