The verbalization of repressed intentions: A socially instituted practice

The widely shared tendency to locate psychoanalysis beyond the scope of the social-historical world is ultimately based on the idea that intention is an inner, mental event that precedes its fulfillment in action or its communication in speech. Now, intention, far from being such a private event, is always expressed, in deeds or in words. Above all, the verbalization of intentions is an instituted practice that mediates interactions by gauging actions against social norms. Freud, by showing his interlocutors how to verbalize new kinds of intentions (repressed ones), implicitly showed them how to gauge actions against the common meanings of an emerging modern, contractual society.