A Semiotic Reflection on Self-

interpretation and Identity

Fernando Andacht
Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS)
Mariela Michel
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)

Abstract. In order to posit an alternative to Cartesian introspection as a

form of privileged access to self-knowledge, the paper argues for a
communicative embodied self which does not jeopardize human agency.
Based on classical pragmatism, namely on Peirce’s triadic semiotic, the
text posits a non-reductionist alternative to the dualistic Cartesian cogito.
Our goal is to advance the solution to an age-old paradox: how to
understand the multiplicity of identities that constitute the self as well as
our sense of unity and consistency across time. The triadic sign is
considered a valuable theoretical tool to account for the unity of the self
and for the diversity in human identity, without favoring either of the two
terms. The self is construed as a sign in continuous growth through a
reflexive, interpretive dialogue that aims to integrate multiple particular
identities into the unity of a generative process.
Key Words: interpretive process, particular identities, self, triadic
semiotic

Psychological theories of the self have been influenced by philosophical

dualistic assumptions that oppose mind and body as irreconcilable elements,
and consequently introduce a breach between the mind and external reality.
In a recent article in this journal, Praetorius (2003) argues that contemporary
approaches to this age-old problem involve either naturalist, body-centered
perspectives, such as physicalism, or an intellectualist exclusive focus on the
mind, such as constructivism and social constructionism, which are influ-
enced by structuralism or by post-structuralist deconstruction. These oppo-
site views, she explains, are actually a version of the classical controversy
between materialism and idealism. Such attempts to escape dualism tend to
reduce mind to matter, or vice versa; therefore, instead of solving the
problem they have tackled, they end up by reproducing it. The possibility of

Theory & Psychology Copyright © 2005 Sage Publications. Vol. 15(1): 51–75
DOI: 10.1177/0959354305049744 www.sagepublications.com
52 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

advancing the formulation of this complex issue depends fundamentally on

finding new ways of integrating complementary perspectives, instead of
exacerbating antagonistic positions.
Assuming that Descartes’ cogito laid the foundation of modernity, the
advent of postmodernity meant a shift from the study of consciousness to
the study of language, and that led to the far more general inquiry into sign
mediation, which was deemed to be central to self-knowledge. The modern
view of the subject as a disembodied, original, unchanging source of
meaning, one who is wholly unrelated to the community, was thus seriously
challenged. The traditional, rigid structure of the self conceived as an
immutable unit was replaced by the notion of a manifold of social identities
whose aim was to account for the plasticity of the development of personal
identity. Gergen (1991) described the self as the product of a socializing
process whereby we become populated by voices of others. A state of non-
pathological multiphrenia without coherence or unity characterizes the
postmodern self. Gradually the localized, particular identities, which were
heavily dependent on cultural practices, primarily narrative ones, took over
and displaced the importance of a generic self, and thus the very notion of a
unity of consistency became jeopardized. From this viewpoint, we were to
be and to behave as a manifold of socially articulate voices and of political
or gender interests (Wiley, 1994, p. 2), but little effort was made to inquire
into what human capacity would be able to organize and to gather coherently
those different discourses. Lest a Babel-like polyphony take over our
postmodern lives, serious reflection on this ordering power seems to be
necessary. That is one of the goals of the present paper.
Of the many new questions that arose concerning the self in post-
modernity, we will be concerned here with the following: if the subject is
not the original, stable source of meaning that he or she was thought to be,
then how are unity and continuity of the self to be accounted for? If identity
is constituted by a heterogeneous multiplicity, then how are we to explain
the subject’s agency and autonomy? Without incurring in contradiction, can
psychological theories of human subjectivity explain both a many-voiced
identity and an integral self (Colapietro, 1990b)?
This paper aims at contributing to the search for an alternative to the
Cartesian view of the dualistic subject by revisiting the triadic semiotic1 of
C.S. Peirce (1839–1914) in so far as it concerns the self and the development
of personal identity. This theory of sign generation will help us develop the
argument that the psychological unity of the self finds a more satisfactory
explanation if we define the self as a sign, that is, as a continuous,
autonomous process of interpretation. To show the advantages of the triadic
semiotic as opposed to European dyadic semiology for a theory of the self,
we will elaborate on Wiley’s (1994) proposal to distinguish the notion of
self from that of particular identities. Wiley’s conception of the ‘semiotic
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 53

self’ builds on Giddens’ (1991) account of the ‘self as a generic phenome-

non’ (p. 52), which he differentiates from a more specific concept of
‘identity’ in the following terms:
Self-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a collection of traits possessed
by the individual. It is the self as reflexively understood by the person in
terms of her or his biography. Identity here still presumes continuity across
time and space: but self-identity is such continuity as interpreted reflex-
ively by the agent. (p. 53)
Wiley’s (1994) work on this conceptual distinction is motivated by the
negative consequences, both clinical and social, that arise when the dif-
ference between self and identity is overlooked. We share his tenet that
much psychological and social suffering comes about as a result of a
category error, which ‘equates (particular) identities with the (generic)
semiotic self’ (p. 2). In order to contribute to an elucidation of the
aforementioned distinction, this paper presents a discussion of some aspects
of sign theory and their relevance for the analysis of human identity. We will
try to show that traditional ideas such as teleology, human agency and self-
control gain new relevance in the light of the semiotic perspective.

The Relevance of the Triadic Semiotic to a Theory of the Self

But dualism in its broadest legitimate meaning [is] the philosophy which
performs its analyses with an axe, leaving as the ultimate elements,
unrelated chunks of being . . . . (CP 7.570)2
In Peirce’s semiotic, discourse and objective reality are not irreconcilable
opposites, but complementary terms. Therein lies the kernel of Peircean
pragmatism, his theory of sign generation construed as a process which is
inseparable from behaviour (Greek pragma), and from experience in gen-
eral. Liszka (1998) describes Peirce’s semiotic as ‘discursive realism’,
because it presupposes the existence of reality as something external to
representation, something independent though incomplete until it is repre-
sented. Thus reference is embedded in the triadic sign as a trigger and limit.
This is one of the original aspects of Peirce’s critical rather than neo-Kantian
approach to representation. The triadic semiotic has a central concern with,
and develops an exhaustive analysis of, the process whereby something
perceptible represents something else, its object, ‘in some respect or ca-
pacity’, so as to determine an equivalent or more developed sign of itself to
some mind, the sign’s meaning, namely its interpretant, to paraphrase a
classic sign definition (CP 2.228).
Being itself a sign, the interpretant, whose generation is the aim of the
process of sign action called semiosis, is also the starting point of a new
interpretive cycle. The relationship between representamen and interpretant
54 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

