This article focuses on the distinction between meaning’s opening and clarification of the signified, as one of the aspects of the relationship between the theory of the sign in Linguistics and Semiotics to the theory of the signifier. The paper also searches to analyze the contribution of Semiotics to the psychoanalytical theory of the subject. Two texts, a literary and a clinical one, are the context to the analysis of the function of alterity for the subject, that may be imaginary or symbolic. It will be symbolic in the constitution of a joke. Our results indicate that there is a relationship between clinical listening, symbolic alterity and meaning’s opening.
psychoanalytical theory of the subject; signifier; signified