THE SEMIOTIC REVIEW OF BOOKS VOLUME 11.1 JULY 2000 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb ISSN 0847-1622

Editorial: The Spell Dufresne’s central strategy is to provide a de- his later metabiology, bringing out the connnection tailed historical and theoretical accounting of between death, constancy (quantifiable energy by Gary Genosko Freud’s controversial and enormously influential bound and discharged) and pleasure, his goal is to late work Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920; move toward this logical conclusion: “the ideal of If I have one regret from my graduate studies, henceforth, BPP). Dufresne’s Chapter 2, “The Het- constancy signified for Freud the ultimate pleasure from which I now have sufficient distance, it is that erogeneous ‘Beyond’: An Introduction to the Dead of death, that is, the orgasmic release from self” I devoted far too much time to the study of psy- and Dying,” (13-144) provides a “review and re- (51). Dufresne carefully investigates all of Freud’s choanalysis. It was not so much the critical atti- construction, an archaeology of BPP in general, and significant debts to 19th century psychology and tude of the time - reading Freud against Freud — of the theory of the death drive in particular” (13- biology, pointing out the problematic psychoana- that consumed me in the name of the endless prac- 14). There are, it seems, many Beyonds. Dufresne lytic interpretations along the way, with a view to tice of a clever literary criticism, but that many of begins by reviewing biographical material and com- exposing the Freudian view that life is encircled by my colleagues were under the spell of the clinical mentaries on Freud’s disruption of his own inven- death: one is not only already dead, but always be- version, which they wielded as if they held in their tion, his own revisionism, actually, with the late coming-dead (57). Life is a catastrophe or, hands the truth against my unlived textual extrava- addition of the non plus ultra of psychoanalysis, the better, it is framed by two catastrophes: birth and gances. Analysis was, for too many, an intellectual death drive. Freud himself often expressed ambiva- death. (61) Not even a funny accent can lighten lifestyle subsidized by the state and successfully pro- lence about this speculative essay, and this also these proceedings. moted within the university as a pursuit into which describes how it was received; some finding it sim- While Dufresne is entertaining his readers as he only the best and the brightest would be permitted ply bizarre, others aligning it with the despair of Vi- runs through these matters in the manner of a Py- entry. ennese culture, or explaining it as a humanistic in- thon fan running through the skits, he is not play- An excellent text by Todd Dufresne, Tales From heritance of German romanticism (or 19th century ing for laughs: the result is a clear picture of the The Freudian Crypt (2000), is a current example of biological speculations), perhaps reading the essay nihilism of a bioanalytically reworked psychoanaly- Freud-bashing (preferable, I think, to the Critical through the backhanded or overstated praise it con- sis dominated by the death drive. Even last ditch Freud Studies moniker), and the work is annointed tained or failed to contain for those from whom efforts by Sandor Ferenczi to put a little love back with the names of its leading figures, Frederick Freud apparently got the idea in the first place (this in the psychoanalytic heart were, as Dufresne puts Crews and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. The latter’s list is long). All of this history of ideas seems a bit it, “too little, too late” (65). candid “Foreword” alerts us to the fundamental is- like a George Romero movie in which a corpse — By the time we get to Melanie Klein’s therapeu- sue at stake in Dufresne’s argument: criticising psy- here in the guise of several young suicides of the tically ambitious entry into the “untapped field” of choanalysis is like trying to put out a fire with gaso- psychoanalytic movement, Victor Tausk and child analysis -paternalistically and patronizingly line — it actually feeds and keeps it alive; or, to use Wilhelm Stekel — thrust its fist through the ground, dubbed “women’s work” by male analysts - the death the death talk that Dufresne prefers, and aficiona- drags itself from the grave, and takes revenge on drive is interpreted through “its representative, the dos of horror films will appreciate: if it’s [always] those who drove it into the ground in the first place, destructive impulse” (69). In this vision, analysis of already dead, you can’t expect to kill it. Borch- namely, Freud and the psychoanalytic establish- the destructive impulse acquires prophylactic Jacobsen puts it this way: “Dufresne is right:let’s ment. If this seems melodramatic, Dufresne reminds power: apparently, child analysis can prevent the leave him [Freud] alone” (xi). Sure, psychoanalysis us that psychoanalysis has a long list of suicides development of later neuroses. Dufresne simulta- is one unforgettable fire (captured beautifully in within its ranks with which to contend (32); and, neously exposes the “twisted” lineage of Freud’s Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1985) screenplay The Freud according to the radically anti-sociological nature metabiology and Klein’s theory of unconscious Scenario with its steady series of struck matches, of the death drive, suicide is an inauthentic act, a phantasy and the “disturbing” fact that child analy- soot and cigar smoke), but if we just leave it alone bit of Eros, a force of sociality that intrudes on the sis actually sacrificed children for the sake of “the it will eventually go out, or away, or as Dufresne path of biology that one’s life is destined to follow. trauma called psychoanalysis” on the altar of the will reveal, remain dead. Even Freud thought this was “extreme.” (32) death drive (79). Psychoanalysis is, then, a lose- In what is part Monty Python sketch and part In the same way that the Monty Python troupe lose proposition. Anyone who points to its clinical forensic hermeneutics, Dufresne goes about the made light of the Black Death with a growing pile triumphs is hiding a great deal about the unsavory business of bringing out the Freudian dead. His short of bodies on a cart pulled through a medieval street, first chapter, “Twilight of the Idols,” investigates the Dufresne heaps together all of the Beyonds — all Contents Pages phenomenon of psychoanalytic followership and the versions of BPP from the Denied, Biographical, Editorial: The Spell 1-2 transference onto the big names, especially Biological, Clinical, Philosophical, and Gary Genosko Jacques Lacan. Key contemporary figures in French Deconstructive — demonstrating, in the process, Sigmund Freud: Savant and Charlatan 3-5 Todd Dufresne psychoanalysis such as Francois Roustang have the great pile that is psychoanalysis and its litera- Remapping Snow’s Gulf 5-7 come to ask themselves: “Why did we follow him tures, all of which is “perhaps a great heap of non- Chris Westbury [Lacan] for so long? (4) Dufresne touches upon all sense” (27). Perhaps. For Dufresne here and there Mindful Semiotics 7-12 the central issues — the innovations of Lacanism hedges his bets, reasserting biographical history Robert E. Innis (theoretical and clinical), institutional struggles, and against theoretical fancies, (28) paying great care Web Site www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb the split between the deep French Freud and lite to the most tendentious of claims, especially con- Mirror Sites American ego psychology, an inheritance of Freud’s cerning the reversal of causality concerning Freud’s Hong Kong http://obelix.lib.hku.hk/semiotic/semiotic Austria www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/srb contempt for America. Dufresne relates a horror cancer and his later texts, especially BPP which was The Netherlands www.bdk.rug.nl/onderzoek/castor/srb story in which Lacan’s displacement of the ego from evidence of a sort that he had cancer before it was The Semiotic Review of Books is a refereed publication. It is the core of the subject, making it an imaginary func- diagnosed a few years later. While Dufresne lets published three times a year. tion that lacks the clarity and distinctiveness char- David Bakan sound less ridiculous than Wilhelm Rates Canada USA Others acteristically assigned to it in the Cartesian tradi- Reich on this point, he ultimately observes the “can- Individual $30 US $30 US $35 tion, but perfectly in line with Freud’s self-pro- cerous absurdity that sometimes claims interpreta- Institution $40 US $40 US $45 claimed Copernican revolution decentering, not tion” (38). Sometimes. While Dufresne may com- General Editor: Gary Genosko plain about the absence of biographical history in man, but the core of his being, entails a gaping hole Associate Editors: Verena Andermatt Conley, Samir Gandesha, in the person of the analyst: “According to Lacan, psychoanalytically-inspired theory, he will later la- Tom Kemple,Sophie Thomas, Peter van Wyck the silent analyst signifies to the patient an empty ment, in an inspired section on completely deliri- Section Editors: J. Adamson, D. Brooks, Chun Wei Choo, Ersu void, lack, death, the Real.” (10) The analyst is a ous interpretations of psychoanalysis, (39-43) that Ding, M.Harkin, R. Kilbourn, D. Lidov, A. Lippit, F. Manjali, D. cadaver! Transference onto such a lack is impossi- “the history of psychoanalysis is an abyss from which McLennan, M. Peschl, S.H.Riggins, H. Schwarz, S. Segalowitz, S. Simpkins, Q.S. Tong, A. Urbancic, A. Zeller ble and mastery is a “hollow fiction.” This is where there is no recourse” (43). Neither history nor Lakehead Operations Group: Rachel Ariss, Lori Chambers, things really get ugly. It was on the shoulders of this theory are positive options. Todd Dufresne, Tom Dunk, Kim Fedderson, Rick Holmes, discovery that Lacan founded his authority and Fans of Monty Python often know every word Pat Jasen, Mike Richardson, Clara Sacchetti, Gillian Siddal, those who followed him fell into the abyss of the uttered in a given sketch and are only too happy to Pam Wakewich master himself in an infinite transference that rehearse them, with accents and gestures. Fans of Founding Editor: Paul Bouissac turned many into “intolerant disciples,” binding free psychoanalysis are only too happy to run through a Layout: Nicole Sutherland, LU Graphics spirits and turning former Leftist radicals into concept or work and its literature with the same Address: Department of Sociology, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada P7B 5E1 “ultraconformist bureaucrats.”Psychoanalysis, giddy assurance. When Dufresne runs through the Tel.: 807-343-8391; Fax: 807-346-7831 Dufresne is telling us, brings out the worst in every- metabiological musings and embarassments of BPP, E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] one. brilliantly linking Freud’s early metapsychology with practices of major figures in the field like Klein, not untimely death, and giving himself a proper death word is that “psychoanalysis is dead,”(186) each new to mention the founding father himself. There is (140). But in Dufresne’s striking critical insight, we book on the subject is a “grim parody” of the com- nothing more extravagant, Dufresne is revealing, learn that this is precisely what Derrida does with pulsion to repeat, and patients in analysis are mak- than the practice of psychoanalysis. Freud: “Derrida writes ‘Freud’ in order to find ing a “grave mistake” because the method never Dufresne’s Tales From The Freudian Crypt owes (him)self; he sends himself on the detour called worked and never will work. a great deal to the comic book Tales From the Crypt, Freud-psychoanalysis in order to establish himself, These are strong sentiments, indeed. But to what from which he borrowed the title. For psychoanalysis deconstruction” (142). And this, Derrida believes, end? The proverbial stake in the heart that finally in Dufresne’s hands reads like a comic book con- is a duty; but it is ultimately self-serving: “a fine kills the undead monster is delivered by Dufresne cerned with horror, a thanatographic delight writ- example of having one’s cake and eating it with a gusto and verve not normally found in aca- ten not so much for adolescent boys but for phi- too”(142). The only kind of desserts in which demic books on psychoanalysis. Dufresne is the losophers. The great chain of thanatography in Dufresne has any interest are the sort qualified by vampire slayer of the Freud-bashers. And his dem- which BPP belongs leads us into the “Philosophical just. To this end he wonders if deconstruction will onstrations of the anti-sociological character of psy- ‘Beyonds’” of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; and ever be as dead as psychoanalysis, which walks the choanalysis would have us exhume a few intellec- then into the thanatopraxis of dialecticians such as earth like a zombie: “I doubt deconstruction will be tual bodies and give them a “proper” burial. Marcuse and Reich whose “correction” of psychoa- so (un)lucky.” (144) Dufresne’s argument may be applied to the work of nalysis made it liberatory, in polymorphous and In Chapter 3, “The Other ‘Beyond’,” Dufresne’s Felix Guattari, for instance. Guattari staked a claim strictly genital terms, respectively (92). Using Freud has arisen. What is at stake is the demon- throughout his psychoanalytic career on Eros, on the BPP as a measure, however, does not allow stration of Freud’s radically anti-sociological and Eros the great enforcer and preserver which coerces Dufresne to fully open the rich field of Freudo- wildly biological theory, pursued through the com- narcissist individuals into group relations; after all, Marxism; indeed, passing references to Lenin and bination of the group psychology and Guattari was the French guru of group subjectivity, Trotsky (92) only beg the question: well, where are metapsychology. Dufresne objects to the orthodox group Eros, and he used the conceptual tool of Gramsci (on this point see especially Stone 1984) instructions of James Strachey, editor of the Stand- transverality in his later work to eliminate the death and Althusser? Even Deleuze and Guattari get short ard Edition, among others, for whom the Group Psy- drive from his brand of analysis (Guattari 1989: 55- shrift here, subsumed under variants of sex poli- chology and BPP have “little connection” (146). 