ABSTRACT
In spite of appearances to the contrary, psychoanalysis has been, since its inception, concerned as much with the non-representational as with the representational aspects of the human mind. By “representational” we refer to what Anna Freud calls “Vorstellungen” and which, as we show later in this chapter, can be subsumed under the three Peircean kinds of signs that can be actively used by the mind—icons, indices, and symbols—with symbols being the purest form of representation. As Freud progressively abandons the neurological language for a metapsychological one, “neurones” will be replaced by “representations” or “ideas”. The act of representing is now called “remembering”, presented as the main goal of psychoanalytic work, but one gets the clear sense that such remembering is not the mere recalling or evoking. Representations are therefore structurally necessary for the working of the psychic apparatus. A symbol is therefore the purest kind of Peircean sign and, as we have seen, the closest to pure representation.
