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ARTICLE HISTORY Received 26 January 2025; Accepted 25 April 2025
In his Target Article, Solms (2025) makes the following point beautifully:
When Freud, as a neurologist, tried to discern the ontological substrate of language, he came to the conclusion that it was something functional rather than anatomical: something ‘virtual’ which exists not within the elements of the nervous system but between them. (p. 15; emphasis in the original)
Thus, the betweenness is a very important point and may be one of the major elements in the evolution from molecules to signs. Function is a complex term. When we use it, we are usually explaining how something works, and we may say the function of the heart is to pump blood. One thing noted in this discussion is that a function has a purpose. And the reason that that function keeps happening is for that purpose, which benefits the organism. One thing to make clear is that with a function there are at least two elements, simply put, the cause and the effect. And when we do the cause, it is usually to get the effect, and it usually works. But what does it mean to say “functional rather than anatomical”? An immediate thought might be that “anatomical” is about where and how something works, and functional may be more about why it is chosen and why it works. Thus, we focus on the purpose more than on the mechanism.
And with a functional disorder, that function is what we want to understand: how the patient uses it to solve an emotional, usually unconscious problem. Anatomically, that sequence of neurological events would never be used to solve a normal problem. With an upper arm paralysis, the arm may be paralyzed to avoid one of its functions, such as aggression. The interference will be in the mind, in the communication and transfer between affects, and less in the neurons. And the work of therapy will be to discover that purpose. As we go up the evolutionary ladder that Solms describes, at each level the apparatus becomes more and more