Beyond the Mind: Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche 1641130342, 9781641130349

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Beyond the Mind

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development Jaan Valsiner, Series Editor

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Beyond the Mind Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche

Giuseppina Marsico University of Salerno, Italy Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark

Jaan Valsiner Aalborg University, Denmark

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress   http://www.loc.gov ISBN: 978-1-64113-034-9 (Paperback) 978-1-64113-035-6 (Hardcover) 978-1-64113-036-3 (ebook)

Copyright © 2018 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction: Desire for Basic Science of Human Being............... ix Giuseppina Marsico

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I

Suffering for Science: Where Psychology Fails........................................ 1 1 Culture in Psychology: Towards the Study of Structured, Highly Variable, and Self-Regulatory Psychological Phenomena.......3 Jaan Valsiner 2 Science of Psychology Today: Future Horizons............................. 25 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Is There any Reason for Suffering—for Science in Psychology?... 49 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner



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II

Understanding Dynamic Processes........................................................53 3 Facing the Future—Making the Past: The Permanent Uncertainty of Living.................................................................... 55 Jaan Valsiner 4 Constructing Identity: A Theoretical Problem for Social Sciences......................................................................................... 65 Jaan Valsiner 5 Reconstructing the Affordance Concept: Semiotic Mediation of Immediacy..................................................................................79 Jaan Valsiner 6 The Concept of Attractor: How Dynamic Systems Theory Deals With Future.......................................................................... 97 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Why Are Dynamic Perspectives Hard to Take?............................115 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

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III

Dialogical Nature of Being....................................................................121 7 The Promoter Sign: Developmental Transformation Within the Structure of Dialogical Self........................................123 Jaan Valsiner 8 Temporal Integration of Structures Within the Dialogical Self..... 147 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Dialogical Semiosis in Irreversible Time—Why Make it So Complex?..... 163 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

Contents    vii

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IV

Aesthetics of Infinities..........................................................................169 9 The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a Dialogical Research Program........................................................................ 171 Jaan Valsiner 10 The Bare Back: Dialogical Self in Action.....................................199 Jaan Valsiner 11 Torturous Tension of the Real and the Unreal: Looking at Surrealist Paintings...................................................................... 217 Jaan Valsiner 12 Dialogical Relationship Between Open and Closed Infinities.......229 Jaan Valsiner 13 The Flagellating Self....................................................................245 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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The Sublime Movement Between Infinities..........................................265 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

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V

Regulation in Societal and Interpersonal Processes............................269 14 Culture Within Development: Similarities Behind Differences.....271 Jaan Valsiner 15 How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel?.....293 Jaan Valsiner 16 Culture in Human Development: Theoretical and Methodological Directions........................................................... 319 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Why Developmental Science?................................................................335 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

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VI

Cultural Processes Within Society........................................................337 17 Civility of Basic Distrust: A Cultural-Psychological View on Persons-in-Society........................................................................339 Jaan Valsiner 18 Higher Education in Focus: Insights Through the CulturalHistorical Activity Theory............................................................363 Jaan Valsiner 19 Communication and Development: Breaking a Communion.......375 Jaan Valsiner 20 The Clicking and Tweeting Society: Beyond Entertainment to Education..................................................................................397 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Relating with Society—By Going Beyond the Practically Useful........... 415 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

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VII

Constructing Basic Human Science: Idiographic, Dynamic, Phenomena-Focused.............................................................................419 21 Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology: Constructions and Implications...............................421 Jaan Valsiner 22 Listening to the Screaming Knowledge: Pathways to Quietude.....453 Jaan Valsiner 23 The Wissenschaft of Social Psychology: Paradoxes of Application of Science in a Society...........................................479 Jaan Valsiner 24 Failure Through Success: Paradoxes of Epistemophilia..............489 Jaan Valsiner

Contents    ix

25 The Human Psyche on the Border of Irreversible Time: Forward-Oriented Semiosis..........................................................503 Jaan Valsiner CO FFEE BR E A K

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Why Do Social Sciences Need to Be Basic?...........................................533 Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner 26 Conclusion: Psyche as a Cultural Membrane...............................537 Giuseppina Marsico Biographical Notes.......................................................................545

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INTRODUCTION

Desire for Basic Science of Human Being Giuseppina Marsico1

T

his book, Beyond the Mind: Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche, is unusual in the content and it the format. That’s why it requires an unusual look. It has to do with a man, an intellectual journey, and uncountable travels across the world over the last two decades. This man is Jaan Valsiner, and here you will read of his restless effort to elaborate ideas while going in different places as invited keynote. This book is mainly about his intellectual trajectory, which touches several places and several interconnected topics. He lives traveling in the mind and in the physical world, and this is what makes him so special. With a great dose of self-irony, he defines himself as E.R.O.: Estonian Round Object! For those who have the fortune to work with Jaan Valsiner, he is our (H.)E.R.O.—Heroic Estonian Round Object—because his enthusiasm and

Beyond the Mind, pages xi–xv Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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never-ending striving for the new has only a few equals in our contemporary academic world. His way of being is not just an erratic way of existence, but instead his traveling around the globe comes from the deep consciousness that new ideas emerge from the periphery of the world and of our mind. Thus, he needs to move intellectually and physically (Figure I.1). This book is about the “minutes” of his “bigger” and well organized works, and also it is a collection of only apparently fragmented texts (mainly keynote lectures, unpublished or rejected papers) where the readers will see the “step-by-step” elaboration over the years of new ideas, theories, models, and even schemas (which Jaan likes very much—maybe especially as he claims basic inability to draw anything). In analogy with the collection of photos of growing babies in any ordinary families, this book shows the ontogenesis and the development of a coherent theoretical framework. Like a baby who grows and becomes stronger and more skillful, the volume encompasses the birth and the development of the cultural psychology of dynamic semiosis that Jaan Valsiner has elaborated over his productive career (Valsiner, 2007, 2014). Its roots are in observations of ordinary people in ordinary life contexts—children being

Figure I.1  What Jaan Valsiner’s passport looks like

Desire for Basic Science of Human Being    xiii

fed in the kitchen (Valsiner, 1987), psychologists living in changing societies (Valsiner, 1988), and women dancing in temples (Valsiner, 1996) or waiting for beautiful moments of deeply personal lifelines. All this leads to a theoretical synthesis—in cultural psychology.

Cultural Psychology: A New Science of the Human Nature Beyond the Mind: Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche offers an overview of ideas, historical roots, and areas of investigations of that sophisticated theoretical proposal that goes under the label of cultural psychology, which aims to reestablish psychology as the science of the human nature (Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato, & Dazzani, 2016a). Valsiner emphasizes how psychology deals with the experiences of the human being and his actions in the world. Humans are culture-makers and, therefore, every form of human activity becomes a legitimate object of study for psychology: art, technology, and institutionalized systems of collective life, but also fashion, religious experience, entertainments, ornaments, and the different ways of treating one’s own body. The talks and papers here presented may appear quite diverse in the scope of their topics but in all of them the focal point is the dynamic of the human psyche. Lecture after lecture, place after place, year after year, the readers will observe the construction of the Valsiner’s proposal that looks at the richness and the intricacy of the high psychological functioning and at the variety of products of collective activity. Psychology, in its history, has shown the difficulty of dealing with the complexity of psychological phenomena. The study of higher psychological functions has been gradually replaced by the analysis of elementary mechanisms. As a result, the human psyche has been reduced to its epiphenomenon, the elaboration of a general theory of psychological functioning replaced with a plethora of almost nonsensical research findings and the focus on processes with emphasis on products. In all this, the epistemic role of culture in the organization of human ways of existence has been lost (Marsico, 2015). Beyond the Mind: Cultural Dynamics of the Psyche proposes, instead, the theoretical coordinates for rethinking psychology starting from the study of the higher psychological functions and the most sophisticated products of human knowledge as they have been constructed in the history of humanity. This volume helps to trace back all the numerous and interwoven intellectual trajectories that led Jaan Valsiner to relocate the psyche at the center of the psychological investigation.

xiv    Desire for Basic Science of Human Being The human Psyche is complex, subjective, meaningful, and mysterious. As such it cannot be reduced to explanations that consider it accounted for by causal mechanisms of lower levels of organization. Thus, the efforts to reduce higher level psychological functions to physiological or genetic “causes” violates the hierarchical systemic structure of the totality of human beings. (Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato & Dazzani, 2016b, p. v)

Yet this book is not only about the past elaborations, but rather it is mostly about the future directions of cultural psychology. In the authors’ intentions, indeed, this is meant as a powerful heuristic tool to support further theoretical elaborations and methodological advances—because Jaan Valsiner, as always, is already looking beyond.

A Glimpse Into the Book The books is organized in seven sections. Each of them contains a variable number of lectures and/or unpublished papers topically selected independently from any chronological order or geographical criterion. Starting from the epistemological foundation of psychology (Section I), the book provides an axis for understanding the dynamicity of psychological processes (Section II), the dialogical nature of the human being (Section III), and the relationship between infinities (Section IV). Then, some regulatory processes at interpersonal and societal level of analysis have been presented (Section V) followed by the discussion of specific cultural processes in society (Section VI) and of the new epistemological and methodological horizons in psychology (Section VII). Each section ends with the so called “coffee breaks.” These are not merely intermezzos, but like in a real conference setting (where the coffee break is the moment for making additional comments about the lecture), they are meant to be dialogical spaces for posing provocative questions and intellectual challenges to the keynote. Let me conclude with a biographical note. In the last ten years, I have had the fortune to read some of the papers that Jaan was going to present in the official conference venues or some of his articles, chapters, or books. Jaan always asks some young- or more-experienced colleagues for feedback, and this is unusual in contemporary over-arrogant academia. The acknowledgments at end of the papers in this book tell a lot of the intellectual integrity and generosity of Jaan Valsiner. There is a deep desire for joint work on constructing psychology as a basic human science in this—and the readers of this book are invited to share it.

Desire for Basic Science of Human Being    xv

Note 1. University of Salerno (Italy) and Centre for Cultural Psychology. Aalborg Univerity (Denmark).

References Marsico, G. (2015). Striving for the new: Cultural psychology as a developmental science. Culture & Psychology, 21(4), 445–454. doi: 10.1177/1354067X 15623020 Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester, England: Wiley Valsiner, J. (1988). Developmental psychology in the Soviet Union. Brighton, England: Harvester Press. Valsiner, J. (1996). Devadasi temple dancers and cultural construction of persons-in-society. In M. K. Raha (Ed.), Dimensions of human society and culture (pp. 443–476). New Delhi, India: Gyan Publishing House. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (Eds.). (2016a). Psychology as a science of human being: The Yokohama manifesto. New York, NY: Springer. Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (2016b). What is changing in psychology? In J. Valsiner, G. Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T. Sato, & V. Dazzani (Eds.), Psychology as a science of human being: The Yokohama manifesto (pp. v–vii). New York, NY: Springer.

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I

Suffering for Science: Where Psychology Fails

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1 Culture in Psychology Towards the Study of Structured, Highly Variable, and Self-Regulatory Psychological Phenomena1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Cultural psychology has a long history within psychology. It antedates the birth of experimental psychology of Wundt (in 1879) by about two decades (1860). The roots of our contemporary invention of cultural psychology are in the different Völkerpsychologie traditions (Lazarus, Steinthal, Wundt) and are related to the work of the “Würzburg School” (O. Külpe, K. Bühler) and the traditions of Ganzheitspsychologie. Furthermore, the psychology of Franz Brentano’s heritage—the work of Alexius Meinong, particularly—sets the stage for the study of complex mental phenomena of cultural framing. Cultural psychology has entered the stage of contemporary psychology three times (end of 19th century—Völkerpsychologie, middle of the 20th century—the culture and personality “school,” and end of the 20th century—various versions of cultural psychology). Different versions of cultural psychology have attempted to investigate complex human psychological functions—and (at least in the case of the first two attempts) have failed to survive. Will it survive now? The Beyond the Mind, pages 3–23 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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4    Beyond the Mind answer to this question might depend on the openness of psychology at large to widen its methodological scope. The inclusion of culture in the psychological organization in the human species increases both the intra-individual and inter-individual variability of the phenomena under consideration, requiring the move towards new kinds of formal modeling of highly variable processes. Cultural regulators—meanings created by persons—operate as different kinds of hierarchies that can be transformed under specifiable conditions. Cultural psychologies return to long-forgotten and dismissed questions in psychology—such as the notion of will—and give it a new specification.

What is cultural psychology? I have no answer to this question that has haunted me since the establishment of my journal, Culture and Psychology, in 1995. Since that time, different colleagues—who claimed to be cultural psychologists themselves—have criticized that title, claiming that the journal should have been named Cultural Psychology. I stubbornly brushed aside these criticisms, and the journal keeps its original name—which was meant from the beginning not to be a single-voiced perspective of some particular view of culture in psychology, but an experiment in the developmental sociology of science. Developmental sociology of science is not a concept you can find in textbooks,3 or explicitly addressed in our discussions about science. We often talk (and talk very passionately!) about social and local politics of science—usually ending up with some fatalistic diagnosis of the downfall of science in psychology, or of the stubborn resistance of funding agencies to fund that kind of research that we happen to want to do. I do not intend to contribute to this talk, but raise the issue of developmental sociology of a specific science that 1. starts by establishing a new label (cultural psychology) as a semiotic organizer of its own identity 2. sets up a position in relation to its historical predecessors in some way—ignoring some, glorifying others, and setting itself up in opposition to third ones 3. rhetorically negotiates its social role within the social power structure of the given discipline. So—we look at the birth pangs of a (supposedly) new direction in its wider social context and are involved in the longitudinal follow-up of its growth, as well as nurturing that growth. A developmental sociologist of science can be likened to a caregiver in some kind of an intellectual kindergarten of the discipline.

Culture in Psychology    5

The Current State of the Enterprise (A Subjective Overview by a Caregiver) When a new area becomes established, different active agents in the process become involved in negotiating its label and fighting for establishment of the priority claims of who had used that label first. Surely such activities are a part of the façade history of the emerging field—by discovery that Dr. X used the label in a bar conversation some months before it emerged in Dr. Y’s published paper, we have not learned much about the newborn discipline. Such priority disputes within our current cultural psychology have ended up with claims that the term emerged sometime in the early 1980s. It is somewhat ironic that psychologists began to discuss the (re)use of that term as having a potential for their discipline at about the same time when the core users of the term—cultural anthropologists—discovered that the term is imprecise and unrepresentative of the phenomena they study within the globalizing mixing of people from various societies at the end of the 20th century. So—one discipline tries to bring the general term into itself—while the other attempts to get rid of it! Emerging intellectual fields make their boundaries to chart out their rhetoric identities. Cultural psychologists can be observed to distance themselves from their cross-cultural counterparts (and vice versa)—like any establishing in-group creates extensive boundaries first of all with the closest neighbors. Indeed there are some conceptual reasons for this as well—the ways in which generalization of knowledge happens are diametrically opposite (Valsiner, 2003). It needs to be added that the disputes about priority claims have been a North American pastime—the different European theoretical perspectives that have become included in cultural psychology over the last decade (e.g., the “dialogical self” of Hubert Hermans [Hermans & Kempen, 1993], the “symbolic action theory” of Ernst E. Boesch and Lutz Eckensberger, “discourse analysis” of Derek Edwards and Ana Smolka, “social representations” theories of Serge Moscovici and Wolfgang Wagner, and others) have not participated in that activity. Surely there is a difference between the continents in the functioning of identity-making labels.

Consolidation in the 1990s Contemporary cultural psychologies arrived at the stage of explicit organization of the various perspectives using the notion of culture in the beginning of the 1990s—perhaps the milestone was the publication of the

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books by James Stigler, Richard Shweder and Gilbert Herdt (1990), Ernst E. Boesch (1991), John Shotter (1990), Barbara Rogoff (1990), James Wertsch (1991), Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Markus (1994), and Michael Cole (1996). The journal Culture and Psychology was started in 1995—followed by a myriad of new journals that include the term culture in their title.4 The social sciences of the end of the 20th century were suddenly saturated by the many uses of the appealing term culture.5 So—psychology was only one of the sciences under the influence of the new catchword. What has happened since 1995 is overviewed in detail in various editorial summaries over the past 9 years (Valsiner, 1995, 1996a, 2001, 2004). The journal has managed to establish itself as a forum for discussions between social sciences and has indeed become the core journal for cultural psychologies. Perhaps the most curious development over these years for the journal is the permanence of the high rejection rate—around 90%—of Culture and Psychology. Something is seriously wrong with this newly developed area—so much waste indicates a state of affairs where the public fascination with the core term is not yet accompanied with serious scholarly efforts to link that term with new ways of empirical investigation.6

Making Histories: Psychology’s Self-Reflection Reconsidered Psychology has rewritten its history in ways that justify its lack of connection with basic human cultural phenomena—the complex intentional forms of feeling, thinking, and acting that characterize our everyday lives. Curiously, over psychology’s formal history, the basic reduction of human beings to be some special cases of salivating dogs or industriously lever-pushing rodents—has passed as if that guaranteed the “scientific status” of the discipline. The “hard” data on rewarding or punishing humans with tokens of consumables—food, money, and so on—have led the way to our modern versions of explaining complexity by way of simple elementary “effects” of some variables. Active persons—soul-searchers filled with curiosity—who create, perform, and feel about theatre, poetry, music; who read novels, organize revolutions and political debates, and worry about cholesterol levels, diets, prices, and marriages—are too “soft” for an “objective” study. My depiction of the situation here is of course a caricature—yet one that keeps canalizing the history of psychology in-the-making. The claim of “softness” of complex psychological phenomena is of course a recognition of failure of the “hardness” of contemporary psychological science. In some sense, the claim of “hard psychology” is quite right—none of these precarious activities of unabashedly subjective human beings is explainable

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by way of lower psychological functions—be those considered behavioral, physiological, or cognitive. There are two ways to deal with this mismatch of psychological science and complex psychological phenomena— not to study the latter, or to rethink the methodologies of the discipline in such ways so as to be able to address them. Let me lead our discussion into yet another façade-historical priority claim—“cultural psychology came first!” Priority claims are interesting for a look at the history of the discipline, as they may reveal ideologically set “blind spots” in the self-reflection of a scientific discipline. The focus on cultural phenomena—mostly language—antedates official history of psychology as a separate discipline. The first specific treatments of culture can be traced to language philosophy of Wilhelm von Humboldt in the beginning of the 19th century (von Humboldt, 1836, 1905). Even in terms of social institutionalization, the cultural side of psychology antedates its experimental counterpart—by 19 years. The first professorship in psychology proper was not that of Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig (1879), but that of Völkerpsychologie for Moritz Lazarus in Bern. That fact has remained in the shadow of psychology’s writing its history as if that were exclusively that of physiological and experimental discipline. Even the reflections of the “official beginner” of psychology—Wilhelm Wundt—have traditionally overlooked (or denigrated) the presence of both experimental and Völkerpsychologie traditions in his thinking. The real history of psychology is much more complex than the origin myth of experimental psychology. It is the Völkerpsychologie tradition that was developing in parallel with experimental psychology in the second half of the 19th century—yet failing to establish links between the two (Valsiner, Diriwächter, & Sauck, 2004). Why such failure? The crucial ideological contrast that has kept cultural psychology in the shadow of its experimental sibling is the tension between holistic and elementaristic axiomatic assumptions in psychology.

