Psychoanalysis session as a speech genre: setting, therapy and social voice tensioning through a Bakhtinian perspective

Abstract

Despite being rarely discussed in Bakhtinian Studies, Volóchinov’s critics towards Freudianism is a landmark in the theoretical production of Bakhtin’s Circle. Based on a critical analysis of Volóchinov’s position towards the therapeutic conditions of psychoanalysis, this article aims to investigate the psychoanalytic social event, in its therapeutic specificity, as a speech genre. To that end, we see social voice intertwining as a constitutive phenomenon of such an event. We reviewed the literature on the speech genres assumptions made by Bakhtin and his Circle to investigate the role of the setting in Freudian psychoanalytic therapy. Such role was then outlined through the Bakhtin’s Circle concepts of architectonics and heterodiscourse and Freud’s concepts of resistance and transference. We argue that the psychoanalytic discursive relationship is specific when it comes to the possibility of making the discursive interaction itself a space-time that is receptive to the unfinished dialogue, typical of both therapeutic encounter and elaborative speech.