6). tics, a Lacanized Reich. Dufresne “hinges” the two works by means of the Finally, once his tale is told, does Dufresne throw The connection between Deleuze and Guattari principles of Eros and Thanatos, exposing Freud’s himself on the heap of dead bodies that is psychoa- and Marcuse is significant since the idea of libera- “essential biologism.” nalysis? Unless he wishes to wallow in sociality, take tion in each begins with the liberation of Freud from It is impossible to ignore Freud’s claim that life’s refuge in the group, or break off his courtship of himself and later from the neo-Freudians. Dufresne aim is death. This fundamental belief, Dufresne the witch, metapsychology, he, too, must stretch provides us with this methodological attitude shows, entails that the growth of the human organ- out on the slab. Is his version of psychoanalysis ex- through Marcuse even if the interpretive road ism results from external stimuli against which the treme enough? It is not, if we take Jean Baudrillard’s doesn’t extend to Deleuze and Guattari, and psychic apparatus protects itself by forming a (1993: 148-54) approach to the matter. In a few Lyotard, for that matter. But he does incorporate “crust”; or, as Dufresne puts it in a delightful for- pages devoted to a critique of the death drive, Lacan in this manner, noting: “the situation with mulation the accessibility of which is its major Baudrillard argues that the BPP merely repeats the Lacan is similar to Marcuse: both were trying to strength:“one must be pinched, so to speak, in or- scientific separation between life and death; in this save Freud from his greatest problems, from his own der to stay awake and grow” (148). way, the death drive “domesticates death.” Death, limitations as a theorist, even as they piled their The anti-sociological implications of Freud’s Baudrillard (1993: 154) argues, “has no need of the own pet theories onto his own.” (118) Dufresne is metapsychology are first seen in relation to the mirror” [of psychoanalysis] and “must be wrested ever attentive to this piling operation: it is his own mother, who turns out to be an agent of Eros, the from psychoanalysis and turned against principle of constancy, his own neatly sorted stack “abstract force” of society against biology, working it,”eliminating the aforementioned separation and of Tales from the Crypt comic books.For his object against the child’s death drive. Society interferes thus invalidating the death drive. Dufresne would of study (BPP) is, as he says so often, “messy” and with narcissism: Eros is a group subjectification undoubtedly respond that this is just another ‘be- this puts him in the camp of Ricoeur whose neat- interfering with the individual’s id-driven narcis- yond’ that really ends up asserting Eros over Thana- ness he admires. (123) Slowly, then, Dufresne is sism (152). This is the revenge of the group psy- tos in the name of an allegedly authentic social re- rewriting the classic Monty Python skit: no longer chology. Further, the mother, like everyone and lation. Although he does not explicitly engage with are the bodies simply heaped onto the cart; rather, thing external, is secondary and a force: others are this view in his lively text, he can account for it. they are washed and readied for examination. But external stimuli, not necessarily subjects at all, part And this, ultimately, is the strength of the book: it no matter how much he appreciates Ricoeur’s ef- of the collective energy known as Eros that restricts has a long reach, like the bony fingers of the undead forts at bringing out the creative dimension of the the organism’s narcissism. Dufresne summarizes the on the pages of Tales from the Crypt and Creepy death drive, he still thinks Ricoeur’s work on Freud Freudian view in this way: “Death is the essence of magazines, beckoning us to join them. was “already dated” when it was first published an authentic individuality that is denied under the (126.) Dated, that is, like the yellow pages of brit- compulsion or threat of a society that demands for Gary Genosko, General Editor, SRB tle keepsakes one would never throw away, but lov- every subject a group identity: to wit, a life” (158). ingly “unpack” once and awhile. This is what makes psychoanalysis, driven by its If, for Dufresne, Ricoeur is too neat, then Derrida metapsychology, extreme. The only therapy true to References is a master of slippage, confusion, and uncertainty, psychoanalysis is, Dufrense concludes, euthanasia which makes his moments of clarity quite interest- (159). Traditional psychoanalytic therapy merely Baudrillard, Jean (1993) Symbolic Exchange and ing by contrast, especially when they are directed plays at death and this makes it a miserable “piece Death, Iain Hamilton Grant (trans.), London: as criticisms of others like Lacan, yet apply just as of sociality” (164). But even this is shown by Sage. easily to himself (127). Using the hackneyed philo- Dufresne in his analysis of the positive “love” trans- sophical metaphor of “unpacking,” then, Dufresne’s ference to be inhabited by the death drive : “latent, Todd Dufresne (2000) Tales From The Freudian Derrida appropriates a Freud whose typically metapsychologically determined hostility toward the Crypt: The Death Drive In Text And Context, logocentric metaphysics had a tendency to break self” (177). Stanford: Stanford University Press. out at key moments and defy closure: “Freud’s ‘origi- The strength of Dufresne’s analysis of Freud’s nality’ is that he was almost deconstructve in his metapsychology (he also stages the same argument Guattari, Felix (1989) Les trois ecologies, Paris: thinking” (133). This is the Derridean variation on with regard to the problem of suggestion and the Galille. the “liberatory” thesis: Freud “is and is not meta- analysand’s creation of false memories through the physical” (135). What does Derrida see in BPP? A analyst’s “bad technique”; 167ff) is that it reveals Sartre, Jean-Paul (1985) The Freud Scenario, crypt that reveals “Freud is his own best (or only?) precisely why it is necessary to leave psychoanaly- J.-B. Pontalis (ed.) and Quinton Hoare (trans.), example of the compulsive repetition that he de- sis alone: its critics are like external energy stimu- Chicago: University of Chicago Press. scribes in BPP, and imputes to others (e.g., children, lating its growth, without which it would simply soldiers, patients)” (137). BPP is a “self-implicat- choke on its own waste: “This is a wicked irony for Stone, Jennifer (1984) “Italian Freud: Gramsci, ing” text and Freud does precisely what little Ernst critics who thereby become the greatest propelling Giulia Schuct, and Wild Analysis,” October 28: does with his string and spool: throw it out —fort force in an ever-expanding economy of psychoana- 105-2 — and pull it back — da. Except, of course, Freud lytic desires” (165). Critics, patients, pupils, every- is playing a game of provisional loss of authority body, in short, except the father himself, Herr Freud, and regaining mastery with speculation through a interferes with the unassailable position of the one strategy of deferral that goes nowhere. A paralysis absolute narcissist. in which “life is the detour, the deferral, of death” In the end, Dufresne honestly counts himself (140). The lesson of the deconstructive fort/da is among the critics — the bashers, “we” — whose that Freud was sending messages to himself, to para- works have contributed to new growths on a method phrase Dufresne, sending himself off, deferring an that has never been open to critique. Still, the last 2 Sigmund Freud: Of course the cost of being untimely is being 2. If Freud was avowedly Charcotian in his views, ignored or misunderstood. Even today apparently then 3. Freud, like Charcot, was also wrong. Un- Savant and Charlatan sophisticated researchers in the field remain unfa- fortunately one doesn’t necessarily encounter logi- miliar with Cioffi’s name, let alone his work. For cal conclusions in the psychoanalytic literature, Frank Cioffi, Freud and the Question of this reason the collection of his essays from 1969 where Freud is simplistically lionized as the father Pseudoscience. Chicago: Open Court, 1998. to the present is an event of the most welcome sort. of modern psychology. What is true, however, is a To begin with, honest researchers will no longer be less auspicious fact: Freud escaped the verdict uni- Frederick Crews, ed., Unauthorized Freud: able to ignore his work, which was squirrelled away versally reached of his Master’s findings. The Doubters Confront a Legend. New York: in far-flung sources. And, best of all, they won’t mechanism for this sleight of hand is the story of Viking, 1998. want to: Cioffi’s arguments are brilliant, witty, and the rise and fall of the Seduction Theory, which is generally convincing. Without exaggeration, Freud to Freud studies what Area 51 is to UFO fanatics: The almost thirty-year decline of psychoa- and the Question of Pseudoscience (FQP) is the most namely, a matter of blind faith. nalysis as a viable theory, therapy, and business can significant work of critical Freud studies to be pub- According to psychoanalytic folklore, Freud be inversely related to the growing vitality of criti- lished in years. replaced his early, objectivist belief in the Seduc- cal Freud studies during the same period. As sign- Two of Cioffi’s essays also appear in Unau- tion Theory with a psychogenic theory of repressed posts on the intellectual landscape, names like thorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend (UF), an infantile fantasies of an incestuous nature. But this Ellenberger, Roazen, Cioffi, Swales, Sulloway, anthology of twenty critical works lovingly collected, is Freud’s own account of events, and we have good Macmillan, Roustang, Esterson, Crews, and Borch- abridged, and introduced by the scourge of psychoa- reason to believe that he cooked the books to make Jacobsen are emblematic of this vitality. For with- nalysis, Frederick Crews. Published by Viking, the it palatable for the unaware, gullible, and intellec- out forming a unified canon, their works set rigor- book is intended to counter and correct decades of tually starving. The ingredients of this recipe are ous standards by which we can measure, often for misinformation about psychoanalysis, beginning at the heart of critical Freud studies, including Freud the first time, Freud and his so-called discoveries. topically enough with the Freud exhibition mounted and the Question of Pseudoscience, where Cioffi wages Arguably it is because of them that a century domi- in late 1998 at the Library of Congress in Washing- battle with Freud and Freud apologists. This focus nated by partisan scholarship, fuelled by ignorance, ton, D.C. Since the world’s most feared critics is no accident, since the future of psychoanalysis is self-interest, and greed, is finally over. weren’t welcome to participate meaningfully in the literally at stake in the interpretation of the Seduc- When exactly the tables turned on Freud and exhibit, Crews has taken the critics to the people. tion Theory. psychoanalysis is unclear, although credit can be The result is a devastating portrait of Freud and So what’s all the fuss about? Once the de- given, ironically enough, to Ernest Jones. I say ironic psychoanalysis by a diverse group of scholars, from bate about the true etiology of hysteria had been because the publication of his three volume biog- Peter Swales to Stanley Fish, that is impossible to decided in Bernheim’s favour, no one wanted to be raphy of Freud in the 1950s was meant to squash dismiss as mere “Freud bashing” (or worse).1 “There painted with the same brush that had permanently critique under the weight of a comprehensive, de- is,” Crews rightly insists, “no team of ‘Freud Bashers’ tarnished Charcot’s once golden reputation. Well, finitive, and official work. What happened, instead, at work here” (ix). On the contrary, the contribu- almost no one. While cautious researchers counted was that the biography became a catalyst for sober tors provide reasoned and measured arguments their wins and losses, Freud invested ever more reassessments of the history of psychoanalysis, be- proving, I think definitively, what many still refuse heavily in Charcot’s theories; an under-appreciated ginning with Jones’s own account. Perhaps not sur- to hear: namely, that psychoanalysis is a serious fact goes a long way toward explaining why Freud, prisingly, analysts themselves issued many of the first menace based on a top-heavy theoretical edifice, on the one hand, had complete confidence in his challenges to Jones’s biography. As the lay analyst faulty premises, circular and self-validating argu- claim that dissociated (repressed, unconscious) Theodor Reik is reported to have said of The Life ments, methodological laxity, motivated self-decep- memories occasioned by childhood seduction were and Work of Sigmund Freud: “It’s a good book. But tion, bad faith, and lies piled upon lies for more than pathogenic, while critics, on the other hand, rou- there are two things that Jones doesn’t understand. a century. tinely shook their heads in disbelief. As Borch- He doesn’t understand the Jews, and he doesn’t Jacobsen puts it, for researchers in the field “it must understand the Viennese. Jones is like a porter: he 1. Who Seduced Whom? have been patently obvious that Freud was simply carries your bags but has no idea what’s in them” Although mostly forgotten, sometimes con- repeating the errors of his ‘Master’, Charcot” (47). (Dufresne 1996). veniently, there have always been powerful critics But blinded by his stunning ignorance of, or disin- Jones had access to unpublished documents of Freud and psychoanalysis. As Crews remarks, terest in, the problem of suggestion, Freud contin- and was able to shed new light on Freud and psy- “In the years before Freud rewrote psychoanalytic ued to dismiss the critics and, in 1896, published choanalysis, but much of the biography is mean- history as a fetching Promethean myth, he was re- three essays outlining the seduction thesis. spirited, hagiographic, or just plain wrong. His treat- ceived more sceptically than in the six decades since In a contemporary remark to his friend ment of dissident analysts, such as Otto Rank and his death” (xxviii). Even before Freud dropped the Wilhelm Fliess, Freud (CL: 224) tellingly compared Sandor Ferenczi, is a case-in-point. Their conflicts Seduction Theory in 1897, a date usually cited as his evolving theory to “the medieval theory of pos- with Freud in the 1920s and 1930s are cast in terms the beginning of psychoanalysis proper, there were session.” To this end Freud posited a relation be- of pathology, their “failing mental integration” no shortage of naysayers. For example, when Freud tween “confessions [extorted] under torture” and (Jones 1957: 46), while Jones is left sitting pretty - and Josef Breuer published Studies on Hysteria in the “communications made by my patients in psy- the sad-but-wiser hero of the story. It was immedi- 1895, J. Mitchell Clarke, Adolf von Strümpell, and chic treatment” (see also Swales 1989, 1989a; and ately clear to informed readers that Jones’s conde- Eugen Bleuler wrote critical reviews in prominent Crews 1997). He also ordered, and eagerly read, scending and self-serving portrait required major psychiatric and medical journals. Like many oth- the infamous guide for ferreting out the devil, the revisions. As a result, we have a tradition of Freud ers of that era, Clarke, Strümpell, and Bleuler wor- Malleus maleficarum [The Hammer of Witches]. The criticism that is loosely divided into a before-Jones ried aloud that suggestion may have contaminated incredulous Freud says at one point, “I dream, there- and an after-Jones. Freud and Breuer’s findings. fore, of a primeval devil religion with rites that are The first wave of after-Jones criticism begins, To their detriment, neither Freud nor Breuer carried on secretly, and understand the harsh roughly speaking, with Erich Fromm’s slim book of worried much about suggestive collusion, since they therapy of the witches’ judges. Connecting links 1959, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, and culminates with believed, following Jean-Martin Charcot and the abound” (CL 227). Therapy? It is no wonder the Paul Roazen’s Freud and His Followers of 1975. But Paris School, that hypnosis and hysteria were pri- esteemed Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Krafft- Cioffi’s early work, along with Henri Ellenberger’s marily organic affairs. As we learn from Mikkel Ebing declared, during a meeting of 1896, that 932-page labour of love, The Discovery of the Un- Borch-Jacobsen’s important, second contribution Freud’s Seduction Theory “sounds like a scientific conscious (1970), easily represents the best of this to Unauthorized Freud, “Self-Seduced,” Freud took fairy tale” (CL 184). first wave. Having trained in analytic philosophy Charcot’s lessons to heart (45-53). Most signifi- For indeed it was. In 1897 Freud finally real- (with A.J. Ayer, no less), Cioffi’s work is not just a cantly, Freud (SE 1: 79) echoed Charcot by falsely ized that the memories he extorted during ‘therapy’ correction of Jones, but a precise investigation of concluding that hysteria “is of a real, objective na- were false, an instance of what researchers today Freud’s wayward retrospections and theoretical ture and not falsified by suggestion on the part of call “experimenter’s effect.” In other words his ear- claims. At the same time, his approach is not blind- the observer.”2 As it happened, it wasn’t Freud but liest reports of success were in fact dismal failures. sided by issues of testability or falsification, as we Charcot’s great adversary from Nancy, Hippolyte It is worth mentioning in this regard that, find in the positivistic interpretation of Freud ad- Bernheim, who criticized the findings of the while failure is never opportune, the Seduction vanced by Adolf Grünbaum - Cioffi’s intellectual Salpêtrière and advanced the psychological expla- Theory debacle exasperated an already delicate situ- nemesis. Cioffi’s engagement with psychoanalysis nation of hysteria. And Bernheim was correct, as ation. First of all, Freud’s (1974) professional repu- is rather more attuned to the troublesome contra- everyone admitted not long after Charcot’s death tation was still recovering from his foolhardy advo- dictions of Freud’s arguments, the logic of which is in August 1893. cacy of cocaine as a cure for morphine addiction not linear. To this end Cioffi consults all of the The implications of this old debate about during the 1880s. Second, Freud’s treatment of relevant texts available, carefully weighing Freud’s technique and etiology lends itself to the sort of wealthy Viennese women, such as the Baroness later, sanitized version of events against his original logical exercise taught in Philosophy 101. It goes Anna von Lieben (“Frau Cäcilie M.” of the Stud- statements. Consequently, his engagement with something like this: 1. If Bernheim’s psychological ies), left many with the impression that he was a Freud in the late 1960s and early 1970s was not perspective about hypnosis and hysteria was right disreputable quack, less a physician than a just years, but decades ahead of its time. and Charcot’s organic perspective was wrong, and magnetizer or magician (Swales in UF: 31-32). 