Four Foundations for the Study of Complex Cultural Phenomena in the 19th Century Cultural psychologies today follow the general orientation of their 19th-century predecessors—in their holistic, dynamic, and developmental emphases. Four continental European traditions that flourished at the beginning of the 20th century—Völkerpsychologie, Ganzheitspsychologie, the introspection-based traditions of the “Würzburg School” of Oswald Külpe, and the various branches of the Austrian traditions of Franz Brentano— particularly the “Graz School” of Alexius Meinong.

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Like any other discipline, Völkerpsychologie in the 19th century was filled with disputes between its major promoters—Moritz Lazarus, Heyman Steinthal contra Hermann Paul—and all of them taking Wilhelm Wundt to task for his version of folk psychology. Yet in its immediate empirical practices, it was a burgeoning discipline that produced many analysis efforts of cultural complexes. The separation of psychology from ethnology was in force in the 19th century as it is now—so the Völkerpsychologie traditions developed further in the direction of the study of Volkskunde (Valsiner et al., 2004). Within psychology, Wundt’s late-life massive work in the area did not leave a direct impact in the German context. Yet from his general psychological world, two other contributors to our contemporary cultural psychology emerged. Both emerged as a result of intellectual defiance of the “father figure”—hence it may be appropriate to say that Wundt triggered the development of psychology of complex processes by evoking a defiant urge in his younger followers. First there was the secession of Wundt’s assistant Oswald Külpe, who— establishing himself at the University of Würzburg—established a small, short-lived, yet productive research program on the study of complex mental processes. It is from the roots of the “Würzburg School” that our contemporary cognitive psychology thrives (Simon, 1999). It is interestingly a forgotten fact that the Aha-Erlebnis (insight) was discovered in humans long before Wolfgang Köhler observed it in chimpanzees. The young assistant to Külpe—Karl Bühler—was the discoverer, and a relentless disputer with Wundt of the usability of experimental methods for the study of higher mental processes. From Bühler’s work comes also a line of sociocultural thinking in cultural psychology—the signs-based (sematological) direction in psychology. Bühler’s theory of communication—the Organon Model—is one of the bases for looking at communication within contemporary cultural psychology (Valsiner, 1998). It paralleled Lev Vygotsky’s sign-mediation perspective in the 1920s (van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). The Würzburg background is the historically shared area between cognitive and cultural psychologies. As both the process-oriented cognitive directions (productive thinking and problem solving—Otto Selz and Karl Duncker) and cultural psychology of today grow out of the Würzburg tradition, it is not surprising that there is phenomenological overlap in their areas of interest. However, in the usual histories of psychology, the “Würzburg School” is habitually presented as the epitome of a failing direction—the study of thinking processes through introspective methods. The second secession from Wundt’s line came with the establishment of the “Second Leipzig School” by his successor in Leipzig—Felix Krueger, and by Hans Volkelt. This direction—Ganzheitspsychologie—brought

Culture in Psychology    9

together the developmental perspective with a focus on the primacy of the whole (Gestalt) over its parts (Krueger, 1926). In the local German context of the time, the Ganzheitspsychologie tradition continued the historical regional disputes—Leipzig with Berlin—and was eventually forgotten as the Berlin Gestalt psychology tradition found its place in psychology’s official history. Yet the notion of the primacy of the whole over its parts was by far more inclusive in the Leipzig than in the Berlin tradition. It included the latter, together with two other centrally relevant themes of our contemporary kind—chaos as a form of order (rather than disorder), and the active role of the person who creates psychological order (a Gestalt requires a Gestalt-maker). Perhaps the most important antecedent for contemporary cultural psychologies is the Austrian tradition in psychology that begins with Franz Brentano and was further exemplified by the “Graz School” of Alexius Meinong (cf. Albertazzi, Jacquette, & Poli, 2001). In its basic ideas, Meinong’s construction of ideas had parallels with the Würzburg School (Lindenfeld, 1972) as their focus is on the analysis of the stream of mental processes that are mediated by presentations (Vorstellung). This focus allows the conceptualization of the future-oriented mental functions—expectations of what might happen. This take on coping with uncertainty is crucial for the emergence of cultural forms in phylogeny. The philosophical underpinnings of our focus on dialogical processes in cultural psychology found their basis in the emphasis on presentation (Vorstellung) of objects (Gegenstände). It is the forward-oriented role of human signification—presentation of objects for the immediate future needs—that the Graz School brought to psychology. In its focus on the poly-Gestalt nature of thinking and the active role of the presenter (Albertazzi, 2001) the Meinongian tradition covered conceptual grounds that our contemporary cognitive science is only beginning to conceptualize. All in all, the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries provided psychology with a rich basis for further development of Völkerpsychologie—all four directions mentioned here stressed (a) the nature of higher—complex— psychological processes, which were (b) parts of the language and social rule systems of the persons, and (c) utilized by the persons in active ways in making sense of their experiences. Yet all of these traditions come from the continental European roots—and psychology lost its continuity with these roots by way of its center of intellectual gravity moving to the Anglo-Saxon world due to World War II. Thus, as part of the trans-Atlantic migration of many intellectual traditions, psychology moved out of the philosophical complexity of the German language and learned to “speak English.” Together with this new language came the philosophical assumptions upheld

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by the language users. The orientation towards the whole—the Ganzheit or Gestalt—was lost and replaced by an associations-based world view. Hence the “second coming” of a predecessor to our contemporary cultural psychologies occurred in America—the so-called “culture and personality” tradition (Kluckhohn & Murray, 1948). For about the decade of the 1950s, the questions of culture-bound personality were being asked—is there specific personality for a particular “culture”? is there a “fascist personality”? Cultural anthropologists were interacting with psychologists then to discuss these questions. Social psychology was the area where integration with anthropology could have happened (see Sherif & Sherif, 1957)—yet it did not. By the 1960s, psychology in the U.S. was entering into the phase of defending the ailing complex of “behaviorism” as the supposed bastion of “science,” and even those areas where culture could have been inserted into psychological research became culture-phobic. So—since the 1990s we can observe the efforts to bring culture into the core of psychological science for the third time—over the past 144 years (since 1860). Without doubt, these efforts open new doors for psychologists legitimate research practices—a turn towards the use of qualitative methods is on its way, theoretical schemes used often transcend the limits of psychology (e.g., borrowing concepts from sociology—like habitus, or from literary scholarship like Bakhtinian polyphony—Smolka, 1994). Yet can this—third—effort succeed? Or better—what is necessary for it to succeed? Instead of asking how can cultural psychologies “join in” with current psychology, I would like to address the question—how can psychological science accommodate itself to the phenomenological, methodological, and theoretical demands that the (re)newed cultural psychologies bring to it? But why look at culture at all?

Psychology, Homo Sapiens, and the Inevitability of Culture Psychology as science is necessarily cultural in its core—as long as its object of investigation is the species of Homo sapiens. Members of that species are not merely involved in behaving—they act, construct new meanings, think, develop strategies of coalition making in social units, and feel in ways that are not explainable by the mere escaping from a bear suddenly encountered in a forest. They construct firearms to go hunting for the bears, believe in the powers of weapons of mass destruction—which they condemn, eat with curious attachments to the body (such as chopsticks, forks, knives), turn the freshest—raw—food into cooked, believe in deities and stock markets,

Culture in Psychology    11

and the like. Ever since the first representative of the human species started to behave in such erratic manner, it has been through the construction of life-relevant instrumental artifacts that has allowed the species to survive. Thus, culture as a set of socially created action, feeling, and thinking tools is an evolutionary emergent. But why was its emergence inevitable? Most nonhuman species have been proven to adjust to their environments quite sufficiently without the invention of such special instruments. An answer to this question may be in the realm of increasing variability of the ecological demands, uncertainly of their futures, and—most importantly— perception of such uncertainty of the futures on the basis of experiences of the past. Such perception requires memory functions to link these past experiences with the immediate perception/action field. There is no need to invent any new means to handle the future if the species is well fitted into the environment. The set of environmental demands—be it elaborate and highly complex—guarantees the life needs of the species. This would stay the case even if these demands fluctuate systematically—as any seasonal variation or day/night change does. It is either under conditions of nonsystematic fluctuations of these demands or qualitative escalations in these demands, or both, that the ecological need for invention of cultural tools becomes inevitable. Thus, the roots of emergence of human culture may be looked for in handling very basic processes—such as thermoregulation of the body under unexpected day/night increased variation of ambient temperatures or wandering by the protohominids to terrains where the ground is impassable by barefoot walking. Thus, possibly the invention of blankets and sandals, rather than stone choppers, was the starting point for emergence of culture in protohominids. This must have followed by handling of alimentary uncertainties of the future in terms of cognitive decisions about edibility of different food sources at different stages of their maturation (vegetarian diets) or decay (in meat scavenging). Nonhuman species in their natural habitats are masters of such decisions without any invention of cultural tools—a basic nonlanguage-encoded knowledge base seems sufficient. But note that this latter task—even if it includes dealing with variability (of the maturation and decay)—still is of systemic kind. The fruits do not become overripe (nor the found dead animal meat rotten) in an erratic time schedule.7 Of course there is a long historical distance that Homo sapiens has covered, from the first sandals-wearing early humans to females in highheeled shoes and ritualistically over-reddened lips, or from devouring the unclaimed dead meat in the forest to our concerns about the edibility dates written on frozen meat packages in supermarkets by the owners of the meat who are interested in your money in exchange for such frozen meat-like

12    Beyond the Mind

substance. Yet the nature of cultural phenomena is the same—there is some constructed artifact, tool, or sign that mediates the relation of the human bodily processes with the environment within which the body exists. The double nature of such artifacts is crucial—tools and signs fortify one another and increase the variability of the human psychological system. Making of new tools leads to making of new signification about these tools and their relation with their object of application and to new action plans how to modify the tool. The active human being creates psychological variability even when the environment is set up to make it unlikely—our freedom of imagination we carry with us anywhere we go. The human psychological world is the world of potentially ever-increasable variability of new feelings, thoughts, and actions. Such variability is a necessary result of forward-oriented pre-adaptation efforts of the organism to live within not-yet-known conditions. Human goals-oriented actions in changing their environments set the stage for the increasing uncertainty of the future conditions. The more our species has exercised the efforts to control the ecological conditions of living, the more open to new versions of variation these relations become. By constructing an environmental setting—be it a building or a corner in one’s apartment—persons project into these settings meaning complexes that turn the architectural structures into subjectively functional places (Lang, 1992). Likewise, they turn a current political debate into a passionate personal credo in the name of which they may denounce long-term friends and become vehicles of social action for social institutions. The high variability of meaningful setting-construction is canalized by the directing of human meaning-making activities in socially acceptable directions.8 To summarize: Human beings create meaningfulness in their life worlds—and by doing that they increase the variability—or differentiation—in their relations with their environments. If the latter consists of S different settings, within each of which the person can act in P different ways (where P is at least 1), then adding a set of possible meanings (M) to the actions (P) increases the variability: S x (P x M). The constructing of M to be added to P doubles the variability even if P=1 (e.g., a person acts in setting S in ways P, which could be either “sincere” or “insincere”). If P > 1, or if the range of meanings includes not a discrete set of options but a field of highly nuanced “shades of meaning” (e.g., “probably sincere,” “obviously sincere,” “possibly sincere,” “showing off as if sincere,” “insincere but doesn’t want it”), we get a dramatic increase in the field of possible cultural forms related to the same act in the same setting. Add to this the creation of an increasing number of settings and of action possibilities (called “choices” in our usual speech), and we face a situation where human conduct is characterized by proliferation of infinite number of culturally constructed

Culture in Psychology    13

forms. Variability is the name of the game—and any effort to operate on the basis of reducing it to some aggregated central tendency (average, prototype) misses the very nature of the phenomena we need to study.

What About a Science of Prediction and Control of Behavior? The focus on human culture as a tool puts to rest the oft-quoted explanation of psychology as a science of “prediction” and “control” of behavior. Or—more precisely—it shows how such definition itself is an act of cultural desperation—an effort to develop a tool (science) that can handle the everproliferating variability. We can rephrase the explanation of psychology, with rather interesting result—psychology is the science of the prediction of the unpredictable, of the control of the uncontrollable, and of the detection of whatever “behavior” may be taken to mean. This alternative look at psychology may look like a joke—but unfortunately it is not. The problem for psychology as science is the reality of high variability in its phenomena and the open-endedness of cultural construction of tools and meanings. If psychology is to be a science of prediction and control processes—of thinking, feeling, and acting—then cultural psychologies become the core of such science. It is not the outcomes of “prediction and control” but the processes through which these outcomes are attempted to be reached, that constitute the core of the investigation. These processes in human species are signification processes—meaningmaking is the main realm of human efforts to control their relations with their worlds.

Implications for Research Process: Mutuality of Meaning Construction The focus on human psychological pre-adaptation as based on signification (sign construction) renders the procedures psychologists use in their research and clinical work as mutual meaning construction contexts. There can be no inherently “neutral stimulus” in the process of any research encounter; even if the stimulus is made to be that at the outset (e.g., “nonsense syllables” in classic memory experiments), it ceases to be that the moment the subject begins to do anything with it (e.g., makes an effort to memorize “nonsense syllables,” projecting into them meaningful memorizing tactics). In sum, the researcher inevitably changes the phenomenon under study—as any “administration of the research procedures” is also a trigger for construction of some new meaning on the side of the subject (“How

14    Beyond the Mind

satisfied are with your X?”—“if she is asking X it implies I should pay attention to X”). Psychological research follows the lead of the classic “Achilles and tortoise” paradox where the obviously speedier human cannot overtake the slowly moving animal. The set-up of directed meaning starts from formulating a research question and the feed-forward of its formulation to the everyday life of future subjects. For instance, studying persons who are considered to be “at risk” for something—and in modern world we are all “at risk” for something9—leads to the proliferation of the notion of “being at risk” in the society’s common sense, with potentials for self-fulfilling prophecies. How can human beings communicate if their cultural organization entails proliferation of differences? The handling the high variability in communication is made possible by meta-level implicit assumptions—implicit, illusory, contracts—that treat the high variability as if it did not exist. Communication entails the creation of illusion of similarity of perspectives—illusory intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1992). Such intersubjectivity is needed as a frame within which the participants try to establish some version or real intersubjectivity. The reliance upon a state of shared illusory intersubjectivity is encoded into the researchersubject relationship in the process of responding to any kind of questionnaire or standardized personality inventory. This is evident in the ease with which subjects in personality studies can quickly give simple answers to very complex questions (Valsiner, Diriwächter & Sauck, 2004)—for instance, a somewhat usual MMPI (or any other personality inventory) item “I frequently have to fight against showing that I am bashful” is more than a mere statement a person can easily endorse or reject (“true” versus “false” forced choice), or even rate its truthfulness on a rating scale. To give a quick answer (“true” or “false”) to such a complex question is possible only if some meta-contract of superficially quick answering style is established—the researcher and subject play a game in which the researcher can ask any complex question and the subject give any first answer that comes to mind (illusory intersubjectivity). Neither of the two are eager to go in depth of pondering of what “bashful” or “frequently” mean in this sentence, and what is the basis for the leading suggestion that the person “has to fight against” it—in the realm of “showing” (versus “being”). What for personality researchers has been an unproblematic issue10—the complexity of meanings of items included in personality questionnaires—becomes a major obstacle for making sense of human personality as a complex of personal self-referential meanings.

Culture in Psychology    15

Making of a New Psychology: Methodological Directions All this complex set of phenomena—proliferation of high variability of meaningful forms by persons, and efforts to limit that variability by social orders—leads the science of psychology to the question of how one can study complex psychological issues. Cultural psychologies of our time are perhaps at the forefront of the efforts to address that issue. As a newly rediscovered topical area of vast width, it cannot show internal inconsistency—to endorse the notion of variability in its fascination with phenomena—and yet proceed along the lines of traditional study of central tendencies. The third attempt—after the failures if the late 19th and mid-20th century—of bringing the notion of culture into psychology can succeed if psychology’s general methodological scope is reexamined.

