Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 5 17
symbols and lastly perhaps certain forms of ideologies as they express momentary
collective values and not rational structures (each of these manifestations,
of course, being capable of ‘rationalization’ to some degree). It can be seen that
at these levels there is a substantial field of comparison open to a general semeiology
and that the latter, inspired by linguistic methods, would be no less essentially
interdisciplinary.
Freudian psychoanalysis, helped in this instance by Bleuler’s work on ‘autistic’
thought and followed by Jung’s dissident school, brought to light the existence
of an individual ‘symbolic thought’ visible in dreams, in childrens’ play
and in various pathological manifestations. Its criterion is that whereas rational
thought seeks adequation with the real, the function of symbolic thought is the
direct satisfaction of desires through the subordination of representations to
affectivity. Freud began by explaining this unconscious symbolism as camouflage
mechanisms due to repression, but later came round to the broader conception
of Blueler who, with his ‘autism’, explained symbolism as a centring
on the ego, and he pursued his research in the direction of art symbols. Jung, on
the other hand, quickly saw that this symbolism constituted a sort of affective
language and, as a result of large-scale comparisons with mythologies, came to
demonstrate the fairly universal nature of a great many symbols or ‘archetypes’
which he considered, without giving proof, as being hereditary, but which are
very widespread - which is quite another thing.
The link thus established between the more or less subconscious symbolism
which the psychoanalysts find in individuals and the mythological artistic
symbolism (one recalls the typical example of the Oedipus myth and ‘complex’)
is evidence that the laws of such a symbolism concern collective as much as psychological
realities. It therefore goes without saying that in the field of social
and cultural anthropology the direct study of mythical representations provides
a contribution of vital importance to this general semeiology at the level above
language; and when Lkvi-Strauss, for example, conceives of it in Saussurian
terms he thereby introduces into this vast and difficult field an indispensable
methodology which was only too lacking in the analyses of Jung and Freud.
Nevertheless that is merely the beginning of the work, for obviously laws
which are general at a certain scale of civilization must have some applications
in societies which are familiar with scientific thought. When K. Marx raised the
problem of the opposition between economic and technical infrastructures and
ideological superstructures, he brought up in doing so a considerable number of
questions regarding the nature and functioning of the various possible types of
ideological productions. To show how necessary it is to raise these questions, it
is worth recalling that one of the most determined adversaries of the Marxist
docrines, V. Pareto, brought into his sociology a distinction which was visibly
based on them: for it was Pareto’s view that social behaviour patterns are
governed by certain needs or affective invariants which he calls the ‘residues’;
but these - and this is the only point which interests us - are in fact manifested
not in naked or direct form but wrapped up in all manner of concepts, doctrines,
etc., which Pareto calls ‘derivations’. It is thus immediately apparent that these
‘derivations’ constitute an ideological superstructure, but one of an essentially