The Language as Object: A Tool of Intersubjective Exchange in Clinical Practice

In mainstream clinical practice, language is regarded as a medium by means of which to keep (and/or to change) specific “essences”—“characteristics” that are conceived as “inner” properties of the individual mind. I outline the unity of mind and discourse: we construct the world we inhabit by speaking. Hence, language use (as sense-making processes) is intrinsically an intersubjective process. I highlight the implications of this perspective by way of defining the object that has to be processed by the therapist, the role of the social and discursive context in the understanding of the reality constructed by the patient, and the aim of the clinical exchange, shaping it as an intrinsically intersubjective process of sense making.