Science Is One, and It Is Universal Despite taking different forms—some European, some North-American—cultural psychologies are unified as being a part of science. In its ideal form, science has no nation boundaries. There is no separate “American psychology,” “Australian psychology,” “Russian psychology,” “indigenous psychology,” and the like, but one general science that benefits from the work of scientists in any country. Yet such an ideal is far from being a reality in psychology where the sociopolitical power structures either explicitly (by direct imposition of some classificatory scheme from one country to another—e.g., APA telling clinical psychology programs in Canada to emphasize “cultural minorities” and evaluate these programs based on their inclusion of such “minorities”) or implicitly monopolize the given discipline. In its history, psychology has moved from European to North American dominance—with the latter resisting internationalization of the discipline’s investigative practices at equal terms. Yet it is precisely that restoration of international nature of the knowledge creation enterprise that brings psychology back from having become a social tool of any country’s dominance over another on the epistemic markets of sciences to the universal domain of knowing (Wissenschaft). Cultural psychology—a (re)new(ed) direction at the intersection of social and developmental psychology on the one hand, and cultural anthropology on the other—is one of our contemporary efforts to break out of the closed circle of national dominance fights in psychology. Its emergence was prepared by the transposition of traditional empirical research on group comparisons to include materials from different societies. At the present time, cultural psychology has moved in a direction that is open

16    Beyond the Mind

to new theoretical models and to integration of approaches with cultural anthropology, social and developmental psychology, history, and sociology.

Variability of Psychological Forms Is the Center of Inquiry Cultural psychologies have rediscovered the prevalence of variability of phenomena in psychology. True—variability exists in behavioral phenomena (as well as in physiological, and genomic phenomena) on a large scale and does not require any cultural psychology to bring it to be the center of our attention. Yet the rigidity of psychology’s methodological imperatives of the past five decades made it not possible to rediscover variability—a new, qualitatively oriented and context-appreciative perspective could do it, being free of the conceptual blinders. And, as stated above, the cultural nature of human psychological processes leads to the growth of the variability. The focus on variability has become crucial in a number of areas of psychology, other than cultural. There has been a major breakthrough in look at variability in psychometrics. Treatment of interindividual variability as if it were isomorphic with intraindividual variability has been proven inadequate in mathematical terms (Molenaar, Huizinga, & Nesselroade, 2002). The implications of such proof for practices of research are profound— large sample sizes become irrelevant, and the focus will be on the intraindividual (i.e., temporal and cross-contextual) variability in the psychological phenomena. The centrality of the individual subject—rather than sample (from a population)—becomes reinstated in contemporary psychology (Lamiell, 2003). While these breakthroughs come from developmental and personality psychology, as well as from psychometrics, they set the stage for cultural psychologies. It is obvious that it is the individual person—in one’s social surroundings—who creates ever-new meanings in one’s facing of the future situations. Furthermore, the individual person is involved in dialogical selforganization (Marková, 1990) and his or her conduct is innovative as play (Köpping, 1997). The increased intrasystemic variability in cultural-psychological phenomena leads to the need to look at the dynamic hierarchical self-regulation of the psychological processes. Here, cultural psychologies transcend the simple hierarchical structure—of “lower” and “higher” (volitional) psychological functions that come from the “Würzburg tradition” through Lev Vygotsky’s and Alexander Luria’s cultural-historical perspective as an intermediary. It becomes replaced by multilevel self-regulatory hierarchy of cultural organizers—both in the intrapersonal (mental) and interpersonal domains. The question of organization of cultural-psychological

Culture in Psychology    17

systems is parallel to the problems facing modern genetics: how to find the regulatory hierarchies in gene-to-gene interaction. In the human cultural-psychological system, different levels of cultural organizers set the stage for both stability and modifiability of the personal psychological system. Different forms of sign hierarchies—transitive and intransitive—coexist in the psychological systems and dynamically adjust to changing circumstances: A transitive hierarchy

An intransitive hierarchy

Value A

Value A

Belief B

Belief B

Action C

Action C

While a transitive hierarchy (A > B > C and no C > A) entails the fixity of an existing psychological system, the intransitive hierarchy (which is practically a cycle within which “dominance relation” literally wanders across levels: A > B > C > A . . . etc.) represents the dynamics of such relation. Intransitive hierarchies are found in human projective cycles of agents of control into the environment (e.g., the “paradoxical” power roles of the devadasi in Hindu temples—Valsiner, 1996b; the role of making of “external control agencies” in person-centered psychotherapy—Valsiner, 1999). Intransitive (circular) hierarchies of cultural organizers are adaptive to dynamically changing environments. Yet the contrast between transitive and intransitive cultural regulatory schemes is only that of two kinds of stabilities—static (deductive, transitive) and dynamic (intransitive). The crucial feature of pre-adaptation of the regulatory hierarchies is the possibility of transformation of either of these into an open-ended structure. Consider change in a transitive hierarchy: Value A

alter value?

Belief B

alter belief?

Action C

IMPLICATION?

No change

By way of implications of C—which are not allowed in case of transitive hierarchy, and which are automatized in case of its intransitive counterpart (where C > A is set to be in place)—the open-ended cultural regulation

18    Beyond the Mind

hierarchy entails a decision domain where the implications of each experience are preemptively constructed. That domain operates as a kind of “conservative filter”—mostly attenuating or eliminating the impacts of the lived-through experiences (No change), but also allowing for alterations at higher levels of the hierarchy. This decision domain can be characterized as probabilistic11 or as an “attractor ruin” (attractor that has become disintegrated) in terms of dynamic systems theory. It is on the basis of forwardoriented constraining of the trajectories of itinerant attractors based on the previous uncertainty zones of attractors (“attractor ruins”) that novelty emerges in the dynamic systems (Valsiner, 2002, Figure 7). Empirical investigations of human life-course development can provide rich evidence for the transformations in the cultural regulator hierarchies. The crucial moment is the emergence of doubt to enter into a hierarchical relation. A closed cycle may become open in ways unexpected to the participants—the present of an encyclopedia by a well-meaning relative to a girl growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family may lead to a sequence of transitions in the personal world of the girl, culminating in the exit from the background family’s social organization (Lawrence, Benedikt, & Valsiner, 1992). Given the possibility for the decision domain to move into a state of doubt (and potential downfall of the previous organizational order), it is of no surprise that political and religious social institutions or any authority-maintaining social power source do their utmost to prevent the transformation of closed (strict, or circular) hierarchies into open ones. The potential “dangers of doubting” as precursors for development is certainly recognized by agents whose goals include resistance to any change in the presently established social or psychological order. Hence the issue of functioning of cultural regulatory hierarchies entails a strategic moment—human beings act in ways as to preemptively block (or enhance) “doubt zones” in one’s feelings, reasoning, or in negotiations between persons, social interest groups, and countries. The images of desired future states lead the meaning-making efforts. This kind of discursive practice can entail much more than mere interaction or “exchange of information” (of what already is known); its major role is to guide the person (or social organism of higher order—group, community, etc.) towards selective attending and acting towards future expected experiences. What is happening in the cultural regulation HERE-AND-NOW operates in the function of being ready for possible future conditions of THERE-AND-THEN. Human cultural organization implies psychological distancing. Psychological distancing always includes the context within which the person is, and in relation to which the distancing takes place. It takes the form of “I reflect upon this context in which I am a part.” This reflection—which is cognitive

Culture in Psychology    19

and affective at the same time—allows the psychological system to consider contexts of the past, imagine contexts of the future, and take perspectives of other persons (in the form of empathy). We have reached a peculiar point in this exposition: From a wide open field of various cultural psychologies and their recurrent histories, we come to the subclass of those that emphasize the central role of the person in integrating the myriad of life experiences while facing the future. The future is moved towards from an intentional basis—persons set themselves goals, orient towards different possible futures, and so on. The long-discredited concept in psychology—the personal will—becomes an inevitable link between person and the social world. Personal will can be viewed as a generalized semiotic operator that provides generic orientation of the self towards the future, selectively highlighting some aspects of the present. When viewed from this angle, culture (as the system of semiotic operators) guarantees that any person would be ready to resist and counteract social suggestions (and disconfirmation of beliefs) by the environment. Culture makes persons free from the demands of the immediate social environments—and thus makes them dependent upon the personally created meanings that have created that freedom.

Acknowledgments My gratitude goes to the University of Melbourne for the opportunity to give this inaugural lecture and to return to Melbourne to enjoy its ambience. Jeanette Lawrence and Agnes Dodds have over years helped my thinking by providing it with careful, humorous, and constructive guidance. Ideas expressed in this lecture have been fermenting in the context of the “Kitchen Seminar” at Clark—a weekly meeting of interested people who discuss constructive ideas rather than politics. Most particularly, the evolutionary slant in the present lecture owes to interactions with Nicholas Thompson, a fellow anarchist, and to Gilbert Gottlieb at the Center of Developmental Science of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Notes 1. The First Brotherton Lecture School of Behavioural Sciences, University of Melbourne, March, 18, 2004. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. In addition—let me question the issue of why psychology is myopic to its own social roles within a given society. I have yet to find a psychology department

20    Beyond the Mind

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

in the world that would include seminars on the social role of psychologists within their society—the applied sociology of science seems to have escaped our attention. Many of them published by SAGE in London. The sociopolitical contexts of the world at large cannot be left unmentioned as possible catalyzers of that tendency: globalization disputes, the challenges of multilingualism in countries filling up with immigrants or guest workers— would bring the theme of “cultural differences” to the discourses in various corridors of social powers. I differ from the people who consider high rejection rate an indicator of the quality of the journal. Instead of viewing this result in a self-congratulatory way, I wonder why so many people send in insufficiently scholarly manuscripts and fail to understand that (re)introduction of the notion of culture into psychology is a deep intellectual project that is likely to lead to reorganization of the discipline’s methodology at its very base (Valsiner, 1997). Nonhuman species have meaning construction codes that can be considered presemiotic—see Von Uexküll (1980). Such codes may be sufficient for the immediate—intuitive—handling of the here-and-now decision-making situations but are insufficient for considering multiple possibilities in future-oriented decision making of preplanning kind. Included among those are both positively and negatively valued directions. Thus, a society guides some persons—and successfully—towards taking on the roles of “criminals,” “delinquents,” “patients,” “terrorists,” “enemies,” and the like in order to build up its own action schemes using such designated symbolic agents as the targets of their actions. A society in which suddenly all “criminals” were to vanish would be in a social turmoil—since the whole set of social system that deals with these opponents of law and order becomes unnecessary. Hence there is a social need for recurrent symbolic construction of socially legitimate “antisocial” roles. Except for “being at risk” for not “being at risk.” In modern societies, a stand that would block the openness to “at risk” designations would not be socially approved, as it neutralizes the mechanisms for creating social panics. Note the importance of generating rhetorical panics for the purposes of unifying mass audiences—markets—for the adoption of commercially available tools and symbols for “overcoming” the “at risk” status. In order to create a legitimate context for new cultural tools, their function has to be symbolically set up—and for such purposes, symbolic designation of “risk” is a mechanism of social innovation (see further Heyman, 2004a, 2004b) Within the tradition of building personality questionnaires, that issue has been avoided by the belief in accumulation of the numbers of endorsements of groups of items that generally converge to some meta-meaning (“social introversion,” “neuroticism,” etc.). The absence of clear links (other than statistical ones) between the item meanings and these meta-level meanings is part of the meta-contract accepted by researchers. Out of the three probability notions—subjective, propensity, and frequentist— only the first two are applicable here. Frequentist probability that is based on

Culture in Psychology    21 the accumulated past history of events is by itself inconsequential for future— except when it is turned into a subjective probability estimate.

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Molenaar, P. C. M., Huizinga, H. M., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2002). The relationship between the structure of inter-individual and intra-individual variability. In U. Staudinger & U. Lindenberger (Eds.), Understanding human development (pp. 339–360). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Klüwer. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. H. Wold (Ed.), The dialogical alternative: Towards a theory of language and mind (pp. 19–44). Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press. Sherif, M., & Sherif, C. W. (1957). Social psychology. New York, NY: Holt. Shotter, J. (1990). Knowing of the third kind. Utrecht, The Netherlands: ISOR Simon, H. (1999). Karl Duncker and cognitive science. From Past to Future, 1(2), 1–11. Smolka, A. L. B. (1994). Discourse practices and the issue of internalization. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Explorations in socio-cultural studies. Vol. 2. Historical and theoretical discourse (pp. 75–84). Madrid, Spain: Fundación Infancia y Aprendizaje Stigler, J., Shweder, R. A., & Herdt, G. (Eds.). (1990). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Valsiner, J. (1995). Editorial: Culture and Psychology. Culture & Psychology, 1(1), 5–10. Valsiner, J. (1996a). Editorial: After the first year. Culture & Psychology, 2(1), 5–8. Valsiner, J. (1996b). Devadasi temple dancers and cultural construction of persons-in-society. In M. K. Raha (Ed.), Dimensions of human society and culture (pp. 443–476). New Delhi, India: Gyan Publishing House. Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1998). The pleasure of thinking: A glimpse into Karl Bühler’s life. From Past to Future: Clark Papers on the History of Psychology, 1(1), 15–35. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26–30. Valsiner, J. (2001). The first six years: Culture’s adventures in psychology. Culture & Psychology, 7(1), 5–48. Valsiner, J. (2002, October). The concept of attractor: How dynamic systems theory deals with future. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Ghent, Belgium. Valsiner, J. (2003). Culture and its transfer: Ways of creating general knowledge through the study of cultural particulars. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online readings in psychology and culture (Unit 2, Chapter 12). Bellingham, WA: Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University. Retrieved from http://www.wwu. edu/~culture

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2 Science of Psychology Today Future Horizons1 Jaan Valsiner2

心理学の新しい地平線 ‘Shinrigaku no atarashii chiheisen’

Abstract Science of psychology is in an ambiguous state ever since its beginning. It has developed along two parallel trajectories over the 20th century—the “American” line of quantitative study of elementary behaviors, and the “continental European” orientation towards qualitative wholes and their relations with their parts (Toomela, 2007). Any science develops through careful investigation of the phenomena under study, together with the advancement of high-level abstract generalizations. Psychology is at the doorstep of a major breakthrough as its new focus emerges through unity of general theories in conjunction with new ways of the generation of the data. What is a psychological fact becomes a central question for the development of science. While the American line has largely dominated psychology and led it to considering statistically analyzed data to count as “facts” in science, it is the continental Beyond the Mind, pages 25–48 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

25

26    Beyond the Mind European line that is beginning to re-establish its central role as it focuses on qualitative perspectives, study of complex dynamic phenomena, and investigation of emerging histories of human life courses (TEM—trajectory equifinality model—developed by Tatsuya Sato). New forms of qualitative mathematics are becoming available for the social scientists to replace the intellectual impasse of reliance on statistical techniques that have failed to adequately represent the phenomena. Psychology in the 21st century is likely to follow the path of investigation of human experiencing that unfolds in time and in culturally structured contexts. The irrelevance of much of present-day psychology to human lives comes from its emphasis on mechanical aspects of reactivity to the neglect of man’s wider experiences, his aspirations, and his incessant endeavour to master and to mould his environment. —Gordon Allport (1967, p. 23)

Psychology struggles with its self-identity. It tries hard to live up to the standards of science—imported from other sciences—and resists the ephemeral nature of its own phenomena. Our real psychological experience is that of the fullness of feeling, thinking, and acting as we are—here and now. These phenomena are rapid (emerge and vanish at an instant), multilayered (as they include metalevel reflexivity), and collective (individuals—be they persons or representatives of animal species—are embedded in a wider social network). Furthermore, the psychological phenomena of here-and-now (acting, feeling, and thinking) are guided by their histories (through memory) and anticipations of the future (goal setting and actions towards future objectives). None of this is new in psychology—the focus on human deeply subjective experience was there at the times when psychology as an independent branch of Wissenschaft3 was born out of philosophy and physiology in the late 19th century. The philosophies of Henri Bergson, Kitaro Nishida, and William Stern created a fruitful framework for the science of psychology to proceed—yet it failed to do so in the direction of making sense of human experience. For example, it has taken a full century for psychology to (re)start asking questions about “psychology of well-being” (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwartz, 2003)—a very vague and subjective general everyday term. Of course the subjectivity of “well-being” is accessible through introspection, which was discredited in early 20th century. Psychology seems to take on most interesting phenomena—then turns these into most uninventive forms of data (quantified signs)—and then laments about the lack of its own understanding of the complexities of the phenomena. How can a new science of the human souls be so self-denying?

