The term ‘parole’ enters the depth-psychology corpus almost exclusively through the gravitational field of Lacanian psychoanalysis, where it operates as one pole of the foundational Saussurean opposition parole/langue — individual speech act against the abstract system of language. Lacan’s ‘Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage’ (1953/1966) constitutes the decisive theoretical moment: there, parole is not merely an instrument of communication but the very medium through which the subject constitutes itself in relation to the Other, pursues recognition, and can achieve or forfeit therapeutic transformation. Lacan distinguishes rigorously between ‘parole pleine’ — full speech that realizes the subject’s truth in intersubjective encounter — and ‘parole vide,’ empty speech that circles narcissistically without genuine recognition. The antinomy between parole (singular, intersubjective, truth-bearing) and langage (functional, impersonal, alienating) runs throughout his clinic. Benveniste, whose linguistics Lacan explicitly draws upon, enriches the problematic through enunciation theory, noting that the religious resonances of terms like euphemia belong to the domain of parole while their purely linguistic value belongs to langue — a distinction with direct consequences for how the analyst hears the patient’s discourse. The concordance reveals that parole is irreducibly tied to recognition, desire, intersubjectivity, and the structural possibilities of psychoanalytic cure.
A mesure que le langage devient plus fonctionnel, il est rendu impropre a la parole, et 4 nous devenir trop particulier il perd sa fonction de langage.
Lacan articulates the constitutive antinomy of parole and langage: as language becomes purely functional it loses the power of speech, while overly private speech loses its linguistic function — the tension that defines the analytic field.
, Écrits, 1966thesis
Ici commence la réalisation de la parole pleine. Examinons la relation qu’elle constitue.
Lacan identifies the moment at which symbolic interpretation inaugurates ‘full speech,’ anchoring the clinical distinction between parole pleine and empty repetition as the hinge of therapeutic progress.
, Écrits, 1966thesis
Ramener l’expérience psychanalytique 4 la parole et au langage comme a ses fondements, intéresse sa technique.
Lacan argues that returning psychoanalytic experience to speech and language as its foundations is not merely theoretical but has immediate technical consequences for interpretive practice.
, Écrits, 1966thesis
ce désir lui-méme, pour étre satisfait dans l’homme, exige d’étre reconnu, par l’accord de la parole ou par la lutte de prestige, dans le symbole ou dans l’imaginaire.
Lacan situates parole as one of the two primary pathways through which desire seeks recognition, linking speech directly to the intersubjective dialectic of symbol and imaginary.
, Écrits, 1966thesis
c’est un mur de langage qui s’oppose a la parole, et les précautions contre le verbalisme qui sont un theme du discours de homme « normal » de notre culture, ne font qu’en renforcer l’épaisseur.
Lacan diagnoses cultural ‘language’ as a wall obstructing genuine speech (parole), arguing that normative anti-verbalism thickens rather than dissolves this barrier.
, Écrits, 1966thesis
Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage
The section heading marks the textual center of Lacan’s foundational essay in which parole is given its full clinical and theoretical elaboration within the Écrits.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
Les acceptions religieuses, avec toutes leurs résonances, leurs associations, leurs interférences, relèvent de la « parole D. Mais ces acceptions ne se déterminent qu’à partir d’une valeur purement linguistique.
Benveniste clarifies that the richly resonant, contextual meanings of ritual utterance belong to the domain of parole, while those meanings can only be grounded in an underlying langue value — reinforcing the analytic necessity of both registers.
, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 1966supporting
Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage 121
Lacan’s placement of American behaviourism and ‘communication’ culture at the antipodes of analytic experience contextualizes the defence of parole as the proper medium of psychoanalytic encounter against reductively functionalist alternatives.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
C’est le monde des mots qui crée le monde des choses, d’abord confondues dans l’hic et nunc du tout en devenir, en donnant son étre concret a leur essence.
Lacan asserts the ontological priority of the symbolic order — the world of words constitutes the world of things — establishing the metaphysical ground on which parole’s truth-bearing function rests.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
c’est dans le discours que doit se scander leur résolution. Quelque vide en effet qu’apparaisse ce discours, il n’en est ainsi qu’a le prendre 4 sa valeur faciale
Lacan warns against reading discourse only at face value: even apparently empty speech carries a structure whose resolution must be articulated discursively, linking parole to the problem of analytic interpretation.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
La suspension de la séance ne peut pas ne pas étre éprouvée par le sujet comme une ponctuation dans son progrés.
Lacan links the technical device of the variable-length session to the structure of speech itself, arguing that punctuation of discourse is constitutive of the subject’s progress in analysis.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
la psychanalyse reste-t-elle une relation dialectique ot le non-agir de l’analyste guide le discours du sujet vers la réalisa-tion de sa vérité
Lacan poses the question of whether analysis remains a dialectical relation guided by parole toward truth-realization, or degenerates into a fantasmatic imaginary coupling — the stakes of the parole/langage distinction in clinical practice.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
un élément essentiel dans la parole elle-même était prédestiné a se couler dans les caractéres mobiles qui… présentifient valablement ce que nous appelons la lettre, 4 savoir la structure essentiellement localisée du signifiant.
Lacan argues that something essential in parole itself is predestined to flow into the letter — the localized structure of the signifier — connecting the living act of speech to the materiality of the signifying chain.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
Les lois de la remémoration et de la reconnaissance symbolique, en effet, sont différentes dans leur essence et dans leur manifestation des lois de la réminiscence imagi-naire
Lacan distinguishes symbolic memory and recognition — the order proper to parole and its truth-effects — from imaginary reminiscence, grounding the clinical superiority of symbolic interpretation.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
il faut parler au sujet « son langage », donne encore plus 4 méditer quant 4 la profondeur de cette naiveté
Lacan ironizes the therapeutic injunction to ‘speak the patient’s language,’ exposing the naivety of confusing adaptive communication with genuine parole oriented toward the subject’s truth.
, Écrits, 1966supporting
s’il a besoin que le patient lui raconte tout et même qu’il s’exprime au hasard et sans propos défini
Benveniste, in his account of analytic discourse, implicitly engages the domain of parole by noting that the analyst requires free, undirected speech from the patient as the condition for accessing the pathogenic historical datum.
, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 1966aside
une telle communication n’est pas transmissible sous la forme symbolique. Elle ne se soutient que dans la relation 4 cet objet.
Lacan distinguishes a form of affective communication that cannot be symbolically transmitted, contrasting it with genuine parole and underscoring that symbolic transmission is the condition of properly human speech.
, Écrits, 1966aside
Le parole sono altrove, by Gruppo Cinema A. I. P. A, presented at the Congresso Nazionale A. I. P. A
A Jungian congress film entitled ‘Le parole sono altrove’ (‘The words are elsewhere’) gestures toward the depth-psychological problematic of speech and its displacement, situating parole within active imagination discourse if only by title reference.
, Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training, 2017aside