Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
History of Psychiatry
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Friedrich, J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Psychopathology and the essence of language: the interpretation of aphasia by Kurt Goldstein and Roman Jakobson

Janette Friedrich

University of Geneva, Janette.Friedrich{at}pse.unige.ch

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the research on aphasia carried out by the linguist Roman Jakobson and the neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein. The linguistic theory of aphasia advocated by Jakobson in the 1950s and 1960s is based on clinical case studies reported by Goldstein at the beginning of the 1930s. However, Jakobson used Goldstein’s clinical observations without taking into account his theoretical work on language pathology. In particular, Jakobson fed the symptoms described by Goldstein into a structuralist model, allowing him to predict different types of aphasia deductively. Goldstein, however, saw the clinical manifestations of aphasia as a particular way of being in the world. By studying the changes associated with the patient’s reaction to the disease, Goldstein wanted to reach an understanding of language functioning in the normal subject. He distinguished between an instrumental use and a symbolic use of language, the latter mainly characteristic of language use in the normal subject. Only a symbolic use reveals the essence of language by showing its intimate nature, the psychic link tying the subject to the world.

Key Words: aphasia • detour • illness • language • present thinking • psychic link

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 17, No. 4, 419-436 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X06063064
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?