STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE SIGN IN CONDITIONS OF NEUROSIS

Abstract

The article presents original conceptual views on the problem of formation of a sign. The peculiarity of the sign signaling of a person in comparison with the natural signaling of animals is that the reflex principle is not dominant in this signal system. At the same time, the reflex response is available for human, but at the conscious level it does not direct its behavior. The phenomenon of human thinking grows not from the intellectual activity of the animal, but represents the opposition to it. In the psychological organization of a person the sign is controversial in the content formation which is constantly in development and can not acquire the final formation. The sign as a unit of the human signaling system is structurally composed of two elements, which form a formal identity, but are substantially non-identical. One of the elements is realized and is dominant, the other is subdominant. The specificity of such a mental organization allows a person to form absurd cognitive relationships between different signs, which provides a deviation from direct reflex response. Formation of the sign for a person is provided by processes of synonymy and antonymy that are absent in the animal signaling system. The essence of thinking is in the disabsurdization of the sign. Neurosis is an interruption of the development of the human sign system. Neurosis is caused by breaking the absurd connection between the two elements of the sign. This happens as a result of the reflection error, when the antonym of the dominant element begins to be perceived as a subdominant element. Psychotherapy consists in the fact that the subject  realized a disabsurdization of the sign by understanding the two elements of the sign. The perspective of the study is to analyze the structural organization of the sign and its structural violations objectified in neurotic and psychotic disorders.