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RESEARCH PRODUCT

On “Action Language” in Psychoanalysis

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The main tenets of action language are summarized in an attempt to discern the direction in which psychoanalysis might go if action language becomes the "new metapsychology." The principal roots of action language are traced to the different linguistic/language and personality-and-culture models of anthropology and to the neobehaviorist currents of academic psychology. The authors' findings support the hypothesis that action language is a form os psychoanalytic behaviorism having idealism, logical positivism, and radical empiricism as its philosophical underpinnings. Its adoption would confound the entire motivational aspect of psychoanalysis. Specifically, the authors suggest that action language falls under the aegis of Wittgenstein's family of language games. When the action language game is said to be brought to a successful resolution, the language game disappears and, supposedly, so do the patient's conflicts.