is ‘correlative’ to that which links object and representamen. This inter-

pretative condition (see Liszka, 1996, pp. 18–52) is what preserves co-
reference, which, in turn, sustains the consistency of the developing self.
Co-reference is a corollary of the functioning of the sign, because the
‘[r]epresentamen . . . stands in such a genuine triadic relation to . . . its
Object, as to be capable of determining its Interpretant, to assume the same
triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object’ (CP
2.274). Logical transitivity assures the reliable transmission from the object
to the interpretant through the representamen, so that reference is not lost in
translation, as it were. (See Liszka, 1996, p. 24 for three different ways to
construe the interpretant as the translation of the sign.)
Peirce’s notion of the productive power of a sign to generate autono-
mously an interpretant of itself (Ransdell, 1992) is the keystone on which to
build a non-dualistic theory of the self. The autonomy of the triadic sign
does not jeopardize human agency, because human beings and signs interact
dialectically within the evolving process of semiosis. This is the way
meaning grows continuously and thereby the self develops. It is a logical
account of a psychological process, and not the other way round (Ibri,
2000).
The partial and gradual nature of the revelation of reality ‘in some
capacity’ escapes the blind alley of Kant’s unknowable thing-in-itself, as
well as the epistemic relativism which denies the very possibility of the
existence of any reliable bridge between representation and external reality.
An interesting ground for overcoming dualism is to be found in what Ibri
(2000, p. 39) describes as the ‘idealism-realism’ of the Peircean pragmatic
semiotic. If we construe ‘Realism and Idealism as doctrines which are
absolutely correlative and mutually necessary’ (Ibri, 2000, p. 39), then the
supposedly irreconcilable antagonists, world (matter) and representation
(mind), are joined in an inseparable collaboration out of which meaning and
purpose develop. What pragmatism proposes is an imperfect but self-
corrective approach to reality and to truth through sign generation; the two
are in a complementary relationship.
Having adopted pragmatism as our general framework, we argue that the
triadic semiotic can be used as a theoretical corrective of the flaws of some
radical postmodern conceptions of the self which put at risk its integrity, and
expose it to fragmentation, even to dissolution. The characterization of the
self as a sign process is the upshot of Peirce’s (CP 5.265) objections to
Cartesianism. Of the four he makes, we will mention two here, namely the
lack of introspective power and the lack of intuition. Intuition is defined as a
cognition which is not determined logically by previous cognitions. Self-
consciousness entails a mediated access to the self, therefore for Peirce the
self is a cognition; it has the nature of a sign. Since to function as such,
every sign must be embodied, then ‘human self-consciousness is the
achievement of an incarnate consciousness’ (Colapietro, 1989, p. 69). For
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 55

Peirce (CP 6.356), being and being knowable or interpretable are synony-
mous; in fact, it is the same phenomenon considered from two com-
plementary perspectives.
The specific mode of sign action is to be distinguished from the physical,
mechanistic collision of action-reaction of one element upon another. The
existence of this dynamic force, however, is presupposed by semiosis, which
functions as a ‘tri-relative influence’ (CP 5.484), because it is a law-like
regularity that involves existents and the qualities which inhere in them.
Thus the three components of sign action correspond ontologically to the
three universal layers of experience (quality, fact, law) postulated by Peirce
(CP 1.304). They constitute the phenomenological basis of the semiotic, and
manifest themselves epistemologically as a three-tiered sign. The categories
and the triadic sign underlie Peirce’s very broad definition of ‘mind’, so
broad that it is synonymous with the life principle or psykhé (CP 1.253)3 in
all its possible manifestations (see Ransdell, 1977). An example of it is the
‘little creature’ observed through a microscope, because as it shows a
purpose, the scientist must conclude that ‘there is mind there’ (CP 1.269).
Therefore no form of life is excluded from the ‘universal mode of action’ of
the triadic sign:
By semiosis I mean . . . an action or influence, which is, or involves a
coöperation of three subjects, such as sign (representamen), its object, and
its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable
into actions between pairs . . . and my definition confers on anything that so
acts the title of a ‘sign’. (CP 5.484)
Let us now provide an illustration of the above. What we wrote so far
about pragmatism and the triadic semiotic, namely the English words we
chose and then put down on paper (actually on screen), are a series of signs
or representamina (the plural form of ‘representamen’) which refer to
Peirce’s sign theory, which thus constitutes the sign’s object. Lastly, the
comprehension that these visible marks aim at eliciting in the reader,
including, of course, the writers of this text, is the interpretant or meaning of
it, what would be understood by anyone who goes through the text with the
purpose of gaining some knowledge on the relation between sign theory of
the self. Rather than concrete, separate things in the world, the three sign
components are logical relations to the world, which produce (fallible)
knowledge thereof. The aforementioned words are, by turns, sign, object or
interpretant. This depends on the analyst’s concern, when she deals with this
text semiotically, and not on some natural, pre-established order. Figure 1
shows the triadic logical relationship which underlies semiosis.
A corollary of the conception of the self as a triadic sign is that its
development is not to be seen as isolated or as radically estranged from
nature, but, on the contrary, as a living component of it, namely a
manifestation of the universal life principle, which is defined in the present
56 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

Figure 1. The triadic model of sign generation or semiosis.

context as the autonomous, continuous generation of meaning. We want to

highlight an aspect that is briefly discussed by Wiley (1994, p. 36), and
which, in our opinion, upholds the self/identities distinction, namely the self-
governed, end-directed functioning of semiosis, since this is the kind of
teleological process through which the self evolves, and, a fortiori, the one
through which the particular identities come to be. What was known in
classical antiquity as final causation is construed by Peirce as functioning in
a complementary fashion with mechanical, efficient causation. Still he
specifies that ‘the being governed by a purpose or other final cause is the
very essence of the psychical phenomenon’ (CP 1.269). According to the
logician, ‘the mind works by final causation, and final causation is logical
causation’ (CP. 1.250). For Peirce, ‘logic’ is but another name for ‘semi-
otic’. It is then clear that the characterization of the triadic sign cannot be
grasped if separated from the working of final causation.
Our claim is that in order to understand the nature of the relationship
between the two components of human subjectivity, namely self/particular
identities, we should consider the semiotic self as a tendency or ‘disposition’
(Ransdell, 1986), and the manifold of identities as the historical upshots or
concrete meaning effects of the former: ‘A sign should not be construed as
an entity governed by rules from the outside, but as a process which itself is
of the nature of a rule, of a “disposition,” in the Aristotelean sense of hexis’
(Ransdell, 1986, para. 38). It is in that autonomous, generative, semiotic
process which is inseparable from its circumstantial, concrete results that the
human being qua human being dwells and develops. The concept of human
autonomy is not to be equated with an absolute command over the meaning
of ourselves as signs, but with our capacity to understand ourselves as beings
who are guided by the purpose of both our personal desires and the general
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 57

ideals embodied in the signs of our culture. Becoming a self takes place
through the continuous generation of tangible ‘dynamic interpretants’ de-
fined as ‘whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign’ (CP
8.315), which are the logical conjunction of what is most idiosyncratic—
dreams and fantasies—and of that which is most impersonal—the voice of
the other as it is manifested in the expectations and traditions of our
community.

