HOW DO EMOTIONS COME TO BE SPOKEN - THERA PEUTIC WORK AMONG VARIOUS COMMUNICATION STRUCTURES

Psychotherapeutic work must take into consideration specific cognitive structures that are given by patients' different use of signs. In som e examples of clinical work with emotionally bound conflicts, the rela tionship between the occurring emotions (as ''natural'' signs) and str ucturally different articulatory-symbolising signs is shown to be one of reciprocal influence. The symbolising signs make possible a connect ion with and a reference back to intra- and intersubjective experience as well as to inner and outer contexts. In this way the borderline ar ea between occurring emotions and experienced emotions and their relat ion to inner and outer object representations (empathy) can be more ea sily bridged over by means of a careful discrimination of signs proces ses. If, on the contrary, a dichotomising and generally evaluating app roach (emotion or speech) is adopted, this results in important questi ons as to the ability to make connections and as to the reciprocal inf luence of intersubjective communication processes only being discussed within a very narrow framework. This is a loss for our clinical and t heoretical work.