Structuralism’s Other Saussure

Abstract

This article attempts to place the psychoanalyst Raymond de Saussure (son of Ferdinand de Saussure and an analysand of Freud) within the history of structuralism, by emphasizing the linguistic dimensions of his early psychoanalytic thought. With reference to numerous unpublished letters, and other archival material, it reconstructs in detail three pivotal moments in the young de Saussure’s early career. First, it locates a preliminary attempt to combine Freudian psychoanalysis with the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure in Raymond de Saussure’s correspondence with the linguist Charles Bally and his review of Antoine Meillet. An attempt is then made to situate Saussure within the context of an early Swiss interest in the relationship between linguistics and psychoanalysis through a study of the papers presented by his colleagues Jean Piaget and Sabina Spielrein, at the 1922 International Psychoanalytic Congress in Berlin. The article then shifts its focus to 1940s New York, to explore how Saussure assisted his close friends and collaborators Roman Jakobson and, to a lesser extent, Claude Lévi-Strauss in establishing the fundamental coordinates of the structuralist movement. The article aims to call attention to an earlier Freudo-Saussurean synthesis that has been overshadowed by Jacques Lacan’s later, more elaborate, application of Saussurean linguistics to psychoanalysis.