Clinical approach of language here refers to clinical experience with plurilingual and polyglot patients attended to in a foreign country (France). The aim is to question the conscious and unconscious mechanisms activated when shifting from native to foreign language and the symmetrical mechanisms when the psychoanalytical session is in the patient's native language. This article deals with the function of linguistic and psychic translation in psychoanalytical session and in transference. Through various clinical illustrations, the author tackles the relationship to mother-tongue, and the multi-layered language of polyglot and plurilingual subjects.
Multilinguism; Psychoanalysis; Translation; Transference (Learning)