In this paper, we discuss the ideas of confusion of tongues, trauma and hospitality in the field of psychoanalysis. For Ferenczi, the adult-child relationship is marked by a sort of confusion due to a difference of tongues (languages), which makes that often one does not understand the other. In this context, it is possible the emergence of the pathogenic trauma. The analytic experience can, instead of bringing the traumatic event to better psychic layers, produce again or even aggravate what was experienced as trauma in the childhood. In this sense, the principle of hospitality presents itself as crucial in order to prevent a possible reproduction of the trauma between analyst and analysand. In this article we used as main reference the work of Sandor Ferenczi, establishing relations at some points with texts from Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin, which discuss the origin of the confusion of tongues and the problem of the possibility of translation.
Ferenczi, Sandor; psychic trauma; hospitality