3 Cioffi was among the first to understand the se- careerist disinterest in their emotional well-be- the relevant sentence from Virgil: “Exoriare aliquis duction episode perfectly: “His critics, it seemed, ing. nostris ex ossibus ultor” (“Let someone arise from were right. What a humiliation! Freud now put In fact, Freud never regretted the confu- my bones as an Avenger”). The word “exoriare,” all his enormous resourcefulness into mitigating, sion, let alone the pain and suffering, that his for example, means both “arise” and “birth” - ei- if not entirely evading, this humiliation” (200). botched technique caused his patients during this ther of which, with the slightest imagination, Freud’s evasion of humiliation is otherwise period. Always a reluctant therapist, he would could signify the pregnancy-anxiety attributed to known as the birth of psychoanalysis. For it is refer to his patients as a “rabble” best suited for associations with “aliquis.” Timpanaro’s with psychoanalysis, the theory of fantasy rather floating psychoanalytic research (Roustang in UF: counterexamples are instructive: “irrespective of than reality, that allowed Freud to escape Char- 248-259). And Freud never came clean with his rarefied epistemological debates” about falsifica- cot’s depressing fate. Having quietly discarded critics, either - or especially. Instead, he kept tion, the fact that any word can do the trick of the Seduction Theory, Freud began to spend his silent about his abandonment of the Seduction Freudian determination means that the expla- time perfecting what was to become his “Teflon Theory for eight years, until the publication of nation “has no scientific value” (101). status” (42): the “need to avoid refutation” that, Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), having shared In the third section of Unauthorized Freud, for Cioffi, characterizes psychoanalysis (117; his change of heart with Fliess alone. Why does Crews gathers expert examinations of Freud’s 136). This assessment is shared by many critics this matter? Because when Freud published his case histories and case studies from Allen today, including Crews who declares in his “In- first papers on “psychoanalysis,” readers assumed Esterson (“Dora”), Joseph Wolpe and Stanley troduction” (xxvii) that classical psychoanalytic that the results were still based on the Seduc- Rachman (“Little Hans”), Frank Sulloway (a theory is “a perpetual motion machine, a fric- tion Theory. And in a way they were, for at least cross-section), Stanley Fish (“Wolfman”), and tion-free engine for generating irrefutable dis- three damning reasons: first, because Freud never David E. Stannard (“Leonardo”). Esterson’s es- course.” Critics like Cioffi and Crews are right abandoned the theoretical utility of his method say, for example, depicts Freud’s mind-boggling to question the old dogmas, since a close read- for naming the repressed, but only the contents irresponsibility with a young victim of sexual har- ing of Freud’s texts reveal numerous misconcep- of what is repressed; second, because Freud be- assment, proving yet again that Freud hardly tions about the Seduction Theory - all of which, gan speaking about “psychoanalysis” in March mended his ways in the years following his aban- not incidentally, were perpetrated by Freud him- 1896, more than one year before he dropped the donment of the Seduction Theory (UF: 149- self. Consider two examples that are discussed Seduction Theory; and third, because Freud was 161). In Sulloway’s contribution we are reminded by Cioffi, Sulloway, Borch-Jacobsen, and Crews: still relying upon the Seduction Theory as late of the incredible fact that Freud neglected to (1) Freud’s retrospective claim that his early pa- as 1905, when he finally published his purported present a successful therapeutic outcome until tients produced memories of seduction is simply clinical substantiations of the theory in the “Dora” 1908. Yet even this case, Sulloway explains, has not true. On the contrary, Freud originally in- case (Esterson in UF: 150; Borch-Jacobsen in UF: no more merit than the famous “cure” of Freud’s sisted that patients withhold belief in stories of 52). Russian patient, Sergius Pankejeff, a.k.a. the seduction and have no feeling of recollection With the “discovery” of psychoanalysis “Wolfman.” For this most celebrated of all ana- whatsoever. Freud insisted upon this fact, say- Freud effectively obscured the fact that it was lytic patients was in and out psychoanalysis for ing that the scenes of sexual trauma were merely business as usual - only better. Having lifted a sixty years. When asked about his experience by helpful visualizations, because it was the crux of theory of innate infantile fantasy from the specu- an Austrian journalist, Pankejeff confessed that his defence against critics who claimed that he lations of Wilhelm Fliess, there was no more need psychoanalysis had been a “catastrophe” in his had produced false memories (Borch-Jacobsen in to worry about the problem of suggestion. So life. He also insisted that his shocking revela- UF: 49). (2) Freud’s claim that he only reluc- much, then, for the annoying critics of psychoa- tions not be published until after his death, since tantly acknowledged the pathogenic role of sexu- nalysis. And so much for reality, which fell out Kurt Eissler and the Sigmund Freud Archives ality is also false, and for three reasons: he dem- of the clinical picture altogether from that point were paying him what amounted to hush money onstrated just such an awareness of sexuality in onward (see Dufresne 2000). (UF: 175-185). his early texts, beginning at least in 1893 (FQP: That we ever believed psychoanalysis could 43-44; 146; 245); he was intimately aware of the 2. Savant or Charlatan? cure anyone is partly explained by Stanley Fish, role of innate infantile sexuality as advanced by Readers of Cioffi’s book may be surprised who provides a compelling analysis of Freud’s Wilhelm Fliess (Sulloway in UF: 57-68); and, in by the contribution from Grünbaum in Unauthor- spell-binding rhetoric. His conclusion: the real any case, the theme of sexuality was already well- ized Freud. For although Cioffi makes a decent “primal scene” at work in the case of the Wolfman established by the sexologists of the 1880s, and case against Grünbaum in his book, repeatedly is “the scene of persuasion” (UF: 199). It is only was a recognized part of the discourse on hyste- dogging him for a recalcitrant belief in the possi- too obvious that this scene has infected genera- ria well before Freud’s ‘reluctant’ discovery of bility of a scientific psychoanalysis, the Grünbaum tions of readers, including some of the most self- infantile sexuality in the late 1890s (cf. UF: 6-7; of “Made-to-Order-Evidence” is hardly less criti- consciously brilliant literary critics and philoso- 45). Once again compelled to stave off the cal about Freud’s claims than Cioffi. Take for phers. But Fish, like Cioffi and Borch-Jacobsen, charge of suggestion, Freud falsely invoked the example the technique of free association. Freud is a marvellous exception, someone who dem- surprise factor: memories of a sexual nature could believed that the problem of suggestion could be onstrates by example how true sophistication can not have been suggested because they were both side-stepped by interpreting the patient’s asso- operate in Freud studies. clinically surprising and culturally taboo (FQP: ciations as a free expression of an internal state. The last section of Unauthorized Freud con- 200; 247). Freud, in other words, claimed that the analyst tains thoughtful contributions about the “mili- Such is thus stuff of pseudoscience. is a neutral observer because he or she is literally tant exclusiveness” (215) of the psychoanalytic Cioffi therefore concludes that Grünbaum external to the workings of the psyche. cause: Ernest Gellner discusses the shackling of and Masson get it all wrong: Grünbaum, for mis- Grünbaum, however, debunks the assumption patients called transference; John Farrell dis- reading Karl Popper’s work on falsification that such associations are in fact free, arguing cusses the effects of Freud’s paranoia; François (among other things), ignoring the ad hoc na- that they are invariably compromised by precon- Roustang explores the wicked sectarianism of ture of Freud’s theory-building, and thus believ- ceptions brought into therapy by patients; by psychoanalysis; and Lavinia Edmunds presents ing that Freud abandoned the Seduction Theory verbal and non-verbal cues, subtle or otherwise, the tragic story of Horace Frink, once Freud’s for scientifically legitimate reasons; Masson, for made by the analyst; by the promptings or “in- favoured apostle in America. Each contribution peddling the “politically correct” nonsense that tellectual help” (as Freud put it) of the analyst; is worth reading, but Crews has saved the most Freud was afraid of confronting the ubiquitous and by the analyst’s selective sampling from the disturbing of the bunch for last. truth of child sexual abuse. “Freud’s dereliction flow of associations (78-84). Thus Grünbaum’s Although many will be unfamiliar with in moral courage showed itself,” Cioffi argues, arguments nicely dovetail with those made in the Frink’s story, it resonates with other well-known “not in what he abandoned but in what he in- first section by Cioffi, Sulloway, Swales, Borch- tales of Freud’s inept meddling in the sexual af- sisted on retaining: the boast that he could re- Jacobsen, and Crews. fairs of his followers. Like some other therapists, construct by psychoanalytic method ... the lost Just as Grünbaum deflates the pretence of including some of Freud’s closest adherents, Frink years of childhood” (206, 244). With psychoa- objectivity in Freud’s technique of ‘free’ associa- fell in love with a patient who, luckily, was a nalysis Freud swept suggestion under the rug, and tion, Sabastiano Timpanaro exposes concretely wealthy heiress but, unluckily, was already mar- along with it any responsibility he had for his fail- its staggering indetermination. In “Error’s Reign,” ried. Just as unlucky: Frink was also married, had ures. As he put it in 1925, “I do not believe even Timpanaro argues that the associations found in two children, and was tormented by depression. now that I forced the seduction-fantasies on my a famous interpretation from The Psychopathol- Frink was an established American psychiatrist, patients, that I ‘suggested’ them” (in Borch- ogy of Everyday Life (1901) are totally arbitrary, a already 38 years of age, when he began an analy- Jacobsen in UF: 46; cf. FQP: 203). As Cioffi reflection of Freud’s “zeal for his own theses” (UF: sis with Freud in 1921. Freud liked Frink, partly therefore concludes, “Freud, like the Emperor in 105). In the analysis, Freud concludes that a trav- for his dark sense of humour, but also because he the story, dealt with bad news by having the elling companion’s associations to a forgotten was a Gentile who, like Jones and Jung, would bearer executed” (FQP: 204; cf. Borch-Jacobsen word, “aliquis,” lead inexorably to the determin- help ‘prove’ that psychoanalysis wasn’t merely a in UF: 52). That bearer of bad news was his pa- ing fount of his anxiety: the idea that a lover may Jewish science. Freud also approved of Frink’s tients, each of whom paid the price for Freud’s be pregnant. Yet the forgotten word, Timpanaro mistress, Angelika Bijur, whose money could argues (97-105), could have been any word in grease the wheels of his fledgling publishing 4 house. In this last respect, Bijur had already duced book, carefully edited and introduced Remapping Snow’s Gulf proven her worth by paying for Frink’s analysis throughout. with Freud. And so Freud, without even know- Both books, in any case, are overdue read- J. Peterson, Maps Of Meaning: The ing their respective spouses, recommended that ing for those erstwhile intellectuals, heads bur- Architecture Of Belief. Frink and Bijur ditch their partners and get mar- ied deep in the sand, who care nothing about New York: Routledge, 1999. ried. Predicting their impending happiness, he facts and, consequently, know little about the threw in an ominous warning that if they didn’t troubled history of psychoanalysis. Their uncriti- marry, the depressed Frink might become a ho- cal investment in Freudian theory suggests we Just over 50 years ago, C.P. Snow (1949) pub- mosexual. revisit a forgotten lesson of Philosophy 101. It lished a little book entitled The Two Cultures. His The story gets worse. Although Frink was goes something like this: 1. If critics like Cioffi title referred to the cleaving of the world of ideas still battling depression, Freud announced his and Crews are right and Freud is wrong, and 2. If into two domains: one inhabited by scientists case complete and sent him back to America to theorists today are avowedly Freudian in their alone; the other by everyone else who might wish arrange his divorce. Worried about Frink’s wife, views, then 3. these theorists, like Freud, are also to lay claim to being an educated thinker. The Freud later issued the following, by now all-too- wrong. Quod erat demonstrandum. division Snow was writing about was hardly new, familiar refrain: “Tell her she is not to blame and he was not the first to write of it. However, analysis for the complications of human feeling Todd Dufresne is Assistant Professor of Philoso- as he pointed out, by the middle of the last which is only exposed but not created by analy- phy, Lakehead University. He is editor of Freud century the gulf that separated the two domains sis” (265). Freud also arranged that the unstable Under Analysis (1997) and Returns of the ‘French was rapidly growing. The astonishing accumula- Frink be voted the next President of the Ameri- Freud’: Freud, Lacan, and Beyond (1997). His tion of scientific knowledge seemed to make it can Psychoanalytic Association (APA), which he book, Tales From the Freudian Crypt (2000), is possible, for the first time in history, for a highly- was in 1923. After two additional mental tune- reviewed in this issue’s editorial. educated person to take a kind of perverse pride ups with Freud, Frink married Bijur at the end of in his ignorance of non-scientific matters; to dis- 1922. However, Frink began to suffer from guilt Notes miss an interest in such things as an unnecessary in addition to depression, a state that only wors- weakness. Whatever science couldn’t know ened when his divorced wife died of pneumonia 1 For example, critics of the Library of Congress Freud exhibit have been characterized as parricides, puritans, seemed increasingly irrelevant compared to what in May of 1923. Long story short: Frink was de- inquisitors, right-wing extremists, anti-Semites, Nazis, science did know: how to decipher the structure posed as leader of the APA, committed himself ayatollahs, and politically correct (read ugly) Americans. of DNA, how to build machines that could solve to a sanatarium on two later occasions, attempted For an overview, see Crews’s “Introduction” (UF: xvii- problems their human creators could not solve, suicide twice, was divorced by Bijur, was remar- xxxi). Peter Swales has also deposited over 300 pages of and how to fell entire cities at a single blow. ried, and died a troubled man in 1936. In short, documents concerning this controversy in the Library of Congress. Since Snow’s book appeared, the gulf between Freud’s self-interested meddling ruined three lives 2 Freud would repeat this claim elsewhere, for example, scientific and non-scientific thinking has grown. and wrecked havoc in a fourth. Under- in an “Appendix” of 1896. In psychology today, that same gulf is threaten- standably, everyone involved in the Frink affair References ing to rend the discipline apart. Many of the developed a distaste for psychoanalysis. Bijur’s Crews, Frederick (1997) “The Legacy of Salem: hard-science psychologists - those who deal every cuckolded first husband captured the feeling suc- Demonology for an Age of Science,” Skeptic, vol. day with neurons, hormones, brain tissue, micro- cinctly in a letter to Freud in 1922, in which he 5, no. 1: 