Foros Temáticos - Investigación Psicoanálisis - The Dynamic Unconscious in the Light of the Peircean Categories First and Second

Abstract:
The author suggests Peircean categories (First, Second, Third) as a meta-theory for theory of thought, including Psychoanalysis; what can be gained with such a purpose?
The advantage of a meta-theory shows itself in the beginning on the basis of a contemporary intra-psychoanalytical discussion of the unconscious’ status. After that question about how the dynamical unconscious will change comparing it with the Peircean categories of immediacy, i.e. the First and the Second. The principal thesis of the paper is about Freudian primary process. According to Freud its principle trace back to the functioning of defense mechanisms. Meanwhile the suggestion here is that it has to be considered as something much wider, as the source of thought altogether,
The Peircean Third will be treated relatively short because of a remarkable correspondence of Psychoanalysis and the philosophy of Peirce. Learning from experience is within Peirce the highest development of Third and it also acts implicitly within psychoanalytical formation of theories and therapeutical processes. As that it has been described often within psychoanalytical literature; it does not change a lot with the inclusion of Peircean thought.

Until 50 years ago the philosophical mainstream view of man was one of the rational specie. The last decades however brought to consciousness the principally social nature of human’s thought. In the main time this means, its provenience is cultural and religious. Since Francicso Varela, Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman it has become general knowledge that the body, until this moment neglected, should be taken into account in all areas of human action and thought. The slogan of the „embodied mind“ has spread this knowledge in all life sciences, including philosophy und social sciences. Embodied mind means, the body as feeling of one’s own self. Together with this goes the emotional, affective and hormonal guidance and influencing of thought through bodily processes.
A-rational aspects had been emphasized long before by psychoanalytical authors. But psychoanalysis is not the single movement of thought which can be considered as a precursor of today’s thinking. Human action has been considered in a way that criticized rationalism by American pragmatism more than 100 years before. Pragmatism, from greek to pragma (action) says that human thought cannot be explained without relating it to action. Following the pragmatic maxim, concepts can be comprehended by considering their practical bearings on action of men (2) . Also the concept of habit was very central for Charles Sanders Peirce (Cf. article beside); this also means that a large part of our daily activities is not in the focus of our attention. We therefore state that there is a habitual, pramatistic unconscious (cp. Saller 2003, p. 112-144). The habitual unconscious consist of unquestioned premises and automatically carried out habits.

I have been thinking about the interrelations of Pragmatist‘s habitual Unconscious with the dynamic one of Psychoanalysis since many years. My ambition and my interest concerning this stems from my originally being an anthropologist and therefore having tried to use psychoanalysis also as a theory of society. Also, as Alfred Tauber in his exciting and worth reading study demonstrated, Freud’s first interest was philosophical. He nevertheless constrained himself to empirical procedure and only in his lat work allowed his speculative inclination to develop – above all in his cultural studies. Meanwhile Freud’s understanding of psychoanalysis as a general theory of thought in my view engenders problems because psychoanalysis‘ origins as technique of healing, therefore implying the opposition of insane and sane cannot be denied. Therefore the translation of psychoanalytical knowledge into a language that has more to do with knowledge and thought seems interesting. Starting reverse, with Peirce, the question on the one hand is if he had admitted a dynamical, psychoanalytical unconscious, in the sense of defended contents. This question had been studied substantially by Vincent Colapietro in two studies (cf. 1989/1995) and he answered it unambiguously with yes. The second question concerns the design of the Freudian Unconscious within the Peircean universe. As far as my problem with psychoanalysis as a general theory of thought lies in its assessing social or cultural phenomenon it is not independent of the opposition sane/insane, I propose to conceptualize the (cp. also Saller 2003:123–127) Unconscious as more comprehensive in comparison with the dynamical one. But further questions rise: How do we make a distinction between them, how to design its links. While I treated Bion and Peirce (Saller 2003: 97–127, 455–469; 2005), respectively Freud and Peirce (Saller n.y.) in my previous papers, in this one I would like to include more recent developments of psychoanalysis. It fits well with my plan that the journal Psyche just published a special issue with the subject “Das Unbewusste, Metamorphosen eines Kernkonzeptes“. Werner Bohleber distinguishes in his introduction the following modification, which are advocated by different directions of psychoanalysis. Beginning with the Freudian model he mentions that it contains a hermeneutic aspect as well as a scientific one, the latter conzeptualizes the Unconscious as a causal energy. Further this author states the Freudian Unconscious being built of drive representations, which develop to fantasies and imaginary scenes of whish. Thinking according to the primary process is characterized by the mechanisms of displacement and condensation. Primary processual thinking is first, secondary thinking develops out of it (p. 809). He sees the Kleinian model as „more horizontal mounted metaphorical room“, he mentions the Laplanchean version, where the Unconscious transforms into the place of enigmatic messages of the Other; and finally mentions the new intersubjective theories, where the unconscious is implicitly lived within the relations (p. 807, my translation (3) ).

The creative Unconscious according Bion and Grotstein is mentioned as a further development. Here the repressed is not any longer in the foreground, but the unconscious is seen as a source of mental and emotional source. The last mentioned facet of unconscious fits well with my understanding, which infers from the Peircean category of the First, and which also considered the place where thinking begins. Next, Bohleber presents the authors of the issue: concepts like two-person-unconscious, rhythms and response, scenic non-verbal elements, kinesthetic dimension, neuroscientific research and collective phantasms set further course.

