Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘discourse’ operates at several irreducible levels simultaneously: ontological, linguistic, clinical, and political. Heidegger establishes the most foundational claim, positioning discourse (Rede) not as a secondary vehicle for pre-formed meaning but as a primordial existential constitutive of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, coequal with state-of-mind and understanding. This ontological grounding stands in productive tension with Benveniste’s strictly linguistic distinction between discourse and historical narrative — a difference indexed by the deployment of personal verb forms and the presence of a situated subject of enunciation. Lacan absorbs both pressures, treating discourse as the structured field within which desire and the subject of the unconscious are constituted; his sustained readings of the speeches in Plato’s Symposium repeatedly interrogate the register, tone, and function of each interlocutor’s logos, revealing how discourse both conceals and symptomatically betrays the truth of love. Giegerich raises the stakes explicitly for depth psychology, framing the ‘who,’ ‘how,’ and ‘what’ of psychological discourse as problems of logical status and not merely rhetorical manner. Ricoeur and Derrida press the term toward its political and phenomenological limits, with Ricoeur noting the inextricable ties between discourse, power, and systematic distortion of language, and Derrida foregrounding the impossibility of grounding discourse in an originally given presence. Together these voices establish discourse as a site where subjectivity, truth, falsehood, and power are negotiated — a central problematic for any rigorous depth-psychological hermeneutics.
As an existential state in which Dasein is disclosed, discourse is constitutive for Dasein’s existence. Hearing and keeping silent are possibilities belonging to discursive speech.
Heidegger establishes discourse (Rede) as a primordial existential structure of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, not a derived communicative instrument but a condition of existential disclosedness.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
From the point of view of the entrance problem we have so far looked at two aspects of psychological discourse, the who of discourse… and the how… There is one more moment that needs to be investigated, the what.
Giegerich articulates a tripartite analysis of psychological discourse — its subject, its logical status, and its content — arguing that rigorous depth psychology demands attention to all three dimensions.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
The Entrance into Psychology and the Style of Psychological Discourse… a) The ‘who’ of psychological discourse… b) The ‘how’ of psychological discourse… c) The ‘what’ of psychological discourse.
Giegerich’s table of contents signals that the style, logical status, and subject-matter of psychological discourse constitute distinct and separately analysable dimensions of depth-psychological inquiry.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
between discourse, power (in the sense of domination), and possession, the ties are so inextricable that a social therapeutics of the systematic distortions of language has to be added to a simple hermeneutic incapable of curing by its discourse alone the misunderstanding in discourse.
Ricoeur, drawing on Habermas, argues that discourse is irreducibly entangled with power and domination, requiring a therapeutic — not merely interpretive — approach to its systematic distortions.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
The fundamental existentialia which constitute the Being of the ‘there’, the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, are states-of-mind and understanding… In so far as a state-of-mind is equiprimordial with an act of understanding, it maintains itself in a certain understanding.
Heidegger situates discourse within the triadic existential structure of state-of-mind, understanding, and interpretation, framing it as the articulation of what is already co-understood in Being-in-the-world.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
if the texture of the text, in a word, is irreducible, not only will the phenomenological description have failed but the descriptive ‘principle’ itself will have been put back into question.
Derrida argues that the irreducibility of textual texture undermines any attempt to found discourse on the originally given presence of a thing, thereby putting the phenomenological principle of description in question.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
the important thing is that it should be in the perspective of the tragic poet that we are given on love precisely the only discourse which is openly, completely derisive.
Lacan reads Agathon’s discourse in the Symposium as a structurally derisive register — a ‘beautiful discourse’ whose connotation as mere amusement marks its function within the dialectical progression of the text.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
the intervention of Socrates intervenes as a rupture, and not as something which devaluates, reduces to nothing what had just been enounced in the discourse of Agathon.
Lacan insists that Socrates’ response to Agathon constitutes a rupture within the succession of discourses rather than a simple negation, preserving the prior discourse’s exemplary function.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
the discourse of Pausanias is indeed something derisory… we will see in his discourse that Aristophanes will make us take a step, the first really illuminating one for us.
Lacan stratifies the discourses of the Symposium by epistemic and rhetorical register, identifying Aristophanes’ contribution as the first genuinely illuminating discourse on love despite its farcical surface.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
we are legitimately entitled to ask ourselves if what is in question is not properly speaking something which is consonant with a comic work as such: in dealing with love, it is clear.
Lacan raises the question of the generic register of the Symposium’s discourse on love, suggesting that the comic mode is not incidental but constitutive of the text’s approach to its subject.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
If not-being has no part in the proposition, then all things must be true; but if not-being has a part, then false opinion and false speech are possible, for to think or to say what is not—is falsehood.
Plato’s Eleatic Stranger establishes discourse’s constitutive vulnerability to falsehood through the participation of non-being, making the ontological analysis of discourse inseparable from the problem of truth.
, Sophist, -360supporting
some idea of a critical art of reasoned discourse stands in contrast with other ways in which one might speak persuasively… logoi, like drugs (pharmaka) have the power to ‘stop fear and take away grief and engender joy.’
Nussbaum traces the analogy between discourse and pharmacological action in Gorgias, positioning reasoned logos as a specialized therapeutic mode distinct from religious, poetic, or traditionally authoritative speech.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
Le discours emploie librement toutes les formes personnelles du verbe, aussi bien je/tu que il. Explicite ou non, la relation de personne est présente partout.
Benveniste defines discourse over against historical narrative by the free deployment of all personal verb forms, making the irreducible presence of the person-relation the structural hallmark of discourse as an enunciative mode.
, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 1966supporting
we do not have the impression that this discourse of Pausanias ended all that badly, we are so used to hearing idiocies of this kind about love.
Lacan remarks that our acculturation to conventional discourses on love dulls our ear to the derisory register that ancient readers would have perceived immediately in Pausanias’s speech.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015aside
Throughout the Second Discourse of Great Seth the speaker uses the first-person singular (‘I’), and the speaker identifies himself as Christ. Thus the text presents itself as the discourse of Christ himself.
Meyer’s editorial note illustrates discourse functioning as a first-person revelatory speech-act in Gnostic literature, where the identity of the speaking subject is itself the theological claim.
, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005aside
When a philosopher such as Pherecydes wrote a book, what was he doing? He was transforming private knowledge into a subject for a public debate similar to that which was becoming established for political matters.
Vernant locates the emergence of philosophical discourse in the transformation of private knowledge into publicly contested logos, structurally homologous with the rationalization of political life in the Greek polis.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside