Semiotics

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 51

introjection and projection that one sometimes finds in Freud (e.g. 1987, p. 133) or in
Kleinian psychoanalysts such as Hinshelwood (1995).^13 In any event, the common
psychoanalytical understanding of projection as a splitting off of a part of the ego which is
then transferred to and discovered in another, e.g. the analyst, can be easily incorporated into
the notion of projectivity as understood here, albeit as part of a broader meaning.
One other interesting point needs to be highlighted regarding the symbolic order from the
point of view of psychoanalytic theory, one which is highly illustrative of the role of the
indexical within it. Rand and Torok (1993) point out a certain inconsistency in Freud‘s
approach to the symbolic, whereby he fails to distinguish consistently between ―personal
meanings‖ and ―the use of universal symbolism‖ (1993, p. 570), sometimes even altering the
emphasis on one of these relative to the other in successive editions of the same text, such as
The Interpretation of Dreams. The authors make their preference clear: ―The method of
permanent symbolic keys is no match for deciphering the verbal and affective distortions of a
dream‘s unique, individual meaning‖ (1993, p. 578).
The matter at issue here is that of the status of personal meanings or personal
associations. Associations of this kind are indexical in an individually subjective sense. So,
for example, for the analyst to tell the dreamer that a severed tree invariably symbolises
castration may turn out to be quite baseless and misleading when in the individual case it
might really mean that a branch of the genealogical family tree has been cut off and lost. This
is clearly a very important point, and yet when Rand and Torok (1993, p. 578) quote Freud on
this question, we must surely wonder with him about his own ambivalence towards it:

We may expect that the analysis of dreams will lead us to a knowledge of man‘s archaic

heritage, of what is physically innate in him. Dreams and neuroses seem to have preserved

more mental antiquities than we could have imagined possible; so that psycho-analysis may

claim a high place among the sciences which are concerned with the reconstruction of the

earliest and most obscure periods of the beginnings of the human race.

The author of this passage from the fifth edition of The Interpretation of Dreams is the
same Freud that the authors quote (1993, p. 573) from the fourth edition as saying:

Indeed dreams are so closely related to linguistic expression that Ferenczi (1910) has

truly remarked that every tongue has its own dream-language. It is impossible as a rule to

translate a dream into a foreign language.

Is it not possible to argue, contra Rand and Torok, that these positions are not necessarily
incompatible? I am not in a position to settle this question here, but let us consider what it
might mean to accept both positions as Freud might have liked to do. Clearly the latter
quotation reflects the view that Rand and Torok would like to uphold, in which it is the case
that certain images, objects or words have obtained their significance for the individual as a
result of strong associations in his or her experience, almost as if in a ̳private language‘. The
former quotation, by contrast, puts the matter in a more universal and evolutionary
perspective.

(^13) This alleged symmetry was similarly rejected by Lacan, on the grounds that projection is an imaginary
mechanism, while introjection is a symbolic process. See Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, accessed
at http://nosubject.com/Projection on 3 February 2010.