The most important schools of depth psychotherapies in Western culture have their origin in Freudian psychoanalysis. Despite more or less important disagreements as to theory and practice, they all share an essential principle, namely, that experience can be verbalized. In general, and especially in Western cultures, to experience something means to construct a given reality within oneself in such a way that it can be verbally expressed to the other. It is only through verbal communication that experienced reality can be shared with others, thus communicating the common intersubjective domain. This article examines the considerable differences in the cultural apprehension of experience and in the way that reality is manifest, and presents conclusions for psychotherapeutic work.
Psychoanalysis; communication verbal cultural; Western