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the object concept system stores all the mental associations of that object - the things which give that object its meaning. The overlapping "radiations" from primary projection areas serve to create more complex association areas. The primary connection between a word and its meaning is between the sound image of the heard word and the visual elements of the associated concept. It is of note that the idea of a distributed semantic representation linked to separate input and output word stores remains at the heart of modern psycholinguistics. Yet, Avzaradel also notes important contributions made to the understanding of language in the 20th century, when language was no longer seen as merely denotative and expressive but also performative, a way of acting upon the other. He especially credits Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953)’s ordinary language philosophy ’s argument that language is constructed through “language games” and that meanings are formed within relationships between individuals – that is, founded in intersubjectivity . Avzaradel extends the argument stating that the capacity of words to relate to each other to form thoughts, and their capacity to represent, is only possible because words are the product of a psychic field . Avzaradel charts a path of words coming into being, a path from a thought that is made of images into a conceptual thought, the use of material images to suggest immaterial relations, and arriving at verbal thought. Based on his clinical and conceptual explorations, he theorizes that the pictogram already carries within itself both its relational and its representational potential, since when one sees it, one almost immediately apprehends what it refers to, whereas words are arbitrary. Something that is expressed under an evocative plane, compacted in an image, is transformed into verbal language which accomplishes the development of meanings. Just as the pictogram, which is a concrete image expression, makes possible relational and representational image thought, the word likewise holds within itself the same possibilities as well as the potential to express affects Both the pictogram and the word, in their own different paths, have the same function: to be, respectively, the groundwork for image thought and for verbal thought, in addition to their relational and representational potential. As far as the word is concerned – which despite being arbitrary in its origin is the offspring of an intersubjective linguistic relationship – it fosters a relational and representational potential. Avzaradel further explores what makes it possible for the word to possess the capacity to be incorporated in psyche with the functions of denoting, expressing and performing; and what makes it possible for words to be joined to form the most varied and complex thoughts, and what is their relational and representation potential. He believes that the psychoanalytic understanding in its object-relations dimension provides an insight into Wittgenstein’s language games (1953), through the analysis of the mental mechanisms of projective and introjective identification and their respective counter-identifications, as well the concepts of transference and countertransference, thus addressing intersubjectivity in such a way as to unveil the vicissitudes of the formation of relational connections and the capacity to represent. To build the bridge between intersubjectivity (the transferential/countertransferential
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