The Problem of Subjectivity and the Semiotic Self

In his useful discussion of the state of the art in the study of subjectivity,
Colapietro (1990a) concludes that the pragmatic approach to human agency
is an adequate response to the dangers entailed by some postmodern
theoretical analyses which ‘displace the cogito from its position of privilege
and authority’, and lead to ‘the vanishing of the subject’ (p. 651) as an
autonomous agent. In view of this theoretical risk, Colapietro (1990b) states
elsewhere, we must prevent the integrity of the self from being jeopardized
by the proclivity to overemphasize multiplicity to the detriment of unity, in
both the social sciences and the humanities. He holds that we must heed both
multiplicity and ‘an overarching identity’ (p. 192), and concludes by
positing the need for a more comprehensive theoretical analysis of the self
‘if I am to be more than an ever shifting signifier, if I am to be a steadfast
self’ (p. 207).
Another relevant contribution to this alternative approach to the self is
Schrag’s (1997). In metaphorical terms, he gives an account of a critical
revision of the postmodern deconstructive turn, whereby the self re-emerges
like ‘the phoenix arising from its ashes—a praxis-oriented self, defined by
its communicative practices, oriented toward an understanding of itself in
its discourse, its action, its being with others, and its experience of
transcendence’ (p. 9).
To explore the self in action as well as in discourse or in exchange with
others, which are all inseparable realms for the pragmatic semiotic, we need
to consider in some detail the aforementioned ‘tri-relative influence’ em-
bodied by the sign. Only thus can we get away from the too abstract,
disembodied self of post-structural theory, which, in fact, has progressed
little further than its Cartesian ancestor, the split subject of modernity.
In an effort to reconsider critically the psychological self, Esgalhado
(2002) posits a sign-based perspective to develop an alternative formulation
of subjectivity. She draws most of her arguments from French post-
structuralism, which, in turn, derives from Saussurean, binary semiological
theory, with some contributions from contemporary psychoanalytic theory.
The overall goal of Esgalhado’s analysis, namely to bring out the importance
of signification as a solution to Cartesian dualism, so as to offer ‘a view of
58 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

the subject as dynamic and multiple’ (p. 778), comes close to our own.
However, we have some reservations concerning her theoretical framework.
Binary sign theory seems adequate to explain the multiplicity of identities
that the subject successively adopts as a member of different groups
separately, but the signifier/signified pair, which is the basis of semiology,
does not seem sufficient to account for the subject’s agency, nor for his or
her sense of enduring personal identity, of unity and sameness through time.
We believe that the triadic sign can yield better results if it is used as the
epistemological basis of a psychological theory of the self, since it allows us
to conceive of the generation of a multiplicity of identities as partial
realizations of the continuous interpretive process which is the self. That is
why the ‘living metaboly’ (CP 5.402) of sign action is essential to analyze
the self and the development of identity.
Peirce (CP 5.462) claims that we are immediately conscious of feeling
qualities but not so of the attribution of feelings to an ego. As we stated
above, the semiotician concludes that the self is the result of an inference, of
an instinctive logical process. Reason starts with perception: we perceive
embodied qualities of feeling through their reaction against our will, and we
infer their generality (CP 8.144). As opposed to the act of reading the units
of a binary abstract code, interpretation entails, for Peirce, the progressive
revelation of ‘brute’ reality through signs, which is a fallible, purposive
endeavor determined—in the sense of being constrained—by the semiotic
object: ‘the idea of one thing manifesting a second to a third—providing
experiential access to it, revealing it, mediating the one to the other—is
among the most helpful intuitive understandings of what semiotic is sup-
posed to be about’ (Ransdell, 1991).
Every semiotic process must have a unity of consistency as it evolves in
time, but how can the subject be at once multiple and still preserve a unity?
Peirce’s (CP 6.237) answer, which is based on the Kantian analysis of unity,
is that the unity of consciousness can logically imply multiplicity without
incurring in paradox. To understand this postulation, it is necessary to give a
brief introduction to the universal phenomenological categories that account
for experience in the triadic semiotic. Multiplicity in its sheer variety
corresponds to the category of firstness, namely feelings considered abso-
lutely in their purely qualitative aspect, not yet embodied in any fact or
existent. The definition of firstness is based on the monadic unrelated aspect
of things or events, which is the analytical result of regarding them neither
as actual facts nor as regularities, but as sheer possibilities: ‘it is the mode of
being which consists in its subject’s being positively such as it is regardless
of aught else’ (CP 1.25).
Something corresponds to the category of secondness if it consists in an
embodied dualistic relation, one which involves an element in reaction
against another. This kind of experience implies the existence of a second
subject; it is what enables our perception of objective reality. By ‘objective’
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 59

we mean whatever stubbornly resists or opposes us, that which is ‘im-

mediately known as external . . . in the sense of being present regardless of
the perceiver’s will or wish’ (CP 5.462). The semiotic object belongs to the
category of secondness and as such it has the nature of a determination or
limit for sign action. Peirce describes the influence of this on interpretation
thus: ‘in the idea of reality, Secondness is predominant; for the real is that
which insists upon forcing its way to recognition as something other than the
mind’s creation’ (CP 1.325). When Peirce writes that ‘the sense of ex-
ternality in perception consists in a sense of powerlessness before the
overwhelming force of perception’ (CP 1.334), he offers a semiotic account
of a basic experience of growth in the process of human development,
namely the coming to terms with the hard limits of the real, which brings a
gradual end to a child’s omnipotence. A developmental account is given by
Peirce (CP 5.233) through an example of the historical emergence of the self
of the child as a kind of logical site where error can inhere. (For an extensive
discussion of the developmental perspective of the self as a sign, see
Colapietro, 1989, pp. 69–75.)
The relation of a first element with a second one in semiosis corresponds
to that of the ego with the non-ego, an experience which implies ‘a two-
sided consciousness’ (CP 8.330). However, genuine mediation is not at-
tained until the category of thirdness is introduced; with it we transcend the
realm of brute force, of mechanical, dynamic reactions. Understanding,
thought, reason itself, can only come about through the category of third-
ness, namely, the working out of a purposeful activity:
A rule to which future events have a tendency to conform is ipso facto, an
important thing, an important element in the happening of those events.
This mode of being which consists, mind my word if you please, the mode
of being which consists in the fact that future facts of Secondness will take
on a determinate general character, I call a Thirdness. (CP 1.26)
This account of the category which presupposes the other two highlights
the complementary nature of facts in which qualities inhere and of tenden-
cies, namely the phenomenological basis of the tri-relative influence which
operates at the heart of the semiotic. Rather than being dependent on
intentions, sign activity—and, a fortiori, the self—is teleological: ‘there is a
real tendency to an end in the sign itself . . . the type of teleology involved
is tendential rather than intentional in type’ (Ransdell, 1992, para. 16).
Semiosis is a process of meaning growth that tends towards an end. The
parallelism between the sign’s ‘living metaboly’ (CP 5.402) and the self/
identities dialectical relationship is manifest: each concrete, historical iden-
tity is an actual or dynamic interpretant, that is, an adaptive effort of the
subject through understanding.
To sum up this brief presentation of the phenomenology which underlies
the theory of sign action, we must bear in mind that Peirce relates the three
60 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

