Psychoanalytic Conceptions of Language
Encyclopedia
Psychoanalytic conceptions of language refers to the intersection of psychoanalytic theory with linguistics
and psycholinguistics
. Language
has been an integral component of the psychoanalytic framework since its inception, as evidenced by the fact that Anna O.
(pseud. for Bertha Pappenheim
), whose treatment via the cathartic method influenced the later development of psychoanalytic therapy, referred to her method of treatment as the "talking cure
" (Freud & Breuer, 1895; de Mijolla, 2005).
Language is relevant to psychoanalysis in two key respects. First, it is important with respect to the therapeutic process, serving as the principal means by which unconscious mental processes are given expression through the verbal exchange between analyst and patient (e.g., free association
, dream analysis, transference
-countertransference
dynamics). Secondly, psychoanalytic theory is linked in many ways to linguistic phenomena, such as parapraxes and the telling of jokes. According to Freud (1915, 1923), the essential difference between modes of thought characterized by primary (irrational, governed by the id) as opposed to secondary (logical, governed by the ego and external reality) thought processes is one of preverbal vs. verbal ways of conceptualizing the world.
and Carl Wernicke. Freud was skeptical of Wernicke's findings, citing a paucity of clinical observation as his reason. Although he conceded the fact that language is linked to neurological processes, Freud repudiated a model of localization of brain function, according to which specific regions of the brain are responsible for certain cognitive functions. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Freud rejected the notion that in most cases pathological phenomena are manifestations of physiological dysfunctions (Lanteri-Laura, 2005a).
In the same paper, Freud (1891) distinguishes between word-presentations, the mental images of words, and thing-presentations, the representations of actual objects. Word-presentations involve the linking of a conscious idea to a verbal stimulus, are associated with the secondary processes, and are oriented towards reality. Thing-presentations are essentially pre- or nonverbal images of objects, are associated with the primary processes, and are not necessarily connected with reality (Rycroft, 1995; Gibeault, 2005a, 2005b; Lanteri-Laura, 2005b). The influence of the external world on the ego is apparent here in that mental processes and word-presentations become connected only gradually as the ego differentiates from the id as a result of contact with the environment (Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1923). The idea of thing vs. word-presentations is also evident in Freud's hypotheses concerning schizophrenia
(Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1894, 1896). It is suggested that, as a defense against intrapsychic
conflict, schizophrenics divest thing-presentations of significance and come to treat word-presentations as actual things (cf. mental functioning in Piaget
's preoperational stage of cognitive development).
and prevented from being expressed accurately due to intrapsychic conflict (Freud, 1901). In terms of humor, Freud (1905) believed that jokes were an innocuous way of expressing sexual and/or aggressive impulses and easing psychic tension, thereby producing a degree of pleasure. Like dreams and neurotic symptoms, jokes serve as compromise-formations and are indicative of many of the same fundamental processes characteristic of the unconscious, e.g., condensation and displacement
. However, unlike dreams and symptoms, jokes occur in an inter- rather than intrapersonal context and are dependent on the listener's ability to discern the ways in which the sense of the joke has been distorted through the condensation of words, multiple use of the same words or phrases, and the double meaning of words (cf. Paul Grice
's cooperative principle
). The humorous quality of the following joke by Viennese journalist Daniel Spitzer is the result of simple phrase rearrangement:
In this joke, we see multiple use of the same phrase with words in a different order, as well as the double meaning of the words "lay" and "lain." Ostensibly about a couple's financial status, this joke is effective because it allows for the overcoming of inhibition and the indirect expression of sexual impulses through the double meaning of words.
's (1976, 1990) typology of the six functions of "the speech event": (1) referential, involving contextual information; (2) poetic, referring to the construction of the form of the message; (3) emotive, or the speaker's emotional influence vis-a-vis the receiver; (4) conative, or the speaker's orientation toward the receiver; (5) phatic, or the attempt to establish and maintain contact between speaker and receiver (e.g., "Can you hear me?"); and (6) metalingual, or the application of language to itself (e.g.,"What do you mean with that word?"). Rizzuto (2002) suggests that by paying an equal amount of attention to each of the six functions of the speech act, the analyst can obtain a more comprehensive picture of the patient's affective life. Conversely, by focusing on one function at a time, the analyst can ascertain the patient's different ways of mitigating anxiety
or coping with stress.
