Being Doll : A Study of Youngness & Oldness at Interface [1 ed.] 9781443864763, 9781443842433

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Being Doll

Being Doll: A Study of Youngness & Oldness at Interface

By

Lisa Pavlik-Malone

Being Doll: A Study of Youngness & Oldness at Interface, by Lisa Pavlik-Malone This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Pavlik-Malone All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4243-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4243-3

For Ann, Doug, Fluff, Harr

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Cognition, Wholeness, and the (Doll) Object Chapter One............................................................................................... 11 On Young of Old, Vice Versa Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 35 The Corset Is The Girdle Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 57 Plastic Surgery Conclusion................................................................................................. 89 Where Do I Keep My Doll? (Cognitive Wholeness as a Personal Need) Bibliography .............................................................................................. 91 Index.......................................................................................................... 95

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

2.1 “woman pulling her corset strings”, Public Domain 2.2 “woman with tiny waist”, Public Domain 2.3 “two girdle images”, Public Domain 2.4 “woman pulling her corset strings”, Public Domain 3.1 Fountain by Louis Icart 3.2 Aurora by Lisa Lichtenfels 3.3 Dandelion by Cindee Moyer 3.4 Papillon by Cindee Moyer 3.5 A Selection of Tools for Sculpting by Tom Oroyan 3.6 Ideal Workspace by Tom Oroyan 3.7 Harriet by Lisa Lichtenfels 3.8 Baby by Susanna Oroyan 3.9 Untitled by OOAKningyo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank many individuals for their help and support in writing and preparing this book. The editors at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for their continued interest in my work and for all of their help in preparing this book; Farrar, Straus, & Giroux and the Ed Victor Agency for use of the short story “The Doll” by Edna O’Brien; Rebecca Klingbeil of Tidbits Trinkets for the collection of Public Domain images; Sterling, Lord, Literistic, Inc. for use of the poem “Woman with Girdle” by Anne Sexton, copied from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Richard from Girdlebound for use of the poem “A Woman in a Girdle”; Karen Choppa & Schiffer Publishing for the use of the Louis Icart piece “Fountain”; Krystyna Poray Goddu of Reverie Publishing; doll artist Lisa Lichtenfels for images of her “Aurora“ and her “Harriet; Doll artist Cindee Moyer for images of her “Dandelion“ and her “Papillon“; Adrianne at C & T Publishing; Donna May President of NIADA; Tom Oroyan for the use of the images “tools“ and “Ideal Workspace“, as well as for the image of doll artist Susanna Oroyan’s “Baby”; doll artist Joanna Thomas; OOAKningyo for use of the doll image “Untitled“; my husband, Peter, for his technical guidance in preparing the visual for this project; Peter Simon for his help with the proofreading of the text; Gloria and Bill Kiprais for their continued support for this project.

INTRODUCTION COGNITION, WHOLENESS, AND THE (DOLL) OBJECT

One construct in psychology that incorporates personal subtleties of thought and emotion is that of cognitive dissonance, a term coined by pioneering social psychologist Leon Festinger (1956). It has been frequently defined as an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. Cognitive Dissonance theory includes the intimate relationship between integration, wholeness, and self, through the characterization of certain thought-emotion complexes that are necessary in order to maintain emotional equilibrium and a sense of internal harmony. It has been characterized more intricately, in the following way. …This contradiction is between two beliefs creates a sort of ‘pressure valve’ that will spontaneously create a third belief in order to be filled… A powerful cause of dissonance is an idea in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as “I am a good person” or “I made the right decision”. The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one’s choices. A person who just spent too much money on a new car might decide that the new vehicle is much less likely to break down than his or her old car. This belief may or may not be true, but would reduce (internal contradiction and conflict) dissonance and make the person feel better…Please be advised that cognitive dissonance is a largely unconscious process; you are seldom consciously aware that you hold two contradictory beliefs… simultaneously…Generally, this ‘third belief’ is pure confabulation (from Wikipedia).

Thus, the interplay between rationalization and truth is often made even more complex by confabulation. The term confabulation can be defined as “the falsification of memory in which gaps in recall are filled by fabrications that the individual accepts as fact. It is not typically

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Introduction

considered to be a conscious attempt to deceive others” (2007: 214). In other words, in the process of remembering an experience or event, the mind automatically “fills in” details that were not part of the actual experience or event when it happened. This is so, even if those particular details were initially encoded as part of the memory, but, for some reason, have not been retrieved in that moment. The above example of cognitive dissonance that also incorporates confabulation in the thought process might be, one’s belief that a new, expensive car will be less likely to break down, even though, one was recently told by a close friend that his own expensive car bought at the same dealership recently broke down three times. In this particular case, the confabulated idea that a new, expensive car will be less likely to break down, may have been unconsciously generated by one’s memory based on one’s current self-concept (“I made the right decision again, like I usually do.”). The mental process of confabulation is important for understanding cognitive wholeness because it supports the idea that, in general, the mind may seek to unwittingly integrate various thought patterns using imagination. If this is the case, than it may be that imaginative faculties function in the human mind both beyond the recall of past perceptual experiences, i.e. envisioning a previously owned hat or remembering the voice of a relative now deceased, and beyond the summoning to the personal challenge of generating some original and valuable idea or thing during creativity, be it in art, science, music, or business, for example. Indeed, cognitive dissonance may utilize imagination automatically through confabulation, particularly where one’s creating and maintaining of a certain “image of self” is concerned. Zahavi (2005), has linked the imaginative process of confabulating to constructing self-narratives in forming a personal identity. It is possible to tell different, even incompatible, stories about one and the same life, but not all of them can be true. The fact that our narration can, and does, include fictional components give rise to at least two questions. First, how do we distinguish true narratives from false narratives? It is obvious that a person’s sincere propagation of a specific life story does not guarantee its truth. In fact, in some cases the stability of our self-identity may be inversely proportional to the fixed stories we tell about ourselves…the second, more worrying issue: What is a narrative selfunderstanding an understanding of? What is the question “Who am I?” a question about? Is the self an independently existing entity that makes the questions we ask about it true or false? Is it something whose nature we gradually unearth, or rather, is it wholly constituted and constructed by our descriptions (2005: 110)?

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To the extent that the formation of narrative self-understandings is a natural—i.e. a genetically hard-wired psychological trait—or not, may be related to its degree of linkage to human brain and body processes that are uniform in most individuals, and that necessarily include various neurocognitive processes co-opted to achieve this developmental effect. Indeed, the mental process of confabulation as internal to experiencing cognitive dissonance has been attributed, in general, to neurological patterns of the brain as well as the body. The brain will try to resolve this uncomfortable cognitive dissonance in a myriad of ways. Oftentimes choice is required to reduce the internal conflict being experienced, and often the choice is irrational or confabulated. Response to internal contradictions on many levels drive most human behavior and render human behavior surprisingly predictable and irrational…Humans are hardwired to remove dissonance…(from Wikipedia) Cognitive dissonance an unpleasant psychological state resulting from inconsistency between two or more elements in a cognitive system. It presumed to involve a state of heightened arousal and to have characteristics similar to physiological drives (e.g., hunger). Thus, cognitive dissonance creates a motivational drive in an individual to reduce the dissonance… (APA Dictionary: 2007).

Thus, to the degree that certain neuro-cognitive mechanisms involved in producing cognitive dissonance interplay with certain genes that drive this particular motivational process, the entity of “self” may be a fundamental or “base” dimension of the human mind. This dimension necessarily relies on particular mental processes such as confabulation that (under conditions described by Zahavi, for example, can function in memory formation related to the developing self-narrative without “dissonance”) may become op-opted to reduce internal, physiological tension between two (or more) inconsistent patterns of thought and feeling that rattle one’s current understanding of who one is.

Cognitive Consonance Part of Cognitive Dissonance theory is its opposite referred to as cognitive consonance, which involves “…a situation in which cognitive elements are consistent with one another, that is, one cognitive element follows from or is implied by the other” (APA: 2007: 188). Thus, as an internal feeling of dissonance presumably includes physiological changes

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Introduction

in the body associated with anxiety, i.e. increased heart rate, breathing, etc., as well as being linked to a motivational drive to reduce this psychological state of inconsistency, an internal feeling of consonance may be associated with emergent inner harmony and calm, i.e. decreased heart rate, breathing, etc., that is fuelled by a motivation or desire to achieve understanding (which may include, at times, an integration of elements that may have been previously inconsistent). These latter dynamics, more than the former, seem akin to the equilibration process described by Piaget, in that disequilibrium (or an anxious feeling of not understanding) is not only reduced, but also replaced by equilibrium (a calm or satisfied feeling of understanding). At its core, Piaget’s theory characterizes equilibration as the basic emotional or motivational component of the cognitive system, that necessarily facilitates the gradual development of increasingly sophisticated and complex mental processes and mental structures; this leads first to the internalization of thought, followed by the achievement of operational dynamics in thought, and epitomized by the mind’s ability to think abstractly. This cognitive distinction of thought from emotion in the form of motivation, is theoretically useful here, in an attempt to characterize the role of consonance in forming new, personal understandings of self. Indeed, this distinction may be important as it relates to both the “desire to maintain” as well as the “desire to expand” self-understandings. In his book The Created Self (2000), psychologist Robert Weber describes the self as having the capacity to both expand and contract, and describes this dualistic mechanism as “the internalization and broad elaboration of natural tendencies to approach and avoid (2000:152). Pavlik-Malone explains, “By the expansive self, he means the ‘stretching’ of one’s conscious (and, presumably, unconscious) understanding of whom one is. By the contractive self, he means, among other things, the simplification of this understanding. In this sense, the self ‘stifles’ or ‘restricts’ itself from change and growth” (2011: xx). Weber also uses the term “affliction” to characterize the contractive self. He states, The contractive self is manifested most clearly under two principal conditions, affliction and simplification. In affliction, we suffer illness, pain, stress, or adversity that tends to cut back our normal voluntary responses for engaging in the world. In each case the question is, How do we make inner contractions to deal with the outer impositions? In simplification, we feel the need to cut through the complexity of an unsatisfying and stressful way of life, and we do so voluntarily and intentionally (2000: 148).

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Thus, while the former term “affliction” seems oftentimes linked with feeling dissonance, since it implies an immediate emotional need or urgency to maintain a current self-concept that is at risk of coming apart, the terms “simplification” and “restriction” imply a consciously motivated attempt to maintain the “inner world order”. In the latter circumstance, one is currently satisfied with one’s sense of “wholeness”, one’s sense of self; thus, the inner harmony of consonance rather than inner discord of dissonance is experienced. Consonance relates not only to simplification, but also to expansion. Indeed, the expanded mind necessarily feels at ease with its new “inner order” or new understanding of self, that has grown in terms of the number of added or strengthened and/or removed or weakened elements, as well as in terms of possible changes in the nature of the configurations of such elements. The idea that semantic opposite elements can become integrated into one overall physical configuration is not new. Noted philosopher and psychologist Alexander Spirkin, in his book Dialectical Materialism (1983), states: The scientific approach to an object of research involves skill in perceiving a dynamic essence, a combination in one and the same object of mutually incompatible elements, which negate each other and yet at the same time belong to each other (1983: 143). The ultimate cause of the development of any concrete system interaction … is possible between objects or elements of objects that are not identical to one another but different. Identity and difference have their degrees. Difference, for example, can be nonessential or essential. The extreme case of difference is an opposite—one of the mutually presupposed sides of a contradiction (1983: 144-145). In the whole world there is no developing object in which one cannot find opposite sides, elements or tendencies: stability and change, old and new, and so on. The dialectical principle of contradiction reflects a dualistic relationship within the whole: the unity of opposites and their struggle. Opposites may come into conflict only to the extent that they form a whole in which one element is as necessary as the other. The necessity of opposing elements is what constitutes the life of the whole (1983: 145).

Thus, to the extent that the complex action of developing an object involves the simultaneous manipulation and application of mental processes and mental structures, the idea of being more or less cognitively whole is plausible as well. In fact, some developmental theorists and writers who study adult cognition have characterized it as potentially

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Introduction

dialectical (Arlin, 1984, 1989) and readily able to have “mixed emotions”. Both characteristics include nuanced thought-feeling complexes in which opposing patterns, such as happiness and sadness, comprise the psychological experience on conscious and unconscious levels. Presumably, these mental connections can become increasingly personal, even idiosyncratic, the more intra-subjectively “deep” they become. Pavlik-Malone has stated, “These involve the forming of mental connections of ‘surface’ ideas that are already accessible to consciousness or close to it, with ideas at increasingly deeper, less accessible levels …intra-subjectivity involves ‘the personal within the personal’, whereby the number of iterations contributes to the complexity…uniqueness and personal nature of mental representations” (2011: xviii). In terms of dialectical thought, the result of merging opposites is a new psychological pattern that expands existential understanding or experience of self. As an example, Pavlik-Malone (2011) introduced the metaphor of the “I Clown”, and states that “…the clown image can be characterized as a foolish social ‘self’ standing in the very crowd that collectively represents the normal, logical, rational ‘self’ (2011: 58). In terms of creating a timeless yet contextually flexible symbolic representation of this image, Pavlik-Malone asks the following two questions, “How might these two selves, the fool and the non-fool, relate to one another in such a way as to merge into one metaphoric representation of the clown in the crowd? And, how might they do so in such a way as to seem, essentially, like two opposing selves agreeing to meet on a whim?” (2011: 58). She goes on to explain how this psychological effect might be achieved “through the rather subtle, interactive energies of constraint and need” (2011: 58) which she explains, in greater detail, in the following way: Metaphorically speaking, the source domain includes the crowd or collective self, the visual gestalt or clown himself or herself, and the psychological distance that divides the non fool and fool. The target domain includes the duality of sense/nonsense that exists as a “whole” of human nature, as well as the human need to express this duality of nature in a constrained way. This latter domain, is expressed using particular instances of creative imagery (2011:58).

Pavlik-Malone characterizes the initial creation of this metaphor, as well as continuous personal experience of this metaphor by the group, in the following ways. …the self is collective, in that, presumably, many minds have come together over the course of time to produce a certain highly symbolic

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image of the clown. Here, expansion and contraction processes seem to work together in such a way as to successfully hone in on the qualities or characteristics of the overall image desired, both consciously and unconsciously, by the group. This may be the result of many individual minds coming together, so to speak, at all levels of consciousness, to provide certain “embodied parameters” for both “stretching” and “constricting” the image. The result is a timeless image that is simultaneously flexible and curable (2011: XXV). …its essence has been created collectively over time from mental “scraps” that contain form, feeling, and colour. Thus, in the act of perceiving various aspects of the finished image such as a tear, a sigh, an expression of loneliness, deep subconscious feelings of all viewers…are stirred (2011:60).

Indeed, what adult viewers often feel are “nuanced emotions”. In her book, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain (2010), author Barbara Strauch writes, As we get older, we also have more mixed emotions, a trait that works in our favour. A study by Susan Turk Charles found that when viewing a scene of clear injustice—a film clip … younger people react only with anger, but older people are both angry and sad. This more complex, nuanced response to the world slows us down, restricting impulse acts…another case in which a middle-aged brain may function better simply because of how it’s set up. “If you have one emotion it is easier to act,” Charles explained. “And if you’re on the savannah and a lion is chasing you, that quick action may help you out there. But in our complex world, it might be good to go slower, to think twice” (2010: 4344).

Also, it may be that this greater tendency in middle age to integrate emotional experience, reflects a human need not only to adapt, continuously, to one’s outer world of people, places, and things, but also to develop one’s “inner world” of thoughts and feelings, which necessarily coincides with, and synergistically connects with, the outer world. In her book, Strauch includes three dimensions of this “inner experience”, which include the cognitive, the reflective, and the affective. The cognitive dimension includes, among other processes, the ability to generate understandings which incorporate “shades of grey”, so to speak, rather than patterns of “black and white”. Thus, to the extent that different categorical dichotomies, such as black/white … love/hate … young/old have diametrically opposed “sides” of thought and emotion, each “side” of

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Introduction

each pairing come become psychologically “mixed” or intertwined with the other in various ways, symbolically merging together into a myriad of “shades of grey”. This cognitive merging process can result in a modification of one’s “inner world”, that possibly allows for greater personal understanding and personal control, and that necessarily integrates certain “key” elements of one’s “outer world” relating to people, places, and/or objects. To follow, the author re-introduces three categories of self and object from her previous book Dolls & Clowns & Things (2011). Each of these categories corresponds to one of three essays which comprise the current study, and which represents a profound move into subjective experience in the form of “cognitive wholeness” using “the object” to promote selfunderstanding and discovery. More specifically, each category is described in terms of how cognitive consonance relates to the presence of the “doll” object uniquely characterized. In each case, certain cognitive processes are used that stimulate the formation of personal understandings which contain integrated patterns of “youngness” and “oldness” symbolized by “the doll”. Broadly speaking, these integrated thought-emotion complexes include various ideas and elements of childhood, youth, and beauty combined with those of adulthood, maturity, and aging. Integrating these two dimensions of experience necessarily includes both conscious and unconscious mental processes and mental structures, along with a deepseated, even unconscious, need or desire to be more “whole” or psychologically complete than before through co-incidentally representing self as both young and old.

Integrating Youngness & Oldness; Three Categories of the (Doll) Object My physical object In Chapter 1, cognitive consonance develops as “youngness” and “oldness” become integrated as part of an episodic memory. This memory incorporates one’s current thoughts and feelings generated in adulthood (“oldness”) with memories of one’s then thoughts and feelings in childhood (“youngness“). Here, sentimentality for the “doll” object is explored in two major ways: one, in terms of how one’s once coveted doll was used as a plaything in childhood to create imaginative scenarios grounded in everyday life, such as “playing doctor” and “playing house”. Through this imaginative process referred to as dollification, the child uses the physical object which is her/his doll, to symbolically represent the self

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who is learning how to behave in a “pretend” real world. This play activity may contribute to the development of memories involving personal identity that extends into adulthood; and two in terms of an adult literary character’s intense feelings of sadness and personal defeat that involve her possibly confabulated version of a childhood memory. This cognitive process is also dollification, in this case the losing of her beloved friend, her favourite doll, to her mean-spirited schoolteacher. Her internal, subjective experience fuels an emotional turnaround in having a sudden positive vision of her life for the future. These latter cognitive dynamics may involve certain re-alignments of spatial, temporal, and emotional components of both childhood and adulthood memories with one another, a process that this author refers to as episodic nonlinearity. Here, this process seems a necessary part of an expanding sense of self achieved by this particular literary character.

My objectified being In Chapter 2, cognitive consonance takes place when “youngness” and “oldness” become integrated through the objectification of the human female body, a psychological process that this author describes as “dollification in reverse”, and which involves, essentially, treating a living subject as if this subject is a non- living, non-sentient physical object. Here the analogical relationship is between the human female torso and the quality of malleability typical of mouldable clay. Semantic and semiotic elements of “youngness” symbolized by the corset metaphor can become idiosyncratically intertwined with such elements of “oldness” symbolized by the girdle metaphor. This can result in an expanded understanding of self in which existential (thought) dynamics interplay with physiological and anatomical ones, to produce a more complex, nuanced metaphor for what it means to be both young and old simultaneously.

My personified idea In Chapter 3, cognitive consonance develops as “youngness” and “oldness” become integrated through artistic personification, as well as through an imaginative process referred to as vivification, which is attributing … a more diffuse life force to the non-living, such as a field of flowers seeming to “come alive” in the wind. Here, an art doll is made that contains physical attributes that indicate both youth and aging. This author introduces the concept of the intuitive self-construct, in an attempt to

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Introduction

characterize the (cognitive) study of personality, self, and subjectivity. Integral to this complex concept is the neuro-developmental quality of plasticity: this is the dual ability of the brain to continuously change as well as retain the current integrity of its neural circuitry. In this particular context of “wholeness” and the (doll) object, a more complete or expanded understanding of self may form through various dynamic neuro-cognitive energy flows that intertwine certain elements of youth and aging. Now, to the essays.

CHAPTER ONE ON YOUNG OF OLD, VICE VERSA

This chapter is about cognitive processes that can produce sentimental feelings toward a once coveted doll. The nature of this sentiment is explored specifically in terms of a need or desire to mend a lonely heart. In this case, feelings include elements of both childhood and adulthood that have become intertwined over time to produce personal understandings which symbolically portray episodic memories involving the (doll) object, in principally phenomenological and existential ways. A Childhood Memory (Described by Gloria Farese, the author’s mother, in September 2011.) I remember I was eight years old at the time, and lived in a big apartment building with my parents. I was allowed this day to go outside and play and so I brought my favourite and only dolly. Another little girl my same age and I began talking and playing. Suddenly, she ripped the doll from my hand, and tossed it onto the ground, without any reason. My doll was on the ground with a crack down the middle of her head and forehead. (The body was of material, fortunately, and so were her limbs.) I was totally devastated. I felt only negative and painful feelings. I had lost my best friend doll. It would take time for me to recover.

