Symbolism à la Levi-Strauss, Klein, Lacan

Introduction: The article itself

The article “effectiveness of symbols” from the book Structural Anthropology by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss deals with the topic how symbols more generally symbolic order and more specifically words have effects on the lives of human beings in fundamental ways even if the mentioned object that are the words is not something material as in the common sense of the word. [1] In the article Lévi-Strauss compares and contrasts the work done by a shaman and a psychoanalyst and comes to the conclusion that both sides work with what he calls the symbolic order and to do that the therapist/shaman works on and through the individual or social myths. Even though the tools being used are words these elements can alter the workings of the flesh and bone body. Implicated in this argument is that the body is made up of language. That is the main premise of the school of thought known as structuralism. This view, namely delineating the human body as a text which follows the rules and the regulations of the language, would be regarded as counterintuitive and even so wrong that it would become trivial in today’s world where human existence is explained by neurocognitional and evolutionary models. Hence the answer to the question why Lévi-Strauss and structuralism is not taken seriously in the academical field anymore. This is due to a change in the paradigm or the definition of science.

Anthropological findings are different than the findings in the clinical work done by psychotherapists but the conclusions could be compared in order to verify the truth or at least the “effectiveness” of both sides. This thesis will investigate the clinical aspects and relevance of Lévi-Strauss’s work and the comparative research done by psychotherapists after. Even though another article by Lévi-Strauss “the sorcerer and his magic” touches on similar topics, it will not be covered here because it has less implications for the field of psychotherapy.

In the article the effectiveness of symbols Lévi-Strauss investigates the work done by another anthropologist Erland Norden­skiöld. This work in which a song, an incantation is told where it is sung by a shaman who tries to help a woman during a difficult childbirth. However Lévi-Strauss is not the researcher who discovered and translated the song but he is working on the data that is presented by others. This as will be seen below causes some methodological problems but as will be seen in this article will argue that the implications Lévi-Strauss distills from the given amount of data is adequate for discussions to take place.

The song that the shaman sings is about a shaman who delves into a mythical realm to fight some malign spirits. It starts with the midwifes confusion and seek for help from the shaman in which shaman starts preparations to fight “Muu”, the spirit who is responsible for the formation of the fetus, abuses her powers and captures the “purba” the soul of the pregnant woman. The fight is not against Muu and her daughters particularly since she is responsible for the procreation but her abuses of her powers.  “Nele” the shaman along his way converts “nuchu” who are the accompanying spirits. Nuchu then are made humane and given special powers “niga” by the shaman to make them help him in the fight to come. Even though purba and niga both can be translated as soul the fact that only humans and animals have niga makes the latter be conceptualized as the vital strength. After the victory Muu releases the purba and tells the Nele to come visit her again.  

Lévi-Strauss argues that the landscape in the song corresponds to an affective geography that corresponds to the real body of the pregnant woman, hills and valleys representing the parts of the vagina and uterus. The treatment by the song is called a “psychological cure” by Lévi-Strauss since there is no physical contact between the patient and the physician. The song is a psychological manipulation of the sick organ. Comings and goings of the shaman are repeated and described in great detail. Shaman tries to make the sick woman relive the pain that she is going through in a very detailed way. This makes the sick woman go from the external world to the internal body, from the physical space to physiological space. The obsessing rhythm of the song tries to make the woman blur the boundary between the physiological and mythical in her head. Of course, the pain makes it easier for the woman to go along with these transitions. The characters in the song which are wild animals is the source of the suffering of the woman. The pain is personified thus defined. The birth is represented as a dangerous descent. However, the successful delivery is an assumption deduced from the data. The shaman introduces another order of reality to make the pains which the body refuses to tolerate, acceptable to the mind. The situations on the emotional level are made explicit. What the shaman gives is a myth that belongs to that tribe in which every member believes in. Of course it doesn’t represent an objective reality but a coherent system used to give meaning to the world. The sick woman accepts these narratives, she even doesn’t question them in the first place. What she doesn’t accept are the bodily pains which she finds arbitrary and alien. These pains then are re-integrated within a meaningful whole or as Calabrese puts it deriving from Ricoeur, emplotted[2].

The cure which enables the woman to have successful delivery leads to questions. It raises the question of the existence of the monsters and spirits. The pains are doubtlessly created by the biological agents or the situations. And the problem is how these physical problems are solved by the introduction of the monsters. Lévi-Strauss argues that the biological explanations are external to the mind of the patient whereas the mythical explanation of the relationship between disease and the monsters is an internal one whether it is unconscious or conscious. It is not important if the spirits called upon exist or not. In this case one can easily say that they don’t but the important thing is the sick woman and the tribe that she belongs to believe in it. Of course it is something else than what could be called a faith or a belief in a modern society.[3] It is the relationship between the symbol and symbolized, sign and meaning. Lévi-Strauss thus states that the shaman provides a language to the sick woman in which the sick woman can express the previously inexpressible psychic states. A chaotic and inexpressible real experience is transitioned into a verbal expression. This is the reorganization of the process that the sick woman going through in a favorable direction and the induction of the release of the physiological process.

It is then argued that shamanistic cure lies between the contemporary physical medicine and psychological therapies which is exampled by psychoanalysis. In both cases the purpose is to bring the conflicts from the unconscious to the conscious. The psychotherapeutic method is applied to a field that is not psychic but organic. The solution lies in the knowledge that “makes possible a specific experience, in the course of which conflicts materialize in an order and on a level permitting their free development and leading to their resolution” It is what is called abreaction or catharsis in psychoanalysis.

It can be noted that this explanation is similar but in some sense opposite to what happens in the formation of a hysterical conversion symptom. In one there is a pain which is cured by the provision of a story whereas in the other one the pain has a story that waits to be discovered only to be solved and made away with. As the transference appears the two figures the human analyst and the object of transference which remained unexpressed, collide which is worked through during the treatment. Shaman plays the dual role as the analyst the listener and the orator. The difference is the shaman being the protagonist in the story he tells thus plays an active role in the story. This makes the patient experience the shaman in the border between the physical and the psychic world. The patient in psychoanalysis overcomes his individual myth by facing a real analyst. The native woman overcomes an organic disorder by identifying with a mythical shaman. That is the capital difference between the two treatments. Some other differences include, in psychoanalytic cure the patient creates an individual myth with elements drawn from his past. In the shamanistic cure the patient receives a social myth from the outside which doesn’t correspond to a former individual state. The psychoanalyst mainly listens whereas shaman only speaks. Working with transference, the feelings and thoughts attributed to the analyst by the patient, psychoanalyst gives back the words to the patient which are put in analysts mouth by the patient in the first place. The shaman speaks for the patient and gives her answers that are interpretations of her condition.

 The characteristics Lévi-Strauss attributes to psychoanalysis overlaps with the mainstream conceptualization of it by that time so it is not to be taken as an exhaustive representation thus an exhaustive comparison but as representation of the most common psychoanalytic understandings back then. There is no mention of the contemporary analytic schools such as the Kohutian self-psychology, relational schools or Kernbergian medical-structural model. The psychoanalysis in the text is what now is called an orthodox view of psychoanalysis with a certain touch of structuralism, the popular view of that time with its emphasis on language as will be seen. The article can be scrutinized again using a more contemporary view of psychoanalysis.

Lévi-Strauss then goes on to make some comparisons to further his view of similarities between psychoanalysis and shamanism. R. Desoille and M. A. Sechehaye are given as examples to elaborate on the symbolic interventions. Working with a schizophrenic girl, Sechehaye realizes the limits of the speech no matter how symbolic it might be. So Sechehaye thought that the preodipal that is to say, preverbal modes of operations cannot be intervened in or modified by speech so acts should be used. Following this thought a girl who had early frustrations with her first caretaker should be treated with maternal care, not with words that a mother would use but actions such as the therapist putting her breast on the cheek of the patient. Even though these are acts and not words the symbolic quality of these acts enables them to be called as language. There is a conversation between the analyst and the patient but not a verbal one. The actions function as the direct messages to unconscious. What shaman and the analyst does is manipulation through the usage of symbols. Symbols being “meaningful equivalents of things meant which belong to another order of reality” the gestures by the analyst address to the unconscious and the representations sung by the shaman address to the organic functions of the patient. The progress of childbirth is reflected in the stages of the mythical song. The detailed changes in the song are made to elicit the corresponding organic processes. In the analytic cure the healer performs the actions and the patient produces the myth. In the native cure the healer provides the myth and the patient does the actions. Other takes on the Sechehaye case will be discussed below.

