The spelling disorder is considered in psychiatry as a specific learning disorder. The recent neuropsychological discoveries of the role of emotions in the learning process confirm the idea, supported by the psychopathologic psychoanalytical approach, according to which the cognitive development cannot be separated from the emotional one. Our research concerned the silence of affects which we had already found with children presenting this specific disorder in our clinical practice ; therefore making us utter the hypothesis of a psychosomatic logic underlying the symptom of spelling disorder. The analysis of a projective test, the CAT, for a group of twenty children and the analysis of Jeanne’s therapy, a child presenting this disorder, highlighted a main repression of affects, a limitation of the fantasmatic expression, prevalency of acts and feelings linked to a very strong importance put on perceptions. These aspects lead us to consider that in those cases, the spelling disorder syptom may be the result of operating defenses but is not necessarily a psychonevrotic symptom expressing a symbolic conflict. Beyond the variety of psychic process of these children, the presence of such steady clinical aspects, leads us to establish a link between the spelling disorder symptom and the psychosomatic symptom. We tried to find a reason for it through the analysis of the transfert movements in Jeanne’s therapy. This brought us to utter the hypothesis of a lack of libidinal subversion leading some patients with spelling disorders to remain in a purely functional and mechanical writing.
