Abstract

We are grateful to René Rosfort for his comment on our target paper Clinical Response to Bodily Symptoms in Psychopathology. Rosfort’s remarks lead us here to specify an important point which our initial proposal may have left too implicit. Within the realm of clinical practice in psychopathology, we argue that bodily manifestations can be offered an expressive space and that they can be listened to in the clinical encounter as being part of the patient’s speech whereby she, by way of her bodily symptoms, addresses a demand to be attended to as a subject of communication. We detail the circumstances under which bodily manifestations may or may not be addressed to a person who is expected to respond, especially in a...