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II. A. Styles With respect to a definition of styles, David Maldavsky (1986), a close collaborator of Liberman’s, described difficulties to find in Liberman’s texts a precise definition, and consequently proposed ways of selecting and combining words and specific sequences in stories, to understand time, space, object and causality. Taking as his basis the fact that the language code, according to the double articulation system of signifier/signified and sign/sign by Luis J. Prieto (1973), allows for infinite possibilities of combination in constructing the signal, which carries the message, Liberman defined distinct stylistic typologies in accordance with the spontaneous choices made by each and every user. This is to say that the three dimensional graphic representations of the ego and the id (Freud, 1923) are crossed by a ‘ribbon’ which departs from the perceptual pole with its respective cathexis of attention to finally flow into the motor pole where it regulates action by the anticipated perception of the reply. Between these poles he proposes six partial ego functions , which correlate with six ways of receiving (decoding), evaluating (discerning different meanings and significance) and issuing (encoding) signals carrying messages. These six modes of functioning are in turn arranged in a succession of boxes which, following the same order, become increasingly included. For illustrative purposes, a numerical synthesis of styles is presented below. Box 1: Reflexive style. This concerns Roman Jakobson’s source factor and metalingual or reflexive function . This discourse is centred on the speaker, e.g. “I think”. The ego function involved implies the capacity to dissociate oneself and to observe without participation by splitting oneself from affects, which in turn enables overall perception and perception of detail. The connection to objects is exclusively perceptual at the price of one’s own affects and those of others. These patients approximately correspond to the schizoids mentioned in classical terminology. In nomenclature used in his 1962 book La Comunicación en la Terapéutica Psicoanalítica (Communication in Psychoanalytic Therapy), Liberman defines them as “observing, but not participating personae”. Box 2: Lyrical style. As in the previous case, the source factor is also involved in that this style is similarly centred in the speaker, but here it is a question of the expressive function, e.g. “I feel”; the splitting in these patients is at the cost of perception while the participation of the affects increases. Perception thus becomes constricted and biased due to the threat of being overwhelmed by affects. The distance between the Ego and the object is reduced in such a way that the subject becomes both included and committed, leaving object relations with the context outside the field of perception. This concerns predominantly Depressive personae in previous systematisations (1962) and individuals suffering from neurotic or psychotic depression, according to classical classification. Box 3: Epic style. This refers to the addressee factor and the conative function is involved. The ego develops the capacity to register personal desires and to detect the vulnerabilities of the human environment in order to put the said desires into action. This involves taking a decision after finding the balance between necessity and possibility. With regard to the previous terminology
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