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Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour38:400218308

2008 The Author

Journal compilation The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2008. Published by Blackwell

Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKJTSBJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour0021-83081468-5914 2008 The Author Journal compilation The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.2008XXXOriginal ArticleSocial Representations and Repression

Michael Billig

Social Representations and Repression: Examiningthe First Formulations of Freud and Moscovici

MICHAEL BILLIG

ABSTRACTThe English edition of Moscovicis classic work on the social representation of psychoanalysis enables us to reflect on the historical origins of psychoanalytic ideas and of social representation theory itself.Moscovici claimed that science was both univocal and abstract and, in these respects, it differs from the social representations of commonsense.This paper exploresthese notions, especially in relation to Moscovicis claim that psychoanalytic theory is to be found in Freuds first formulations.It is suggested that some of the processes, which Moscovici attributes to the passage of psychoanalytic ideas to commonsense, can be found occur in the early history of psychoanalysis.This can be seen in Freuds criticisms of the way Jung usedthe concept of complex.Moreover, psychoanalytic theory could never be univocal for it incorporated the voices of patients and their representations of the world.An examination ofStudies on Hysteria

reveals further multivocality as Freud uses both the actionlanguage of ordinary life and the reified, nominalized language of science.Examples are given in relation to thefirst formulations of the key psychoanalytic concept of repression.Some comparisons are made between Freuds first formulations of repressionand Moscovicis first formulations of social representation.Key words:Repression, social representations, nominalization, psycho-analysis, Freud, complex Social Representations and Repression:examining first formulations

Questions of historical origins are central to the theory of social representations.Moscovici (1984), in his essay The phenomenon of representations, wrote that

if one wanted to understand a particular representation, it was necessary to start

with the representation or representations from which it is born (p. 13). This is

what makes the English translation of Moscovicis great work on psychoanalysis

both untimely and timely. In an obvious sense, it is untimely because it is so long

overdue. Since 1961, when the book first appeared, various French psychology

books of far less intellectual importance have been translated into English. But,

in a deeper sense, the delay is timely. Its current re-publication encourages us now

to reflect historically on the representations from which the theory of socialrepresentations was born.

At the minimum this means reflecting on the main thesis of Moscovicis

Psychoanalysis

namely, the representation of psychoanalysis in popular culture. To

follow Moscovicis own recommendation, we should seek to understand this

representation historically. This means we should reflect upon the origins of

psychoanalysis and, in particular, examine what representations of the world were

involved in these origins. As will be suggested, it is possible to find processes,

which Moscovici located in the passage of psychoanalysis into commonsense,

occurring within psychoanalysis before it entered popular culture. This hassignificance for Moscovicis thesis about the relations between science and

commonsense in contemporary society.

In addition, the re-publication is timely, because it should encourage us to reflect

on the origins of the theory of social representations itself. If social psychologists

are to be truly historical, they should do more than examine the historical

origins of the ideas that they study. They should also self-reflexively examine the

historical origins of their own ideas (Billig, 2008). When Moscovici wrote Psychoanalysis

,

there was no network of researchers self-consciously promoting the study of

social representations. There were no social representation summer schools,conferences or doctoral programmes. Today the editors of Papers on Social Repre-

sentations

can address the social representation community (Editors, 2003,


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Journal compilation The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2008

p. 3.1). The journey of social representation from a nominal, denoting a supposed

entity in the social world, to social representation as an adjective, describing a

particular community, approach or theory, had not yet been made.

Moscovicis arguments about the diffusion of scientific ideas point reflexively to

his own first book as a resource for examining the birth of an idea that hasbecome more than an ideathat has become the identity for a community of

academics. Accordingly, the tardy re-publication of Psychoanalysis

, appearing as it

does in a very different intellectual climate from its first edition, offers the opportu-

nity, not just for looking at the origins of psychoanalysis and social representation

theory, but for comparing the historical transformations of both.

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

Moscovicis Psychoanalysis

is a deeply historical work. It concerns the movement of

science into common-sense, as ideas pass from the world of scientists into the

wider society. The book is also a historical study of contemporary society. Moscovici

suggested that today commonsense is infused with concepts that originated in

scientific theories. This makes contemporary representations different from those

of traditional societies which had no formal sciences. It is not merely the content

of todays representations that is entirely new, but so are the means of their

diffusion. Radio and magazinesand when Moscovici conducted his original

research, television was not the cultural force that it has now becomepromoteentertaining controversies. They are not disseminating a unified view of the world,

in the way that propagandists attempted. Disagreement and debate sell news-

papers and attract listeners. We live in an age of atomised opinions, rather than

structured ideologies. In consequence, commonsense contains new forms of entity

namely, social representations which differ from the collective representations that

Durkheim studied in traditional societies.

