The Self, the Third, and Desire

Abstract

“The fact that the dreamer’s own ego appears several times, or in several forms, in a dream”, Freud wrote in his 1925 revision of The Interpretation of Dreams (1954 ed., p. 12), “is at bottom no more remarkable than that the ego should be contained in a conscious thought several times or in different places or connections—e.g., in the sentence ‘when I think what a healthy child I was.’”[1] Freud was referring to the various representations the dreamer’s ego can take in a dream. Implicit in his rather unwieldy sentence is a “psychology” that is neither immediately nor necessarily associated with his explicit psychology. [2] This implicit psychology serves as the ground for his thought. It serves, too, I suggest, as the ground for my own contribution, and the other contributions, to this volume.

I have the intention of carrying out a particular task and I make a plan. The plan in my mind is supposed to consist in my seeing myself acting thus and so. But how do I know, that it is myself that I’m seeing? Well, it isn’t myself, but a kind of a picture. But why do I call it the picture of me?

“How do I know that it’s myself?”: the question makes sense if it means, for example, “how do I know that I’m the one I see there?” And the answer mentions characteristics by which I can be recognized.

But it is my own decision that makes my image represent myself. And I might as well ask “how do I know that the word ‘I’ stands for myself?” For my shape in the picture was only another word ‘I’.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Grammar, paragraph 62)