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(1968). Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 37:199-211

Explosives and Spirants: Primitive Sounds in Cathected Words

Maurice N. Walsh, M.D.

The importance of language as an indicator of emotion and of mood and as a vehicle for the expression of affects cannot be overestimated. Certain words are easily recognizable as heavily cathected with affect, notably, but not exclusively, obscene ones. Heavily cathected words tend to arrive at expression under situations of great stress, and certain words tend to emerge as forceful verbal expressions spoken of a 'ejaculations'.

Certain sounds which make up such words are becoming recognized as primitive sounds related to early affective experiences, and associated with condensed memory traces, being thus heavily cathected with powerful affects. Many of the sounds are associated with early human experiences which are universal, such as gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and respiratory tract operations in infancy.

Psychoanalytic experience demonstrates that the ordinal aspect of words, a function of their phonetic qualities, is related to the auditory comprehension of spoken w

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