Science of Psychology Today    27

How Insisting on the Purity of the Scientific Method Defies Wissenschaft The paradox of psychology as science—desiring to be that, and insisting upon “the scientific method” haunts psychology over the 20th century. In some sense, psychology can be viewed as a “Puritan science”—where much ideological discourse has been devoted to social positioning of oneself within some general perspective designated by an -ism (mentalism, behaviorism, cognitivism, interactionism, transactionism, socioculturalism, and even humanism!) and setting up socially normative prescriptions for the methods through which “scientific facts” are produced. The -isms have been fighting one another for dominance in the field—leading from the “Era of Behaviorism” to the “Cognitivism Restoration,” and to further eras. Yet the basic knowledge resulting from these ideologically positioned perspectives advances slowly, in a nonlinear way. We may know less about some aspect of the human psyche in the beginning of the technologically advanced 21st century than we knew 50 or 100 years before. The phenomena of personal experiences of living—the focus of Gordon Allport quoted in the beginning of this chapter—may be a good example. Psychology’s traditional methodology since the “Era of Behaviorism” has been ill-prepared to study the phenomena of personal experiencing. The normative purification of “the scientific method”—freeing it from the richness of the phenomena—has contributed to our poverty of Wissenschaft. Psychologists’ “measure” some psychological characteristics—ironically, the “measurement” of various psychological features of human beings— personality and the like—is seen as a contribution to science, while the phenomena—temporary, never to repeat themselves—and acts of conduct are let to escape the sieve of psychology’s research instruments. A “standardized method” collects answers from respondents that are immediately decontextualized—hence losing their psychological specificity. Seemingly such methods “gather facts”—but that is precisely a problem. In general terms, psychology lacks a clear understanding of what a fact is—how it is created and how solidly it stands within the ocean of alternative interpretations.

A Semiotic Perspective: Facts Are Signs Fact is not a given (“true”) entity, but knowledge that has been created at the intersection of the object of study and the subject who studies the object. As such, what is constructed out of the object of investigation as a fact is a sign—some meaning that stands for some aspect of reality. Yet “facts”— in contrast to other signs—are presented as if they were “the truth.” Yet

28    Beyond the Mind

in psychology there is no “truth” outside of context-dependency that the sociocultural paradigms have emphasized in recent decades, and that was prominent already in Gordon Allport’s personality theory in the 1930s (Allport, 1937). Let us consider the most obvious (and widely accepted) notion—is a behavior a fact? A behaves towards B in way X: A man bites into an ice cream A dog bites into the calf of a man A dog bites another dog A small puppy (dog) bites its mother (dog) A small child bites the nipple of his mother A mosquito bites all of the above (except for the ice cream) These are all examples of similar behavior—biting—done by different agents to others. Yet in our “making of the facts” out of these behaviors we use different frames of meaning that we apply. Thus, the frame of eating might make the ice cream-eating man and the man-eating mosquito doing “the same thing” (eating), while the offspring’s biting of their mothers is another “same thing” (playing) rather than the “fight” of the two dogs. Furthermore—is absence of a particular behavioral act itself a behavior? During my visit to the Kyoto Primate Center in 2004, while observing an experiment carried out on chimpanzee cognition, I tried to remain passive in the background (with the assumption that my sociality towards the chimp could interfere with the experiment). The chimpanzee tried hard to get my attention (yet I kept up my nonresponse) and after a while moaned and spat in my direction. Only later did it reach my Western scientific mind that within the “Kyoto tradition” of chimpanzee research all “social others”—experimenters, visitors, and so on—are viewed as natural environment in the Center. Hence my nonbehavior was interpreted—by the chimpanzee—as very impolite behavior (and responded to appropriately). Yet my nonbehavior became behavior through the act of interpretation—by the chimpanzee—of my part in the given environment. Furthermore—the presence of “zero signifiers” in human communication (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1994) shows how nonevents are as much meaningful (or more) than events. Psychology as long declared—in North America—as “the study of behavior” has thus missed its own target. So—facts are not “givens” as such, they are facts only as they are interpreted to be such. They acquire their “truth value” in that process of interpretive fact-making. Facts—in semiotic sense—are signs that stand for something else. When I look at the outside thermometer on my window and see that the

Science of Psychology Today    29

temperature has fallen under 0 degrees Celsius, I have a background system that makes this number a fact. For 0 degrees on the Kelvin scale I have no comparable fact-making system. Nor would I comprehend the notion that a particular star is 500 light-years away from the Earth. This may be true— hence a fact within the system of astrophysical measurements—yet for my personal fact-making universe it is outside of my imagination. Hence, facts are signs that are treated as if they were true. As long as there is no “fact-defining framework” constructed around such fact-making, they are ambiguous. Miracles are events treated as facts within a particular belief system (Josephs & Valsiner, 1999). Once such framework is given—through hypergeneralized semiotic fields (Valsiner, 2005a)—they become “facts” (for the believers) and puzzles or impossibilities for the others. The processes of “fact making” are well described in the classic study of When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956) and remain visible to us in our daily lives when we look at the TV news from far-away corners of the world.

Data as Signs: Signifying What? Data are signs (Valsiner, 2000). In psychology there is a tendency to generate quantitative data—signs that take the form of real numbers. The scientific nature of data is often viewed as a result of “assigning numbers” to phenomena. These numbers—once assigned—begin to “live a life of their own” in ever-complex data analysis systems. For example—you ask me “how much do you like X” and give me a 7-point scale from “not at all” to “very much,” with equal intervals marked on a linear line: Is psychology a science telling us about the human soul? Not at all

Very much 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

As you can see, this task is a deeply confusing one. At the manifest content level it seems straightforward—we (as psychologists) probably have a clear generalized picture in our minds what PSYCHOLOGY AS SCIENCE is. Furthermore, as human beings and as psychologists we probably have some perspective on what the HUMAN SOUL is—and how we connect it (or refuse to connect it) with SCIENCE. Yet these are general—vague and unspecific—terms of many meanings possible. Each of us would have our own—so comparison of your answer with mine should be in principle impossible. Yet in psychology we assume that a similar mark on such a linear scale represents similar psychological realities.

30    Beyond the Mind

Further confusion is added to the task by quantification—pre-assuming the linearity of the scale and the equality of units. A mark at 5 is supposed to be at the same distance from one at 4, as a mark at 3 is from 2. Our deeply subjective meaning construction about psychology as science and its representation of the soul is pressured here into a pseudo-quantified framework. There is no psychological reality in a mark “5” outside of the process by which I could bring myself to put a mark on that location. The rating is not a fact—but an artifact.4 It has no interpretability outside of the unique process that created it. Yet—as it happens in psychology—rating scale data are treated as if they represent something—analyzed under such assumptions (see further Wagoner & Valsiner, 2005). The data are deeply ideological—in the sense of their dependence upon the interpretation framework: Behind psychological research exists an ideological support structure. By this I mean a discipline-wide, shared system of beliefs which, while it may not be universal, maintains both the dominant methodological practices and the content of the dominant methodological educational programmes. This ideological support structure is manifest in three ways: in the contents of textbooks; in the contents of methodology courses; and in the research programmes of psychologists. In the case of measurement in psychology this ideological support structure works to prevent psychologists from recognizing otherwise accessible methodological facts relevant to their research. (Michell, 1997, p. 374, emphasis added)

Rephrasing Smedslund’s (1997) critique—psychology is ideologically pseudoempirical. Its social norms require obtaining “facts” (data) derived from the phenomena, their analyses within a prescribed normative framework, and their interpretation within a seemingly universal framework that still provides hard times for use in far-from-laboratory conditions.

Distance from the Phenomena Created by the Data Whether the data construction is quantitative or qualitative, it entails distancing of the researcher’s experience from the immediate experience with the phenomena for the sake of arriving at the power of abstractive generalizations. In this sense, data are facts (signs) that are impoverished in relation to the phenomena of their origin and not yet empowered by the act of abstractive generalization. There are three directions in the transformation of phenomena into data that guarantee the artifactual status of the latter: Eliminating the dynamic flow of the phenomena in the data Eliminating the hierarchical order (part  whole relations) in the transformation of phenomena into data

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Eliminating the immediate context of the phenomenon in its transformation into data. Each of these elimination strategies blocks the movement of Wissenschaft into some area. The elimination of evidence about the dynamic flow of phenomena in the data has blocked the advancement of developmental science for about a century (Cairns, 1998). The elimination of hierarchical order has made it difficult to handle issues of complexity. The elimination of context has led psychology to overlook the social nature of psychological phenomena. Given all these obstacles to knowledge, it is obvious that the key to further breakthroughs in psychology is in the domain of general methodology—the cyclical relation of all features of generating new knowledge (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). In Figure 2.1 we can observe a model of such cyclical relation. Obviously, psychology in the 21st century has much to learn from its own history—especially from the failures of the discipline to capture the crucial phenomena of human existence. It has been criticized for its pseudo-empiricism (Smedslund, 1997)—proving by empirical studies what is already known through the implications of the common language. Smedslund’s suggestion of replacement of the inductive generalization strategy with its deductive counterpart would restore general focus to otherwise “facts-driven” area of psychology. Yet it would not be sufficient—since generation of new knowledge is an abductive (i.e., neither inductive nor deductive, but synthetic) enterprise. Abductive synthesis—the only kind that can create new ideas (Peirce, 1935, CP 2.777)—entails a qualitative “jump” beyond what is known inductively and what is assumed deductively. The issue of synthesis is a conceptual theme at which psychology has arrived a Assumptions About the World

Theory

Intuitive Experiencing by the scientist

Phenomena

Method

Data

Figure 2.1  The Methodology Cycle (after Branco and Valsiner, 1997).

32    Beyond the Mind

number of times—from Wundt, Baldwin, Piaget, Krueger, and Vygotsky to contemporary builders of neural networks—yet it has not been resolved.

Psychology as a Migrant—Consequences of History The center of where the “core” of psychology as science is located has been moving over the history of the discipline. While acquiring its independence in Germany (and in German) around 1870s, it has been exported from Europe in all directions. As a consequence of the historical turmoils of World War II, psychology’s center of activities had moved to North America. Of course the move out of the German language room to the Anglo-Saxon chapel of cultural heritance started already after World War I and progressed slowly (but surely). The applied entrepreneurship in North America in the 1920s was a ground for extended proliferation of psychological techniques in social practices—something that in the inflation-ridden Weimar Germany or ideologically volatile Russia in the 1920s could not easily happen.5 The ideas—which usually are creative under ideological and economic stress—flourished in Europe in the 1920s, but applied practices developed in the United States. The migration of a critical mass of psychologists from Europe to North America after 1933 was not the first trans-Atlantic migration of the discipline. This had happened before—at the end of the 19th century (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000). Yet the first migration was by a dominant perspective that the North American self-liberating intellectual world accepted as something to follow. This led to adaptation of European ideas to North American socio-moral contexts (Dolby, 1977)—yet with preservation of the centrality of the German language in philosophical6 and psychological discourses. America at the turn of the 20th century was a novice in psychology—learning from the Germans (and in German). Yet that learning soon took a practical turn— under the influence of pragmatism (Valsiner, 2000). The second migration in the 1930s was very different. The European migrants were powerless—having lost their university positions in Europe, they had hard times getting into the academic establishment in the United States, despite their American colleagues’ efforts to help. The United States was in deep recession after 1929, and the antiforeigner feelings that usually go together with economic downturns were high. The applied orientation of psychology had developed rapidly in the 1920s and framed the expectations for psychology in the 1930s. Theoretical pursuits were clearly secondary to social practices, and Central European academics had to survive under these flop-sided social demands.7

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Migration of Ideas—and the Opportunities for Psychology in Japan Migration results in all kinds of adaptation issues. Migrants can be seen as maintaining their habits of origin while under “assimilation pressures” from the receiving social context—or, just the opposite, show a pattern of hyperassimilation. Can we find impact of the second trans-Atlantic migration (Europe to North America) in the ways in which psychology operates now? Is psychology operating under the influence of some dominant extrascientific agenda that is a result of such migration? Frequent stories—often laments—about the dominance of “American psychology” all over the world seem to point in that direction. Yet I would argue that there are two partners in a dance (even if one leads the other)—so if there is an effect of the “other,” there has to be an accepting recipient—or a partner—in that act of influence. The history of psychology in Japan is of particular interest from this perspective. Japan—for long time a country closed to foreigners until 1870s— became a place of active import of the newly established discipline from both Europe—the place of its origin—and the United States (where the European traditions were already being transformed by local social demands). Yet it was both the holistic direction from Germany (the Gestalt impact) and the American imports that reached Japan (Sato et al., 2007). Japan had no fixed alternative of its own—so its import created (and keeps creating) a complex arena for both imitation of others’ practices as well as for serious innovation. As Miki Takasuna has argued, “Japanese culture has some unfixed boundaries, which correlates well to the scientific methods and premises required by both [the scientific methods and the culture]” (2007, p. 91). I cover some of these potentials elsewhere (Valsiner, 2008). It is a very interesting historical experiment in the making to see in which ways subareas of psychology in Japan emerge in leadership roles in the world. Once technology makers in Japan have succeeded in that—then why not knowledge makers? Yet such examples of success—when found—are necessarily surrounded by similar examples of nonsuccess. The latter—through imitating others’ successes in a fixed way—participate in the blocking of the development of psychology’s knowledge base. Science’s movement to develop Wissenschaft are uneven, and multiple.

Contrasting Methodological Trajectories Aaro Toomela (2007) has recently brought to our attention the development of psychology in the second half of the 20th century along two

34    Beyond the Mind

trajectories—the North American and the German-Austrian methodological orientations. Based on the analysis of these two trajectories already back in the 1930s, Toomela points out the intellectual impasse of the dominance of the quantitatively oriented North American trajectory: Last 60 years in psychological research have given us thousands, perhaps even millions, of ways how to predict statistically one psychological variable by way of another. At the same time, many fundamental questions have even not been asked because of limited methodological thinking. We still find “objective” scores without knowing how many different psychological mechanisms may underlie the same score. We do not know how psychological aspect of experimental conditions may have contributed to study results. Study of fragments gives very little to understanding of a human person as a whole. . . . Statistical probabilistic prediction has become an end goal of studies even though most of the thinking and insight should begin where the science of mainstream psychology seems to end now. (Toomela, 2007, p. 18, emphasis added)

We can perhaps create a parallel to HIV in the biological world in the form of IIDS (“intellectual immune deficiency syndrome”). Like in the breakdown of biological immunity, the migration of dominant ideas— propagated with a missionary kind of fervor—may break down the natural intellectual immune system of thinkers in another society. For instance— the axiomatic acceptance of quantification as the guarantor of objectivity in psychology8 is possible only if the natural intuitive anti-position “but the psychological phenomena as I experience them are all qualitative” is weakened, or blocked (Brower, 1949, p. 326, emphasis added). The person stops trusting his or her own introspection about psychological matters— and adopts the authoritative discourse from a (translated) introductory textbook! How is that possible? Science—as a category—is a new invention: The word scientist in the English language (in contrast with artist) was introduced as late as in 1834 by William Whewell (Yeo, 1986, p. 273). By differentiating the words the nature of the socially constructed activity also changed—introducing the “subjectivity” (of art) versus “objectivity” (of science) dichotomy. That dichotomy is of course very unrealistic in the lives of persons who work in science, and is not present in other languages in similar strict form (e.g., German Wissenschaft—knowing—does not entail such strict dichotomy). Thus, through English becoming the medium of international communication in science, the discourses about science are guided in directions that mask the actual deeply human ways of acting in the knowledge construction process (Knorr Cetina, 1999). The three components—the utopia of creating “better, cumulative knowledge,” the meanings of knowledge for persons,

Science of Psychology Today    35

and the critical (deconstructive) look at their relations (Teo, 1999)—have created a discourse style about science that may bring out the current impasses—yet without constructive innovation. However, a whole range of our contemporary scientific acts are on their way to reconstructing psychology. A major break is slowly moving into contemporary psychology—abandoning the assumption that scientific evidence in psychology is necessarily (and automatically) quantitative: There are many spheres of human behavior concerned with the production of cultural products in which any investigation that sidesteps the content of these products neglects an important (if not the most important) feature of the behavior. The most glaring example, of course, is the phenomenon of meaning, not just linguistic meaning, but meaning in all forms of symbolism. (Michell, 2004, p. 316)

Since meaning-making is the most central human psychological process, we find ourselves in a situation where quantification is an operation the use of which in the psychological science needs to be first proven— rather than accepted automatically, without doubt, as a scientific given. What is becoming very clear is that psychology needs first to resolve the metatheoretical issues of what kind of generalized knowledge is adequate for its Wissenschaft. How would that happen? We can currently observe increased interest in qualitative methodology (for closest overview, see Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, n.d.). The “qualitative turn” is to be expected, since psychology deals with structured wholes—and their dynamic transformation (Valsiner, 2005c). There is a search for new formal models for complex processes—like that of the developmental logic (“genetic logic”) of James Mark Baldwin from years 1906–1915 (Valsiner, 2009) is a new challenge for the field—first of all within the traditions of developmental science (Cairns, Elder, & Costello, 1996). The issue at stake is the parts  whole relationship (as a unified structure) and its transformation— developing further the notion of Gestalt levels that Christian von Ehrenfels introduced to psychology from the 1890s onwards (von Ehrenfels, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c). New horizons—which are sometimes new ways of returning to selected previously used ideas—are currently in the making.

Horizon One: Future in Hierarchically Structured and Dynamic Views A new era in psychology is opened by return to the issues that had remained unsolved by the first independent (from philosophy and physiology)

36    Beyond the Mind

psychologists—Wilhelm Wundt, Franz Brentano, Moritz Lazarus, Heyman Steinthal, William James, James Mark Baldwin, and others. All of them— in their distinctly individual ways—tried to make sense of various levels of human psychological functions—lower, and higher (volitional)—and their embeddedness in their cultural environments. These efforts largely stopped around the time of World War I, as the reduction of complex human phenomena to the behavior of restricted range of animal species (rats) in limited unnatural environments (laboratories) became popular. Now, about a hundred years later, psychology is attempting to address issues of complexity again (Bradley, 2005). In these efforts, the movement for developmental science (Cairns et al., 1996) has taken the lead. By its focus on development—including the emergence of hierarchical order in ontogeny (Fischer & Bidell, 1998), developmental science is necessarily holistic and individual-centered: The point of departure for a holistic analysis of individual functioning is that an individual functions as a totality that each aspect of the structures and processes (perceptions, cognitions, plans, values, goals, motives, biological factors, conduct, and other aspects) takes on meaning from the role it plays in the total functioning of the individual. (Magnusson & Törestad, 1993, p. 436)

Empirically elegant work on such holistic processes cannot be reductionist—if theoretically we claim “the person is a whole,” then it is the features of that whole that the empirical work needs to reveal.