The evidence for this bold, historical thesis lay in Moscovicis analysis of

psychoanalytic terminology. Moscovici took psychoanalysis as an example of a

science whose ideas were spreading to the population at large. He was arguingthat, in the years following the Second World War, commonsense in France had

incorporated concepts from psychoanalysis. This incorporation involved more

than a transfer of ideas from one domain to another. Psychoanalytic ideas were

transformed as they entered public debate, for the journey from science to social

representation made the abstract concrete and the strange familiar.

At the root of this thesis lay a contrast between science and common sense. In

the Preliminary remarks, Moscovici declared that gradually or suddenly,

depending upon the country, regime or social class, psychoanalysis descended

from the heaven of ideas and entered into the life, thoughts, behaviour, habits andthe world of conversations

of a great number of individuals (2008, p. xxv, emphasis

in original). The metaphor echoed Marx and Engelss claim in The German Ideology


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that the philosophy of the German idealists descends from the heavens to earth

(1846/1970, p. 47). Whereas Marx and Engels were arguing that any philosophy

descending from the heavens would misunderstand the nature of ordinary life,

Moscovici was suggesting that, by descending from the heavens, science enters

into everyday lifeit becomes a part of what Marx and Engels referred to asthe life-process. This image of descent contains two elements: science as an

abstraction, emerging from the unworldly heavens, and commonsense rooted into

worldly life of people. In the Preliminary remarks, Moscovici comments of

social representations that their role is to shape something that is given from the

outside (p. xxx). In this way, Moscovici was depicting science as something that

existed separately from commonsense.

In an obvious sense, this was an exaggeration. The world of science is not

divorced from the world of common sense. As has been repeatedly shown, scientists

must use ordinary language when they deal with colleagues, run their laboratories,explain away the theories of rivals, even when they write their technical papers

etc (e.g., Davis and Hersh, 1990; Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984; Latour and Woolgar,

1986; Mulkay, 1991; Woolgar, 1988). Vaihinger (1935) observed a number of

years ago that science needs fictional exaggerations in order to advance. Most

notable theories in psychology start their existence as exaggerationsFreudian

psychoanalysis, Skinnerian behaviourism, cognitive dissonance, Piagetian theory

etc. Later researchers can add the qualifications and limitations, rather like

accountants balancing the books. Similarly, the theory of social representations

begins with a creative exaggeration. As if to counterbalance his exaggeration,Moscovici (1984) later commented that science draws on commonsense, making

it less common. He might equally have said that science makes commonsense less

sensible (in both meanings of the word). Nevertheless, the original emphasis on

the movement from science to commonsense has continued. Volklein and

Howarth (2005) observe that later social representation researchers have rarely

examined how social representations influence science, rather than vice versa.

Moscovici did not define the differences between science and commonsense.

Indeed, he has consistently resisted offering definitions for his key concepts,

suggesting that definitions typically constrain the theoretical imagination (Moscovici,1985). This is one reason why he was unconcerned whether psychoanalysis really

was or was not a science. Nevertheless, in Psychoanalysis

Moscovici made a number

of distinctions between science and commonsense. He claimed that scientific ideas

stand in need of verification, while social representations, being embodied in

social life, produce their own concrete examples (p. 112f ). He also suggested that

sciences are abstractions, although typically they do not originate in abstract

thinking (pp. 212). Social representations, by contrast, move in the opposite

direction by translating the abstract into the concrete (pp. 678). There is a further

difference of great significance. Science, according to Moscovici, is univocal: itdoes not permit the co-existence of contradictions (p. 178). On the other hand,

commonsenseand especially the commonsense of contemporary societiesis


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multivocal. It is characterised by cognitive polyphasia (pp. 190ff; for a discussion

of this concept, see Jovchelovitch, 2006). The idea that commonsense contains

opposing, contradictory themes is not new. It can be found in ancient rhetorical

theory. Opposingtopoi

such as those of justice/mercy, or courage/foolhardiness

belong to the sensus communis

, or shared sense of the community (Billig, 1996).Everyday thinking and dialogue depend on the existence of contradictory themes.

