Beyond the Psychoanalytic Dyad: Developmental Semiotics in Freud, Peirce and Lacan

by Muller,John P.

• ISBN13: 9780415910682
• ISBN10: 0415910684
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-12-18
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this original work of psychoanalytic theory, John Muller explores the formative power of signs and their impact on the mind, the body and subjectivity, giving special attention to work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Muller explores how Lacan's way of understanding experience through three dimensions--the real, the imaginary and the symbolic--can be useful both for thinking about cultural phenomena and for understanding the complexities involved in treating psychotic patients. Muller develops Lacan's perspective gradually, presenting it as distinctive approaches to data from a variety of sources, such as cognitive, social and developmental psychology, literature, history, art, and psychoanalytic treatment. The book's first four chapters present Muller's reading of selected data from child development research, psychology and linguistics, approximating a semiotic model of "normal" development. The following three chapters examine in aLacanian framework the structural basis of psychotic stages as indicative of massive semiotic failure in development. The final chapters on human narcissism suggest reasons that "normal" development may be impossible.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
Mother-Infant Mutual Gazing	p. 13
Semiotic Perspectives on the Dyad	p. 27
Developmental Foundations of Infant Semiotics	p. 43
Intersubjectivity through Semiotics	p. 61
The Real and Boundaries: Walking or Falling into the Wild	p. 75
Language, Psychosis, and Culture	p. 91
A Semiotic Correlate of Psychotic States	p. 105
The Ego and Mirroring in the Dyad	p. 119
From Imaginary to Symbolic Identification in the Case of Mr. Z	p. 135
A Re-Reading of Studies on Hysteria	p. 161
Conclusion	p. 187
References	p. 195
Name Index	p. 221
Subject Index	p. 226
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