universal categories of experience to ‘that of which we are aware in feeling,

volition and cognition’ (CP 1.332), respectively. Possible qualities and
general laws are, for the triadic semiotic, as real as existents (facts); the three
are the essential living bricks in the development of human subjectivity,
which, from the pragmatic view, is part of nature, not its omnipotent,
detached constructor. Assuming this rather modest but powerful epistemo-
logical stand, we will try to revisit a semiotic theory of the self which does
justice to both permanence and change, namely the self as a meaning-
generating pattern, and human identities as its protean ‘significate effects’.
Peirce’s Heraclitean model of signification offers a sturdy though flexible
bridge of triadic, multifarious, not only verbal signs which vitally connects
us to reality. In no way does sign action conceal from us the inherent
semiotic structure through which the real becomes available to all creatures,
human beings included. The semiotic tri-relative influence serves as an
antidote against any theory which pulls the rug of the real from under our
very feet, and which may transform the subject into a creature which floats
in an aseptic vacuum which only holds signifiers and signifieds that are
disconnected from anything which is not language. Against the enduring
vision of a spiritualized subject cut off from the fierce friction of objective
reality stands the process of an evolving and continuous semiosis. The
human self cannot bear too much abstraction, because in order to evolve, it
needs the precious ties of concrete place, time and others, in short, the
working station of her or his own body situated within some community, at
some particular period of its history.
Neither a denial of positive facts nor a devaluation of the sign textures on
which we rely to find our way through life, the triadic semiotic heeds both
elements and introduces a third one, namely the logical synthesis called the
interpretant. This Peircean notion is not tied to an individual—
the interpreter—but is a technical term for the content of an act of
interpretation, for the sign’s meaning effect. Peirce’s original conception
of realism and idealism as complementary doctrines aimed at ‘depolarizing
the subject–object relation, by rejecting any form of estrangement which
could be congealed in it’ (Ibri, 2000, p. 39). The upshot of basing semiotic
on synechism, namely the doctrine of universal continuity, is that sign
action, whereof the self is an emergent property, incorporates subject and
object as aspects of one and the same process. Interpretation is not what a
person constructs inwardly from a remote standpoint in order to project it on
the world. In category terms, interpretation is the general synthesis of
thirdness, which involves free-wheeling firstness, namely subjectivity as a
manifold of possible forms, when considered analytically apart from any
other element, as well as obdurate, existential secondness, the concrete
individual wherein the form inheres. In order to observe and interpret signs,
human beings must navigate in that stream called semiosis. Colapietro
(1989) points out that we do not use signs in the way we use other artifacts;
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 61

our very existence as meaningful beings depends largely on our being part of
the sign process: ‘the subject in its innermost being is itself a form
of semiosis’ (p. 37).

Some Advantages of the Triadic Semiotic over Dyadic

Semiology for a Theory of the Self

A triadic model of the sign is required if we are to avoid positing either the
human subject or objective reality as irrelevant to the interpretive process.
In this lies one of the key contributions of triadic semiotic, namely a steady
flux of perception–action–understanding which can be compared with the
Moebius strip, whereby world and interpreter, as manifestations of both
external reality and the semiotic web, intermingle creatively. The subject
and the real are fully placed within the process of sign-interpretation. This
perfectly continuous relationship of the subject and the object of thought
contrasts sharply with Saussurean semiology’s dualistic sign of signifier and
signified, which inevitably weakens and blurs the influence of the world
outside, as it were, in favor of mental signs.
Saussure’s sign theory or semiology was originally (1915/1974) defined
as the study of the life of signs within society, and it was said to belong to
social psychology. Therefore, signification was deemed to be to be part of
society’s ways and customs, a kind of taxonomic analysis of some of its
practices. Peirce construed ‘semiotic’ as a synonym of ‘logic’, which has a
different kind of relation with psychology, as we wrote above.
The Saussurean sign is defined as an arbitrary relation between a signifier
( = sound image) and a signified ( = mental concept), while co-reference, as
an upshot of logical transitivity between object, representamen and inter-
pretant, makes the triadic relation between them a necessary one. The
relation between signifier and signified depends on a conventional, social
code—the Saussurean langue or language system. Thus meaning in semi-
ology is construed as the purely negative upshot of structural differences
among signs which belong to a system, for example national military
insignia. This becomes even clearer in the work of one of Saussure’s
followers, the Danish linguist Hjelmslev (1935/1961), for whom meaning is
nothing but the projection of an abstract grid over an amorphous and inert
substance, namely brute reality before language cuts it out and shapes it in
orderly meaningful units. In structuralism signs are understood not so much
on account of the existence of an intrinsic meaning within the sign unit, but
owing solely to a system of oppositions within an abstract pattern, the
language system construed as a closed, self-sufficient universe. It is no
coincidence that Saussure’s favourite example of a meaningful sign system
is the chess board: the value of each place is wholly dependent on the other
62 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

spaces of the board; nothing external enters into the abstract, oppositional
definition of meaning of semiology.
Let us sum up the inconvenience of working with a dyadic theory of
signification for an account of the self. First, objective reality tends to lose
its relevance regarding meaning, and this jeopardizes the self-understanding
of a being who exists in the world, surrounded by things and by others with
which he or she must interact and negotiate the meaning of his or her self.
Second, since in semiology reference to reality and to mental concepts are
fused into just one notion, that of the signified, meaning generation as an
evolving process which compounds the determination of the real and that of
the sign structure to elicit an interpretant cannot be accounted for. The
theoretical loss of the generation of interpretants is a death blow for the
understanding of the self as a continuous process whereby subjectivity
evolves, and adapts or fails to do so while it interacts with the world. Far
from denying the strong ties of self with discourse, we believe that to
construe the self as exclusively dependent on verbal conventions cannot but
weaken its other essential features. If the three phenomenological categories
are part of every experience, then possible qualities and the hard evidence of
existents, namely imagination and concrete circumstances, are as much part
of meaning as regularities, which exceed by far those of human linguistic
patterns. The determination of the real consists in its being what it is
regardless of any personal opinion about it (CP 6.495). If we do not want to
withdraw a vital sustenance from the self, its perceptual as well as its
imaginative connections with the world, with the lived situation, the triadic
semiotic account seems more adequate.
We may conclude this brief contrast of the two sign models by means of
an analogy proposed by Wiley (1994): ‘Peirce’s semiotic triad is dynamic
and in potential perpetual motion, involving an indefinite amount of inter-
pretation and reinterpretation. To stretch a metaphor, it is more a (triadic)
moving picture than a (dyadic) snapshot’ (p. 14).