In this matter, there is no disagreement between social representation theory and

rhetorical theorysomething that Moscovici has acknowledged (Moscovici, 2000,

pp. 1478; see also Markov, 2005). However, the general contrast between the

supposed univocality of science and the multivocality of commonsense contains a

number of difficulties.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND MULTIVOCALITY

Psychoanalysis provides Moscovicis object of study, not its means of analysis, as

was noted by Daniel Lagache in his preface to Psychoanalysis

. For example, Moscovici

does not offer psychoanalytic explanations to account for the loss of libidinal

themes as psychoanalysis moves from theory to representation. This leads to a

curious situation. Moscovici presents psychoanalysis as first and foremost, a science

or a theory

(p. 57, emphasis in original). He also assumes that social psychology

is a science. But if the theory of social representations and psychoanalytic theory

are both scientific theories, how can they produce very different accounts whenthey study the same object?

Of course, the simple answer is that the world of science contains different

theories. Each theory may be consistent within itself and, thus, constitute a

univocal theoretical structure (p. 178). These various theories may contradict

each other, filling the world of science with debate and controversy. If the law of

contradiction is the dominant feature of scientific thinking, then scientists cannot

permit the equality of contradictory scientific theories. They will assume that one

theorytheir theorywill eventually prove its competitors to be mistaken. This

is how scientists think in practice about their own theories and those of rivals(Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). Yet, Moscovici, by theoretically assuming that both

psychoanalysis and social psychology are sciences, rather than rivals in a zero-sum

game, is expressing the multivocality of non-scientific thinking. At the same time,

when explaining phenomena, he acts as if his own version of non-psychoanalytic

social psychology produces univocally superior interpretations. In this regard, his

work multivocally expresses both multi- and univocality.

Matters become more complicated with respect to Moscovicis representation

of psychoanalytic theory as scientific. If the movement from science to

social representation is the movement from the abstract to the concrete, thenpsychoanalytic theory needs to be shown as an abstract theory. Moscovici draws

parallels between psychoanalytic and Newtonian theories (pp. 57ff ). The various


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writes that the entire social representation of psychoanalysis is, as it were,

concentrated in this notion and assimilated to it (p. 158).

To attribute this change in the meaning of complex just to the journey from

science to social representation may be historically too simple. Freud, in his

History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, complained about the way that Junghad popularised the word complex. It is worth spelling out Freuds complaint.

According to Freud, the word complex had not produced a psychological

theory, nor was it easily assimilated into psychoanalytic theory; yet the word

complex . . . has become naturalized, so to speak, in psychoanalytic language.

It has become, he wrote, a convenient short-hand: none of the other terms coined

by psychoanalysis for its own needs has achieved such widespread popularity or

been so misapplied to the detriment of the construction of clearer concepts.

Thus, analysts speak of a return of a complex when they should refer to the

return of the repressed; or they say I have a complex against him, when,according to Freud, the only correct expression would have been a resistance

against him (Freud, 1914/1993, p. 87).

In the context of Moscovicis Psychoanalysis

, the passage is extraordinary. Freud

was writing just before the First World War, almost ten years before he began

using the theoretical terms id and superego. It was a time when the

psychoanalytic movement was still comparatively small. Yet, Freud, in criticising

how psychoanalysts were using the word complex, was using virtually identical

terms to the way that Moscovici would depict the way that the word was being

used in French popular culture following the Second World War. Freud was notingthe words popularity (at least among psychoanalysts), its lack of theoretical

specificity and the way that it had become naturalized (or, to use, Moscovicis

preferred term, objectified). Freud, unlike Moscovici, was deploring these

linguistic developments, holding Jung and his followers to blame. It is significant that

Freud could complain that this was happening within the world of psychoanalysis

before psychoanalysis had become an important element of popular culture.

This suggests that science and popular culture may not be entirely distinct, but

both may be affected by similar linguistic and social processes.

FIRST FORMULATIONS AND MULTIVOCALITY

Moscovici recommended that we should turn to Freuds first formulations to see

the science of psychoanalysis. Where should we find Freuds first formulations?

