Symbolic concept of psychoanalysis

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Concept history and development

Freud

Reminder symbol

The term symbol appears for the first time in Freud's writings in the form of the memory symbol . It occurs here as a memory of a symptom and has no meaning, but only marks a temporal connection with the remembered symptom (e.g. memory of pain). The subject is unconscious of this connection.

Dream symbol

In the " Interpretation of Dreams " Freud developed a new concept of symbols, a systematic doctrine of dream symbols. The dream symbol is not a product of individual unconscious processes, but is culturally present. Regarding the genesis of this cultural heritage, Freud imagined that what “… is symbolically connected today,… was probably united in prehistoric times through conceptual and linguistic identity.” The dream symbolism is, so to speak, the “cover” that the cultural heritage provides for the expression of the Has wishes ready. He explains symbol formation as a preliminary stage to concept formation, as an unconscious substitute for the concept in the conscious.

Symbol and subjective (life history) meaning

Freud's understanding of the symbol in the sense of “meaning as a creative achievement of the subject” can already be found in Freud's investigations on the speech disorders of aphasic patients, since until a few decades ago Freud was divided by psychoanalysts into a “neurologist” and a “psychoanalyst” - what Grubrich-Simitis and Lorenzer (see below) criticize, this version of the concept of symbol remained largely unreceived.

Ernest Jones

Ernest Jones takes up Freud's definition of the symbolic as a proxy for repressed wishes and thus shaped the narrower understanding of the concept of symbol in psychoanalysis for a long time . This view takes up Freud's attachment of the symbol to the unconscious. However, there is also another conception in Jones , in which symbols are not tied to what has been repressed, but encompass the entire cultural development. These symbols have to be created over and over again from individual experience. Thus the symbol takes a back seat in favor of the process of symbolization.

According to Jones

In the following discussion of the concept of symbol, the connection indicated last emerges more clearly, as the symbol (as content) in its semantic function is seen as inseparable from its intra- and inter-individual mediating function. This includes the social as well as the creative situation. Provided that the symbol is seen less as a universal phenomenon ( Jung ) or as a sign of a symbolic order ( Lacan ), the understanding of symbols in psychoanalysis can thus be subjected to a criticism that makes it compatible with and open to discussion with the more recent symbol theories .

Alfred Lorenzer

In his “Critique of the Psychoanalytic Concept of Symbols”, Alfred Lorenzer differentiates between presentative (gestural-affective) and discursive symbols, i.e. symbols of language, based on Susanne K. Langer .

In doing so, he removes the narrow psychoanalytic concept of symbols from its sole attachment to unconscious psychological processes. Only then did the psychoanalytic concept of symbols become both metatheoretically founded and discussed in an interdisciplinary manner. He therefore starts the process of symbol formation early in ontogenesis, already in the prelinguistic experiences of the subject with his reference persons, the sensual-symbolic forms of interaction. These form the first stage of subject formation. Symbol formation is thus an achievement of the ego, ie its preconscious and conscious functions.

After the “introductory situation of language”, the language symbols develop that enable conscious thinking and (test) action. This is the second stage of subject formation, which involves the subject in the community of language. Symbol and language theory thus become central themes for Lorenzer's metatheory of psychoanalysis, which he brings to the term as a “hermeneutics of the body”. In a later work, Lorenzer worked out his understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of symbols, which he developed from psychoanalysis - the meaning of sensuality and language - using the example of religion and other cultural phenomena. He thus presents a method transfer from the analysis of subjective structure in psychoanalysis to the analysis of collective phenomena. Lorenzer's criticism of the psychoanalytic concept of symbols is received in cultural, linguistic and religious studies, in pedagogy, literary studies etc. T. further developed.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1895 Freud et al. Breuer
  2. ↑ Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams. (1900)
  3. ^ Sigmund Freud: GW II / III, p. 357
  4. ^ Sigmund Freud: GW II / III, p. 203
  5. ^ Sigmund Freud: Letter to CG Jung of March 14, 1911
  6. ↑ Ernest Jones: The Theory of Symbolism (1916)
  7. ^ Alfred Lorenzer: Critique of the psychoanalytic concept of symbols
  • Sigmund Freud (1895d): Studies on Hysteria. GW I, 248
  • Sigmund Freud (1900): The Interpretation of Dreams. GW II / III

literature

  • Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams. (1900), Fischer-Taschenbuch, ISBN 3-596-10436-X
  • Ernest Jones: The Theory of Symbolism. London 1916 online version
  • Alfred Lorenzer: Critique of the psychoanalytic concept of symbols. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1970.