Semiotic realms: Codes, language, mind. A psychoanalytic perspective

Abstract

Exploring continuity from organic codes and natural signals to cultural sign and symbol systems, this paper is undergirded conceptually by a semiotic tree depicting an ascending hierarchy of semiotic forms. Originating in underground roots from a medley of organic codes, the human use of codified meanings surfaces in the trunk, (in Latin Caudex or Codex), our simplest semiotic instrument. Ascending branches represent natural and man-made signals, and indicative and denotative signs, rising to more complex fully symbolic abstract forms in various sign systems. Each level corresponds to a different mental organization, determining the quality and nature of subjective experience and knowledge, epistemology and information being closely tied to semiotic and semantic factors.The psychoanalytic method focuses on unconscious phenomena descending interpretively below the limen of linguistic consciousness generating a semantic field that exposes multiple levels and kinds of meanings. This positions us optimally to observe different semiotic organizations, a multi-coded spectrum of human enacted and mediated meanings that is best systemized along developmental lines (Aragno, 1997/,2016). Freud’s decoding the grammar of dreams enables the linguistic interpretation of condensed and displaced pictographic representations of a deeply unconscious ‘Primary Process’ semantic bridging biological and psychological processes that are ongoing throughout life. A multilayered model of mind reframes theoretical understanding around epigenetic and morphological principles that are applicable to phylogenetic and ontogenetic development. From this revised meta-theoretical base, this paper illustrates how language absorbs and often serves deep unconscious functions, as well as, conversely, elevating abstract cognition and conscious articulation.A bio-semiotic multiple-code model of mind is based on progressive stages in the development of symbolization, a cerebral faculty unique to our species, distinguishing us from all other animals, without which we could neither speak nor conceive of “Mind” at all. Conscious ‘mind’ emerges through a signifying act, assigning a name to a ‘person’ or ‘thing’ that can be represented within, in its absence. This simple concept has far reaching cognitive/psychological consequences impacting on all aspects of experience and knowledge.