36-44. scopes, scalpels, and cannulas - increasingly feel asks: “Great Doctor, are you savant or charla- that they have nothing in common with their tan?” (267). Dufresne, Todd (1996) Unpublished Interview colleagues who deal mainly in abstracta - the Cioffi asks a similarly blunt question of with David Bakan (July 19). social psychologists, clinicians, cognitivists, ex- Freud in his most famous essay, “Was Freud a perimental computer scientists, hermeneuticists, Liar?,” and at times in his book flirts with an af- Ellenberger, Henri (1970) The Discovery of the semioticians, and moral philosophers with whom firmative answer. But he is generally wary of Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic they have been uneasily sharing departmental putting questions to Freud in such a stark, un- Psychiatry, New York: Basic Books. quarters.In universities around the planet, the compromising way. In his first long chapter of hard scientists are living up to their name, draw- Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience, “Why Are Freud, Sigmund (1888) “Preface to the ing a line that deliberately excludes their erst- We Still Arguing About Freud?,” Cioffi rejects Translation of Bernheim’s Suggestion,” In while colleagues in the Faculty of Arts. Increas- the “fake antithesis” that impels us to choose Standard Edition of the Complete ingly, they are demanding, if not their own sepa- between Freud the savant or charlatan, truth- Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (SE), rate departments of Neuroscience, Comparative seeker or liar. For Cioffi, such simplifications only ed. James Strachey, London: Hogarth, 1953-74, Biology, or Behavioral Science, at least their own play into the hands of Freudian apologists, who vol. 1. floor and their own hiring committees. are then able, in apparent good faith, to dismiss —— (1974) Cocaine Papers, notes by Anna A few psychologists - hard scientists or other- as naive and conspiratorial criticism that they Freud, ed. Robert Byck, New York: Stonehill. wise - view this development with despair. To don’t want to hear. “The sceptic,” Cioffi rightly them, the division of their discipline into the ob- counters, “does not require large-scale lying on Freud, Sigmund and Wilhelm Fliess (1985) jective and the subjective cleaves our world at the part of analysts to account for the consistent The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to precisely the point that is most psychologically reporting of phenomena now conceded not to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904 (CL), ed. Jeffrey interesting. There are important questions that occur” (36). So what explains a century of wide- M. Masson, Cambridge: Harvard University fall squarely into Snow’s Gulf, questions that de- spread belief in, and misinformation about, the Press. mand answers. How does simple neural tissue history and theory of psychoanalysis? Cioffi sustain our rich phenomenological world? What points to experiments in social psychology, such Fromm, Erich (1959) Sigmund Freud’s is the relation between what we see and what as those conducted by Solomon Asch in the late Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and exists? What does it mean to be human? Why 1940s and 1950s, which prove that objectivity Influence, New York: Grove Press. are we so destructive? How did I get to be me? can be compromised by the coercion and peer Scientists are understandably leery of address- pressure of authoritative others. The very same Jones, Ernest (1957) The Life and Work of ing such grand questions because any answers pressures of suggestion, not incidentally, that are Sigmund Freud: The Last Phase, vol. 3, New offered must clearly be speculative and partial. evinced in Freud’s own practice and in the move- York: Basic Books. Jordan Peterson’s book Maps Of Meaning tries to ment at large, and which are discussed in Cioffi’s show that this is not the same thing as saying and Crews’s important books. Roazen, Paul (1975) Freud and His Followers, those answers are completely unconstrained - Unlike much of the literature on Freud, New York: Knopf. that is, it is not the same as saying we have no which snuggles up to its subject, these books by idea at all what the answer will look like. If we Cioffi and Crews are courageous provocations Swales, Peter (1989) “Freud, Johann Weier, identify real constraints on the kinds of answer that redeem psychoanalytic studies as an intel- and the Status of Seduction: The Role of the that humans can offer to any question, we also lectual pursuit. Freud and the Question of Witch in the Conception of Fantasy,” In make some progress towards finding an answer Pseudoscience is a hard hitting, sophisticated, and Sigmund Freud: Critical Assessments, vol. 1, to the grand questions. Where might such con- much-anticipated book on the history and ed. L. Spurling, London: Routledge: 331-358. straints lie? On one side of Snow’s Gulf - the epistemic status of psychoanalysis. Unfortu- newly-developed side of hard science - there must nately, while the book legitimately represents the —— (1989a) “Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and the be identifiable limits grounded in neurobiology. development of Cioffi’s thought over thirty years, Witches: The Role of Krafft-Ebing in Freud’s After all, human beings are mammals, with mam- there is no indication of false steps along the way; Flight Into Fantasy,” In Sigmund Freud: malian nervous systems and with all the biologi- a stronger editorial hand could have helped the Critical Assessments, vol. 1, ed. L. Spurling, cal, chemical, and computational limitations to reader avoid the occasional pitfall. By contrast, London: Routledge: 359-365. which such systems are inherently subject. An- Crews’s Unauthorized Freud is a seamlessly pro- swers to questions about how the world appears 5 to us, about what that appearance means, are and complexity, we began to organize it for trans- inferences about the nature of existence, derived certainly constrained by the hard limitations of mission to others. Part of this transmission was primarily from observations of human behavior. our neural wetware. in the form of simple know-how about particular This means, in essence, that pre-experimental On the other side of Snow’s Gulf, the kinds aspects of the world: information such as ‘Don’t man observed ‘morality’ in his behavior and of answers we can give to the big questions are eat these mushrooms or you will die’. Peterson is inferred the existence of a source or rationale for limited by our ability to compress complex infor- more concerned with a different, more general that morality in the structure of the ‘universe’ mation into coherent narratives. Any answer method. Human beings began to learn, codify, [the known world] itself” (103). The growth of to our grand questions - any answer that could and share general principles which could be used Snow’s Gulf reflects the fact that scientific meth- ever matter to beings like us - has to be both for turning any unknown entity into a known odology has given man the means to uncouple tellable and comprehensible. It has to seem to entity: “we can learn not only the precise factual knowledge from morality, which Peterson make a kind of sense. Not just anything does. behaviors that constitute adaptation, but in the defines as a body of codified knowledge rooted So, suggests Peterson, if we want to understand process by which those behaviors were generated in behavioral consequences. Our pre-scientific the limits on the answers to the big questions, we can learn not only skill, but meta-skill (can ancestors lived entirely on the ancient side of we can try to understand the limits of meaning- learn to mimic the pattern of behavior to Snow’s Gulf, in a world governed in all aspects ful narrative. We can try to understand what generate new skills)” (76). Explaining the impli- by such behavioral consequences. We (especially makes a story seem interesting, coherent, and sat- cations of this transmission of meta-skills forces those of us who have laid stakes on the new side isfying. Peterson to jump to the non-scientist side of the of Snow’s Gulf) live in a world governed by facts It is remarkable how little attention has been gulf. The bulk of his book is devoted to fleshing which are independent of those who know them paid to the connection between these two lim- out the claim that mythological narrative in all - a world in which things have, as it were, a life its. Clearly, the structure of our brains must to a cultures is intended to play the role of transmis- of their own. large extent structure our narrative worlds, just sion of meta-skills for turning the unknown into The behavioral consequences marking the as it structures our perceptual world. Peterson the known - that it is precisely “the encapsula- bounds of the knowable world for our ancestors tries to outline the connection between these two tion of meta-skill in a story that makes that story were sometimes extremely restrictive, imposing limits, narrowing in on it from both sides of the great” (76). In simplest terms, Peterson (citing strict limitations on what could count as ‘known’ gulf at once. The book-length argument he of- and building upon a large body of previous mytho- and therefore as acceptable. An important part fers is dense and long. However, the essence of it logical analyses) argues the structure of such great of Peterson’s project is to analyze how shared might be stated in a single aphorism: Action stories always hinges on a character - a hero - understanding of these limitations come to de- grounds belief. Less pithily, we might say that who motivates himself to overcome his fear of fine cultures. The rise of the boundaries defining what we believe is rooted in our need to select the unknown by imagining a future in which he cultures allowed for the rise of tyranny, intoler- behaviors appropriate to our situation. Unpack- will be better off for having done so. With a fu- ance, xenophobia, and war, as those culturally- ing the implications in that statement takes some ture in sight as a goal, he is able to formulate a defined limits of the known came to be experi- doing. plan of action that might turn what Peterson calls enced in just the same way as natural limits of The argument from neurobiology is perhaps “the Unbearable Present” (now made even more the known: because they were marked out by the easier side of the argument to grasp. Peterson unbearable by its contrast to the imagined goal fear and anxiety. lays it out early in his book. The key idea is one state) into “the Ideal Future.” By definition, such However, there was, Peterson argues, also one that no biological scientist would have the a plan plunges the hero into chaos, since it nec- positive aspect to such a morally-bounded uni- slightest trouble accepting or justifying on evo- essarily forces him to confront what he necessar- verse: it was experienced as meaningful. The lutionary terms: what is unknown is frightening. ily fears: the Unknown. manner in which we conceive of ‘meaning’ is, Mammals like us, Peterson points out, are built Citing extensively from mythological litera- Peterson insists throughout his book, deeply to fear what we do not know, what we do not ture, Maps Of Meaning explains how this simple rooted in codified behavioral information. In understand. A little-remarked consequence of narrative structure is complicated by a great many mythological terms, trying to sever that link is to this is that what is unknown constitutes a single factors. One complication is that in many cases follow the path of one of the most dangerous entity with a single affective valence: “Fear is the we do not have access to our own motivations. archetypes, to which Peterson devotes his final a priori position, the natural response to every- The hero of mythology, just like you or I, may chapter: the eternal adversary, hostile brother, thing for which no structure of behavior has been have “a very narrow window of expressible and cruel tyrant; in short, the devil. Such sever- designed and inculcated. Fear is the innate reac- ‘frames of reference’ - conscious stories” (88). If ance amounts to succumbing to the sin of tion to everything that has not been rendered the hero is nevertheless able to proceed in his pride, by living according to a belief that one’s predictable, as a consequence of successful, crea- journey through the Unknown, it is because of own abilities - unchecked by the codified wis- tive exploratory behavior undertaken in its metaphoric, imagistic processes, whose import dom of ancestors, unconstrained by concern for presence, at some time in the past” (57). The and neurological underpinnings Peterson elabo- consequences - are wholly sufficient for under- dizzying variety of places and things that any sin- rates in some detail. A second complication is standing how to proceed in life. Peterson argues gle individual (man or mouse) does not under- that our hero may be influenced by those meta- at length and with passion that such a belief is stand are in a real sense (for all practical pur- phoric, imagistic processes which have been im- not, as it may appear, the logical extension of poses) one single thing. The unknown constitutes planted and cultivated by his exposure to the the hero myth - the hero as ultra-capable the most primitive metaphor or mapping of one ritualized, dramatized, analogized, or only par- loner, unconstrained by anything other than his thing onto another. It constitutes the most primi- tially understood stories of previous heroes. own abilities. It is rather a perversion of the hero tive archetype. Adaptive process can be codified through such myth that can only end with a spiral descent into Peterson reviews the neural processes under- means without necessarily being explicitly ex- the decadent chaos of meaninglessness. If you lying this collapse of the unknown into a single pressed (or even expressible) in words. A third need an example, think of how the Unabomber’s category. When a mammal approaches what it complication is that the process of journeying personal project was received by society at large. does not know, a small almond-shaped organ from known to unknown may be recursively Even as he travels on his mythic journey, a genu- called the amygdala - with strong links to corti- embedded, in many ways. One hero may serve as ine hero necessarily exists because of and cal and subcortical memory circuits - starts fir- the motivation for the next, with one story set- for a larger group whose existence has made it ing. That firing underlies a huge shift in normal ting the stage for a later story. One may today possible for him to venture out. The existence of neural functioning, which is experienced subjec- find oneself fighting for justice because a favorite such a group grounds and dignifies his journey. It tively as anxiety or fear. The only way to contemporary novelist read Henry Thoreau, who makes that journey possible, worthwhile, and escape being continually thrown into this un- (let us imagine) read about Don Quixote, who comprehensible. pleasant state is to transform the unknown into found himself fighting because Christian knights Summarizing the gist of this sprawling book the known. found themselves fighting because Jesus Christ hardly does it justice. Peterson’s passion for rel- For most mammals, the only means of effect- found himself fighting because he knew some evant work on both sides of Snow’s Gulf is evi- ing this transformation is by directly interacting great stories. And so on. To make things even dent, and the book is richer in neurological, with the unknown. A mouse or monkey can only more complicated, a single narrative (or lived mythological, literary, and philosophical summary familiarize himself with what is novel by actively experience) may itself contain multiple adaptive and analyses - helpfully buttressed with diagram- scouting it out. For most of our evolutionary processes recursively embedded within it. matic and chapter summaries - than can be con- history, our species was probably no different. If A fourth complication concerns Peterson very veyed in just a few pages. Indeed, its richness at we wanted to understand a thing, we had to in- much. This is the historically-recent emergence times presents an impediment to understanding teract with it - observe it, touch it, walk on it, of Snow’s Gulf, as a result of the explicit codifi- its complex argument. Weighing in as it does at taste it. Things had no conceivable separate ex- cation of the scientific method. According to nearly 500 dense pages, this is a book that de- istence from our experience of them. Anything