The Elegance of Complex Processes The elegance of complexity requires a basic change in the axiomatic basis—well expressed by the critique by Magoroh Maruyama of psychology’s reliance on the notion of normal distribution: The uncritical use of the assumption of normal distribution—the bellshaped curve—dominated psychology and social sciences. But in this assumption, something important was overlooked. Researchers tended to forget or never learned how the bell-shaped curve had been mathematically derived and defined. The normal distribution occurs when both the following conditions are satisfied: (1) The fluctuations are random; (2) they are independent of one another. But psychological and social events are neither random nor independent. Therefore it is illogical to assume a normal distribution. (Maruyama, 1999, p. 53, emphasis in original)

By this singular look at the misfit of the axiomatic basis of the statistical method and the nature of psychological phenomena, Maruyama has

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elegantly cleaned the base for building new methodological perspectives— by introducing into science the notion of deviation-amplifying processes (which are working in coordination with deviation-counteracting, i.e., equilibrating, processes—Maruyama, 1963). Open systems not merely are characterized by their variability, but they generate increasing variability—as well as constraints to keep that variability within manageable bounds.

Horizon Two: Focus on Emerging Structures— Multiple Trajectories The perspective of psychology becomes reversed—as the deviating moves in human conduct are not “deviations” but acts of persistent imitation (to use James Mark Baldwin’s terms). The centrality of the system—the person— who creates such novelty is restored as the legitimate target for science: Clearly human beings should not be considered “an error.” Single cases that contradict group data should not be thrown away but be described and understood. It is the “true value mythology” that should be given up in psychology as a science of human being’s life experience. (Sato, Watanabe, & Omi, 2007, p. 53)

This simple, basic understanding of the central role of variability has had a very hard time becoming understood in psychology (Valsiner, 1986). It is inherent in any developmental process (Maruyama, 1963, 1999; Siegler, 1996). In the case of all open systems, deviations are amplified in order to bring them—by some constraining conditions—to a particular limited range. Since that range unfolds in irreversible time, we can talk of trajectories—ranges of variation qualitatively different from one another that diverge from one and converge in another bifurcation point (Figure 2.2). In Figure 2.2 you can observe the system exiting from one steady state (BF1—bifurcation point 1) through deviation amplification. The variability in the process is enhanced—exaggerated—until the amplifying deviation creates its opposite—a constraint that starts to limit that deviation. The result is the formation of different potential trajectories. The move of the actual developing system into one (or the other) may depend on coincidental factors—yet by either trajectory, the next point (BF2) is reached. Figure 2.2 creates the link between Maruyama’s basic breakthrough in understanding how development works in the late 1950s and our contemporary work half-a-century later on the trajectory equifinality model (TEM—Sato, Yasuda, Kido, Takada, & Valsiner, 2006; Sato, Yasuda, et al., 2007)—which was elaborated on the basis of parallel ideas (nonindependence of human

38    Beyond the Mind

Creation of Trajectory A BF1

Amplification of Deviations

BF2 Creation of Trajectory B

Figure 2.2  The making of trajectories through deviation amplification.

phenomena, nonrandomness of distributions) when discussing the issues of sampling. Variability is canalized over time—this is the core of the trajectory equifinality model (TEM), which emphasized the relationship between the emerging future trajectories (right-hand side of Figure 2.2)—all of which in the present are just potential (not yet constructed) futures. The history of the two methodological trajectories, outlined by Toomela (2007), can itself be taken as an example of TEM application. The “American trajectory” emerged after the turmoils of rapid industrialization and World War I—yet on the basis of prescientific social uses of numbers (Donnelly, 1998). What emerged (by the 1940s) is a socialized, hypergeneralized feeling of objectivity through the use of numbers (Brower, 1949). This feeling is the delimiter of the range of possibilities—ruling out alternatives within the researcher’s own mind. The “ideological support structure” that Michell (2004) described (above) starts from the intrapsychological life philosophy of a researcher. While the “urge for numbers” that has been latent in the Anglo-Saxon world since times before psychology has created one of the two trajectories, the “feeling for phenomenology” within the continental European tradition has led to the establishment of the holistic trajectory—with prioritizing qualitative (Gestalt) perspectives. What we encounter in our present time is BF2—where both trajectories come together in a new dialogue—the “American trajectory” having failed to capture dynamically complex phenomena, and the “continental trajectory” that has

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failed to develop formal generalizing methods for capturing the nature of qualitative phenomena. In the present time, the dialogue between the two trajectories in BF2 uses “old” (BF1 time) arguments, attempting to develop a novel synthesis in the future.

TEM and Processes of Development In its minimalistic form, the TEM is depicted in Figure 2.3. It is obvious that it requires the analysis of complex phenomena—as these unfold in time—into units that cross the time barrier of future and past—including memories of past dialogues between the then-actualized (A) versus thenpotential (not eventually actualized—B) trajectories. The relation {A  B} becomes coordinated with the potential opposition {C  D} (Figure 2.3). The TEM model is not merely a description of unfolded trajectories, but a mechanism that generates future actualized trajectories on the basis of past contrasts of the actual and the potential directions. The TEM structure in Figure 2.3 relates to the concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) that has gained prominence in developmental psychology as a specific notion from the theoretical heritage of Lev Vygotsky (Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993). While the ZPD entails consideration of how new functions emerge (the {C  D} relation in Figure 2.3), TEM adds to Vygotsky’s concept the nonlinear reliance on life-course history. It also links psychology’s formal modeling of time-related processes with the probabilistic version of attractor theory in the dynamic systems framework—particularly the notion of attractor ruins (Tsuda, 2001) as domains of the dynamic processes where the move to new structure starts. C

A

D

B

Past

Present

Future

Figure 2.3  The locus of coverage by the TEM of the coordination of the past and the future.

40    Beyond the Mind

Horizon Three: Movement Towards the Idiographic Focus in Psychology We are witnessing a quickly developing trend towards the centrality of qualitative and single-case based methodological interests worldwide—even in parts of the social sciences (e.g., education) in the United States. Gordon Allport’s clear vision about the centrality of the single case (Allport, 1967) is finally—with some historical time-lag—about to become true. Peter Molenaar has made it very explicit: Psychology as an idiographic science restores the balance by focusing on the neglected time-dependent variation within a single individual (IAV). It brings back into scientific psychology the dedicated study of the individual, prior to pooling across other individuals. Each person is initially conceived of as a possibly unique system of interacting dynamic processes, the unfolding of which gives rise to an individual life trajectory in a high-dimensional psychological space. Bringing thus back the person into scientific psychology, it can be proven that her return is definitive this time. Classical theorems in ergodic theory, a branch of mathematical statistics and probability theory, show that most psychological processes will have to be considered to be nonergodic. (Molenaar, 2004, p. 202)

Molenaar’s revolutionary claim renders most of the work done in psychology over the past half-century inconsequential. Nonergodicity means that treating interindividual variability (which we usually label indistinctively as “variance” or “individual differences”) as if it adequately reflected intraindividual (temporal) variability is not possible. By rejection of the axiom of ergodicity in psychology we invalidate the interpretations of groupbased data that are applied to individuals. Implications for both empirical research practices and practical applications of psychology are profound. Psychology has been exploring important topics—yet with methods that were inadequate to these topics. Methodological alternatives exist (Molenaar, 2007; Rudolph, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c)—yet they are outside of the consensually set ways of generalization in psychology. The poetic and dynamic nature of psychological phenomena (Abbey & Valsiner, 2005; Bibace, Laird, Noller, & Valsiner, 2005; Buller, 2006) call for the use of new kinds of abstract tools (Rudolph & Valsiner, 2009; van Geert, 2003). The proliferation of the focus on narrative and conversational analyses in contemporary psychology is an empirical proof of the science in its transition to a focus on the qualitative ways of knowledge construction.

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Negotiating New Horizons: Psychologists in Their Social Worlds In some sense, psychology is a culture—or maybe a sect—in itself. People who convert to it go through a tedious and complicated adaptation (formal psychology studies—Kullasepp, 2006). They coordinate their in-group worlds with the challenges from outside and set up barriers that demarcate their scientific production from that of everyday life’s versions of psychological explanations. Such “guild-like” nature of psychology organization maintains their social boundaries, regulates who is “in” (or “out”) of it, and socially constructs the norms by which the science proceeds.

Becoming Public: Between Communication and Commodity Scientists publish—and psychologists publish even more than others. If the world were just, any new idea could (and should) get published—so the collective knowledge construction effort that knows no national or language boundaries could be enriched. The credo for the function of publishing as communicative act has been clearly stated by Bruce Alberts, the new (as of 2008) editor of the journal Science: The publication of a scientific article is less a way for scientists to earn recognition and advance their careers than it is an engine for scientific progress. Science continually advances only because many cycles of independent testing by different scientists allow new knowledge to be built with confidence upon old knowledge, thereby creating a repository of reliable understandings. (Alberts, 2008, p. 1271)

In contemporary sciences we can observe a curious new social phenomenon in this communication process—the retracting of published scientific articles. A paper published in one issue of a journal is “taken back” later by its authors, or eliminated from consideration as an act of inadequate presentation. That practice has not yet reached psychology—where the fact of publication is highly cherished as a unit of social currency. There are historical demonstrations of probable fraud in old publications (e.g., the case of Cyril Burt)—but it is unlikely that these would be retracted by either authors (long dead) or current psychological associations.9 The process of communication through publishing entails complications at its roots. History of science is filled with stories of failures of publishing key ideas—particularly revolutionary ones. As an example,

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Magoroh Maruyama’s 1963 paper (Maruyama, 1963) on “second cybernetics”—to become a “classic” in the following two decades—was first rejected by 10 American journals until it was published in the American Scientist (Maruyama, 1988, p. 12). So the question of public sharing of one’s ideas becomes a game of breaking through the barriers that control access to publication—be these those of power, language, prestige, or economics of scientific journals. Around these acts of gaining access to the interested audiences—nowadays easy due to internet—social value is constructed. Thus, the acceptance of an article for publication is a social success (independent of what intellectually relevant ideas are in the article), and the collectivity of the acceptance decision is attributed further social value. In a historian’s view, “In recent times, peer review has achieved an almost mythical status as a mark of scientific respectability. It rivals statistical significance as the preeminent mechanism for certifying a finding as impersonal and, in that important sense, objective” (Porter, 1995, p. 12, emphasis added). Of course there is no symbolic glory in “peer review”—but rather mundane making of a speedy social consensus by an editor and two or three selected reviewers (who must be highly motivated to give their effort—not usable on their own tasks—to the journal). All the social value construction around publication is an act of participation—by authors and reviewers—in an administrative game that has been labeled “Bibliographic Darwinism” (Castiel & Sanz-Valero, 2007). Young academics in many countries—mostly in Europe—are expected to meticulously consider the pedigree of the journals they publish in (“impact factor”), rather than decide with whom they are communicating through their publication act. The use of such administrative practices is detrimental for knowledge and constitutes an administrative control mechanism applied to science. As such, it limits and redirects the future of a science from outside (setting up evaluation rules) that pretends to be linked with the crucial aspect of the development of scientific ideas in the internal discourses of scientists (attention by scientists in the given area to specific ideas or findings). In psychology, such social control amounts to turning futures-making in psychology into a discursive fighting for dominance on the communication arena (evidence based on citations) of different fashionable category labels (-isms), rather than results of complex empirical or theoretical elaborations. Futures-making in psychology is driven under the influence of popular science discourse of appeasing the lay public with topics of intuitive appeal (e.g., “emotional intelligence,” “well-being,” “do apes have a language or not?”). Such focus of the semiotic demand setting for psychology’s discourses surely sets up barriers for psychology as Wissenschaft. Journalistic popularity of some of psychology’s inventions cannot drive the discipline in its core knowledge.

Science of Psychology Today    43

General Conclusions: Future Is Being Made Today . . .  Every Day Psychology in the 21st century is on its way to new international synthesis that has no single-country dominance of ideas and where cultural heritages of European, Asian, and American (equally all three—South, Central, and North) kinds intermingle in the making of a new science. That new science restores the centrality of human experiencing into its core, treats the phenomena as these develop over time, honoring their single-case nature, and restores the qualitative—structural-functional—abstractions to the objectivity-making process in the science. As this making of the future is already happening in small steps—in different locations, by different psychologists—one large question remains for the historians of science—how to understand the slow, tumultuous, and often regressions-prone history of the given discipline? While the notion of ever-new progress in a science is a desirable projection by scientists to the lay public, the insiders know all too well that this is not the case. The development of ideas is slow, often blocked by social demands, and filtered through the power relations of the institutional system of the discipline in the given country. It is by making explicit these social blocking mechanisms of the past that history of psychology emerges from its designated powerless social role as a “museum discipline” and starts to lead the future development of the discipline. If we claim to make future—we are making history, and history tells us how we can do it.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Koji Komatsu of Osaka Kyoiku University and Sergio Salvatore from University of Salento for feedback on earlier versions of this text, to Tatsuya Sato of Ritsumeikan University for teaching me the elegance of short metaphoric expressions, and to Shing-Jen Chen of University of Hokkaido for encouraging me to make sense of the interfaces of psychology in Japan and other countries.

Notes 1. Keynote Lecture at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Psychological Association, Sapporo, September, 19, 2008. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA.

44    Beyond the Mind 3. All through this talk, I keep using the German notion Wissenschaft when I refer to basic generalized knowledge (and ways of its construction), while using the English word science when referring to the common opposition of the field of activities of selected persons and social groups (“this [what/how we do X] is science”) with their out-group (“this [what/how they do X] is not science”). 4. These ratings are interpretable as if they were numbers only if axiomatically treated that way— “No matter how much the logic of quantification must utilize mathematical results, it is not a part of mathematics. It is a branch of philosophy” (Michell, 1999, p. 47) 5. Importantly, it is only in the 1930s, under the restoration of economic stability in Germany under the Nazi regime—and as a part of its own build-up of the military and eugenic systems, that the practices of applied psychology got a chance for extensive development. In contrast, in the both in Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the development of the theoretical side stopped—most psychologists emigrated or were silenced, and the whole area of psychology became declared extinct in USSR in 1936. 6. For instance, Josiah Royce gave his philosophy seminars at Harvard in the early 20th century in German—knowledge of the language was a prerequisite for participation. 7. A good example of the bifurcation of such survival is the fate of Karl and Charlotte Bühler after their arrival in the United States in 1938. Karl—world-famous theorist by that time—never found an academic position in the United States. Charlotte—younger and practice-oriented—thrived in the clinical psychology environment, finding a place under the label of “humanistic psychology.” Others had similar adaptation problems—Heinz Werner, after leaving Hamburg in 1933, could not find a permanent university professorship in the U.S. until 1947, working instead in practical contexts (Valsiner, 2005b). 8. For a demonstration of how quantification conceals the psychological phenomena, see Valsiner (2006). Lee Rudolph (2006a, 2006b, 2006c) has demonstrated that psychology is mistaking its use of real numbers for psychological reality. Alternatives exist in contemporary mathematics—but are not within psychologists’ sphere of knowledge (Rudolph, 2009; Rudolph & Valsiner, 2009; Valsiner & Rudolph, 2008). On what is “objectivity” in the social sciences, see Daston (1992, 1997); Porter (1986, 1992, 1994, 1995); as well as Ziliak and McCloskey (2008). 9. For example, it would be unthinkable that the American Psychological Association, or the editors of its journal Psychological Review, would suddenly announce that the 1913 article by John B. Watson “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”—the manifesto that marks the “Behaviorist Era”—is being retracted for its lack of factual evidence.

References Abbey, E., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Poetiken des Selbst: Zwischen Ambivalenz, Bedeutung, Formlösigkeit und Wandel. Psychologie & Gesellschaftskritik, 29, 3/4 (whole No 115/116), 133–149.