The episodic memory described above expresses two complementary deep-seated psychological needs, namely the desire to “make” or form, and the desire to “mend” or heal, deep emotion. In the “making”, both the girls had personally and privately “connected” with the same doll, but in different ways and for different purposes. Gloria, the owner of the doll, had presumably found continued joy in possessing her “only” doll which she also deemed her “favourite”. Indeed, it was traumatic for her that her favourite doll cracked her head on the ground. Her emotional reaction can be viewed as intense, even overwhelming, perhaps partly due to the “bestness” quality of a coveted doll that ranks above other no less-

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Chapter One

cherished dolls that could rather quickly begin to fill an emptiness or void within a little girl’s heart. The other little girl, who was also emotionally connected with the doll, did so rather instantly and abruptly. Here there is no firsthand expression nor even implication that this girl had taken a personal liking (or disliking) to “Gloria’s doll” specifically. However, the “talking and playing” that the girls had engaged in beforehand, may have in some way stirred a private need in the other girl to hurt Gloria through the aggressive manipulation of her doll. While Gloria’s emotional connection to the doll is personal in a way that speaks symbolically to the melding of social bonds with a developing individual identity and growing ability to love someone or something in particular, the other girl’s emotional connection to the doll is personal to the extent that this object was quickly deemed useful by her, perhaps to satisfy a need to instill psychic pain in another human being. Furthermore, like the “making”, the “mending” seemed to also be there inside both girls. Gloria, explicitly stated that it would “take time” for her to recover from the devastation and the emotional pain associated with her loss. For the other little girl, the impulsive grabbing and smashing on the ground of another child’s doll presumably fulfilled at least a momentary visceral need in her, not necessarily specific to “Gloria’s doll” either, but which seemingly occurred as one with and integral to her “made” emotional connection with this particular object for the time being. Thus, the subjective experience of both girls in this encounter speaks to the presence of very private places in consciousness where both emotional hurting and the need to heal become relevant to an object. For Gloria at least, that fact the that object is specifically a doll to play with, rather easily allows for developmental change and growth through a type of personified process referred to as dollification, in which an object is treated as an animate and sentient being (Ellis and Hall, 1896), in this case, as a beloved friend.

Sentimentality of the Object-Subjectivized Sentimental Adjective: 1. Of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia… (Google)

Over a century ago, two behavioural researchers, Caswell Ellis and Stanley Hall, conducted a psychological study of dolls using principally the survey method. Their questionnaire was issued to 800 teachers and parents in order to access certain information. They state, “The data desired are juvenile feelings, acts, or thoughts towards any object which represents a baby or a child” (1896: 129). The following are excerpts from

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the instructions to teachers and parents on the questionnaire. 1. Describe your dolls and get children to do the same; whether of wax, rags, paper, pasteboard, rubber, china, wood, stone, etc., and give instances where clothes pins, nails, bottles, vegetables, sticks, flowers, keys, button hooks, etc, have been regarded as dolls in any respect or in any degree. 2. Feeding … Describe imaginary foods, dishes, spoons, and other utensils. Is there any regularly or system of feeding, and any hunger starvation, food preferences, or growth imagined. 3. Medicines, diseases. What diseases, pains, symptoms are imagined. How is sympathy shown… How, and with what conceptions. Imaginary doll doctors, their visit and functions… 4. What constitutes the death of a doll. Funeral services, and burial of dolls. When lost or crushed do children assume a future life for the doll, and does this assuage their grief. 5. Give details of psychic acts and qualities ascribed to the dolls, and show how real, how treated, etc., are their feelings of cold, fatigue, anger, pain, jealousy, love, hate, goodness and badness, modesty, tidiness, etc. Is any individuality or moral or other characteristics consistently and persistently ascribed to dolls. 6. Dolls’ names. Are they of real persons, and if so, is their any resemblance real or fancied. 7. Accessories and furnishings, toilet, articles, clothes, beds, tables and dishes…for the doll, etc… 8. Doll families, and the relationship of the members, doll schools, doll parties, balls, entertainment, weddings. 9. Doll discipline, hygiene and regimen. What toilet and what rewards and punishments are usual, and what moral qualities are aimed at. 10. Dolls’ sleep. How are they put to sleep… 11. Dress … Can taste in dress, tidiness…or other moral qualities be cultivated. How does the material of which the doll is made and the degree of life-like perfection react on the child. Is there regularly and persistency in the care of the dolls…(1896: 129-130).

The various elements of the above list were described to the teachers and parents as “merely suggestive”, and were expected by the researchers

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Chapter One

to be used by them to “write down with accuracy any facts which memory or observation may suggest…” (1986: 130). Each of these characteristics implies the presence of an imaginative process capable of bringing the (doll) object squarely within the realm of another’s private, subjective purview, be her or him a child or an adult. This personal scope not only enables “my doll” to possess “psychic acts and qualities”, for example, not principally attributed by others to “me”, but that such displays and characteristics can be individualized to points of psychological subtly and idiosyncrasy. In his essay titled “Eye of the Doll” (1993), Aesthetics scholar Curtis Carter alludes to this imaginative process in the following description: There may be important differences between a doll’s function as intimate companion and confidant of the child or adult participating in and reflecting life, and the doll image functioning as an expressive, conceptual symbol in a work of art. For the child or adult who “plays” with dolls, the dolls share a personal, if in part fantasy world that helps to define the personal narrative that constitutes the individual self. As a mirror consisting in part of what is given by the cultural prescriptions for making dolls—dress codes, gender behavior for instance —and in the part of the behaviors enacted through it, the doll reflexively helps the person watch himself or herself live. In turn the doll may contribute to the shaping of a person’s identity by virtue of the experiences that it provides. In art…doll images function…as a metaphor for contemplating the universal concern that human beings have for personal identity (1993: 8).

In his book Life Like Dolls (2004), anthropologist A.F. Robertson describes how the act of (Porcelain) doll collecting can not only help symbolically define personal identity, but can be used by the collector to re-write the narrative in one’s emotional favour as well. Thus, sentimental feelings such as sadness and nostalgia, towards the (doll) object can, ironically, be in the form of memories that have been at least partially recoded in the here and now. He writes: The… advertisements play on an emptiness in the life of the collector that can be resolved by the act of the purchase: “Share the love in her heart. Send for Grace today.”… Key words in the emotional vocabulary are “adore” and “adorable”, used in the quarter of the advertisements. Similar words are “delightful,” “charm (ing),” “enchant (ing),” and “captivat (ing).” Overflowing with affection, the dolls may sound better than the real thing to women who have been through emotional deserts with their own teenagers…The dolls represent a second chance, an assurance of undying affection (2004: 97).

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Scholar Juliette Peers, in her examination of the Fashion doll through modern history, describes the societal construction of the female identity using the doll as the mediating object between gender and culture. “Dolls raise so many issues about the representation and cultural positioning of the feminine in society that the narrative could be extended to censorship and the erotic … or ethnicity … or marketing, branding and global corporations—subjects that cut across but are not synonymous with the doll and fashion interchange.” (2004: 8). Here, Peers infers that “the narrative” can be quite varied, which presumably lends itself to the influence of individual perspective and personal exploration beyond cultural demarcations and parameters. In line with these ideas of persistence as well as change in personal narrative, comes the possibly of neurotic tendencies, even perversion. In his book The Sex Doll (2010), writer Anthony Ferguson describes the artist Oskar Kokoschka’s use of a life-sized doll constructed specifically for him in the uncanny physical likeness of his deceased wife. In this case, what begins as behaviour fuelled by sentiment towards his “dear departed”, ends as a serendipitous experience of the object as better than the previous “living thing”: Kokoschka had a torrid love affair with Alma Mahler, the widow of the great composer … when she ended the relationship after three years, Kokoschka reacted badly and continued to obsess over her for the rest of his life … so powerful were his residual feelings for Alma that he tried to exorcise his obsession by commissioning the construction of a life-sized doll. He … commissioned Mahler’s personal dressmaker … to make the doll for him. He bought the doll clothes and underwear, and brought it out for public engagements … Jon Stratton notes “He got his servants to spread rumors about the doll, to give public impression that she was a real women … Kokoschka held a big party during which, the servant paraded the doll as if at a fashion show”. For Kokoschka the doll was not only a surrogate for Mahler, but she was, to his mind, a considerable improvement on the original… As to whether he has sexual relations with the doll, Kokoschka never told. (2010: 20-21)

In his article “Passion for Possessions: Mine!” (2011), psychologist Bruce Hood explains: We are the only species that… covets possessions… The most conspicuous examples of the desire are the emotional attachments we forge with sentimental objects that extend far beyond their functional use or market value… Extreme fondness for specific objects increases between the ages of one and three, plateaus between three and four, then drops around age six. Yet many individuals retain these sentimental items into adulthood. An

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Chapter One eminent neuroscientist … famously travels everywhere with his dilapidated Steiff teddy bear, indicating that attachment is not the preserve of the weak-minded (2011: 58-59).

“Furthermore”, says Hood, “the trauma we experience from the loss of these sentimental possessions has a common physiological basis” (2011: 59). In 2010, he and his colleagues found an anxiety response present among a group of 31 adults using the Galvanic Skin technique, when they were asked to destroy (by cutting up) photographs of their own sentimental objects. However, this response was not found among this group when they destroyed their “valuable” objects, e.g. one’s cell phone, with “no sentimental attachment to them”. And, marketing professor Russell Belk has written about “investing self in objects” which he refers to as “the extended self”. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) provide a … psychological explanation in suggesting that we invest “psychic energy” in an object which we have directed our efforts, time, and attention. This energy and its products are regarded as a part of self because they have grown and emerged from the self (1988: 144). Possessions can also symbolically extend the self, as when a uniform or trophy allows us to convince ourselves (and perhaps others) that we would be a different person than we would without them (1988: 145).

Also, where dolls (as well as teddy bears) are often concerned, great efforts are sometimes made to preserve the physical integrity of the object as it becomes increasingly worn. Indeed, the doll hospital functions for just this purpose. To date, there are over two hundred of these businesses in the United States alone. One resides in Secaucus, New Jersey, owned by Luis and Ana Casas, originally from Bogota, Columbia. According to Jim Beckerman, staff writer for The Bergen Record, “The front parlor is the ‘waiting room’. It’s overflowing with patients: Raggedy Anns, teddy bears, Cabbage Patch Kids. Pinocchio and his IV tube (he’s on ‘5 percent dextrose’ solution), on a shelf on the far wall…” (2011: F-3). The owners, who also run the hospital, mention how they have become well acquainted with high sentimentality in individual Americans. Beckerman continues, “Most of the toys here have stories. Some are so heartbreaking, it’s all that Dr. Casas and his wife can do to maintain their bedside manner” (2011: F3).

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The (play) doll as facilitator of episodic nonlinearity Explored from a cognitive perspective, the internal, imaginative act of doll play may fulfill an existential need to develop personal understandings of self. These understandings can resonate both from “reflexive” experience in the moment through the use of a doll that functions as an “intimate companion”, as well as from “reflective” experience across time, which Curtis Carter relates to the Art doll. The “in the moment” one includes the doll being immersed in everyday activities that are centred around the physical manipulation of objects and people, such as toys, feeding utensils, furniture, and friends. In addition, this play may include the projecting of personal qualities that one desires one’s doll to have, which leads to the imaginative effect of considering one’s doll a “humanlike” friend. These genuine feelings of friendship may be why its perceived collapse is so upsetting, such as when Gloria’s doll broke when it hit the ground. In this real-world situation, another human intervened in the friendship in such a way as to alter, even destroy, its ongoing psychological dynamics. All of these experiences can potentially become related to the development of the “personal narrative”, described earlier by Carter, as “reflexively” watching oneself “live”. This process presumably contributes to the development of personal identity, as the person (often a child) creates thoughts, feelings, and behaviours tied to a particular moment in the everyday life of or with her or his doll, that he or she goes through. These experiences become newly created long-term memories, in part, to construct a “self-narrative” that may continue to evolve over the lifespan, even into adulthood; this is, basically, the motivation to reflectively connect elements of one’s personal narrative constructed in the past, with thoughts, feelings, and memories that comprise one’s current understanding of oneself. Carter attributes the self-narrative as emerging from a “universal concern” that individuals have about personal identity, which can be expressed by the raising of such personal questions as, Who am I? What is my essence? What is my purpose in life? Thus, this latter narrative may not only relate to creating a doll as art as Carter describes, but may also have relevance for the mind’s ability to grow and transform an ongoing self-narrative. This narrative may contain links that reach directly back to specific memories of one’s childhood “doll play”, and that continue to allow one to subjectively identify herself or himself with her or his doll, as an adult. In cognitive psychology, “personal accounts” come in the form of at least three kinds of memory having definitions which semantically overlap. First, episodic memory is “memory for specific, personally

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experienced events that happened at a particular time or place. Retrieval from episodic memory involves using cues based on context associated with the original experience (time and place)” (APA, 2007: 337). Second, autobiographical memory is “a type of EPISODIC MEMORY comprising vivid personal memories recalling the time and place of events” (APA, 2007: 90). And third, autonoetic memory is “the recall of a personal memory and the conscious awareness that one is reliving a moment of the past” (APA, 2007: 92). Presumably, one major way in which episodic and autobiographical memories may differ is in terms of the level of emotional intensity at which the personal account is felt. In addition, these first two memory kinds may differ from autonoetic memories, in that the latter necessarily include being consciously aware that one is in the midst of recounting a personal or very personal experience. In this essay, the term episodic memory will be defined as “memory for specific, experienced events, that are personally-to-very-personally felt (in terms of intensity of emotion), and which may or may not contain a degree of conscious awareness in the midst of remembering”. All three of the separate definitions include three fundamental components, namely a temporal, a spatial, and an emotional one. Temporal refers to when something took place. Spatial refers to where something took place. Emotional refers to the personal feelings experienced when and where something took place. Both the temporal and spatial components of episodic memories are declarative, in that one can express in words both “the where” and “the when” of a personal experience. This declarative part is rather dependent on a brain structure referred to as the hippocampus, for its neuro-cognitive processing. In contrast, the emotional component of episodic memories depends considerably on the amygdala instead. Thus, the declarative and emotional parts of these kinds of memories correspond to, at least somewhat, different neurocognitive energy flows in the brain, that become integrated to produce the conscious experience of any single particular personal memory. Indeed, from the traditional psychoanalytic perspective on personal memory, the declarative and emotional components have been understood to dissociate from, and even inhibit, one another. For instance, according to the Categorization of Defence Mechanisms by Vaillant (from Wikipedia), intellectualization involves one “…concentrating on the intellectual components of a situation so as to distance oneself from the associated anxiety-producing emotions; separation of emotion from ideas…”; while the converse is present in repression,“…seemingly unexplainable naivety, memory lapse or lack of awareness of one’s own situation and condition; the emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent.”

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Also, recent findings from neuropsychological research support two integrated levels of self-awareness, namely experiential or “self in the moment”, and narrative or “self across time”, with reflected differences in the degree of cortical activity between them that can become dissociated. In her book, Boleyn-Fitzgerald uses the phrase “mental time travel”, which is essential to the formation of episodic/autobiographical memories. While the former level involves a mental focus on one’s current thoughts and feelings, the latter refers to the tendency to link “…past and present experience with concepts and imagined future experiences…” (BoleynFitzgerald: 113: 2010) through the act of reflection. Interestingly, because experiential and narrative levels of self-awareness show essentially different cortical patterns, it is also possible to intentionally dissociate them using attention re-training techniques such as meditation. BoleynFitzgerald writes, “…meditation practice has been associated with cortical growth in the right insular and other areas of the brain linked to sensory perception suggesting that they might be strengthened through the regular exercise of moment-to-moment awareness, and ‘may represent the neural underpinnings of self-reference in the psychological present’”. (115: 2010). The author describes this practice as the “…ability to disentangle our moment -to-moment conscious experience from an extended, narrative sense of self (Boleyn-Fitzgerald: 115: 2010), which can lead to greater happiness through less time spent having “…ruminative, self-obsessed forms of thought that rehash the past or strategize about the future…” (Boleyn-Fitzgerald: 115: 2010). Indeed, these neural pathways “linked to sensory perception” in the present may correspond to those which comprise the developing personal narrative which, when hyper-focused on, may diminish the mind’s tendency towards self-narrative thought. In addition, it may be that both concrete and abstract conceptions of one’s experience also exist in one’s brain networks in psychologically integrated ways (that can become dissociated), contributing to one’s developing sense of personal connectedness to the (doll) object. Both kinds of conceptions are akin to “concretely in the moment” and “abstractly across time” as related to doll play. In her doctoral studies on cognition and short story writing (1997), Pavlik distinguishes between concrete and abstract concepts. She states: Concrete concepts such as animal have been found to contain properties and the relationships among them that are highly correlated with instances they represent in the environment (Rosch et al, 1976; Hampton, 1979). However, for abstract concepts, the important properties and their relationships are largely unknown. Such concepts seem to contain characteristics that are derived from personal experiences and situational

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Chapter One contexts. The work of Hampton (1981) provides support for the structure of eight abstract concepts, including a crime, a rule, and a work of art. He proposed that five underlying characteristics are present in features that participants listed as belonging to each of these concepts. These characteristics include the details of the agent, the act, the motive, the effect, and the social meaning of the action. For instance, a crime that is done deliberately by someone can be a detail of the agent (1997: 181).

Presumably, concrete aspects of doll play episodes include one’s perceptual processing of various physical qualities of experience related to objects, i.e., what the doll is made of, what you feed it, what medicine you give it, how you bury it if it has died, etc., as well as one’s current feelings and emotional responses to these behaviours and events in the moment. Simultaneously, more abstract aspects of these episodes may be included in the developing or ongoing personal narrative which contains, among other characteristics, details of the agent, as well as a burgeoning selfnarrative. As was just described, the self-narrative, at its core, presents an omnipresent sense of self that persists across time, and so, may come to exist within an individual as memories of whom one is, based on one’s past, as well as on memories of one in the present and in the future. Indeed, through this process of “mental time travel” one‘s abstract experience of self may come to exist such that linear points in time may form mental representations that are nonlinear instead. Under such conditions, one’s present conscious experience of self could contain elements of a past memory (parts of a personal narrative), for example, with a self-narrative component that is re-interpreted in light of ongoing self-knowledge and personal experience since that time. This new developing mental tapestry, is unintentional in that one is not consciously motivated to bring certain particular memory elements together in consciousness (unlike the desire to dissociate sensory perceptual experience and ruminative thought during meditation). In fact, in his recent article “Secret Life of the Mind”: The subconscious knows many things that your conscious mind does not” (2011: 50-53), neuroscientist David Eagleman, states how your “…perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs … are final products of the activity of billions of nerve cells” (2011: 52) and suggests, that much of this “activity” takes place out of conscious awareness. Presumably, this includes not only the cognitive processes at the micro level, which more directly manipulate memory data, but also at the meta-cognitive or macro level which includes intentional ability that helps to channel motivation. Thus, in adulthood, one may have an emotionally laced image of oneself as a child playing dolls with another child. During this particular “play scenario” one’s doll “feels good” about

On Young of Old, Vice Versa

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itself for doing the right thing towards her/or his playmate, partner, or friend, which is the other child‘s doll. This memory is retrieved at the same time as one reflects on how lonely one often feels in the present day, and hence concludes that playing dolls in childhood helped to assuage her or him of this chronic loneliness that has actually become part of the selfnarrative at a time later than this childhood experience. Such a complex episodic memory can be described as having an “old of young” trajectory as its symbolic structure, since thoughts and feelings such as those about personal loneliness in adulthood, come to colour a childhood memory in the process of its re-interpretation. Conversely, one’s adult feelings of loneliness may diminish in light of childhood memories of doll play episodes in which one‘s doll feels accepted and appreciated, hence forming a “young of old” memory trajectory of “feeling liked” in adulthood, instead. Indeed, such dissociation dynamics may potentially be linked to potential disentanglements among declarative and emotional, experiential and narrative, as well as concrete and abstract, elements. These largely unconscious dynamics may produce modifications in the episodic memory structure itself, which may be experienced on a conscious level or autonoetically, as the way things “really” were then, at that specific time and place.

My (phenomenal) dol1 The relationship between subjectivity, episodic memory, and the (doll) object, can also be understood from within the theoretical framework of phenomenology. In his book, Introduction to Phenomenology (2007), philosophy professor Robert Sokolowski defines this school of thought as “… the study of human experience and of the way things present themselves to us in and through such experience” (2007: 2). This “presentation” is examined in terms of the ways in which the mind perceives the object. While the nature of perceptual processes is central here, these processes can become co-opted to produce different physical realities of the same object. Sokolowski states that, “In phenomenology ‘intending’ means the conscious relationship we have with an object “ (2007: 8). He continues: For example, we carry out perceptual intentions when we see an ordinary material object, but we must intend pictorially when we see a photograph or painting. We must change our intentionality; taking something as a picture is different from taking something as a simple object. Pictures are correlated with pictorial intending, and perceptual objects are correlated with perceptual intending. Still another is at work when we take something

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Chapter One to be a word, another when we remember something… Sorting out and differentiating … intentionalities, as well as the specific kinds of objects correlated with them, is what is done… (2007: 12-13).

