Metaphors in psychoanalytic theory – Do we need them?

Abstract

The author questions Wallerstein’s conviction that psychoanalytic concepts are “scientific metaphors.” If one were to adopt his view, psychoanalysis would fall into line with Lakoff and Johnson′s thesis that the conceptual system of our thoughts and actions is basically metaphorically structured. The author rejects both their views by demonstrating how the system inherent in our conceptual structure works, and disproving Lakoff and Johnson’s thesis as an assertion. In his view, if psychoanalytic concepts are understood as metaphors without defining their target domains, they lose their cognitive function and allow general metaphors to be understood in a whole variety of ways. The author suspects that this metaphorization of psychoanalytic concepts serves to suggest that psychoanalysis has a unified theory which would guarantee the community’s scientific unity, despite the theoretical and therapeutic pluralism that currently prevails.

Key words:

• “Scientific metaphors” (Wallerstein)
• concepts
• Lakoff and Johnson

Notes

1 As early as 1915 (p. 98) De Saussure postulated that words relate to objects by means of concepts which constitute their meaning, and this fact is also incarnate in Ogden and Richards’ (1923) famous semiotic triangle.

2 Freud repeats Aristotle’s (1991, p. 195) definition of truth in another wording: “For it is not on account of a true supposition, on our parts, of your being white that you are in reality white, but, on account of your being white we who make this assertion as to your whiteness can verify our assertion.”

3 Of course, there are other attempts to conceptualize concepts, but a critical discussion of these other attempts would by far exceed the limits of this paper. I will limit myself to Schlick because, as far as I know, he was the first to conceptualize “concepts” in this way.

4 It is worth mentioning that, years ago, Rapaport et al. (1968) and Rosen (1966) recommended adopting this concept of “concept” for establishing a psychoanalytic theory of language.

5 Metalanguage I can itself become object language I again and can be examined with the instruments of a metalanguage II, etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Siegfried Zepf

Univ. – Prof. em. Siegfried Zepf, MD, was previously director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Me­dicine of the University of Saarland, and a training analyst with the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft (DPG) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie (DGPT).