Some notes on Structuralism

The French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) started his exploration of the human mind because during his work he discovered that there were certain cases that could not be explained somatically. In order to understand psychiatrist patients, it was not enough to understand the human body, but also the condition in general. As that other doctor, Freud, had encountered the same problems, Lacan decided to reread Freud attentively. Especially the later studies caught his attention. In these studies the analyst's focus shifted from a search of 'a real truth' to conceptions of a complex and multilayered idea of truth, in which the linguistic representation prevailed over a reality beyond language that is gone forever, lost to both speaker and listener. Gradually, Lacan then developed his notions of the Symbolic order, the Imaginary Order, and the Real. He called this enterprise a 'Retour à Freud'. This differs from the manifold interpretations of Freud some later psychoanalysts, such as the egopsychologists, have given. Lacan is also indebted to structuralism, but he adds some striking changes to the theory. We can say that he looked at Freud through structuralist glasses, which resulted in a unique theory, with as building stones the three Orders mentioned above. The central idea is that man is a cultural being, and that this culture is in essence symbolic. The coordinates if man's life are symbols, are lingual, not the things language refers to.