The notion of "action-language" was proposed by Roy Schafer to refer to a code or group of rules, within the framework of a conceptualization that aims to legitimize existence to all conscious or unconscious activity, and all mental acts capable of being externalized by means of words or gestures, so that these mental acts can be related to unconscious conflicts (slips of the tongue, parapraxes), representations of self and object, bodily fantasies, feelings and emotions, desires and beliefs, or courses of action that the subject uses to "put aside" certain ideas or invest others.

Action-language involves a strategy (favoring the use of action verbs and adverbs over nouns, adjectives, and the verbs have and be) for listening to, acknowledging, translating, retranslating, interpreting, and organizing the data or the modalities of action of the agent or his or her person, that is, the analysand, within the context...