50 Tahir Wood
It is these two triads, of introjectivity, projectivity and reflectivity on the one hand, and
the iconic, indexical and symbolic on the other, that in their complex articulation, and in the
historical developments that illustrate them, may give us a theoretical perspective on the co-
evolution of subject and semiosis.
There is an interesting parallel between these two triads. Just as the symbolic order is
definitive of the human subject, in constrast to the animal kingdom, and contains within it the
iconic and the indexical, so too is the reflective order definitive of human agency and contains
within it the introjective and projective dimensions. In other words humble forms of
introjectivity and projectivity can be discerned in the animal kingdom, but not of reflective
judgment, and it is in terms of the latter notion that we may hope to go beyond the animal
kingdom of the spirit. The macro-level point that suggests itself then is that a specifically
human agency is reflective and that this reflectivity is inherently symbolic.
2.6. Semiosis and Psychoanalysis
It is worth making some observations in passing concerning psychoanalytic theory, since
in its own way it is profoundly a theory of semiosis, even though my aim here cannot be a full
exploration of this idea.
Nevertheless the convergence of some of my terminology, particularly introjectivity and
projectivity, with that of psychoanalysis is not to be avoided nor its significance denied.
Many (or perhaps all) of the associative mechanisms explained in psychoanalysis are
indexical in nature, such as ̳displacement‘ and ̳condensation‘. And in many schools of
psychoanalytic therapy (especially the ̳Hungarian school‘ of Ferenczi, Abraham, Torok and
Rand) the possibility of symbolisation, described as introjection, is equated with a process of
inaugurated mourning that is healing in its nature.^11 This is by no means external to my
meaning. As Yassa (2002, p. 90) summarises:
The central idea running through the body of the Abraham and Torok work is that of the
prerequisites for the emergence of subjectivity. The question of how a unique individual
comes into being is only superficially simple. They approach this question at several different
levels of the experience of subjectivity, and with the help of their specific concept of
introjection – seen as the key to every aspect of psychic life.The process of the development of subjectivity through the mediation of the symbolic
order is precisely what I intend in my own use of the term introjectivity. With regard to the
meaning of this term in Abraham and Torok there is little discrepancy between their usage
and what I propose.^12
The position regarding projection in psychoanalysis is slightly more complicated.
Abraham and Torok do not appear to have employed this term to nearly the same extent as
introjection, and they did not propagate the formal symmetry in the opposition between
(^11) Cf. Freud on ̳Mourning and melancholia‘ (1987, pp. 245-268, originally 1917).
(^12) However this cannot be said of all schools of psychoanalysis, in some of which (occasionally including Freud
himself), this term is not used with anything like the same degree of precision or consistency. .See especially
Abraham and Torok‘s critique of Melanie Klein and others (1994, pp. 125-138, originally 1972). Notice how
this implies a critique of Freud‘s own inconsistent usage, for example in ̳Instincts and their vicissitudes‘
(1987, p. 133, originally 1915).