a. What is meant by psychoanalysis and therapy?

Men is the result of a long history of evolution.

In the course of this evolution different forms of "being related" to what surrounds a living being (and thus also the "representation" of this "surrounding") have developed.

Two of these "reference-forms" we humans know only too well:

One is our emotions, the other our ideas and theories. Or to put it more precisely:

One is that we relate to the world with "emotional categories", the other one with our "mental-symbolic" ones.

Of course, these categories "integrate" each other again and again, but we are also very familiar with situations in which, for example, our "emotional categories" gain "the upper hand":

Because the new boss reminds with a certain "mannerism" of the strict and sometimes even chastising father, he causes a deep malaise from the first contact. Yes, he is even experienced as threatening or mean, even though he has only said five sentences.

Where this is the case, our "deep dynamics" have been activated: "Emotional categories" or "schemes /schemata" have been activated, which began in childhood as the simplest emotional reactions to the context of life ("fear", "anger", etc.) and which, over time, took on increasingly complex forms, including language and judgements. Whoever is, as it were, in his "schemata" is like in a tunnel in which things always continue the same way - no matter how the situation around you may change.

The "being related" that has been established in this way is our "schemata-reference" to the world (arising in every childhood). In this there is no real interpretation of the world as we know it from the use of our language: While in latter we may "examine" what positive or negative qualities the new boss shows in a certain period of time (and while we may remain open to "revision" of our "interpretations"), in the schematic reference the boss is simply "as is". This means that in this form of reference it ultimately does not matter whether this "as he is" actually says something about the boss or ourselves.

Because a schemata-reference is much like the reference of weathercock and wind: The weathercock indicates the wind by turning with it. Schemata also show the other one in a kind of "turning with it" - but it gets completely confused who is the wind and who is the weathercock.

To put it more theoretically: Schemata are something like "signs" or "representations/presentations"; however, representations which only "indicate" or "index", but never "proceed" in an interpretative and therefore multi-layered way. And in addition, signs and the object to be designated are "sloppy" mixed together - which is then uncritically described in a (naive) language of experience as (natural) "identification".

Therefore, schemata are not only problematic as tools of cognition and reference; they are also in conflict with a second "reference structure" that evolution has produced in us: that of "real" signs and symbols, as they are realized in human language (and in the perception to which language likes to refer).

Even if language is often "bracketed" by the schemata-reference and then simply serves to "stretch" the reference of the schemata verbally ("That lousy type of boss!"), we also know a way of speaking and thinking that works quite differently. And then makes the "real" world reference of symbols tangible:

Whoever, for example - as already briefly illustrated above in the example of the boss - "questions" things and works out qualities and relates them to each other ("The new guy was on the one hand very affectionate, but also clear with regard to certain consequences; so what could his 'leadership philosophy' be?"), opens up the "meaning-reference" which is only possible with the complex signs and symbols, which can only become an independent entity with the increasing maturity of the biological brain. In other words, a "being related" is established that always focuses on (qualitative) connections and interactions that can only become a topic in the use of symbols. And this in such a way that - in contrast to a schemata-reference that in its "identificational co-turning" stamps interactions and the like - literally creates spaces of possibility.

In the relation to meaning we become interpreters of the world and ourselves, as which we can then, among other things, recognize "the other" really as other, as different, as to "be explored ones" - which enables real relationship and development in relationships.

For this very reason, one of the basic concerns of psychoanalysis and modern therapy in general is to make its clients into interpreters; i.e. people who overcome the (inevitable) schemata-reference of the child and live from the meaning-reference:

Therapy means to get to know one's own specific schemata; to understand in how many situations we act out variations of our schemata-reference (instead of realizing a meaning-fulfillment); to test how the meaning-reference might look like in a standard situation where we tilt into certain schemata again and again.

And because psychoanalysis or therapy does just that, it is fundamentally developing and promoting the meaning-consummation:

Precisely because I learn to interpret myself according to my schemata, I become the interpreter of myself beyond the schemata-reference - and thus ultimately the interpreter of the world!

A psychoanalysis understood in this way, which starts at the roots of this tradition, but understands evolutionary development as the unfolding of reference and thus of representation and sign, is transformed into an ultimately "semiotic practice"; in other words, into a work on our linguistic signs (semiotics - the "theory" of signs), in which, as it were, a "new speaking" is to be learned.

The reason why this requires a specific relationship - that of analyst and analysand - is that the leap from the schema-reference to the meaning-reference succeeds best when the meaning-reference in a relationship is experienced as attractive and successful.

If this is the case, it can become a self-runner which is nourished by the aesthetics of signs; that is, by the unfolding of possibilities, which means the future.