Freud, Psychoanalysis and Symbolism

Abstract

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Symbolism offers an innovative general theory of symbolism, derived from Freud's psychoanalytic theory and relocated within mainstream scientific psychology. It is the first systematic investigation of the development of Freud's treatment of symbolism throughout his published works, and discovers in those writings a broad theory which is far superior to the widely accepted, narrow, 'official' view. Agnes Petocz argues that the treatment of symbolism must begin with the identification and clarification of a set of logical constraints and psychological requirements which any general theory of symbolism must respect, and that these requirements have been neglected by existing accounts across a number of disciplines. Her newly proposed 'Freudian broad' theory of symbolism, by contrast, does meet these requirements, but only after it has been rehabilitated within a revised psychoanalytic context, encompassing major changes to our understanding of the concepts of unconscious and repression and the role of language.

Bread: From grain to life. Validating the use of metaphor

“…This article will not explore the intricacies of the variety of meanings for ritualistic use and its symbolism 30 such as Petocz (1999) does in relation to psychoanalysis. This article accepts the premise of living in a symbol system (Clift & Clift 1991:28) encoded with information, 31 which influences 26.Even though there sometimes is confusion discerning between metaphor, simile, symbol, analogy, model and so on, I do not wish to spend time defining these individually.…”

“…Petocz (1999), for instance, explores symbol in a broad continuum only to narrow it down so as to establish bona fides of its relational application for psychoanalysis, but it must be borne in mind that metaphor encapsulates most of symbol.…”

`Mind as Feeling' or Affective Relations?

“…The term 'motivation' itself is nebulous, but one position, influenced by Anderson's commitment to determinism, proposes that behaviour is mechanistically driven, a position that rejects any notion of self-determining or self-directing behaviour and instead looks for causal antecedents, although not precluding cognition (Maze, 1983). In line with this, Maze (1983Maze ( , 1987a has developed Freud's (1915Freud's ( /1957) notion of 'instinctual drives', and this position has been subsequently adopted by a number of realist theorists as the motivational source of human behaviour (e.g., Michell, 1988;Petocz, 1999). Conceptualized as neuro-physical 'biological engines' which mechanistically initiate and propel behaviour, these drives are also postulated as the substructures within the brain that know the world via the perceptual apparatus, thus accounting for the subject terms of the cognitive relation (Maze, 1983, p. 162).…”

“…In recent years this realist position has been defended and extended considerably by Maze (1983Maze ( , 1991, Michell (1988) and McMullen (1996a), but whilst considerable in-roads have been made in formulating a realist account of 'cognition' (Maze, 1983;Michell, 1988), 'error' (Galloway, 2000;Michell, 1988;Rantzen 1993), 'memory' (McMullen, 2000;Michell, 1988), 'motivation' (Mackay, 1996;Maze, 1983Maze, , 1987a, 'meaning' (Mackay, 2003;Petocz, 1999), 'measurement' and philosophy of science (Hibberd, 2001(Hibberd, , 2005Maze, 2001;Michell, 2000Michell, , 2003, the theory of affects or emotions has received considerably less attention. Assuming the tripartite division of mind into cognition, conation and feeling, ) position proposes that whilst cognition and conation should be considered as relations (between a knower/striver and a known/striven for situation), it is the feelings themselves that constitute the 'real qualities of mental processes' (p. 73), a position finding most recent defence in this journal by McMullen (1996b).…”

Addressing Mental Plurality

“…Subsequently, Maze (1983) and Petocz (1999) identify the motivational systems (the instinctual drives) within the organism as the conflicting knowers:…”