Insubstantial Language and the Space Between Healer and Patient
This article examines the transformation of language from a vehicle of metaphysical truth to what I term the "insubstantiation of meaning per se" within the therapeutic encounter. Drawing upon the critical works of Eli Rubin, Elliot Wolfson, Susan Handelman, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Kafka, I argue that language in the healing space operates not as a transparent medium for communication but as a site of dislocation, concealment, and paradoxical revelation. The patient's discourse reveals itself as fragmentary, incomplete, and haunted by the unconscious—qualities that, when properly understood, open deeper layers of healing potential. This analysis challenges conventional therapeutic approaches that seek to extract meaning from patient narratives, proposing instead a hermeneutic of presence that honors language's essential insubstantiality. By applying insights from Jewish mystical hermeneutics, modernist literary theory, and critical philosophy, this work demonstrates how the space between healer and patient becomes a site of transformative encounter precisely through its linguistic indeterminacy. The implications extend beyond therapeutic practice to fundamental questions about how meaning emerges in intersubjective relationships and how healing occurs through the very failure of language to fully contain experience.