Taken from a Lacanian Approach

To begin with, first a word about the title. Here Jones presents a theory dealing with symbolism, so from the outset it must be differentiated from the symbolic. Let me briefly remind you that in psychoanalysis the symbolic order corresponds with something or someone which is missing from its place, for example, a book which isn’t found where expected on the library shelf, or more extreme still, that which has been lost, like the loss of someone dear. More generally speaking, the symbolic relates to what is missing, not only by accident, in a contingent way, but as a function linked to the structure of ‘speaking being’. It is thus that we can read the starting point of Freud’s “Urverdrängt”, of originary repression. Because when a signifier falls from the chain of signifiers to be primordially repressed, the subject is marked therefore by a symbolic gap, and equally becomes a symbolic subject, a subject marked by a gap, which is exactly what is treated in psychoanalysis. Therefore the symbolic and the unconscious are found to have a similar status, due to this collision between the symbolic order and the unconscious.

Thus the symbolic order as a structure, as unconscious, is to be distinguished from symbolism, which remains, for its part, attached to an object, or which is, like in a dream, represented by an object or by a person. However, this distinction does not necessarily exclude symbolism from the symbolic plain because symbolism can play a part in this symbolic order, for example through agreements, exchanges, and more precisely through donations, as Lacan reminds us in “Function and Field of Speech and Language”. If, nonetheless, it can be inscribed in symbolism, it is not precisely the symbol which structurally represents this symbolic dimension.  

So in an attempt to give justice to Jones in his endeavour, the question that I will pose is to enquire as to what he is trying to articulate through this question of the symbol, because in effect, what he is striving to do here is to outline, to invent something, yet without the tools of contemporary linguistics. Moreover, in his opening lines he clearly sets out his starting point as being a concern for psychoanalysis, since he is surprised by the fact that the interpretation of the symbols infers, as he puts it, “the greatest resistance”.

Directly after this point he states – and I read it as if it were part of a psychoanalysis session – he tells us this: “With the symbol, we find ourselves faced with a question, which by its very generality, bears on the entire development of civilization. In fact, what exactly is civilization, if not an endless series of substitutions?” I emphasize this term ‘substitution’. Therefore, he places substitution at the heart of the human process, which perhaps for us is not without making reference to the question of metaphor as a substitution of signifiers. But he raises our hopes in vain, because at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to set off down that path. And moreover, he is not alluding to metaphor as we understand it. He pinpoints two ideas within symbolism : firstly a form of gradual progress, progressing step by step towards the abstract, which he considers to belong to a type of movement that shifts from the simplest to the most complex form (thus, on a metonymic register,) and then he continues by linking symbolism and representation, saying :“Symbolism is a way of representing the truth.” 

Taking into account the diversity that this symbolism covers, he begins by bringing forward six attributes, six common criteria, which we will now list before going on to discuss them point by point.

The first point is the following: a symbol represents another idea, from which it draws a secondary signification, which alone it does not possess. Once again, he alludes to the question of substitution, which could call to mind the metaphor, but this time he is speaking about the substitution of an idea, which is to say something that, it would appear to me, could be situated in the field of the signified.

Second point: a symbol represents the primary element because it has something in common with it. He highlights the close association between the terms that substitute each other, and not the heterogeneity between the elements.

Third point: he indicates the concrete aspect of the symbol.

Fourth point: his conception of symbolism adheres to the idea of a regression towards methods of thinking which he calls primitive.

Fifth point: the symbolism is used to express an idea, which is hidden, secret or reserved, and perhaps we can understand by that a suggestion of repression.

Finally, the sixth point: he claims that there lies a link between symbol and witticism. Aware that witty remarks often play on condensed or shifted meanings, he therefore draws a link to the question of language within that symbol.

These six criteria are not, claims Jones, specific to symbolism, but concern all unconscious, figurative representations, that including the symbol. That is to say that the symbol is considered here from the angle of image and representation – in other words, from the imaginary side nevertheless.