Influenced by the recent brain researches done with the psychotic population of his time, Lévi-Strauss goes on to point the future possibilities that the effectiveness of symbols being applied to a biochemical level. Of course, the contemporary brain research done with the latest technology is totally different from the time when the article was written. Furthermore, the foremost epistemological problem of the structuralist thought can be seen here, where there is no qualitative difference between the observing subject and the observed object. Everything observed or different levels of the examined object can be reduced to elementary premises without the doubt that the observing mind can also be affected or determined by the same premises. The observed object is the same with the observation.   

As put in the article “The effectiveness of symbols would consist precisely in this „inductive property,“ by which formally homologous structures, built out of different materials at different levels of life-organic processes, unconscious mind, rational thought-are related to one another.” (Lévi-Strauss, 1994)

Psychoanalysts would be offended if what they are doing is called constituting myths rather than bringing into conscious the real-historical memories. The therapeutic value comes from the fact that these situations when remembered are experienced as living myth. It can be argued here that psychoanalysis in its developmental process ceased to insist that the recovered memories are real ones but reconstructions. So the stories that are unearthed during the analytic process are not necessarily lived experiences but fantasies which are as important if not more than the biographical information.

Lévi-Strauss argues that for the neurotic all the experiences are subordinated to the initial myth and this is universal for neurotic people whether civilized or primitive. And this is called unconscious. It is not the repository of the individual thoughts and experiences as Freud claimed. Rather it is the preconscious for Lévi-Strauss whereas unconscious can be defined as a function namely the symbolic function. Preconscious is the memory even though the elements within are not always available to the person, it is the collection of images, thoughts and emotions. So Freudian unconscious is renamed as the preconscious. The unconscious is like an empty stomach. The qualitative difference can be summed by the comparison, images to the unconscious is the same as the food to the stomach. Lévi-Strauss states “As the organ of a specific function, the unconscious merely imposes structural laws upon inarticulated elements which originate elsewhere-impulses, emotions, representations, and memories.” Preconscious is the lexicon and the vocabulary of the personal history and unconscious transform this vocabulary into a language according to its laws. These laws are same for everyone. So the structure matters more than the vocabulary, the form is more important than the content. This aspect is taken and researched by some psychoanalysts and not at all by some others as will be seen below. Coming back to the native cure, the contents of the myth are not important whether it is social or individual. It just collects the representations to work with. The structure remains the same and symbolic function is fulfilled through it. There can be various contents but only few rules to regulate them. Lévi-Strauss implies that the focus of the research should be on the forms and not the vocabulary hence the name structuralism. The events that take place during the analysis is just one way of expression of a more fundamental method. In the industrial civilization mythical time is reduced to the inside of the individual. The article ends with a suggestion to psychoanalysts to compare their methods and goals with their precursors, shamans. And this Lévi-Strauss states that this is nothing pejorative to both sides.

Other takes on the article

Boris Wiseman

Wiseman argues that what shaman does can also be defined as the supply of signifiers to the patient to assemble the floating signifiers with missing signifieds which doesn’t add up to the empirical data of the body.[4] That is to say the patient has the feeling that the pains mean something but she doesn’t know it. There is an inverted symmetry between the psychoanalysis and shamanistic cure. Psychosexual reading of the oedipus myth is just another reading. Unconscious is not filled with sexual desires. Wiseman goes on to talk about different possible effects of the incantation. He argues that the patient doesn’t necessarily understand the song but what is understood is the isolated phrases so the parts of the song not the whole of it. Meaningless words as blank pages to be projected by the patient. This causes the patient to receive the song or more clearly the patient goes through a work of reception of the things heard. Of course on the other hand the fact that no meaning being given to the lines by the curer is another aspect to make this process possible. The cure by the song could consist of two elements. First the rhythm and the sound of the song, the other is the images it creates in the patient. So the focus shifts on the act of enunciation at the expense of message itself. This is as some  psychoanalysts argue is the main premise of the Lacanian practice. Fink argues in his work that the psychoanalysts shouldn’t focus on empathy with their patients with the things they tell about themselves but rather focus on the words and sentences they use to convey their sufferings.[5] Shaman takes a “complex identity” with the song. in the preamble shaman narrates in present tense a visit of midwife, patient is ill the shaman visit and ritual preparations. A shaman singing about a shaman who is about to start singings. There are odd temporal paradoxes. All of this Wiseman argues creates a dual identity in parallel which are the real shaman and the protagonist shaman who is behind an auditory mask. This causes doubt and anxiety in the patient who the real shaman is and will the cure be effective or not. The important point is not that the patient believes the things told but he can’t say that say with certainty that they are not. Doubt is in the center of symbolic efficacy. Shaman is a condensated personality because he also sings about monsters which represent fearful inner objects. Shamans personality is a gradual accumulation of different identities both real which refers to the physical and symbolic which refers to the song.

Darian Leader

Leader asks why the song sung by the shaman is so detailed and embellished. The song which has symbols that are “meaningful equivalences of things meant which belong to another order of reality” which are deemed as meaningless by the listener.[6] Leader argues that any kind of human interaction is deeply embedded with meaning. Human beings are born into a world of meaning which they struggle to make sense of as they grow up because it is totally meaningless for them at first. Different words act as different levels. For example Sechehaye giving the patient different kinds of apple every time (starting with a slice of apple then apple juice then unpeeled apple and so on) is not something done to intervene with the preverbal period of the Renee but it installs a system of differences in her mind. Things which exist because of their difference. Differentiations as in language.

Leader adds that Marguerite Sechehaye and her husband Albert Sechehaye attended Ferdinand De Saussure’s lectures who is a linguist and one of the founders of structuralism. What Sechehaye thinks she does is helping Renee to create a symbolic realization.[7] But looked from another perspective. It is not the introduction of oral gratification but rather grafting of a symbolic system that is to say grafting of a system of differences just like language. So Leader argues that what is being done is the allowance of the birth of the symbolic function. two main different definitions of what a symbol is are presented. First definition states that a symbol is different than a word because it relays of an empirical element in the sound, rhythm or appearance. So a symbol is something that resembles another thing by its visual or acoustic components. This definition is based on the some element in the symbol or the symbol as a whole is in a direct relation to the reality. The other definition is the complete opposite of this delineation. Second view says that a symbol is a symbol because it bears completely no link to the thing it symbolizes. Leader gives Jean Piagets work as an example to make his point clear. In his book “Play, dreams and imitation in childhood” (which has the name “the formation of the symbol” in the original French edition) Piaget observes his daughter Jacqueline and deduces hypotheses.[8] Piaget observes that J as he calls his daughter has “invented a creature which she called the “aseau” and which she deliberately distinguished from “oiseau” (bird) which she pronounced correctly at this age J. imitated it and took its place. She ran about the room flapping her wings (her outstretched arms) to suggest flight. ” Leader calls attention to the imaginary features of this creation. Although the term imaginary is used in a Lacanian sense by Leader what he means in this context is the first definition of a symbol. That is to say the symbol of aseau has a visual connection to the real bird with the flapping of the arms and an auditory connection with the word of the bird. the symbol is “like the real thing”.  So in this sense the symbol J. created is closer to the first definition. So it’s not really a symbol proper yet for Leader. Then aseau becomes a dog with J. crawling on all fours. It gets more composite everyday. It gets legs, hair like J.’s mother. It moves through a chain of signifieds that is to say the same word has different meanings.  

