It was Bertha Pappenheim — the famous “Anna O.” of Josef Breuer’s first experiments with psychoanalysis, and a pioneer social worker in her own right — who first named psychotherapy “the talking cure.” And so it is, as a legion of well-controlled studies documents. Across a surprising variety of psychotherapeutic approaches, verbal exchanges between client and therapist can be powerfully curative — except when they aren’t. And when they aren’t, when the resources of literal speech alone are not enough, people often find themselves reaching for other symbolic resources to express, share, and transform wordless suffering into something that can be borne, validated, even cherished as a source of.
