Discontinuities in Freud and Lacan's scientific research programs around the "language apparatus"

Abstract

The present exploratory work is part of a larger research project entitled "Continuity and discontinuity of the psychoanalytic PIC between Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan from the perspective of I. Lakatos". Through literature review, we will try to shed light on Freudian and Lacanian approaches to the conception of the language apparatus, taking as background the Ernst Mach Sensation Analysis and its influence on Freud, together with contributions from the existential phenomenology in Lacan. Taking as a reference the epistemological perspective of Lakatos, who argues that in every scientific research program there is a “firm core” and a cordon of protective auxiliary theories, attempts will be made to identify the theories of language that underlie Lacanian and Freudian research programs, which reflect a discontinuity or rupture between the two: Freud supports his apparatus of language in supposed “machianos” starting from the stimulus – perception – sensation – representation chain; and in this Lacan is contrasted, who in theorizing about the apparatus of language tries to satisfy the requirements of the existential phenomenological program, sustaining the revelation of being in the Heideggerian word.