To even better convey this idea of “intending”, Sokolowski (2000) has provided a paradigmatic example of the conscious experience of the object. This example, especially those aspects of it that relate directly to subjectivity, can provide ways to understand how a doll can come to symbolically encapsulate combined thoughts, feelings, and memories of youth and maturity, thus producing an intensely personal connection to or sentiment towards the object. He states: Let us formulate this structure in regard to its objective and its subjective dimensions. Objectively, what is given to me when I see a cube is a blend made up of sides that are present and sides that are absent but cointended. The thing being seen involves a mixture of the present and the absent. Subjectively, my perception, my viewing, is a blend made up of filled and empty intentions. My activity of perceiving, therefore, is also a mixture; parts of it intend what is present, and other parts intend what is absent, the “other sides” of the cube…All experience involves a blend of presence and absence, and in some cases drawing our attention to this mixture can be philosophically illuminating (2000: 17-18).

In his book, Sokolowski describes the “Perception of a Cube as a Paradigm of Conscious Experience” (2000: 17). Phenomenologically speaking, one’s perception of one’s doll can be understood analogously to the perception of a cube. A three-dimensional cube contains sides, aspects, and profiles. When one looks at a cube, one’s filled intentions include just one of its sides, with empty intentions being its other sides not perceived at the particular moment, but, nonetheless, are continuous parts of this perceptual experience. “My perception is dynamic, not static; even if I just look at the one side of the cube, the saccadic motion of my eyes introduces a kind of searching mobility that I am not even beware of” (2000: 18). Each side of the cube can be perceived in more than one manner or aspect depending on the moment. “If I hold a side directly before me, it is presented as a square, but if I tilt the cube away from me slightly, the sides … look more like a trapezoid” (2000: 19). A profile, then, is a momentary view of an aspect. Sokolowski states “I can view a particular aspect at a given moment; I can close my eyes for a minute, then open them again. If I have not moved, I will have the same aspect given to me again” (2000: 19). Similarly, one’s doll has several sides. At a given moment, one has filled intentions, attending to just any one side. To do this, one’s eyeballs produce subtle jumping motions, referred to as micro saccades, that

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contribute to the co- intending, a mixture of perceptually present and perceptually absent parts of the doll. In addition, each side of the doll can potentially be seen in more than one manner or aspect, i.e. if you hold the doll face forward in front of you, she or he seems to look you in the eye, whereas if you turn her or his head slightly to the left, she or he no longer seems to do so. Furthermore, any aspect can take on different profiles, i.e. the doll looking at you in the eye can be a pleasant or unpleasant experience depending on your own mood at the time. Sokolowski says that unlike a side and an aspect, “A profile is a temporally individuated perception of the object” (2000: 19). Thus, while the former two elements are basically inter-subjective, in that neurocognitive processes function similarly between individual perceivers to allow them to phenomenalogically see the same thing, the content of a profile is meant to be more private, subjective, and intuitive. The perception of this element of the object, be it a cube or one’s doll, for example, includes the conscious and unconscious influences of nuanced feelings and personal memories that make for a different “seeing” from one viewer to the next. For instance, when we both look at your doll from a certain aspect, you have a marked emotional reaction felt in your gut while I feel nothing marked or different than I felt before viewing this aspect of your doll with you a moment ago. In her book, Dolls & Clowns & Things (2011), PavlikMalone describes the difference between subjectivity and intra-subjectivity and each one’s relation to the object. … a hallmark characteristic of any thing or object, is its ability, if not tendency, to be subjectively molded and shaped by the particulars of the mind that does the … intuiting…What internal mechanisms might be at work (and play) here? There seems to be a “subset” of mental processes, structures, and abilities that exist within the subjective realm. This ‘subset” can be referred to as the intra-subjective. They are at times more present than at other times, and enable the individual to create very personal understandings of objects from deep within … its nature as “the personal within the personal” has the power … to produce understandings of…objects which are nothing less than transformative for the self (2011: xvi).

Thus, Pavlik-Malone characterizes subjectivity and intra-subjective experience as essentially intuitive. The subjective realm (unlike the objective realm principally characterized by logic and rationality) may contain an influential dose of unconscious as well as certain conscious forces. According to Sokolowski, “…intuition is simply having the object actually present to us, in contrast with having it intended in its absence”

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(2000 : 35). He uses the examples of “finding the glasses I was looking for”, and “If I talk to you about Leonardo‘s painting”, along with “the actual seeing of a cube”, as instances of intuitive thought “…because they bring a thing to presence. Such presentation is played off against the empty intentions directed to the thing in its absence” (2000: 35). The internal act of “bringing a thing to presence” implies that an idea of the object-to-be-found residing at an unconscious level is somehow retrieved into conscious awareness in a lateral way, in which emotions or feelings, at least as much as logic, have considerable influence. In phenomenology, then, thinking about where one might have put one’s glasses, is part of the same overall perceptual experience as being in the midst of having found them; each thought of where the glasses might in fact be is a particular empty intention that guides behaviour and perception to the actual presence of the object. Hence, every subsequent place that one actually “looks” for the object becomes a particular filled (conscious) intention that either “sees“ something else or “sees“ the object-to-be-found. He states: … it is because phenomenology takes the absence of things so seriously that it can clarify the meaning of intuition; intuition, with the presence it achieves, is made to be much more understandable by being contrasted with empty intentions and their absences… There is a dimension of presence and absence, of filled and empty intentions, that we have not yet examined. It is the fact that empty and filled intending are directed toward one and the same object. One and the same thing is at one time absent and at another present. In other words, there is an identity “behind” and “in” presence and absence… If I talk to you about Leonardo’s painting, you and I intend one and the same painting, the same one that we will see directly when we walk into the room where it is present. The presence is the presence of the painting; the absence is the absence of the same painting, and the painting is one and the same across presence and absence. The painting is identified across the two. The painting belongs to a dimension different from the presence and the absence… The presence and absence belong to the being of the thing identified in them (2011: 35-36).

In this particular case, “philosophical illumination” is ignited by a psychological link of a doll to episodic memories that become part and parcel of new understandings of self. Such understandings come about through self-consciousness that has a mixture of both the present and past, of both filled and empty intentions. This mixture includes feelings or emotions that cut across one‘s life span from childhood into adulthood and/or vice versa. This subjective experience naturally incorporates internal (often visual) images of a particular doll that once became one’s beloved childhood plaything. The mind can use this cognitive element (as

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well as others), to influence the content of new personal interpretations of self generated in the here and now. Thus, one’s generic human capacity for sentiment can be brought to “subjectivized fruition”, which is a quintessentially private symbolic experience of one‘s doll that has bridged different “phases” in one’s personal understanding of who one is. In the chapter of her book that explores the clown in the crowd as a personified object, Pavlik-Malone (2011) describes the influential role of “A nuanced visual sense” that combines both the physiological eye and the psychological “spotlight”. She says: Recent research supports the idea that subconscious attention directs involuntary movements of the eyeballs referred to as micro saccades (Martinez-conde and Macknik, 2007: Engbert and Kliegal, 2003: Hofed and Clark, 2002). According to Martinez-Conde and Macknik, “… the direction of micro saccades is biased toward objects to which people are unconsciously attracted… Even when your gaze is fixed, your attention can unconsciously shift about a visual scene to objects that attract your interest…” (2007: 56 & 62).

This visual mechanism is the same one mentioned earlier by Sokolowski, in which subtle jumping motions of the eyeballs allow for the perceptual experience of empty intentions (to objects or parts of a single object that are currently physically absent), along side filled ones. Thus, micro saccades provide a concrete physical gateway, so to speak, to the rather abstract, deeply seated psychological world of intra-subjectivity. Indeed, through the these subtle workings of the eyes that scan various angles and dimensions, generic perceptual experiences can be co-opted to produce, at least somewhat, different physical realities of the same object. For instance, consider the example given earlier that involves the two of us looking at a particular doll. We both look at your doll from a certain aspect; you have a marked emotional reaction felt in your gut while I feel nothing marked nor different than I felt before viewing this aspect of your doll with you a moment ago. In such a circumstance, your rather generic perception of this doll, certain side and aspects, experienced just a second or so ago becomes co-opted to become a profile. When this happens, the psychological influence of your now heightened emotion, moves private thought, memory, and feeling elements (some gradually, some all-at-once) from unconscious and less conscious levels into the forefront of one‘s online perceptual experience. Thus, one’s attending of the (doll) object from various sides and aspects, can lead to a private intra-subjective experience of a certain profile of the doll that only you “see”. The metaphor of the “mental spotlight” was introduced by author

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Dylan Evans in his book Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (2001). He says, “Spotlights can be more or less focused… When we are relaxed, and not in the grip of any particular emotion, our mental spotlight is relatively unfocused, and more thoughts may drift through our awareness” (2011: 113). With respect to the developing “clown” image, Pavlik-Malone states: This implies that gazing is a dynamic act that includes bouts of both conscious and subconscious processing. Indeed, the relatively unfocused mental spotlight may function as a loosened pressure value through which normally hidden feelings flow over into conscious awareness. This may allow for the thought to take many initial forms, including those having to do with physical distance, vibrancy of color, eccentricity of movement, or intensity of emotion. At the same time, this mental haziness may make capturing the true nature of the developing image by any single viewer more difficult (2011: 59-60).

Presumably, it may be within the mental spotlight that “young of old” and “old of young” nonlinear memory trajectories are formed. While the so called “mental haziness” of a “loosened pressure value” may be detrimental, in that it may make it difficult for any one viewer to capture all the significant detail of a developing creative image, this same haziness may be destructive or constructive to the single individual in relation to an already physically incarnated (doll) object. Indeed, it may be within the “hazy dynamics” of the mental spotlight that the different components of (past) childhood and (present) adulthood episodic memories can become dissociated (at least temporarily) to original memory elements that then intertwine or become re-associated in ways that allow for new personal interpretations of self to form. Thus, under such conditions, one’s present conscious experience of self could develop to contain elements of past (childhood) memories intertwined with elements of ongoing selfknowledge and personal experience since that time. In other words, the “self across time” narrative can, for instance, become re-interpreted using childhood elements of the personal narrative, within the internal realm of mental spotlight. Again, for example, in adulthood, one may have an emotionally laced image of oneself as a child playing dolls with another child. During this particular “play scenario” one’s doll “feels good” about itself for doing the right thing towards her/or his playmate, partner, or friend, which is the other child‘s doll. This memory is retrieved, in much of its temporal, spatial, and emotional form, at the same time as one reflects on how lonely one often feels in the present day; hence, he or she concludes that playing dolls in childhood helped to assuage him or her of

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this chronic loneliness that has actually become part of the self-narrative at a time later than this particular childhood experience. This newly created episodic memory comes to have an “old of young” trajectory as its symbolic structure, because, as was stated before, current thoughts and feelings about one’s loneliness in adulthood come to emotionally re-colour the childhood memory. In this instance, temporal, spatial, and emotional components have become re-aligned such that the one’s current “lonely feelings” or emotional component (a part of the current self-narrative) become cognitively linked to the time and space components of the childhood memory (parts of the personal narrative). This re-alignment may occur through the haziness of the mental spotlight, since it tends to take place outside of conscious awareness. Thus, the formation of a “old of young” trajectory—such as this one—naturally alludes the individual‘s meta-cognitive attention, in that it does not even dawn on him or her that his or her current thoughts related to a particular time and place have become re-coloured emotionally. Unconscious processes can also be understood to contribute to this effect on episodic memory through Sokolowski’s philosophical characterization of intuition. For instance, the internal act of “bringing a thing to presence” implies that a stored memory of an object such as a particular doll can be just as valid psychologically, as least in some ways, as the actual physical presence of the object. Pavlik-Malone states: “… looking at an internally generated image of an existing or known object e.g. a sea horse, generated in working memory activates some of the same areas of the visual network as looking at the actual object in the environment (2011: 81). Thus, the spontaneous formation of a doll image in consciousness, can lead to the further retrieval of details surrounding one or more instances of doll play with this particular doll. During this time, the “mind’s eye” may come upon a particular aspect of the doll that, as part of the memory, has a particular profile—a personal, intrasubjective interpretation. Thus, this profile would not only include some of the time and space components of the memory of the doll, but an emotional component as well. This third component may become reinterpreted during self-reflection, within the haziness of the mental spotlight that is operative in the here and now, but which may have mental mechanisms that naturally allude consciousness. Under such internal conditions, intuition functions creatively through a mixing of conscious and subconscious elements and processes; here, truth is internally re-made, leading to a new self-understanding. This re-making of personal truth is part and parcel of the process of dollification, defined earlier, in which a physical object, such as a doll, is treated as an animate and sentient being.

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In this case, a doll symbolically becomes the person who owns it, in order to function as an instrument through which she or he can develop a personal identity that is at least partly shaped by childhood memories of her or his “doll play”. In the next section, the author analyzes this complex psychological process within the literary framework of a short story about a (once) beloved doll, and how memories of this (doll) object as “intimate companion” (utilized to create one’s “personal narrative”) in childhood, come to influence and shape one’s self-narrative in adulthood.

Forming a New Self-Understanding through Dollification: A Literary Character’s Account Sentimental Adjective: 2. (of a work of literature, music, or art) Dealing with feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia…exaggerated and self-indulgent… (Google)

In his article, “In the Minds of Others: reading fiction can strengthen your social ties and even change your personality” (2011), cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley states: … stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general. In 1986, psychologist Jerome Bruner … argued persuasively that narrative is a distinctive and important mode of thought. It elaborates our conceptions of human or humanlike agents and explores how their intentions collide with reality (2011: 63).

Thus, Oatley (and Bruner) believe human cognitive processes can potentially be mirrored by the minds of fictional characters. In fact, Oatley and others have recently conducted experimental research studies which have yielded findings that generally support this claim (Mar, Tackett and Moore, 2010; Mar, Oatley and Peterson, 2009; Mar 2007). “The brain responds to fiction as if a reader were feeling or acting just as the character in the story” (2011: 66). For instance, functional MRI scans have shown that “the prefrontal cortex … concerned with goal-setting, reacted when a character initiated a new goal”, Raymond crumpled the paper, seemingly without any anxiety (2011: 66). However, “The temporal cortex… responded to character switches and goal-directed actions”, As soon as Mrs. Logan made a check mark on his paper, Raymond hurried back to his desk (2011: 66).

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We recognize Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver by his commanding presence, his stoicism and the absence of his left leg, cut off below the hip. Although we think we know the roguish Silver, characters such as he are not of this world, as Stevenson himself admitted in Longman’s Magazine is 1884. He described fictional characters as being like circles—abstractions. Scientists use circles to solve problems in physics, and writers and readers likewise use fictional characters to think about people in the social world (2011: 63).

Presumably, these literary character abstractions, come to be mental abstractions of behaviour that may combine over time to form working mental models of human nature that individuals can use to better understand not only the social world of inter-subjective dynamics, but also the intra-subjective world of individual motivation, intent, and experience. Indeed, a character’s feelings of tenderness, sadness, and/or nostalgia might tend to be exaggerated in a particular literary scenario in order to produce or cognitively stimulate an “abstractive effect” in the reader (or the writer), and hence help him or her to mentally model these feelings that can then be applied intra-subjectively to understanding oneself. The literary character whose cognition is being examined here is the narrator of her own story entitled “The Doll” written in 1981, by the Irish writer Edna O’Brien. This short story is about a schoolgirl and her beloved doll. Like little Gloria in A Childhood Memory, this girl too has her intimate (doll) companion abruptly taken away from her. In both cases, another human being intervenes in the friendship between a girl and her doll. However, there is at least one important difference between the two scenarios: Gloria’s memory is a single captured moment in her entire life experience with her doll. In other words, it is only part and parcel of a developing personal narrative in childhood that is further integrated into a burgeoning self-narrative that presumably extends into adulthood. However, in the short story we are given three vital existential elements: one, there are details about the character’s reflexive experiences with her one doll (as well as with her other dolls) in childhood that contribute to the developing personal narrative; two, there are background psychological details about the human being who intervenes and permanently alters the friendship between the character and her doll; and three, there are details about the character’s developing self-narrative that extends into her adult life.

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Her reflexive experience This process presumably contributes to the development of the character’s personal identity, as she creates thoughts, feelings, and behaviours tied to particular moments in her everyday life of or with her dolls. Each of my dolls was given a name, and a place of rest, in a corner or on a whatnot, or in an empty biscuit tin, and each had special conversations allotted to them, and if necessary special chastisements. They had special times for fresh air—a doll would be brought out and splayed on a windowsill, or sunk down in the high grass and apparently abandoned. (These experiences can become newly created long-term memories, in part, to construct a “self-narrative” that may continue to evolve over the lifespan, even into adulthood; this is, basically, the motivation to reflectively connect elements of one’s personal narrative constructed in the past, with thoughts, feelings, and memories that comprise one’s current understanding of oneself.) Each of these dolls was a Christmas gift given to her over successive years by an acquaintance of her mother. On year this woman gave her a doll that became her favourite. I had no favourites until the seventh doll came, and she was to me the living representation of a princess. She too was a sleeping doll, but a sizable one, and she was dressed in a pale-blue dress, with a gauze overdress, a pale-blue bonnet, and white kid button shoes…. She was uncanny … she was lifelike … and … with coaxing she might speak. Her flaxen hair was like a feather to finger, her little wrists moved on a swivel. Her eyelashes were black and sleek and the gaze in her eyes so fetching that we often thought she was not an inanimate creature, that she had a soul and a sense of use. Conversations with her were the most intense and the most incriminating of all.

The human in-between The scenario of Gloria’s memory includes another little girl who “comes between” Gloria and her doll, an action that permanently alters Gloria’s deeply felt friendship. Here, the intervening human is the girl’s teacher, who is persistently mean to her. She makes fun of the girl (even in front of the other students), She made jokes about my cardigan or my shoelaces or the slide in my hair, and to make the other girls laugh, she referred to me as “It.”; she criticizes her excellent school work, If in an examination I came first—and I usually did—she would read out everyone‘s marks, leave mine until last, and say, “We know who swotted the most,” as if I were a disgrace. And eventually she “steals” her beloved

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(seventh) doll after the girl “loans her out“ to be used as a major part of that year’s Christmas play, “You don’t think I’m going to let you have her now, I’ve got quite fond of her … the little mite,” she said, and gave the china cheek a tap. Just as Gloria was “devastated”, this girl is too. At home I was berserk. My mother said the teacher was probably teasing and that she would return the doll in a day or two. My father said that if she didn’t she would have to answer to him, or else get a hammering. The days passed and the holidays came, and not only did she not give me my doll, but she took it to her own home and put it in the china cabinet along with cups and ornaments. At home she was “berserk”, which probably included visual images of the doll reappearing in consciousness. Furthermore, Gloria’s childhood scenario implies that after her doll breaks, any implication of a future physical relationship with the doll essentially ends (even if concrete images of their precious time together are still ripe in her mind), while, in the story, the character’s doll is still physically accessible, if not physically presented, to her. Passing by their window, I would look in. I could not see her because the china cabinet was in the corner, but I knew where she was, as the maid Lizzie told me. I would press my forehead to the window and call to the doll and say that I was thinking of her and that rescue was being hatched. Indeed, the continued physical existence of the doll, as well as the character’s knowledge of this reality, may catapult the development of a “young of old” memory trajectory, in which one’s adult feelings of sadness, loneliness, and/or nostalgia are intensified or even come to be, in light of childhood memories surrounding one’s self, another, and one’s beloved doll. This may be so since a loving human-doll relationship that is profoundly “fractured” rather than radically “severed” may be the added seedlings from which the intensity of the emotional component of memories builds; in other words, rather than moving in the direction of “letting go”, one “holds on”, psychologically speaking, even increasingly tighter, for longer periods of time.