The obvious place is Freuds first book, Studies on Hysteria

, (published in 1895). It

was here that Freud introduced the concept of repression, which he would

describe as the corner-stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis

rests (1914/1993, p. 73). The notion of the unconscious, which also firstappeared in Studies

, depends upon repression, for the unconscious comprises that

which is repressed. This is why some scholars have seen Studies

as containing the


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essential ideas of psychoanalysis (e.g., Billig, 1999; Grubrich-Simitis, 1997;

Grnbaum, 1998). Freud, in his preface to the second edition, was to be more

ambivalent, notably because, when he wrote Studies

, he had not yet developed his

theory of infant sexuality.

Studies

is not a univocal work, quite apart from the obvious fact of having twoauthors, Freud and Joseph Breuer. Only the first theoretical section was jointly

written by the two. The other sections can be attributed to one or the other. In

another respectand more importantly so for the present argument

Studies

is

multivocal. It contains theoretical sections, describing the mental operations

underlying of hysteria, but the core of the book comprises five case historiesone

written by Breuer and four by Freud.

In many respects, the style, structure and language of the case histories differ

from the theoretical sections. Freud, after outlining the story of the final case-

history, commented on his style of writing. He mentions that he had not alwaysbeen a psychotherapist but had trained as a neuropathologist: It still strikes me

as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as

one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science (1895/1991, p. 231). He

added that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than

any preference of my own (p. 231).

Certainly, Freuds case histories have a wonderful, literary quality. Because of

the richness of their detail and their narrative power, later analysts have returned

to them again and again, claiming to discover new secrets about the patients, about

Freud and about the nature of psychoanalysis. None of this would have beenpossible had the case histories resembled the sort of short diagnoses and descrip-

tions of treatment that came to characterise many psychoanalytic case histories

after psychoanalysis became well established (Meehl, 1990). It would not have

been possible for Freud to have summarised the condition of those early patients

in conventional psychoanalytic terminology, for he had not yet invented that

terminology. The accounts had to be concrete and extended, filled with detail.

For this, the style needed to follow literary fiction rather than medical report.

Freuds early case histories should not be treated as if they belonged to a

pre-scientific stage before psychoanalysis emerged as a proper, univocal, abstractscience. Case histories are integral to psychoanalysis. As Moscovici noted, science

stands in need of verification. Case histories provide the verification for

psychoanalytic theory. This means that psychoanalysis never was separate from

the world of commonsense and social representations. Its object of study was the

world of ordinary people; and its means of study was conversation. Ordinary

people needed to bring their representations into the laboratory, and the analyst

needed to re-present those representations back to them. The consulting-room

was psychoanalysiss laboratory. There could be no control group, from which

social representations were excluded. Such a control group would have been asilent consulting roomand that would have constituted a poor scientific test of

the talking cure.


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The cases histories in Studies

took place before Freuds reputation was made

even in the small Viennese circles from which his early patients came. When those

first patients came to Freud, they had little notion what to expect; nor, in truth,

did their doctor. Word would soon spread about the spectacular successes of the

young nerve doctor. By October 1907, when Ernst Lanzer, the Rat Man,started treatment, things were different. He came to Freud expecting to talk about

his sexual experiences and began doing so in the first session (1909/1991, p. 39).

Freud, in the published case history, records that he had asked the young man

why he thought he should be talking about sex. Ernst answered that although he

had not read any of Freuds books, a little while earlier he had been turning over

the pages of one of my books and he had come across the explanation of some

curious verbal associations (pp. 3940). These so reminded him of his own

thoughts that he had decided to consult Freud. Fortuitously the notes that Freud

wrote after each sessionhis process noteshave survived for this case. Thesereveal that Freuds published account was downplaying Lanzers knowledge of

psychoanalysis. The process notes show Lanzer claiming to have read parts of

Freuds Psychopathology of Everyday Life

(Hawelka, 1974, p. 63). In the second

session, the patient praised Freud for his ideas; Freud noted that he had read an

extract from my theory of dreams (Hawelka, 1974, p. 53).

The patients, of whom Freud wrote in Studies

, did not spontaneously talk about

their sexual feelings. Freud had to approach such personal matters delicately.

Even then, some were reluctant to talk openly. One of the patients was not even

a patient. Katherina was the teenage daughter of an inn-keeper whoseestablishment Freud visited when climbing mountains during his summer break.

The young girl had served him lunch and then asked him whether he was a

doctor, having, she said, seen his signature in the visitors book. She has having

problems with her nerves and her local doctor had not really helped.

