Understanding Psychoanalysis by Sharpe Matthew; Faulkner Joanne; & Joanne Faulkner

Author:Sharpe, Matthew; Faulkner, Joanne; & Joanne Faulkner [Matthew Sharpe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1886912
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Why "structuralism"?

The elementary insight of structuralism is that there can never be just one signifier or one signified. One sign could not “make sense” or pick out anything specific in the external world. Each sign is instead part of a larger structure. The proof is that:

Different languages have different “signifiers” for the same signified: “Hund” in German, “chien” in French, “dog” in English, and so on.

Different cultures have concepts with different semantic “boundaries”: the English-language concept of a river, for example, covers the extension of the French concepts of a riviere (a waterway that runs to the sea), and a fleuve (a waterway that does not). Structuralism emphasizes how signifiers hence signify only in contrast and combination with other signifiers in a linguistic system or “structure” (such as English or French). They do so on the basis of their differences from other signifiers in the structure (“d-o-g” is not “f-o-g” or “d-a-g” or “d-o-c”, which signify different concepts). Equally, each of the individual “signifieds” that a culture develops to understand the world gets its “ostensive boundaries” through its differential relations to the culture’s other signifieds.

Our natural language’s structure is something we learn from others early in our lives. Far from able to “mean whatever we choose”, the meanings of our wishes are shaped and can only be expressed by way of this linguistic structure, which preceded us and will outlast us.

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