The Middle Voice occupies a distinctive position within the depth-psychology corpus, appearing principally across two registers: the rigorous linguistic analysis of Rutger Allan’s systematic study of Ancient Greek polysemy, and the psycho-philosophical appropriation pursued by Cody Peterson in his recovery of the thumotic soul. Allan’s treatment is fundamentally semantic and typological, arguing that the Greek middle voice constitutes a polysemous network unified by the abstract schema of ‘subject-affectedness’—the subject functions simultaneously as Initiator and Endpoint of the action. Eleven distinguishable middle uses (passive, spontaneous process, mental process, body motion, collective motion, reciprocal, direct reflexive, perception, mental activity, speech act, indirect reflexive) are mapped onto a semantic network whose prototype is the mental process middle. Peterson’s contribution shifts the register entirely: drawing on Benveniste and Barthes, he reads the erosion of the middle voice in the Latin West as a structural loss of the grammatical scaffolding required to sustain interior deliberation—the thumotic capacity to act upon oneself. For Peterson, the middle voice is not merely a grammatical category but the syntactic correlate of inwardness itself; its disappearance from Western languages is implicated in the collapse of the psychic middle ground between agent and patient. The tension between these positions—analytical and therapeutic—marks the conceptual stakes of the term for depth-psychological inquiry.
in the Middle, the subject is ‘interior to the process’ (dans le procès), acting not upon the external world but within the sphere of their own being
Drawing on Benveniste and Barthes, Peterson argues that the middle voice grammatically encodes self-affecting interiority—the subject acts within rather than upon, making it the syntactic foundation of thumotic selfhood.
, The Abolished Middle: Retrieving the Thumotic Soul from the Unconscious, 2026thesis
When the West migrated from Greek to Latin, the internal dialogue was silenced by the very tools of speech. As the Middle Voice eroded, the Western mind lost the grammatical scaffolding necessary to sustain the thūmos.
Peterson argues that the structural loss of the middle voice in Latin enforced a binary of agent and patient, depriving Western psychic life of the syntax required for interior deliberation.
, The Abolished Middle: Retrieving the Thumotic Soul from the Unconscious, 2026thesis
the middle voice expresses that the subject is conceptualized as both the Initiator and the Endpoint.
Allan, following Kemmer’s macro-role theory, defines the middle voice as the grammatical expression of a subject that simultaneously originates and terminates the action within itself.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
The middle voice in Ancient Greek can be said to code that the subject is the Endpoint of the event.
Allan’s general conclusion distills the unified semantic core of all middle uses: the subject, regardless of the specific middle type, is positioned as the terminal recipient of the verbal process.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
the middle voice can be defined as a marked coding of a departure from the prototypical transitive. Contrary to the prototypical transitive, the subject, in some way or other, undergoes
Allan defines the middle voice through its relationship to prototypical transitivity: it marks events in which the canonical agent-patient asymmetry is disrupted by the subject’s own affectedness.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
the middle voice is seen as a polysemous network of interrelated meanings. The abstract schema, embodying the semantic commonality of all middle meanings, can be characterized as affectedness of the subject.
Allan proposes a Complex Network Category model in which all middle meanings share the abstract schema of subject-affectedness, related to one another through prototype and extension rather than a single invariant definition.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003thesis
aisthanomai (αἰσθάνομαι, ‘to perceive’) rejects the binary of active projection or passive recording. Perception is neither a laser projected from the eye nor a passive imprinting upon the retina; it is a Middle Voice reception in which the subject is formed by what it witnesses.
Peterson uses the Greek perception verb as a paradigm case to demonstrate that the middle voice dissolves the Cartesian subject-object split, making perception a constitutive, self-transforming event.
, The Abolished Middle: Retrieving the Thumotic Soul from the Unconscious, 2026supporting
the middle ending makes this inherent element conceptually more salient, whereas the active ending - being neutral as to subject-affectedness - does not contribute to the meaning of the verb
Allan explains synonymous active-middle verb pairs by arguing that the middle inflection foregrounds an already-present semantic element of subject-affectedness that the active ending leaves unmarked.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
mental states are typically temporary. As such, mental states are different from states that have a more permanent character such as ‘be king’, ‘be small’, ‘be red’.
Allan characterizes the mental process middle as encoding temporary, subject-internal states—an observation that subtly bridges the linguistic and depth-psychological registers of the term.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
the direct reflexive middle appears to be a rather peripheral member of the category. In this respect, the Greek middle voice diverges from the reflexive systems as they are found in modern European languages.
Allan notes that the Greek middle voice is more semantically expansive than modern reflexive systems, with direct reflexivity occupying only a peripheral position in the network—a point reinforcing its irreducibility to simple self-action.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
There have been many attempts to capture the essence of the semantics of the Greek middle voice. This is not an easy task if one considers the diversity of middle usages such as passive, intransitive, direct reflexive and indirect reflexive.
Allan surveys the historical difficulty of defining the middle voice, framing the challenge of semantic diversity that motivates his polysemy approach.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
is there a semantic element common to these usage types? If so, how should it be defined?
Allan frames the foundational research question driving his study: whether a unified semantic core underlies the diverse grammatical functions of the middle voice in Ancient Greek.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
These semantic features all relate to the subject of the clause.
Allan’s semantic feature analysis of all eleven middle use-types demonstrates that subject-orientation is the single constant across the entire category, validating his abstract schema.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
Apart from (12), the logophoric middle, and the facilitative middle, each of the enumerated middle uses seems to be instantiated in Ancient Greek.
Allan maps Kemmer’s cross-linguistic typology of middle uses onto Ancient Greek, confirming the language’s unusually comprehensive instantiation of the category.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
In the course of the history of the Greek language, a gradual expansion of the passive aorist form can be observed. This expansion takes place mainly at the cost of the sigmatic middle aorist.
Allan traces the historical contraction of the middle voice at the expense of the emerging passive, providing diachronic evidence for the semantic map and for Peterson’s cultural-structural argument about its erosion.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003supporting
the extending form will not ‘jump over’ from middle use A to middle use C, without affecting the intermediate use B.
Allan articulates the contiguity principle governing diachronic spread across the semantic network, offering a methodological tool for validating the network’s structure.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside
Kemmer’s diachronical analyses are based on the assumption that two meanings A and B are related, if one can observe that a form spreads from meaning A to meaning B
Allan endorses Kemmer’s diachronic method as complementary to synchronic semantic analysis, grounding the relational structure of the middle voice category in attested historical extension.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside
Body motion verbs are typically volitional. However, many body motion verbs can also be used non-volitionally.
Allan illustrates the body motion middle’s semantic range, showing how volitional and spontaneous interpretations coexist within a single middle use-type.
, The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek A Study of Polysemy, 2003aside