
Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2012
Pages: 243-255
Series: Phaenomenologica
ISBN (Hardback): 9789400718470
Full citation:
, "Toward a semantics of the symptom", in: Founding psychoanalysis phenomenologically, Berlin, Springer, 2012


Toward a semantics of the symptom
the world of fraud
pp. 243-255
in: Dieter Lohmar, Jagna Brudzińska (eds), Founding psychoanalysis phenomenologically, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
This paper arises out of collaborative work between a psychosomatic physician and a philosopher that uses an analysis of a 30-year-old woman suffering from tinnitus to begin framing what we call a semantics of psychosomatic symptoms. We suggest that her symptom has a truth-bearing function that can be discovered once we understand the symptom as situated in her world and her world in terms of the phenomenological notion of horizon. The horizon, to speak generally, consists of a nexus of significance. The notion of significance, however, is polymorphic and can be dismantled into three different structures supporting human engagement, into what we call setting, context, and background. Distinguishing them, we suggest, would make a contribution to the theory of psychosomatic symptoms. The paper then concentrates on the notion of background, the harder of the three notions to capture, and introduces a contrast between the origins and the telos of bodily symptoms. Returning to the case of Frau D, we suggest that the truth of her (and perhaps others') conflict-generated symptoms can be found not just in the history of her conflicts but also in four interlocking functions organized teleologically: delimiting, bordering, gate-keeping, and attaching. "— End of Abstract'
Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Berlin
Year: 2012
Pages: 243-255
Series: Phaenomenologica
ISBN (Hardback): 9789400718470
Full citation:
, "Toward a semantics of the symptom", in: Founding psychoanalysis phenomenologically, Berlin, Springer, 2012