Psychopathology and the essence of language: the interpretation of aphasia by Kurt Goldstein and Roman Jakobson

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the research on aphasia carried out by the linguist Roman Jakobson and the neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein. The linguistic theory of aphasia advocated by Jakobson in the 1950s and 1960s is based on clinical case studies reported by Goldstein at the beginning of the 1930s. However, Jakobson used Goldstein’s clinical observations without taking into account his theoretical work on language pathology. In particular, Jakobson fed the symptoms described by Goldstein into a structuralist model, allowing him to predict different types of aphasia deductively. Goldstein, however, saw the clinical manifestations of aphasia as a particular way of being in the world. By studying the changes associated with the patient’s reaction to the disease, Goldstein wanted to reach an understanding of language functioning in the normal subject. He distinguished between an instrumental use and a symbolic use of language, the latter mainly characteristic of language use in the normal subject. Only a symbolic use reveals the essence of language by showing its intimate nature, the psychic link tying the subject to the world.