Then it starts to dispense justice with a moral authority. Leader argues that it starts to take role of a family member by permitting some things and forbidding others. It can be said that Leader implies that the child creates a Name-of-the-father by herself. A figure who helps the child establish paternal function.  Aseasu moves from an imaginary-imaginative position to an autonomous symbolic function. It becomes a term which is important because it is empty. It doesn’t have a fixed meaning. It only takes meaning in relation to the other elements in the system. So it shows the properties of the elements in language. Leader argues that words acting autonomously of their imaginary meanings is the inscription of the symbolic in a subject.  Leader gives the example of opening the sink in order to urinate. But it is something different than the symbolic function. It would be called symbolic equation since there is an equation between the flow of the water from the sink and the possible movements in the urethra. According to Klein, these symbolic equations are necessary because it makes the world interesting for the child. It is a necessary stage in development but if it stays there then the world will be dangerous place. Since there is no difference between the symbol and the thing symbolized for example a broken window would mean a broken body. That is why the overlap between the two creates intense anxiety. It is a clinical scene seen in psychotic and autistic subjects. In autism there appears no differences between the different objects thus the indifferent attitude. When one talks about symbolic efficacy or symbolic functioning, as mentioned before there has to be another order of reality where the topic elements should be meaningful. From a Lévi-Straussian perspective these cannot be regarded as symbols. And according to Lacan as well.

Leader makes a Lacanian reading of a case by Melanie Klein from her book “Love, Guilt and Reparation” In the article called “A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition” Klein talks about a seven year old boy who is suffering from intellectual inhibitions in which he cannot differentiate between the translations of three words which are chicken, ice cream  and fish.[9] He manages to give different translations every time when asked. So when asked about fish he gives the translation of chicken and so on. It can be argued that the child should know the correct answers if he is able to give wrong ones all the time. When Klein asks the boy to associate to these words she observes that the boy experiences great anxiety exampled with him throwing his legs around and getting up and running around. Then Klein discovers that all these terms are laden with meanings that are about death and injury. For example the associations of the chicken is a chicken being left alone in a farm and then a fox entering the farm and killing the chicken. Klein interprets this as the fox being the boy and the chicken being his small brother  and the scene enacting his hate and envy for the small brother.

As the analysis goes on the boy has a dream in which he is lying in water and there are many crabs around him. Klein interprets the crabs as the fathers penis and his own faeces. A new term is introduced and as the analysis goes on the boy is able to differentiate the meanings of the words. This acts as the fathers name. And in the end of the treatment the boy says that now he knows that they are all the same. From a Lévi-Straussian-Lacanian perspective, it can be said that the boy can use the language in a more operative way not because now they are all situated as linguistics elements in a chain and not some of them being heavily saturated with meaning in this case themes of death and injury. For example as the word chicken had the meanings of death the boy couldn’t control or manipulate the word. Once he was able to empty the word of the imaginary and terrifying connotations. Just like Piaget’s daughter emptied the word Aseau of its connections to a bird flapping its arms. When the boy learned to separate the signs and their meanings then the symbolic function could operate. The realization by the boy that all the words are the same means an entrance to a linguistic functioning in which all words have the same value and not some of them being different because of their massive connotations. What symbolic function has done is breaking the link with the imaginary referent.

A similar process can be seen in a case study by Annaliese Schnurmann who used to be a colleague of Anna Freud’s in Britain. The case example will not be discussed in detail since it would be somewhat out of scope. In this case Schnurmann talks about a 2-and-a-half-years-old girl named Sandy. Sandy has anxieties and she has phobia regarding dogs.[10] It starts with her fear that there is a dog on the bed then she start being afraid of the dogs on the streets. She then discovers the difference between the sexes but the cause of the phobia is not this discovery.

According to Lacan the child has the symbolic world already structured by the presence and absence of the mother due to her regular visits to the clinic to see Sandy. [11] When she sees her mother ill, weak and walking with a stick due to a medical operation she had, maternal omnipotence collapses in her mind and this causes maternal castration. This is the cause of the phobia which is the patients attempt at establishing a fathers name by themselves. Symbolic function of the mother is lacking so the child comes up with her own answer to the enigma which is a phobia. When her mother recovers Sandy feels less anxious. After the war ends the mother gets remarried and the brother returns. According to Lacan the introduction of a father, someone or something that creates a division between the child and the mother and so to say the desire between them the phallus. Sandy has to give up the place in the bed which is near her mother to the stepfather but these external developments has positive effects on Sandy. With these changes in Sandy’s life and the progress of her analysis her anxieties decrease significantly. In one of the footnotes Schnurmann talks about an interpretation Anna Freud gives about Sandy in one of the supervision meetings. Sandy is afraid is dogs however she can play with a little toy dog which she calls “pussycat”. Members of the clinic are perplexed by this substitution. Anna Freud tells the members that Sandy thinks a cat is something which has the pleasant qualities of a dog except the dangerous ones. So in Sandy’s eyes a cat is a “safe dog”, something which has the good parts or sides of something dangerous.

From a Lévi-Straussian-Lacanian perspective it can be said that like the cases above, the child in sometime of her development learns that the words doesn’t have fixed meanings. When the words doesn’t have fixed-intense meanings their grip on the psyche weakens significantly. Words matter because of the emptiness of their meaning. So Sandy doesn’t think that cat is a good dog but she disposes the word of its imaginary meaning which equalizes its value to other words. From now on a cat can be a dog and a dog can be cat.

Discussion of Symbolism in Lacanian School and Object Relations

Symbolic in Freud, Klein, Lacan

When it comes to the idea of the symbols and symbolic, Lacanian and Kleinian schools are usually regarded as totally different and opposing each other. For Klein and later elaborated by Bion prior to symbols there is the experience of the subject. The subject is overwhelmed by Beta Elements, non-symbolic building blocks of experience and through the object and object relating the infant develops through different stages of symbolism and then ends up in language. According to Lacan an infant is born into the language and only through language one is able to experience the objects which is driven by the lack the very entrance to the language creates. That’s why a subject speaks because symbols are what made him a subject in the first place. The baby is spoken to before it is even born. So there is no unmediated experience, every experience is stamped by the language. The language has its own rules and laws to which every speaking being is subordinated to. This is the reason for Lacanian clinical practice to focus on the signifiers and their relations to each to other rather than the meaning they have for the patient.[12]

As discussed above this change of focus  from the meanings and images to the systems of signifiers brought about by Lacan to the psychoanalysis and metapsychology, could be traced back to the way of research called structuralist anthropology done by Lévi-Strauss. In this line affect whether comes up during the session or daily life of the subject doesn’t have its own regulations but moves through the pathways created by the symbolic.

Even though both authors talk of a representation when they mention symbolic there are theoretical differences. When Klein talks about symbolic it is more of a ideographic symbolism, a way of expression by the shapes, images and movements. Lacan talks about symbolic order, it is more of a linguistic signification and a way of functioning of the mind. However for both analysts symbolic is important to be integrated in the social world and failure of it means severe pathologies. It can be said that Klein pays attention to both sides of the symbol: representative function and expressive side. But in theory she only focuses on the first side and the second part is implied in the clinical cases. For Lacan the first is the signifier and the second the signified.[13]

In Kleinian thinking pathologies which are “disorders of thinking” are caused by inner traumatic experiences and leads to the loss or decrease in on the grasp of the expressive side of the symbols. The expressive side is non-discursive and connotative. It works by evoking or associating to other realities. So a person who is suffering from mental illness cuts this link between the sides of a symbol. That leads to the person not being able to use the emotional-affective side of the symbol and isolating the meanings from the interpretations made by the analyst. This situation acts as a inhibition for the mental growth because only emotional experience leads to mental growth. So a vicious circle can be seen in the patients who cut the expressive sides and not being able to grow mentally or heal themselves because of this very inability.