I would like to go further into Wolfgang Mertens‘ paper, because he points at the above mentioned conflict within psychoanalytical theory. His subject is the interpersonal unconscious. He claims that the analyst’s tools, as „abstinence, neutrality and restrained interaction“ destined for the „protection of the analytical position of understanding“ cannot be anymore more than “sign posts” (p. 836), because in the last decades our knowledge concerning the involvement of the analyst in the process has incredibly grown. He expresses the concern of many of his colleagues showing that analyst and analysand are mutual related „with their emotional structures, with their disposition for transference as well as with their manifold behavioral expressions of mimic, gestic, postural and verbal prosodic kind which are carried out unconsciously”(p. 835).

And so do I, I consider myself as being a part of these theoretical developments. I especially welcome the judgment that the analytic speech is near to action (Mertens entitles one paragraph with „From talking cure to action dialogue“), because it suits with my project to understand psychoanalysis pragmatically.

Mertens describes these recently examined forms of Unconscious as implicit (cp. also Junker 2013) and he opens the questions, what the relationship between the good old Unconscious to the implicit, non-memorized relations might be. Describing the modifications of what counts as “Unconscious” in the German and English speaking world he mentions – do I hear a tone of indignation? – “the conceptualizations of the Boston Change Process Study Group“.
(CPSG) (Mertens 2013: 837) which are recently nearly enthusiastically received” (CPSG 2013:837). The discussions about the implicit put on the agenda by CPSG and their dyadic understanding of psychoanalysis was partly consequence of former violent argument between Daniel Stern, one of the main protagonists of the CPSG and André Green, a representative of official psychoanalysis (4) .

Today’s statements by CPSG, which refer to psychoanalytical theory and therapy are rather unfriendly: “[As we considered this task, it became clear that there has been a fundamental confusion in previous theorizing as to what is surface and what is depth” (The same 2007: 2). With Surface and depth the meaning is that analysts of old school assumed depth naming conflicts by their interpretations – meanwhile they moved – according to the insight of the authors – rather on the surface. It’s exactly the other way round: they claim to treat phenomenon on the so called implicit level – I would call this the transference level – and this is in their view the veritable depth. But is it not presumptuous to believe that analysts could control this implicit level – a level that certainly exists, I do not have the slightest doubt. I believe therefore that without the equipment of psychoanalytical theory as a benchmark and without a group of colleagues with whom we share our tools we get lost in an awful mess of pseudo-empathy.
Already Daniel Stern’s The Interpersonal World of Infant (1985), a Standard of infant’ research provoked ambiguous reactions. I recall my own reading: First, I was really impressed and enthusiastic. After a time I began to realize Stern’s levering out of psychoanalytical basics, as soon as he left his fascinating, empathically written comprehensive compendium of the whole research on mother-baby-relation of the last 50 year. Although enthusiastically about the observations, I did not want to follow him in this. I resolved this dilemma saying to myself: Stern is describing very empathically situations, in which mother and baby are able to make the contact. He has not got words for those cases, where there is misunderstanding and desperation.
Similarily Rolf Peter Warsitz commenting on the procedures of the authors of CPSG: „the concept of implicit knowledge only seemingly corresponds to the Unconscious in psychoanalysis […] It is not identical at all with the ‚dynamical unconscious‘ because it entirely does without the functions of defense or repression“ (Warsitz, 2007: 82).

Empathy within the dance of intersubjectivity is certainly an important precondition of the psychoanalytical process, because without it, the situation of being constantly observed and commented could easily hurt in a narcissistic way. Meanwhile with an empathic company the situation can be interpreted as well intended and good-natured. In my view the „something more than interpretation“ (cp. the title of one of CPSG’s papers (1998), and also Litowitz 2005) is, that since years we have been preoccupied, how to find our way around with aggressive transference and counter-transference.

Reading the descriptions of implicit memory, one often is tempted to exclaim: but that’s exactly what Freud describes. But as already said defense processes, which are typical for the classical dynamical Unconscious are missing. Sometime they say that implicit memory – in contrast to the repressed contents of Unconscious – never were available in symbolized form, they represent themselves in nothing but direct acting out. In this point they remember the conflicts of psychosomatic patients which also were commented as never having been symbolized and only expressed through the body (cf. McDougall, 1985).

Meanwhile, when the observer or – later on – the analyst try to reanimate these impulses that never had had a chance to live, isn’t there then a conflict, a kind of psychical defense, arising? Coming back to our subject, the question arises if the implicit on the one hand and the part of the unconscious that I described as habitual, on the other, have something in common. Comparing the habitual with the implicit, which was more in the focus of the attention these last years, the habitual is seen more typical for processes which are not so intimately bodily like the processes of the early development of the baby, which are impossible to remember. With habitual we associate rather automatization of capabilites which were learnt and we would use the term procedural memory. Nevertheless the two adjectival determinations are sometimes used as synonym for non-conscious parts of our memory which have to be continuously “online” during acting and self-orientation. I would like to skip this more definitory questions and I think that maybe there aren’t that principal differences but rather differing prioritization. The protagonists of the intersubjectivists are more preoccupied with central emotional incidents and memories. Even so it is obvious that that they are informed by a behavourial view point, in the same way as the theoreticians of learing and automatization.

In contrast the psychoanalytical ideas of learning and memory are marked by gaps in symbolizations processes gendered by trauma and conflict. Is it possible to reconcile the two disciplines which were regarded as incompatible for years? I agree with Matthias Kettner and Wolfgang Mertens, the editors of a small booklet about unconscious who are quite interested in this. At the end of the study Kettner comments on Mertens: „You mention a point which seems to me electrifying; the idea that the dichotomisation of cognitive unconscious on the one hand and the dynamical one of psychoanalysis is erroneous” (Mertens/Kettner, 2010: 133). In my view Peirce, who was always pro continuity, could well figure as a bridge in such a convergence.