In a symposium paper on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Harris (1995) offers a variety of reasons why the mutual exchange of ideas between the two disciplines is an important enterprise. The theoretical shift in psychoanalysis from libidinal development and drive states to object relations and attachment, first initiated around the middle of the twentieth century, is now incorporating more and more elements of cognitive science
and psycholinguistics. The framework of intersubjectivity
and model of the therapeutic alliance as a reciprocal exchange constructed by both analyst and patient call for a modification to both theory and practice, the ultimate aim of which is to think of the analytic process more in terms of interpersonal relations and "complex language worlds" (p. 616). Furthermore, over the past twenty years infancy research has greatly informed psychoanalytic theory, and the concepts of symbol
ism and mental representation
have influenced both frameworks. According to Harris (1995), the processes involved in the transition from nonverbal to verbal ways of thinking about and experiencing the world, first investigated in infancy research, have pointed to the relevance of language with respect to psychoanalytic thinking. A closer interdisciplinary relationship between psychoanalysis and linguistics could potentially bolster the former's status as a research paradigm at the intersection of hermeneutics and natural science
, a reformulation that some analysts have suggested (Strenger, 1991).
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
. Language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
has been an integral component of the psychoanalytic framework since its inception, as evidenced by the fact that Anna O.
Anna O.
Anna O. was the pseudonym of a patient of Josef Breuer, who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim , an Austrian-Jewish feminist and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund .Anna O...
(pseud. for Bertha Pappenheim
Bertha Pappenheim
Bertha Pappenheim was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jüdischer Frauenbund .- Youth :...
), whose treatment via the cathartic method influenced the later development of psychoanalytic therapy, referred to her method of treatment as the "talking cure
Talking cure
The Talking Cure was a term originally offered, along with "chimney sweep", by Dr. Josef Breuer's patient Bertha Pappenheim to describe the talking therapy that relieved her of her hysterical symptoms...
" (Freud & Breuer, 1895; de Mijolla, 2005).
Language is relevant to psychoanalysis in two key respects. First, it is important with respect to the therapeutic process, serving as the principal means by which unconscious mental processes are given expression through the verbal exchange between analyst and patient (e.g., free association
Free association (psychology)
Free association is a technique used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and coworker, Josef Breuer....
, dream analysis, transference
Transference
Transference is a phenomenon in psychoanalysis characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." Another definition is "the...
-countertransference
Countertransference
Countertransferenceis defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.-Early formulations:...
dynamics). Secondly, psychoanalytic theory is linked in many ways to linguistic phenomena, such as parapraxes and the telling of jokes. According to Freud (1915, 1923), the essential difference between modes of thought characterized by primary (irrational, governed by the id) as opposed to secondary (logical, governed by the ego and external reality) thought processes is one of preverbal vs. verbal ways of conceptualizing the world.
Freud's ideas on language
According to Freud (1940), "...the function of speech…brings material in the ego into a firm connection with the mnemic residues of visual, but more particularly of auditory, perceptions" (p. 35). In other words, the mind is able to assimilate perceptual information through language - we are able to make sense of our perceptions by thinking about them in the form of words.Aphasia, thing- and word-presentations
One of Freud's earliest papers, On Aphasia (1891), was concerned with the speech disorder the neurological mechanisms of which had been investigated earlier in the century by Paul BrocaPaul Broca
Pierre Paul Broca was a French physician, surgeon, anatomist, and anthropologist. He was born in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that has been named after him. Broca’s Area is responsible for articulated language...
and Carl Wernicke. Freud was skeptical of Wernicke's findings, citing a paucity of clinical observation as his reason. Although he conceded the fact that language is linked to neurological processes, Freud repudiated a model of localization of brain function, according to which specific regions of the brain are responsible for certain cognitive functions. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Freud rejected the notion that in most cases pathological phenomena are manifestations of physiological dysfunctions (Lanteri-Laura, 2005a).
In the same paper, Freud (1891) distinguishes between word-presentations, the mental images of words, and thing-presentations, the representations of actual objects. Word-presentations involve the linking of a conscious idea to a verbal stimulus, are associated with the secondary processes, and are oriented towards reality. Thing-presentations are essentially pre- or nonverbal images of objects, are associated with the primary processes, and are not necessarily connected with reality (Rycroft, 1995; Gibeault, 2005a, 2005b; Lanteri-Laura, 2005b). The influence of the external world on the ego is apparent here in that mental processes and word-presentations become connected only gradually as the ego differentiates from the id as a result of contact with the environment (Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1923). The idea of thing vs. word-presentations is also evident in Freud's hypotheses concerning schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
(Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1894, 1896). It is suggested that, as a defense against intrapsychic
Intrapsychic
Intrapsychic is a psychological term referring to internal psychological processes of the individual. These processes can be positive , negative or neutral....
conflict, schizophrenics divest thing-presentations of significance and come to treat word-presentations as actual things (cf. mental functioning in Piaget
Piaget
Piaget is surname of:* Edouard Piaget , Swiss entomologist* Jean Piaget , Swiss developmental psychologist* Paul Piaget , a Swiss rower...
