Roy
Harris
Online
Freud and the Language Myth
Freud's account of 'forgetting' the name Signorelli (INP No.16) reveals a great deal about what he expected of one's command of language when functioning 'normally'. Not being able to recall the name is a parapraxis. But what exactly does that presuppose?
It presupposes that if we already know the meaning of a linguistic sign, that meaning should be available to us as a resource to deal with at least two types of question. One type of question involves being presented with the word, and then asked for information presumably known to all those who understand what it means. Such a question might be, to keep to Freud's example, 'Who is Signorelli?' or 'What did Signorelli do?' (Nothing here depends on the fact that Signorelli is a proper name. One might likewise expect someone who 'knows the meaning' of the word grass to be able to answer such questions as 'What is grass?' or 'Is grass green?')
The other type of question involves being able to produce the word when confronted with a question that can be answered simply by producing it. For instance, Q. 'Who painted the famous frescoes in Orvieto cathedral' A. 'Signorelli'; or, Q. 'What do sheep eat?' A. 'Grass'.
Let us assume for the moment that the answers given above are all satisfactory. The point to focus on is that there is nevertheless a deep asymmetry between these two types of question. Having forgotten the name of the painter who painted the frescoes is not at all on a par with having forgotten everything about the use of the name Signorelli. But Freud's expectation (i.e. what makes being unable to recall the name a case of parapraxis and thus requiring a causal explanation) is that someone familiar with the history of art in Italy ought not only to know the name of the painter of the Orvieto frescoes, but to manifest that knowledge by being able to produce the name of said painter when called upon to do so. When the name is (temporarily) forgotten, the disjunction is one between knowledge (which is assumed to remain intact) and its application (assumed to be locally defective for adventitious reasons). It is like the difference between knowing how to add up and occasionally getting a sum wrong. The error does not typify or exemplify one's mathematical competence. (If it did, one's mathematical competence would be zero.) But it is actually worse than that. The case of Signorelli is like having forgotten one of the numbers. One is reminded of the anecdote about the parachutist who failed to pull his ripcord, and on being rescued from the sea asked 'What comes after eight?' (The Freudian explanation would presumably be some personal hang-up about the word nine and its associations.)
Having excavated thus far beneath the surface of Freud's account, it seems clear where its roots lie. They stretch all the way back to the Aristotelian version of the language myth, which is unashamedly reocentric. The sign's very existence depends on some feature of external reality leaving an 'image' in the mind, to which a sound is then attached by 'convention'. So forgetting the name Signorelli is a malfunction involving just the 'conventional' part. The rest can remain intact. So we can 'know' who painted the frescoes at Orvieto, even if we have (temporarily, or even permanently) forgotten what his name was. (Or perhaps never knew?) The name is no more than a superficial (social) adjunct to a more fundamental (psychological/natural) structure, involving the man himself and his artistic achievement.
In other words, Freud's contribution to the investigation of 'forgetting' proper names is permeated with tacit epistemological assumptions about the relations between language and reality. It is a classic case of confusing interpretations with 'data'. It is also, at the same time, a legacy of the Cartesian view of the mind as a spectral machine (Ryle 1949). Freud's inability to produce the name Signorelli when required is interpreted ab initio as a case of 'forgetting', and thus requires 'explanation'. Why? Because minds in good working order do not forget. They should 'automatically' come up with the name of whoever is known to have done this or that. If the mind fails, then it must have been 'prevented' from carrying out its pre-ordained mechanical function.
The example also highlights Freud's tacit commitment to a dualist theory of the linguistic sign. That is central to his whole diagnosis of the problem. In other words, he assumes that the trouble cannot have anything to do with the bearer of the name (which his conscious mind can readily identify as 'the artist who painted the cathedral frescoes at Orvieto'), and therefore it must have something to do with the name itself. For, from a dualist perspective, there is no other component to take into consideration: name and bearer jointly exhaust the possibilities. This is the dualist thinking that leads Freud to ask what is difficult about recalling that name (i.e. irrespective of the bearer); which in turn leads him to identify the source of trouble in its phonological/morphological composition.
It is here that Freud's assumptions concerning languages as codes become apparent. In order to explain the suppression of Signorelli, he needs somehow to reinterpret the name, so as to make it mean something other than 'the artist who... etc.'. So he does this by, in effect, conjuring up an unconscious 'Italo-Germanic' code, which re-analyses the name and assigns the meaning 'Herr' to the first two syllables. (What the rest of the name means he never explains.) This is necessary because phonological coincidence will not do the trick: there is no formal homophony between any of the syllables of Signorelli and those of Bosnia or Herzogovina. The connexion has to be semantic, and this can be effected only by hypothesizing a latent code in which that connexion is established by courtesy of the two already existing Italian and German words signore and Herr, (thus anticipating by decades Lacan's overtly 'Saussurean' claims about the unconscious being structured like a language).
Freud is not interested at all in the circumstantial question of how forgetting a name may affect the communicational process. The spectrum of possibilities is very wide. In the most serious cases, when a name is missing communication breaks down altogether - or cannot even get started. But often the impact on a communication situation is much less. In the Signorelli case, it seems to have been minimal. It did not prevent Freud from continuing with his conversation about travel in Italy; for the name could easily be omitted, or bypassed by substituting a description. At the most, it might have occasioned a momentary embarrassment at having to reformulate a sentence - or even having to admit a temporary lapse of memory. His companion did not apparently volunteer the name Freud had forgotten. The fact that in analysing the incident Freud supplies no such details is itself significant. It emphasizes how far away he is from thinking of the name as a sign having an ongoing integrational function in a specific situation, as distinct from occupying a static, quasi-permanent place in a codified nomenclature.
It is thus the language myth that not only tacitly underwrites Freud's
analysis of the parapraxis but dictates the entire logic of his 'explanation'.
What unconsciously steers his thinking is a very traditional belief about
the linguistic role of proper names.
REFERENCES
Freud, S. (1901), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, trans.
A. Tyson, Harmondsworth, Penguin,1971.
Ryle, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind, London, Hutchinson