The question that comes immediately to Jones is precisely that of the metaphor, though he tries to refute it, and distinguish it from what he calls “true” symbolism. However, despite his refutation, he alludes to it all the same – appearing as almost a negation, something which comes up regularly in the text – even though, in my opinion, the metaphor as he sees it has nothing to do with what Lacan later develops on the subject of metaphor.  He therefore tries to specify the metaphor so as to differentiate it from symbolism.

What does he tell us about the metaphor? Firstly, that it is originally derived from the comparison, and that at its root it is a form of comparison that gradually lost the term “like”. Jones, as we have established, does not have the appropriate linguistic tools, though he is nevertheless practically ‘Saussurien’. Since as in the case of Saussure himself, we can say that he does not recognize the question or function of the bar which separates the signifier from the signified in the written form of the linguistic symbol. According to Lacan, this emphasis placed on the bar distinguishes our understanding of the signifier from our ‘linguisterie’ – (the psychoanalytical use of linguistic concept, and the relationship between linguistics and hysteria, where meaning in language fails.) It could be said that the metaphor is the effect of the substitution of signifiers, which leads to the creation and invention of a new meaning that is impossible to predefine or anticipate. Jones has a tendency to maintain that if the metaphor is fulfilled, it is because there is already a common point, a point of comparison between the terms where one substitutes the other.  

Therefore for Jones the crucial point lies in pinpointing a previous shared meaning. The closer the meaning created for the second term is to the first, then the more effective the metaphor. However, it is the very opposite which seems to apply, since the further the new, inferred meaning is from first, then the more inventive and successful becomes the metaphor. It would also appear to me that Jones favours the signified, speaking to us of the prevalent idea within the metaphor.  Psychoanalysis reveals however that the signifier never functions by virtue of its signification for the subject, but according to its very difference from other signifiers, including its own difference from itself. Therefore, no direct connection can be made between signifier and signified. The metaphor, in an analytical sense, can only work if the primary meaning is lost, because the substitution of a signifier by another reduces the signifier being replaced to the position of signified.  

Jones’s own reading of the metaphor is therefore a wholly traditional one, which is commonly found in literature for example, and indeed Lacan levels the very same accusation against Perlmann in the appendix to “Ecrits” (Writings), under the heading “The Metaphor of the Subject”.  For Jones the metaphor doesn’t make a statement which is fundamentally different to the rest, and I believe that his perception leads him to get the metaphor stuck in the logic of analogy, as opposed to separating it radically from the question of image.

Jones then goes on to describe a supposed development in the way the metaphor is introduced, which he calls the “decline of the metaphor”, and which he then lays out in three points. According to him, this development is based on the signified progressively taking on a figurative meaning. He finishes this first section by pushing the metaphor into the “theory of knowledge”, the metaphor being an easier mechanism, he says, to compensate for lack of understanding. Therefore, the conclusion so far of this first part is not to relegate the symbol to its function of metaphoric signifier, as would be expected today, and Jones makes a point of freeing this metaphorical dimension from anything to do with the symbol.  Thus he makes that separation, and he goes on to try to define the symbol without having to evoke the question of metaphor.

In the second chapter, Jones does something that I find wholly remarkable. In order to illustrate true symbolism, he refers to a particular symbol that he claims to be totally different from all others, that is to say, he goes on to speak about the phallic symbol in his development of the Punchinello, which is precisely where he brings in caricature and the comic dimension. It seems to me to be a surprising coup of intuition, as the example par excellence of the metaphor, as we understand it, is that of the “Name of the Father”, the very same metaphor behind the phallic symptom – that is to say, it is a structure that centres itself on a lack, and which gives the chain of signifiers all its cohesion. And at his point I will not go into the issue of what appears to be his debatable comments on the phallic symbol as a representation of the penis: in any case, he considers the phallic symbol to be an example which differs wholly from all other examples of symbols, and he believes that by this approach he will reach his goal.

