The Words to Say It by Marie Cardinal

The Words to Say It by Marie Cardinal is an exceptional narrative of a young woman’s seven year journey through psychoanalysis; a journey through which she embarks on an unconquered path to a successful self-discovery. While on that journey, Cardinal regains control over her health and body, redefines womanhood and femininity, discovers injustices and inequality and gets out of madness. Cardinal’s sensual and artistic writing through colorful metaphors, imagery, poetic language and sensual descriptions characterizes the heroic triumph from madness.

Cardinal’s narration of psychoanalysis treatment is celebrated as one of the best accounts. In the introduction, Bruno Bettelheim praises The Words to Say It: “of all accounts of psychoanalysis, as experienced by the patient, none can compare with this novel, so superior is it in all pertinent respects” (xi). The narrative is unique because it recounts the experiences of the patient without any interpretation by the psychoanalyst. At the beginning of her analysis, the doctor asked Cardinal to try and understand what provokes her, attenuates or accentuate her crises, and that everything is important: noises, colors, odors, gestures, atmospheres, everything”(33). This is the only moment throughout the book that the doctor speaks and takes charge in the session. For the most part, Cardinal is at the helm of discovering the unconscious, rediscovering childhood experiences and finding meaning in traumatic experiences in relation to her madness. While at the peak of her illness, she mentions how she would let the images come, and the ideas; one image led to another and she tried to express them without sorting them through (205). The depiction of her process puts Cardinal in control of th...

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...nt it seems unfair to use other words to analyze this work because, she herself has the words to say it, and every word matters in this narrative. She has the right word for every emotion, movement, and disturbance: this is what makes her narrative unique. It’s been a momentous ride with Cardinal through this journey; it’s been a pleasure to see her flourish with newness. A new Marie Cardinal was born, full of life. She was in a cocoon and her new life resembles a butterfly, she can fly and soar up high (271).

Works Cited

Cardinal, M. (1983). The Words to Say It. (Pat Goodheart, Trans.) Cambridge, MA. (Original work published 1975).

DeSalvo L. (1999). Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. San Francisco, CA.

Frank, A.W. (1999). The wounded storyteller: body, illness, and ethics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.