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Ongoing Discussion: David D. Olds’s “Affect as a Sign System”

Dr. David Olds’s paper1 on the possible application of a Peircean semiotics to psychoanalysis is particularly stimulating and explorative in its concluding two subsections. In these pages, Dr. Olds discusses three aspects of affect and their possible dissociations, and the import of the symbolization of affect. His discussions bring to the fore in explicit ways the possible value of a semiotic modeling of affect and, in the process, exemplify concretely the possible relevance of a semiotic point of view to psychoanalytic practice. I would like to suggest a salutary move: a semiotic reconstruction of his Peircean application that begins with these two subsections. In this reconstructed paper, the move would be from a descriptive analysis of the clinical semiotics operative in psychoanalytic practice to possible neurological–physiological semiotic correlates. The critical comments that follow are geared to that reconstructive effort and intended to be read as such—that is, as positive in their aim.