The movie The Secret Life of Words emphasizes the traumatic nature of suffering and the function of speech. In the movie, the body appears as a stage for the effects of painful experience. The subjective experience of trauma, inapprehensible and difficult to be supported, always returns to the same place, but it escapes; it is impossible to find it, so the subject repeats the attempt, insistently. From this perspective, we think of the psychoanalytic clinic as a place of resignification for the traumatic affective experience, and of the metaphorical speech as a therapeutic resource for symbolization. The objective of this paper is to present the movie The Secret Life of Words, linking it to repetition in the context of clinical psychoanalysis, and to speech as a therapeutic resource, considering the implications of trauma on the body. Taking the psychoanalytical concept of repetition as a reference, we use the theory of Freud and Lacan to make our reflections. From the film, we present the concept of repetition, written by Freud and Lacan, and situate the psychoanalytic clinic as a place of the word, highlighting its metaphorical functions with a report of clinical observations. We conclude that repetition on its own harbors the difference, it is for the psychoanalyst to intervene on this, making the word appear, which goes beyond of the deflation of tension.
Psychic trauma; Repetition compulsion; Speech; Metaphor