Abstract

The process of meaning construction is studied through semiotic analysis focusing on the microgenetic level of psychological experience. This article illustrates this analysis taking an extract of therapeutic session with mothers of sexually abused children. The meaning making process goes by means of dynamics of tension and distancing through particular meaning complexes characterized by ambivalence, ambiguity and opposition. The person copes with uncertainty of immediate future using the temporal stability given by Social Representations, as cultural tools and semiotic devices. The resulting process of thinking and making sense of life takes place through negotiating between the cultural context and its personal subjectively lived-through experience. Some cultural notions of motherhood are particularly considered with the experience of the abuse of one’s child.