Her reflective experience Carter attributes the self-narrative as emerging from a “universal concern” that individuals have about personal identity, which can be expressed by the raising of such personal questions as., Who am I?, What is my essence?, What is my purpose in life? Thus, this latter narrative, may not only relate to creating a doll as art as Carter describes, but may also have relevance for the mind’s ability to grow and transform an ongoing self-narrative. This narrative may contain links that reach directly back to

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specific memories of one’s childhood “doll play”, and that continue to allow one to subjectively identify with his or her “close childhood friend”, being his or her doll, as an adult. In the story, the character’s episodic memories develop a “young of old” trajectory, that involves the reinterpretation and re-alignment of emotional components. As an adult, the character is living in the city, where she has many friends and acquaintances. She frequently hosts parties and social gatherings with these people, as well as “new” people who attend. During such times, however, she often takes note of their emotional distance and loneliness that seem to her to mirror her own. People come to my house, all sorts of people, and they do feats like dancing, or jesting, or singing, inventing a sort of private theatre where we all play a part. I too play a part. My part is to receive and disarm them, ply them with food and drink, and secretly be wary of them. Like them I smile, and drift; like them I smoke or drink to induce a feverishness or a pleasant wandering hallucination. Also, she is aware of her desire not to be this way, while at the same time, understands that her own mind has a “mind of its own”. It is not something I cultivated. It developed of its own accord, like a spore that breathes in the darkness. So I am far from those I am with, and far from those I have left. This interpretation of “being out of my control” may be partly linked cognitively to the “haziness” characteristic of the mental spotlight, where emotional elements may re-align to produce a new personal interpretation. Her profoundly negative feelings (of anxiety, anger, and sadness) have come to dramatically colour her memories of her present life. Thus, a “young of old” memory trajectory is being formed that has coalesced into personal accounts by the character, which are negative descriptions of her current “cosmopolitan life”, and which may be destructive to her selfnarrative or developing understanding of who she is, her essence, and her purpose in life. In the meantime, she gets word of the death of her former teacher and reacts by stating, I feel none of the rage and none of the despair. She does not matter to me any more. I am on the run from them. I have fled. I live in a city. I am cosmopolitan. A sickness has come over me, a sort of nausea for having cared so much about the doll, for having let them maltreat me, and now for no longer caring at all. Her statement implies a deep-seated emotional struggle to mend a lonely heart, since “feeling nothing”, no rage, no despair, and no mattering, seem in sharp psychological contrast to currently being “on the run”, as well as the visceral contrast between “caring so much” and “not caring at all”. Although she has the opportunity to create an adventurous, satisfying and essentially “positive” life for herself, she still cannot. This may be because her friends and the people

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she meets suffer from the same basic emotional afflictions; however, it may also be that she projects her own emotional struggles onto them, at least to some extent. In response to the news about her former teacher, she goes back to her childhood neighbourhood to attend the funeral since she feels it is her duty to do so. Also, at this point she believes she understands the motivation of her teacher to treat her cruelly, better than she ever has. I was older now and it was clear to me that she had kept the doll out of perversity, out of pique and jealousy. In some way she had divined that I would have a life far away from them and adventures that she herself would never taste. This particular thought pattern implies a kind of “old of young” trajectory to the extent that the character, now an adult, may be unknowingly re-interpreting the emotions and desires of her teacher towards her when she was a child, in light of her current knowledge as an adult. (This knowledge is of the stereotypic association known to be made between feeling personal satisfaction and living a “cosmopolitan life”, a life she now leads.) past. This trajectory may have become further entangled with other memories of the character’s personal accounts, ultimately moving her self-narrative in the opposite direction, at least momentarily.

Two memory trajectories intersected One evening, soon after her teacher’s funeral, the character goes around her old neighbourhood. During this time, she is immersed in deep thought and personal reflection that mirrors the inner workings of selfnarrative dynamics. Walking down the street, where I walk in memory, morning noon and night, I could not tell what it was, precisely, that reduced me to such wretchedness. It was not death but rather the gnawing conviction of not having yet lived. All I could tell was that the stars were as singular and as wondrous as I remembered them and that they still seemed like a link, an enticement to the great heavens, and that one day I would reach them and be absorbed into their glory, and pass from a world that, at that moment, I found to be rife with cruelty and stupidity, a world that had forgotten how to give… Tomorrow… I thought. Tomorrow I shall be gone, and realized that I had not lost the desire to escape or the strenuous habits of hoping. Initially, the sad, anxious, and angry emotional components of childhood memories that involved herself, her teacher, and her doll, became re-aligned to certain spatial and temporal components of her adult social and emotional memories and experiences. This “young of old” trajectory seems to be a rather destructive internal force that negatively affected her developing self-narrative from childhood into

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adulthood. However, in the story text above, the re-alignment seems to have included certain cognitive forces that facilitated a turn of this developing narrative in a more constructive direction. Interestingly, among these forces, was likely the “old of young” memory trajectory described earlier, in which the adult character states that she now understands her childhood teacher’s basic motivation to mistreat her, which included taking her beloved doll away. (To reiterate, this was her belief that her teacher felt envious that her student would experience much adventure and emotional satisfaction later on in life.) Whether or not her teacher did in fact feel this way, seems less important now than the possible cognitive effect her feelings contribute to her developing self-narrative. Indeed, this “old of young” memory structure may have interjected itself within the character’s rather negative self-understanding. In other words, the favourable stereotypic imagery of the “cosmopolitan life”, that was part of her belief regarding her teacher, seems to become subtly associated or realigned to mirror the character‘s noticing of the “wondrous quality” of the stars, that inspire her to “escape” her sadness, anger, and anxiety (symbolized by her childhood neighbourhood), as well as to “hope” that things can still get better for her emotionally (even, possibly, through living the “cosmopolitan life” in the future). Through these cognitive dynamics, “young of old” and “old of young” memory trajectories seem to intersect. This is so, since her negative self-understanding generated in adulthood by unhappy childhood memories (“young of old”) becomes associated with the character’s adult understanding of her teacher’s envy towards her as a child (“old of young”). Presumably, this influenced her sudden renewed sense of having personal opportunity in adulthood. Had this memory intersection not occurred, the character’s directional change in negative to positive feelings regarding self may not have happened, since her supposed adult insight (regarding her teacher) would not have facilitated its inception. These sentimental feelings of the character may seem exaggerated precisely because they seem to change general direction, in the form of an acutely felt personal insight about self. (Also, this intensity may additionally help to rouse empathy for this character’s emotional plight in the reader.) Indeed, in each case, is the implicit truth that the character’s current feelings in adulthood, can be traced back to an intensely dollified experience of having a (once) “beloved friend” taken away.

CHAPTER TWO THE CORSET IS THE GIRDLE

Figure 2.1 (Exerpt from “The Young Housewife”, 1935, by William Carlos Williams) Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair…

This chapter is about an actual (female) subject who becomes an imagined physical object akin to mouldable clay. If the metaphoric moulding is highly restrictive and exact of certain contours and proportions to reflect a general beauty ideal, the object figure wears a corset. If such moulding is less exact, more flexible and so less bound to this ideal, the object figure wears a girdle. However, both “the corset” metaphor and “the girdle” metaphor can be made to take symbolic positions in relation to each other about an object figure, to create semantic “points”, as it were, of personal, as well as physical, expansion and contraction. This complex cognitive process can promote selfunderstanding that metaphorically links the intertwining images of young and old.

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“Dollification in Reverse” (The Dynamics of Cognitive Synergy) The term dollification, coined in 1896 by researchers Caswell Ellis and Stanley Hall, is the imaginative tendency to treat a physical object as an animate and sentient being, thus projecting one’s own preferred thoughts and feelings onto said object. When this is done, the object becomes a subject in a sense, that may consciously or subconsciously act as a surrogate representation of self. Dollification is an essentially internal, cognitive act, heavily linked to the subjective dimension, and so its psychological effects are principally phenomenological. For one, as was just stated, it can allow any actual object to become an imagined subject, e.g. a sunflower becomes a happy child. But also, and instead, it can allow an actual subject to become an imagined object, namely a doll, which initially involves the suggestive power of the subject’s physical appearance and attractiveness on the mind of the particular imaginer (Pavlik-Malone, 2011). When this happens, the imaginer is free to project his or her own private thoughts and feelings into his or her own personal “object of interest” or “object of desire”. In the process of dollification, comes the synergistic tendency of the imagination to not only combine and arrange, but also to re-combine and re-arrange, internal experiences to one’s present emotional inclination or satisfaction. For this reason, “dollification in reverse” (DIR) is a natural, even expected, process coming out of such self-organizing dynamics. By this author’s definition, “dollification in reverse” can be understood to occur “when an actual animate and sentient being becomes a physical object, either literally or symbolically”. Thus, the DIR thought process may result in any creative representation of a subject in the form of any object, including a doll, that subsequently may or may not lead to dollification which involves, essentially, the thoughts and feelings of the imaginer being projected onto it. This interpretation could take the form of a drawing, painting, sculpture, or even a visual image that exists in the mind exclusively, e.g. a painting of a scarecrow that has the face of one‘s mother, or an internal image that portrays a particular person as a certain fruit such as “his ruddy cratered complexion makes him a strawberry”. In this way, thought and emotion dynamically give rise to certain new “inner world orders” in which the synergistic process of combining and re-combining mental representations that were initially semantically or psychologically rather separate in the mind of the creator, plays a essential role. In his book Nature’s Magic (2003), scientist Peter Corning describes synergy like this: .

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Very broadly, the term refers to the combined, or cooperative effects produced by the relationships among various forces, particles, elements, parts, or individuals in a given context —effects that are not otherwise possible. The term is derived from the Greek word synergos, meaning “working together” or, literally, “co-operating.” Synergy is often associated with the cliché, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” …but this is actually a rather narrow and misleading characterization. In fact, synergy comes in many forms; sometimes wholes are not greater than the sum of their parts, just different (2003: 2).

Thus, through synergy, certain forces, parts or elements often produce important, useful, and/or interesting arrangements. Presumably, when “the whole is greater than”, the parts need to come together in a specific relation to make the result more valuable or useful in a way that these same parts placed in many other relations would not. With regard to this interpretation of synergy, it has been said: Above all, we need relationship and connection. The pieces of a bicycle, spread out on the garage floor, are not a bicycle. Only the pieces assembled—this is, arranged and connected into proper relationship. Note that such special relationships and connections—out of hundreds of possible relationships and connections—generate something “more” for the parts or the whole. In the case of our bicycle, the pedals have to be in a special relationship with the wheels to enable the rider’s feet to move the bicycle forward. If the pedals are where the seat should be, they can’t do their job. Such “right relationship” is called “synergy” (From The CoIntelligence Institute website, 2011).

Thus, under such cognitive conditions, a vision (in the form of a mental representation) of the “right relationship” among the parts is pursued in the service of achieving a certain desired goal or effect. However, when the whole is “not greater than”, but “just different” from the sum of its parts, it may be that the parts need only the opportunity to come together in the first place. Thus, whatever actual arrangement results from this happening is potentially of as equal value or necessity as any other hypothetical arrangement would be. Under these cognitive conditions, the “right” vision can be deemed serendipitous, since there is no pre-determined goal nor effect in mind beforehand. Thus, the goal or effect itself “takes shape” or develops as various “points of synergy” are gleaned, one subsequently and more or less unexpectedly leading to another. Sometimes, such synergistic effects are towards a psychological effect rather than towards a functional, physical, or chemical one. As was stated by the author in the previous chapter, “the serendipitous encompasses

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the unconscious, impulsive, emotional self”. This cognitive process is deemed intra-subjective, which speaks to its iterative nature as “the personal within the personal”. Thus, these “points of synergy” can be interpreted as developing “paths” of both literal and symbolic interpretation that are often rather personal, even idiosyncratic. Furthermore, such (private) interpretations can simultaneously be understood to have a single basic metaphoric structure or foundation at their core, which leads cognition—thought and emotion—to take both a unitary shape, as well as unique, individualized ones.

Metaphor Essentially, the analogical association being made here is between the torso or middle section of the sexually mature female body (from the breast line to the thigh) and the quality of malleability typical of mouldable clay. This analogy makes cognition unitary, in an attempt to develop personal interpretations of self as both young and old. In his paper on metaphor, memory, and affect (2001) psychoanalyst Arnold Modell explains, in detail, the fundamental role of synergy in producing emotional change and growth within the cognitive system. He also distinguishes between a generative metaphor (“through which new meanings are generated”) and a foreclosed one. He states: … metaphor can be defined as the mapping of one conceptual domain onto a dissimilar conceptual domain (Lakoff, 1987). So that in the use of metaphor there is the juxtaposition between different domains resulting in a transfer of meaning from one to the other. In his sense metaphor is the basis of creative apperception of the world whether in science, art, or everyday life. Consider this metaphor: sex is the poor man’s opera. Sex and opera are dissimilar domains, yet the metaphor rests upon recognizing the similarity of both domains. The pleasure that we obtain from this metaphor depends on a sense of the playful juxtaposition of the similar and dissimilar, a form of imaginative play through which new meanings are generated. These are metaphors that transform and enlarge our understanding. But there are other metaphors that are fixed, unambiguous, and unchanging. I have described these metaphors as foreclosed. These are metaphors that can be found to be operative in transference, repetition, traumatic memories, and in certain inhibitions (2001: 1).

Thus, according to Modell, the cognitive quality of ambiguity is reflective of psychological openness and emotional health, since the mind is not “locked into” a neurotic pattern of failing to perceive points of dissimilarity among similarity ones. (One can imagine how an inability to

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distinguish between a “battlefield” memory and a “surprise!” introduction at one’s birthday party might be linked to having emotional difficulties.) Indeed, neurobiologist Semir Zeki (2009) has also acknowledged the power of ambiguity and openness in formulating interpretations. However, from his perspective, a stimulus such as a work-of-art may have several different but equally valid interpretations. This is somewhat in contrast to a metaphor such as “sex is the poor man’s opera”, since here it is expected that most individuals will glean a shared meaning, in the form of a common pattern of similar/dissimilar elements, from it. Also, Modell believes that (cognitive) synergy is present in producing both kinds of metaphors, through the active interactions between memory processes and emotional ones. Indeed, metaphor, he says, “rests on the border between psychology and physiology” (2001: 2). Thus, the intimate link between the body and the mind through memory and emotional sensation that becomes coded into metaphoric thought, provides a basic framework for the developing aspects of a self-concept, which include personal understandings that are fundamentally linked to “feelings” about one‘s body shape, size, and proportions. Indeed, Modell states, “By allowing us to find the familiar in the unfamiliar, metaphor provides our … most fundamental means of structuring experience, a schema for bringing feelings and other bodily sensations within the agency of the self (2001: 1). Apparently, however, interpretation of experience can sometimes become stifled in the process, such that “feelings and other bodily sensations” consolidated through figurative thought can be rather rigidly kept in place. Furthermore, metaphor is basic not only in “creative apperception” of the outside world, but also in “creative apperception” (or, in the case of foreclosed metaphor, a lack thereof) of the inside world, where thought-feeling complexes which comprise the current self-concept have been contextualized (Modell, 2001) in certain ways. Thus, it is the role of metaphoric processes, among other cognitive ones, not only to contextualize, but also to re-contextualize (Modell, 2001) internal experience in such ways that lead to new personal meanings that are capable of being more emotionally positive, psychologically healthier views of self and one‘s body.

The Semiosphere In her book An Intimate Affair (2007), author Jill Fields explores in depth, among other things, the social and cultural significance of corsets and girdles in the United States during the early-to-middle twentieth century. She writes:

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Chapter Two This chapter begins at the turn of the twentieth century, when use of the rigid nineteenth-century corset declined, and continues through the first decades of the twentieth century, when challenges to the corset intensified. Significantly, this time frame also encompasses an era of heightened agitation of women’s political, sexual, economic, and social equity… Analysis of how the commercialized practice and ideology of corsetry shaped the way women viewed, imagined, and experienced their own bodies can help us understand both the persistence and reshaping of problematic gender structures and identities (2007: 48).

Fields continues to describe how the corset industry, in particular, sought to maintain their economic prosperity and societal status often in the psychological disservice of a woman’s body image. Corset manufacturers’ coordinated response to women’s new widespread defiance of older fashion standards, which enlisted corset saleswomen to deploy a merchandising campaign against the “corsetless evil”, emphasized youthful standards of beauty, developed scientific discourse that viewed the female body as inherently flawed, and connected ideologies of racial purity, national security, and heterosexual privilege to corset use. Examining the marketing strategies developed to keep women in corsets, reveals how the corset’s instrumentality changed in the twentieth century… Thus, the meanings that corsetry impressed upon women’s bodies shifted with industrialization; women’s fears of aging, imperfect, inferior, unfashionable, and unscientific bodies replaced earlier fears of moral turpitude and questionable respectability (2007: 48-49).

For this study, of particular interest are “the meanings” she says “that corsetry impressed upon women’s bodies”. Presumably, such “meanings” encompassed various kinds of figurative thought which included metaphoric ones, both generative as well as foreclosed. Also, as was alluded to before, such metaphors can potentially “colour” or contextualize how memory, emotion, and sensation interpret self in very personal, intra-subjective ways (For instance, feeling sensational disgust at the sight of one‘s uncorseted jiggling stomach). Indeed, Fields says, “The new perceptions about the female body that the industry deployed … encouraged … women to identify themselves in terms of flaws and to thus construct their subjectivity in self-deprecating terms” (2007: 75). Thus, societal and cultural inclinations to interpret women’s bodies as enduring “objects of imperfection”, that desperately needed “work”, presumably appealed to many, both to men and women alike. To understand the synergistic nature of how this “work” might have taken place, a distinction can first be made

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between the biosphere and the semiosphere. In his introductory book on semiotic theory entitled The Quest for Meaning (2007), Marcel Danesi defines the semiosphere as “The world of signs, codes, and texts to be differentiated from the biosphere (the physical, life-supporting environment)” (2007: 180). Presumably, this “sphere” of psychological influence includes various kinds of meanings given to things, places, and people by society and culture. These meanings exist, theoretically at least, in sharp contrast to the other “sphere” which encompasses “nature’s processes”, and that is driven principally by genetics rather than by culture. Fields describes a corset industry, in the early-mid twentieth century, that created a semiosphere having entangled meanings related specifically to female beauty, self-image, and underwear. The following are three “snapshot” examples of interrelated elements in this “sphere”: A survey conducted in New Jersey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930’s…provides a measure of corset manufacturers’ and retailers’ success in persuading Americans of the importance and legitimacy of figure types. According to Time magazine, this “gynemetric survey” measured “each subject—matron, maid, scrubwoman, show girl…” in 59 different places, [with] special recordings made to check the ‘sitting spread’” (2007: 66). The survey produced the … determination that “only two million out of forty million women have ideal proportions.”… The highly publicized conclusion that only a small percentage of women had perfect figures underscored the necessity for most women to conform to ideal standards of beauty by transforming the appearance of their flawed bodies with figureshaping undergarments (2007: 66-67). The greater public presence and freedom in body display and movement that women achieved in the 1920s were attenuated by this reformulated and internalized emphasis on female imperfection. Marketing corsets on their ability to solve “figure faults” meant an identification of faults assumed greater importance in persuading women to buy corsets, focusing them on the effort to disguise their defects. Corset saleswomen, for example, were instructed to first identify a customer’s figure type and then to determine their particular figure problems (2007: 67).

Thus, through the wearing of a corset chosen (and in some cases, even designed) specifically for a particular woman and her figure (flaws), it was expected not only that flaws could be hidden, by that in some cases, flaws would be physically improved upon or even corrected as the corset would “mould” the body in the aesthetically desirable direction through influencing

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body posture and breathing, for example. In the process, it was also expected, somewhat ironically, that a woman’s (personal) corset would reshape itself to some extent to her “own” individual body shapes, contours, and proportions, thus making it more comfortable and natural to wear as time went on. Such complex physical and physiological effects, were surely synergistic, as the end result was “my new” and “more attractive” female body that simultaneously conformed to, and resisted, a certain conventional standardization. Indeed, through the semiosphere, it seems that “the corset” had become a metaphor for female beauty (at least through the torso). This metaphor comprised one conceptual domain—an ideal version of the female body (had naturally by only two million out of forty million women)—that became “mapped onto”, or perhaps more accurately, “moulded onto” a less-than-ideal version of an actual body that was an adult female one none the less. For this reason, essentially, one may interpret “the corset” as a generative metaphor, that allowed for a more ideal body form to emerge outside the standard “matron”, “maid’, and “scrubwoman” categories. However, on closer look at “the corset” it seems that it functioned in the semiosphere as a foreclosed metaphor as well. This is due, at least in part, to the physical pain and suffering many women endured in the daily wearing of the garment, in order for their body to “look right”. Indeed, while the corset exaggerated the size of the bust and hips in order to (dramatically) slim the waist (see image below), it also tended to constrict the ribcage, sometimes to the point of breaking the bones and causing deformity. Also, other internal organs such as the liver, stomach, and intestines, were compressed to the point of causing chronic indigestion. In addition, coughing and trouble breathing were common since bodies tightly bound in corsets had trouble filling the lungs completely with air. This caused shortness of breath, as well as an accumulation of mucus at the bottom of the lungs. (From lovetoknow.com, 2011)

Figure 2.2

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Thus, this foreclosed metaphor presumably had its structural origins in the idea that a human body is completely malleable like clay, such that it can be manipulated and contorted in ways and to degrees without consequence. To the extent that women internalized this misconception, is the extent to which they were unable to imagine their own bodies as mouldable only to a certain degree. Indeed, these physical and physiological limitations are the result, at least in part, to change and growth parameters operative within the biosphere, and hence are genetically pre-determined. Presumably such parameters include applications to both individual differences in body size, shape, and proportions, as well as to those of the human female species as a whole. What we have here is an example of metaphoric dynamics known as negative synergy (Corning, 2003). In essence, this is the same kind of process as positive synergy in which two conceptual domains come together psychologically, sometimes through similarity and difference, i.e. generative metaphor, and sometimes through similarity only, i.e. foreclosed metaphor, except that the end result or effect is functionally useless or maladaptive in one or more ways. In this case, the effect of “the corset” as a foreclosed metaphor could be characterized as a physically, physiologically, and cognitively unhealthy or maladaptive thought-emotion complex. In her detailed examination of corsets, Fields describes the gradual increased accessibility of and preference for the girdle by women of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Indeed, from a marketing standpoint, the relative age of the woman needed to become decreasingly relevant. She writes: Making lighter and more flexible girdles in junior sizes was one means of keeping young women in foundation garments. Girdles were available in increasing numbers as the means of producing elastic stretch fabrics improved. In the 1910s, elastic insets in corsets offered a way to improve the garments’ flexibility… Several years later, when the young appeal of elastic girdles was more apparent, manufacturers’ and retailers’ resistance to them ended. By 1924, elastic step-in girdles were on sale in corset departments nationwide … manufacturers and retailers could not dismiss women’s desires for greater comfort and freedom of movement (2007: 7475).

