Abstract

Using a psychoanalytic approach, I argue that shame is experienced and understood only within the context of a circle of discourse, and for the most part this understanding is dependent on a family of metaphors. Within the context of a circle of discourse, literal language is that which is coherent with the network of concepts and symbols composing a particular semiotic system. I call these dynamic systems "semiotic gestalts." A semiotic gestalt may, however, incorporate expressions that are incoherent with the dynamic network of that gestalt. I term these contextually incoherent, yet meaningful, expressions "systemic metaphors" because, though incoherent within the semiotic gestalts that introject them, systemic metaphors nevertheless allow semiotic gestalts to use extra-systemic concepts or symbols that are coherent within different systems. A systemic metaphor is the incorporation of an external and possibly revolutionary set of concepts or symbols into an already functioning semiotic system. ;To illustrate that systemic metaphors have a profound influence on semioitc gestalts, I go on to show that much of the work of both Vico and Freud is based on their shared introjection of the systemic metaphor shame, a metaphor each took from Hesiod's mythology of the primal scene. What is coherent within the mythology of Hesiod, however, is insidiously revolutionary within the metaphysical semiotic gestalts of Vico and Freud. ;I conclude that the mythological symbol of shame metaphorically introjected by both Vico and Freud is not coherent within their individual metaphysical systems, and this metaphorical incoherency has a powerful influence on their conceptual systems, in particular on their shared tacit assumption that metaphysical opposition depends on an opposition between masculine activity and non-masculine, feminine, passivity