Account for
I know the dictionary meaning of "account for". However, I think in the following context it means more like:
account for= are responsible for and account for= are representative of (represent)
am I right?
Context:
From the ‘stories’ told to them in the clinic, psychoanalysts enable their patients to create equivalent narratives for events that may or may not have occurred in a time and space different from the present. These equivalent narratives are not true pieces of evidence and they circulate in psychoanalytic theory in relation to particular conceptual and fantasmatic ‘objects’ – the transitional object (D.W. Winnicott), the petit objet a (Jacques Lacan), internal objects (Freud, Melanie Klein) and abject objects (Julia Kristeva). These ‘objects’ are structures that account for the expression of material affects and desires. They can account for impulses and forces in art, but do not translate the meaning of pictorial and spatial representations into another language. Rather than a means of interpreting art, which would be to ascribe a hierarchy in the relationship, psychoanalysis interrelates with art in much more dynamic ways.
Top answer
I think you are on the right track. Your two meanings are inherent in "account for", I'd say. The dictionaries are all over the place with their definitions of the phrasal verb, but I would say the core is "To constitute the governing or primary factor in: Bad weather accounted for the long delay.
- I think you are on the right track.
- Your two meanings are inherent in "account for", I'd say.
- The dictionaries are all over the place with their definitions of the phrasal verb, but I would say the core is "To constitute the governing or primary factor in: Bad weather accounted for the long delay.
- " (AHD)
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I think you are on the right track. Your two meanings are inherent in "account for", I'd say. The dictionaries are all over the place with their definitions of the phrasal verb, but I would say the core is "To constitute the governing or primary factor in: Bad weather accounted for the long delay." (AHD)
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