That which Speech Fails to Treat

That which Speech Fails to Treat
Sharon Zvili-Cohen

I began my clinical training with an interest in making room for speech, but what I could not say to myself then, was my interest in what could not be captured in words; or more approximately what speech fails to treat. I remember, at the beginning of my psychoanalytic formation, a case of a young man I met in a public mental health hospital. He came to speak to me. As he spoke, the words ran into each other creating what sounded like one long glued sentence. Sitting on a chair next to a computer, I suggested that he write. The typed words looked just like the words he spoke; a continuous stream without stops or spaces between the words. I sat next to him and asked him to read out what he had written. With my finger on the space bar, I punctuated what became word by word.