This article discusses the question as to whether there is a subject in madness. This is not exactly a new question, since it has been present during much of the history of madness itself. The terms subject and madness have a common history that began during the 18th century: they are heirs of the Cartesian subject defined by reason and consciousness. During that century of the Enlightenment, madness lost its central characterization and was thereafter referred to as unreason. Once madness had been established as a topic of medical knowledge, the insane ceased to be part of the life of the polis, and were dispatched off to mental hospitals. Psychiatry fully identified with this solution of confinement, insanity being perceived as pure negativity. The mental hospital thus emerged as an institution to symbolize this context governed by the logic of segregation and limited therapeutic resources. Later, the psychiatric reform followed in the wake of movements that questioned the psychiatric system in vogue and reaffirmed the citizenship of the insane, thus creating new spaces for social inclusion. The contribution of psychoanalysis continues an essential factor for recognizing subjective positivity in the experience of insanity. The workshop known as Palavrear The Wording Workshop, which is the clinical instrument described in this article, confirms the basic tenet which holds that each one bears a truth and is the subject of his or her own experience. The practice of the unconscious in the workshop means asserting the existence of a place of the analyst, on which the workshop activities are based. To sustain this place, the concept of transference acts as the mainspring, and the word serves as the basic connector. However, there is an even more essential condition for this support: the analyst's desire. The minutes of the workshop, written by the patients themselves, with their accounts, stories, lapses, inconsistencies, scribblings, advances and confusion, showed a complex discursive interplay where a subject always emerged. The Wording Workshop is an attempt to return the word to the insane, individuals who are often denied the dignity of being subjects.