A Semiotic Approach to the Development of Personal Identity

In a book-long analysis of Peirce’s account of the self, Colapietro (1989)

appraises systematically the many references to this notion that are dissemi-
nated throughout the semiotician’s vast writings on logic, which, for Peirce,
was but another name for semiotic. Colapietro proposes the outline of a
budding semiotic theory of personal identity in Peirce’s writings. In a chap-
ter devoted to semiosis and subjectivity, there is a critique of Locke’s
pioneering introduction of the term semeiotiké, the doctrine of signs, for his
failure to substitute the notion of idea for that of sign as the basic means to
attain knowledge (p. 28). For Colapietro, the use of the term ‘sign’ implies a
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 63

conceptual advance over that of ‘idea’ regarding the problem of subjectivity,

and not a mere change of words:
From the perspective of semiotic, we are always already in the midst of
others as well as of meaning; indeed otherness and meaning are given
together in our experience of ourselves as beings embedded in a network of
relations—more specifically, enmeshed in the ‘semiotic web’. (p. 28)
A similar point is made by Ransdell (1991) when he deems ‘representa-
tion’ and ‘sign’ to be complementary notions. ‘Representation’ is associated
with the subjective realm; it is an internal, private aspect of things,
something that happens within the mind, but which is related to some
external fact or event. The term ‘sign’ is linked with something that is
publicly available. The self as sign possesses a dimension of inwardness, but
it is not inaccessible, since meaning is generated in an intersubjective way.
A frequent criticism raised by Peirce (CP 1.368) against Hegel’s phenom-
enology is based on the insufficient importance that the German thinker
gives to the category of secondness, to ‘the outward clash’ (CP 8.41) of
experience. A consequence of the theoretical standpoint of pragmatism is
that the self is not to be located inside the head, as it were. Neither a part of
the brain nor an intangible sociocultural abstraction, the self is knowable
through its externality; it is embodied mind. Colapietro (1989, p. 116)
remarks that although the experience of inwardness subsists in Peircean
semiotic, thought construed as internal reflection is radically incomplete as a
means for self-knowledge. The self only becomes fully though fallibly
knowable and meaningful through its outward manifestation: ‘What passes
within we only know as it is mirrored in external objects’ (CP 8.144).
The acquisition of self-knowledge always takes place in relation to others,
who function as interpretants of the self (Andacht, 2001). Our condition of
being knowable externally is not restricted to the others’ perspective; self-
knowledge crucially involves interpreting oneself as other. Thus the experi-
ence of an inner world derives from the active and endless commerce with
the outer world. The construal of thought as an inner dialogue of the self
across time is the natural outcome of its semiotic functioning. Peirce
describes this mechanism as a conversation wherein the self of the present—
the ‘I’ role—addresses the self of the future as if it were a ‘You’, in a similar
fashion as if it were addressing others.
In his study of the theory of the self, Wiley (1994) concludes that the
influence of Descartes is the main cause of two kinds of theoretical
reductionism relative to the ontology of the self (pp. 212–213). One is a
downward reduction, a biologically determined account of the self. The
other is an upward reduction which tends to dissolve the self in the
community, and thus misses the individual experience of the person. Wiley’s
central tenet is that the triadic structure of the sign is needed to avoid such
reductions: ‘Both reductions misunderstand the sui generis self, because
64 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

Figure 2. A diagrammatic representation of Wiley’s (1994) account

of the inner speech of the self.

both, being dyadic, are based on faulty semiotics. In the pragmatic scheme
there are three semiotic elements that can be missing: the sign, interpretant,
or object’ (p. 212).
Based on Peirce’s dialogic construal of thought, and on G.H. Mead’s
(1913) symbolic interactionism, Wiley (1994) devises his own model of the
communicative self (see Figure 2), which he depicts as a triad engaged in an
internal conversation (pp. 13–16), a self ‘not based on cogito but on a slow
self discovery’ (N. Wiley, personal communication, April 22, 2003). Thus
Wiley combines Peirce’s I–you systemic directionality with Mead’s dialogic
self—‘I–me’—to obtain a reflexive trialogue that involves the three personal
pronouns: ‘Me–I–you’. The ‘I-self’ of the present stands for the ‘Me-self’ of
the past and addresses a ‘You-self’ of the future if we formulate this model
of the self in terms of Peirce’s definition of sign (CP 2.228).
Concerning the development of personal identity, Wiley’s (1994) central
tenet is that the ‘I–you–me’ self structure ought to be conceptually distin-
guished from the manifold of particular semiotic identities (pp. 26–39),
which are the concrete contents of that structure. The pathological usurping
of the self by a single identity is compared by Wiley with the unrestricted
growth of a tumor. The normal self-governed process comes to a halt as one
of its momentary products replaces the entire process. We will illustrate this
below with a clinical example. To illustrate this dangerous confusion, Wiley
describes the ‘overall structure of the self’ (p. 36) as a ‘container’, and the
specific identities, which are sets of particular signs, as being ‘contained’
(p. 38).
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 65

However, this spatial image of the self may unwittingly conspire against
our grasping the processual nature of the semiotic self which Wiley himself
assumes, as he acknowledges (p. 27). Let us recall that Peirce’s original
conception of the ‘tri-relative influence’ involves the generation of inter-
pretants across time. The use that Wiley makes of the three personal
pronouns which structure human communication points strongly to the
teleological dimension of sign action: the development of the commun-
icative self through time, the tendency to address the ‘You’ in the future,
starting from the ‘Me’ in the past, and going through the present mediation
of the ‘I’.
The question now is how to advance in the characterization of concrete
identities that Wiley (1994, p. 36) relates to ‘social traits’, to ‘personalized
psychological traits’ and to ‘self-concepts’, on the one hand, and the generic
self as the center of meaning generation, on the other. The hegemony
exerted by a partial component of the self process cannot but reify and
falsify the true nature of human beings as temporal creatures, who must find
their feet in an ever-changing, Heraclitean reality.
Short’s (1981a) assertion that the basic issue of the triadic semiotic is not
that of sign but that of semiosis, the process of sign interpretation, [which] is
essentially teleological (p. 202) is no overstatement. The corollary of a
semiotic theory of personal identity is that ‘to be a self is to be in process of
becoming a self’ (Colapietro, 1989, p. 77). To develop the consequences
of the self/identities distinction we must rely on the teleological functioning
of semiosis. The autonomous generation of interpretants is decisive for the
generation of the ‘significate effects’ (CP 5.475) which we call our identity,
and which occurs at a certain place and time, in our interaction with others.
If this distinction becomes blurred, or worse if it is obliterated by the
unwarranted halting of what is in fact a continuous flow of change (self)
which includes and integrates its stationary pauses (identities), then we are
apt to become the prisoners of a jail of our own devising, namely a fixed
identity which we feel and think we have to adopt for all times and
circumstances. Against such trouble, psychology must focus its analytical
strategies, lest the flow of adaptive creativity not become frozen, and bring
about a numbing of psyche, the life principle of all that exhibits a purpose.