When a patients is speaking, he is doing it in a way that he denotatively presents his ideas without the implications of the expressive-affective side. He has a limited ability to perceive the connotations or the things exemplified in his words. So these words don’t create emotions in the speaker. The treatment which is working through or “transformation” leads or should lead to the symbol being more broad and specific at the same time. Interpreting the dreams or associations of the patient in general unveil emotional experiences which in turn open up new emotional connections thus creating more meaning. Meaning is a relation and not a thing in itself[14]

As expected both analysts are inspired by Freud but different conceptualizations of his. Freud uses the word symbol to mean the conversive symptoms of the hysteric patients which leads back to a repressed memory. The other use is the symbolization which means the additional linguistic component of the memory. It can be argued that the difference between symbol and symbolization is symbolization is when a linguistic element is added to the symbol. Symbolism is also a technique used by Freud when patients cannot associate with the elements of the dream anymore. Then Freud makes the symbolic interpretations regarding the male and female genitalia. Examples of this kind of symbolism for example a snake symbolizing a penis, are based on visual resemblance so in this case symbols are images. So symbols are imaginary symbols in this theory.

In his later works Freud talks about the relations between the systems unconscious, preconscious and conscious. Unconscious is made up of thing-representations and in order them to become preconscious which is a condition for them to become conscious, they have to attach themselves to word-representations. Some thoughts can also be conscious as visual images but it is not a complete conscious element. To be complete it has to have a linguistic term attached which differentiates it from the other visual elements. So it is only possible for different visual elements being conscious, is them to be differentiated with language. These two theories of symbols contradict each other. if there is no language to differentiate the symbol and the thing symbolized like the penis and the snake it cant be talked about two different things in the first place.

Visual images without a reference to the language cannot be differentiated. It can be argued that Klein is closer to the first conceptualizing of the symbol where as Lacan to the latter.[15] Post-Kleinian thinkers such as Julia Kristeva and Wilfred Bion argued that there is an innate knowledge of the object in the infant before the actual contact with the object. Kristeva infers from her clinical work that there is a preverbal symbolic world even though it sounds unpersuasive philosophically and logically.[16] Bion thinks that the infant “thinks” with a matrix made of links between sensory impressions during the preverbal period. [17]

To elaborate further on the distinction in the theory and practice of symbols by two analysts another case of Melanie Klein can be exampled. Lacan analyses another case of Klein’s which is a famous one. It is the Little Dick case mentioned in 1930 under the name “The importance of symbol formation in the development of the ego” In this article Klein talks about a 4-year-old boy named Dick who is suffering from schizophrenia according to Klein but his symptoms today would be diagnosed as autism or an autistic spectrum disorder.[18] His intellectual and cognitive development is stuck in 15-18 months. His motor abilities are underdeveloped as well. He has no adaptation to reality and no emotional ties to the environment. He cannot differentiate his body from the objects in the environment. He is always indifferent to the presence or absence of his mother or nurse or Klein. It is as if Klein was a piece of furniture in the room. He walks into people and furniture and indifferent to possible pain caused by such collisions.

From a Lacanian point of view the cause of autism would be the lack of the desire of the mother in which if present can give the subject infinite possibilities as answers to the other’s enigma. An example would be Sandy developing a phobia as an answer as discussed above. In Dick’s case where there is no desire of the mother, he couldn’t even be a psychotic subject which requires the identification with the mother’s desire an embodiment of it. So in Lacanian terms Dick is in a state of total alienation.[19]

What strikes Klein in that case is Dick doesn’t show anxiety in the presence of other people unlike neurotic children. She infers that Dick has no awareness of himself as an individual person, he cannot place himself in the space and time. He makes unintelligible sounds and repeats particular noises. Klein says that when he talks which is really rare he doesn’t  wish to be understood. Whenever the mother ask Dick to repeat the words she says Dick always modifies the words whereas other times he would pronounce them without any mistake. For this reason Klein calls Dick “an indifferent negativist”[20] This makes the mother angry and frustrated. Klein talks about the bodily difficulties Dick had, such as an unsatisfactory lactation period in which the mother keeps on trying to breastfeed Dick for a long time with no success. Dick nearly starves to death then he was artificially fed. He had problems with his anus and digestions. Throughout from the start to that day the mother was always anxious. Klein starts with interpreting Dick’s limited play with toys. Klein is the founder of play therapy and it can be seen here that According to Klein even children who don’t speak can be analyzed because of the conception that symbols doesn’t necessarily require language.

The children playing with toys during the session, visually satisfies the inner drives. The visual aspect is important as discussed above. Dick knows the words train and station. As Dick is playing with the trains Klein says that the big train is daddy and the small one is Dick. This doesn’t make any difference. Klein then says it’s a Dick-train going into Mommy-station which makes a difference. According to Lacan discussing in his first seminar on Freudian technique[21], Klein “plugs in the symbolic” She “brutally grafts” an “oedipal veneer” that is to say introduces the symbolization.

Klein talks about an inhibition in the ego development. It can be called an arrested development as well. She does something which decreases anxiety in order to reverse this arrest by interpreting the unconscious phantasies verbally. By symbolically introducing someone, someone other, separate than Dick who is the mommy. There were words for Dick which are the elementary for otherness but these words didn’t address to anybody because there weren’t anyone other than Dick. The subject must have been through the alienation in order take words as demands from the other.

Lacan comments that Dick has access to language already and this can be seen whenever he plays with the words that his mother gives him. He always opposes when the adults try to intrude. So an inhibition for Klein is an opposition attempt against intrusion for Lacan. Of course the most important aspect of the description of the case is Dick’s usage and relation to language for Lacan rather than the other symptoms. According to him there is a dislocation between the orders of real, imaginary and symbolic. Lacan says that Klein launches an operation which enlarges the border to make move something in the ego of the child which is under inertia due to this dislocation. According to Lacan what Klein does is a brutal grafting of the first symbolizations.

This process leads to Dick having an unconscious where he had none before, something which talks only in symbols. Because splitting of the subject didn’t take place for him which would alienate him or primary repression as Freud puts it. It is not an pedagogical or normativizing intervention by Klein, argues Lacan which he often attributes thus uses to criticize American school of psychoanalysis, namely ego psychology.

Lacan thinks that lack of the mother’s desire is the cause of Dick’s condition whereas Klein thinks that Dick is afraid of retaliation regarding his sadistic fantasies directed to the mother’s body. So what Klein does is to symbolize this fantasy for him. The interpretation has effects on Dick, he runs to another room and starts calling for the nurse. Klein argues that anxiety and the dependency for other appears simultaneously. He then starts showing interest to the words told to him by Klein. It makes Dick a subject of demand. The reason why the first interpretation didn’t work is Klein uses a binary that doesn’t exist in Dick. He doesn’t know the difference between the the trains only binary he has is train-station. Klein implies that the word station represents mommy in Dick’s unconscious.

It can be seen here that in Kleinian formulation fantasies predate language, word don’t have determinatory power over a subjects fate so in that case words are signs or signals and not signifiers as will be seen below.[22] From a Lévi-Straussian-Lacanian perspective it can be said that the second interpretation that is Dick-train entering Mommy-station inscribes a symbolic distinction between Dick and an Other creating a distinction between the subject and the other. The interpretation alienates Dick in the language. After that Dick expresses aggression when he plays with the toys. He tells Klein to cut coal pieces from the train toy. He then orders her to put them all in a drawer and says “gone” It is similar to when Freud’s grandchild says “gone” and “here” as he tries to symbolize the absence of the mother, as argued by Freud.[23] Lacan states that this “gone” has two aspects. first is as Dick starts to perceive himself as a subject, someone else than his mother, he divides a part of toy from the main body.

On the other hand since this division creates anxiety in him he tries to get rid of all of it by putting them into the drawer, a regressive manner. Here Dick represents how being a object of love for the mother can destroy or vanish both sides. According to Lacan this would be called metaphorical position in which the subject tries to identify with what it thinks the other lacks. This leads to psychosis, a position where there is no difference between subject and other. The second position is metonymic position where a part of the subject represents the subject, thus causing the neurotic structure. Coming back to Freud’s grandson, Freud says that the child is trying to create a mastery over the mothers absence to decrease the anxiety. According to Lacan the child is throwing a part of himself which still belongs to him this is the metonymical position. Lacan himself argues that both statements are true even though the one by Freud is of second importance.[24]

According to Freud the prevalence of “forts” during the games is an indication of the strength of death drive over the libido. Whereas Lacan says that during the forts the child sends a part of himself to the other. That is to say he lets go a part of himself in technical terms a signifier in order to preserve himself in the symbolic register. “Das” are less because it would mean a metaphorical position, disappearance of the subject since it establishes the subject as the drive object of the other. This is something subjects try to escape from even at high costs. So a solution would be giving a part of oneself to the other to not to give everything. This would be what is called jouissance, the pain in pleasure and the pleasure in pain, a necessary process.