Clearly, the young country girl knew nothing of Freuds work. But the Viennese

patients of Studies

could not have glanced at, let alone read, any Freudian books,

as none existed. The theories could not pre-date the cases, for the patients and

their talk were helping their doctor to create the theory. This is why those early

cases are so significant. By the time Lanzer began his treatment, Freuds ideas werebecoming known in psychoanalytic circles. Freud and Jung had met earlier in the

year that Lanzer began his treatment. Freud was greatly impressed by the young

Swiss doctor (see, for instance, Gay, 1995, pp. 197ff ). Jung had not behaved

entirely differently from Lanzer. Jung had read some of Freuds works and written

to him, the difference being that Jung contacted Freud as a fellow psychiatrist

rather than as a potential patient, although many followers were to contact Freud

hoping that the great man would analyse them personally. It would only take a few

years before Freud would be accusing Jung of naturalizing the concept of complex.

By 1907 some patients like Lanzer may have read some of Freuds works;others might have known someone who knew someone who had read a book by

Freud; or they knew someone who had been treated by Freud; and some belonged


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to the growing circle of Freuds followers. All these patients would have some idea

what to expect when they came to the consulting-room and lay down on the couch.

None could be as innocent as Katherina, serving Freud his dinner in the remote

mountain inn. Psychoanalytic ideas were spreading, albeit slower than Freud

would have wished and less extensively than they would do in the years to come.The diffusion of psychoanalytic ideas did not just run from theory to public

representation, from abstraction to concreteness, or from Freud to the outside

world. Lanzers understandings and misunderstandings would feed back into

psychoanalytic theory. When Freud published the case history, he claimed that it

permitted him to develop theoretically the first observations on the subject of

obsessional neurosis that he had made (1909/1991, p. 36). He hoped that the

publication would be a starting-point for the work of other investigators (p. 38).

As it was, the case-history became a classic in the history of psychoanalysis.

Accordingly, Lanzers ways of representing the world were to become apowerful source of verification for psychoanalysts. His was the classic case

showing that repressed desires lay at the root of obsessional neurosis. Lanzers

contribution was more than that of an object to be studied, as if he were a

chemical solution in a test-tube or specimen under a microscope. He was an active

participant, not just in providing the details of life, but also in the ways of under-

standing those details. In this respect, he was a contributor to the development of

theory. He supplied the phrase the omnipotence of thought to describe his

obsession that his private thoughts could affect the events of the world. Later

Freud would use this phrase in Totem and Taboo

to explain the obsessive nature ofreligious thinking. Religious believers, like obsessive neurotics, are convinced that

their thoughts can determine whether good or evil events occur. Freud described

this as omnipotence of thought, writing that it was not he but his highly

intelligent patient, who had coined the phrase as an explanation of all the

strange and uncanny events by which he, like others afflicted with the same illness,

seemed to be pursued (Freud, 1913/1990, p. 143).

If psychoanalysis was to become an abstract science, as Moscovici argued, it

needed its verifying data. The patientstheir voices, their ways of talking, their

common and not so common ways of understandingprovided the data. Butthey did more than that. They were active participants in the conversations that

formed the basis of psychoanalysis. Their words were central to the creation of

psychoanalysis as a science. In this respect, psychoanalysis could never be univocalit

had to be multi-voiced or multivocal.

ACTION AND SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE

There is a deeper, rhetorical level at which psychoanalytic theory has tended tobe multivocal. Not only can the voices of scientist (or doctor) and patient be

heard, but the psychoanalytic scientist does not speak (or write) in a single voice.


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Two different psychoanalytic voices can be broadly distinguished. As Freud noted,

his case histories read like short stories. These stories demand to be written in the

sort of language that Roy Schafer (1976), in an important revision of psychoanalytic

theory, called action language. This is principally the language of ordinary life:

it is the language which tells us what people do. By contrast, there is also atechnical language which outwardly parades the stamp of serious science. When

used to describe peoples actions, Schafer calls this a reified language. Instead

of attributing acts to people, this language ascribes them to forces, energies and

other biological or psychic entities. Schafer argued that this language has been

disastrous for the development of psychoanalytic theory. It draws attention away

from what people actually do and it assumes that their ways of thinking are

governed by unseen mechanical entities.

