la imagen síntoma y la construcción del imaginario

Abstract

In Philosophy and Psychology the word “imaginary” is used to refer to what is connected to imagination. Freud mentions the existence of a web of symbols in which the speakers’ community takes part; Freud points out, as well, that this web of shared symbols, instead to be due only to be speakers of the same language, goes beyond the limits of language, and is attributed to a peculiarity of our unconscious thought. Lacan, on the other hand, talks about “founding words” and “nomenclature rules” that make the language be the field of symbolic, where is possible to play and to build the imaginary. We choose both positions, Freud’s and Lacan’s, as a starting point to highlight the connection between the imaginary and the unconscious, the symptomatic value of the images produced by it and the link of this productive activity towards reality. When we start to approach to images as symptoms, it will be possible to be conscious about the common background on which depend our thoughts, our convictions, and even our daily behaviours, including the violent or pathologic ones. To analyse them will be, then, to verbalise them and to face them, making them conscious, in order to transform the impulses that control us, knowing them, into aspects we have to live with. There cannot be any effective policy to eradicate mistreatment towards women if it employs just judicial or repressive methods, and forgets to listen to the images, that claim to be interpreted, to reveal their transforming power