Metonymic position, giving a part of the body as a gift embeds the subject to the symbolic order. Gift is given as a part of exchange which is the basis of the symbolic. Lévi-Straussian influences in Lacanian theory can be seen here. Theory of exchange as a prerequisite for the symbolic order is coined by Lévi-Strauss and taken by Lacan[25] Likewise when Dick asks Klein to cut a piece of coal from the train he is moving in a metonymical position offering a part of himself and then when he asks to get rid of both items he is in a metaphorical position where he directly is the object of the other. Klein’s interpretations work then Dick is able to extend his play and use words. As can be seen here for Klein objects and unconscious phantasies come first and it is only after the development that a child speaks.

For Klein psychoanalytic practice is about the development or the arrest of the ego result of dealing with conscious and unconscious anxieties. The aim is to make the patient experience the world as non-threatening where one is able to connect with his objects. The infant seeks connections with his objects which makes the world an interesting place. And if this process is halted by the anxieties, then the analyst should help the infant or to put it more correctly the infantile part in the infant or the adult to work through the persecutory anxieties.

The aim is to move from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position. This is done by the analyst being a good object for the patient who he can identify with. This takes forward the stopped development. This process has a hidden moral implication which says that there is some sorts of an objective or a finalism that development leads to. It can be argued as well that this reading of Klein is done from a Middle Group point of view where ideas of dependency and natural development towards a relatively healthy way of relating to world is welcome if at all. For that matter works of Klein can be interpreted from a Bionian way using the container↔contained or PS↔D conceptualizations in which finalism or the ideas of a arrested development yield their place to arbitrariness and uncertainty.[26] Anxiety should diminish, ego development should continue and object relations should be more secure. For that matter Dick case is a good example that even severely psychotic children whom would be called autistic today can be cured and be led to the oedipal dynamics if their unconscious phantasies are interpreted and brought to the consciousness.

For Lacan everything Klein talks about theoretical and practical belongs to the Imaginary order and a proper psychoanalytic practice should be conducted on symbolic order. Dick is perfectly normal and is experiencing the unmediated real. It feels weird for Klein because she is a speaking being, she doesn’t have access to the Real. Every infant is thrown into a world they are trying to make sense of. And everyone become subjects/subjected to the symbolic order. A person can never be fully integrated to the symbolic. So the analytic cure has to lead the subject to acknowledge this part in himself and others. The patient or analysand has come to terms with this Otherness. The symbolic order and his part in it is determined even before the birth but the patient or analysand as Lacan puts it, has to subjectivize it that is to say make it his own.[27] The analysand has to follow his desire and he should be aware of the factors that go beyond him so only then relative freedom would be possible. The imaginary aspects of the superego which bombards the analysand with unrealistic standards has to be accepted with their own lack. That’s why from a Lacanian point of view Klein’s interpretations were not soothing and anxiety-decreasing but increased the anxiety in Dick which is the proper way of practicing clinically. The ultimate aim of the psychoanalysis is make subject with problems to be able to sustain himself with problems.[28]

Other takes on the article cont.

Carlo Severi

Italian anthropologist Carlo Severi in his 2015 book The Chimera Principle makes detailed reading of the article Effectiveness of Symbols also including his own filed notes.[29] Being a pupil of Lévi-Strauss himself, he acknowledges his respect to his teacher before giving his own take on the article using the newer data than the time Lévi-Strauss wrote his paper. Severi remarks to the fact that before the singer begins his song all that will be described in the song has already taken place. As if shaman is talking about himself as a he. This creates “regressum ad infinitum” since the shaman is talking about a shaman who is talking about a shaman etc. before singing the shaman talks about a shaman who is about to start singing. It can be said that as a way of oral transmission the content of the curative song also includes the instructions about what the shaman should do before and how to conduct the cure. So the introductory part of the song would stand for these instructions.

With everything ready and in their place the plot of the song and the act of singing overlaps. That means the fiction in the song becomes a description of the real situation. It creates a paradox “a particular mode of communication” different than the daily life. Only in this moment the song starts having therapeutic effect when this paradoxical narrative is introduced since otherwise if the song was just about a shaman incarnating other magical being to beat the evil spirits, it would have a therapeutic effect. Shaman undergoes a “parallelist” practice where he is both himself in the song and another animal. Now there are two locutors one being the parallel image of the other. One being a shaman sitting in the hut and the other one being in another world preparing to fight the evil spirits. This parallelist aspects of the song is a common practice among shamanistic rituals. Also it is what separates a ritual from a general practice when the identity of the people participating are modified on the basis of even contradicting identities.

Here Severi argues that ethnologist should not only look at the content of the song that is usually a journey to the place where something is stolen from the ailing person but what is done by the singing of the song and what really goes on in the story of the journey. Ritual and the language used there are not two different things. The words used are the ritual itself. So this change in the methodology lead to the induction that the song is not just a part of the native myth explaining the origins of the world but rather shows that the identity of the shaman is a result of complex relational system.

The most detailed data about the shamanistic rituals show that the shaman sometimes represents the evil spirit that he is supposed to get rid of.  It is common in the shamanistic practices that the shaman doesn’t have a symbolic position when he is not performing a ritual, meaning that he only becomes the symbolic identity of the shaman is inherent to the ritual. The ritual is what makes a member of the tribe a shaman for a limited amount of time. Performing a ritual requires going through unstable changes in one’s body and mind and it is accepted that any member can go through such an experience. So a shaman is not a person who walks around with his magical powers but only has them after starting the ritual. This explains the confusion created by the paradoxical identity of the shaman where he also identifies with the evil spirit. It is not a shaman who identifies with the thing he fights but a figure who identifies with the shaman and the opponent. The many identities shaman take can be defined as symbolic oppositions.

The ever increasing identities of the shaman are made in a similar fashion meaning that the shaman represents a shaman and the patient and the patient and each of them representing two more elements. The shaman in the real world stays still as he is singing as the song since the song is not designed to express the world view or the ideology of the Kuna tribe but to introduce a complex identity of the locutor. That is to say the song doesn’t convey meaning but function as a “acoustic mask” The ritual creates a specific kind of doubt in the listener that is one of the elements of the ritual as well.

So a ritual is different from an ordinary interaction is the introduction of doubt and belief by the locutor taking a confusing and paradoxical identity. This is what creates the “perlocutionary effect” according to Severi Borrowing from philosopher Austin.

Severi contributes something crucial that is provided by his own empirical work among the tribe. He found that the song is in a language that takes a long time to learn. So the patient can never fully understand the song. The scene is such that a shaman is singing a lengthy and monotonous song to a woman that is suffering in a language that she doesn’t understand. So the idea presented Lévi-Strauss that the sick woman finds a symbolic language to express the bodily pains that were alien and inexpressible prior to the ritual. The woman cannot utilize the monsters as sign of her unconscious processes.

Severi thinks an anthropologist should study the beliefs in a group and not leave it to the discipline of psychology. To study it belief should be conceptualized as a relation between the person and the link to the representation. It is a personal process of projection rather than a passive acceptance of the ideology of the respective culture. it is always connected to the doubt. No one can advocate the existence or the absence of the thing he believes. Doubt and projection are what differs belief from the faith which means a total acknowledgment of the thing or the concept. In that manner belief is a similar process as projection while there is an investment by the person himself.

The belief is both commonsense and a leap in the dark because it is a general knowledge most of the members of the group have but at the same time they are not sure about it. There is a certain characteristic of an imaginary quality. The link between person and the representation is constant in an affective way and fragile in logical way that is to say the person having the feelings but cannot cognitively decide is generated by the projection.

