O significante em Lacan e antes dele

Abstract

The first debates in Western philosophy about language and the meaning attributed to what is spoken are presented. From there, I briefly follow the course of the debate in philology and linguistics in the 18th and 19th centuries, until I reach Ferdinand de Saussure’s conceptualization of the linguistic sign. Next, a few words are said about Roman Jakobson’s thought concerning metaphor and metonymy in aphasias. Supported by these initial ideas, the creation of the psychoanalytic method is discussed as a natural unfolding of the search for meaning that exists in the background of language studies. The unconscious is understood as a concept necessary to explain the phenomena observed by Freud and not explainable by the medical and psychological theories of the time. The use of language in psychoanalytic technique is discussed, presenting the function of symbol, involved in psychoanalytic interpretation. This first psychoanalysis is compared to Lacan’s formulations in the 1950s, founded on the symbolic dimension, with the combination of signifiers as the motor that governs the unconscious effects produced in the person’s life. Finally, a clinical case assisted at the Centro de Serviços de Psicologia Aplicada (CSPA) is presented.