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Alberts, B. (2008). Scientific publishing standards. Science, 321, 1271. doi:10.1126/science.1165268 Allport, G. (1937). Personality. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehardt and Winston Allport, G. (1967). Gordon W. Allport. In E. C. Boring & G. Lindzey (Eds.), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. 5, pp. 1–25). New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Croffts. Bibace, R., Laird, J. D., Noller, K. L., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2005). Science and medicine in dialogue: Thinking through particulars and universals. Westport, CT: Praeger. Bradley, B. S. (2005). Psychology and experience. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Branco A. U., & Valsiner J. (1997), Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9(1), 35–64. Brower, D (1949). The problem of quantification in psychological science. Psychological Review, 56, 325–331. Buller, A. (2006). Mechanisms underlying ambivalence: a psychodynamic model. Estudios de Psicologia, 27(1), 49–66. Cairns, R. B. (1998). The making of developmental psychology In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 25–105). New York, NY: Wiley. Cairns, R. B., Elder, G., & Costello, E. J. (Eds.). (1996). Developmental science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Castiel, L. D., & Sanz-Valero, J. (2007). Entre fetichismo e sobrevivencia: o artigo cientifico é uma mercadoria academica? [Between fetishism and survival: are scientific articles a form of scientific merchandise?]. Cadernos do Saude Publica, 23(12), 3041–3050. Daston, L. (1992). Objectivity and the escape from perspective. Social Studies of Science, 22, 597–618. Daston, L. (1997). L’esperanza scientific e le sue possibili storie. Quaderni Strorici, 96(3), 831–838. Donnelly, M. (1998). From political arithmetic to social statistics: how some nineteenth-century roots of the social sciences were implanted. In J. Heilbron, L. Magnusson, & B. Wittrock (Eds.), The rise of the social sciences and the formation of modernity: Conceptual change in context, 1750–1850 (pp. 225– 239). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Fischer K. W., & Bidell, T. R. (1998). Dynamic development of psychological structures in action and thought. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 467–562). New York, NY: Wiley. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung. (n.d.). Home page. Retrieved from http:// www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/index

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Josephs, I. E., & Valsiner, J. (1999). Meaning-making and miracles: The creative inconsistency of the mind. In K. H. Reich, F. K. Oser, & W. G. Scarlett (Eds.), Psychological studies on spiritual and religious development. Being human (Vol. 2, pp. 101–114).Lengerich, Germany: W. Pabst. Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwartz, N. (Eds.). (2003). Well-being: Foundations of hedonic psychology. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Knorr Cetina, K (1999). Epistemic cultures. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kullasepp, K. (2006). Identitity construction of psychology students during their first year of studies: A longitudinal approach. European Journal of School Psychology, 4(2), 249–280. Magnusson, D., & Törestad, B. (1993). A holistic view of personality: A model revisited. Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 427–452. Maruyama, M. (1963). The second cybernetics: Deviation amplifying mutual causal processes. American Scientist, 51, 164–179. Maruyama, M. (1988). This week’s citation classic: Maruyama (1963). Current Contents: Social & Behavioral Sciences, 20(8), 12. Maruyama, M. (1999). Heterogram analysis: Where the assumption of normal distribution is illogical. Human Systems Management, 18, 53–60. Michell, J. (1997). Quantitative science and the definition of measurement in psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 355–383. Michell, J. (1999). Measurement in psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Michell, J. (2004). The place of qualitative research in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1, 307–319. Molenaar, P. C. M. (2004). A manifesto on psychology as idiographic science: Bringing the person back into scientific psychology, this time forever, Measurement: Interdisciplinary research and perspectives, 2, 201–218. Molenaar, P. C. M. (2007). Psychological methodology will change profoundly due to the necessity to focus on intra-individual variation. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 35–40. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1994). The power of absence: zero signifiers and their transgressions. L’Homme, 34, 2 (Whole No. 130), 59–76. Peirce, C. S. (1935). Collected papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Porter, T. M. (1986). The rise of statistical thinking 1820–1900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Porter, T. M. (1992). Quantification and the accounting ideal in science. Social Studies of Science, 22, 633–652. Porter, T. M. (1994). Objectivity as standardization: The rhetoric of impersonality in measurement, statistics, and cost-benefit analysis. In A. Megill (Ed.), Rethinking objectivity (pp. 197–237). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Porter, T. M. (1995). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rudolph, L. (2006a). The fullness of time. Culture and Psychology, 12(2), 157–186.

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Rudolph, L. (2006b). Mathematics, models and metaphors. Culture and Psychology, 12(2), 245–265. Rudolph, L. (2006c). Spaces of ambivalence: Qualitative mathematics in the modeling of complex fluid phenomena. Estudios de Psicología, 27(1), 67–83. Rudolph, L. (2009). A unified topological approach to Umwelts and life spaces Part II: Constructing life space from an Umwelt. In J. Clegg (Ed.), The observation of human systems (pp. 117–140). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Rudolph, L., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2009). Qualitative mathematics for the social sciences. London, England: Routledge. Sato, T., Watanabe, Y., & Omi, Y. (2007). Beyond dichotomy—towards creative synthesis. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 50–59. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Takada, S., & Valsiner, J. (2006). The discovery of the trajectory equifinality model. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 5, 255–275. (In Japanese) Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Sampling reconsidered: Idiographic science and the analyses of personal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 82–106). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Siegler, R. S. (1996). Emerging minds: The process of change in children’s thinking. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Smedslund, J. (1997). The structure of psychological common sense. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Takasuna, M. (2007). Proliferation of Western methodological thought in psychology in Japan: way of objectification. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 83–92. Teo, T. (1999). Functions of knowledge in psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 17, 1–15. Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 6–20. Tsuda, I. (2001). Toward an interpretation of dynamic neural activity in terms of chaotic dynamic systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 793–847. Valsiner, J. (Ed.) (1986). The individual subject and scientific psychology. New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (2000). Thinking through consequences: the perils of pragmatism. Revista de Historia de la Psicologia, 21(4), 145–175. Valsiner, J. (2005a). Affektive Entwicklung im kulturellen Kontext. In J. B. Asendorpf (Ed.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Soziale, emotionale und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung (Vol. 3, pp. 677–728). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Valsiner, J. (Ed.). (2005b). Heinz Werner and developmental science. New York, NY: Kluwer Scientific/Plenum. Valsiner, J. (2005c). Transformations and flexible forms: Where qualitative psychology begins. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4(4), 39–57.

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Valsiner, J. (2006). Developmental epistemology and implications for methodology. In. R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 166–209). New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2008, September). How can psychology in Japan become a well-behaving rebel? Paper presented at the Japanese Psychological Society meeting, Sapporo, Japan. Valsiner, J. (2009). Baldwin’s quest: A universal logic of development. In J. Clegg (Ed.), The observation of human systems (pp. 45–82). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (1993). The encoding of distance: The concept of the zone of proximal development and its interpretations. In R. R. Cocking & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), The development and meaning of psychological distance (pp. 35–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind: Construction of the idea. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Valsiner, J., & Rudolph, L. (2008, July). Who shall survive? Psychology that replaces quantification with qualitative mathematics. Paper presented at the 29th International Congress of Psychology, Berlin. van Geert, P. (2003). Dynamic systems approaches and modeling of developmental processes. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 640–672). London, England: SAGE. von Ehrenfels, C. (1988a). Über Gestaltqualitäten (1890/1922). In C. von Ehrenfels, Philosophische Schriften: Psychologie Ethik Erkenntnistheorie (Vol. 3, pp. 128–167). München, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. von Ehrenfels, C. (1988b). On ‘Gestalt qualities’. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations of Gestalt theory (pp. 82–116). München, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. von Ehrenfels, C. (1988c). On Gestalt qualities (1932). In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations of Gestalt theory (pp. 121–123). München, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. Wagoner, B., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Rating tasks in psychology: From static ontology to dialogical synthesis of meaning. In A. Gülerce, A. Hofmeister, I. Staeuble, G. Saunders, & J. Kaye (Eds.), Contemporary theorizing in psychology: Global perspectives (pp. 197–-213). Toronto, ON: Captus Press. Yeo, R. R. (1986). Scientific method and the rhetoric of science in Britain, 1830–1917. In J. A. Schuster & R. R. Yeo (Eds.), The politics and rhetoric of scientific method (pp. 259–297). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. Ziliak, S. T., & McCloskey, D. N. (2008). The cult of statistical significance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

COFFEE BREAK

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Is There any Reason for Suffering— for Science in Psychology? Giuseppina Marsico and Jaan Valsiner

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art I includes texts about the current state of affairs in psychology and of the emergence of the new area—cultural psychology—that turns out to be older than psychology itself. The sentiments expressed in these two papers seem to represent the doubts their author has about the future of psychology as a science. A dialogue between the two authors (GM and JV) of the present coffee break ensued—so that the issues of the early 21st century (2004 and 2008) became elaborated from the angle of another decade of feverish progress in the field: GM: You seem to be rather pessimistic about psychology—yet, as we all know, it is burgeoning at our time. Cognitive psychology had long eliminated the narrowness of the sole focus on behavior, restoring the dignity of the human mind as a relevant object of investigation.

Beyond the Mind, pages 49–52 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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A giant like Jerome Bruner (1973, 1990, 1996) made it possible, placing the meaning-making process at the center of psychological functioning! Since the “cognitive revolution,” we can see ecological and, finally, cultural perspectives leading psychology towards its future. The field is highly productive—ever new journals come into being, more and more book series get established—as books are still being revered. And you—yourself very much a leader in the field—show signs of pessimism. It does not fit. JV: No, it does fit. These are two different issues—external formal productivity (publications, societies, conferences, and the like) on the one side, and the inherent development of new ideas to make sense of the psyche, on the other. I have claimed—and continue to claim—that there have been very few new ideas about the psyche emerging in the last half-century. We can pinpoint to the reason—methodological confusions in psychology (Toomela & Valsiner, 2010) that have led to the fusion of the levels of organization (social and personal) and acceptance of basic interpretation errors that are already encoded into our cognitive systems (Valsiner, 1986). Psychology has become ANOVAted,1 not innovating. For me—to overcome my own and the field’s pessimism—it needs to become the latter, not the former. Psychology needs to go beyond the common sense in order to give us basic knowledge. GM: These are rather devastating viewpoints. Can you offer any alternatives? Or is your critique of the field like that of most others— badmouthing the field in which you yourself are situating your activities? JV: No, my critique is meant to be constructive. By highlighting the problems—axiomatic misfits—I am focusing on the constructive reorganization of methodology (Valsiner, 2017). The open systems nature of psychological phenomena—axiomatic property of all living systems—leads to new empirical focus. GM: But in Part II here in our book you are very critical of the ways in which dynamic systems theory (DST) is being used in contemporary psychology. DST does lead to a new empirical focus—with the reorientation onto the future (thinking in terms of attractors), as well as starting from the whole nature of relating with the world (the affordance notion). Yet you are not satisfied by their uses either—demanding a turn to the application of semiotics onto psychology. Sure—semiotics as a science of signs and their use can be applied to human psychological functions. But—is there a need for that? What can cultural psychologies—that you have finally

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accepted as a viable term—gain from showing that human sign uses are very complex and dynamic? Adding the notion of sign hierarchies to the notions of identity or affordance seems to eliminate the basic value of these theoretical concepts. You restore the construction focus that the originator of the affordance theory—James Gibson—adamantly and purposefully refused to include. JV: No, I am not in any way trying to get rid of the DST or the affordance ideas. I appreciate their dynamic and context-binding nature. Yet at the same time I cannot accept the theoretical reduction of hierarchical orders to a single-level notion of some kind of an immediate fusion of the person and the context. All natural and social phenomena take some hierarchical and dynamic order. There is no structure of a biological or psychological (or social or political) organization without some form of hierarchy. My solution to the problem—make the hierarchy dynamic and transitory. It—in terms of sign hierarchy—can emerge at any time, and can be demolished at any time. It is a temporary support and guidance for the psyche. That is why the notion of identity is usable only in its dynamic sense. We do not “have” identities but are constantly in the process of creating them—through sign hierarchies oriented to our own selves—and treating the constructions as if they were permanent. They are not—they are transitory. The only process that is permanent—operates as long as we live—is the process of building, temporarily maintaining, and demolishing them. GM: So you see the future of the science of psychology in abandoning ontological concepts and replacing them with processual—developmental—ones? JV: Yes—all science of psychology is necessarily developmental psychology. It deals with the processes of emergence of novel phenomena by the participation of the person oneself. We produce our own novelties and then try to present those as givens (Valsiner, 1999). It is our ontological fallacy to treat what is transitory as it exists. It exists as long as we have created conditions for their existence. Sometimes they vanish in a moment (as we use circumvention strategies to inhibit them—Josephs & Valsiner, 1998), sometimes they become encoded in hard substances and last for centuries—until purposefully destroyed by other human beings considering these as heresies (e,g., the Bamiyan Buddhas2), or merely decaying by natural causes. GM: But isn’t your image of what psychology’s future also a kind of heresy?

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JV: Sure, somebody could claim that. What I point to is a rather basic reorientation of the way psychology creates knowledge, and it would look either naïve or dangerous to some actors in the field. Many resources are invested in the current form of the well-maintained epistemological machinery of psychology—endangering it on the grounds of positioning of ideas is a threat to their well-being. Yet I do not want to undermine anybody’s fixed convictions— only to outline a possible road to recovery.

Notes 1. Making the technical premises of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) into the axiomatic bases of the discipline (Gigerenzer, 1993; Gigerenzer et al., 1989). The use of general linear model does not fit with the nonlinear nature of psychological phenomena. 2. The two tall Buddha sculptures erected at the end of the 6th century AD in Bamiyan in today’s Afganistan were destroyed by local religious extremists in 2001 as “idols”—human cultural tools are used both to build and maintain, as well as destroy.

References Bruner, J. S. (1973). Going beyond the information given. New York, NY: Norton. Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gigerenzer, G. (1993). The superego, the ego, and the id in statistical reasoning. In G. Keren & C. Lewis (Eds.), A handbook for data analysis in the behavioral sciences: Methodological issues (pp. 311–339). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1989). The empire of chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Josephs, I. E., & Valsiner, J. (1998). How does autodialogue work? Miracles of meaning maintenance and circumvention strategies. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(1), 68–83. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Valsiner, J. (1986). Between groups and individuals: Psychologists’ and laypersons’ interpretations of correlational findings. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 113–152). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26–30. Valsiner, J. (2017). From methodology to methods in human psychology. New York, NY: Springer.

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Understanding Dynamic Processes

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3 Facing the Future—Making the Past The Permanent Uncertainty of Living1 Jaan Valsiner2

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major ontological problem exists in the sciences that consider time as central to their inquiries—by focus on time the nature of the reality may disappear! In an axiomatically time-free universe the ontology of objects is given within the classical-logical scheme of the law of excluded middle: If object A exists it is not true that object A does not exist; and if object A does not exist it is not true that it exists. All is clear—and the sciences that treat their objects in time-free ways have only to study the existing (or not existing) objects as these are.

Enter the notion of time—and all that simplicity vanishes. What can be said to exist now (here-and-now) need not exist in the past—nor in the future. What existed in the past need not exist now (disappearance in time), and what might exist in the future need not exist now either. Furthermore—in the separation of “the now” (present) exists our construction of Beyond the Mind, pages 55–63 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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the infinitesimal time moment of “now” into an extended duration between past and future. So any statement about “what exists now” is built upon the philosophical construction of “the now” as a time period of relative duration of sameness. That sameness is made by a comparison between the two infinities of “this instant” (ever smaller time frame, not graspable by our senses) and “that eternity” (which equals a static universe where time does not matter). There is no “being” in the infinitely instantaneous universe. Likewise, there is no “becoming” in the infinitely eternal universe. And as there is no extended present (other than in our mental construction)— there is nothing! Yet the persons who are capable of reflecting upon “there is nothing” are not “nothing” themselves—but “somethings” (or “somebodies”) who reflect upon past and future contrasts. All developmental sciences—astrophysics, synthetic chemistry, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, social history—are all facing the problem of the emergence of “somethings” that did not exist before—together with the disappearance of previously existing objects. Thus, James Mark Baldwin, developing his foundations of “genetic logic”3 (Baldwin, 1906, 1908, 1911, 1915), challenged his contemporary psychologists with a methodological imperative: “That series of events is truly genetic which cannot be constructed before it has happened, and which cannot be exhausted backwards, after it has happened” (Baldwin, 1906, p. 21). This “positive postulate” might seem to render any science of time-based processes mute. Yet it merely specifies where the investigation needs to happen—concurrently with the emerging and disappearing objects. For a committed developmental thinker of his time, Baldwin had no difficulty accepting the notion of emergence as intimately linked with irreversible time.

Asymmetry of Past and Future The past and the future are asymmetric when viewed from the present (Figure 3.1). The past contains the unilinear actualized trajectory, and fees itself from the non-actualized earlier possible trajectories. In contrast, the future entails a variety of equally potential (not yet actualized) trajectories. The focus of classical (2-valent) logic is rendered inappropriate, as At the moment “now” the parts of the previous life already do not exist, and the future history in all of its details does not exist ontologically as well. If the truthfulness or falsity of a theorem remains unchanged over centuries, then for events that depend on time it is the other way round. (Anisov, 2002, p. 7)

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Figure 3.1  The past as an actualized trajectory and the future as set of multilinear possibilities.

Hence the formalization of developmental logics—started by James Mark Baldwin but not finished by him—is necessary. Developmental psychologists have tried to struggle with that issue in the context of the notion of Zone of Proximal Development (Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993). This scheme is in some sense deceptive—while illustrating the contrast between options of the future and actualized sequence of past options, it leaves the impression of the special moment nature of the bifurcation points. Furthermore, the scheme seems to indicate that the different options at a given time are discrete mutually distinguished choices—rather than emerging differentiation of trajectories. Therefore, a microview of a bifurcation point is given in Figure 3.2. The flowing process involved becomes constrained—generating a condition of “bounded randomness” (Weissert, 1995, p. 122) that proceeds to create a new trajectory (and not others). The “option fields” in Figure 3.1 operate as attractors that “pull towards them” the emerging course of movement in the current moment. Yet such attractors are set up by the past-present trajectory by projecting into the future the set of potentialities. That projection is set into motion by way of constraints that create distinctions (Figure 3.2). The flow originally similar units of the flow of the process (A, B, C) becomes changed if one of the units (B) transforms into a regulatory role

58    Beyond the Mind Realized trajectory

A

B

B

Changed function of B in becoming a constraint that bifurcates the trajectories

C

“Vanishing” possible trajectory

Flow of time

Figure 3.2  What happens at a bifurcation point?

over the others (A, C). It becomes a constraint (Valsiner, 1987) for further separation of the actualized trajectory from the potential-but-“vanishing” one. Distinctions that organisms make are forward-oriented, as these organisms move towards their next future moment. When I exclaim, “Oh, that is beautiful!” I am making a distinction between something I am at this moment about to consider beautiful, and conversely I am about to lose the nonbeautiful something else out of my focus—at the next time moment. All our sign-making is that of creating semiotic constraints to guide us in the immediate future—even if the manifest claim (“that is beautiful”) seems to be pertaining to the present. The crucial feature of the making of the constraint is its emergent function from the past to the future. This is the moment of establishment of a barrier—a divider—into the flow of the process—it becomes a bifurcator. As such, it establishes itself as belonging to the control level in the emerging hierarchy of parts of the system: By becoming different from A and C, B acquires control over the further progression of A and C. Here is the beginning point of hierarchical integration (Werner, 1948)—but, more importantly, that integration takes place in a relationship of what already has emerged (PAST extension → PRESENT moment) and what could emerge (selection of FUTURE possibilities). This feature is important for understanding processes of selection in the framework of development.