Severi discusses the psychoanalyst Gaetano Roi whose work hasn’t been translated in English. Apparently he is a psychoanalyst mainly working with autistic people and Severi reports that Roi listens to his patients in a musical way. He listens to the factors which normally would be counted as accidents and obstacles in a normal communication, namely the sounds or made up words the patients use. So basically Roi listens to everything that would be excluded in a so called normal conversation. Soon it is found out that though seemingly random these distortions has a rule on their own. The patients who are unable to use the language, who cant express their thoughts using sentences have another way of expressing their suffering if one knows how to listen. This other way of saying or expression can be called similar to poetry where the meaning and the sound of the words are used in a different way than a normal way of expression.

The difference is in the poetic language there are two registers of resonances namely the one between the words and the sounds and the other one only between the sounds. İndependent of whether Roi calls himself a Lacanian or not, Here linguistic influences on Lacan can be seen. As stated above in the clinical practice Lacanian analysts tend to listen to what is said rather than the meanings of the words said. it leads to focusing on the phonemes in the patient’s sentences and replacing them with each other as a clinical intervention. There can be another reason to call these patients’ discourse as poetic. Severi states that poetry is often cited during moments of intense emotional experience which is usually ritualistic moments. In such moments usually linguistic communication yields its place to ritualistic action like dances or movements. Because it is hard to symbolize the intense affects linguistically. The analyst finds that the deformations and distortions of the words by the patients are not random and has a hidden logic.

This discovery is similar to Melanie Klein calling Dick a “negativist” as discussed above. Simply it can be argued that a communication or an utterance has different levels of existence. There are many elements beyond the linguistic aspect. So these elements which are rich in resonance and ritualistic are fields that an anthropologist pay attention to. In these rituals the linguistic aspect is designed in a way that it avoids the normal way of communication. As in the song mentioned in the article, the Kuna song is complicated and it requires a special language. The aim is to decrease the understanding the song by the patient and make it complex. So Severi argues that there could be a link between the two topics at hand namely the “musical way” of expression conducted by autistic patients and the complicated song sung by the Kuna shaman.

The minute description of the landscape to create a “affective geography” is just sounds for the woman in pain in the end. There is not even ambiguous meanings and confusing statements just a long and monotonous incomprehensible babbling. But Kuna people advocate to its healing effects. Severi thinks the only way to analyze the song is to analyze the sonorous image rather than the meaning of the words. The overall process is similar to an optical illusion where there is an incomplete visual image that is completed by the receiver.

There is again an active process of projection to make sense of the empty screen. The way the song is designed, the paralellist account of repetitions is received by the pregnant woman as a undefined sonorous pattern. Though the song is not totally incomprehensible some words are used from the everyday language the people use. These words have two different roles on two platforms. First they are understood for and in themselves whereas they cannot be put into a context which renders them without meaning. This is what is called the symbolic efficacy. There is the cultural aspect of the song which tells the magical world of the Kuna mythology. The sounds represent the sound that are made by the spirits.

On the other hand there is no meaning of the song so there is no discourse built to express the pain. The important thing is that the song creates a perceptive illusion. The common knowledge in the song which is the shaman going to the place of battle, transforming himself and so on is sung here and there throughout the long song. The spaces in between are left to the patient to fill. The minute detailed description of the landscape is not important in content but in its audial ambiguity. These blank spaces are projected on by the sick woman whose thoughts about her pain are racing in her mind as she is listening to the rhythm. In this dynamic, a link with belief is created not because something becomes certain but something gets uncertain which makes the whole process more effective. This form of communication is created mutually. It’s not the shaman giving the woman a language like Lévi-Strauss has thought. So the healing power of the song rests in the patient as she is doing the work as well. Similar element can be seen in the way Lacanian analysts define the proper way of an interpretation during the session. An interpretation made by a Lacanian analyst should be ambiguous and it should be worked on by the patient hence the rename, analysand.

Contrary to the other schools of psychoanalysis which Lacanians define themselves as opposed to like object relations, the interpretation should not aim at clarification by bringing the unconscious material to the conscious. As discussed above in the Dick case, this small practical divergence implies a bigger theoretical difference between Kleinian and Lacanian schools. Along the same line it can be argued that the post-Kleinian authors tend to embrace the uncertainty of unconscious materials and processes more than their master used to if at all.

Even though the content of the song is same for every patient. The patient constructs the symbolic efficacy herself. Before the emergence of belief in the patient, she engages in a process of projection. So the incomprehensible song becomes able to symbolize what the normal communication couldn’t. Both in the Kuna song and Roi’s way of listening to his patients, the focus is on the musicality and sonorous aspect of the language. This opens up a way to express what is hard to express, namely the pain a person has. The way to create representations is not to use intuitive ones but counterintuitive ones that are placed in a counterintuitive contexts. This gives the utterance a quality of narrative or rather it is given a quality of narrative by the listener. The symbolic efficacy of the song is created by the patient through belief which is created by the processes of projection.

Marcel Hénaff

French philosopher and ethnologist Marcel Hénaff gives his take on the article effectiveness of symbols in a book that was edited by Boris Wiseman.[30] Here, Hénaff starts with the criticism from Lévi-Strauss to Marcel Mauss saying that Mauss thinks that it is possible to come up with a sociological theory of symbolism. Whereas Lévi-Strauss thinks that the opposite is possible, to come up with a symbolic origin of the society. However the origin of the symbolism is something that sociology cannot explain but it has to take it for granted. As discussed above it is different than but similar to the Lacanian theory of an infant being born into the symbolic. It is not the emergence of the symbolic thought for the subject that is important like as in object relations theory but the importance lies in whether the subject can make use of symbolic or is being used by it.

However it can be argued that object relations theory in general Kleinian thinking doesn’t give an account of the origin of the symbols or symbolic thinking in the mind as well. It just avoids the question by placing the ego at the birth that is to say starting from a primitive way and than evolving to a more mature or complex operating level, there is always a symbolization going on in the mind. The arguments by Lévi-Strauss have two implication. First is that society can be understood as an institution through symbolism, second is culture is an expression of this symbolism. A general criticism towards Lévi-Strauss, blaming him of reducing everything to formalism and founding the reality on the symbolic is flawed. Relationship between the formalism, structuralism and psychoanalysis will be discussed below. Lévi-Strauss never talks about the symbolism in the of the symbolic. The symbolic as a term is coined by Lacan during the fifties.

Symbolism for Lévi-Strauss is an order, a group of relationships that are the subject of rules like a system. And this is the precondition of emergence of a society or culture. this implies that symbolism is about a mutual recognition like an institution. It is a system of differences as well which is best exampled in language. It is what differentiates mankind from the nature. The difference of the symbolism from signs or images is that symbols belong to a symbolic system which operates. As can be seen in the healing song it is used to perform something. Hénaff argues that in the book The Elementary Structures of Kinship Lévi-Strauss puts the incest taboo as universal and this is a important hypothesis regarding the symbolic origin of the society. Lévi-Strauss was to first anthropologist to propose a sociological answer to a sociological problem rather than answers found in psychology or biology. The firmest observation is the consequence of this prohibition which leads to exogamy. It is negative in the sense of a prohibition but positive in the sense of opening new potentials with another exogamic group. This is the same for the other group as well. This creates reciprocity. The nature necessitates that reproduction needs two members of opposite sexes. That is the rule of nature. But choosing the sexual partner is not imposed by the nature so creating rules around the sexual relationship is only possible in the cultural field or rather it is what can be called the culture. the social starts with a rule. And this social rule imposes itself directly to the natural rule. But this rule as such doesn’t necessarily explain how humans will respond to this rule. So incest prohibition enters here. It creates a regulation of not being able to create a union with people from one’s own bloodline. Rather it is available only for social group, people who are not blood related. This prohibition is valid in all the societies, that’s what gives it qualities of a natural rule.

