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Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp37206

A General Model of Mental Functioning, Based on the Application of Set Theory

Lutz Goetzmann ; University of Lübeck, Clinic of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Ratzeburger Allee 160, DE–23538 Lübeck / Institute of Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Cultural Studies (IPPK), Maybachufer 20, DE–12047 Berlin


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Abstract

Set theory could offer a formalization of thought, but also about the psyche. In the following paper, a model of psychological functioning is firstly developed, that connects Jean Laplanche’s basic anthropological situation with an enigmatic message from the other, an “enclaved unconscious” and the later translation of this message into thoughts and ideas. I see this model against the background of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s theory of mind and Jacques Marie Émile Lacan’s RSI-paradigm: the sensations in the enclaved unconscious are real, they are – apart from certain, unrepresentable remainders (“objects a”) – determined by imaginary and symbolic. In the second step, I formulate these relationships based on Alain Badiou’s philosophical model in set theory. I follow Badiou’s approach of “multiplicity” and “counting-as-one”, which is outlined in his main work Being and Event, and examine the various sets or subsets of real, imaginary, and symbolic elements. In connection with the real unconscious, the idea of the “void set” and its evental site within the psychological situation plays a key role, not least from a therapeutic perspective.

Keywords

theory of mind; set theory; enigmatic message; object a; empty set; event; the real; mathematics

Hrčak ID:

303702

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/303702

Publication date:

29.12.2022.

Article data in other languages: croatian german french

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