The origins and beginnings of a psychoanalytical concept of the symbol based on the theory of Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones and Melanie Klein

Abstract

Thesis. The aim of the paper is to present the origins of a psychoanalytical concept of the symbol, based on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones and Melanie Klein, which will allow us to indicate connections between the psychoanalytic and semiotic perspectives relating to symbols.

Concepts discussed. A review of the literature on the concept of the symbol in its historical development, starting from initial remarks on the symbol in S. Freud’s papers (Freud, 1900/1996), through the recognition of the symbol in its spatial quality in E. Jones’s theory (Jones, 2000), up to the interpretation of the symbol according to the object relation paradigm proposed by M. Klein (Klein, 1930/2007). There is an analysis of these concepts with reference to their comprehension of the symbol as co-created by a unique internal world of unconscious fantasy with the simultaneous employment of semiotic discoveries, which in their very core are oriented to an external, group order perspective.

Results. Following S. Freud’s elaboration on the symbol allows us to locate the point when his narrow concept of the symbol gains multidimensionality through unobvious recognition that the rule of substitution can be employed to the language of the unconscious. With that in place, S. Freud enters into a broad concept of the symbol freeing its interpretations from cultural clichés. E. Jones’s concept traces S. Freud’s discoveries, and at the same time strengthens the relation between the symbol and the individual by considering it in the context of regression, blood relations and matters of life and death. M. Klein encounters an even more demanding part of the symbol definition which is its muteness: a peculiar quality of an attack on the external through the inhibition of what is internal. This confrontation leads her to a description of the anxieties and desires which create a dynamic structure disabling the expression of meaning.

Conclusions. An analysis of the origins of the psychoanalytical concept of the symbol leads to capturing its essentials and indicating its close linkage to problem of individual expression, especially in the matter of verbal expression and its relation to thinking, as it reveals that the psychoanalytic symbol is placed between the semiotic and psychoanalysis.