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The notion of selection is an accepted mechanism in evolutionary thought and is used widely in contemporary evolutionary psychology. Its uses are oriented to the past—the selection of the more fit specimens from among all that have emerged. Contrary to evolutionary psychology’s reliance upon the mechanisms of natural selection among the already formed specimens (focus on the PAST → PRESENT), here we turn the selection process to “face outwards”—towards the future. What is “natural” in the selection processes of the biological and any other open-systemic phenomena is the selection from the potentialities of the future. Selection occurs among courses of future—not of past—development. This theoretical relocation of the selection mechanism makes it constructive in the open-ended world of new developmental trajectories. It relies heavily on the assumption that organisms anticipate changes within their environments. Such anticipation may produce adaptation errors as well as successes—as the distinction between the two becomes known only after the development has taken place.

Where TEM Begins: Structure of Opposite Possibilities The trajectory equifinality model (TEM) that is the focus in this book grows out of the theoretical need of contemporary science to maintain two central features in its analytic scheme—time and (linked with it) the transformation of potentialities into actualities (realization). It is the latter—the inclusion of the hypothetical (not real—or not yet real—or not to be real)—that separates TEM from all other time-inclusive models (time series analyses, etc.). The kernel of TEM is given in the scheme of the generic “cell” of the processes that in their reality are hyper-complex (Figure 3.3). Structural units like the one in Figure 3.3 enter into variety of configurations, Possibility A (“attractor”) Bifurcation Point that is a 4-fold tension point—between the opposites (A and non-A) and the flow of time (present entails tension between past and future)

The past course (realized potentials)

Possibility non-A (“attractor”) The present moment

Figure 3.3  The basic unit of TEM.

Irreversible time flow

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yet—like the minimal unit of any complex whole—the one depicted in Figure 3.3 is the core “minimal gestalt” we need to consider. The basic unit of TEM in Figure 3.3 is actually the scheme of “Buridan’s ass”4—set into motion under context of the pressure of the irreversible flow of time. While the actual contents that is captured by the basic unit are unique—given the irreversibility of time and constructivity (semiosis) of human beings to overcome the fourfold tension, then the formal structure of the basic unit is in its abstract form stable and universal. It is the birthplace of the interpretants (in C. S. Peirce’s terms—Rosa & Valsiner, 2007). Semiosis is a solution to the tension of reflexive living within the inherently unstable world. The TEM model in itself does not include semiosis but merely charts out the background for locating where the acts of meaning construction and their function in organizing the psychological flow (promoter signs—Valsiner, 2004, 2007a) are likely to take place.

The Role of HSS in TEM If TEM is an abstract general model, HSS (historically structured sampling) is a technical procedure that is used for selection of researchable phenomena—persons, social units, contexts, etc). We (Sato, Yasuda, Kido, Takada & Valsiner, 2006; Sato et al., 2007; Valsiner & Sato, 2006) introduced that concept as a counterpoint to the nonsystemic practice of “random sampling” and its less random analogs. If the theoretical implications of TEM are taken as the starting point, then HSS is the necessary sampling tactic to use for the study. Outside of the theoretical framework of TEM, HSS is irrelevant. HSS is only usable when referring to the technical act of sampling in an empirical study—while TEM is a generic framework for generating varied theoretical schemes all unified by their interest in irreversibility of time and the dialectic of the potential and the actual.

Contemporary Psychology Through the Lens of TEM TEM breaks up the backbone of contemporary psychology—its reliance upon inductive generalization and its practical elaboration conventionally called “measurement.” It replaces that practice by careful investigation of relevant phenomena and our basic assumptions about them. TEM brings—on deductive grounds—the focus on time into the center of empirical studies. It is an abductive orientation—starting from general premises it connects with the phenomena. In a way, it is the reverse of the widespread inductive generalization method of the grounded theory—instead

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of “working upwards” from the phenomena towards creating a theory, it “works downwards” from basic assumptions, linking those with phenomena, and developing both theory and methods at the intersection of that juxtaposition. TEM is not quantifiable. Hence it has the advantages of introducing into the science of psychology new rigor of qualitative methodology that psychology has—mostly under North American social demands—pushed out of the focus of science (Toomela, 2007). Psychological phenomena have much to share with their biological counterparts where it is the quality—the form—that determines quantities (Beloussov, 1998). Thus—returning to Figure 3.3—if the fourfold tension at the intersection of time and future opposites might be quantifiable, then the framework within which that tension occurs is itself a qualitative structure. Psychology has confused the dialectical unity of quantity and quality in its wholesale acceptance of quantification as the marker of “science” (Valsiner, 2005). Nothing can be more misleading in science than abandoning the general view on the quality of the whole as it relates with its parts. In the case of time-dependent—open—systems, that relationship becomes the central target of investigation. TEM is the intellectual tool to conceptualize the variability of the trajectories in the making and remaking of these relationships. Instead of considering relationships to be linear and formally quantitative (e.g., as implied by correlation coefficients and their straightforward interpretation—Figure 3.4a), the qualitative focus through the lens of TEM allows for the study of such relationships as conditionally permeable boundaries (Figure 3.4b). Relationships between psychological wholes is an analogue of membranes in biology—rather than linearly depicted forces in physics (Valsiner, 2007b). A A

B B

(a)

(b)

Figure 3.4  The formal linear relationship model (a) in contrast to the membrane model (b).

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Psychology’s status as science cannot be determined by either “objectivity” of what it observes (i.e., the claim that study of behavior is “objective”) nor through the social convention that declares some class of methods to be “scientific” (e.g., quantitative or standardized methods). It is the reality of successful dealing with in principle ungraspable flow of irreversible time that makes psychology the science of the future. Theoretical constructions like TEM are a means for working towards turning psychology into a science that does not eliminate time but does just the opposite—explains the complexities of the human mind by its fate of full time-embeddedness.

Notes 1. This chapter is the Eghlish draft finished on March29, 2008 of the following Japanese book chapter: Valsiner, J. (2009). ヤーン・ヴァルシナー 2009 未来 に向かう――過去を形成する 永続する 不確定性とともに生きる。 サトウ タツヤ 編 『TEMではじめる質的研究―時間とプロセスを扱う研究をめざし て』，誠信書房，第６章１節 [Facing the future—making the past: the permanent uncertainty of living Psychology from the TEM (In Japanese). In T. Sato (Ed.), Starting qualitative psychology on the TEM as a new method. Tokyo ; Seishin-shobo. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. According to Baldwin, “Genetic logic was, in my usage, the term adopted to designate the body inside or psychic process in which mental development takes place. Within this logic, all the varied special motives of adaptation, opposition, assimilation, etc. uncovered in the detailed researches, show themselves in the phenomena of personal and social progress” (1930, pp. 11–12). 4. This notion—of a donkey starving oneself to death by being unable to choose which of the two equidistant and equal size piles of hay to approach—narrated by Vygotsky—has been the usual introductory point of the role of signs in the human psyche. Semiotic mediation is the means for temporarily solving the fourfold tension.

References Anisov, A. M. (2002). Logika neopredelennosti i neopredelennost’ vo vremeni [The logic of indeterminacy and indeterminacy in time]. Logical Studies, 8, 1–27. Baldwin, J. M. (1906). Thought and things: A study of the development and meaning of thought, or genetic logic. Vol. 1. Functional logic, or genetic theory of knowledge. London, England: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Baldwin, J. M. (1908). Thought and things: A study of the development and meaning of thought, or genetic logic. Vol. 2. Experimental logic, or genetic theory of thought. London, England: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.

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Baldwin, J. M. (1911). Thought and things: A study of the development and meaning of thought, or genetic logic. Vol 3. Interest and art being real logic. London, England: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Baldwin, J. M. (1915). Genetic theory of reality. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Baldwin, J. M. (1930). James Mark Baldwin. In C. Murchison (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography. (Vol. 1, pp. 1–30). New York, NY: Russell & Russell. Beloussov, L. V. (1998). The dynamic architecture of a developing organism. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Rosa, A., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Socio-cultural psychology on the move: semiotic methodology in the making. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 692–707) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido , A., Takada , S., & Valsiner, J. ( 2006). The discovery of the Trajectory Equifinality Model. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 5, 255–275. (in Japanese) Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Sampling reconsidered: Idiographic science and the analyses of personal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 82–106). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 6–20. Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester, England: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2004, July). The promoter sign: Developmental transformation within the structure of dialogical self. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), Ghent, Belgium. Valsiner, J. (2005). Transformations and flexible forms: where qualitative psychology begins. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4(4), 39–57. Valsiner, J. (2007a). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2007b). Looking across cultural gender boundaries. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(3–4), 219–224. Valsiner, J., & Van der Veer, R. (1993). The encoding of distance: The concept of the zone of proximal development and its interpretations. In R. R. Cocking & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), The development and meaning of psychological distance (pp. 35–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J., & Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS): How can psychology’s methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning (pp. 215–251). Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript. Weissert, T. P. (1995). Dynamical discourse theory. Time & Society, 4(1), 111–133. Werner, H. (1948). Comparative psychology of mental development. New York, NY: International University Press.

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4 Constructing Identity A Theoretical Problem for Social Sciences1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The question of identity is dealt with from a developmental and culturalpsychological perspectives. Contemporary cultural psychologies are oriented towards making the meaning construction process the core of person–society relationships and study that relation in terms of emergent meanings. In parallel, developmental psychology has an emphasis on the processes of emergence of novelty and on the directed movement of the developing system away from its present state, towards some—expected and desired—future state. The processes that are implied in theorizing about identity of any kind (personal, social, national, etc.) entail simultaneously semiotic construction of unifying ties of the person with the social world of some scope, and abstraction from the concrete realm of human activity. Cultural means—semiotic regulators—are constructed to fortify both the extrapersonal extension and recontextualization of abstracted unity in the ongoing real-life situations.

Beyond the Mind, pages 65–77 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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The concept of identity poses social sciences the problem of lacking identity of the concept itself. Using this concept is an act of search for some reflexive denotation, which seems to be lost. To be more precise, consider the strict definition of identity: at any moment of existence, a system is identical to itself as it exists, or S = S. This strict view on identity may be precise—yet it is useless for anything else but scholastic discussions of the kind “I am because I am” (i.e., at any given moment, I exist and my existence is identical to itself, at that moment). Of course, both Heraclitan philosophical tradition and contemporary developmental thought (which largely originates from Henri Bergson’s duration concept—Bergson, 1907/1911) would cast doubt on that notion of identity, pointing out that in the present micromoment a new state of the system is already emerging—hence, the relation S = S cannot exist in principle and is replaced by a case of constantly lingering making of unidentity: first S, then modified-S, followed by further-modified(modified-S), and so on, towards infinity. The problem of identity as a theoretical concept for different social sciences is thus predicated upon the developmental impossibility of defining states of identity, on the one hand, and the need to guide developmental processes towards some state of unity (with themselves, with social institutions, etc.), on the other. If it were possible to “have” an “identity” of a person with oneself, with one’s social group, or one’s nation, in the full (absolute, S = S) sense of the term, then the problem of identity would never be invented by societies and by social sciences. Everybody would have it—and it would be of no problem to anybody, person or social institution—as it would pass unnoticed. Identity then would be as basic as our full dependence upon breathing air—which we do so constantly and unproblematically that we pay no attention to it (until we get into respiratory problems). Thus, the need to conceptualize identity in the social sciences is based on the recognition of tension-filled differences between persons and specific (posited) objects of identity. The question then is—how are the identity objects posited? Who differentiates these from the potentially infinite realm of possible meanings that can be used as such objects? Specification of such objects is an axiomatic necessity—without them, the notion of identity cannot be created. Hence, in the realm of social sciences, the question of identity becomes defined by a contrast between a state of a system that is (S) and another state that is—from some vantage point—seen as linked with that state: S = X (where X is the constructed identity object, be it desired for further development, or suspected to “cause” the “problems” in the present time). The particular valuation of the S = X connection depends upon the perspective of the valuator—one’s “enemy’s” case of strong

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S = X linkage may be valued negatively (and efforts may be made to intervene with that linkage), while a similarly strong linkage in the case of the evaluator is considered to be supreme virtue. So, when social scientists speak about terms like “national,” “personal,” “social,” “class,” “gender,” and so on—these “identities” are often used in as if they were actually existing entities. In reality, these are posited (desired or undesired) linkages that exist in scientific discourse precisely because they do not exist in direct forms in the real world. A person’s “gender identity” is not describable as a phenomenon separable from the person’s everyday life activities and objects used in these activities. Making of the meaning with the use of the notion of “gender identity” is a way to abstract and generalize from the given here-and-now life situation. Thus, if I were—here and now— wearing a mini-skirt (a cultural object), then the mini-skirt in itself does not include any notion of my “gender identity,” yet my wearing it would make it possible for you to make use of the meaning of “gender identity” in order to arrive at some generalized reflection about my gender identity. Such reflection is then projected back into other aspects of my conduct in other situations and begins to form a constructed pattern about my “gender identity” (but in your reflection). I may be completely uninformed by that construction, as for me the wearing of that object of clothing may be meaningfully constructed in a different way (e.g., maintaining “identity” with my Scottish great-grandfather). The “detection” of identity is thus in the mind of the beholder—it is a coconstructive interpretive act. My “gender identity” is not “present” in my conduct; it is interpretively constructed on the basis of my conduct—and differently by you and by myself. In general, thus, identities do not exist (as givens), but as goal-orientedly constructed states, which are set for persons (and by persons) in the course of their development. The question of investigation into identity is thus a question of persons’ construction of versions of psychological substitutions of an imagined whole (e.g., nation, social group, family) for a part (self). Identity—as viewed this way—is constantly in a process of construction and maintenance, and it can never be presented as if its essence has a static form. This may be the major contribution that developmental psychology can offer for interdisciplinary efforts to make sense of identity issues. This blocks the researcher from constructing theories of identity in terms of object-like constructs (e.g., using terms like “having identity of X”) and guides him or her towards the description of the processes involved in the interpretive constructing of assumed identities. Such description would not deny the possibility to describe temporary “steady states” in the processes involved, but would not allow the presentation of such states in terms of static entities.