And this is the real core of my explanations here: the examination of how the Freudian Unconscious changes when the Peircean semiotic is pressuposed as a metatheory. Our starting point will be, that the term Unconcsious is – as Mertens also notices – purely semantically only the negation of concsiousness. But as we all know, Freud did assign it a specific form of organization. Primary process is characterized by a form of experience, in which energy is free floating, meanwhile “the systems of Cs and Pcs contain energy in a tied form and it also shows inhibiting structures” (Kettner/Mertens 117f).

As far as Freud did not take up primary process in later writings (cf. Noy1969), it is not quite clear if this principle of organization after the introduction of the second topic stays valid only for the dynamical unconscious or if the modus of primary process is active also in descriptive or other unconscious activities. Within the intention of Freud’s primary process, how he discovered and described it, it seems nevertheless clear that he considers it as bound to the mechanisms of defense. Condensation (Verdichtung) and Displacement (Verschiebung), the main characteristics of the process, emerge out of an active unconscious process of pushing back, that’s just the defense. This implies the idea, that a thing which was formerly rationally captured, has been condensed to an amalgam of different things. I would like to show, that the Peircean idea differs here as far as the beginning of thought and knowledge themselves are conceptualized as vague. Here we have to presuppose a “primary process” which is indeed primary. Idea that somehow seems also to be Freud’s meaning, because if not, why should he have put tagged the primary process primary? (cp. Bohleber above).

Inclusion of the baby observer’s knowledge, the findings of cognition psychology as well as brain research suggest a bigger part of non-conflictive unconscious – it is also what Peircean ideas bring to mind. The following question will be, if the dynamical unconscious has a definite border of the rest of the unconscious and if the different forms of unconscious are mutually related in continuous form.
This dynamical area of unconscious as the smaller part needs a clear qualification; in this I agree with Kettner. As criteria of delimitation he proposes negativity or conflictivity: „What’s the meaning of my saying? The doctrine of the defenses; that means the whole direction of thought, which begins with Freud’s and Breuer’s describing in conflict related, intentionalistic terms what they interested most, for example ‚counter-will (Gegenwille)‘, ‚restistance (Widerstand)‘, ‚defense (Abwehr)’, ‚repression (Verdrängung)‘, ‚censorship (Zensur)‘, ‚anti-cathexis (Gegenbesetzung)‘“ (Kettner/Mertens, 134, cf. a similar idea in Litowitz 2005, 752). In relation to the habitual part of unconscious life the conflictuality as a criteria of discrimination would be the perfect. On behalf of the implicit object relation however the criteria is not entirely clear. The described experiences of relationship often also were rather negative. Following the criteria of Kettner they pertain to the dynamical unconscious, their borderline not being the defense mechanism of repression, but rather dissociation, disavowal or impulses that could not be released because of a missing adequate mirroring.

One of the central ideas in Peirce’s philosophy is continuity. Accordingly my suggested separation of certain parts of non-conscious from others is to be understand as an idealtypic characterization of entities that in real life not so clearly separated: they interfere and mutually influence. I would add also, that in my view, the difference between the total dismissal of a conflict, which happens on a pre-symbolic level, and the repression, characterized as the belated repression or pushing back of symbolizations, cannot be made every time that clear as the terms suggest. We have to be aware that we are dealing with lively processes which are continually developing. We could imagine a non-symbolized content which is still in development to symbolization. Disavowel in such a case could be considered as block or freeze of such a process of development. I will come back on this later.

Comparing and bringing together the non-repressed unconscious with the dynamical we also have to scratch on Freud’s thinking. My explorations in Peirce will demonstrate that part of what Freud considered as typical for primary process in many ways has to be understood in a new and different way.

Another subject where I differ from Freud is perception. Furthermore I would like to express those ideas of Freud which he expressed with the metaphor of energy, but I won’t seize them in Freud’s physicalistic language.
The basic attitudes of the two authors in ontological-episemological respect fit surprisingly well, as I have already explored somewhere else (Saller o.J.). In summary I have said there, that Peirce obviously disapproved of nihilism and epistemological skepticism. He was one of the first to characterize knowledge as a social He was one of the first to characterize knowledge as a thoroughly social achievment (5). This was occasionaly interpreted as if pragmatist’s theory of truth entirely renounced of the idea of a reality which exists independently of our thoughts about it; this understanding alleges that following pragmatists claim that truth were to identify truth which what is useful or coherent. But this is rather, what postmodern constructivist suggest, although they never argue explicitly for it; for Peirce this allegation is absolutely erroneous. For him it was crucial that there is a reality, independently of what we consider it, but it was also always clear, that we never can grasp it in its totality. Nevertheless we are capable of grasping it every generation a bit clearer. A similar stance in this fundamental epistemological questions is to be found in Freud. I therefore am critical about constructivistic statements how they are to be heard in circles of self psychology, pretending that the only target of psychoanalysis is to find or construe a „proper history“ which is more harmonious for the patient (6), and I also dismiss the nihilistic position, which approximately is expressed in Bion’s and Lacan’s, according to which human beings are forced to misjudge themselves and also cannot cognize reality (cf. Pagel/Weiss 1993, Psyche).

I will present my explorations about Unconscious following the three categories First, Second and Third which Peirce suggested. Starting from Kant’s categories of Pure Reason , which he rearranged several times, Peirce discovered these three categories which are the basis of all human experience (7). I begin with characterizing First, Second and Third, as short as possible: First stands for a very primitive, one could say pre-conceptual form of being. It is our being before something is represented or before it represents something – obviously also before it reflects itself. As an example Peirce often presents the colour of red. He thinks of the quality of red, without paying attention to the content of a picture. It is only the experienced quality, without comparing it to anything. Within the classification of signs, it is the icon which corresponds to the First.

