You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A revision of (Jones') psychoanalytic theory of symbol formation is submitted in line with more recent investigations in the philosophy of language. Symbolization is conceived as an ego activity which elaborates unconscious stimuli. Conscious representations (symbols) are distinguished from repressed-unconscious clichés. Repression is interpreted as a formal regression in the process of symbolization which substitutes a cliché-determined blind acting-reacting (neurosis) for symbolically mediated, reflective behaviour. Symbols which are affected by the repressive process become excluded from generally comprehensible communication and are 'formulated' in a private language. Ordinary and private language do not, however, operate in mutually exclusive fashion, but tend rather to intermingle, with resulting extensions and limitations of meaning: 'language confusion'. By dint of secondary revision, private language remains woven into the fabric of ordinary language; this may leave doctor and patient with a (false!) sense of understanding. Private language always appears behind a mask of pseudo-ordinary language. This causes the peculiar difficulties of the therapeutic correction of language qua semantic revision. Its method corresponds neither to the model of 'explanation' nor to that of 'understanding', but appears rather as a hermeneutic method sui generis.