From cognitive and semiotic perspectives, the rather increased flexibility of the girdle (see images below) over the traditional corset meant that the individualized body of a woman (of any age) could make a greater incarnated “imprint” on the garment itself when she wore it.

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Figure 2.3

This imprinting experience, understood philosophically as an embodied one, would hence include greater freedom, literally, “in body” itself, as well as psychologically “in mind”. Thus, through the girdle, one could be made to “look better” and so “feel more proud”, while at the same time looking like oneself rather than like a “plaster mould” of the ideal (young) woman, with taut full breasts and an extra slim waist. Presumably, this had a distinct psychological advantage for the aging woman in that the wider social and cultural acceptance of the girdle implied greater acceptance of an older, as well as naturally imperfect female body. Simultaneously, the garment was also much better for the actual physiological integrity of the human body as well, making it easier to breath normally and digest food, as well as have internal organs of normal shape and size. Presumably, for these reasons, “the girdle” seemed the appropriate new generative metaphor, in which one conceptual domain, namely an improved version of the female body, could be “mapped onto” any other version of an actual female body that was flawed. So, whether one was, in reality, a “matron”, “maid’, or “scrubwoman” became, at least partially, independent of the particulars of her figure. This could be understood as a fundamental “loosening” of the metaphoric integrity of “categories of female body type”; thereby making it easier for one’s individuality, which necessarily includes the uniqueness of one’s body with all its own combinations of attributes and flaws, to transcend, if not the image of the “show girl” in its perfection, at least some of other categories in their marked imperfection. (This was true at least in terms of where the middle part of the body— breasts, waist, hips, and upper thighs—was concerned.) For instance, the “matron” could now more easily be imagined as long and lean, curvaceous, portly, or athletic. Thus, “the girdle” metaphor used to symbolize the human female body was a more authentic generative one than “the corset” in that it could be applied more flexibly to actual varying female figures, presumably even those that might qualify as “in-between”

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traditionally delineated figure types. The symbolic change in interpretation of the female body, while concretized on a societal scale by corset manufacturers’ desire to continue to please female customers, was fuelled, at least in part, by the motivation of women to “subjectify” themselves to some degree through the display of their more naturally shaped bodies. The term “subjectification”, has been described by Jerome Bruner as “the depiction of reality… through the filter of…consciousness…” (1986:25). This implies at least two possible realities; that one’s private, internal image of one’s body could be cognitively generated and personally maintained upon presentation to others, and that one’s body image is capable of being externally manipulated to the point that thoughts, feelings, and ideas can be “put into” as well as “kept out of” one’s conscious experience of self by outside sources. (Indeed, this can occur without “formal” kinds of psychological intervening such the use of propaganda tactics, hypnosis, or brainwashing.) In the former reality, the woman herself is much more the mistress of her body‘s interpretation, whereby she has an active or operative part in how her own body “looks” to others as well as herself. In the latter reality, the woman is a passive receiver of what others’ conscious experience dictates to her that her body should look like. Under these conditions, she can be said to function symbolically as a “beautiful doll”, which Pavlik-Malone has described as “a non-sentient receiver of another’s intents and creative forces” (2011: 54). A “beautiful doll” is an actual human being who, through dollification, comes to have the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of others that deeply affect her natural desire and ability to control her own physical appearance in a nihilistic way. Utilizing the non-sentient doll. At times, however, “dollification in reverse” (DIR) is the ultimate cognitive effect. As was described earlier, this is when a subject becomes an object in the imaginer’s eyes, which may also somehow translate into physical reality as well. One particular instance of DIR is when a prototypically young, physically attractive female body becomes an often-faceless vesicle that is marketed as “a doll”. Other (sex) object “dolls” are extremely life-like however, realistically resembling a human female woman as she would appear as a “sex object”. Central to the appeal of both kinds of dolls is what author Anthony Ferguson describes as the “perfect, powerless, silent partner.” Examples of dolls that “feed” this particular DIR thought process come from his book entitled The Sex Doll (2010). He writes: The top of the line sex doll is made from silicone. These dolls are very lifelike, featuring real hair in a variety of styles, with an articulated PVC (a hard plastic made from polyvinyl chloride) or metal skeleton, and are much

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Chapter Two heavier and thus closer to the weight of an actual woman. They have flexible joints to allow for a greater variety of positioning and usually offer the bonus of removable sexually functioning parts… There are also partial sex dolls, which consist of an eroticized part of the anatomical structure. These types include modeled heads with functional mouths, or in some instances just the upper torso and head of a female body, with all the necessary apertures…Most popular in the partial body models are those simply consisting of the genitalia, anatomically correct, fully functional, life-size replicas of the vagina and anus (2010: 32-33).

The unique personal appeal of the sex doll is its “role” as “tool”. This kind of doll contains physical properties and concrete qualities needed to arouse and/or maintain physiological desire. However, at the same time, it is both expectedly devoid of needs and desires of its own (since “she” is, in fact, a physical object, namely a doll, rather than a human woman), while often unexpectedly devoid of projected thoughts and feelings as well. Thus, she functions for her user without socially, emotionally, and erotically interacting with him (or her), even through the user’s own phenomenological imagination. In this sense, the sex doll can be seen as a kind of anti-doll perhaps (diametrically opposed to, say, the art doll, for instance), that symbolizes a fundamental lack of concern, even a distaste, for personal identity and its change, growth, and development. Symbolic shaping of young and old. The use of the partial sex doll is particularly interesting for the study of show synergy and metaphor can come to symbolically represent in one’s consciousness what it means to be both young and old. In the first place, synergy can be understood to exist in at least two potential forms here, namely as static or dynamic (Corning, 2003). Static synergy includes the way that parts are placed in relation to each other to produce a desired (or in the case of negative synergy an undesired) effect. An example of static synergy would be in the perceptual “look” of a flower arrangement (from lovetoknow.com, 2011); an observer can like, love, hate, or have no marked emotional response to it. The observer’s mental representation includes the psychological effect produced by colour and form being placed in a certain physical relation to each other. This kind of synergy is akin to the “scheme” or “schema”, which is understood in cognitive psychology, as a mental representation of something in which the parts are juxtaposed in consciousness in a certain way. The schematic representation is considered static because it exists in the mind without having movement dynamics represented among its parts. In contrast, dynamic synergy, does contain dynamic movement among parts. Here, the parts can be said to interact with each other in order to produce an effect, desired or not. An example of dynamic synergy would

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be the perceptual “sound” that emerges from a singing group; a listener may like, love, hate, or have no marked emotional response to it. The listener’s mental representation includes the psychological effect of the harmony, for instance, being produced by the sound of two or more of the voices interacting with each other. This kind of synergy is akin to the “mental model”, which is a cognitive term used to refer to a mental representation that contains parts that interact with one another in the mind’s eye a certain way. It seems that foreclosed metaphors tend to have static synergy in terms of their ability to mobilize memory and emotion. What happens here is that the initial conceptual domain remains “frozen” in psychological space, and hence, does not interact with, or become mapped onto, the dissimilar domain. In such instances, content of the metaphor is not recontextualized to reflect both similarities and differences between the initial domain (known as the source) and the new one (known as the target). For instance, declaring an abstract sculpture (the dissimilar conceptual domain) as definitively “young” (the initial conceptual domain). Here, one’s conception of “young” remains unaltered when observing the sculpture. In contrast, generative metaphors tend to have dynamic synergy, and so memory and emotion are altered in consciousness, since the initial conceptual domain becomes successfully mapped onto the dissimilar domain. Thus, similarities as well as differences between the two domains are highlighted through the mind’s attention processes. The cognitive result is the ability to view the current domain in at least a partially new way. For instance, declaring the abstract sculpture (the dissimilar conceptual domain) as suggestive of both “young” and “old” simultaneously (two initial conceptual domains) rather than definitive of one category or the other. Here, one’s conception of “young” as well as one’s conception of “old” become semantically intertwined through their having been mapped onto the dissimilar domain. Thus, a understanding of what it means to be both young and old at the same time, are achieved. Interestingly, static and dynamic kinds of cognitive synergy may instead work in parallel, in terms of their effects on memory and emotion, to produce a certain kind of complex metaphor. This kind of metaphor both “clings” to similarity as well as incorporates “the semantic dance” of similarity and difference, to achieve new understandings. In poetical terms, the complex metaphor examined here is “the corset” is “the girdle”, to be understood simultaneously as its converse “the girdle” is “the corset”. This kind of metaphor has no particular source nor target (domain); the two domains have degrees of semantic influence that are symmetrically interchangeable. This quality contributes to the three-tiered

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structure of this metaphor. First, there are two “baseline” interpretations of experience out of which come both secondary and tertiary subinterpretations. The baseline interpretations include: one, “the corset” metaphor, which essentially created the idea that every human female body is the ideal female body; and two, “the girdle” metaphor, which created the idea the every human female body is an ideal individualized body. The secondary level of sub-interpretation includes the analogical association (mentioned earlier) between the torso or middle section of the sexually mature female body (from the breast line to the thigh) and the quality of malleability typical of mouldable clay. This analogy makes cognition unitary, in that it can readily accommodate the meaning-structure of both the baseline interpretations, .i.e. one’s body can be moulded like clay to reflect the more standardized feminine ideal or the more individualized feminine ideal. Also, this analogy paves the way for the development of tertiary interpretations of young and old that are new, personal and selfdriven. Thus, among these three levels of baseline, secondary, and tertiary are bouts of static and dynamic kinds of synergy. The two baseline interpretations are static in that they remain the same, in the process of making new and individualized sub-interpretations which naturally involves dynamic synergy. The secondary level, which contains the analogical association between the female body and mouldable clay, contains both static and dynamic synergy. The static energy includes the energy shared with the baseline level. The dynamic energy includes the energy shared with the tertiary level. This level generates new subinterpretations about being young and old that creatively utilize an internalized image of the human female torso as if it was made of mouldable clay. This three-tiered imaginative experience likens a subject to an object that is physically capable of (and even expected to) take on unique and personal shapes, sizes, and proportions that are not so easily categorized as one thing or another. Varying conceptions. In the same way that the sex doll can be used exclusively mechanistically for a person’s physical pleasure, the human female torso can be imaginatively manipulated (through visual images, words, etc.) as a clay-like object for the creating of subjective subinterpretations (at the tertiary level) integral to personal identity. Here, both “the corset” metaphor and “the girdle” metaphor can be made to take symbolic positions in relation to each other about the object figure, to create symbolic “points” that are both physical and personal, and that incorporate expansion and contraction. This complex cognitive process can promote self-understanding that metaphorically links the intertwining images of young and old. In his book The Created self (2000), Psychologist

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Robert Weber discusses how self-understandings and personal identity can be created and re-created. His thesis includes the notion that the self expands and contracts, and describes this dualistic mechanism as “the internalization and broad elaboration of natural tendencies to approach and avoid” (2000: 152). By the expansive self, he means the “stretching” of one’s understanding of who one is. Integral to this process is a feeling of personal growth and new self-understanding. By the contractive self, he means either of two conditions which include affliction and simplification. He states, “In affliction, we suffer illness, pain, stress or adversity that tend to cut back our normal voluntary responses for engaging in the world” (2000: 148). Thus, one can argue that “the corset” metaphor constricts the development of self-understanding through affliction, since one’s natural body contours are, in most cases, generously distorted. This can cause physical pain as well as psychological stress to have to “look” essentially one “ideal” way. For simplification, Weber states, “…we feel a need to cut through the complexity of an unsatisfying and stressful way of life, and we do so voluntarily and intentionally (2000: 148). Thus, one may choose not to wear a corset or a girdle as an emotional response to societal pressures to have an attractive feminine body. Under both conditions, the self “stifles” or “restricts” itself from change and growth in a certain direction; in the example of “the corset” metaphor applied, one does not come to accept one’s self in “one’s own skin”, while in the simplification example, one’s self does not reap the possible benefits of wearing a flexible undergarment like a girdle (applying “the girdle” metaphor), such as being hired for a new job in which physical presentation is paramount. The following are the presentations and semantic/semiotic analyses of two poems, namely “Woman with Girdle” (Anne Sexton, 1962) and “A Woman in a Girdle” (girdlebound.com, 2012). For each poem, points of expansion will be instances when imagery and symbolism seem to refer specifically to cognitive change in the form of greater self-understanding and why. However, points of contraction will be instances when metaphor and symbolism suggest affliction or simplification and why. The first poem seems to be reflective of the three-tiered “the corset” is “the girdle” metaphor, which, through expansion and contraction, leads to a new selfunderstanding of being young and old that is semantically intertwined. The imagery and symbolism specific to this poem reflect an altered understanding of self, and so is essentially generative. In contrast, the second poem, while incorporating some elements of the three-tiered structure as well as expansion and contraction, suggests a foreclosed understanding that, while personally meaningful in a mostly visceral way,

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is not particularly complex, profound or individualistic. Thus, this poem can be said to fall short of the symbolic power needed to alter cognition in a way that can combine supposed opposites, namely youngness and oldness. Poem One Your Midriff sags toward your knees; your breasts lie down in air, their nipples as uninvolved as warm starfish. You stand in your elastic case, still not giving up the new-born and the old-born cycle. Moving, you roll down the garment, down that pink snapper and hoarder, as your belly, soft as pudding, slops into the empty space; down, over the surgeon’s careful mark down over hips, those head cushions and mouth cushions, slow motion like a rolling pin, over crisp hairs, that amazing field that hides your genius from your patron; over thighs, thick as young pigs, over knees like saucers,, over calves, polished as leather, down toward the feet. You pause for a moment, tying your ankles into knots. Now you rise, a city from the sea, born long before Alexandria was, straightway from God you have come into your redeeming skin. (Anne Sexton, 1962)

Essentially, the poem above is about an older woman slowly taking off her girdle. In doing so, she subjectively re-contextualizes the symbolic meaning of her own “girdled body” a mix of young and old that is ultimately quite satisfying. It is apparent that the poem contains “the

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girdle” metaphor (every human female body is an ideal individualized body) at its baseline level. However, less obvious is that the baseline also contains “the corset” metaphor (every human female body is the ideal female body). Both metaphors seem to be reflected in the lines “You stand in your elastic case, / still not giving up the new-born / and the old-born cycle. The “girdle” is the “elastic case” that she has yet to “give up” wearing. Presumably, there is a part of her that still identifies her body with that of a young, fertile woman, as the symbol of “new-born cycle” can relate to the menstruation process. Here, “the corset” metaphor is present since the ideal feminine torso suggests perfection which simultaneously implies youthfulness which further suggests high fertility. At the same time, she still feels the need to make her body look more physically attractive and feminine then before, as the symbolism of the “old-born cycle” refers to her continuing to encase herself in the first place, even if she does so relatively flexibly, in a girdle rather than a corset. Thus, both “the corset” and “the girdle” metaphors take symbolic positions in relation to each other around the object figure which is the woman’s mid-region of her own body. This symbolic positioning exists in the woman’s imagination and in varying degrees of her conscious experience. On the secondary level, the analogical relation between the human female torso and mouldable clay is evident in the following lines “Your Midriff sags toward your knees; / your breasts lie down in air…” and “Moving, you roll down the garment, / down that pink snapper and hoarder, as your belly, soft as pudding / slops into the empty space…” What is implied in these lines is the actual sculptural effects the girdle has on the woman’s flesh, such that this flesh can be readily altered by pressing it down and jutting it out in the “right” areas and directions. On the tertiary level, re-contextualization constitutes the cognitive process whereby both “the corset” metaphor and “the girdle” metaphor, which were initially rather separate in the woman’s mind, become interrelated in a way that facilitates a new personal understanding for her; this understanding includes aspects of both youngness and oldness. This new complex metaphor re-orders cognition on a deep or semantic level (with the two metaphors having symmetric degrees of semantic influence), and involves symbolic “points” of personal as well as physical expansion and contraction. With regard to points in which self-understanding expands, some lines that are key include, “You pause for a moment, / tying your ankles into knots. This is the most dramatic moment in the poem, and implies a time during the act of removing her girdle where she takes the most personal control of her self-conception. This may or may not be the

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first time she’s performed this move on herself. But, either way, in the act of “tying” her “ankles into knots” her own bound body self-imposed becomes a springboard for the coming of a significant re-contextualization of self. The final lines include, “Now you rise, / a city from the sea, / born long before Alexandria was, / straightway from God you have come / into your redeeming skin. This re-contextualization begins with a symbolic physical expansion of her body that is awesome, in that she does not merely stands up naked, but proceeds to “rise” like “a city from the sea”. In this poem, both “the corset” and “the girdle” metaphors become profoundly less significant, in that having neither the ideal female body nor an ideal individualized female body is what makes her feel connected to “the core” of who she is ultimately as a human being. Thus, in a symbolic sense, “the corset” and “the girdle” become semantically interchangeable, such that “the corset” is “the girdle” or likewise “the girdle” is “the corset”, either way the meaning is personally the same for this woman, which is insignificance. In fact, the private unveiling of her loose, falling, unattractive skin is what ironically facilitates the rising (or re-rising) of her profound connection to her indelible self-worth. Both “being young” (in actual years or through the “structural magic” of a corset) and “being old” (in actual years with the continued opportunity to re-shape her body in a more ingratiating form using a girdle) come together in the sense that they both take an equal “backseat” to her eternal self that was “born long before Alexandria”—her core, her soul, the soul bestowed into her by God. Now, points in which her self-understanding contracts, include those instances of affliction and simplification (instilled by societal pressures most likely) that are meant to keep her self-worth bound largely to her physicality. Indeed, affliction is evident in the following line, “…over the surgeon’s careful mark” since this implies having had some kind of surgery. Such an endeavour could have resulted from her chronic dissatisfaction with her body form. Or, this could have been an embarrassing mark, from some other kind of surgery, which she has “bared” all these years. In both instances, her capacity to enjoy life and embrace her individuality could have been diminished. Also, simplification is relevant to the lines, “…still not giving up the new-born/and the oldborn cycle.” and “…that amazing field/ that hides your genius from your patron…” In the former line, both the “new-born” and “old-born” cycles described before, may best be given up by the woman in order to only revel what can be referred to as the “eternal self”. However, such revelling might not have been as powerfully achieved by the woman in the first place, without the “push” of her crippled self-esteem from the opposite

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(self-deprecating) direction. Thus, it seems that, like within the threetiered metaphoric structure that contains synergistic dynamics at each level, expansion and contraction also work synergistically to influence the creating of unique and individualistic sub-interpretations. The latter line implies simplification in the sense that to her partners—namely her husbands, boyfriends, or lovers—all have, through the carnal vitality of her womanhood, been kept from knowing her “genius”, which seems to be her ability to forge tremendous pride and integrity from her being. Poem Two Oh, how lovely the curves of a woman laced. How many times my fantasies embraced a lace-covered belly and beautiful satin rear? Give me a waist confined and I’ll be near. There is something about a cinched tight waist above a thigh closed with metal zipper about the hook and eyes, something about the flesh held firm that hints at hidden ecstasy and makes me squirm. Oh, the bottom tight and round Give me a woman girdle bound. (girdlebound.com: 2012)

“A Woman in a Girdle” is an admirer’s expression of love for the effects of the corset on a woman’s body. Although the title uses the word girdle, it seems that this poem contains only “the corset” metaphor (every human female body is the ideal female body) at its baseline level; the admirer seems to use the terms “girdle” and “corset” to refer to the same metaphoric understanding. Thus, there is no symbolic positioning of two metaphors about the object figure. Indeed, at best, these two metaphors are simultaneously conveyed on a surface or sign level of cognition, in which two words have been used, seemingly interchangeably, to symbolize the same concept (which is comprised of “the corset” metaphor). Evidence for the psychological presence of this single metaphor is reflected in the lines “Oh, how lovely the curves of a woman laced”; as well as “Give me a waist confined and I’ll be near. / There is something about a cinched tight waist above a thigh /closed with metal zipper about the hook and eyes, / something about the flesh held firm…”; and finally “Oh, the bottom tight and round / Give me a woman girdle bound.”. On the secondary level, the analogical relation between the human female torso and mouldable clay is evident in the following lines “There’s something about a cinched tight

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waist…”, “something about the flesh held firm”, and “Oh, the bottom tight and round”. The symbolic meanings of this poem seem to lack a tertiary level. A lack of re-contextualization that includes elements of youngness and oldness, can be inferred through a certain synergistic effect; this effect includes the admirer’s cognitive adherence to the physical “shaping” of, presumably, most any woman’s body by a corset from the beginning to the end of the poem, with the strictly viscera arousing effects of this process on the admirer’s mind and body. Here, “the corset” metaphor is present since the ideal feminine torso suggests perfection which simultaneously implies youthfulness. (This is different from the synergy in the Sexton poem, in which a cognitive adherence to the gradual removal of a girdle by the woman as her eye roams down her aging body, leads ultimately to dramatic changes in her personal perspective about herself that symbolically incorporates “the corset” and “the girdle”.) Thus, this poem does not reflect the complex metaphor “the corset” is “the girdle” (or “the girdle” is “the corset”).