Second refers to the moment when this undisturbed, contented being encounters reality. Peirce asks his listeners to imagine a state of absolute tranquility, an undisturbed being without paying the slightest attention to any of stimulus that surrounds us (as f.e. heat or cold, the body’s touching of the floor, the chair we are sitting on or – more general – to the bodily posture). As mentioned this would be a state of First. If in this situation a loud noise startles your contemplation, there will be a hundredth of a second Second. The moment you do not realize what it is that scared you. Second is the hit with the reality; Peirce sometimes speaks of the „outward clash“. While understanding that this is the sound of the breaktime bell, that means, sorting out our experienced shock and thinking: “o, the breaktime bell. We can go out and relax!” the experience gets the character of a Third. Third, that means that the thing you just have experienced is tagged as a symbol which forms part of a wider web of socially shared symbols. In the Third you know certainly what a situation you are dealing with and which habits you ought to activate. You have understood what it is about (8).

It seems obvious at first sight that the First can be seen as similar to the Freudian Unconscious. Meanwhile we have to be careful, the here described non-identity is not the consequence of a defense process but a principle which lays on the ground of all thinking.
As I mentioned the sign types of icon, index and symbol correspond to the categories of First, Second and Third. This classification of signs refers to the relationship between sign and its object. The icon bases on a relationship of similarity, the index on contiguity (spacial nearness) and causality, meanwhile the symbol is about a conventional relationship.

This categorization of signs is often quoted and often understood in a hypostatic way. In my view it is important to emphasize that although the aspect of how a sign represents its object can be quite explicative, it has to be kept in mind that any of this sign types is never to be met in its pure form. This is especially true for the icon, where the sign relation is on the level of First. I will comment on this later. For a better understanding it has to be added, that an iconic sign must not be a picture – in spite of its name. The definition of an iconicity is rather, that the sign shares a characteristic of the object.
Peirce characterizes experiencing the First: „The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of freshness, life, freedom. The free is that which has not another behind it, determining its actions; […] Freedom can only manifest itself in unlimited and uncontrolled variety and multiplicity; and thus the first becomes predominant in the ideas of measureless variety and multiplicity” (CP 1:302).
I mentioned above for the primary process that the energy is free floating and that later on it will be bond within symbolization of the secondary process. Peirce’s description of the First reminds this although here the metaphor used is not energy but potentiality. There is not yet a recognition of things, but only single characteristics, as for example a smell, or a colour, is present in the mind, isolated. This is the reason why a purely iconic sign is impossible; a sign always signifies something , here we do not have a thing in mind, but only an impression of – let’s say – red. Peirce therefore calls the pure icon „only a possiblity“, something absolutely vague (9).

As indicated the principles of condensation and displacement seem to fit well to the idea that the beginning of thought should be seen as a sea of vagueness, where only characteristics of world are present and a real true recognition of things does not take place. The a-rational principles described by Freud nevertheless here are not the outcome of a defense process but the first and natural form of thinking (10). The hallucinatory wish fulfillment enriches this process – described by Peirce rather static – by the wish (Freud 1900: 568). The wish – or let’s talk of drive here – gets the baby to imagine a scene where it experiences once more an experience of the past. Hereby the baby does not imagine the mother as a whole person, but it only remembers certain characteristics, maybe her scent, and her kind of holding the baby. This is what also the Kleinians call part-objects. Obviously it is impossible to know how active a child is in imagining this comfortable feelings. But something, a motive or an energy which builds something like a motor for the following processes must be assumed. And I think the drive is a rather good concept for this (11).

The wish to re-experience the same could be seen as an expression of the principle of insisting that characterizes the First. There is no recognition of differences, but the same is experienced again and again. David Olds, another American psychoanalyst who is preoccupied with neuropsychoanalysis, Peirce and psychoanalysis writes:
„Semiotic theory leads us to focus on the repetition-compulsion as fundamental to much repetitive behavior, some, but not all, of which is maladaptive and out of a person's control. The repetition structures transference responses and many behavioral complexes we term “characterologic.” A repetition is, by definition, iconic.” (Olds 2003: 91).
For me my occupation with the First also made the Freudian thing presentation more vivid. Paradoxically with the thing presentation we do not have to deal with things but rather qualities, characteristics of things which bump against us like outer things, kinaesthetically, olfactory, gustative, optical or acoustical, like things (or qualities of things) do. Meanwhile if we have a thing in mind, because the term suggests this, a thing as it is, undigested within the mind, we are misled. The thing presentation is the sensual trace which rises whenever we see something similar.

I have referred on the hallucinatory wish fulfillment in order to investigate the process of perception which according to Peirce also begins here. Perception starts on this totally unconscious level of First. We perceive qualities, qualities which we have perceived before. The whole process from the first percept to the perceptual judgment proceeds in stages. To understand this we have to go further and take into account the Second, in other words the contact with reality. Peirce imagines that complex processes of understanding are happening here, which – although entirely unnoticed by the individual – result in the perceptual judgment (on the level of the Third).
On all levels of these processes run abductive inferences (cp. the adjacent article) and the judgment in the end is also only a hypothesis, if we look at it closely (CP 7:597–688). It would take too much room here to explain those processes in detail. Important is that according to Peirce perception begins, obviously different from Freud, in the unconscious part of the human psyche. That’s what I was diffidently hinting at at the end of a conference lately, saying that Freud possibly was wrong considering perception as an function of the ego and characterizing it therefore as conscious. My wish to criticise Freud originated in the study of Peirce’s writings. Meanwhile the same insight also seems to grow out of the bunch of new developments on which I referred above. Actually I found the following quote in Mertens: „For introspection it seems evident that perception generates unmediated in consciousness or is even identical with the last. Also Freud acted on this assumption but it proved as erroneous. In reality the non-conscious percept on his way to consciousness has suffered an amount of corrections and omissions, but also a considerable increase of meaning“ (2013: 824).