“The prime role of culture is to ensure the group’s existence as a group, and consequently, in this domain as in all others, to replace chance by organization. The prohibition of incest is a certain form, and even highly varied forms, of intervention. But it is intervention over and above anything else; even more exactly, it is the intervention.” (Lévi-Strauss 1969a: 32)

            It can be argued that culture creates itself by the means of itself. That is to say in order for the culture to happen and keep on its existence, there has to be an intervention that is the culture. since it is an universal rule it is guaranteed that for every woman that is prohibited another one would be available. This creates an interdependency of the groups in a mutual recognition. This is what prevents families being closed systems. To explain this element of reciprocity Lévi-Strauss turns back to Mauss and his idea of the gift. According to Mauss the act of giving gifts is not just a simple gesture of courtesy but a “total social fact”[31] that is to say it has all the aspects of the social like the economical, political, legal etc. So it is where the essence of the social is expressed.

Exchange of the gifts have three moments which are respectively giving, receiving and returning. Any two elements of this system depends on the other and vice versa. It is a ternary system. Gift exchange has obligatory qualities in which  the giver is obliged to give and the receiver is obliged to receive and return with a gift of his own to evade conflict. The giver is regarded as giving a part of himself as well with the gift. That is to say the giver is condenses himself into the gift. And as the receiver takes the gift and later gives a part of himself is what gives the gifts their value. It is the most important part of the gift exchange. An alliance is established between the sides. A mutual agreement on recognizing each other emerges. And with this exchange the sides come to an agreement and both socially benefit from it. Mauss doesn’t talk about exchanges of bride-to-be-women which is really important for Lévi-Strauss. It can be said that Lévi-Strauss sees the exogamic marriage exchanges as the principle of all exchanges that is to say something more primal than the gift exchange. The exchange of women rests among the exchange of other goods such as food and wares. This is important because it delineates marriages(necessarily exogamic) as a condition of existence of the culture but also a product of it.

Exchanging women is what creates the culture but on the other hand it is just an exchange object in the culture itself. Lacanian idea of phallus comes to the mind. Phallus enables itself as a paradigmatic element in one’s psyche. That is to say phallus intervenes as itself and then opens up a place where it can be replaced by something else. That’s why doing something prohibited during the rituals has a quality of an incestuous relationship. In this way, reciprocity also means an expropriation since it prohibits the private use of the goods. This exchange is symbolism in its most elementary form.

Hénaff then starts talking about the etymology of the word symbol. Greek word “sumballein” means putting something together. It refers to the ancient Greek or Roman practice of breaking a pottery in which everyone gets a broken piece. The practice of “sumbolon” implies the parts which don’t mean anything on their own if not correlated with each other just like the broken pieces of the pottery. These pieces offer a balance and thus agreement between the sides. Because the sides recognize each other. This is the essence of human development. This implicit pact between different individuals and then groups. This leads to the idea that was put forth by the linguists. The idea that any kind of signification requires a symbolic structure which is immanent in language.

In language there is an implicit aspect which is symbolic and made up of differential elements which enables the creation of the sign. Symbols are the essentials elements in language. Their interaction implies a principle of reciprocity. Sign is created when the signifier and signified is united. The symbol is in the register of the relationship between signifiers. That is to say signifier only means something in relation to other signifiers. It doesn’t have a positive meaning but only gets its meaning because the other elements in the system don’t have that particular meaning. So if the language is a system of symbols, then speaking is always as if it is speaking to someone. This is similar to what Lacan implies when he says that the signifier is what represents the subject to another subject.

There are two levels; sign expresses a meaning and the symbol realizes the structure of the language. Prohibition of incest creates the society and the culture as a system of differences which are governed by rules. It can be defined as the symbolic order which is something special for the mankind. This is where Lévi-Strauss accounts as the symbolic origin of society. With the prohibition of incest mankind makes an implicit pact which everyone accepts the rules.

As is the case above there are two different meanings of the symbol here as well. First is a pact or an agreement, second is a surplus meaning so to say of a gesture or a place. These two definitions seem difficult two merge. In the article effectiveness of symbols Lévi-Strauss find a possible solution to this problem. The curative effect comes from the fact that the ritual has two levels one is the symbolism and the other the social dimension. Second level refer to the language and systems of sign and first being something different from these, different from the daily language. Talking of monsters and spirits as if talking about body parts is something particular to symbolism.

The overlap between the figure and a meaning and its operations work on a different level than ordinary language and conscious discourses. It takes place in pensée sauvage, untamed thought. Lévi-Strauss attributes the importance to the shaman bringing up images which the woman in pain never questioned their existence she lives in a tribe which believes in the myth. So the myth provides a meaningful system to the woman in pain and then the delivery happens. She projects her body to the story and then introjects it. This dynamic creates the symbolic effectiveness. The individual unconscious is integrated again in the representations of the tribe. As if the woman “fell” from the social world in the first place. The sickness is an exception that is to say something went wrong in the normal order of things. So the song is about the characters returning to their places. The cure occurs because the symbolic order and the symbolic function are united. This can be traced back to the idea of the society emerging out of symbolism and every practice having a symbolic quality to it.

The group is a symbolic order and functions symbolically. The term symbolic efficacy is in itself a paradoxical one because in most of the cases the word symbol is used as something that is opposed to reality as In a symbolic gesture in which the gesture itself is not expected to make differences in reality or it is important just because of its symbolism. Effectiveness is connotated with technicality which refers to things moving in relation in real life. The way Lévi-Strauss uses the term symbol can be defined in opposition to the one of the sign. Borrowing Saussureian linguistics the relation between the signifier and signified is an arbitrary one. Because these terms are different in nature. The phonic elements or the sequences created by these elements belong to another register than the meanings. It is a necessary relation in the sense that signifier and signified cannot exist without each other.

On the other hand the relation between symbolizer and symbolized is unnecessary, two elements can exist indepently from each other simultaneously. Like a tree symbolizing a family. The relation between the symbolizer and symbolized can be defined as either based on metonymy or metaphor. So this is a different dynamic than the unmotivated one between the signifier and signified. Both signs and symbols belong to the realm of representation. That is to say they are not natural they are like references to the natural world. Its elements are taken from the the real world but they are separate from it. The importance lies in the connection between the form and content in a symbol. That makes possible the “inductive process” which link the different registers which are the mental elements and physical pains and this is the mechanism behind the curative effect of the song.

If the discussion above is applied to the idea of symbols it can be inferred that symbols only exist in regard to each other. So there should be a symbolic system which symbols coexist. Symbolic system exist on two levels, first is the empirical one that is to say elements that are are attributed a value in different cultures. Second one is the definition that is closer to the symbolic function, it being natural as in the sense of being seen in every culture and the other not being natural as in the sense of it being a product of the culture.

So according to Hénaff it is meaningless to search for meaning in the symbols. Meanings belong to the realm of signifieds an more generally they are created by the signs. And looking for meanings in the symbols would mean to reduce the symbols to the signs. Therefore abolishing the difference. The signs is there to express and the symbol or rather the relations between plural symbols is a function. Interpretation of the symbols are not their meanings. It is a way of organizing the information. They are like instruments which distinguish not with their meaning but rather what the users can produce using them. As discussed above this delineation of the symbolic system as opposed to meaning and expression can be seen in Lacanian theory and practice. Since it is the basis of the society in the general sense it doesn’t function on the conscious level and it doesn’t contain affects. In that manner the famous motto of the Lacanianism “Return to Freud” can be questioned if it is a possible return to Freud who is a Lévi-Straussian.

