Kapsambelis, Vassilis

Organ-speech - 2014.


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‘Organ-speech’ is a term used by Freud to describe a linguistic disturbance in schizophrenia that consists in expressing a relationship to a bodily organ or function, to the exclusion of any reference to the object. The analysis of Freud’s argument shows that organ-speech can be related to the hypothesis of a sensation that could not be linked either to an object representation or to an actual bodily manifestation—a sensation therefore that cathects only the specific words that describe it. From this viewpoint, organ-speech can be likened on the one hand to hypochondriac language and on the other to any other schizophrenic linguistic disturbance, however the sensation has originated (externally or internally). These different forms of organ-speech might have a common substrate in a particular cathexis of speech and the organ that produces it.