ABSTRACT
The comparison of psychoanalytic practice to the study of a written text takes analysts to the heart of the problem posed by the impersonality of the semiotic and neurophysiologic subject. Formal linguistic codes and mechanisms in the brain seem to leave little place for an actual person, a living being in the world, and suggest reductionism or schematizing of complex human relationships. The textual comparison disturbed scholars, including many psychoanalysts who saw the comparison as a dehumanizing, impersonal move bordering on a kind of nihilism. From a semiotic perspective, stronger version of the textual analogy argues that as a language-dependent creature the human subject is composed of discursive figures, which determine its thinking and speech. The textual analogy holds the merit of reminding analysts that the development of newborn babies into self-conscious, speaking beings involves the internalization and rearrangement of affectively charged messages from others for which the subject becomes the vehicle.