From there, he picks up from where Rank and Sach left off in their founding work on analytical symbolism, and in some respects this leads him into a certain impasse. So, in essence, these authors place the symbol in the domain of perception, which for them is tantamount to inferring that it compares with primitive thought. And they outline six extra criteria, which for some, are discussed by Jones

The first main criterium is that the symbol represents an unconscious material, where the repressed factor in the equation constitutes the effect. This point is debatable, in so far as Freud later goes on to claim that after Vorstellung repräsentnat it is the offshoots which are repressed, and never the affect. I reread a text he wrote in 1894 which states that the affect is converted, shifted, and transformed, but never repressed. But even if Jones imposes the question of repression on to the affect, there is still this hint towards repression that is brought with it.

Second point: these same authors suppose that the symbol has an invariable signification. Jones dismisses this point, saying that interpreting a symbol always depends on the specific context at the time, and that in principle there is no such thing as having a completely fixed status.

Third point: the symbol is independent of individual determinant factors. He equally criticizes this point, saying that the list of symbols is never closed off to the possibility of individual invention, which allows him, by the same token, to criticise the notion of heredity of ideas developed by Jung.

Fourth point: the linguistic relationship between the symbol and what it symbolises. On this point it would seem to me that Jones arrives at a contradiction regarding the separation that he had previously established between true symbolism and metaphor. In other words between symbolism and the interplay of the signifier, since, by virtue of the associated links that he sets out in relation to the “Pulchinella,” he suggests a series made up of phonematic word play that demonstrates precisely the signifier structure of this phallic symbol. In spite of himself, all he finds to write on the subject shows nevertheless, through an interplay of phonemes, the signifer movement that goes beyond any intention to signify. 

Fifth point: this refers to phylogenetic parallels. He talks to us about the ubiquitous nature of the symbol, and he places the symbol outside any particular class, nation, or era, doubtlessly mentioning the fact that it is rooted in language.

He concludes this second part by pointing out that the total number of symbols is far greater than the number of ideas symbolized, and he establishes what he calls the list of primary ideas. What does it consist of? He tells us that these primary ideas include the following: non-sexual concerns in small quantities, that is, everything to do with parents, birth and death; sexual concerns in large quantities, with everything linked to the phallus obviously being the most prevalent.

Thus, to try to shed more light on this phallic predominance, Jones turns to an interpretation which refers to the myth of a supposed prevalence of this sexual function in primitive man. But here we find ourselves confronted with a myth, and I believe that one must always try to see what the structure of a myth can reveal. Without a doubt, this phallic predominance is one of the physiological effects of language, and the consequence of the relationship between the subject and the Other, because this opening that the subject will find as a result of his primitive request will be symbolized by the phallus. This last point concerns the genesis of the symbolic, and he gives over an entire chapter to the subject.

I will now turn to the third chapter in question.

I will begin with a quote from Jones: “In the same way that the image is the basis of all metaphor, a primary identification forms the basis of all symbolism”. If you consider that identification is not the usual analytical concept, it must be specified that what Jones means here by “identification” is the perception of an object or image. It is in fact organized by the perception. For Jones this leads to the following question: why is it that two ideas, between which the conscious cannot find any resemblance, come to be identified by the unconscious.

Jones mentions three different answers:

First answer: he claims that it is due to an intellectual incapacity to discriminate amongst differing elements, therefore through a stopping of the discrimination process. This is what comes from Jung and Silberer, and that Jones nevertheless challenges, refusing a supposed apperceptive incapacity because this reading of Silberer is a very particular concept of the symbol, seeing it as an effect of inadequacy of perception.

Second point: he alludes to the pleasure principle as being the origin of symbolism. This principle, he tells us, encourages the link between new things and those already known, because effectively, it is a lot easier to consolidate established knowledge, than to accept what eventually comes along to dislodge that knowledge.

Therefore, the pleasure principle would lead to forming symbols through resemblance. To illustrate this point, Jones refers to the example of Darwin, seeking to highlight how the same label is given to different situations, which had common points that were easily identifiable. Without realising it, by virtue of this example, Jones goes more towards illustrating how the interplay of signifier takes form for a child, who plays at naming everything by a “couac,” thus disconnecting, as Lacan would say, the object from the child’s shout and in so doing, elevating the « couac » to the dimension of the signifier. This interplay is what brings about the separation between signifier and signified, thus conferring on the “couac” its true dimension of signifier.  And this is also what is suggested by those children’s games where they play at naming different things by a signifier, other than that which is commonly used.

