On the Limits (of the Subject) of Psychology

Abstract

The subject of psychology broaches two domains of discourse, one in which the subject belongs to psychology as its object of study and another where the discipline of psychology belongs to the subject as a topic of discussion. Actually, these are not two domains of discourse but rather two domains concerning discourse: a domain where the subject belongs to discourse and a domain where discourse belongs to the subject; more precisely: a domain of being known and a domain of the knowing being. This article is about the delimitation of these two domains. Bringing them into existence requires complicated motions on (or at) the borderline that separates them. This means a special kind of writing of the subject of psychology, a writing characterized by a double stroke in the sense that it represses while it creates. In this article, the author explores the nature of this kind of delimitation, and then relates three stories to illustrate the writing that constitutes the subject of psychology as a knowing being and a being known. We see how the delimitation of the discipline of psychology splits the subject into a subject who comes into being on both the inside and the outside of psychology, and how in an attempt to bridge this split (which is the drive for identity) a core part of the subject must be repressed, and finally how the attempt to wipe the traces of this repression constitutes an entire psychology, which reveals psychology as a double repression. The article concludes that these notions open psychology as a grammatology, meaning that the logos of the psyche is not simply revealed, but written in and through a double stroke. 75