This paper returns to three Freudian concepts - Verdrängung, Verwerfung and Verleugnung -, and it discusses the difficulties of their understanding because of the translations available in Portuguese based on a semantic analysis of the original in the German version. Then, through some devices of semiotic analysis (the semiotic square and its modalizations), the modulations of /KNOW/ /BELIEVE/ /WANT/ are compared and confronted in the semantic-modal movements of these three psychic mechanisms formulated by Freud. Our goal is to propose theoretical explanations (possibly applying them to the clinic) able to distinguish, based on the extracted structures of those modalities, the different subjective positions of the patient.
repression; repudiation; denial; psychoanalysis; semiotics
