A flowery memory; on determination and determinism; dialogue between Freud and Peirce

Abstract

Based on Freud‘s famous article «Ueber Deckerinnerungen», we attempt to carry out a Peircean analysis of it, in order to start then a discussion on the concepts of determination, overdetermination, determinism and determinability. Semiotics and psychoanalysis come thus close in an effort of mutual translation. Memory, dream, sublimation acquire a new, more complex meaning, and the same happens with some key notions of semiotic theory, such as object and interpretant.
In this manner, both disciplines approach one of the central problems of contemporary thought, namely, that of uncertainty.