Linguistics and Psychoanalysis: Freud, Saussure, Hjelmslev, Lacan and others

194 Pages·1992·17.95 MB·English

by  Michel Arrivé

LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
SEMIOTIC CROSSROADS
General Editor
Paul Perron
University of Toronto
Associate Editors
Paolo Fabbri
Eric Landowski
Herman Parret
Editorial Board
Alain J.-J. Cohen; Bernard S. Jackson
Fredric Jameson; Bennetta Jules-Rosette
Dean MacCannell; Hans-George Ruprecht
Volume 4
Michel Arrivé
Linguistics and Psychoanalysis
Freud, Saussure, Hjelmslev, Lacan and others
MICHEL ARRIVÉ
LINGUISTICS AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS
FREUD, SAUSSURE, HJELMSLEV,
LACAN AND OTHERS
with a preface by
JEAN-CLAUDE COQUET
Translated from the French by
JAMES LEADER
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1992
Original title: Michel Arrivé - Linguistique et psychanalyse: Freud, Saussure,
Hjelmslev, Lacan et les autres avec une préface de Jean-Claude Coquet.
© Meridiens Klinksieck, Paris 1986.
Translated from the French by James Leader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arrivé, Michel.
[Linguistique et psychanalyse. English]
Linguistics and psychoanalysis : Freud, Saussure, Hjelmslev, Lacan and others /
Michel Arrivé : with a preface by Jean-Claude Coquet ; translated from the French by
James Leader.
p. cm. -- (Semiotic crossroads : v. 4)
Translation of: Linguistique et psychanalyse.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Meaning (Psychology) 3. Signs and symbols. I. Title. II.
Series.
P37.A78713 1992
401'.9--dc20 92-8213
ISBN 90 272 1945 1 (Eur.)/l-55619-338-6 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1992 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O. Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION 1
First Part: About the Symbol 9
Liminary Remarks 11
Chapter I: The Symbol in Linguistics: Saussure and Hjelmslev 19
Chapter II: The Symbol in Psycho-Analysis: Freud 45
Chapter III: The Meeting of two Symbols? 91
Chapter IV: Freud and his Linguists: Sperber, Abel, Schreber 103
Second Part: The Way of the Signifier 119
Chapter I: Saussurian Signifier and Lacanian Signifier 121
Chapter II: "There is no Metalanguage": What does this mean? 143
EPILOGUE 165
BIBLIOGRAPHY 167
INDEX OF NAMES AND CONCEPTS 175