Once more I would like to add that these processes are not imaginable without acknowleging an energy which carries our knowledge along. With this in mind I still appreciate the Freudian concept of drive and I also sympathize with Klein’s and Bion’s setting of a third motive, the drive of knowledge.
As I stated in a former contribution (Saller 2011: 151f) the Freudian explication of the concept of the drive and his perceptual identity (Wahrnehmungsidentität) can also be read as a principle of capacity to symbolize. In my view there is nothing to be said against the integration of the drive as a fundamental motivation into the Peircean universe of signs. On the contrary: the drive which originates between soma and psyche and could therefore be considered as helpful for overcoming of the dualistic world view, what also was one of the central concerns of Peirce.

My optimistic view of this contrasts with the rather negative judgment of two colleagues who also since years are preoccupied with the subject contrast. Kettner, in his „Reflexionen über das Unbewusste“ refers to the sceptic evaluation of Bonnie Litowitz (1991), who then wrote „The catch is that neither linguistic nor semiotic theory contains within it any element that could replace the function of energy in Freud’s theory; that is, as a motivational source of intentionality“ (p. 103). Kettner certainly comments (Kettner/Mertens, S 106), that the possibilities of semiotics are not exhausted yet and he holds out the prospect of better and more opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue. But at the same time he is afraid that the whole enterprise finally could prove futile, and he compares it to the artificial language esperanto, which in the end did not contribute a lot to understanding among nations. This pessimism maybe refers to a project where authors isolate the semiotic from the rest of the Peircean complete philosophical work and try to transfer these schematic thoughts to psychoanalysis. In my view it is justified to leave the semiotic approach within the coherence of Peirce’s general account of what is the essence of humanity (12). This means above all, that Peirce’s pragmatism should be included although – as I will indicate at the end of my article – the Peircean work has much more to offer.

It is not my intent to introduce semiotics as a dry categorization, simply in order to have some have some more complicated terms within psychoanalytical theory but to take up the Peircean input, who always considered the process of interpretation as the subject. I would like to show this in my consideration of the Second. The above described iconic impressions transform into indexical signs even before we get aware of them. The Second therefore is the moment, where a stimulus from the outer world startles the person who is absorbed in her thoughts. We can visualize once more the situation where the described impressions of similarity remind us of something already seen in the past. It is here were the sign process starts. The momentaneous impression can be taken then as a sign for the occurrence, that appears in our memory. This is the step where our momentaneous sense impression – let us think of a madeleine – turns into a sign for a childhood memory.
What exactly does this have to do with psychoanalysis? I am stating here that the Freudian unconscious is to be found at the levels of First and Second. The utilization of two levels is similar to Green’s (1979) separation of the repressed into affect (Second) and the Imagination (First). The Second is the place where reality is met – together with this goes, it is the place of defenses. It is the place of learning and the place of refusal to learn. Asking if the Second and indexical signs are conscious or unconscious the answer is twofold (13). Indexical signs are dependent on the speaker’s and hearer’s here and now. Using indexes, the sender of the message points normally at things which are located within the range of vision. They are particular. It is only the symbols which allow us to think things, which are not, or are not here. It is only in area of symbolic that rational thoughts, which are so important for the conscious self, can develop. This is one of the answers.

The other answer says that Second cannot be seen as unconscious, because it is here that we find the clash with reality, which – and this is a further communality with psychoanalysis (and especially with psychoanalysis according to Bion) – quite often is described as brute and decisive (14). Another possiblity is, that our response to the reality as it urges us to acknowledge it is surprise – also a reaction on the conscious level (cp.Cooke 2011).

Second signifies therefore the invasion of reality into our dreamy state. It marks the threshold of consciousness and the place where contents are kept in the unconscious state (15). Because reality (or the other) bumps us we are forced to pay attention, to look at it and focus our attention. And while we rouse from the dreamy silence of First, we have to react. This is the reason why I will treat affects as well as self as expressions of Second. Another expression of the Second are defense processes. Paraphrasing Bion, one could characterize them as refusal to learn from experience. But why put the self within the level of the Second? The idea is, that we cannot experience ourself as self until we are confronted with this outer energy or until we feel its impact. Another form to express this would be, that we cannot experience ourself as selfs until we have heard the no, in behalf of our wishes. Another expression of the self’s being on the level of the Second is, that within language, personal pronouns are the most important pronouns. They show the speaker and listener who speaks and what is the subject of the speech.

The already mentioned Olds refers to the working of affects as a semiotic system (cp. 2003). He stresses the indexes‘ function of regulating the distance to the object. Indexes, in his view, serve the individual to express his wish for the object, respective his wish of distance to the object: “Indeed there is something about the affect system that is peculiarly indexical: affects are derived from the evolution of approach-avoidance systems“ (The same 2000: 512, emphasis of the author). The aspect of affective regulation on the level of distance and closeness is also emphasized by the authors of CPSG. They tag this as the micro-level of analysis (The same 2002).
The affect’s pointing at the other can be seen in relation to the pragmatic orientation of Peirce’s semiotic. The point is not simply an emotionless interchange of signs, but our state of mind, our gestures and our speaking is integrated in a coherent whole from the beginning.