Peterson: “Before the emergence of empirical mands from its reader a good proportion of the we had not experienced (directly or vicariously) methodology, which allowed for methodological passionate devotion that obviously went into its fell into the category of the unknown. As our separation of subject and object in description, construction. In a preface as unexpected in this store of knowledge of the world increased in size the world-model contained [only] abstracted kind of a book as it is moving, Peterson explains 6 in detail where his own passion for his topic predecessors. How does simple neural tissue sus- Mindful Semiotics comes from. Peterson began the work that even- tain our rich phenomenological world? What is tually lead to this book as a form of self-therapy, the relation between what we see and what ex- David Lidov, Elements of Semiotics. to overcome a crisis of faith he experienced which ists? What does it mean to be human? Why are New York: St. Martin’s Press,1999. left him with nightmares, compulsions, and a we so destructive? How did I get to be me? These horror of living in a world as close to the brink of questions will be posed again and again as long I. self-annihilation as is our modern world. His study as humans live. Answers will be told and re-told. of psychology was motivated by his need to un- None will ever satisfy all critics. The answer The goal of David Lidov’s engaging, nuanced, and derstand how the world - and himself - had come Peterson has worked so hard to outline in his book sophisticated book is to review “foundational to be. satisfies me,because it deepens and extends my options in the construction of a semiotic theory” This personal passion of its author informs all understanding of what it means to ask and an- and to furnish us with an “arrangement of aspects of Maps Of Meaning, and lends the book swer these kinds of questions. It reminds me why distinctions regarding signs” (251). This arrange- a rare and compelling force among academic they are vitally important, even if our most pow- ment of distinctions makes up the ‘first cut’ of works. In his preface, Peterson approvingly cites erful question-answering tools - the tools of sci- Lidov’s analytical scissors: the decomposition of Jung’s (1976) claim that: “The very fact that a ence - cannot address them. the plenum of semiosis into its constitutive units general problem has gripped and assimilated the Maps Of Meaning tries to build a bridge across and the putting of them into an intelligible whole of a person is a guarantee that that speaker Snow’s Gulf by treading through some of the most pattern of relations. Lidov aims to delineate a has really experienced it, and gained something unstable, impenetrable, and delicate territory in “system of technical usages” that, formally, make from his sufferings. He will then reflect the that gulf - the territory of Meaning. No scientist up what he is calling elements (11). The guiding problem for us in his personal life and thereby who understands the matter can doubt that idea is to always keep in mind just what differ- show us the truth.” Neuropsychology and my- Meaning is destined to forever escape science’s ence a semiotic approach, in the various spheres thology are demanding and often dry subjects that amazing toolbox. All that matters to us as living of possible applications, would make. “What sorts are difficult for a non-specialist reader to tackle. human beings will never be expressible only by of phenomena will we understand better in the Few readers can come to Peterson’s book with reference to our physiological structure and its perspective of semiotics than we could without the appropriate knowledge, since he tries to tie lawful neurophysiological state transformations. it?” (37). The ‘second cut’ of Lidov’s analytical together subjects that are usually considered far The subjective experience of those states as scissors, accordingly, is into a wide, though apart, and rarely successfully conjoined (sure, meaningful is deeply shaped by the cultural mi- primarily illustrative, field of phenomena that Carl Jung tried - but scientists who can read lieu in which the human neurophysiology is both benefit from a semiotic perspective and re- Jung with understanding are rarer than Snow’s placed. If we are to understand what it means to veal the limits of a purely semiotic analysis. Lidov, poets who can cite the Second Law Of Thermo- be human, why we experience ourselves the way without going into acribious philosophical dynamics with understanding). Peterson makes we do, then we will certainly need to understand detail, resolutely rejects the notion that we are strong demands on his reader to understand both what properties our cultural milieu has, what enclosed in some sort of “semiosic jail” or “‘prison mythology and (to a lesser extent) neuropsychol- constraints it imposes on our own experience, house of language’” (121), that there is no ‘out- ogy. His own clear passion, and his insistence on and why. Maps Of Meaning is a big, bold attempt side’ to the spiral of semiosis. Lidov’s central the- the importance of such multi-disciplinary under- to show us that those properties are not simply sis is that the “fundamental phenomenon” for standing and the importance of his argument, will random or of ‘merely philosophical’ interest just semiotics is the field of “fluctuations of sign con- push readers from both sides of the gulf to make because they fall squarely on the ancient side of sciousness”(8). Semiotics is the study of the the extra effort to comprehend what the other Snow’s Gulf. It is an attempt to explain why an “ubiquitous activity of interpreting signs” (13), a side has to offer. understanding of those properties need not be position which clearly indicates, at the very out- No book of this scope can hope to give the ‘mere’ story-telling. Effective story-telling, set, a confluence of semiotics and hermeneutics. final word on its subject matter. The questions it Peterson insists, is never ‘mere’. It is a vital ele- And just as hermeneutics arises out of failures to addresses are too big. The answers provided by ment to understanding who we are, and why our understand, or breakdowns in understanding, so any single author can only point to paths which brains deliver the world to us in the way that semiotic consciousness “simply emerges from our each reader must go on to explore. It is interest- they do. spontaneously heightened sign consciousness as ing to see how strongly Peterson’s viewpoint an extended and structured occasion for signs to dovetails with and extends the viewpoints of oth- Chris Westbury is currently a post-doctoral fel- reflect (on) themselves” (24). ers who have tackled similar questions. Maps Of low in the Department of Psychology, University Lidov’s main objective is to “track the princi- Meaning enriches and extends the ideas laid out, of Alberta. His current research is in the area of ples which lead from simple to elaborate signs” for example, by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philo- language processing and the computational (44). Sign use - or semiosis - for Lidov “pertains sophical Investigations (1953). Like Peterson’s analysis of words and nonwords. to consciousness exclusively” (97), which “is a book, Philosophical Investigations attempted to scramble” (97). But semiosis is a “component of lay out how the apparent structure of the mind References conscious experience but not the whole of it” was conditioned by cultural and historical vari- (118). Affirming at one and the same time that ables, and explain why rules for interpretation Bateson, G. (1972) Steps To An Ecology Of Mind: “semiotics is not a part of psychology” (125) cannot be cited as the final ground of meaning, Collected Essays In Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evo- and the undeniable existence of a “simmering but themselves stand in need of explanation. lution, And Epistemology. soup of thought” (125), Lidov wants neverthe- Wittgenstein was interested in (although scepti- New York: Ballantine Books. less to draw his study of “mental life out of psy- cal of) both neuropsychology and mythology. I chology and back into the world of signs” (85), a suspect he might have appreciated Peterson’s Jung, C. G. (1976) The Structure And Dynamics public and intersubjectively shared world. The book as a rightful “heir to the subject that used Of The Psyche, Bolligen Series XX. Princeton: basic idea, which is fundamentally Peircean, is to be called philosophy” (Wittgenstein 1958: 28). Princeton University Press. that the mind and mental life, whatever else they Peterson’s ideas also resonate fruitfully and in pro- may turn out to be, are at least, for semiotics in found ways with Gregory Bateson’s (1972) cy- Nietszche, F. (1966) Beyond Good And Evil: Prel- its distinctive task, invested in external media. bernetic/ecological understanding of mind. ude To A Philosophy of the Future, W. Kaufmann The logic of these media becomes the logic of Bateson emphasized that we need to think of in- (trans.). New York: Vintage Books. mind in so far as it is involved with signs. The formation as an active transformation of a per- ‘scramble’ of consciousness is defined by a com- ceived difference. For Bateson, differences that Snow, C.P. (1959) The Two Cultures. Cambridge: plex ‘web’ of sign-factors and experiential make a difference (his definition of a ‘bit’ of Cambridge University Press. components that give it a distinctive felt ‘qual- information) are error activated, insofar as they ity’ at every moment. Consciousness itself is a are perceived to exist by an organism only in situ- Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investiga- phenomenon that, to different degrees, is acces- ations where they hold a behavioral relevance. tions. Oxford: Blackwell sible at every moment. Its structural scaffolding This belief led Bateson to conclude, much like is so connected with its contents that Peterson, that the complex human inner world — (1958) The Blue and Brown Books. New York: its‘appropriation’ and thematization is a constant is built largely on the perception of similarities Harper. challenge. Lidov thinks of consciousness as a dy- between abstracted descriptions grounded in namic field of ‘presencings’ and as the ‘place’ of behavioral relevance. Peterson makes a few brief semioses. It has no clear boundaries, indeed, no passing references to Wittgenstein, but none to greatest upper bound, if we take seriously the Bateson, suggesting that the similarities may re- recursive nature of reflection on consciousness. flect some genuine convergence of views on a Consciousness, which is not to be thought of tricky topic, rather than simply a lineage of in- as a ‘thing’ or ‘substance,’ is full of ‘items.’ An tellectual influence. Peterson’s book enriches and item is “anything we attend to” (98), certainly as extends the viewpoints of these and other broad and as neutral a notion as we can imagine. 7 Items, in this sense, belong to the “foreground” mentally Peircean, but with “consequential thing that can develop, and the construct, “the (98) of consciousness and emerge as figures out differences” (104): (a) its basis is ad hoc psycho- object of a sign that is not firmly linked to a dis- of a ground. Semiosis can be thought of as a kind logical categories rather than ontological catego- tinct and influential dynamic object” (106), a of figuration or itemization of consciousness. The ries (i.e., first, second, and third do not appear), notion that in the last analysis he wants nothing first term emphasizes the processual nature of (b) the interpretant is not considered “necessar- to do with. semiosis and consciousness. The second term ily” to be a sign, and (c) the dynamic object Lidov opts (though not exclusively) for a di- emphasizes the work of segmentation that comes is not considered to be essential to a properly vision of signs that is fundamentally Peircean, from ‘acts of attending,’ in the way, say, Iris formulated semiotic theory. Opting for a Peircean with the terminological substitution of ‘terms’ for Murdoch or Simone Weil used the notion of ‘at- foundation for the “schema of the sign” does not Peirce’s ‘symbols’ in the differentiation of tending.’ eo ipso set it in irreconcilable opposition sign-types. But the book is not organized around There is, on Lidov’s analysis, no a priori limi- to Saussure’s differential model based on an ex- this well-known and exhaustively commented on tation of what can be an item: anything that is, trapolation from structural linguistics, which in division. For Lidov, icon, index, and symbol are or can be, attended to -- or from -- is an ‘item,’ in fact Lidov treats even-handedly and insightfully. “aspects” of signs rather than ontologically dis- the sense defined. Sign-factors, the proper and The tracking of the paths from simple to elabo- tinct sign-types. Iconic, indexical, and symbolic distinctive object of semiotics as an analytical and rate signs involves a general schematization of elements co-occur in different weightings self-reflective discipline, are par excellence items signs and then the development of a series of dis- in the various sign-complexes produced and in- in consciousness (99). The equality of all items tinctions and categories that ‘modulate’ or terpreted in intrinsically labile semiosic activi- in consciousness, Lidov thinks, devalues the of- ‘torque’ the general schema, depending on the ties. Because sign-situations are “evanescent” ten drawn distinction between formal and instru- phenomena that are provoking the investigation. (104) the focus of Lidov’s analyses is the mental signs (99), because, as Lidov sees it, The general schematization has both a stipulative sign-situate, that is, an item that is a sign consciousness blends internal and external and a descriptive dimension, while the following “only when situated as one,” not the phases in its awareness of items (100). There is, out of its various ramifications or branchings leads sign-designate, that is, an item that is a sign “even in short, no essential difference between our Lidov to furnish us with stimulating and novel if idle or misused” (90). Lidov is, as noted, con- awareness of tools and instruments and our systematic comparisons of different genres of sign. cerned with signs in use. Indeed, while Lidov awareness of signs. The ‘internal-external’ con- This, he clearly shows, is one of the main tasks clearly admits that “Peirce’s semiotics is ... the trast is ultimately of no importance for semiotics of semiotics. Lidov’s book oscillates creatively most elaborate, audacious, inventive, and grand - or for semiosis. It is to be supplanted by a crea- between two poles or foci: the descriptive or ana- that we have” (87), his book is by no means ei- tive extension of the type-token relation. The lytical and the comparative or methodological. ther another commentary on Peirce’s texts or a issue for any sign-mediated conscious act of Lidov’s actual definition of a sign comes rather systematic application of Peirce’s schema in or- attending is the stabilization of a unity: an idea - late in the book. “A sign-complex (‘sign’ for short) der to show its comprehensiveness and heuristic the idea of a bicycle, say - functioning as a focal is a triplet of three distinct factors. The factors fertility, which he nevertheless clearly and forth- item, can tie together (synthesize or subject to a of a sign are items in consciousness” (103). These rightly admits in word and deed. rule) “a disparate group of external experiences” conscious factors or items are, unsurprisingly, This is exemplied in his discussion of the ‘con- and thus label or ‘bind’ the stream of three of the (five) Peircean factors of semiosis: texts’ of the three factors of the ‘sign-complex.’ experiencings. This is a classic, realist, position representamen, object, and interpretant. The The contexts of a representamen is its medium on the constitutive nature of concepts, where ‘interpreter’ and the ‘ground,’ which Peirce ex- and its structural environment. But Lidov points external experiences are ‘tokens’ of the ‘type’ en- plicitly differentiates as essential to the consti- out that many different types of things are called capsulated in the concept. However, in a power- tution of a semiosic event, are implicit in Lidov a medium: a material, or a grammar, or a tech- ful and illuminating observation, Lidov notes that but not thematized in the definition. The con- nology, a vagueness, he notes, that is perhaps an actual physical bicycle can be used to tie to- scious interpreter is the ‘place’ where “more useful than obstructive” (109). The chief gether and control the “myriad images I have of representamina are brought into conscious rela- orientation of a comparative semiotics is to be it” (100), that is, it may, functioning as a sign, tion with objects by means of interpretants. These found here in the comparison of media, the exemplify what a bicycle is. Signs are not ‘sub- three factors effect the relation of representation, guiding principle of which is that “in general, a stance’ or ‘things,’ but anything that is used in a which Lidov considers, resolutely and most con- sign system or a pattern provides the structural particular way. The ‘idea’ of a bicycle and the vincingly, as a “relation in consciousness” (7). contexts of its elements” (109). This is clearly bicycle itself are both signs, ‘items’ in conscious- Semiosis, carried out by the construction of the syntactic component of a sign-system, which ness. Here is a kind of pansemioticism in poten- sign-complexes and our existential investment functions as a field. The context of an object is tia but not in actu. Signs ‘are’ not; they in them, is a phenomenon of consciousness qua its world. Lidov distinguishes, from the semiotic are ‘taken.’ tale. Any item of consciousness whatsoever, point of view, two worlds: the world the object Lidov wisely makes no attempt to ‘define’ con- functioning as a representamen, “evokes and was extracted from, albeit with the help of signs, sciousness, since it is not clear that all the phe- constrains an interpretant of the object” (104). and the one into which the sign inserts it (109). nomena we include under the rubric of ‘con- The ‘material phase’ of an external Designation is the semiotic work of extraction. sciousness’ are able to be subsumed under an representamen is a vehicle, since the Modality marks the sign’s power to determine a essentialistic definition. ‘Consciousness’ is a kind representamen must be ‘carried’ or ‘invested.’ new context for the object. This polarity between of analytical primitive for Lidov, synonymous with When the representamen is internal, the mate- designation and modality is a permanent feature ‘presence’ or ‘attending’ or ‘noticing.’ It encom- rial phase is an image, broadly understood, cer- of semiosis and one of the distinguishing marks passes our awareness of our bodies as felt centers tainly a distant echo of Peirce’s insistence on the of human mentality as invested in the work of of movement and expressive gestures, sensory role of ‘mental diagrams’ or schemata. signs. The context of an interpretant is a per- consciousness of impressions and experiential The interpretant is defined in orthodox spective. “A group of signs may be interpreted in qualities, consciousness of the development and Peircean fashion: it is the “factor of the sign that a way that expresses a unity (be it of feeling, of unity of a musical theme, consciousness of the instantiates, or realizes, the relationship of the attitude, of situation, of argument, or whatever). meaning of a sentence or a text. These are representamen to the object” (107). Lidov, in These share a perspective” (110). Lidov connects all instances of ‘consciousness.’ What we are spite of his belief that the notion of the the notion of a perspective with a remarkable conscious of defines consciousness and its types interpretant is “probably Peirce’s most original passage from Peirce dealing with personality: and patterns. Mind - as the place of semiosis - is, contribution” (92), deviates from Peirce here in to use Lidov’s formulation, invested in signs. It that rather than taking over the Peircean [P]ersonality is some kind of coordination or con- is to signs and their configurations that we are to schematization of interpretants into emotional, nection of ideas. Not much to say, this, perhaps. Yet when look to understand what consciousness is. Con- energetic, and logical, he distinguishes an imme- we consider that, according to the principle that we are sciousness ‘is’ a function of what we are attend- diate interpretant, a responsive interpretant, and tracing out, a connection between ideas is itself a general idea, and that a general idea is a living feeling, it is ing to and the means we are using to attend to or then a “seven-league-boot interpretant” plain that we have at least taken an appreciable ‘access’ it. Each distinct form of consciousness (108-109). The immediate interpretant, on step toward the understanding of personality. This per- for the type of semiotic theory Lidov is concerned Lidov’s reckoning, is “intrinsically tenuous,” al- sonality, like any general idea, is not a thing to be appre- to develop is a distinct way of accessing meaning ways involving “a supplement or some redun- hended in an instant. It has to be lived in time, nor can created through investment in an item or com- dancy.” Although he does not refer in any sys- any finite time embrace it in all its fullness. Yet in each infinitesimal interval it is present and living, though spe- plex of items functioning as a sign or system of tematic way to Peirce’s notion of the time-binding cially colored by the immediate feelings of that moment. signs. character of consciousness as a sequence of (Peirce 1972: 213) self-appropriating interpretants, Lidov does af- II. firm that “the interpretant is drawn out in time. To have a perspective, and to know one has a Often a sign allows a range of interpretants” perspective, is to be a person in the deepest sense Although Lidov offers no definition of con- (109). The object -- the thing-meant -- is, on of the term. A person is a living time-bound sciousness, the rest of his book is resolutely the first cut, divided by Lidov into the immedi- perspectival feeling-process. A person is marked definitional. The definition of the sign is funda- ate object, which is something in the mind, some- by a definite qualitative feel of each pulse of 8 consciousness. Lidov goes on to say that we per- of subelements. The vocabularies that some com- School and in the work of Mukarovsky and ceive perspectives, but it seems to me to be bet- binatorial systems depend on in turn depend on Jakobson, “might be said to extend Saussurian ter to say that perceiving, as continuous pulsings a combinatorial vocabulary of features” (134). structuralism from langue to parole “ (65). Lidov of experience, is itself perspectival and is felt as Does not perception, as conscious process, treat thinks that the various functions are referential such, and that we can reflect, by means of a new the existential properties of its objects as indexi- functions (65) and that in the last analysis func- ‘perceiving,’ on our perspectives. This avoids the cal features? Lidov seems to admit this himself, tionalism does not so much extend as contest loss of perspective as a category and also pin- which brings him very close to Peirce’s position “the division of langue from parole “ (65). But points the self-augmenting and self-reflecting na- on the semiotic structure of perception itself. Lidov is not satisfied with the results so far, which ture of perception and consciousness. he calls an “ad hoc method ... of parsing the so- Lidov claims that the third factor of a sign III. cial situation of the sign,” but not a new concep- could be a rule rather than an interpretant. “All tion of the sign itself (65). Functionalism’s great- the plausible interpretants of a designated sign, Beyond the fact that Lidov accepts the est power for him, it seems, is in analyzing the when it is launched into a sign situation, are basic lines of the Peircean semiotic schema, how- aesthetic. It does so because, like structuralism, governed by its rule, and they form a class. The ever, is the question of why he prefers it to the and unlike Peircean pragmatist semiotics, it of- rule defines the class; the interpretants are the schema derived from Saussure’s structuralist fers us a “ generalized understanding [of] how members of the class” (111). Lidov is very astute project. Structuralism, according to Lidov, views parts relate to wholes within sign factors” (89). when he writes that “we note a tendency for con- semiotics as a “map of differences” (133) with Structuralism, with its functionalist continuation, sciousness to provide its own supplement to the semiosis as the actual mapping of differences. But, has to do “with our consciousness of order and rule, true interpretants if weak ones” (111). More as Lidov sees it, pure difference does not exist organization” (129) and in this sense it must be puzzling perhaps is his contention that “the (133). Difference is always positive because it is seen as “an unfinished project” (129). It is, how- interpretant is simultaneously essential and su- always in situ. Peirce’s representamen “may com- ever, a supplement to pragmatism not an alter- perfluous” - it is “something more” that is added prise positive qualities and positive facts, not native to it. But the permanent influence of struc- in consciousness when the mind employs a sign. just empty ‘difference’” (91). What, then, is the turalist and functionalist concerns is clearly seen It amounts to “grasp or understanding” (112). alternative to reified difference? “A more particu- in the nuanced comparative aesthetic analyses Following his insistence on the importance of lar conception of articulation” (133). Further- that make up a large part of Lidov’s book, where consciousness Lidov correctly writes that “it is more, “the purely systematic view of language ‘the signs of art’ are subjected to a most insight- only the awareness of a sign that allows for the implicit in Saussure’s opposition of signification ful analysis and flesh out and give bite to the differentiation of meaning from effect” (112). I and value can be overlaid on other kinds of signs scheme of elements, the construction of which am not sure, however, that Lidov has quite un- to only a very limited extent” (52-53). This point is the main task of the book. derstood - or at least put sufficient value on - the is also connected with the issue of conscious significance of Peirce’s notion of the energetic qualities, with the feel of signs, of qualia as es- IV. interpretant, thinking that Wittgenstein’s analy- sential to signs. At the same time “the system- sis of ‘non-mindful’ behavioral and automatic atic study of differences within any medium is a I cannot reproduce the delicacy, detail,and responses is sufficient. Lidov takes it as essential potent analytical tool whether or not such a per- concreteness of Lidov’s presentation and argu- that “the interpretant must be conscious” (112), spective can survey the whole territory” (53). In ment. I must restrict myself to drawing attention a position with which I can certainly agree, but short, “Saussure gave us a practical model of to some representative positions which exemplify that certainly does not mean that it must be the- signifiers but only a vague conjecture about the valuable ‘take’ on semiotics that Lidov has matically attended to or operatively reflected signifieds. The practical model finds wide appli- constructed. upon. We can prethematically live through, and cation outside language. Indeed, his main ideas First, Lidov, in spite of his love of the musical consequently be conscious of, our actions and about signifiers are no more linguistic than they and plastic arts, resolutely holds to the distinc- bodily movements without making them focal are musicological or anthropological. They be- tiveness, indeed superiority, of language as a semi- and an action can in this way be a true long - as he proposed - to semiology or semiot- otic system. While he admits that the differences ‘interpretant’ of a sign-situation. ics” (56). Peirce and Saussure, it appears, can between language and other signifying media Although sign-complexes and forms of con- sleep in the same room but not in the same bed. are “not all black and white,” it appears, never- sciousness are, I noted, correlative for Lidov, and They are, in fact, assigned to beds of different theless, that language is not only “unique in its semiosis is a phenomenon of consciousness ex- sizes. Saussure’s great discovery is of a model of capacity to define its own terms” but that sen- clusively, it is nevertheless a “component of signifying structures that, generalizing from lin- tences, the carriers of human utterances, conscious experience but not the whole of it” guistics, “most dynamically connected the phi- “seem unique in their capacity to designate as- (117). This means that consciousness as semiosis losophy of signs to the concrete data of culture” pects of a situation and combine them” (148). has vague and complex boundaries that con- (46). Strangely enough, in criticizing Saussure’s The referential function of language is encom- stantly shift. As a result, representation, the Urakt conception of the sign, Lidov asserts that it is passed by the work of designation, analysis, and of semiosis, is “one part of the larger whole of “inadequate to give us a handle on the behavior modality. Designation, as Lidov uses the term, experience” (117). Since not all items of con- of signs in mental life. What it leaves out are the involves the indexical component of a sentence, sciousness are signs - unless taken to be such - angles. The sign is biased. Representation is the hooking of the complex linguistic sign onto “thought develops signs where there were of something as something” (85). This is, then, a part of the world ‘outside’ of itself so as to ‘ex- none” (117). A radical consequence of such a the great role of the Peircean ‘interpretant,’ a tract’ it and ‘mark’ it off. Analysis is exemplified position for Lidov is that there are no uncon- much more powerful notion than Saussure’s glo- in the division of the fundamental units of the scious signs and that sign-complexes attain sta- bal category of a ‘signified.’ ‘marked’ experiential continuum into the three bility within constantly shifting boundaries of As to Saussure’s model of the signifier, how- basic categories of agent, action, object. Modal- semiosis. The unconscious, as Lidov sees it, has ever, Lidov acknowledges its power and indicates ity is an internal function of the sign. Modality is no semiotic relevance as a field of interpretations. its range of application. A theme that runs an interpretant that “assigns the object to a It is interpreted, but not interpreting, and we are throughout his book is that “reference and world” (149). The ‘modal’ object of a sentence, related to it as we are related to the external structure compete” (62). In aesthetic signs, for on this analysis, would be the “proposition it ex- world. Strangely enough, Lidov contends that instance, we find that “any sign takes on aesthetic presses and its context is a world: a world of ex- “perceptions as such are not signs, even though function to the extent that it is regarded as an isting fact, a world of desiderata, a world of obli- he also wants to hold that “every species has its end in itself. Whether this happens or not is ... a gations, a world of necessities, a world of hypoth- own way of constructing an objective world” question of social norms” (60). This involves the esis, and so on” (150). There is no limit to modal (118), a thesis that has become central to cer- simultaneous foregrounding of “internal struc- worlds nor is there a “universal vocabulary for tain powerful semiotic theories such as those of tural arrangements within the sign” and the “po- modes” (150). Moreover, it is the “capacity to von Uexküll, Cassirer, and Thomas Sebeok. As sitioning of the sign with respect to cultural sys- encode designation, modality, and semantic Lidov puts it, “normally, the resultant object is a tems of value” (62). Structural analysis stresses analysis with precision” that is sui generis for ver- true substitute for the sensations that it three factors: heightened artifice of symmetries bal signs. “No exact equivalents to these appear replaces, the output of their input, not their sign” of all sorts, departures from stylistic norms, and outside language. No other medium sustains the (119). There are exceptions when this does not transformation of the sign’s logical character. The contrasts of designation with denotation (the in- hold. But, we may ask, with Peirce, Cassirer, and cultural perspective, for its part, “stresses the rela- dication of a class rather than an individual). others, what if “appearances” are structured tivity of aesthetic valuation” (63). Lidov is However, once teased apart, these ingredients of semiotically (see Innis 1994)? Later, in his dis- especially strong in his brilliant structural analy- verbal reference turn out to play roles, albeit of- cussion of ‘features,’ Lidov seems to give back ses which belong to the