Third point: he mentions the principle of reality. He says, “Identification forms the basis of symbolism as a means of adapting to reality, a means which becomes superfluous and takes on the simple signification of a symbol once the end goal, namely the adaptation, has finally been achieved.”

Jones ends by referring to the myth of the origin of symbolism as argued by Sperber, who believes that fundamentally every word presents a primarily sexual sense. This leads him to consider that there is an order of language development, which passes progressively through successive steps, beginning with the concrete dimension, passing through the general, and ending with the abstract. This echoes, for me, the question of metonymy, from the point of view of it being a process that operates in a step by step language along a path of contiguity. Finally, he presents the setup of the symbolic as always going in the same direction; he tells us that a bell tower can symbolize the phallus, but the phallus cannot symbolize a bell tower, which is one of the key points in his controversy with Siblerer and Jung, and which at the same time leads to the destruction of the theory of perception as being at the origin of the symbol. Since if it is due to resemblance that one can symbolize the other, then why can’t the phallus represent a bell tower? He quotes Ferenczi to more or less say that if an object is confused with another, it is due to certain internal factors, and that resemblance simply provides an opportunity for these internal factors to reveal themselves.

He concludes the chapter by finally bringing up the question of the symbolic in relation to that of repression, which is an important point, since if symbolism is to do with the metaphor, then the metaphor refers to the passage of a term below the line, a term which is therefore repressed.

There is an implied link here between repression and the metaphoric equation, since Jones’s theory holds that only that which is repressed is symbolized, adding that this point should be considered as a touchstone of the analytical theory of symbolism.  

So now I shall go directly to the conclusion, since the fourth part concerning the theory of Silberer is quite confused. To return to the heart of the matter, this section appears to date historically from Jung’s conflict. What Jones holds against Silberer is that the symbol represents something concrete – and he insists on this point – and not abstract from the outset, which enables him to refute Jung, who himself sees symbolism as representing the abstract in concrete terms, in other words, exactly the opposite. Thus for Jung, the serpent for example symbolizes the abstract idea of sexuality rather than the concrete idea, being the phallus. We don’t know what could be the concrete aspect of the phallus, but in any case it is an argument that Jones takes up so as to reverse the movement which consists, he tells us, for Jung of putting the “cart before the horse”; for example when he claims that it is the unconscious complex that symbolizes the symptom and not the symptom which symbolizes the unconscious complex. He says that in this equation, Silberer takes for being a symbol something which is nothing more than an emblem, in other words, a sign.

Jones ends this chapter examining the link between symbol and the learning process, and in particular, scientific learning.  Jung maintains that within the symbol there exists, already present, ulterior scientific knowledge, which supposes that all ulterior knowledge about the world is already present within the unconscious – which is a complete delusion.  Jones rejects this point of view, and presents us with a theory of science which, here again, is made up of gradual steps, and which would seem to me to put to work certain aspects of metonymy.

In conclusion – here I have simply mapped out several points, a few guidelines, which we can develop in detail later – for Jones, true symbolism is a radicalisation of all that concerns what he calls the metaphor. But his conception of the metaphor doesn’t appear to cover our approach to this question. All of his research into the setting up of the symbol doesn’t take into account in the symbol the leap itself which is inferred in all metaphor. Rather, through the progressive stages that he deploys, he appears to give the description of a metonymic process, with the symbol relating to and representing, for him, a signification which is already present. And this is how I understand the reference that he uses to conclude his work on the question of scientific generalization. Lacan’s approach, as laid out in the article he wrote on the subject “In Memory of Ernest Jones: On His Theory of Symbolism,” (‘Writings’, the first complete collection in English, p 585) is to consider the question of the signifier as being linked to a double equation, that is metaphoric and metonymic. Jones in his text attempts to highlight the question of the relationship with language, via the symptom and the symbol, which is no mean task: but the relationship with language that he brings out – and this is my hypothesis – appears to me to be exclusively connected to the metonymic process, and thus will not be without consequences later on.