Theory of the mediation

The Théorie of the Mediation (TDM) founded by Jean Gagnepain offers a model of analysis and a scientific program of a considerable range applicable so that would be true Social sciences. Remained ignored a long time, it was masked at its beginnings by the effect of mode of structuralism, later by the influence of holding of the " cognitivo-comportementalisme". Its audience widens slowly but surely in the academic world in France and abroad, and it starts to reach the " public éclairé" in spite of its complexity: the TDM could appear well as a finally solid alternative against a vision neopositivist of human which tends today to impose its law everywhere.

Initiated in Rennes by Jean Gagnepain and his pupils during the years 1960 and 1970, the TDM historically knew its first ramifications in France by professors Philippe Bruneau and Pierre-Yves Balut, archeologists in Paris Iv-Sorbonne in the UFR of History of Art and Archeology, and in Belgium where it was introduced by Jacques Schotte.

General presentation

The TDM was built on the confrontation of the decisive contributions in linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure with pathologies of the language, in particular the aphasias studied under a new day in collaboration with Olivier Sabouraud, professor of neurology. If the heritage of Gagnepain is unquestionably marked by German phenomenology and structuralism saussurien, Freud and Marx also have a decisive role there. Indeed, for the TDM abstraction (Saussure), implicit (Freud) and dialectical (Marx) are essential characteristics of the human reason.

One should not mistake to see in the language only human specificity, even if, having been the subject of scientifically the most succeeded research, it is a place of effective observation analogically to analyze the four plans of the rationality modelled by the TDM.

Because if the language is well a properly human demonstration, the man shows other specific capacities which led the TDM, forced by the analysis of pathologies, to break up the rationality into four plans:

the logical rationality , which specifies the capacity of sign (the knowledge, the language, logic…), object of the glossology . ;
the technical rationality , which specifies the capacity of tool (to do it, technique, the report/ratio mediatized with the material object, habitat etc,…), object of the ergology . ;
the ethnic rationality , which specifies the capacity of anybody (the being, the company, the report/ratio with the other…), object of the sociology . ;
the ethical rationality , which specifies the capacity of standard (to want it, morals or ethics, control of the desire…), object of the axiology .

It is essential to understand that the concepts of sign, tool, nobody and standard return to positive realities, but with implicit processes (one recognizes under this implicit the unconscious freudien, but who is not limited any more to the field of the language). This cutting makes it possible to build a model where each plan can be established by analogy with the three others: thus the famous distinction saussurienne of the faces of the sign (reconsidered by the TDM) ---- (meaning/meant) ---- find its equivalent analogical in the plan of the tool ---- (manufacturing/manufactured) ----, in the plan of the person ---- (instituting/instituted) ---- and in the plan of the standard ---- (regulating/regulated). Thus also the biaxiality (taxonomy/generativity) attested by the study of the 2 principal types of Aphasie is found it analogically in the four plans.

This diffracted rationality supposes to agree to think that the man is determined by capacities " culturelles" properly human which corticalement is corticalement conditioned (Jean Gagnepain insists there while strongly arguing his hostility with the reductionnism, the evolutionism and positivism). Capacities " culturelles" therefore, specific of the human one, but we share with the animal on the four plans a bottom " naturel" and the TDM returns account with a great rigor of this natural separation/culture. It does it through the concepts of built-in formalization (praxis), of dialectical abstraction and especially of . For Gagnepain following Marx, the dialectical is a cultural fact really constitutive of human, and not only one method of thought.

Each of the four determinisms of human must be analyzed in its internal coherence. However, each one of these plans is constantly influenced by the three others and exerts an influence on them in the ordinary operation of the reason, so much so that only the recourse to the study of pathologies makes it possible to attest the autonomous existence of it. It is also this recourse to the study of pathologies which gives its legitimacy and its heuristic strength to the construction of the model by analogy: if " the human reason is a in its principe" , any new element that one can bring to the model in one of the four plans should be able to be required, checked or invalidated by clinical experimentation in each of the three other plans.

This is why the Theory of the Mediation is also called clinical anthropology , because she claims to study what specifies the man while taking constantly, like points of resistance, the contributions of the private clinic: the aphasia, the atechnie, the psychosis and the neurosis are principal pathologies attesting the projections mediationnists perpetually.

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