Re “pose”

Figure 2.4 I love the symbolism of the corset that was meant to hold and hide, escaping to the forefront. What fun it would be to wear a corset on the outside. For the entire world to see… (Kristen Robinson, Altered Couture, Autumn 2008)

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Unlike the shy young housewife who is self-conscious about the state of her uncorseted body, the quote above reflects a change in the semantic relationship between the “under” garment itself and its metaphor (the one stated in this chapter). This change can be said to have even taken place in this same woman’s mind over time. The idea that she should now wear a corset on the outside of her body “for the entire world to see” is, in a basic way, more akin to a girdle and its metaphor (the one stated in this chapter); in the former, she implies to the outside world that she has bodily imperfections which need to be moulded and shaped, while in the latter, she displays these improved upon flaws themselves. Thus, as in the first poem, the two metaphors have come together, once again, to take their symbolic positions in relation to each other around the object figure to reflect “the corset” is “the girdle”. This time, however, the presence of “the corset” metaphor is obvious, while “the girdle” metaphor is implicit. Thus, at the tertiary level, it can be said as a figurative notion that her “beauty” lies in the eye of the “corset-beheld” herself … and only possibly … in the eye of her beholder.

CHAPTER THREE PLASTIC SURGERY

This chapter is about cognitive processes that can create a doll to be both young and old. While on a conscious level, the individual may choose either “youngness” or “oldness” in any quest for self-representation, the need to integrate the former and latter may be ever present. The doll, as an object of self-expression, can be used creatively to incarnate self in ways more whole or complete than a man or woman might choose for his or her own face and body. These configurations, that contain desired elements suggesting both youth and aging, necessarily include dynamics of brain and mind, thought and emotion, conscious and unconscious.

Being Doll “…when female edits and re-orders—principally herself—she is a doll.” (Juliette Peers, 2004)

In her book, writer and academic Juliette Peers extensively explores the role that the fashion doll has played in promoting and shaping cultural ideas of beauty, fashion, and taste. Her above quote, refers to the historical tendency of some to view “woman” as “doll” for several reasons, one of which is that she tends to alter her “look” in the fashion sense, like a girl might do to her Jumeau or Barbie doll, in order to learn about fashion. What is particularly interesting is the idea that woman and doll are semiotically interchangeable in a way, in that one can be a “stand in” for the other. Thus, within the semiosphere, it is not only possible for “woman to become doll”, but for doll to become woman (or man). The latter is so for at least two reasons. One, doll is literally “made” by an artist who is a woman or a man, thus its material existence has not been there to be imitated from the start; and two, creating a doll involves “extending” the mind of the creator into the world, such that he or she can physically appear in ways that the artist may not find sensible, socially appropriate, and/or personally appealing for his or her own face, body and/or dress

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(Pavlik-Malone, 2011). Thus, this particular act of extension allows for a psychologically healthy mingling of conscious and unconscious levels, such that configurations of ideas, thoughts, and feelings, such as those about youngness and oldness, from these two levels, can more readily merge into one “whole” creative incarnation of self. In his book Life Like Dolls, A. F. Robertson describes the created appearance of the Porcelain Collector doll (PCD) as often a configuration or “collage” of different times or phases in the collector’s life. He writes: … many of the PCDs look beyond the child and add facial features that are distinctly adult. It is as though these dolls, making their late entry into women’s lives, look back across a wide range of life experiences, bringing a broader conception of attractiveness to bear on design. The doll is thus less an ideal of a child at a particular age than a collage of features that were idealized at different ages. The simplest example of this is the ever popular bridal doll, which appears not only as an adult effigy but as a child or baby doll wearing a wedding dress: a fusion of two blissful but transient episodes in a woman’s life (2004: 201).

Then, he continues by suggesting the role the unconscious can play in interpreting some of these configurations. It is the tendency of many of the dolls to include nubile features that observers find subliminally disturbing. If a child’s face and body are designed to inspire nurturing and protective behavior rather than eliciting a sexual response, more mature come-on signals are disconcerting…The nubile component was added to the PDCs mainly in keeping the eyes unnaturally large and the cheeks plump, while emphasizing the cheekbones and increasing the proportions of the lips and jaw. Caroline … is a fair representative of these tendencies. In the words of her designer, Pamela Phillips, she is “both childlike and ladylike” (2004: 201).

The creating of these PCD configurations, and the simultaneous conscious/unconscious reactions they rouse in consumers and others, reflect, if not a basic need of mind, at least a basic tendency of the self system to process internal subjective dynamics in integrated ways. Thus, the disgust that some feel by the above PCD collages is a “gist” psychological effect, in essentially the same sense as the admiration for these dolls felt by others is. Presumably, either way, various elements of both thought and emotion come together at various levels of awareness to produce the reaction or response. And, although not obvious, these kinds of “gist” effects can be said to be organizational and integrative in ways at least somewhat similar to the structures-of-personality traditionally

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described by psychoanalysts. For instance, Carl Jung’s theory contains the following elements of self: the personal unconscious, collective unconscious, anima, animus, persona, and shadow. The first two parts reflect the individual’s own and universally shared or archetypal unconscious or subliminal experience, some aspects of which may, and undoubtedly do, enter into conscious awareness. The next two parts, the anima and the animus, reflect the universal archetypes of femaleness and maleness, which reside in the collective unconscious, but can and do have individualized instances of expression that reside in the personal unconscious, and contain at least portions of which may become conscious as well. The third parts, the persona and the shadow, represent the parts of the self presented to the outside world and the “dark side” of the human psyche, where socially unacceptable thoughts and feelings reside. Portions of these parts can and do also become accessible to consciousness. In addition, the Jungian process of individuation is important here and is “…the gradual development of a unified integrated personality that incorporates greater and greater amounts of the unconscious, both personal and collective, and resolves any conflicts that exist…” (2007: 477) Thus, the disgust or admiration for the PCD’s felt by many individuals, that Robertson describes, may tap into both the collective unconscious and personal unconscious, the anima and animus, the persona and the shadow, more or less simultaneously. The “group” reaction that reflects one or the other basic feeling, represents the collective unconscious, while the personal unconscious may factor into any individual mind coming to represent one group or the other; the anima and the animus may represent the female “nurturing” side through viewing the nubile large eyes and plump cheeks, and the male side through the emphasis of the cheekbones and larger proportions of the lips and law.. And lastly, the persona may express itself, in the tendency to “side” with one group or other, while the shadow, may show itself in the tendencies of the collective and personal unconscious combined, to “reject’ or ‘accept” one’s own sexual feelings and urges. In addition, any of these six Jungian personality parts, can become further delineated. For instance, Jungian scholar Toni Wolff, has identified four distinct archetypal elements to the female personality, and according to psychologist Karen Kaigler-Walker, “A major part of the process of individuation is incorporating and balancing all four archetypes within our psyches, to bring them to consciousness so they can help us carry out our roles … if we fail to … they will lie in the shadow of our unconscious and create … havoc…” (2001:206) These “types” include:

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Chapter Three The Mother, which we might associate with the goddess Demeter [who] places her highest value on her family… At her best, she brings love and nurturance to the world. At her worst, she is the devourer. The Amazon places greatest priority on her self-sufficiency and independence. These women are fathers’ daughters, inasmuch as they, like Athena, patterned themselves on the active masculine rather than on the traditional feminine. They often serve as role models regarding how to make it in the physical world, but without some balance they can become unfeeling tyrants. Hetaira’s nature is sensual and may exude sexuality, as did Aphrodite, in that female sexuality is one with our potent creative force. These women abound in the arts. However, the undeveloped Hetaira limits herself to playing out either the role of the sexy woman or muse for men. And, when she falls short of her potential to create for herself, she becomes a selfdestructive demon. The Medium corresponds to Persephone and Hecate and resides in the spirit realm of the unconscious… Women who traverse their inner self easily and instinctively and trust their intuition are in tune with the Medium. However, carried to the extreme, they become moody, dreamy, and ineffective in the physical world (2001: 205-206).

Thus, like the porcelain collector doll, that can come to simultaneously represent at least two parts of self, namely “the girl” and “the woman”, so too can the internal personality structure (such as the Jungian six), with each part potentially containing various integrated parts of its own (such as the Wolff four, 1992). In either sense, the result is a balancing act that has at its psychological core the power to affect one’s conscious experience of self in an emotionally healthy, self-reflective way. In her book Positive Aging (2001), Karen Kaigler-Walker introduces the term “authentic appearance”, which refers to a greater or lesser tendency of an individual to cultivate “a look” aligned with his or her currently “real” or “true” self. Interestingly, this look includes not only one’s chosen clothes and jewelry to represent such individuality, and which perhaps can, theoretically, be modelled in more diminutive proportions on a Fashion doll, but also characteristics of the physical body itself, such as skin elasticity, hair texture, and muscle tone. These later characteristics, which reflect a biologically driven process, contribute to one’s authentic look through honesty and truth about whom one really is, not matter how old, nor whatever physical signs of “being older” or “being younger” are present. In her 2006 daring exhibition Hard Wear, visual artist Lauren Kalman uses gold as “…a vehicle to amplify taboo aspects of the body” (2009). In

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doing so, she creates a truly synergistic effect between the (physical) outside and (biological) inside dimensions of the individual. She writes: Gold is a material imbued with myth. Its brilliance, indelibility … have come to signify beauty, purity, and immortality. To appropriate these qualities cultures have adopted the application of gold to the body. This reflects a desire to amend imperfections and impermanence of the physical body form… In contrast … I fabricate gold adornment to highlight where the interior body transgresses its boundaries making organs, imperfections and diseases visible. The form of adornment often reflects malignant excrescences, such as rupturing membranes or cancerous growths. These gleaming outgrowths cause bodily residues to be shed as they spread orifices and tear skin. When the beauty of gold is alloyed with the seeping body the objects become both intriguing and repulsive… In my work, applying and wearing gold suggests a struggle between the unrefined body and the desire for perfection… The body endures pain in an attempt to recast itself, through the wearing of the intrusive gold adornment (2009: 1).

Both cases, inform the tendency to cover up or hide what may be considered aesthetically or socially undesirable principally for such desirability’s sake. In the Kaigler-Walker case, one is guided first and foremost by an internal standard. This standard dictates whether or not a certain characteristic feels “real” or “true” to the self, and requires the ability or tendency to tap into deeper recesses of one‘s personality-laden psyche. The end result is an overall unique presentation that may, for instance, incorporate silver-grey hair, thin lips, and a hot pink bikini, or a long sideburns, cowboy boots and a walker. Thus, in the “authentic appearance”, the true self is theoretically preserved in its entirety, and it can be improved upon, only through changes in the presentation that draw an ever more rich and complete self-representation that feeds personal understanding. In the Kalman case, however, an internal standard has been excised as “the struggle between the unrefined body and the desire for perfection” is glaringly concretized and amplified. Interestingly, inauthentic dress or what some behavioural scientists refer to as “fake adornment”—the wearing of more cheaply made knockoffs—has been shown to have spontaneous negative effects on character, and thus, may have negative affects on cultivating selfreflection and self-understanding. In his article “Faking It”, Wray Herbert states: … we buy knockoffs … to polish our self-image and broadcast that polished version of our personality to the world—at a fraction of the price… But does it work? …We have to convince ourselves of our

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Chapter Three idealized image if we are going to sway anyone else. Can we really become Ray-Ban wearing, Versace-bedecked sophisticates in our own mind, just by dressing up? … Ironically, as scientists reported … wearing counterfeit glasses not only fails to bolster ego and self-image the way we hope, but actually undermines our internal sense of authenticity. “Faking it” makes us feel like phonies and cheaters on the inside, and this alienated counterfeit “self” leads to cheating … in the real world (2010: 67).

Though wearing such “fake” dress can be initially viewed as constructive to creating the desired persona, it ultimately sells the individual short, in terms of its potentially deleterious effects on the internal, personal or “true” self. And, to the extent that the fashion doll is, and has been historically (Peers, 2004), used to promote style and taste introduced by expensive designer labels which, in turn, leads to the acquisition of knockoffs, it can be viewed as central to undermining genuine self-representation. Another kind of “faking it” is in having surgery, which relates to the physical body rather than to what adorns it. Surgery includes both relatively simple to more complex procedures, and can often be costly. The potential emotional effects of it can be negative in ways similar to dress, in that inauthentic versions of self can be created, and perhaps even better perpetuated, since the effects, changes, collages, and configurations made, can seem to the recipient as much more “carved in stone”. The legendary spring known as the Fountain of Youth “reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks its water” (Wikipedia). The symbolism of this legend is present in ancient and modern accounts and stories the world over, from Greek historian Herodotus, to Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, to American cartoon icon Donald Duck. Among these accounts and stories, are what appear to be two literal interpretations. The first is the idea that this spring, presumably through some magical or alchemical process, restores the youth of a person such that he or she is given another chance to be young again with his or her own unique face, shapes and proportions. In other words, one’s individualized age regression is the overall effect. And the second is the interpretation of the spring that grants a “long life” to a person, such that he or she can expect to live a long time that begins at his or her current age. Either way, there is an implication of change from the “inside out”, whereby biological mechanisms from deep within the person are spontaneously and profoundly tweaked, so that the internal body comes to resonate with restorative energies towards “youngness”, or towards the internal production of conditions that promote longevity. Put another way, the Foundation of Youth affects the nature of the person, the genetic machinery that is part

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and parcel of one’s physical development, and is one’s rather “hard-wired” propensity towards youth, beauty, and aging.

Figure 3.1 From Louis Icart: The Complete Etchings, 4th Ed. c 1990 Holland, Catania and Isen. Reproduced by permission of Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, PA.

The Fountain of Euphemism The physical or “surface” effects of the Fountain of Youth differ fundamentally from those acquired through cosmetic surgery (also known as aesthetic surgery), which is a type of plastic surgery used specifically to enhance physical attractiveness. These procedures involve the “reconstruction of cutaneous or underlying tissue” (The Free Medical Dictionary by Farlex, 2012), that do not “dig deep” within the face and body. Some such procedures include a face-lift and neck liposuction, as well as less surgically involved ones like botox injections, to name a few. Interestingly, there seems to be another fountain associated, but through its semantic familiarity, with this kind of surgery. It is referred to here as the Fountain of Euphemism. This fountain is strictly a metaphoric spring, is not legendary, nor are there are any explicit accounts nor stories about its potential literal effects on the physicality of human beings. This “spring” contains, among its imagistic overflow, a blatant and prototypic schema of

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youth and beauty, an ideal presumably created by an evolutionarily directed, culturally instantiated personal “need” to look a certain way. In a recent Association for Psychological Science article, “Beauty is in the Mind of the Beholder” Eric Wargo wrote, “Evolutionary psychology holds that faces really are windows into certain fundamental and important characteristics indicative of a person’s quality as a romantic partner and as a mate--qualities of health and genes…” The feminine ideal typically includes prominent cheekbones, large eyes, small nose, a taller forehead, smooth skin, and an overall young or even childlike appearance (2011: 20), while the male ideal includes relatively prominent cheekbones and eyebrow ridges and a relatively long lower face (2011: 20) These schematic patterns of beauty, when applied prescriptively, can make the aging process seem euphemistically “less inevitable”, and hence more palatable to those who would rather not think about it in absolute terms. Writer Ralph Keyes, in his book Euphemania (2010), explains the human need to euphemize: Euphemisms … can be a source of evasion, a way to avoid topics that should be confronted and of choosing not to face unpleasant truths… On the other hand … euphemisms can civilize discourse… The primary social value of euphemisms is that they make it possible to discuss touchy topics while pretending we’re talking about something else. Ideally, all parties know exactly what’s under consideration and can discuss it obliquely… As French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu put it, euphemisms double our profits when speaking—“the profit of saying and the profit of denying what is said” (2010: 229-230).

Thus, the Fountain of Euphemism caters to a physically aging, so described “less than deal” looker: an individual in the midst of having and/or whom has had one or more aesthetic procedures, in order to “feel good” about him-or herself again—presenting self, again, in a more socially appealing and desirable light. The essential psychological purpose of this fountain is to evade (rather than discuss) the truth, that one is aging and imperfect, both inside in biological integrity and outside in physical appearance. Because this truth makes the individual, as well as those around him or her, sad and insecure, it becomes necessary to “slap on” a cosmetic veneer. In doing so, feelings and realities that should really be explored, psychologically worked through, and genuinely integrated into self, are only alluded to in the act of simultaneously covering them up. In doing so, there is an implicit social understanding that it is “wrong” or “bad” to look older, that no one should want to, or need to, or have to, ever again. The problem here is that looking older and getting older become out

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of synch, as one (sometimes repeatedly) becomes inauthentic. For this reason, Pierre Bourdieu’s to “double our profits” may in this case be to “double our losses”, since what we really feel through our euphemistic “surgical” actions seems as unhealthy emotionally as “not” discussing and consoling our deepest fears. In “drinking its water” so to speak, this fountain does not produce youth through restoration in the legendary sense, but rather youth through reconstruction in the popular sense. It works essentially to create a “mask” of youth and often of “added” or “sculpted” beauty as well. This landscape is strategically “thought out” beforehand, and methodically “put in place” through the skilled hands of a surgeon. Typically, there are no changes that take place from deep within the body on a genetic level, so no actual age regression or increase in longevity can occur. The changes that take place are principally “surface” ones of the face and/or body, and deeper ones in thought and emotion that relate to one’s sense of self. Therefore, not only is one made to look younger and perhaps more prototypically beautiful, but one can expect to have a renewed sense of self, as social admiration may re-arise, and one’s self-concept may re-expand through the reclaiming of lost feelings of worthiness. In essence, this fountain, while often successful in promoting temporary physical and psychological improvements, seems to fall tragically short of producing the kinds of sustained emotional effects that a truly integrated self provides, be it through the a magical or alchemical process that slows or turns back time, or instead, through both the strategic and serendipitous creating of a seemingly magical object, capable of encapsulating whom one really is outside (in physical appearance) and inside (biologically and psychologically), in unending, and seemingly dichotomous, contradiction.

Integration, Self and the Art Doll In psychology, integration can be understood not only from an analytic perspective, as was described earlier, but from a cognitive one as well. Cognition is essentially about the nature and dynamics of internal mental processes and mental structures, and their interconnections with overt, external behaviours, responses, and products. While the psychoanalytic framework, broadly speaking, is also focused on this kind of interconnectivity, cognition traditionally studies it through principally experimental means (that often include the study of brain processes). In addition, and mostly probably as an effect of paradigmatic orientation, the cognitive framework has veered away from any systematic understanding of personality, and towards the study of “mental processing phenomena”

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such as perception, reasoning, language and memory. In contrast, the analytic framework has, first and foremost, embraced the study of the personality with all of its difficult-to-test intricacies. In this section, the author introduces the nature of integration within the intuitive selfconstruct. This cognitive approach to the study of personality, builds a theoretical understanding of this integration at the mind and brain levels. The first six categories that follow constitute areas of cognition in which thought either is or can be made personal and subjective, and thus, integral to intuitive self-construct dynamics. The next three categories include a description and two (case) analyses of the Art doll, as a premier object of creative integration within the self-construct.

1. Subjectivity/intra-subjectivity In her book Dolls & Clowns & Things (2011), Pavlik-Malone distinguishes the subjective from the intra-subjective. She writes: There seems to be a “subset” of mental processes, structures, and abilities that exists within the subjective realm. This “subset” can be referred to as the intra-subjective. They are at times more present than at other times, and enable the individual to create very personal understandings of objects from deep within… Generally speaking, the subjective dimension involves the forming of “internal to internal” associations in which any conscious idea, e.g., I hate sunsets, can become associated with any other idea, e.g., when Batman flies through them. Taken a step further, certain other cognitive processes as well are relatable to intra-subjectivity. These involve the forming of mental connections of “surface” ideas that are already accessible to consciousness or close to it, with ideas at increasingly deeper, less accessible levels…intra-subjectivity refers to “the personal within the personal”, whereby the number of interations contributes to the complexity and “deepness” and, therefore, to the uniqueness and personal nature of the mental representations (2011: xvi & xviii).

