Language
Loewald approached language from a perspective that is unique among analytic theorists. Unlike Sullivan, Daniel Stern, and Freud, whose understanding of language included a sharp distinction between verbal and preverbal expressions, Loewald states that verbal and preverbal expressions are a form of sensory experience.
He distinguishes between the primary process in which the child experiences only sounds (fantasy), and the secondary process, in which the child gives meaning to these sounds (reality).
Psychopathology is caused by a split between these processes, between fantasy and reality. Mental health entails an open communication and interpenetration between the primary and the secondary process.
Read more about this topic: Hans Loewald
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)
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“They who in folly or mere greed
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Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.”
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