The Teleological Integration of Identity

Constructivist theories consider meaning as that which is made up or

attributed by people to phenomena which do not possess any intrinsic
meaning, and which thus are entirely subordinated to this potent human act
of will, whereby to interpret entails to invent or to construct meaning where
there was none before (Turrisi, 2002, p. 126). It is not hard to see
constructivism as the epistemological counterpart of the radical postmodern,
66 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

post-structuralist theories discussed in the first part of this paper. Whether

the subject be construed as a formal system of signifiers, who then may
vanish in an all-powerful community, or as an omnipotent though unsuspect-
ing meaning-maker who is oblivious of being the tireless inventor of what is
out there and in him- or herself, in both cases there is a glaring lack of the
constraint of reality and of the autonomy of meaning generation, which is
indeed social but also natural and universal.
For pragmatism, human agency is but another manifestation of a far more
general purposeful activity or mind taken in Peirce’s broad sense, which
allows for the integration of all living beings, as opposed to a hierarchical
and anthropocentric vision. Instead of conceiving the world as a vast blank
bereft of sense which must then be filled with meaning by the subject, or as
a chess game ordered by abstract, external, rational rules, the triadic semiotic
posits interpretation as a way of interaction with the world which is akin to
the observation of it.
If thoughts are not in us, but it is us interpreters-observers who are in
thought, just as we do not say that motion is in the body, but that the body
is in motion (CP 5.289), then a pragmatic account of the self is one which
does not separate understanding from acting purposefully in the world, and
one for which the most precious skill is to learn how to navigate among
signs. There is a continuum between perceiving something and interpreting
what that something means, and this is inseparable from conceiving a way of
behaving in relation to it, not necessarily then and there, but in a general,
prospective manner, as ‘the way every mind would act’ (CP 8.315), namely
what we think would happen if we were to actively engage with the
observed element. It is in that sense that Ransdell (1992) writes: ‘An
interpreter’s interpretation is to be regarded as being primarily a perception
or observation of the meaning exhibited by the sign itself’ (para. 2).
In her article about the structuring function of narratives in relation to self
and to identity, Crossley (2000) criticizes the assumption that the self be
considered as just any other object in the world. The alternative proposed by
social constructionism sees the self as ‘inextricably dependent on the
language and linguistic practices that we use in our everyday lives to make
sense of ourselves and other people’ (p. 529). Crossley criticizes the
postmodern radicalizing of this proposal. The construal of the self being
wholly dependent on local linguistic practices entails the loss of the self as a
universal human category.
To further Crossley’s argument in favor of the universality of the self, we
can add that to consider the self as one more sign in the world, a relational
unit, and not as a mere object of the world, enables us to integrate
theoretically both aspects of human nature, namely our interpretive tendency
and our objective embodied existence in the world. Such a conception
displaces the discussion away from the ‘prison-house of language’ (Jame-
son, 1972) of the self, and relocates it in a much larger environment, that of
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 67

nature. This is nicely captured by Alexander’s (2002) notion of ‘relative

objectivity’, which she uses to describe pragmatism as a philosophical
alternative to the radical subjectivity favored by postmodernism. The non-
passive nature of human knowledge of the world can be accounted for
without giving up objectivity altogether. The apparent paradox of a direct
(perceived) and mediated (represented) experience which is entailed by sign
action, the kernel of Peircean semiotic, is a way of overcoming the duality of
matter and mind. The fact ‘that everything which is present to us is a
phenomenal manifestation of ourselves . . . does not prevent its being
a phenomenon without us, just as a rainbow is once a manifestation of both
of the sun and of the rain’ (CP 5. 283). The observer does not stand outside
of semiosis, but actively participates in the generation of meaning by
establishing some kind of relation to that which resists her in experience,
the semiotic object, and to that which she understands as its meaning, the
generated intepretant. These two logical components are mediated by a
perceptible element which is not only linguistic or necessarily linguistic, the
representamen, and whose systemic aim in the process of semiosis is to
reveal an aspect of the object in the interpretant, after receiving the
determination of the semiotic object.
. . . When we think, to what thought does that thought-sign which is our
self address itself? It may, through the medium of outward expression . . .
come to address itself to thought of another person. But whether this
happens or not, it is always interpreted by a subsequent thought of our own.
(CP 5.284)
Once again the image of the Moebius strip comes in handy: the theory of
the self as sign entails no privileged God’s-eye view of this logical process;
it is an endless circulation without an inside or outside which enables us to
understand the world and ourselves as part of it. For such a sign theory we
do not construct or invent meaning, but actively participate in its fallible
revelation. It is through the self-criticism of our interpretations, which are
often framed narratively, that meaning grows.
According to Crossley (2000), a way out of the postmodern reductionism
of the self as a universal category can be found in the assumption that human
life bears ‘within it a “narrative structure”’ (p. 528) which furnishes a ‘sense
of order and connection’ (p. 542) that orients the development of the self. In
our view, her argument finds further theoretical support in the teleological
functioning of signs in human life, namely the experience of a sense of
directionality or systemic purpose, which is not always or necessarily a
conscious one. Pragmatic semiotic accounts for such a narrative sense of
order by teleology, which involves a dialectical tension between telic
directionality and telic originality (Alexander, 2002). Alexander’s thesis is
that Peirce contributes to the classical theory of teleology by introducing the
notion of ontological absolute chance (CP 6.74), whereby the semiotic ‘nests
68 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

determinism within indeterminism’ (Alexander, 2002). This proposal ac-

counts for the possibility of order arising spontaneously out of disorder.
While the directional telos allows for predictions, since it is based on
regularity, the original telos explains the emergence of new patterns, of
changes, through the intervention of objective chance. The conception
of the self as a dynamically stable emergent form (Alexander, 2002) is the
processual background against which personal identities emerge, and with
them originality is introduced in the development of human subjectivity. Out
of every spontaneous variation a new tendency can consolidate through self-
interpretation: from sheer possibility (firstness), through its manifestation
(secondness), a new regularity is born (thirdness).
The development of the self is purposive, but we must heed Short’s
(1981b) timely caveat against a too narrow account of this notion:
Purposes are not particular psychological events. Rather, someone’s pur-
pose is the ideal type which he wills to actualize. His willing to actualize it
is what makes this type his purpose, but the purpose is the type, and not
any particular act or acts of will. (p. 369)
This view of teleology is presupposed by Peirce’s conception of the self
as a center of purpose and interpretive power (Colapietro, 1989, p. 92), and
not as a wholly external agent who goes around in an Adam-like way
bestowing meaning to a meaningless environment. To state that semiotic
processes are teleological is tantamount to saying they are tendencies.
Therefore, what Wiley (1994) describes as the ‘generic’ dimension of the
self results from the tendency of all signs to actualize a general, ideal type.
The many identities over which the self rules are the actualized results of
this process, but the former should not be confused with the latter.
The solution to the false dilemma of being either the passive puppets of
autonomous signs or the sole owners and creators of our signs is found in
Peirce’s view of human nature as essentially communicative. The notion of a
human creature that can do without the avenues which signs open for it to
walk along is implausible. To become human then entails to learn (and
to reflect on) how to navigate amidst signs, which is part and parcel of our
species. The notion of an isolated creature that is wholly deprived of the
communion with signs and with others simply does not fit any reasonable
description of humanity. However, in order to argue for an account of the
self as a sign, we cannot rely only on our will, that most vaunted and
cherished human virtue. The functioning of signs does not allow for the
arbitrary endowment of meaning by anyone. This does not mean, however,
that we lack the necessary semiotic skill to handle signs:
. . . such control as we do have over the powers of signs (thus over meaning
phenomena in general) lies in our skill at setting them in interaction with
one another in the compositional process in ways favorable to some desired
result. (Ransdell, 1992, para. 2)
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 69