Russian Formalism-Conclusion

To conclude by making things clearer about the differences between the Freudian unconscious and a Lévi-Straussian one, examples from Russian Formalism can be given. Lévi-Strauss develops a similar logic in his work on myths. According to the Russian Formalist School when something cannot be formulated in a meaningful way, it will take a form of relation between two meaningful propositions. This can also be seen in Lacan’s take on the Freud’s famous patient, the Rat Man.[32] If something cannot be said than it will take form of relation between two things that can be said. Deriving from this Lévi-Strauss argues that myth is not something that gives answers but rather puts two questions into relation to each other. Unconscious is not a place which stores memories of someone wanting to have sex with their mother and kill their father but it is a combinatorial system producing threads of mutual contradiction. It is not the contents or the story itself but putting things into relation creates a dynamic effect which cures the patient for example in the case of the Kuna song. It can be said considering the discussions above that the most important contribution by Lévi-Strauss to psychoanalysis resides in the reconceptualization of unconscious. It is not the storage of memories as Freudians and Post-Freudians argue which Lévi-Strauss renames as preconscious but it is something which creates relations in the material which is inside. It is a function which the memories pass through. So according to Lévi-Strauss and Lacan who is influenced by him, this function should be studied rather than what is inside and what meanings it expresses.

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Da Rocha Barros, E., Da Rocha Barros, E. (2015). Symbolism, emotions, and mental growth. In C. Bronstein, J. Borossa, & C. Pajaczkowska (Eds.), The new Klein-Lacan dialogues (pp. 233-234). London: Karnac.

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Fink, B. (1997). The Lacanian subject: Between language and jouissance. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press.

Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Symbol and Symbolic Function. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wpfq9-5a963c [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Symbolic efficacy: From Ritual to Psychoanalysis and Back Again. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-5b2is-5a9635 [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Therapeutic Emplotment in the Native American Church. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ixtr6-5a9647 [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

Freud, S. (1961). Beyond the Pleasure Principle (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: Hogarth Press.

Goldenberg, M. (n.d.). Autism: An Ethical Stake for Our Time. The Symptom 13

Grotstein, J. (2007). A Beam of Intense Darkness. London: Karnac.

Hénaff, M. (2009). Lévi-Strauss and the question of symbolism. In B. Wiseman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp 177-195

Klein, M. (1984). A contribution to the theory of intellectual inhibition. In Love, guilt, and reparation, and other works, 1921-1945. New York: Free Press.

Klein, M. (1930). The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 11:24-39

Koehler, F. (1996). Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. In B. Fink, R. Feldstein, & M. Jaanus (Eds.), Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (pp. 111-117). New York: State University of New York Press.

Kristeva, J. (2010). Melanie Klein. Columbia University Press

Lacan, J. (1998). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (J. Miller, Ed.). New York: Norton.

Lacan, J. (1991). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1, Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-1954 (J. Miller, Ed.; J. Forrester, Trans.). New York: Norton.

Leader, D. (1992, December). Some Notes On Obsessional Neurosis. Lecture presented in Metropolitan University. Retrieved from http://jcfar.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Some-Notes-on-Obsessional-Neurosis-Darian-Leader.pdf

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1994). Effectiveness of Symbols. In Structural Anthropology (pp. 181-201). London: Penguin Books.

Mauss, Marcel 2002. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. London: Routledge.

Mintchev, N. (2015). A Theoretial Impasse? The Concept of the Symbolic In Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. Psychoanalytische Perspectieven, 33(3), 307-324.

Piaget, J. (1962). Classification Of Games and Their Evolution After The Beginnings Of Language. In Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton.

Renée, & Sèchehaye, M. (1994). Autobiography of a schizophrenic girl: The true story of „Renee“. New York: Meridian

Rosen-Carole, A. (2012). Lacan and Klein, Creation and Discovery An Essay of Reintroduction. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Severi, C. (2015). The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination (J. Lloyd, Trans.). Chicago: HAU Books.

Schnurmann, A. (1947). Observation of a Phobia. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 3(1), 253-270.

Scubla, L. (2011). Introductory Note in Le symbolique chez Lévi-Strauss et chez Lacan. Revue du MAUSS, no 37,(1), 253-269.

Stonebridge, L., & Phillips, J. (1998). Reading Melanie Klein. London: Routledge.

Tendlarz, S. E. (2003). Childhood psychosis: A Lacanian perspective. London: Karnac.

Zizek, S. (1997). Desire: Drive = Truth: Knowledge. UMBR(a), (1), 147-151.

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[1] Lévi-Strauss, C. (1994). Effectiveness of Symbols. In Structural Anthropology (pp. 181-201). London: Penguin Books.

[2] Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Therapeutic Emplotment in the Native American Church. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-ixtr6-5a9647 [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

[3] Stonebridge, L., & Phillips, J. (1998). Reading Melanie Klein. London: Routledge.

[4] Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Symbolic efficacy: From Ritual to Psychoanalysis and Back Again. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-5b2is-5a9635 [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

[5] Fink, B. (2014). Against Understanding. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

[6] Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts (2015). Symbol and Symbolic Function. [podcast] Conference: The Effectiveness of Symbols. Available at: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wpfq9-5a963c [Accessed 13 Mar. 2018].

[7] Renée, & Sèchehaye, M. (1994). Autobiography of a schizophrenic girl: The true story of „Renee“. New York: Meridian

[8] Piaget, J. (1962). Classification Of Games and Their Evolution After The Beginnings Of Language. In Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton.

[9] Klein, M. (1984). A contribution to the theory of intellectual inhibition. In Love, guilt, and reparation, and other works, 1921-1945. New York: Free Press.

[10] Schnurmann, A. (1947). Observation of a Phobia. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 3(1), 253-270.

[11] Tendlarz, S. E. (2003). Childhood psychosis: A Lacanian perspective. London: Karnac.

[12] Fink, B. (1997). The Lacanian subject: Between language and jouissance. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press.

[13] Bailly, L. (2015). The Symbolic. In C. Bronstein, J. Borossa, & C. Pajaczkowska (Eds.), The new Klein-Lacan
dialogues (pp. 233-234). London: Karnac.

[14] Da Rocha Barros, E., Da Rocha Barros, E. (2015). Symbolism, emotions, and mental

growth. In C. Bronstein, J. Borossa, & C. Pajaczkowska (Eds.), The new Klein-Lacan dialogues (pp. 233-234). London: Karnac.

[15] Mintchev, N. (2015). A Theoretial Impasse? The Concept of the Symbolic In Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. Psychoanalytische Perspectieven, 33(3), 307-324.

[16] Kristeva, J. (2010). Melanie Klein. Columbia University Press.

[17] Bion, W. R. (1984). Learning from Experience. London: Karnac.

[18] Klein, M. (1930). The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 11:24-39

[19] Bell, C. (2014). The Lacanian Subject: Subject of Desire or the Subject of Drive?. Language and Psychoanalysis, 3(1), 39-65.

[20] Goldenberg, M. (n.d.). Autism: An Ethical Stake for Our Time. The Symptom 13

[21] Lacan, J. (1991). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1, Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-1954 (J. Miller, Ed.; J. Forrester, Trans.). New York: Norton.

[22] Koehler, F. (1996). Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. In B. Fink, R. Feldstein, & M. Jaanus (Eds.), Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (pp. 111-117). New York: State University of New York Press.

[23] Freud, S. (1961). Beyond the Pleasure Principle (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: Hogarth Press.

[24] Lacan, J. (1998). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (J. Miller, Ed.). New York: Norton.

[25]Scubla, L. (2011). Introductory Note in Le symbolique chez Lévi-Strauss et chez Lacan. Revue du MAUSS, no 37,(1), 253-269.

[26] Grotstein, J. (2007). A Beam of Intense Darkness. London: Karnac.

[27] Zizek, S. (1997). Desire: Drive = Truth: Knowledge. UMBR(a), (1), 147-151.

[28] Rosen-Carole, A. (2012). Lacan and Klein, Creation and Discovery An Essay of Reintroduction. Lanham: Lexington Books.

[29] Severi, C. (2015). The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination (J. Lloyd, Trans.). Chicago: HAU Books.

[30] Hénaff, M. (2009). Lévi-Strauss and the question of symbolism. In B. Wiseman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp 177-195

[31] Mauss, Marcel 2002. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. London: Routledge.

[32] Leader, D. (1992, December). Some Notes On Obsessional Neurosis. Lecture presented in Metropolitan University. Retrieved from http://jcfar.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Some-Notes-on-Obsessional-Neurosis-Darian-Leader.pdf

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