Presumably, the intuitive self-construct incorporates both subjective and intra-subjective levels. The former level can be divided into two sublevels, namely “the strategic” and “the serendipitous”. The strategic refers to the conscious, deliberate, reflective self, while the serendipitous encompasses the unconscious, impulsive, emotional self. In addition, the strategic can be said to function within the frontal and prefrontal parts of the brain, while the serendipitous, within the limbic area. However, the latter level, or intra-subjective, includes highly personal, even idiosyncratic instances of cognitive content, as well as the intertwining neural mechanisms that presumably help make the creating of such

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content possible. In his book on creativity, Fire in the Crucible, author John Briggs describes his consultations with scientist Paul LaViolette, who characterizes the nature of what he refers to as “nuance cycles” in the brain, that, in essence, combine reflection and emotion, deliberation and impulsivity, strategic and serendipitous selves. These “cycles” roam about the brain in two rotations or “loops”. loop 1: … raw sense data passes through the thalamus into the limbic system where it circulates around and around in what is called the Papez circuit, a closed-loop network of neurons connecting the limbic organs … there they trigger feeling-tone responses and generate what Gray and LaViolette call an emotional ‘theme’… composed of an organized pattern of feeling-tones… loop 2: …the ‘theme’ … enters a second loop communicating between portions of the thalamus and the prefrontal regions of the cortex … this loop abstracts and filters out certain nuances and amplifies them., and reintroduces them into the Papez circuit… With each cycling through the prefrontal cortex, the idea … might be abstracted and amplified… The result would be a thought… The nuances, the complex emotion and perception, are still there, but they now lie in the shadow of this abstraction (1990: 52-55).

Thus, these two repeated rotations, may work together to merge conscious and unconscious forces in intra-subjectivity, to synergistically produce “deliberately unconscious”, “rationally intuitive” configurations of ideas, feelings, and images, that are more or less unique and personal to the individual.

2. “self across time”/ “self in the moment” Within the intuitive self-construct is the spirit of, what science writer Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald refers to as the “decentralized self”. She writes: … the neural activity associated with the subjective experience of “self” cannot be located in a single area of the brain. This finding matches what we now know about the entanglement of neural circuits associated with emotion, cognition, memory… “The brain”, says Richard Davidson, “does not respect the dichotomy of passions (emotions) and reason handed to us by the Greek tradition … there is no area of the brain we can point to as a single seat of consciousness. A more fitting analysis for the neural “self” network might be a noisy family dinner table, and depending on who makes it home in time for the meal, who had a hard day or the best day

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Chapter Three ever, and who decides to shut up and pay attention, our subjective experience of self can vary wildly from moment to moment” (2010: 113).

In her book Pictures of The Mind, Boleyn-Fitzgerald describes recent findings from neuropsychological brain research that support selfawareness as having at least two distinct forms, namely narrative or “self across time” and experiential or “self in the moment”. As was described in Chapter 1, the former self involves what is also referred to as “narrative focus”, and this “…extended self-reference links past and present experiences with concepts and imagined future experiences…” (2010: 113) that involves self-reflection and personal understanding. This kind of “mental time travel” is essentially an intrinsic quality of episodic or autobiographical memory that contributes greatly to its potential richness of content. (Zimmer, 2011: 26) The latter (experiential) self, however, also referred to as “experiential focus”, involves “…a momentary awareness of self that is centred in the present…” (2010: 114), and involves “…an emphasis on sensing thoughts and feelings…with no other goal than to notice moment-to-moment mental and physical experiences…” (2010: 115) These two kinds of self-awareness show different patterns of neural activity in similar areas of the brain. Narrative focus is associated with neural activity in midline areas of the cortex, including the prefrontal cortex, as well as in language areas of the left hemisphere. Experiential focus, however, showed “lighter” neural activity in these same areas. Boleyn-Fitzgerald also describes how researchers explain these two forms of self as “habitually integrated” in the brain, but whose neural activity can become disentangled or “dissociated” using certain techniques that help to re-train attention. Thus, in general, “online” thoughts and feelings about self contain these two levels of awareness at the same time. Because of this, intra-subjective imagery of self, that involves a “surrogate” of self “in the past” and/or “in the future” can converge in consciousness with “self in the moment” to produce imagined and imaginative interpretations. These interpretations may include among other things, renditions of physical appearance, for example, at different times over the life span.

3. The mental spotlight and cognitive disinhibition In her book, Pavlik-Malone cites Dylan Evans on what he has termed the “mental spotlight”: The author states, “Spotlights can be more or less focused… When we are relaxed, and not in the grip of any particular emotions, our mental spotlight

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is relatively unfocused, and more thoughts may drift through out awareness” … This implies that gazing is a dynamic act that includes bouts of both conscious and subconscious processing. Indeed, the relatively unfocused mental spotlight may function as a loosened pressure value through which normally hidden feelings flow over into conscious awareness. This may allow the thought to take many initial forms… (2011: 59-60).

Thus, the mental spotlight and its pressure valve are figurative interpretations of general cognitive mechanisms that the human mind possesses, and which can be actively manipulated to accommodate varying situational demands for original, imaginative thought. In her article, “The Unleashed Mind”, author Shelley Carson introduces the term cognitive disinhibition. She describes this quality of mind as involving, among other things, a propensity to effectively integrate initially extraneous information into one’s thought process in order to achieve a goal. She writes, We are all equipped with mental filters that hide most of the processing that goes on in our brains behind the scenes … many signals come in through our sensory organs…Furthermore, our brains are constantly accessing imagery and memories stored in our mental files to process and decode incoming information. Thanks to cognitive filters, most of this input never reaches conscious awareness… There are individual differences in how much information we block out… Cognitive disinhibition is also likely at the heart of what we think of as the aha! experience. During moments of insight, cognitive filters relax momentarily and allow ideas that are on the brain’s back burners to leap forward into conscious awareness… (2011: 25-26).

Thus, cognitive disinhibition can be characterized here as a primary individual difference factor in the brain that influences the ability or tendency to manipulate the mental spotlight to a creative advantage. Presumably, a greater propensity to do so, relates to the intuitive selfconstruct and intra-subjectivity, in terms of the increased likelihood of finding personal ways to combine disparate elements in consciousness, that are also intelligible, and perhaps even interesting, to others.

4. Pattern-recognition/pattern-diffusion Recently, studies have been conducted on adult cognition supporting certain higher-order thinking as well as “feeling” skills specific to middle age (Strauch, 2001). Broadly speaking, these functions encompass at least

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two categories, namely pattern-recognition and pattern-diffusion. The former has traditionally been referred to as inductive reasoning, which is the ability to form new more general categories, responses or conclusions from specific instances, e.g., this creature waddles and quacks, ducks waddle and quack, therefore this must be a duck (Stassen Berger, 2008: 397). In other words, it is a way of the mind that consolidates an array of seemingly separate experiences into one interconnected whole. It is a kind of objective thought, just like deductive reasoning, which is a way of the mind that forms specific conclusions based on an array of concrete instances, e.g., “waddles like one” and “quacks like one”, therefore, it is a duck (Stassen Berger, 2008: 397) While the use of facts and concepts relate to objective thought. Intuition, or personal memories, feelings and experiences, relates to subjective thought. When intuitive ability is used in an inductive way it can be referred to as “gist”. In her book, The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain, author Barbara Strauch describes (cognitive) gist in this way. … faced with information that in some way—even a very small way— relates to what’s already known, the middle age brain works quicker and smarter, discerning patterns and jumping to the logical endpoint… In many ways, of course, all this sounds a lot like what we like to call intuition or gut instinct. Neuroscientists don’t like to use such words. They prefer the word gist. Defined broadly, gist is the ability to understand—and remember—underlying major themes. Here again, we get better at grasping the big picture--because of the intrinsic nature of how our brains operate (2001: 47-48).

Thus, gist is related to the intuitive self-construct in that it enables various personal memories and experiences, specific instances of self understanding (analogous to “self in the moment”) to develop an overall thought-feeling based broad understanding of whom one is (analogous to “self across time”), that is highly accessible to consciousness, e.g. realizing that one is a hard working employee or is an attentive lover. On the other hand, pattern-diffusion is referred to here as he ability of the mind to suspend the formation of categories or “gist“ effects, at least temporarily, in order to ultimately achieve subtle, more meaning-rich, personally-laced understandings. Strauch writes: As we get older, we also have more mixed emotions, a trait that works in our favor. This more complex, nuanced response…slows us down, restricting impulsive acts … a middle-aged brain may function better simply because of how its set up… “if you have one emotion it is easier to act” …In our complex world, it might be good to go slower, to think

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twice” (2001: 43 & 44).

Nuance is relevant to the intuitive self-construct in that it enables unconscious thoughts and feelings to become integral to selfunderstandings. This may occur, at least in part, due to the cyclical quality of neurocognitive activity through loop 1 and loop 2 in the brain. Physician William Grey describes (to John Briggs) this complex psychological process in the following way: Thoughts containing a similar nuance feeling are filed together, even if they aren’t logically or chronologically connected. This would account for the mind’s sometimes strange association of ideas. … thought-emotions become associated together into structures vastly larger and more complex than 2+2=4...for example, our knowledge of mathematics as a whole… These ‘emotional-cognitive structures become “organizationally closed” when the richness of their nuances are summarized by a simpler emotional response (such as liking blondes) or turned into thoughts which have a feeling of closure attached to them (1990: 48-50).

Thus, at some point in this process, a new idea, thought or concept emerges into consciousness, that is felt as deeply self-relevant and personality significant. In this sense, “self across time” becomes a tapestry of points of emotional summarizing or organizational closure, in which various insights about the self are made psychologically valid.

5. Postformal (dialectical) thought Developmental theorists have also studied adult cognition. Arlin (1984, 1989) has used the term Postformal to refer to a fifth stage of cognitive change and growth beyond Piaget’s well known “four”. Postformal thought is said to possess at least three hallmark characteristics. These include: one, the skilled simultaneous use of subjective experience, i.e. personal memories and information, and objective thought, i.e. knowledge of facts, concepts and theories; two, intellectual flexibility or the tendency to view the same situation from several possible perspectives or possibilities at once, as well as to understand that knowledge is both fluid and malleable; and three, dialectical thought, which is considered the most psychologically advanced, and involves the ability to merge the semantic integrity of opposites into one unified whole. Presumably, this “whole” reflects “reality” or “truth” to a greater degree than either of its parts or dimensions does individually. Stassen Berger (2008) explains dialectical

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thought in the following way: To use the words of philosophers, each idea, or thesis, implies an opposing idea, or antithesis. Dialectical thought involves considering both these poles of an idea simultaneously and then forging them into a synthesis-that is, a new idea that integrates both the original and its opposite… For example, many young children idolize their parents (thesis), many adolescents are highly critical of their parents (antithesis), and many emerging adults appreciate their parents but realize they are influenced by their background and age (synthesis)… Dialectical thought involves the constant integration of beliefs and experiences with all the contradictions and inconsistencies of daily life… Because ideas always initiate their opposites, change is continuous. Each new synthesis deepens and refines the thesis and antithesis that initiated it: Dialectical changes results in developmental growth… (2008: 480).

Thus, dialectical thought, can contribute profoundly to the growth and development of the intuitive self-construct. Perhaps this takes place at least partly through the brain’s natural iterative capacity, or tendency to produce temporally influenced cascades of “inter”-associations among memories, ideas, concepts and feelings, at the intra-subjective level. Through this fluid intermingling of mental associations, semantic opposites can form a particular cohesive mental model of dynamic ongoing personal knowledge and experience.

6. The inherited brain concept of “self as omnipresent” In his book, Splendors and Miseries of the Brain (2009), cognitive neurobiologist Semir Zeki has distinguished inherited concepts from synthetic (acquired) concepts. In general, the former are mental representations that have a universal presence in the neural circuitry of all individuals regardless of cultural or social background. An example is the concept of “unity-in-love”, between two lovers and between mother and child, which Zeki explains as being present in examples of visual art and literature the world over. Intrinsic to this concept is the idea that feelings of love promote a deep, continuous need of the individual to be eternally “close” to another. Some parts of the brain which Zeki describes as corresponding to the “unity-in-love” concept for lovers includes the hypothalamus and dopamine receptors, while attachment and maternal nurturance include the hypothalamus as well as oxytocin and vasopressin receptors. The latter, or synthetic, concepts are mental representations based on the deeply rooted inherited concepts that incorporate cultural

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and/or individual variation. For instance, the “kind” of person, in terms of appearance, personality, temperament, etc., that one believes is ideally suited for romantic “union” with oneself, varies from one person to another, and may even vary within the same individual across time. These acquired instances of self-understanding are presumably more heavily associated with neural activity in the memory formation (hippocampus) and judgment (frontal lobe) areas of the brain, than are the inherited concept. The inherited brain concept being introduced here is “self as omnipresent”. Intrinsic to this concept is the idea that one feels or senses a self —“me” —as being generally present inside of one’s head. From this inherited concept come synthetic concepts that are varying mental presentations of what one literally “thinks” and “feels” about either oneself specifically, or about anything or anyone else, at any conscious moment in time. Possible evidence for the existence of this inherited concept may come from at least three sources. One is from the presumed iterative nature of intra-subjective dynamics. Pavlik-Malone writes: … as was stated before, the subjective dimension is “private” “emotional” and “intuitive”. These qualities seem to suggest a feedback dynamic of a subtle and malleable kind, whereby mental representations en route to and from the conscious level, can be continuously molded, shaped and changed. As Marshall states, ‘Edelman … has proposed that all brain networks are characterized by complex bidirectional connections between outputs and inputs, as well as a lack of specialization of individual pathways…’ This lack of specialization … taps into the essence of subjectivity since neural pathways can be made to … recode many times over, significant portions of internal experience… Put in way similar to before, intra-subjectivity refers to “the personal within the personal”, whereby the number of iterations contributes to the complexity and “deepness” and, therefore, to the uniqueness and personal nature of the mental representations (2011: xvii &xviii).

Thus, various ideas and cognitive instances of self can, theoretically, reside in both any and many neural pathways simultaneously, as new semantically and personally richer mental representations of self are formed. Two, is through the integrated neural networks of “self in the moment” and “self across time”. As described before, the neural networks that correspond to each of these two components of the decentralized self, seem to be interconnected to one another, such that conscious experiences of self in the moment and across time can co-exist in parallel. And three is through the mirror neuron system, which simultaneously

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promotes both empathic identification and ego integrity. According to psychologist Louis Cozolino: Mirror … circuits combine with visceral, cognitive, and abstract networks to allow us to place others in contexts as we try to “get inside their head.” Thus, empathy requires many levels of neural processing and integration … we hold our own perspective in mind while simultaneously imagining what it is like to be another (2006: 203).

Thus, the self can exist as both psychologically “a part of” and “apart from” another self, being in two different psychological places at once.

The art doll Compared with Fashion dolls and Porcelain Collector dolls, art dolls seem uniquely suited for cognitive integration within the intuitive selfconstruct. Although the adult engages in aspects of personification and fanciful activity with all three of these kinds of dolls, in doing so, the art doll may place the most creative demands on the imagination of the individual mind, and thus, allow for the most intensive and exhaustive application of the several cognitive processes just described. This may be so for several reasons, a main one of which is that the fashion doll and the porcelain collector doll generally exist as commercial commodities that are reproduced more or less in bulk. Thus, their appearances are essentially shaped by the doll manufacturers that usually have a particular “look” in mind related to some general want, need or standard set by the market to which they are targeted, i.e., market research and analysis has shown that women who collect porcelain dolls want facial features that suggest both childlike innocence and womanly maturity. According to Robertson (2003), this seems to be because such physical collages enable the collector to more readily use the doll as a more or less personalized, trans-generational symbol of various times in her (or his) life. The art doll, however, is often singularly produced by an “artist” who has a deeply personal, idiosyncratic connection to her or his creation. Indeed, as art psychologist Bernard Baars states: Art and beauty are resistant to redundancy. The same is true of any emotional event… Emotions move us; that is, they bring unresolved questions to consciousness, again and again, until we literally move our stance toward life, to experience it in a new and more adaptive way. In just the same sense, genuine art moves us (1999: 60).

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In light of these insights, Pavlik-Malone states: “… our own genuine art moves us”. Thus, to the extent that Dolly functions as artistic in the eye of her adorner includes the degree to which she “informs” her or him about self, enabling deeper, more complete, and adaptive self-conceptions and personal questions to become concrete and accessible to consciousness (2011: 11).

The art doll, like other art forms, is a vehicle through which personal truths can flourish through the neural processing mechanism of ambiguity, which an individual brain creates for itself. According to Zeki, ambiguity “…is not vagueness or uncertainty, bur rather … certainty of different scenarios, each of which has equal validity to the other”. He also says, “It is … the capacity to project multiple concepts and experiences onto a work”. In terms of what goes on in the brain during ambiguous processing of stimuli, Zeki states that … the brain can project more than one acquired concept onto the incoming signals…which dictates that more than one group of cells or more than one brain area is engaged when viewing a scene that can not be resolved into one stable and unchanging entity, regardless of viewing conditions (2009: 62).

In the case of the doll artist, the “incoming signals” include those developing patterns of physical appearance and adornment that have already been externalized either on the doll itself or, perhaps, in terms of preliminary sketches on paper. What may happen is that through pattern recognition processes (as well as pattern diffusion ones), “gist” effects may be gradually formed in the mind, that capture a unique representational compromise between varying interpretations. As a result, the developing doll takes on more than one physical incarnation at the same time. In addition, Zeki includes the quality of contradiction as intrinsic to ambiguity. He states, “In fact, it is ambiguity that allows us to give contradictory or conflicting interpretations”. Thus, the varying interpretations made and transformed into a physical incarnation can include contradictory elements such as beautiful and ugly, black and white, young and old, etc. Indeed, through this complex cognitive process, new synthetic concepts themselves can form more ideal or hyperreal versions of self, that are more personally “whole”, psychologically encompassing, and dialectical. The following two cases are examples of cognitive integration within the intuitive self-construct. In Case One, integration takes place through creating one (doll) object, while in Case Two, two (doll) objects are formed.

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Case one (Aurora) Sculptor Lisa Lichtenfel’s “Aurora the Senior Angel” (Figure 3.2) is what the artist describes as “a comfortable balance between the celestial and the ordinary, the divine and the mundane”. Within the spirit of this doll, are the artist’s intertwined neural connections of “self in the moment” and “self across time” which comprise the “self as omnipresent“ inherited concept. In her descriptions of Aurora, she includes the following lines. After a few projects on which I used wings, I had a sizable bag of rejected feathers that were damaged, stained or badly clipped. I was about to throw them away, when I looked at them, and realized the unevenness had a texture that was very interesting. That was when I got the idea for an older, high-mileage, seen-better-days king of angels. I can hear a slight cough, maybe from a pack-a-day habit. The 70’s-style footrest she’s on would have the occasional stain, and maybe even a burn or two from a stray butt. Her otherworldly side is revealed by her wings and her garment. I wish a mere photograph could do a better job of conveying the fabric I used; it is the finest china silk, so lustrous and sensuous it can barely be held—it slips through the fingers like quicksilver… This is what the Roman emperors had in mind when they proclaimed silk to be “the fabric of the Gods”… It is truly beyond the ordinary, and it is definitely the stuff of angels (2009: 46).

Both smoking every day and occasional stain … maybe even a burn or two constitute particular instances of a synthetic concept representing “self in the moment” that may have formed through nuance-laden instances of iterative dynamics or a cascade of inter-associations that entered Lisa‘s working memory. They may also include the mental process of pattern recognition, since “the habit” can lead to “a stain” or “a burn” on her “footrest”; as well as through pattern diffusion and cognitive disinhibition since she is “a high-mileage, seen-better-days angel” who is thus “human enough” to “form a habit” namely “smoking”, and even “cough” because of it. Pattern recognition is also apparent in the artist’s associations between “Roman emperors”, “fabric of the Gods”, and “stuff of angels”. Indeed, her otherworldly side that includes her wings and her garment are particular instances of a synthetic concept that represents “self across time”. Also, it is evident that the artist has created not only a personal, but also a dialectical, understanding of what it means to be “celestial versus ordinary”, in her lines, “Personally, if I were to have a guardian angel, I

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would love one like Aurora, I can’t relate to perfection. Compassion comes out of knowing one’s foibles, and experiencing frailty”. And lastly, the inherited brain concept of ‘self as omnipresent” is operative through, first and foremost, the mirror neuron system and its role in facilitating empathic understanding, since the artist feels deeply “in tune” with her human doll’s quality of imperfection, and suggests that she, in reality, “sees herself” in Aurora.

Case two (Dandelion & Papillon) Aurora “came to psychological life” for her artist through the process of personification, which has been defined as attributing “…human characteristics to nonpersons. In the process the nonperson is invested with human qualities such as personality, motives, intentions, emotions, and hopes” (Weber, 2000: 164). Mental processing mechanisms involved here “include those that transform abstract thoughts, feelings, and emotions into a specific concrete entity that conveys emotional subtly and semiotic complexity (Pavlik-Malone, 2011: xxiii). In contrast, the dolls by Cindee Moyer titled “The Delicate Dandelion” and “Papillon” (Figures 3.3 & 3.4), seem less complex in and of themselves, since each one separately represents for the artist what it means to “become old” versus “become new”, and does so in vivified, rather than in personified, form. Psychologist Robert Weber defines vivification as “…more general than personification, attributing not just human characteristics but a more diffuse life force to the non-living: I see the clouds changing into animals” (Weber, 2000: 165). Of the artist and the making of her two dolls, a writer from the magazine Art Doll Quarterly states: Papillon and The Delicate Dandelion represent new beginnings and endings and were created using two separate workshops… The Delicate Dandelion expresses the beauty of change as she quietly and elegantly accepts that her hair has grayed and her season will pass… She wanted her body to be willowy like a dandelion at the end of its season. She chose not to add arms to further emphasize her flowery state. After finishing the Dandelion, she wanted to continue working in the same vein. She liked how the figure alone was able to express feeling and began working on Papillon. Papillon comes alive with the flutter of butterflies surrounding her head. She embodies new life and anticipation. By bending her body forward, arching her back, and tipping her head, the remaining hollow was perfect to fill in with the tree of butterflies she has for hair (2011: 116).

