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    Why Language Matters Reply To August Bak

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    Idril
    The document discusses the differences between designative and constitutive views of language and their implications for psychoanalysis. It argues that Kohut's theoretical language conveyed a designative perspective that viewed reality as pre-formed, while psychoanalysis requires a constitutive perspective where language shapes experiences of selfhood and reality.

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    Why Language Matters Reply To August Bak

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    Idril
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    The document discusses the differences between designative and constitutive views of language and their implications for psychoanalysis. It argues that Kohut's theoretical language conveyed a designative perspective that viewed reality as pre-formed, while psychoanalysis requires a constitutive perspective where language shapes experiences of selfhood and reality.

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    The document discusses the differences between designative and constitutive views of language and their implications for psychoanalysis. It argues that Kohut's theoretical language conveyed a designative perspective that viewed reality as pre-formed, while psychoanalysis requires a constitutive perspective where language shapes experiences of selfhood and reality.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    18 views2 pages

    Why Language Matters Reply To August Bak

    Uploaded by

    Idril
    The document discusses the differences between designative and constitutive views of language and their implications for psychoanalysis. It argues that Kohut's theoretical language conveyed a designative perspective that viewed reality as pre-formed, while psychoanalysis requires a constitutive perspective where language shapes experiences of selfhood and reality.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    PSYCHOANALYSIS, SELF AND CONTEXT

    https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2020.1830992

    �
    Why Language Matters: Reply To August Baker
    �
    Robert D. Stolorow and George E. Atwood

    Baker is right by emphasizing that our critique of Kohut’s metaphysics (his doctrine of the
    bipolar self) shows up as a critique of Kohut’s theoretical language. But Baker trivializes our
    criticisms by suggesting that they boil down to Kohut’s faulty use of parts of speech—e.g., using
    a noun (the self) when he should be using a gerund (experiencing selfhood). What Baker misses
    is that our objections� to Kohut’s theoretical language are objections to the sense of reality that
    his language conveys.
    Philosophers of language have explicated two meta-theories of language, two semantic logics
    —the designative and the constitutive (Taylor, 2016). In the designative viewpoint, words acquire
    meaning by being attached to fully formed ideas about reality. In the constitutive viewpoint, by
    contrast, language alters reality by introducing new meanings into the world. Language co-
    creates the reality it names by allowing it to show up in experience as something intelligible.
    From the constitutive perspective language is inherently interpretive, not merely descriptive.
    Language transforms reality by introducing a new way of disclosing it, thereby introducing new
    ways of being. The meanings provided by language are always constitutive of experience and
    never merely designative.
    Baker’s critique is sweeping, unconstrained by epistemic humility. His criticisms often seem
    designed to ridicule us and do not invite serious scholarly dialogue. We have decided not to respond
    to such criticism and to focus instead on his misunderstanding of the phenomenology of language.
    Specifically, it would appear that he is unaware of the distinction between designative and constitutive
    views of language and that he employs a designative perspective with regard to Kohut’s language, ours,
    and his own.
    From a designative perspective, language plays little role in the constitution of one’s sense of the
    real; reality is already established and language merely names it. Such names are readily exchanged
    with other names, much as happens in translation. From a designative perspective, it makes little
    difference whether one speaks of a self or an experiencing of selfhood; the phenomenology being
    designated remains unchanged.
    Not so from a constitutive perspective, in which the naming contributes to the shaping of
    the phenomenology being named. From a constitutive viewpoint one could never so cavalierly
    dismiss differences in terminology, because they always reflect differences in the experience of
    oneself (“self” appears there as a reflexive pronoun, not an entity) and of the world.
    The world to which Kohut’s theoretical language points designatively is a Cartesian world of pre-
    formed entities, selves. Everyone’s self has the same structure—ambitions, ideals, tension arc, etc. Such
    structural uniformity is ironic in that Kohut’s brilliant clinical work disclosed dimensions of experi-
    encing selfhood hitherto unknown. This latter world is context-dependent through and through. It is
    a world “populated” by context-sensitive ways of being rather than pre-formed selves. It is a world of
    uniqueness and vulnerability, not uniformity and stability, and it needs a theoretical language that can
    constitutively capture and co-constitute these qualities.

    CONTACT Robert D. Stolorow robertdstolorow@gmail.com�


    Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.—Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.—Martin Heidegger
    © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
    2 ROBERT D. STOLOROW AND GEORGE E. ATWOOD�

    Reference
    Taylor, C. (2016). The language animal: The full shape of human linguistic capacity. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press
    of Harvard University Press.

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