Clark,
I share your scepticism about psychoanalysis John Collier Professor Emeritus, UKZN http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: CLARK GOBLE [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] Sent: Tuesday, 01 December 2015 4:48 AM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations On Nov 30, 2015, at 2:18 PM, CLARK GOBLE wrote: Snip ... Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of view, and he learned that besides his "the imaginary" (1ness) and "the symbolic" (3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic sign) he had to add "the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the impossible", « la grimace du réel »... or better (or in a more perverse way): "what never ceases to not join the symbolic" (the translation from the Spanish version is mine...) apparently, the French (original version) is. « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire »... I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by Peirce. For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA (International Psychoanalytic Association)... I think that is not promising for several reasons, not the least because of the identity of 2ness with the real rather than the existing, though there is a sense of ‘real’ in which it means the actual as opposed to the possible. Adopting this sense, the real is independent of symbolism. One might think of it as the integration of “brute facts”, but there is (or at least seems to me to be) a psychological aspect to symbolism in this that comes out in « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire », at least in my Quebec French. Perhaps this is a good focus for psychoanalytic analysis, but it doesn’t generalize well. Application to dynamical objects, on this account, seems to me to be restricted to the realm of 2ness, which is also much too restrictive. Interesting again, although I admit to a very strong skepticism of psychoanalysis in general. My friends who do like it tend to like it more as a source of metaphors and structures than really taking it seriously on its own terms. But it is exactly the metaphorical aspects that, connected with an emotional appreciation, permit a change from one psychological state to another. Despite the name, analytical and formal implications, psychoanalysis does not work without the emotional component, at least according to a psychiatrist I worked with in Calgary to the extent of doing Psychiatric Grand Rounds with at the local teaching hospital. I am completely convinced he is right about this. Being too rational (on either side) sets up an obstacle to successful change. So I think htat the metaphorical aspect is more than incidental, though not sufficient itself. It is interesting that I’ve heard that Saussure’s semiotics in practice (rather than as received) really was more Peircean than most realize. I’ve never been able to confirm this though. Interesting indeed. I haven’t studied Saussure directly at all, in English translation let alone the French, because of his bad reputation and obvious failures of applications of his work that I am familiar with. Perhaps there is something worth investigating here by some able graduate student who would be interested in clearing the record. Cheers, John
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