Text as a Tool for Understanding the Self: A Literature Review between Hermeneutics (Gadamer) and Cultural Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Gadamer views the text as an open hermeneutical space for dialogue, in which the self is understood through the fusion of historical and linguistic horizons. Understanding is not a purely individual act but rather a dialectical process between the reader and the text, mediated by history and language. Meanwhile, proponents of cultural-psychological analysis regard the text as a symbolic tool for organizing consciousness. Words, narrative, and writing are not mere reflections of the self but mediating instruments that reshape it internally, since the text activates higher psychological functions—thinking, memory, and self-awareness—through cultural mediation and social interaction. Both perspectives reject an individualistic conception of the self: for Gadamer, understanding is realized historically and linguistically; for cultural psychology, it is realized functionally through symbolic mediation. Thus, the text encompasses two complementary dimensions: one philosophical-hermeneutical, and the other cultural-psychological.