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In the creating of each doll, pattern recognition, as well as pattern diffusion, were presumably operative. For Dandelion specifically, the “the willowy body”, “lack of arms”, and “flowery state” suggest recognition of a familiar image, while the addition of “hair” that has “grayed” may have been psychologically achieved through, among other processes, a diffused state of mind. For Papillon specifically, recognition of another familiar image is implied by “comes alive”, “flutter of butterflies”, and “new life and anticipation”. Also, once again, a diffused state of mind may have contributed to making mental connections between a tree and “bending her body forward”, “arching her back”, and “tipping her head”. In addition, the integrated brain networks of “self in the moment/she across time” may have enabled the artist to conceptualize Dandelion as noticing the graying of her own hair (see the gaze “up” of the doll in Figure 3.3). Cognitive disinhibition may have also contributed to the realization that each “figure alone was able to express feeling”. Any finally, we see dialectical thought, not merged in a single (doll) object, as one might expect. Instead, the seemingly opposing ideas of “becoming old” and “becoming new” come together with the idea of “nature” to form a personal, dynamic, ongoing mental model that spans at least “two separate workshops” or creative sessions. Undoubtedly, the creative act of making a doll produces psychological change within the intuitive self-construct. This change process is due, at least in part, to the desire for personification or the desire for vivification. Through either of these imaginative processes, one can infer the intricate workings of what neuroscientists refer to as plasticity, which involves, among other things, the ability of neural tissue to continuously alter itself for the better. Indeed, it is through this plastic quality of the brain, that the mind can be re-constructed in various “holistic” ways, one of which includes the ability of the self to be young and old simultaneously.

Re-construction and the Creating of a Personified Surrogate “Reality is a creation of the nervous system…” —Harry Jerison, Biological psychologist (S. Fanelli , 2007)

At the Fountain of Euphemism, reality can be created through the coincidental manipulation of brain circuitry. This, however, is likely to be a psychologically unhealthy kind of “evasive” reality, in which the individual, through his or her own pursuit of aesthetic procedures, can

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continuously avoid an honest and open discussion and basic emotional understanding and acceptance of what is actually taking place in his or her body, and that of which naturally and normally affects his or her physical appearance in the direction of becoming older. A better alternative would be to create a hyperreal version of self in the environment, whereby elements of young and old are configured within a more ideal version of self, not only because they express a more unique self, but even more so here because they express a more complete self. Pavlik-Malone has introduced the metaphor of the “I Clown”, in which two seemingly opposed psychological traits--rationality and irrationality--come together as one personified idea that potentially allows for more individualized, creative instances of self-expression and self-understanding (for example) through poetry. She writes: …the clown image can be characterized as a foolish social “self” standing in the very crowd that collectively represents the normal, logical, rational “self”. How might these two selves, the fool and non-fool, relate to one another in such a way as to merge into one metaphoric representation of the Clown in the crowd? And, how might they do so in such a way as to seem … like two opposing selves agreeing to meet on a whim? Indeed, this psychological effect may come about through the rather subtle, interactive energies of constraint and need. According to Modell, “…the self is constrained by its own vital needs, and the degree to which it is constrained will in turn limit the complexity that characterizes the image of the other (2003: 117). With Regard to the two selves of … the I Clown, each is understood to be at a necessary psychological distance from the other, even when physically side by side … each self becomes the desired portrayal of the other, irrationality for rationality and vice versa (2011: 58).

Thus, although, as with oldness, one may not want to associate oneself with nonsense, the mind, through its natural self-organizing tendency, may utilize its own conscious and unconscious mechanisms in order to remain as a dynamic and complex entity. When it does not do so for some reason, one may be in danger of having stunted psychological maintenance and growth. When this occurs, one side of self may psychologically squelch the other side, which has the potential to affect thought, feeling or behaviour in negative ways. Pavlik-Malone writes: One reason the clown in the crowd metaphor can be so unsettling such as in the poem Clown‘s Houses, may have to do with the workings of constraint/need dynamics. It may be that the psychological distance between the clown and the crowd, the fool and the non fool, becomes so diminished as to be incapable of integrating the nature of both selves into

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Conversely, in the case of plastic surgery, only the young, presumably appealing, side of self presents itself to consciousness. This may seem a desirable effect, except that in both cases, the nature of two vital selves, one as an image complex and one as a personal understanding, becomes diminished. Thus, in the latter case, a chronic lack of satisfaction with oneself, as well as other negative emotions and compulsive behaviours, e.g. more surgeries being had, may ensue. On the other hand, authentic appearance, which includes seemingly contradictory elements that may be viewed as desirable or undesirable, can be achieved through re-construction with the right tools and an open mind. This appearance can be achieved when the act of re-construction is interpreted as affirming the “creative” rather than as being the opposite of “procreative”. Marcel Danesi, in his book on semiotic theory, distinguishes between the semiosphere and the biosphere (2007). The former “sphere” refers to the “world of signs, codes, and texts”, and the latter to “the physical life-supporting environment”. Within the semiosphere, authentic appearance can evolve in a gestational sense that has to do with imaginative dynamics rather than genetic ones. It is through the creating of a visual text—a doll—using various instruments and techniques, that a new personal understanding or self-representation can be born in the form of a personified surrogate. On the nature of linguistic texts specifically, Marcel Danesi quotes speech writer Peggy Noonan who states: Great speeches have always had great sound bites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the sound bite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great sound bites happen by accident, which is to say, all great sound bites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren’t a little flower somebody sewed on (2007: 97).

What Noonan implies here is a need for avoidance of a superficial kind of alteration, so that, instead, patterns seem to spring forth spontaneously from within the dynamic “tapestry” of a linguistic text. The making of a doll as a visual text in progress is relatable to this natural self-organizing process, the workings of which can be traced from the developing doll to cognitive processes of the mind to neural networks in the brain, and back again. Thus, at the level of the object, physical characteristics can be made on the doll through the skilled hands of an artist and his or her tools. At the

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same time, various mental processes are applied on the cognitive level, which promote changes, in terms of orderings and re-orderings of neural pathways, at the brain level. These brain changes, in turn, become a neuronal web, a kind of woven tapestry, that is, essentially, a new understanding of self. Developments in self-understanding can be promoted in the brain through plasticity, also by what this author describes as the “dance of the strategic and the serendipitous” as part of the subjective/intra-subjective dimension, as well as through the interplay of the structural connectivity and functional connectivity of neural networks in the cerebral cortex. As was mentioned before, plasticity involves that ability of the brain to alter itself for the better. However, this kind of alteration paradoxically includes the tendency of neural tissue to both change and stay the same. In his book The Brain That Changes Itself (2007), psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes, The plastic paradox is that the same neuroplastic properties that allow us to change our brains and produce more flexible behaviours can also allow us to produce more rigid ones… Anything that involves unvaried repetition-our careers, cultural activities, skills, and neuroses—can lead to rigidity. Indeed, it is because we have a neuroplastic brain that we can develop these rigid behaviours in the first place… Because our neuroplasticity can give rise to both mental flexibility and mental rigidity, we tend to underestimate our own potential for flexibility, which most of us experience only in flashes (2007: 242-243).

An understanding of self that is “sculpted” both literally with the use of tools, and neurologically through the manipulation of neural wiring, presumably involves the tendency of the brain to know what aspects of one’s experience of self to change in light of which ones to keep as the same. If a person views him- or herself in terms of “youngness”—looking, feeling, and acting a certain kind of way—this quality of the intuitive selfconstruct does not want to be done away with, as it is a vital part of selfunderstanding, and so, plastic rigidity or integrity will do what it can to ensure these neural pathways in the brain remain in tact. At the same time, however, plastic flexibility allows for this understanding to modify itself in light of new information. This information encompasses a synergistic interplay between the developing object (a doll) and how both the conscious and unconscious mind receives and interprets various aspects of this developing stimulus at different points in the creative process. As was described before, conscious and unconscious mind activity reside in loop1 and loop 2 of the limbic system and frontal areas of the brain. The metaphor of “the dance between the strategic and the serendipitous” is

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meant to convey a dynamic interplay between loop 1 (serendipitous) and loop 2 (strategic) neural energies, whereby a developing idea contains unconscious elements (including those related to “self” and “oldness”), some of which are gradually chosen to become a part of the look of a doll using bouts of abstraction and conscious intent. The third component includes structural connectivity, which refers to a certain landscape or topology in a neural network of the cortex, the brain area that coincides with conscious thought. This topology includes a certain configuration of synaptic connections. However, functional connectivity or dynamics refers to the presence of synaptic activation/inhibition patterns among individual neural pathways in this topology. These two components of the neural network have the capacity to influence each other to become new thoughts, ideas, and experiences of the mind. In other words, synaptic connections that presently comprise a structural topology can be modified to include new synaptic connections that naturally, in the process, also alter current ones. In his book Networks of the Brain (2011), neuroscientist Olaf Sporns describes this complex cognitive modification process as a “symbiotic relationship” between structural and functional connectivity. He writes: In cortical networks, structural and functional connectivity mutually influence each other on multiple time scales. On fast as well as slower time scales, structural connections shape the topography of functional networks… Conversely, functional connectivity can also mold synaptic patterns via a number of activity-dependent mechanisms. Thus, structure shapes neural activity, and neural activity shapes structure. The mutual interdependency of network topology and dynamics in the brain is an example of what Gross and Blasius (2008) have referred to as “adaptive coevolutionary networks”. In these networks, dynamic processes unfolding on a relatively fast time scale shape the topology of the network on a slower time scale. These changes in topography in turn alter the dynamics of the system… For example, a traffic or communication network may experience congestion, a form of dynamic failure, which triggers efforts to construct new links to ease traffic flow (Gross and Blasius, 2008). The brain is a particularly striking example of a network where fast dynamic processes continually shape and are shaped by the topology of structural connections (2011: 241).

Thus, topological and dynamical brain networks are “coevolutionary” because they produce positive or desirable changes in each other over time. As these changes take place, actual thoughts themselves become modified. For this study, these literal “changes of brain and mind” reshape one’s understanding of what it means to be both young and old as each

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relates to self. In the current neural topology, idea units of “self”, and those of “young”, share what Sporns refers to as “similar activation values”. At the same time, these same idea units of “self” are dynamically connected to the idea units of “old” with similar levels of inhibition values instead. What this suggests psychologically, is that one’s conscious thought of “self” neurologically accepts “young” as it simultaneously rejects “old”, in the same instant, and to the same degree. What needs to happen here, is that through the act of doll creation, activation levels are re-established, so that the previous inhibitory circuits which comprise “self’ and “old” not only gradually become excitatory ones, but excitatory at a level similar to those of “self” and “young”. At this same time, the current activation level between “self” and “young” may re-adjust itself to a lesser activation level. This results in the conscious mind having a less dramatic psychological connection that exists between “self” and “young” exclusively, as activation energies are spread over a greater cognitive surface area that now includes idea units of “self”, “young”, and “old” simultaneously. A coevolutionary process is “adaptive” because it, presumably, improves the functioning of the system for the purpose for which it was designed. In a traffic network, a better network could mean less congestion and a smoother, quicker flow of traffic. In a psychological network, a better network could mean one that promotes mental connections in consciousness that enable a person to have a smoother, more satisfying adjustment to life, which, in this context, includes the ability to conceptualize and accept oneself as both young and old. One way this profound and complex “plastic” change can be achieved is through the gathering and use of certain tools, just as a surgeon would do. However, in this context, the act of re-construction takes place in order to produce a personified surrogate object—a doll—that looks both young and old simultaneously, rather than to make a human being look exclusively younger again. With reference to using tools when working in a clay medium, doll-artist and author Suzanna Oroyan states: Anything you can find comfortable in your hand or that will produce the effect you want is a sculpting tool! Most commercial tools (wood or metal) are made for working with ceramic clays and are usually unwieldy for working in doll scale. Some sculpture tools are made by or available from the polymer or paper clay manufacturers; however, they are primarily made for general craft work and may not be able to achieve the detail you would like in doll making. Experiment with sculpture tools you find, and any of the following, until you find tools that fit your hand and habits (1994: 14).

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The following are a list of possible tools, some concrete examples of such tools for doll-making, as well as a visual depiction of “an ideal workspace”, specified by Oroyan in her book Fantastic Figures (1994). thin metal fingernail file orange sticks, dowel sticks, toothpicks glass-head pins of varying sizes (use head to smooth small areas) dental tools (ask your dentist to save broken ones for you) water spray bottle (for smoothing surfaces) small embroidery scissors double-pointed drawing compass (Oroyan, 1994: 14)

Figure 3.5 by Tom Oroyan, From Fantastic Figures, c 1994 S. Oroyan. Reproduced by permission of Tom Oroyan.

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Figure 3.6 by Tom Oroyan, From Fantastic Figures, c 1994 S. Oroyan. Reproduced by permission of Tom Oroyan.

The following are three dolls, each of which may constitute an “after” example of such plastic surgery (Henry, 2000). And although one may not have been privy to pathway configurations and activation/inhibition patterns of each artist’s neural landscape before as well as after surgery, these dolls suggest an internal neuro-psychological tapestry that includes idea units for “young”, “old”, and “self” at “similar activation levels”.

Harriet (by Lisa Lichtenfels) Harriet (Figure 3.7) is a young girl who shows at least two facial signs of aging. The first is the puffiness underneath her eyes, and the second is the skin of her cheek that seems to sag somewhat, adhering less well to its underlying tissue. Among these characteristics of age are those of youth, such as her clear complexion, short nose, fuller lower lip, even white teeth. All of these physical features were created using various tools (besides materials and techniques), some of which were possibly mentioned before. The “self” that created Harriet presumably used several cognitive processes available to the intuitive self-construct, some of which the artist may have been meta-cognitively aware of using before, after, and/or

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during their time of application. Through the plastic quality of her creator’s brain, Harriet manages to express “oldness” as an integral, more nuanced quality of who she has physically, and perhaps even psychologically, been made to be. Thus, her “youngness” is what likely “stands out” in the minds of those who observe her, and is what they may attribute to her being first and foremost.

Baby (by Suzanna Oroyan) Baby (Figure 3.8) is an older woman doll who also has signs of youth. Her relative age is suggested at least by the make-up—eye shadow, mascara, face powder, and lipstick—she wears, that enhances the youthful attractiveness of her aging face. We know she is older because of the lines around her mouth, the beginning indentations in her naso-labial fold and cheek regions, as well as the slightly elongation of her nose in relation to the size of her face. However, her eyelids are smooth and tight, and eyes big, which all suggest youth. Also, her mouth is heart-shaped, which contributes to the beauty (and so, indirectly) the youth of her face, as well. The “self” that created Baby also, presumably both consciously and unconsciously, used several cognitive processes available to the intuitive self-construct. Those who observe her may get the impression that “Baby” is a nickname meant to convey her “young spirit”, as well as to semantically approximate her “painted” somewhat child-like face.

Untitled (by OOAKningyo) This doll (Figure 3.9) seems a symmetric amalgam of youngness and oldness that defies a “what is her relative age ” visual schema. Her skin is very smooth and hair very long, which suggest youth. However, her hair is also a grey-blonde and seems to be thinning. Her nose is elongated, but lips are full, and the rosy colour in her face seems natural. Her forehead, while not wrinkled at all, is unnaturally large, which suggests a bigger head like a baby’s. Her eyes are puffy underneath and cheeks appear hollowed like those of an elderly woman. Once again, the “self” that created her used various cognitive processes within the intuitive selfconstruct. Observers may perceive an “other-worldly” quality about her, that may include the natural and seemingly odd inclination to “not have age”. Indeed, the name of the doll as “Untitled” may be meant to convey its profound lack of categorical specificity.

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The dolls, hyperreality and “self as omnipresent” Each of these three dolls expresses an ideal or hyperreal state of intuitive self-construct development by the artist that is beyond discrete physical specifications of young and old. In other words, within the doll object, there seems the ability to instantiate ironic duality and semiotic complexity that presumably mirrors neuro-psychological growth, either in terms of a deep alteration in associations among idea units or a new created instance of such associations that already exist, inside the artist. This change process is part and parcel of the brain’s inherited concept “self as omnipresent”, since it suggests that those idea units which comprise the inherited “self”, act as an underlying support structure for any synthetic versions of the concept that have taken a unique “dollified” form. On this more ideal version of self, Pavlik-Malone states: As Robertson suggests, hyperreality is like creating a blueprint for something after the thing already exists; in the blueprint, one is free to incorporate properties and qualities that one wants or desires or “needs” the thing to have had in the first place. In essence, the blueprint is more real because it takes on a certain psychological realism for the creator that the thing itself does not possess. Here, the doll functions as “more than real” in a way that only a self-made human-like figure can, by acting as a metaphoric “mirror image” of whom one really is (2011: 13-14).

Thus, also in this current journey through hyperreality, the brain, as a quintessential self-organizer, necessarily changes itself. This naturally results in a new, highly personalized image of self that appears as a nonliving “being”, so to speak, in the form of a doll. In turn, particular collages and configurations of “young” and “old” in this current creation, have the potential to springboard still more instances, perhaps those even more detailed and nuanced, into future personified surrogacy.

CONCLUSION WHERE DO I KEEP MY DOLL? (COGNITIVE WHOLENESS AS A PERSONAL NEED)

In a recent issue of Discover magazine (July/August 2012), writer Sherry Baker describes five categories of out-of-body experience that are now being studied in cognitive neuroscientific laboratories using up-todate virtual technology. One such category, titled “Become a Living Doll”, includes studies that strategically use an 11.5 inch Barbie Doll and a 13foot-tall mannequin. Baker describes the conduct of some of these studies headed by neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm: … participants wore head-mounted displays connected to two video cameras … the subjects were positioned in beds on their backs while two cameras sent them images of a tiny doll or an oversized mannequin lying on a bed next to them. The cameras assumed the same perspective as the person, looking down at the doppelganger. When test participants gazed through their video-connected goggles toward their feet, therefore, their bodies appeared to be the size and shape of the artificial one nearby. A researcher stroked the fake body with a rod while softly touching the real body of the volunteer in exactly the same way. Participants quickly got the bizarre feeling that they were inhabiting the body of the small doll or the large mannequin (2012: 55).

In addition, He measured the volunteers’ evoked skin-conductance response … while they observed someone threatening or cutting the doll with a knife. Skin conductance rose in step with the apparent level of threat, just as it does when a person faces a genuine possibility of physical harm (2012: 55).

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Baker then explains what Ehrsson believes to be possible future “practical uses” of systematically facilitating such “out-of-body illusions”. For instance, “… they might one day allow a surgeon to feel as if he or she were inhabiting a microscopic medical robot, directing operations inside the human patient. Or a worker might project himself into a giant robot, maneuvering it as if it were his own body to make repairs at a nuclear power plant“ (Baker: 2012: pp. 55). Based on experimental results gleaned from Ehrsson’s studies, it seems possible that self exists somewhere in between the object and the body. As Baker states, “The brain’s tendency to bind what the eyes see to what the body feels is so powerful…” (2012: 52); indeed, subjective experience of self as “the object” may happen not only systematically, but also spontaneously. Through a strong human need for “wholeness” or consonance, one can “bind” self, using tactile dynamics, “gut” feelings (also known as intuition) and emotional reactions, to the (doll) object impersonal, during experimentation. However, this same need may, in essence, drive intuition and emotions towards my doll in an increasingly personal, intra-subjective sense, i.e. my physical object, my objectified being, my personified idea. Thus, this “added” experience of being “my” doll specifically, may also reside in that “in between” space, where complex dynamics of memory, those of internalized notions and ideas (of opposites such as young and old, for instance), as well as powers of artistic expression, also inhabit.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX art doll ; Art doll 46, 65, 66, 74, 75 consonance 3, 4, 8, 9 dissonance 1, 3, 5 dollification-in-reverse (DIR) 36, 44 dialectical ; dialectical 6, 71, 72, 76 episodic memory 17, 18 foreclosed ; foreclosed (metaphor) 38, 47 functional connectivity 82 generative ; generative (metaphor) 38, 44, 47, 49 intuitive self-construct : intuitive self-construct 9, 66, 72, 74, 75, 78, 85, 86, 87 (neuro) plasticity ; plastic ; plasticity 81, 83, 85, 86 personal narrative 17, 20, 26, 27 phenomenology ; phenomenologically 21, 22, 23, 24 postformal thought 71 self-narratives 2 self-narrative 17, 19, 27 semiosphere 39, 41, 42 structural connectivity 82