Exploring Signs and Voices in the Therapeutic Space

The recent social constructionist and narrative approaches to subjectivity and psychotherapy tend to exclude psychoanalysis as essentialist and reductionist. This paper revisits psychoanalytic theory, and particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis, and discusses its relevance for a semiotic understanding of subjectivity. It draws upon Lacan's and Bakhtin's theories to outline a theory of subjectivity as a constellation of linguistically produced and enacted positions and of transference as a semiotic articulation in the therapeutic setting of dialogical patterns deriving from the client's past. The therapeutic exchange is theorized as a process of shared exploration and mutual appropriation of positions, voices and languages. These processes are illustrated through a micro-analysis of extracts from one session of a long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The analysis traces the movement of the encounter from the articulation of a transferential dialogical pattern to the development of increasingly strong reflexive positions. It focuses on the interplay of utterances between therapist and client, demonstrating the micro-processes through which subjectivity is articulated and transformed in psychotherapy practice.