comparative dimension ten more vague, in nonverbal semiosis” (150). what he has just taken away. A feature, as he of his book. But the analyses are structural with- This vagueness is not to be construed as a sign of puts it, “is a sign factor component that is atomic out being structuralist in the strict sense and they weakness, however, as if forms of nonverbal in a given perspective; that is, it is an element also rely on tools taken from functionalism. semiosis are poor relatives of verbal or linguistic that we do not want to regard as a combination Functionalism, exemplified in the Prague forms of semiosis. The point is that the 9 self-reflective and self-analysing nature of lan- His treatment of it is suggestive, short and sweet, gagement that is a sign factor in the processive guage enables us both to highlight its distinctive and correct. He points out that “our objective sign. Accordingly, Lidov offers the following defi- features and to read off the features that it shares worlds are plural, contradictory, interpenetrat- nition of a processive sign. It is a “sign in which with all other sign media. The choice of a signi- ing, and in part unstable” (172) in that the representamen, the object, or the fying medium will condition the actual form that sign-complexes accomplish the world-building interpretant is a process” (182). Such a notion these three kinds of reference can take. work of designation, analysis, and assignment of allows Lidov to schematize processive signs in Second, the stable result of verbal semiosis is modality in radically different ways. “The worlds three ways: a text, the labile result being a conversation or engendered by immersion in texts and grammars (1) process as representamen gives us dialogue, assuming, that is, reciprocity of voice, control our perception of experiences external ritual, which relations of power do not always allow. to them. In a sense, texts act like theories” (172). (2) process as object gives us symbols, Lidov formulates Foucault’s great lesson as teach- We dwell in theories and interpret the world in (3) process as interpretant gives us works ing us that “there are very few domains of dis- light of them. But we can also step outside any of art. course in which language furnishes all the signs given theory and view it from the outside. We In ritual one participates, either as actor or as in play” (176). Texts display a permanent use it to refer while ascribing to it at the same witness, in an action with which one identifies. tension found in all semiotic constructs to which time its own autonomy. In the same way, with “Participation establishes a situation, an orien- Lidov also grants the honorific of being ‘texts,’ texts and complete semiotic systems we can be tation, and a feeling, which is to say that it in- even if they are not language-constituted stricto both inside and outside them. But what we can duces a process in consciousness proper to the sensu: a tension between grammar and pattern. do with texts and systems we cannot do with ritual” (182). A ritual, a time-defined Grammar attaches a semiotic work to society. our own minds. “We cannot see our own minds representamen, is coercive of feeling or behavior. Pattern individualizes the work. Grammatical from the outside” (174). Consequently, “semi- It is the fact of experiential immersion that marks structure is not the same as the structure of a otic closure is tenuous” (174). Our encounter rituals. “In ritual, there is no substitute for per- particular work. “A grammar for assembling with any text involves our ascribing a “syntactic sonal presence. Presence permits a process to be texts is a set of rules that governs the text’s con- diagram” to it, but “complex texts do not fully engaged, and that process represents whatever stituents and their relations by reference to cat- yield to neat diagrams, and this is crucial” (174). the ritual represents” (183). A symbol, as Lidov egories “ (154). Parts of speech, types of steps in Complex texts establish “grounds for competing is using the term, is “a sign that does not merely dance, classes of chords in music belong here. interpretants” and hence establish a discourse. indicate or designate its object but also involves These categories and the rules for combining In this way “the text becomes an image of think- us in a feeling or disposition affiliated with its them or selecting them are known a priori. When ing. Discourse embodies the movement of object” (183). Lidov parallels here the deep and a combination realizes a grammatical rule we thought” (174). vital work of the theologian Paul Tillich. In fact, have a form: sentence, syllogism, still-life, musi- I would like to cite a representative passage his analysis also parallels the work of Michael cal sonata, standard types of plot, and “perhaps bearing on this theme to illustrate the richness Polanyi in his last work, Meaning. Flags, tomb- the standard press conference” (154). and acuity of Lidov’s project. stones, and other such objects, for example, are While ‘categories’ and ‘forms’ define grammar, A text offers us a world when three conditions are symbols in that they evoke sets of feelings and ‘units’ and ‘sets’ define patterns. Individual texts met: attitudes, such as a “sense of belonging and loy- are characterized by distinctive patterns. “A pat- (1) it must capture attention but be too complex alty, of death and horror, and of romance and tern is a concrete ad hoc arrangement of con- to be comprehended readily in its details and organiza- madness” (183). In short, the symbol “specifies a tion; stituents that establishes relations of similarity (2) it must suggest closure - the associations whole field of experience as its object” (183). and contrast” (154). These take two forms: sets, among its parts must suggest that they belong to a con- Symbols “entrain” a dense penumbra of associa- which are “‘paradigms’ determined by similarity sistent scheme in which they define each other by similar- tions and dispositions. A symbol does not merely and contrast,” and units, which are “‘syntagms’ ity and difference or by grammatical relations; and designate this penumbra. It engages it (and its determined by similarity and contrast” (154). (3) the text or grammar must not actually yield to contents). “The symbol actually provokes a sam- the unitary diagram that it seems to promise. These three Here is a clear reference to the two-axis theme characteristics are also characteristics of the ‘real’ or ‘eve- ple of the experience it refers to” (183). Artworks of linguistics (paradigmatic and syntagmatic) and ryday’ world to which we are referring our comparison: induce us to sustain a perspective by casting us the parallel notion of an axis of selection and an The world is complex and absorbing; it seems to into it. “The perspective sustained is an axis of combination. Lidov points out that we have unity or at least continuity (which is close to unity); interpretant-process” (184). A work of art, in cannot predict pattern. Pattern is discovered by yet we can’t quite make out what the unity and articula- this schema, strives to heighten our perception tions are. The loose ends and leftovers create conceptual induction or abduction. It is known only a pos- instabilities that are the representamen of the life of of the work “as a structured sensuous material,” teriori and “develops from perceptions of thought, the buzz of unprocessed experiences around the heighten our “imagination of its object,” and as- symmetries of all kinds: repetitions, variations, edge of our articulated objective world (174). similate us to “the viewpoint toward the object and transformations and contrasts” (154). Exam- To understand the world and to understand a text induced by the work” (184). Art engages and ples of pattern are the rhyming of words in a is to enter into a dialogue, where we answer both merges perception, imagination, and ‘viewpoint’ poem, thematic motifs in a symphony, distribu- world and text with counterwords. “Where semi- as three “dimensions of experience” (184). Lidov tion of colors on a canvas, and so forth. Set is to otic worlds collide, they enjoin dialogues” (177). notes that this scheme works best when we can pattern what category is to grammar. Understood Third, Lidov has an extremely interesting, identify an object of the representation. But even in this way, Lidov is certainly right in holding that but not altogether unproblematic, discussion of when the object has been removed, say, in a there is no prior blueprint for pattern which can what he calls ‘processive signs,’ which encom- non-figurative work, it is still parasitic upon a work within grammatical constraints or contra- pass ritual, symbol, and art. The sign-complexes prior representational form or scheme. In this dict and escape such constraints. This is also why that constitute these central domains of semiosis sense art works display in perspicuous fashion the pattern is so often connected with the aesthetic are situated within the great polarity of struc- “eradication of reference with the elaboration of (157). But at the same time, as Lidov points out, ture and reference that is one of the constant structure” that is intrinsic to semiosis and is one “the role of grammar and pattern in the plastic themes of his book. To the degree that of its constitutive principles (185). Even in the arts is more fragmentary because visual articula- sign-complexes foreground their structure and absence of the object a work can suggest how it tion structure is so widely various” (156). There thus become more internally elaborate “they tend would relate to an object if there were one. can be, in other words, no ‘language’ of art ex- to lose or loosen their hold on their objects” (128) Rituals, symbols, and art works, as cept in the most attenuated sense of the term. and in that sense become more ‘opaque.’ To the sign-complexes, so engage us that they provoke Which does not mean, however, that art works degree that they tighten their referential hold on and sustain “a continuous experience.” Ritual are not sign-complexes, in the sense defined. It their objects they become more ‘transparent.’ In does so by the controls of perception “entailed is just that the sign-object-interpretant triad is ritual, symbol, and art “the axis of opacity and by the conditions of presence at a sign situation” not torqued according to the logic or model of transparency doubles back on itself ... for these when they “compel a structured conscious ex- language. Lidov is utterly convincing here, espe- may be so opaque as to seem beyond interpreta- perience” (186). A symbol depends on the inter- cially in his insistence on the close connections tion and at the same time so involving as not to action between a sign and a base of knowledge . between perception and semiosis as exemplified call for any” (181). Processive signs are signs with While a symbol can be a relatively simple, uni- in art. a special aura, “signs that are absorbing, salient, fied vehicle - sun, moon, flag, stars, circles, In the course of discussing the issue of clo- problematic” (181). They are signs that deal with squares, serpents, etc. - it is “attached to a rich sure and autonomy in connection with the the processes of feeling, processes of conscious- network of cultural lore” (186) in which we have well-known distinction between open and closed ness. The pivot of Lidov’s analysis is that there is embodied or invested ourselves. The symbol texts, Lidov remarks that the issue is “tied to no rigid distinction between items in conscious- immerses us in this network. While art works [a] fundamental question in epistemology: Is our ness and processes in consciousness. “A feeling certainly control perception and immerse us in own experience, as whole, open or closed?” (171). can be taken as an item” (182). A process, as rich networks of socially shared meanings Lidov Although Lidov resolutely tries to reduce the Lidov is using the term, “involves a sustained en- in the last analysis pinpoints “the opacity of the philosophical component of his book to a mini- gagement in environment, orientation, feeling, vehicle itself” as the mark of aesthetic signs mum, this is one of those (big) philosophical and/or disposition” (182). It is precisely that en- problems that he cannot quite manage to avoid. 10 which, by reason of its structure, and not by rea- ent models” (199). Tree graphs model the com- example, halo, gallows, balance as representing son of any recondite object, ‘defamiliarizes’ our prehension of sentences while net graphs sanctity, death, justice - certainly a blend of experiences. We are directed to the vehicle itself model the comprehension of melodies: both types symbolism and convention, and and not what it refers to, in two directions: (1) of graphs are attempts to model boundary and (3) the inflectional object, a concept that “toward reconstruction of structural coherence” region hierarchies, whether situations and actions covers a large range of phenomena. and (2) “toward immersion in sensation” (186). that are proper to narratives, or states and tran- Inflectional objects are holistic elements: illu- We meet once again the “fundamental antith- sitions proper to melodies and flow charts. On sions, color dynamics, distortion, synaesthetic esis of structure and reference” (186) that marks all these topics Lidov is a laconic and insightful values, color warmth and color distance. “In gen- sign systems of all sorts. Lidov insightfully points guide. eral, the inflections of pictures are out that art works, while being embodied representamina of nonvisual objects - such as sign-complexes, depend upon a “continuous ma- V. feelings - which we may call, collectively, the in- terial surface” that furnishes the “background of flectional objects of the picture” (209). sensorial continuity” which is the normal pre- It is, however, in his comparison of music Non-depictive painting focusses our attention on requisite condition for the “unmarked state for and visual art that Lidov truly excels. For Lidov inflectional objects, the ‘reading’ of which dif- aesthetic engagement” (187). This is the port of the arts quite generally are “the true laboratories fers greatly from the ‘reading’ of depictions, in- entry into the kingdom of “sensory qualities” of the great human project of sign making” (191). ducing, in Lidov’s opinion, a kind of entrance- (187). The artist in constructing the art work is Repudiating the all too facile opposition between ment. marked by the “ability to create continuity” the musical and the plastic - the arts of time and Lidov maintains a firm grip on the dialectical (187), which can be present in many forms: un- the arts of space - Lidov insists on the much more tension between a picture as a text and the pic- dercoating in oil painting, the steady tone of the semiotically informative fact that we “can ac- ture as a whole or holistic unity. A picture has a musician, the “relaxed flow” of the drafter’s knowledge hierarchy of content, perspective, and “more or less unitary overall object (the scene)” hand, and so forth. It is in comments such as suggestions of designation and modality in both” and, “for any one reading, a more less unitary these that Lidov shows his geniality and mastery. (191). Two major questions arise for the semi- significance, its interpretant as a whole” (211). It also indicates the rootedness of Lidov’s semi- otic treatment of art. First, “How is the signify- Lidov in this way throws off hints and insights otic elements in the lived structures of experi- ing structure equipped to entrain, designate, or on every page. Pictures can clearly signify more encing. generalize various objects?” Second, “How does than they depict. Pictures depicting events can In spite of my substantive agreement with the it constrain and elaborate their interpretation?” have component figures that are not events thrust of Lidov’s distinction between and analy- (191). The signifying structure of art works shares and in this sense are like, on the one hand, words sis of ritual, symbol, and art, I think they are best with artificial languages and games a ‘playful’ de- in a sentence and, on the other hand, parts in a thought of as ‘aspects’ of processive limitation of means which promotes “musement.” whole. The inflectional unity is an emergent sign-complexes where it is the weighting of the Lidov speaks of the “discipline of the signifier by property, a unifying quality, as Dewey so perspicu- various sign-factors that marks off something as limitation of means” (203). Such limitations - ously showed in his Art as Experience, which Lidov primarily ritual, symbol, or artwork. I find the proper