I would like to illustrate the indexical signs‘ integration in intention with a remark of the philosopher Helmut Pape. Pointing at the vagueness of indexical signs, he writes, – and he critisizes the american philosophy of language, which bases her analysises exclusively on sentences which describe the world – : “ The Vagueness of indexical signs […] just is not founded in an omission, but on the implicite request to complete out of the situational knowledge“ (The Same, p. 10/11). Pape with this indicates the near relationship of silent gestures and short indexical interjection. For example I call: „here!“, seeing that my collegue turns back, looking for me behind him, meanwhile I was walking in front of him; or someone shouts: “Fire” in order to warn other people.
Indexical expressions indicate the social environment to which the spoken words and signs refer.16 Michael Tomasello (2002), Peter Fonagy (2006) and other have shown that in one of the most important stages leading to the capacity to mentalize the baby and one of his parents often look at the same thing indicating with their finger to it and speaking about it. And again, the attention is focused on the object, creating this shared space through indicating and the use of indexical expressions, as f. e.: “Look at this, this is interesting”; or simply pointing a finger at something, stammering: “hm, hm, hm!”

Now I would like to show how Peircean terms help to describe processes of development and interpretation without losing their liveliness. The character of process can be demonstrated in the sign types’ tendency to change. There is a contradiction in the indexes: On the one hand, they have something very particular, they only talk of one very particular thing or place. But on the other hand, they are subjected to the linguistic rules; and in that, they have something general. That means, although every time someone articulates a “I”, another person, another particular, unique human is meant, but there is the rule that it is always the speaker, who is meant. In this the linguistic indexes are already in between of Second and Third.
In a similar way I indicated above to the iconic quasi-signs’ tendency to transform into indexes. As I showed we can find the trend in direction of symbolical within indexicality. Thought is always in movement, signs develop.
But in this process deadlocks are happening. Further above I considered the baby observer’s accounts as to harmonious. In opposition to these, in analytical treatments we also have to deal with the desperately disappointed child, the child who retires into a corner and has its own thoughts. The sulking child which invents a story of the mother, falling to the floor, striking her head, prone and bleeding. The sulking child cannot abandon itself to his thoughts, like they run through its head, but it tries to get rid of these appalling pictures.

Or, we have to do with a man, who is so desperately looking for appreciation, that in all his saying whatever he says with regards to content, he only expresses: “Look up to me”. John P. Muller, another Peirce-expert and psychoanalyst calls this phenomenon „coerced mirroring“. Muller gives a resumé of baby observation and relational psychotherapy from the semiotic point of view. He shows the undiscerning character of thinking in dyads and he points out that the mother is able to adopt her task of mirroring only because she herself is rooted in the Third, in culture and language: „Such acts of mutual recognition are possible because the infant’s rudimentary semiotic competence is engaged by the mother’s deictic framework, concretized by her use of pronouns“(1996, p. 67).

He warns therapists about staying deadlocked in the Second, in coerced mirroring. „A two-person model may be used to simplify the interactional field, making it easier to reduce psychopathology to victimization, as damage done by one to another, as the encounter of two masses, limiting it to Peirce’s category of Secondness. Patients themselves pressure us to think of them as victims” (at the same place, p. 72/73).

A big part of the linguistic signs are conventional or, to say it in Saussure’s jargon, arbitratry (16). For Peirce the Third, sort of high point of sign processes, implies the capability of men to take habits and to change them self reflective. To say it in other words, the faculty to larn is adressed. How I already denoted, I would characterize psychoanalytical described defense mechanimsm as deadlocks within the process of sign interpretation (cp. also Colapietro 1989).
Peirce identified himself epistemologically as a fallibilist that means he acknowledged every knowledge only as valid for a time, until another experience or the experience of other will show me, that it was not as I thought. Lifelong learning was therefore a matter of course for Peirce. But obviously there are hold-ups, also according to Peirce. In his „The Fixation of Belief“ (CP: 5.358–387) he considers several methods how we try to reach a knowledge that seems subjectively firm, for example the method of tenacity or the method of authority.

It is certainly clear that for Peirce the best method is the scientific one, and that means, the method where the individual is ready to learn something new, over and over. But he is aware that many people choose one of the other methods – and this choice corresponds to hold-ups within the ideally conceptualized, ever going further process of sign interpretation.

Is there something that differentiates neurotic tenacity of normal tenacity? The idea of clearly distinct people with mental illness on the one hand and healthy, normal on the other is obsolete in psychoanalysis since a long time. Every behavior has its healthy and its neurotic side. Still we need the vision of processes which destabilize the psychical balance beyond all measure on the one part, and on the other part developments in which stability mutates to inflexibility or rigidness.
In how we conceptualize the relationship between the two types we also here are well advised with the idea of continuity. This means we imagine these forms as continuously merging and consider the differences more as quantitative than qualitative.
The psychoanalytical process were then a process of accompanied self-reflexion. As the other has anyway a lot to say within the production of meaning and sense, the analyst as a meaningful other person is the one who helps to stand anxieties which were considered as unbearable by the subject. The analysands get help in developing what according to Peirce would be a scientific attitude, for us the capability to learn.

The important kernel of what was said meanwhile is, that with the highest step in the process of sign interpretation, we reach the ability to improve and with this the responsibility of one’s own and self-care is addressed. I would like to remind the quote of Muller above, where he speaks of the patient’s tendency to present themselves as victims, an attitude which contradicts this self-responsability. Peirce has this hope that humans are able to resume the responsibility for their libidinal impulses and deeds (17). It is this hope that makes Peirce’s work suitable to promote further development of the psychoanalytical theory. And it is this attitude that is fundamentally psychoanalytic and that seems to have disappeared within the above addressed developments of dyadic psychoanalytical therapy according to CPSG.