Figure 3. Diagrammatic summary of Colapietro’s (1989) reflection

on self-control (pp. 92–97).

What constitutes the genuine, species-specific semiotic dimension of

human beings is the representational or interpretive relation in which we are
continuously engaged, and this comes about through the dialogical genera-
tion of meaning. Such is the logical basis of the power of self-control.
Semiotic power is different from the force of sheer will; the former is ‘the
creative power of reasonableness’ (CP 5.520). Therefore, human autonomy
is not to be equated with our absolute command over the meaning of
ourselves as signs, but with our capacity to understand ourselves as beings
who are guided by the ideal purposes of both our personal desires and the
general ideals embodied in the signs of our culture (Figure 3).

An Illustration of the Self–Identity Distinction: A Child’s Self

Narrative

A story told by a patient from a children’s psychotherapy group serves to

illustrate the notions of particular identities as actual dynamic interpretants
and of the self as a semiotic process that evolves by the cooperative effort of
objective reality, imaginative qualitative form and purposive human
agency.
A young girl introduced herself with a story to a psychotherapy group. In
a previous family interview with Lucia (an assumed name) and her mother it
became known that the reason for her consultation was an abrupt change in
70 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

her; from being a lively, playful child, she had become cheerless and
devitalized. There was an obvious reason for this loss of vitality which
seemed to escape her mother. Her father had been recently killed in an
accident. During the interview, the mother repeatedly emphasized that Lucia
was not herself any longer. The girl agreed wholeheartedly that she was
indeed a cheerful kind of girl. Her manifest concern was that she was not
able to be who she used to be, someone always willing to play with her
friends.
This is the story Lucia told to the group. Once upon a time there was a
kitten that did not want not to play. A rabbit offered to play with him, and
the kitten said ‘no’. A dog asked him to play, and he also said ‘no’. Finally,
the kitten felt so sad and lonely that he went home and died.
From the semiotic point of view, the reduction of her self to a single
identity had diminished the generative power of the self as an evolving sign.
In terms of Wiley’s (1994) proposed distinction of generic self and particular
identities, we can say that Lucia had mistaken the identity of a cheerful girl,
of a single dominating ‘self-concept’ or ‘psychological trait’ (Wiley, 1994,
p. 36), for her self. Therefore, in spite of her peers’ considering her story an
extremely sad one, she did not see herself as responsible for having told a
heart-breaking story. There was no doubt that the intense sadness that was
felt all around was of her own making, but Lucia did not heed the others’
request. She said that she was tired and she did not feel like changing the
plot at that moment.
As a closure to the session, it was decided that a make-believe picture of
the whole group of children was to be taken. Its aim was to help Lucia see
herself through the eyes of the others, and thus to integrate what she so
insisted was not part of her. As she took her turn behind the imaginary
camera,4 she was taken aback with what she saw in front of her: ‘Lucia
looks sad!’ she exclaimed. Then she stopped to think for a while, until her
face lit up with an idea that had obviously just come to her: ‘I know why she
is sad! It’s because her father died!’ There was a long silence in the room. At
last, one of the boys said softly: ‘My mother also died.’ After that, he
approached Lucia and held her hand.
It is relevant to recall that the girl had attributed her distress not to an
inhibition of grief, but to the difficulty of accepting a manifest change in her
identity, which implied a limitation of her self-interpretive power. Expressed
in the girl’s words, the motive for her consulting was that she did not want
to be the kind of person she actually was. If her will had had its way
unrestrainedly, that is, if the self could be really constructed, Lucia would
have told the group the cheerful, carefree story of a character who was
energetic, sociable and lively. That was indeed her will, as it had been
clearly asserted on the day of the interview. Still, the story that came out of
the girl’s mouth seemed to have a life of its own, or a visible lack thereof, in
fact. The signs were independent of the manifest force of her will (CP
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 71

1.220), as opposed to the teleological power of ideas, which, for Peirce, are
the same as signs, whereby we ‘receive and transmit ideal influence of which
[we are] a vehicle’ (CP 1.212).
The playful characters who populated her story embodied a particular
identity of Lucia’s self, that of a cheerful girl. However, the kitten with the
deadly feeling stood for another voice or identity that was also part of the
girl’s self. The girl’s self is an interpretive ongoing unity and not the simple
sum of the voices. This explains that her liveliness is not the result of her
being always ‘a cheerful girl’, but of her capacity as an interpretive agent.
If we combine Short’s (1981b) proposal of human purpose as the
appropriation of some ideal type, and Ransdell’s (1992) proposal of our real
power consisting in observing and manipulating signs that already have
meaning-generating power, then we are able to understand human agency. It
is Lucia who picks the narrative signs that are able to express, as a living
purpose, what her past, concrete identity does not allow her to express. Thus
she becomes the vehicle for the emergence of telic originality, the truth,
which, in this case, is the aesthetic ideal of being a self continuously in the
process of becoming one, and not the reiteration of a single, predefined
interpretant/identity which is willed by others or by even herself. Her taking
up that ideal type or purpose, the tragic narrative, is what being a self is all
about: the manifestation of a multifarious continuum which is made of both
playfulness and grief, and many other possible identities, which are nothing
but the possible and actual interpretants of our self in changing circum-
stances. Each ‘self concept’ or ‘psychological trait’ (Wiley, 1994, p. 36)
corresponds semiotically to the generation of a single interpretation.
Short’s (1981b, p. 368) description of somebody’s purpose as the actualiz-
ation of an ideal type allows us to conclude that the girl’s choice of that story
shows the convergence of telic directionality and of telic originality (Alex-
ander, 2002). The narrative begins like a typical children’s story, since, like
so many others, it involves pets, and thus is akin to playing. But her story
also contains an unexpected, tragic turn of events that upsets the young
audience, and allows the girl’s unwilled identity to emerge, and then to be
observed and interpreted by the narrator herself.

