experience

The experience is really there only, just a moment before you say the word. Once the word is said, it’s already over there. But, at the same time, of course, the same was true with an abstraction, the same holds true for a concept. (…) The ambiguity of „words,“ the ambiguity of „concepts,“ and yet all that matters is really where the word comes from. If you say a word that comes from your experience, then the word will remain in the living context in which it is spoken an expression of the experience. If you speak a word which comes from your brain and yet which according to its contents should come from experience, then indeed your word is empty and is nothing but an idol, a little idol. ― (1992g [1959]: Dealing with the Unconscious in Psychotherapeutic Practice, in: E. Fromm, Beyond Freud: From Individual to Social Psychoanalysis, New York (American Mental Health Foundation) 2010, pp. 92f.)