Unfortunately this is not the place to present the many further fascinating topics in Peirce’s writings, fascinating for me. I would to mention only passing that e.g. Peirce’s theories comprehend biology, functioning of the psyche, body and mind in the same way. This is very promising for many today’s mind preoccupying topics as e.g. psychosomatics, or pharmatherapy (Olds, 2000, p. 525). Semiosis is definitely very apt to explain the way humans think. Peirce nevertheless recognizes semiotic processes not only in man’s mind, but also in the biological world as e.g. animals, plants, and even in the universe. This extension of the subject of investigation carries the chance to bridge the gap between science and arts/Humantities without reductionism.
But let’s stay modest and let us state in the end: „A central point of all this is that this model gives a unified framework in which to fit our clinical theories and research paradigms. “ (on the same place: 524).

Bohleber, W. (2013): Editiorial. “Der psychoanalytische Begriff des Unbewussten und seine Entwicklung“. Psyche 67, 9/10, 807–816.
Boston Change Process Study Group (CPSG) (2007): The foundational level of psychodynamic meaning: Implicit process in relation to conflict, defense and the dynamic unconscious. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88, S. 1–16
The same (2002): Explicating the implicit: The local level and the microprocess of change in the analytic situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 83, S. 1051–1062.
The same (1998): Non-interpretative mechanismsin psychoanalytic therapy. The ‚something more‘ than interpretation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 79, p. 903–9021
Colapietro, V. M. (1989): Peirce's Approach to the Self. A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. New York: State University of New York Press.
The same (1995): Notes for a Sketch of the Peircean Theory of the Unconscious. Trans. of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 31, 3, 482–506.
Cooke, E.F. (2011): Phenomenology of Error and Surprise: Peirce, Davidson and McDowell. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47, 1, 62–86.
Fonagy, Peter et al. (2006/2002): Affektregulation, Mentalisierung und die Entstehung des Selbst. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Englisch: Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.

Green, André (1979): Psychoanalytische Theorien über den Affekt. In Psyche 33, 8, 681-732.

The same (1999): Über Geschiedenheit und Ungeschiedenheit von Affekt und Vorstellung. Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis.14, 2, 138-195.
The same (2000): Science and science-fiction in der Säuglingsforschung. Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis 15; 4, 438–466.

The same (2002): La Tiercéité. The same La Pensée Clinique. Paris: Edition Odile Jacob. S. 259–380.
Hacking, Ian (1995): Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Scienes of Memory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Houser, N. (1983): Peirce’s General Taxonomy of Consciousness. In: Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society. 19:331-359.

Junker, H. (2013): Intersubjektivität und implizites Gedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel.

Kettner, M., Mertens, W. (2010): Reflexionen über das Unbewusste. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Litowitz, B. E. (1991): Elements of Semiotic Theory Relevant to Psychoanalysis. Dies./Epstein, Ph. ( Hrsg.): Semiotic Perspectives on Clinical Theory and Practice, Medicine, Neuropsychiatry, and Psychoanalysis (S. 81–110) Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.

The same (2005): When “Something More” is Less. Commentary On the Boston Changes Process Study Group. Journal of the American Psychoanal. Association 53, 751–759.
McDougall, J. (1985): Plädoyer für eine gewisse Anormalität. Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp, S. 426–432

Mertens, W. (2013): „Das Zwei-Personen-Unbewusste“. Psyche 67, 9/10, 817–843.

Noy, P. (1969): The Primary Process. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 60, S. 155–178.

Olds, D. D. (2000): “A Semiotic Model of Mind”. Jounal of American Psychoanalytical Association 48, S. 497– 529.

The same (2003): “Affect as a Sign System”, Neuropsychoanalysis 5, S. 81–95.

Pagel, G./ Weiss, H. (1993): Erkenntnistheoretische Aspekte im Werk von W.R. Bion und J. Lacan. Tress, W. und Nagel, St. ( Hrsg.): Psychoanalyse und Philosophie: eine Begegnung. Heidelberg: Roland Asanger: 170-182.
Pape, H. (2002): „Indexikalität und die Anwesenheit der Welt in der Sprache“. Kettner, M. und Pape, H. ( Hrsg.): Indexikalität und sprachlicher Weltbezug. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag. S. 91–119.

Peirce, Ch. S. (1931-1958): The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. I-VI ed. Ch. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-1935. Vols. VII-VIII ed. A. W. Burks 1958.

Petitmengin, C. (2007): “Towards the source of thoughts. The gestural and transmodal dimension of lived experience”. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14, 3, 54–82.

Renik, O. (1998): The Analyst’s Subjectivity and the Analyst’s Objectivity. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 79, S. 487-497.

Saller, V. (n.y.): What exactly does thinking mean? A few possible answers to preliminary questions concerning a pragmatic-semiotic-psychoanalytic theory of thought. Unveröffentlichtes Manuskript.
The same (2003): Wanderungen zwischen Ethnologie und Psychoanalyse.Psychoanalytische Gespräche mit Migrantinnen aus der Türkei. Dissertation. Tübingen: edition diskord.

The same (2005): „Ein Zeichenbegriff für die Psychoanalyse“. Journal für Psychoanalyse, 44, S. 7–34.

The same (2011): „Kann es ein Unbewusstes geben?“ Journal für Psychoanalyse 52, 147–162

The same (1996): From pure icon to metaphor: Six degrees of iconity. Colapietro and Olshewsky (eds): Peirce’s Doctrine of Signs. Theory, Applications and Connections. Berlin. New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 205-214.
The same (1993): Difficulties and Strategies in Applying Peirce’s Semiotics. Semiotica 97, 3/4, 401–410.