to artifice, models, graphs, and notations could have exploited to the benefit of his argu- schematization forced and really not in accord - attribute text structure to their objects and thus ment. “A picture as a whole encompasses the ar- with Lidov’s own refusal to reify sign-types. As belong to a class of conceptlike representamina. rangement of all its inflections as a unity” (212). classification, I find the schematization inad- These representamina are to be distinguished Balance emerges out of the perception of equate. As phenomenology of the work of from holistic representamina which resist ‘reciprocities’: of weight and counterweight, ten- sign-complexes, however, I find it stimulating and ‘articulating’ their objects. Unarticulated inflec- sion and countertension, structural features that cogent. tions, as in paintings and performances, are “more are not rooted in categories but in magnitudes. Fourth, Lidov’s comparative orientation al- holistic than formal graphs and notations, but The fusion in artistic texts of conceptlike ele- lows him to throw sharp light on topics the full they include conceptlike aspects” (203). In ments and holistic elements leads to “a concep- explication of which would take complete stud- art - but not just in art - there is a continuous tion of feeling” and “the feeling of concept” (212), ies in themselves. He points out that natural and axis of “complex mixtures of conceptlike and a genial and important formulation. The distinc- artificial languages are not so strictly and defini- holistic elements,” and signs are not to be di- tive feel or quality of a painting - or sculpture, tively distinguished. Indeed, games can be assimi- vided into two sharp classes. While it is true that for that matter - is the interaction of inflection lated to artificial languages. They involve a de- “conceptlike representamina facilitate play” by and depiction. marcation of a playing field (a ludic space) and allowing us to be immersed in a “closed and in- Turning to music, which is Lidov’s professional an articulation of the moves allowed (194). Pure sulated world” of “playful inventions” (204), it is field, we find him once again tracing the intri- notation systems, which Lidov first discusses with also true that “you cannot play with the whole cate relations between semiotic and non-semiotic Nelson Goodman as dialogue partner, are rare universe at once. To play requires focusing, and aspects. Lidov illuminatingly applies the semiotic and are exemplified in musical notation: pitch a closed, artificial world assists that focus” (204). triad to the analysis of melody. The melodic and rhythm are clearly notated, while the Lidov’s ‘take’ on the visual arts can be sum- representamen is compounded of discrete parts, conductor’s beat is a nonnotational model for a marized in the following way, some of it tradi- revealed in pattern analysis and foregrounding symphonic performance. And theories are, on tional and some of it relatively new, especially in disjunct entities and a hierarchy of regions, and Lidov’s reckoning, models for their objects. Lidov, terms of emphasis and weighting. Works of visual of modulating continuities, revealed in in the Peircean mode, emphasizes the ‘iconic’ art have a double appearance: the visual vehi- grammar analysis and foregrounding rising and character of models. A sign-complex is a model cle, the appearance of the formed material, and falling conjunct intervals and a hierarchy of if: (1) we can construct the representamen the visual scene (Langer’s virtual object). A pic- boundaries (216). The pattern of disjunct ele- from a “vocabulary of known elements and ture, for example, is legitimately thought of as a ments is highly articulate and assists us to reify known relations,” composition and a text, though it is not modeled the melody (216). It reveals the unique vocabu- (2) the representamen makes the object on language. It combines, to be sure, size, shape, lary of the melody. The modulation hierarchy is known by means of resemblance, color, texture. But visual art has no “universal like waves on a lake. Conjunction is identified (3) the relation between representamen articulatory framework” (206), and there are no by us perceptually “with continuity and with and object is not indexical (197). Diagrams, ac- universal grammatical or pattern schemata. In processes in consciousness rather than items” cordingly, aspire to the status of models (197). this sense the visual arts are the great domain of (216). It is this double character of the melodic Their function is to make all the parts of a sys- visual novelty, making appear in a continuously representamen that “prepares us for the surpris- tem able to be regarded simultaneously, even if variable stream “the relations among perceptual ing complexity of its references” (216). The the clarity of diagrams is, as Lidov astutely ob- aspects” (205-206) as well as novel forms of de- motional object of music is rooted in proprio- serves, more sensorial than logical and even if piction, which is the “most characteristic rela- ceptive knowledge, which Lidov discusses with we frequently use diagrams “to make our ideas tion of reference for visual art” (207). Neverthe- reliance on the stimulating work of Pierce and look better than they are” (198). At the same less, isomorphism between representation and Pierce. “We may interpret the melodic reference time the feeling of control of an object domain object is to be rejected. The substitution of a to motion as the expressive behavior of a sub- that attends our use of graphs leads to “free grammar of depiction for a grammar of vision ject” (219). This involves an ascription of sub- play” (198), as do all formal systems. A formal makes possible the “understanding of pictures as jectivity, of a persona, to music or to a musical system as invested in a graph can be used as a signs” (209). Lidov is especially good at pointing theme (219). Lidov thinks of a melodic shape as notation (199), with graphs such as tree graphs out that a picture sign can have three objects: “encoding two simpler, simultaneous contours” and net graphs being considered models of (1) the depicted object, which can also be (219), which are ultimately the rhythmic and the mental diagrams, which are not immediately a state of affairs, proper to ‘representational’ art, pitch structures. We are presented in the musi- available. The important and fertile implication which is subject to multiple grammars, cal line with a constant tension, played out in that Lidov wants to draw is that “different sorts (2) the stipulated object, which is the ob- the perceiving body, between effort and momen- of comprehension of sense are suggested for ject referred to when a depicted object itself be- tum. Rhythmic and pitch structures are in con- melodies and sentences in adapting these differ- comes a representamen of another object, for stant dialectical relationship, with acceleration 11 and deceleration of rhythm playing against throw a penetrating light on the issue of emer- At the end of his book, in a compact and rising and falling pitch (221). As to the musical gent properties or emergent qualitative values in clear-headed discussion of education, Lidov ar- interpretant, Lidov points out that not only mo- art. His thesis and theme is that “in art holistic gues that “education is the primary locus for the tion but also emotion has an essential affinity with elements are framed and manipulated so as to maintenance of sign systems and texts” (261). music. While the recourse to emotion is, become conceptlike; conceptlike elements are Proper education, dependent on ‘discipline,’ as Lidov says, “no shortcut to understanding transformed and inflected to convey holistic in- needs “manageable packages of signs” (262). The music” (221), he does want to sustain the thesis flections” (230). Art evolves, consequently, expert teacher’s job is to match students with that in spite of the vagueness of the notion of on two planes: a plane of composition and a plane the right-sized projects and in this way lead them emotion and its confusion at times with mood of inflection. Composition deals with pattern and out of themselves. Creativity in its authentic, non and sensation, “it remains a fact that music can grammar in so far as they are amenable to nota- “flabby,” sense arises in interaction with sign sys- indicate qualities of feeling and that qualities of tion. Inflection encompasses unarticulated ele- tems and texts, in the opportunities to “encoun- emotion are a salient subclass of these....Music ments that “have a character dependent on their ter structured works” (264). Education in the el- represents specific characteristics of movement exact shape” (230) and are subject to continu- ements of semiosis and the elements of semiot- that are indices of emotion” (221), that is, really ous graphing (but not notational graphing). The ics is the task Lidov set himself in this book, connected with them in a Peircean and Deweyan role of inflection is to account for “accurate re- which is part of his own self-confessed project of sense. alizations of the same score” (230). But these fighting, both in his life and in his professional Connected where? In the body of both per- realizations do not have to be identical. Indeed, career, to maintain “well-structured texts” (267) former and perceiver of the music. Lidov performs they cannot be. The upshot is that “what is most and to offer us a manageable package of signs an invaluable service to the semiotic community magical and mysterious in art is the intertwining about signs. In short, his book is written for by his rich and allusive appropriation of the of expressivity and conceptualization” (230). all those who eschew fads and “who appreciate work of Manfred Clynes on ‘sentics,’ which of- The semiotic relevance of the body and the the importance, complexity, and privileges of fers support for what Lidov calls the “gesture hy- ‘deintellectualization’ of art is given a clear and elaborate semiosis” (267). pothesis,” one of the most stimulating ideas of precise treatment in Lidov. Lidov shows the heu- his book. Music, for Lidov, arises in gesture, em- ristic fertility of Clynes’s work beyond the sphere bodies gesture, and gives rise to a distinctive of music. “It seems that we comprehend spatial Robert E. Innis is Professor of Philosophy at the gestural shape or ‘sentic form’ in the perceiver. relations, time relations, and force relations in University of Massachusetts Lowell. His books A gesture, in Lidov’s formulation, is a “single, part by projecting body images” (231) - as in include Karl Bühler: Semiotic Foundations of Lan- molar unity of expressive bodily movement or moving lines and colors. “We project our own guage Theory (Plenum 1982), Semiotics: posture. One single gesture has no parts that feelings into the objects or events that evoke An Introductory Anthology (Indiana University are experienced by the actor or perceiver as them readily if those events or objects embody Press 1985), Consciousness and the Play of Signs volitionally distinct, that is, as the products of expressive physical inflections” (231). Lidov (Indiana University Press 1994). He is currently distinct impulses” (222). One gesture, while not thinks that the gesture hypothesis is more sug- preparing Forms of Sense. compound, is nevertheless complex, according gestive than Goodman’s notion of metaphorical to Lidov. Lidov distinguishes between the articu- exemplification. In the case of Michelangelo’s lation of the gesture (which body parts do what) Pieta, for example, Lidov traces its power to the References and the inflection of the gesture, which is deter- provoking of subliminal mimicry and it appears mined by its rhythm, “its profile of force” (222). that we “project the feeling resulting from our Clynes, Manfred (1989) Sentics: The Touch of the Gesture I, as he calls it, both accepts cultural own muscular tensions onto the sculpture as a Emotions. Introduction by Yehudi Menuhin. control and is subject to notation. Gesture II is sort of illusion” (231). In brilliant analyses of the Bridport, Dorset: Prism Press. biologically determined and incapable of nota- Funeral March in Beethoven’s Eroica and of the tion, “subject to cultural modification only in that Joseph window in Chagall’s Jerusalem windows Dewey, John (1934) Art as Experience. Critical it can be contextualized, facilitated, or inhibited” Lidov enriches the semiotic frames that he has edition: Carbondale: Southern Illinois University (222). Here is where the presentation and de- been so much at pains to develop in the course Press, 1987. fence of Clynes’s position on sentic forms enters of the book. The analyses are most indebted to the discussion. Clynes’s main point, as under- Clynes and the main theoretical or semiotic point Innis, Robert E. (1994) Consciousness and the Play stood by Lidov, is that expressive patterns “con- is to show that “the relations of conceptualization of Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press verge on a shape that is distinct for each of sev- and expressivity in art are infinitely variable” eral different emotions but the same for most (247) and that semiotic theory is not “wedded Langer, Susanne K. (1953) Feeling and Form: A people” (223). These shapes are sentic forms. to particular interpretations” (248). Theory of Art. New York: Scribner’s. “Sentic shapes are temporal patterns of fixed duration that describe the growth and decay of VI. Peirce, C.S. (1972) The Essential Writings, E.C. muscular effort (and momentum)” (223). Mu- Moore (ed.), New York: Harper. sic, on this analysis, is a sonically embodied sentic Lidov’s book offers in more ways than I form, a position extremely close to Susanne have been able to indicate a direct and nuanced Pierce, Alexandra and Roger Pierce (1989) Langer’s as developed especially in her Feeling and survey and discussion of these foundational ele- Expressive Movement. New York: Plenum. Form. Only such a position, thinks Lidov, per- ments and a demonstration of how they are to mits us “to address a variety of issues that other- be used in concrete semiotic analyses. It estab- Polanyi, Michael and Harry Prosch (1975) wise would be intractable” about the types of lishes a subtle network of concepts and distinc- Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press meaning music can have. In spite of the tions and it displays with admirable clarity and ‘physicality’ of its analyses it avoids being a scope their consequences for the ubiquitous ac- push-button theory even if it focuses on an “in- tivity of interpreting signs. Although I am not dexical component of artistic expression” (226). sure that he has done himself an unequivocable The expressive quality that marks any musical service in downplaying the philosophical premises realization is connected to the precision of the and implications of semiotics, he, no doubt, did innate gestural form that defines the intensity of so in order to offer a common platform for read- the expression (226). ers of different philosophical persuasions. While Sentic forms are in principle “incapable of by doing so he has managed to avoid certain types notation” (226). Inflections of musical perform- of controversy about philosophical method and ances are not in the score, just as inflections of subject matter, they nevertheless might be intrin- dance are not in the Labanotation. Something sic to semiotics as such. Those who want ex- slips through the net of formal notations. “Just tended philosophical discussions will have to look as with musical notation, what we are inclined elsewhere. As will those who are more concerned to call the quality of movement is not caught in with the social role of signs. Moreover, Lidov’s the sieve of formal notation” (227). In all the book is not a book of exposition nor is it a arts - and even in casual communication - Lidov primer. Yet its directness must not be confused clearly establishes that we are dealing with two with simplicity. The focusing on elements is by planes or streams, “one bound up with no means elementary and the level of discussion conceptlike structure, subject to playful manipu- is resolutely high. Indeed, his book presupposes lations, and one bound up with inflection, sub- a degree of sophistication and familiarity with the ject to inhibition and release” (227). Lidov background discussions that challenges the thematizes the streams as analogous to ocean reader on every page. It occupies, in fact, a valu- currents that mingle and interact without able middle ground between being an initiation fixed boundaries. Lidov in this way is able to and being for the initiated. 12