PREFACE
Reading Michel Arrivé made me think of the answer a famous pianist
gave when asked to describe the rules of his art. One must play, he said,
exactly what is written on the score. But then, as if suddenly doubting the
truth of what he had said, he corrected himself and asked: "But what does
'exactly' mean?". This coming back on oneself, this "metadiscourse" as
Michel Arrivé proposes to call it and which he examines in this book, is
a fact of everyday life before becoming the particular concern of the
theoretician.
The pages devoted in this book to the often awkward and difficult
advances of psycho-analysis and of linguistics might well be described as
an object lesson in exactitude. This does not mean, however, that his book
reads like a lecture or that it pursues the illusory bait of communicating
and coming up with a clear conclusion at all costs. Michel Arrivé, as he
says himself on more than one occasion in this book, unquestionably
strives to be clear.
Nevertheless, his task, it seems to me, is to track the birth and develop­
ment of theoretical concepts; to show, if this is the case, where they are
"elusive" and where they quite simply "collapse"; to point out where they
seem solid and where they seem less so; to mark out areas in which they
can validly operate and others upon which they should not trespass. In
short, Michel Arrivé's book is a salutary warning addressed to those
readers, and they do exist, who are prone to pass judgement too un­
compromisingly: Saussure is not as simple (or simplistic) nor Lacan as
complex (or confused) as one might lazily like to think.
I cite Saussure and Lacan because they constitute the two centres of
attraction which Michel Arrivé chooses to focus on. They are, of course,
not alone in being subjected to the test of analysis; Hjelmslev and
Benveniste are among the linguists examined while psycho-analysis is
represented by its founder, Freud.
Both disciplines have to do with language (although, admittedly, to
different degrees and in different ways). They sometimes have recourse to
the same basic vocabulary and seem to share several fundamental concepts.
Reason enough to compare the definitions of these concepts, which Michel
viii ARRIVE - LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
Arrivé does with great brio, to see if it is not possible to refine the
terminologies - showing where they are related and where there are
ambiguities.
The problem and the solutions which he outlines thus derive from a
method which is both comparative (internal and external) and historical
(which chronology, which origin to put forward?). For example, in Freud
the traces of distinct operations allow one to foreground three types of
symbols (the one word "symbol" covering very different meanings)
produced by three types of neurosis (hysteria, obsession and anxiety).
However Freud may later decide to classify these symbols, the polysemy
of the term is clear. If linguistics and semiotics of a broadly Saussurian
inspiration have abandoned the word "symbol" it is doubtless because
"language [being] a special symbolic system" it was necessary to find
denominations which would be specific to it. Language is a "two-sided
entity" or, put differently, it is conceived of in the image of the sign,
articulated as signified and signifier1. "Symbol" and "sign" thus conquered
their respective domains, psycho-analysis and linguistics.
The same is not the case for the two other word-concepts which Arrivé
examines: "signifier" and "metalanguage". Lacanian psycho-analysis puts
these to surprising use. But before taking up these problems of vocabulary
(the unravelling of which demanded all the subtlety of Michel Arrivé's
keen mind) it would doubtless be opportune to identify who borrowed what
from whom and, more especially, to whose advantage or disadvantage. The
reader will notice that, in this book at least, it is psycho-analysis which
looks to linguistics for the theoretico-practical hardware it needs. It does
this, in Freud's time, with what seems to me great naivety. A question of
"épistêmê" one might argue, with some justification, but there is surely
more to it than that. Let us add that a non-specialist may assess badly the
quality of information which he receives2. Freud is quite happy to accept
as a "fact (...) confirmed by other linguists [that] primitive languages (...)
originally have only one word for the two opposite ends of a series of
qualities or actions (strong-weak, old-young, near-distant, bound-sepa­
rate...". The linguists say so, therefore it is: "Abel [the linguist, supposed
master of knowledge] notes that this phenomenon is constant in old
Egyptian and observes that one can find traces of it in the Semitic and
Indo-European languages." Thus the Latin alius means "high" and "deep",
the Greek aidos means "honour" and "shame", the Arabic tagasmara
means "to be fair" and "to be unfair", etc3. This comes to the support of
PREFACE ix
Freud's hypothesis that dreams "excel in bringing opposites together and
representing them in a single object"4. But the existence of "primitive
languages" (cf. the "primal horde") is illusory. As for ancient or modern
languages which it is possible to study, it is quite simply not enough, as
Abel does, "[to] assemble everything which bears the mark of similarity"
to conclude that "these languages, however archaic one may imagine them
to be, escape from the "principle of contradiction" by conferring upon one
and the same expression two mutually exclusive or merely opposite
notions". Simple philological criticism "dispels these mirages"5.
Lacan is not altogether happy about Benveniste's refusal to give his
support to Freud's (and, incidentally, Abel's) project and he tries to
separate the "signifier" from its attachment to the "signified" 6. The
technician is not so blinkered by his discipline that he cannot see that
linguistics and psycho-analysis do have to deal with each other. As one can
see by looking at Lacan's essay on the grammatical subject and the
speaking-desiring subject in Scilicet he clearly believes there "must be
something in common" between them. Provided one observes precedence
and makes, as is only right, linguistics the handmaid of psycho-analysis.
We are a long way here from Freud. The chain of presuppositions removes
any possible doubt: "language is the precondition of the unconscious"; "the
unconscious is the precondition of linguistics"7. Surely the first steps to
annexation!
What, then, is the status of the "signifier"? One would like to able to
say that for linguists this is quite unproblematic. Unfortunately this is not
the case. What is needed is a terminology which would allow all concerned
to use with proper discernment closely-related denominations such as
"signifier", "phoneme", "sound". The word "signifier" which in Saussure,
towards the end of the Third Course, replaces the "sound-image" "is in no
way phonic" in Saussure's eyes; it is, he stresses, "incorporeal"8. He thus
goes against the tradition established by the Stoics. Hjelmslev is of the
same opinion9. One might also follow Troubetzkoy who, having recalled
the opposition between language [langue] and speech [parole], advocates
constituting a sort of doublet: "the 'signifier' of the system of language is
something quite different from that of the act of speech"10. Put another
way, the tripartition would be as follows: the signifier may be grasped as
an abstract entity (language plane); it is articulated into phonemes ; or it
X ARRIVE - LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
can be grasped as a concrete entity (speech plane); it is articulated into
sounds 11.
To take up the thread of Michel Arrivé's argument concerning Lacan's
identification of the "signifier' in Freud (see the diagram at the end of
chapter I, Part 2, which neatly synthesizes the opposition between the
Saussurian and Lacanian signifiers) it seems to me that the double
denomination of the signifier, Wahrnehmungszeichen and Vorstellungs­
repräsentanz, corresponds to a distinction comparable to the one we have
just pointed to in linguistics. Would it not be worthwhile to bring to light
in both fields a relation of interdependence between signifiers and to show
that this relation is determined, in the field of psycho-analysis, by a relation
of order? Thus the VorStellungsrepräsentanz which is situated at a higher
level, would dominate ("the dominance of the letter") the Wahrneh­
mungszeichen ; and this second signifier would keep its specific meaning
of external perception and (if one wishes "to lose nothing of the semantic
resources of the German language", as Lacan recommends elswhere) of
"true" perception, i.e., at this point, true to "reality"12. To the "linguistic"
signifier (shortened legitimately by Lacan to Zeichen) would thus
correspond a signifier which I would call "discursive" ("the unconscious
IS a discourse") and which would be necessary to say "the truth" about
"the real".
Michel Arrivé's tight-knit discussion of metalanguage provides a fine
ending to the book. Taking account of Lacan's critique of metalanguage he
outlines the reasons why he considers it relevant to distinguish between
"metalanguage" "metalangue" and "metadiscourse". I shall discuss only
that which he presents as "the evolution of Lacan's positions on this
problem" with the aid of the distinction referred to above between Vorstel­
lungsrepräsentanz and Wahrnehmungszeichen. Located as we are at the
level of the discursive signifier we cannot use "metalanguage" since we do
not leave language [langage]; it is this caveat which we must keep in mind
if we wish to avoid being "wrong-footed", as Lacan puts it in Scilicet on
the subject of "the judicious use Jakobson makes of [the] notion of
'metalanguage' in his study of aphasia". A clever use of the notion "must
not hide from us the power this term has to wrong-foot us; that we are
obliged to use language to speak of language is precisely that which proves
that we do not leave language". But we are, nevertheless, forced to use
metalanguage, as we realize each time we have recourse to metalinguistic
operations. There is no way-out: "as if there were a metalanguage which