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II. EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT
It should not be forgotten that, previous to this, the author had already given a hint in this direction relating his theoretical concerns in his doctoral thesis, which went on to become his first book, entitled Psychosomatic Semiology, published in 1947. Liberman’s use of the Theory of Communication was but one more step in a long effort to systematize psychoanalytic clinical work so as to account for the reality of consulting patients in a more possibly objective way while taking into account the singularity of each member of the therapeutic couple. The Theory of Communication was followed in his explorations by one of its extensions, semiotics. Semiotics is the science, which studies the general principles governing the functioning of systems of signs and codes and establishes their typology (Prieto, 1973). This discipline (also informed by Morris, 1946) provided him with the conceptual tools to conclude that human communication is not transmitted only through the verbal channel (the ‘syntactic area’) but that we must also remain aware of possible ‘misunderstandings’ in communication, pertaining to the ‘semantic area’ and, finally, to the ‘pragmatic area’ to decode the messages which travel predominantly along the behavioral channel. Therefore, ‘syntactic area’ refers to the syntagmatic relationship between signs, ‘semantic area’ to the relationship between signifier and signified, and ‘pragmatic area’ to the relationship between the user and the code (Watzlawick et al, 1967). In other terms, information travels in “packages” which contain various amalgamations of the three semiotic areas. According to the prevailing elements and the distortions that can be observed in each of them, Liberman classified the patients into three categories: 1) “patients with predominantly syntactic distortions”, approximately corresponding to “neurotic” patients of classic psychopathology; 2) “patients with predominantly semantic distortions”, covering a vast array of those called “narcissistic” by classic psychopathology; and 3) “patients with predominantly pragmatic distortions”, including psychopathic disorders, perversions and addictions of classic classifications. Predominantly is the key word in this systematization. the clue word Finally, Liberman finished his sequence of clinical systematizations with a study of Roman Jakobson’s “factors and functions of communication” (Jakobson, 1960). In correlating them with his own personal adaptation of Freud’s first topographical model, he created his theory of “styles,” of “stylistic complementarity”, and of the “ideally plastic ego”. In the last years of his life, which was prematurely cut short, Liberman returned to his early subject of the psychosomatic effects with his description of the “over-adapted patient” which means a passive adaptation to reality in terms of E. Pichon Rivière’s teachings about ‘adaptation to reality’ (Arbiser, 2017)
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