Linguists have identified two important features of scientific language. Scientific

writers tend to favour nominalizations, or a preference for using nouns, ratherthan verbs, to denote processes; and they tend to use passive, rather than active,

sentences (e.g. Goatly, 2007; Halliday and Martin, 1993). As critical discourse

analysts have pointed out, there are ideological dangers in using nominalization

and passivization, for, by using these forms, writers/speakers can avoid describing

how people perform actions (Fowler et al., 1979; Fowler, 1991; Lemke, 1995).

When human or social scientists use this sort of language, their analyses can often

be ambiguous (Billig, in press, a; in press, b; but see Fairclough, in press; van Dijk,

in press). Writers use technical nominals to denote abstract entities, but it can be

unclear whether such entities are believed to exist in a realistic or in a metaphoricalsense. What exactly is a cognitive representation? Is it, to use the words of

Vaihinger, a theoretical fiction, which psychologists have invented as a metaphorical

as-if to stimulate insight? Or do human scientists believe such representations

actually exist? If so, where and how, do they exist? Researchers, following

conventional experimental paradigms, often forget to detail exactly what it is

about peoples actionstheir ways of representing the worldthat led observers

to assume the existence of cognitive representations in the first place. Instead a

research tradition develops, and a community of researchers takes for granted the

existence of non-observable, fictional entities.The Studies

contains both action and reified language, as Freud talks about

people and about their presumed unconscious, biological mechanisms of mind.

The former language is not confined to the case histories and the latter to the

theoretical sections. Instead, the two voices are interconnected. As Moscovici

suggested, the first formulations are particularly revealing. So it is interesting to

examine Freuds first use of repression (

Verdrngung

).

Significantly the first use comes, not as a nominal (repression) but as an active

verb (repressing). The opening section, written jointly with Breuer, discusses the

traumas underlying neuroses: It was a question of things which the personwished to forget, and therefore intentionally repressed from his conscious

thought (1895/1990, p. 61; 1895/1952, p. 89). Here, the authors do not use the


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noun repression (

Verdrngung

). The verb indicates an action that a person performs:

the person can push aside thoughts

verdrngte

and does so intentionally

absichtlich

. In the case histories, we can see Elisabeth von R struggling to dispel

from her own mind the shameful thought that she desired her sisters husband.

Her symptoms are a way of distracting herself and others. Repressing, here, is notmerely a human action; it is an all too human failing.

Repression, as the noun derived from the verb verdrngen

(to push aside),

makes its appearance later in the case history of Lucy R., which was written

wholly by Freud:

(A)n idea must be intentionally repressed from consciousness

and excluded from associative modifi-

cation. In my view, the intentional repression is also the basis for the conversion, whether total or

partial, of the sum of excitation. The sum of excitation, being cut off from psychical association,

finds its way all the more easily along the wrong path to a somatic innervation (1895/1990,

pp. 1812, emphasis in English translation but not in original German text: 1895/1952, p. 174).

In this passage, Freud starts by using repress as a verb, again with the adverb

intentionally (

absichtlich

), but this time in the passive tense. Instead of writing

that a person intentionally represses an idea, he writes of an idea being intentionally

repressed (

verdrngt

), thereby omitting the human agent, who might be doing the

repressing. Then Freud moves from passive verb to nominalization. Repression

(

Verdrngung

) is the subject of the following sentence, which includes two

other abstract nominals, both denoting processesconversion (

Konversion

) and

excitation (

Erregungssumme

: or excitation-sum). In the next sentence Freuddescribes how the sum of excitation does somethingnamely, finding its way

along a path to a somatic innervation (

krperlichen Innervation

).

Freud has made a move from action language to reified, nominalized language.

The actor now is not a person but a processa supposed, but unspecified, process

of excitation. This is certainly not the language of short stories. Despite its

technical quality, this language is actually quite vaguewhat and how things are

being converted, excited, innervated is unclear. What exactly is this sum of

excitation? It is described as being cut off from psychical association (

psychische

Assoziation

), as if it could be associated with psychical, non-material entities, but itis also described as finding its way to something material or bodily (

krperlichen

). Is

it a neurological phenomenon? How is it to be identified? How does it go about

finding its way? Freud does not say.