Conclusion

Our paper began with the central problem tackled by Wiley (1994) concern-
ing the Cartesian influence on various forms of contemporary reductionism
affecting the self as a universal category. Theories such as constructivism
and social constructionism tend to identify human generic nature, the self,
with the shifting identities that are adaptive to changing social contexts and
different life circumstances. We argued that the framework of the pragmatic
triadic semiotic and the phenomenological categories which serve as its
72 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

foundation could contribute to the search for an alternative perspective to

the dualistic opposition between idealism and realism and to preserve the
distinction between the self as living process of sign action, of meaning
generation, and the particular identity or identities which are construed as
momentary, concrete realizations of that process.
A reasonable doubt may still arise at this point: what is the alleged benefit
of bringing in the Peircean triadic semiotic to bear on the theory of the self?
Or, to sum up the main point of our paper, how can we semiotically explain
the multiplicity of identities and the unity of the self across time? The
answer lies in the fact that the triadic semiotic is based on the cooperation or
tri-relative influence of the following logical elements:
● The real as a constraining force, that of our actual life circumstances over
which often we have but little power. It involves the pressure of historical
facts, whether they be material or not. Our ignoring or denying them
cannot suppress their determining effect. This is the point of friction
between ego and non-ego, which functions as a stubborn limit for the self-
as-sign process. It is the objective boundary of human subjectivity.
● A possible quality conceived of as a pure form which is sought after as an
adequate expression by the blind determination of the real, to produce a
concept thereof. A narrative which at first appears as a normal, innocent
children’s story then shows itself as having a tragic, elegiac quality, as in
the previous example. This is the space that the semiotic allots to
creativity. The spontaneous, random, formal variety introduced by each
voice stands in a dialectical relationship with existential circumstances,
and with a general, guiding purpose which is aimed at, consciously or
not.
● The general meaning effect as the probable upshot of the triadic coopera-
tion. This is the ongoing synthesis which comes about through the
influence of the other two elements. It is the systemic end towards which
the entire semiotic process tends. The unity of consistency of the self
derives not from there being an already existent, predetermined end-state,
but from its being of the nature of a potentiality or esse in futuro (CP
2.148), namely an evolving tendency or disposition, which presupposes
the two other components (existential and qualitative).
From that theoretical perspective, the triadic sign bears within itself the
power to determine an equivalent or a more developed sign that relates to
the semiotic object in the same respect as the sign itself does. In such terms,
to become a self entails a continuous growth of reasonableness (Santaella,
2000, p. 98). Thus the self of a person is not an accomplished fact, such as
being always a cheerful person, because the meaning of our self as that of
any other sign emerges as our will actualizes ideal types. However, ‘a
general (fact) cannot be fully realized. It is a potentiality’ (CP 2.148). That is
why it is more realistic to consider the self as a process that is based on a
ANDACHT & MICHEL: SELF-INTERPRETATION AND IDENTITY 73

spontaneous logic of inquiry in a self-governed, self-corrective and self-

critical mode of functioning. Becoming a self is not to remain faithful to one
particular content or interpretation—a dynamic interpretant. Neither does it
imply the loss of unity as a sense of continuity across time. It implies a
constant engagement in a self-controlled semiotic endeavor which is insepa-
rable from the fallible pursuit of some evolving ideal (Colapietro, 1989, pp.
92–97).
The conclusions that we have drawn in our paper point to the need to
examine a theoretical issue which could only be briefly discussed here,
namely the relation of Peircean teleology with the development of the self/
identity process. This appears as the next logical step in order to understand
both the conservative (telic directionality) and the innovative tendencies
(telic originality), and thus to delve into the nature of human autonomy and
agency.
We have argued that triadic signs have their own, proper meaning, which
is our task to observe and gradually understand in our endless road to the
truth, which is not invented or constructed but laboriously and fallibly
discovered. That center of interpretive power which is the self, a triadic
structure which functions tendentially to generate meaning, in no way
relinquishes agency, as the post-structuralist theories postulate, nor does it
invent reality at will, as social constructionism and constructivism uphold.
Our main conclusion, then, is that not even something as real and as close to
a human being as his or her own self can be truly constructed, as the result
of either a collective or a personal decision. Such is the purport of the
example presented above. We are neither the passive recipients of social
signs nor the omnipotent creators of meaning, but beings who are actively
engaged in the universal process of meaning generation. This semiotic
involvement is what makes us truly human, namely part of an evolving,
meaningful reality, and not its external and alien constructors or inventors.

Notes

1. We follow a common practice among Peircean scholars, and use the term
‘semiotic’ to denote the specific kind of triadic sign theory developed by Peirce.
This serves to differentiate this model from other sign theories (e.g. semiology,
also known as European semiotics).
2. We follow the convention of quoting Peirce with the notation ‘CP [X.XXX]’,
referring to volume and paragraph in The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce
(1931–58).
3. Peircean semiotic distinguishes psychic truths from psychological truths. The
former refer to logical matters, and the latter to a special, applied science. See Ibri
(2000, p. 44) for a development of the opposition.
4. A psychodramatic technique was used.
74 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 15(1)

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Fernando Andacht is Professor of Communication in the Graduate

Program of the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), São
Leopoldo, Brazil, and a researcher in the semiotics of the media and
society. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International
Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS) and vice-president of the Latin
American Association of Semiotic Studies (FELS). Recent publications
include: ‘Those Powerful Materialized Dreams’ (The American Journal of
Semiotics, 2001); ‘Reflections on Iconic Power: From Technocynicism to
Synechism’ (Visio: International Journal for Visual Semiotics, 2004); Un
camino indisciplinario hacia la comunicación: Semiótica y medios masivos
(Bogotá, 2001); and El reality show: Una perspectiva analı́tica de la
televisión (Buenos Aires, 2003). Address: Graduate Program of Commun-
ication Studies, UNISINOS, Av. Unisinos 950, 93022–000, São Leopoldo,
RS, Brazil. [email: [email protected]]

Mariela Michel is a Ph.D. candidate in the postgraduate Program of

Developmental Psychology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
(UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil, and is a clinical children’s psychologist
who since 1987 has been coordinator in the area of children’s psycho-
dramatic psychotherapy at Hospital Pereira Rossell, Montevideo, Uruguay.
She is a member of the Asociación de Psiquiatrı́a y Psicopatologı́a de la
Infancia y la Adolescencia (APPIA), and of the Instituto de Psicodrama J.
L. Moreno, Buenos Aires. Recent publications include: ‘Through Child-
ren’s Eyes’ (S: European Journal of Semiotics, 2000); ‘Pedro y Gretel:
Creatividad, repetición’ (Revista de Literatura Hispanoamericana, 2000);
and ‘Reseña de la Jornada “Mitos y conocimientos sobre lo masculino y lo
femenino” ’ (Momento: Revista del Instituto de Psicodrama J.L. Moreno,
Buenos Aires, 2002). Address: Graduate Program of Developmental
Psychology, UFRGS, Ramiro Barcelos 2600, 90035–003, Porto Alegre,
RS, Brazil. [email: [email protected]]