Stern, D. (1985): The Interpersonal World of the Infant. A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic Books.

The same (2000): Zur Bedeutung der empirischen Säuglingsforschung für die Psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis. Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Theorie und Praxis 15; 4, 468–483.
Tauber, A. (2010): Freud. The Reluctant Philosopher. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 17
Tomasello, Michael (1999): The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA und London, UK: Harvard.
Toulmin, Stephen (1990): Cosmopolis. The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. New York: The Free Press.
Warsitz, R.P. (2007): Stern, Daniel: Der Gegenwartsmoment. Veränderungsprozesse in Psychoanalyse, Psychotherapie und Alltag. Buchbesprechung. Psyche 61, 01, 79–84. 18.

(1) The German version of this article was published as target article in Journal für Psychoanalyse, 2005, Vol 55, pp. 5–29. For quotations please consult the print-version ISBN 978-3-03777-142-6
In this issue of Journal für Psychoanalyse you also find five replica by Eugen Baer, Christian Hauser, Bonnie E. Litowitz, Wolfgang Mertens and Mirna Würgler. You also find a duplica by the author. Further contributions by Milan Scheidegger, Rosmarie Barwinski and Vincent Colapietro treat the subject of Charles S. Peirce and Psychoanalysis. (Vera Saller 14.10.2013).

(2) Cf. How to make our ideas clear, CP 5:386–410. Peirce quotation from Collected Papers: CP Vol: Paragraph.

(3) All quotations from German speaking media are my translation, V.S.

(4) Cp. the debate about baby observation’s relevance for psychoanalysis. In German: Green 2000 und Stern 2000.

(5) In antique and mediveal times the social, i.e. cultural origin of knowledge was a matter-of- course. It was the enlightenment with its overestimation of rationality however put the origin of knowledge within the individual (Toulmin 1990 calls this “the myth of tabula rasa). Only in the recent 50 years, occidental intellectual history began to discover this thoughts anew. Peirce was one of the forerunner of this revolution, which could be characterised with reference the names of Ludwig Fleck and Thomas S. Kuhn.

(6) .g. Owen Renik: “We were trying to devise a view of Ethan's life, present and past, that worked, i.e. that helped him feel better"(1998, S. 492).

(7) E6 Cp: “My own list grew originally out of the study of the table of Kant.” (CP 1:300)

(8) For an easily understandable summary of the Peircean categories consult Houser 2000.

(9) One of Peirce’s definitions of sign: „A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign or perhaps a more developed sign“ (CP 2:228).

(10) A Representamen by firstness alone can only have a similar object. Thus a Sign by Contrast denotes its object only by virtue of a contrast or Secondness, between two qualities. A sign by firstness is an imago of its object and, more strictly speaking, can only be an idea (CP2.276, emphasis of the author).

(11) Cp. the beautiful title of a paper of Claire Petitmengin: „Towards the source of thoughts“. This First-Person researcher investigates with qualitative interviews where conscious thought may come from and how it develops. Unfortunately she includes neither Peirce nor psychoanalysis in her considerations.

(12) Thomas Short (2007) demonstrates Peirce’s understanding of science tolerating teleological causalities. Referring to human behavior Peirce often mentions its purpose. I elsewhere hinted at the imilarity of the Freudian concept of drive and the Peircean purpose (Saller n.y.).

(13) I am following Colapietro, 1995, who in his turn takes the advice from Santaella Braga, who warns not to take Peircean terms out of their general coherence (ebd. S. 483). He quotes Santaella Braga, 1993: „When seen in the light of the philosophical foundation in which they are rooted, Peirce’s definitions and classifications of signs do not appear as mere classifications strict sensu, but as patterns which include […]all the ontological and epistemological aspects of the sign universe: the problem of reference; of reality and fiction […]; the question of objectivity[…]; the logical analysis of meaning […]; and the problem of truth […]” (S. 405, Hervorhebung der Autorin).

(14) Obviously there were several trials to bring together First, Second and Third with the Lacanian register of Imaginary, Real and Symbolic. That this does not necessarily work turns out in that in two different trials did not reach to the same result. So there was the version with First as Real (cp. Muller 1996, 75ff) and the other one where the First was equated with the Imaginary (vgl. Santaella 2005 ). The important thing meanwhile is, that the Lacanian Real and Peirce’s reality (which at the level of Second projects into the sign process) are different things. It is here were the pessimistic, sceptical world view, marked by existentialism clashes with the fundamentally optimistic tuned american way of life.

(15) Green (2002, S. 78) considers as an advantage of Peirce compared with Lacan, that he is thinking the conflict from the beginning. I think that with this remark he refers to the individual’s being startled and forced to leave its obliviousness to one‘s surroundings and to acknowledge reality as it is.

(16) I agree with Colapietro who mentions the necessity of a theory about how preconscious thought is admitted to consciousness „Not only do we need an account of how ideas become operative in the unconscious […], we also need to comprehend how preconscious ideas become conscious“ (Cp. The same 1995, p. 492).

(17) I think I have already made clear that Peirce’s model of sign, compared with the structuralist’s one, has the advantage, that also pre-linguistic signs play an important role. For a more detailed explicaton of the advantages of Peirce’s semiotic compared with structuralism cp. also Colapietro 1989, Saller 2005, Short 2007:228f.

(18) Cp. Also the study of Ian Hacking (1996) who asks, what kind of culture produces such an amount of people who wish to be seen as victims.