's preoperational stage of cognitive development).
Parapraxes, jokes
The parapraxes (e.g., slips of the tongue and pen) and humor were two other areas related to language that Freud investigated. He conceptualized speech errors as discrepancies between what a speaker intended to say and what he or she actually said, indicating that the intention was unconsciousUnconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
and prevented from being expressed accurately due to intrapsychic conflict (Freud, 1901). In terms of humor, Freud (1905) believed that jokes were an innocuous way of expressing sexual and/or aggressive impulses and easing psychic tension, thereby producing a degree of pleasure. Like dreams and neurotic symptoms, jokes serve as compromise-formations and are indicative of many of the same fundamental processes characteristic of the unconscious, e.g., condensation and displacement
Displacement (psychology)
In Freudian psychology, displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects effects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable...
. However, unlike dreams and symptoms, jokes occur in an inter- rather than intrapersonal context and are dependent on the listener's ability to discern the ways in which the sense of the joke has been distorted through the condensation of words, multiple use of the same words or phrases, and the double meaning of words (cf. Paul Grice
Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...
's cooperative principle
Cooperative principle
In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle describes how people interact with one another. As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or...
). The humorous quality of the following joke by Viennese journalist Daniel Spitzer is the result of simple phrase rearrangement:
In this joke, we see multiple use of the same phrase with words in a different order, as well as the double meaning of the words "lay" and "lain." Ostensibly about a couple's financial status, this joke is effective because it allows for the overcoming of inhibition and the indirect expression of sexual impulses through the double meaning of words.
Psychoanalysis and psycholinguistics
Over the past half century, there have been efforts by psychoanalysts and cognitive psychologists to bridge the gap between their two respective disciplines. Rizzuto (2002) has discussed the nature of the verbal exchange between analyst and patient in the context of Roman JakobsonRoman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary theorist.As a pioneer of the structural analysis of language, which became the dominant trend of twentieth-century linguistics, Jakobson was among the most influential linguists of the century...
's (1976, 1990) typology of the six functions of "the speech event": (1) referential, involving contextual information; (2) poetic, referring to the construction of the form of the message; (3) emotive, or the speaker's emotional influence vis-a-vis the receiver; (4) conative, or the speaker's orientation toward the receiver; (5) phatic, or the attempt to establish and maintain contact between speaker and receiver (e.g., "Can you hear me?"); and (6) metalingual, or the application of language to itself (e.g.,"What do you mean with that word?"). Rizzuto (2002) suggests that by paying an equal amount of attention to each of the six functions of the speech act, the analyst can obtain a more comprehensive picture of the patient's affective life. Conversely, by focusing on one function at a time, the analyst can ascertain the patient's different ways of mitigating anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
or coping with stress.
In a symposium paper on psychoanalysis and linguistics, Harris (1995) offers a variety of reasons why the mutual exchange of ideas between the two disciplines is an important enterprise. The theoretical shift in psychoanalysis from libidinal development and drive states to object relations and attachment, first initiated around the middle of the twentieth century, is now incorporating more and more elements of cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
and psycholinguistics. The framework of intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced but by more than one subject....
and model of the therapeutic alliance as a reciprocal exchange constructed by both analyst and patient call for a modification to both theory and practice, the ultimate aim of which is to think of the analytic process more in terms of interpersonal relations and "complex language worlds" (p. 616). Furthermore, over the past twenty years infancy research has greatly informed psychoanalytic theory, and the concepts of symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism and mental representation
Mental representation
A representation, in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that makes use of such a symbol; "a formal system for making explicit certain entities or types...
have influenced both frameworks. According to Harris (1995), the processes involved in the transition from nonverbal to verbal ways of thinking about and experiencing the world, first investigated in infancy research, have pointed to the relevance of language with respect to psychoanalytic thinking. A closer interdisciplinary relationship between psychoanalysis and linguistics could potentially bolster the former's status as a research paradigm at the intersection of hermeneutics and natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
, a reformulation that some analysts have suggested (Strenger, 1991).