Ambiguity and Ambivalence: an Issue for the Subjective Dynamics in the Relation between Language and Affection

Abstract

This article stems from an interest taken in discussing the usage of the terms ambivalence and ambiguity, which are very present in Psychology’s publications and savoir faire. It is important to reiterate that in common sense and even in scientific publications these terms are often used as synonyms or notions of little conceptual delimitation. The relevance of such differentiation is proposed once these notions participates of the emergence of the new in human subjective experience, and, in a methodological approach, ambiguity and ambivalence are dimensions that leads the researcher goes beyond a repetitive sterile description of the subject’s speech, moving towards new perspectives of the psychological data. This paper aims to retrieve the qualifying power of such notions by making a broader reflection on the functions of language in the production of interpretive realities. We also propose to bring up a reflection about ambiguity in the construction of meaning and to reiterate ambivalences as inherent to human nature, its affective record and the process of human becoming. As a way to explain the proposed themes, we will analyse an excerpt from the documentary “Últimas Conversas”, produced by the Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, in which high school students from public state schools in Rio de Janeiro tell their stories, speaking of dreams and shared challenges. The character Rafaela was selected for this article because of the emergence of unspeakable emotions from her narrative about an expected future as a promise of reconciliation with the alterity of her life story.