The paradox is that ordinary language can be quite specific when describing

human action whereas technical, scientific sounding language is frequently

imprecise, especially when used to explain human actions. There is a cost in

moving towards the reified language. Repression is posited as a thing that does

hidden bodily tasks. This way of representing psychoanalytic processes draws

attention away from what the person actually has to do in order to accomplishthe task of repressing. In consequence, there is a large gap in Freuds theorising

(Billig, 1999). He does not specify the skills that the person needs to acquire to be


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able to repress. In Freuds developmental theory, it is as if the biological engine of

repression automatically starts up when the child is at the Oedipal stage. Even in

his case history of Little Hans, Freud does not observe how the parents are

teaching the child that ideas should be pushed from his mind, and demonstrating

by their own actions how this might be done (Billig, 1999, chapter five). Much ofthis repressing is not consciously intentional, as Freud and Breuer might

have implied in their first formulation, but it is subtly habitual; in this way it is

unselfconsciously learned, practised and transmitted.

REPRESSING AND REPRESENTING

Are there parallels between the linguistic history of the concepts of repression

and social representation? This is a big question that requires detailed study inits own right. But a few very brief suggestions are possible. Moscovicis first

formulations of social representation do not begin with an active verb (social

representing) and then move to the technical nominal. The first sentence of the

first chapter of Psychoanalysis

is a bold statement of existence: Social representa-

tions are almost tangible entities (p. 1). The existence of social representations is

not a hypothesis to be tested. As Vaihinger (1935) noted, scientists do not propose

their fictional entities as hypotheses. They knowingly propose them as if they exist,

using metaphor as integral to creativity. Thus, Moscovici claims that social repre-

sentations are almost

tangible. He knows that they are not actually tangible, buthe is treating them as if they are actually existing entities. The second sentence of

this first chapter makes social representations the grammatical subject of actions:

They circulate ceaselessly in our day-to-day world, intersect and crystallize

through a word, a gesture, an encounter (p. 1).

The metaphor of social representations doing things continues throughout

Psychoanalysis

.

1

There is a parallel with Freud and repression. Both emphasise the

entity, rather than the activity. Certainly at times in Psychoanalysis

, Moscovici mentions

the activity of representing but overwhelmingly he concentrates on the entities

the social representations. This has continued in later research. It is rare fora member of the social representation community to focus on the activity

of social representing rather than on the entity (see, for example, Valsiner, 2003).

As the term social representation circulates, its non-metaphorical reality

becomes firmly established, just as repression did with psychoanalysts. In this,

there is a historical movement from scientific metaphor to realism. As Moscovici

notes in a phrase that echoes Vaihinger, at least in spirit, a metaphor is a young

analogy and when it is mature it becomes a hypothesis (2008, p. 356). However,

the hypothesis is rarely tested as such, for the existence of the entities, whose

reality might be hypothesised, is taken for granted. In this regard, objectificationcan be observed within the world of science, which is always more than just a

scientific world. The social representation community cannot treat the existence


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367

2008 The Author


of social representations as a mere hypothesis that has to be tested, any more

than practising psychoanalysts could treat the existence of repression or the

unconscious as just hypotheses. These particular communities require their

members to hold certain existential beliefs; otherwise the communities would not

exist as communities. Members are expected to employ regularly their specialwords of identity in their official discourse. Members of the social representation

community must repeat the phrase social representation, as Freudians must

repeat repression, id and Oedipal stage. If such words have become almost

magical, their magic lies in the way that they are held to represent literal truths.

Without the ritual repetition members risk being ostracised by their community.

But that is another story.

Michael Billig

Department of Social SciencesLoughborough University

Leicestershire LE11 3TU

[email protected]

NOTE

1

This is also true of the second part of Psychoanalysis

, in which Moscovici examines

systems of communication, rather than social representations per se. Again nounspredominate over verbs. He discusses diffusion rather than people diffusing, pro-pagation rather than propagating etc. When Moscovici claims that diffusion, propagationand propaganda have goals (p. 282), these processes appear as actors (rather thanthose who diffuse, propagate or propagandise). The same points, which Billig (in press a;in press b) addresses to the way that linguists use terms such as nominalization andpassivization, apply equally when Moscovici writes that tautologization organizes andcrystallizes the representation (p. 331). A presumed linguistic process, rather than specificspeakers/writers, seems to be performing the action of organizing. When analysts use thissort of phrasing, they assume the existence of the entities to which they referin this casetautologization and representation. Here, we are no nearer to examining closely and

specifying exactly what a speaker/writer has to do in order to be said to be sociallyrepresenting.

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