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Psychology’s Traditions of Developmental Analyses, and Issues of Identity The question of how such analysis can be accomplished in practice immediately arises here. Psychology has had a venerable tradition—even if at times forgotten—of focusing on the analysis of processes of movement towards some developmental outcome state. This is implicated in the traditions of Jean Piaget, Heinz Werner, and Lev Vygotsky. From the sociological perspective, the role of George Herbert Mead in charing out the focus on dynamic processes of self-development is a relevant basis for assuming a developmental perspective. Classical social psychology provides further support—Muzafer Sherif’s focus on the processes of social construction of social norms (Sherif, 1936) is a good example of developmental (microgenetic) analysis. The methodological tradition of microgenesis has lived through a notable period of development in German psychology in the first three decades of the 20th century (Krueger, 1915, 1928; Sander, 1930). It entails empirical investigation of the emergence of new forms (wholes) in the psychological phenomena in the concrete contexts of experiencing, retaining time as relevant part of the emergence process. Within the present-day sociocultural research tradition, the focus on developmental analysis has become differentiated into the ontogenetic and context-oriented (local) investigative orientations. The former often overlooks the immediate dynamics of the phenomena (i.e., is blind to microgenesis) and instead concentrates on the comparison of different age levels, reconstructing the ontogeny on the basis of comparisons across age. Piaget’s “stage accounts” of development constitute a good example of this direction—numerous empirical studies describe children’s progress from sensorimotor to preoperational, and further to concrete-operational and formal-operational “stages,” without explicating the process that guides such change. In contrast, investigative directions that focus on the study of dynamic psychological phenomena in the local contexts may reveal microgenetic processes but would not explain how the here-and-now emergence of a new way of conduct transfers to the level of general ontogeny. Contemporary analytic efforts of the discourse analytic kind are indeed open to the registration of the dynamic phenomena (in speaking), yet basic questions of development need not be elaborated within that approach. The conceptual complex of identity is a perfect target of being divided between these two methodological traditions. Questions of identity are in some way always associated with moral questions (see DeGraaf, 1997), and

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moral questions are larger ontological idea complexes in any society. Thus, the ontogenetic view of identity study can follow the path of applications of Piaget’s “stage account,” explicating different stages (homogeneous states) through which a child becomes an adult (or “arrives at” the expected identity state). The latter is a product of social processes that involve multiple goal-oriented actions by social institutions. Thus, it is no surprise that at the times of major sociopolitical reorganization of the political and economic worlds, the question of “national” and “supranational” identities seem to come to the forefront in the social sciences (see overview in Camilleri & Malewska-Peyre, 1997). The new theme of “unification of Europe” brings out the political agenda of switching from the local (“national”) identities to the newly constituted (“European”) ones, in ways resemblant of the efforts in the 1920/30s in the Soviet Union to move towards acceptance of “Soviet” national identity and away from particular ethnic/cultural constructions. The latter case can be analyzed in terms of presence of mutually interlinked narrative constructions—stories of history of the given social unit (family, village, town, land, nation, region, universe, etc.)—among which some stories are set up to be in a dominant position relative to others. This orientation to the analysis of history stories—along the lines of the notion of “hierarchies of social languages” of Mikhail Bakhtin— point to the potential reversibility of such narrative power constructions. Thus, the coexistence of “official” and “unofficial” versions of history of the given nation has been claimed to set the stage for relatively quick social change of the mentalities of persons (see the case for Poland— Luczynski, 1997; Estonia—Ahonen, 1997; Tulviste & Wertsch, 1994). In contrast, when the mutually opposed relation between “official” and “unofficial” versions of national history is absent (e.g., not allowed to emerge, as in the case of the United States—see Wertsch & O’Connor, 1994), the mentality of persons within a society is productively “buffered” against quick societal transformations. The identity construction as a process is a dialogical one—yet one in which the dominant side may attempt to eradicate its opposing counterpart in full. Ironically, that is a very unlikely scenario, as individuals in any social context transcend the dominant myth stories and recreate new ones, often under rather unpredictable circumstances (Lawrence, Benedikt, & Valsiner, 1992; Valsiner & Lawrence, 1997). These new narrative constructions may move from supporting the separation of the person from a subservient role to an ideology to become linked with an opposite one—or the counter-myths (see Ramanujan, 1991) can set the stage for social cohesion of groups opposing a dominant opponent—be that political (e.g., Sande, 1992) or institutional (Pollner & McDonald-Wikler, 1985) of its nature. Different social institutions can direct the opposing (subdominant) myth story to become the

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center of escalation of the conduct of persons, who become directed towards the goals set up by the institutions. Uses of cultural narratives, in conjunction with specific “linking rituals” of persons with “the common cause” (e.g., see Haupt & Tacke, 1996, pp. 277–279 on the establishment of “death for fatherland” mental set around World War I) can lead to hyperescalation of identity processes, taking the form of unreflexive eradication of other human beings, as well as themselves. The history of the world—which is mostly that of history of military conflicts—includes descriptions of the “heroic” (or “desperate”— depends upon interpretation) acts by kamikaze pilots, young pioneers like Pavlik Morozov, or “red guards” like Lei Feng (Chan, 1985, p. 64). So, contemporary cultural-psychological perspective on identity processes entails recognition of the coconstruction of the phenomena based on identity-meanings. First, goal-oriented social institutions suggest both myth-stories to the persons and create rituals for actions in the desired direction—as preparation for further actions while promoting the present identity construction. There exist also social suggestions encoded in object form and merely displayed as markers in the everyday life environments of the targeted persons—different kinds of national monuments, memorial plaques on buildings, naming of streets in towns, putting out flags, and so on. These “silent suggestions” are particularly relevant because of their inconspicuousness—the symbolic objects are “just there”—yet these can be at any moment utilized for the purposes of creating rituals in their location. Hence we can observe interesting efforts—in respect to burial practices for different political figures— ranging from placing their gravesite to be a center of public worship (e.g., Lenin’s mausoleum in the former USSR) or to hide the grave (or not have the grave) of a discredited political figure (usually the loser of power fights) at all. Secondly, on the side of the persons who are targeted for their build-up of identity processes, the active relating with the set of social suggestions (“collective culture”) with which they are in contact leads the personal construction of one’s meaningful role in the world. The person is the active and constructive internalizer/externalizer of the life experiences (Valsiner & Lawrence, 1997). The active person goes beyond the set of “social input,” both resisting, neutralizing, and destroying some of that, and turning other sides of it into one’s personal—often exaggerated—new versions. If the personal goal-orientation of the latter coincides with the goal-orientation of the social institution, the processes of hyperescalation of identity may result. The possibility for hyperescalation of identity processes is possible thanks to the coconstructive nature of human cultural development. However, from recognition of such possibility, there is still a long pathway to making sense of how it actually takes place.

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Directed Reflexivity Settings as Cultural Vehicles for Identity Orientation Phenomena of identity processes can be approached through a look at the extension of particular self-referential meanings. In general, human language use is remarkable for its omniscopous nature— through language, a wide variety of meanings can be simultaneously covered, creating meaning systems that are in principle unfalsifiable. Such “all-seeing” possibilities of language uses are shown to work in case of fortune tellers (Aphek & Tobin, 1983, 1990), as well as in efforts to fuse person’s life experiences with ideological idea complexes (Valsiner, 1984). In different contexts of socioinstitutional promotion of internalization of the suggested directions, the person may be provided with some autonomy (within the ritual) to reconstruct the meaning in one’s own terms—yet within the field controlled by a ritual. As Del Río and Alvarez describe the context of prayer, Prayer, the construction of a direct dialogue with the ideal or absent subject—the divinity, saints, and loved ones “in heaven” accessible through a “spiritual path”—is systematically organized. It allows the construction of a psychological world in which the presence of a “divine order” and of a “father” or powerful personage presides and provides a scene, an argument, and a stable base of mental activity. It supplies a system of distributed consciousness and a system of organized knowing around a group of consciuousness that is internalized but culturally situated (Del Río & Alvarez, 1995, p. 238, emphasis added)

The unity of direction by another (“father” figure of “divine order”) and the personal construction “site” makes rituals like prayer (and its many secular counterparts in situations of meetings, tutorials, etc.) fitting with the coconstructive reality of meaning construction. The general direction is given by the organization of the ritual—while the specific versions are left to the individual’s personal construction of meanings. The result is a heterogeneous set of personalized versions of meanings, within the general framework charted out by the generally “defined field.” Surely there are also personally constructed versions of meanings that transcend the boundaries of the general direction (these would become the “counter-stories” a la Ramanujan, 1991), yet these can be separated from the realm of the enclosed “spiritual path” regulated by the institutional goals.

Identity Construction Through Fantasmic Abstraction A crucial issue in identity processes is that of the uses of “we” — in contrast to “you” (singular version) or “I”—in the discursive guidance. Here Karl

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Bühler’s Sprachtheorie (Bühler, 1934, 1990) provides productive analysis of the issue. To start from organismic given—or axiomatic starting point— each persona-psychological system is necessarily ego-centered in its vantage point. In language, this is reflected by using talk about “I,” and (in reference to another person)— singular—“you.” Nevertheless, it is possible very quickly to extend this ego-centered point to incorporate different realms of others— starting from a particular other person (singular “you”) and ending with the inclusion of all possible human beings—by shifting the discourse from “I” to “we,” for instance: I (the preacher) claim that we (i.e., I and all of you, listening to me hereand-now) should act in way X because of Y. Only then can we (i.e., all human beings) benefit from X, which could lead us (= humankind in total) to salvation, which in its turn is essential for our (= I and all of you, listening to me here-and-now) spiritual well-being, as it brings to our (each singular you as each of the listeners of my preaching, and I as the preacher) lives the happiness, which my telling you this story indicates.

This example of gradual expansion (“I” —> “we” of different extensions) and constriction (from all humankind to the “I”) of the field of meaning of “we” indicates the way in which limits of human thought are regulated in a social encounter. Constant moving between the ego-centered (singular) and socially inclusive (plural) perspectives, without specification of the exact boundaries of inclusion of the latter, promotes the internalization (and externalization) of the specific message via passing reference to social unity. Aside from the modulation of the boundaries of social unity, Bühler’s speech theory focused on the abstractive generalization of inherently ambiguous communicative messages (Bühler, 1990, pp. 52–54). An abstract convention can be set up to overrule the emergence of complex nuances of understanding. In the example above, claims (by the preacher) of the inclusion of ill-defined general notions “salvation,” “spiritual well-being,” and “happiness” indicate the effort to control the personal emergence of understanding by providing general, ambiguous, yet connotationally positive “labels” for any personal nuance of meaning construction. Yet the process of abstractive generalization remains co-constructionist, as it is—in the final sense—the meaning-constructing particular person who reconstructs one’s ego-centered perspective by way of “populating the suggested label” (to paraphrase Bakhtin’s well-known saying) by one’s own semiotic synthesis. Vygotsky has provided an illuminating analysis of this process while trying to make sense of how personal insights while reading a short story can emerge (see Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991, Chapter 2). The author of a story, or an artist, creates the structured field within which

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the reader (or viewer) can arrive at one’s moments of synthesis of affective meanings. Thus, A painter portraying a tree cannot paint its every leaf, but gives a general impression by means of spots of color and draws a few leaves here and there. In the same fashion, the writer selects only those events that characterize best and most convincingly the real life material with which he is dealing. Strictly speaking, we already begin to apply our own viewpoints about life to this matter. (Vygotsky, 1971, p. 159)

This process of “applying our own viewpoints” (notice Vygotsky’s use of the move from singular position to include indeterminate set of others!) leads to inherent contradictions, which are overcome by a personal synthesis. The guidance by the writer is expressed in the art of structuring the text in ways that lead the coconstructing reader towards such “key moments,” yet the actualization of the latter remains the prerogative of personal experiencing. The latter may be paradoxical (from the prediction based on the described events): A description of a tragedy can lead to lightness of feelings. Speaking of Ivan Bunin’s Legkoe dykhanie, Vygotsky described the feeling: Instead of painful tension and suspense, we experience an almost pathological lightness. This illustrates the affective contradiction, the collision between two contrasting emotions which apparently makes up the astonishing psychological rules of the aesthetics of the story. Astonishing, because traditional aesthetics prepared us for a diametrically opposite understanding of art. For centuries, scholars of aesthetics have told us of the harmony of form and content. They have told us that form illustrates, completes, or accompanies, the content. And now we suddenly discover that this was an error, that the form may be in conflict with the content, struggle with it, overcome it. We discover in this dialectic contradiction between content and form the true psychological meaning of our own aesthetic reaction. (Vygotsky, 1971, p. 160)

Vygotsky’s perspective on aesthetic synthesis is parallel to my present take on the processes of identity—from the structured social suggestions for identity, the person builds up one’s own personal invention of it. The social suggestions and personal constructions are likely to be in contradiction with one another, yet the latter is constructed on the basis of the former. The two can be characterized in terms of the myth fantasm conceptual pair, elaborated in the symbolic action theory of Ernst E. Boesch (1982, 1991). The heterogeneous set of myth-stories that circulate in the social environment of persons constitute the social direction for individual construction of fantasms, which are “overarching goals” set by generalized meanings. Thus, “the personal contents the individual gives to a term like ‘happiness’

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would constitute a fantasm, as would the subjective meaning given to the term ‘self-realization’ or ‘order’” (Boesch, 1991, p. 124). The productive moment of theoretical construction in Boesch’s terminology is the maintenance of the interdependency of the myth and fantasm notions. Returning to the example (of the preacher) above, it becomes evident that on the background of myth-stories, the narrators make suggestions for the audience in which direction of overarching meanings (which are simultaneosly goal-implying: e.g., “happiness” entails “desire for happiness”) the other persons are expected to build their personal construction. How in particular they might do the latter cannot be prescribed (nor can it be controlled), yet the general value-laden orientation can be given. Most of our generalized meanings include an affectively set directionality—they are nonneutral in their implications. “Happiness,” “justice,” “love,” “wisdom” have appeal quite different from “sadness,” “exploitation,” “envy,” “stupidity”—even as the latter are relevant semiotic organizers of personal worlds and societies.

General Conclusions: What Can Interdisciplinary Research Learn From Developmental and Cultural Psychologies? Identity was here viewed a process of personal construction of the fantasm (in terms of Ernst E. Boesch) that relates the self with social units of various kinds, through semiotic means. Social guidance of these processes entails symbolic marking of the environment (through monuments, architectural styles, sociopolitical symbols) as well as human life courses (through ritualistic events). Questions of identity are often asked from ideological perspectives of either breaking down some special kind of identity (e.g., “national”) and replace it with other kind (e.g., “international,” “European”; or “local community”) target. These ideological guidance cases need to be taken into account in research into identity formation, but research on identity issues cannot be conducted from these ideological standpoints. Last (but not least), it is interesting to note the continuity of orientations—especially as this presentation takes place here in Halle, the location which has long historical traditions in the interest in identity formation. In the folk-wisdom of the German area in late 18th century, a saying “he who goes to Halle returns either Pietist or Atheist” (Pinson, 1934, p. 128) reflects the tradition of interest in persons’ identity formation. The pioneering role August Hermann Francke in the area of education along the

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lines of German Pietist religious revitalization is interestingly similar to our present interests. Thus, A correspondent writing of the Halle Pädagogium in 1784 says “The school concerns itself with the hearts of its pupils.” Francke’s most original contribution to pedagogic theory is considered . . . to be his introduction of the principle of the education of the will. Education for him was essentially the influencing of the will; Christian education essentially the determination of the will to live according to the will of God. (Pinson, 1934, p. 140)

The practice of education has achieved successes—although partial—that still need to be explained by developmental and cultural psychologies. The coconstructionist orientation elaborated here is an effort in that direction—yet it is not attempted to convert the wills of any interdisciplinary scholars to this new terminological garment in modern psychology.

Notes 1. Presentation at the Workshop “Identitätsdiskussionen in der Psychologie,” in the framework of the Graduiertenkollegs “Identitätsforschung” of Martin-LutherUniversität Halle-am-Saale, April 18, 1997. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA.

References Ahonen, S. (1997). A transformation of history: The official representations of history in East Germany and Estonia, 1986–1991. Culture & Psychology, 3(1), 41–62. Aphek, E., & Tobin, Y. (1983). On image building and establishing credibility in the language of fortune-telling. Eastern Anthropologist, 36(4), 287–308. Aphek, E., & Tobin, Y. (1990). The semiotics of fortune-telling. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Bergson, H. (1907/1911). Creative evolution. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Boesch, E. E. (1982). Fantasmus und Mythos. In J. Stagl (Ed.), Aspekte der Kultursoziologie (pp. 59–86). Berlin, Germany: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Boesch, E. E. (1991). Symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. New York, NY: Springer. Bühler, K. (1934). Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer. (2nd edition: Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1965) Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

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Camilleri, C., & Malewska-Peyre, H. (1997). Socialization and identity strategies. In J. W. Berry, P. R. Dasen, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (pp. 41–67). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Chan, A. (1985). Children of Mao: Personality development & political activism in the Red Guard generation. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. DeGraaf, W. (1997). Identity as moral narrative. In M. Grossen & P. Py (Eds.), Pratiques sociales et médiations symboliques (pp. 121–136). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Del Río, P., & Alvarez, A. (1995a). Tossing, praying, and reasoning: the changing architectures of mind and agency. In J. V. Wertsch, P. del Río, & A. Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 215–247). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Haupt, G.-G., & Tacke, C. (1996). Die Kultur des Nationalen. In W. Hardtwig & H.-U. Wehler (Eds.), Kulturgeschichte Heute (pp. 255–283). Göttingen, Germany: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht. Krueger, F. (1915). Über Entwicklungspsychologie. Arbeiten zur Entwicklungspsychologie, 1(1), 1–232. Krueger, F. (1928). The essence of feeling. In M. L. Reymert (Ed.), Feelings and emotions: The Wittenberg Symposium (pp 38–88) Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Lawrence, J. A., Benedikt, R., & Valsiner, J. (1992). Homeless in the mind: A case history of personal life in and out a close orthodox community. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 1(2), 157–176. Luczynski, J. (1997). The multivoicedness of historical representations in a changing sociocultural context: Young Polish adults’ representations of World War II. Culture & Psychology, 3(1), 21–40. Pinson, K. S. (1934). Pietism as a factor in the rise of German nationalism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Pollner, M., & McDonald-Wikler, L. (1985). The social construction of unreality: A case study of family’s attribution of competence to a severely retarded child. Family Process, 24, 241–254. Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). Toward a counter-system: women’s tales. In A. Appadurai, F. J. Korom, & M. A. Mills (Eds.), Gender, genre, and power in South Asian expressive traditions (pp. 33–55). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sande, H. (1992). Palestinian martyr widowhood— emotional needs in conflict with role expectations. Social Science & Medicine, 34(6), 709–717. Sander, F. (1930). Structure, totality of experience, and Gestalt. In C. Murchison (Ed.), Psychologies of 1930 (pp. 188–204). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Tulviste, P., & Wertsch, J. V. (1994). Official and unofficial histories: the case of Estonia. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 4(4), 311–329. Valsiner, J. (1984). The childhood of the Soviet citizen: Socialization for loyalty. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University Press.

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Valsiner, J., & Lawrence, J. A. (1997). Human development in culture across the life span. In J. W. Berry, P. R. Dasen, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Basic processes and human development (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 69–106). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). The psychology of art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wertsch, J. V., & O’Connor, K. (1994). Multivoicedness in historical representation: American college students’ accounts of the origins of the United States. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 4(4), 295–309.

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5 Reconstructing the Affordance Concept Semiotic Mediation of Immediacy1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Ecological psychology is of varied kinds—usually considered to start from the work of James Gibson whose anticonstructionist stance has been the center for creating the concept of affordance—based on his “philosophical behaviorism” and in analogy with Kurt Lewin’s and Kurt Koffka’s notion of Aufforderungscharakter in the 1920s-1930s. Disputes over the affordance concept in our times between the cognitive and ecological perspectives constitutes a proof of the theoretical impasse of locating that notion within the metascientific mindscape of conflict between “direct” and “indirect” views of psychological phenomena. Psychological phenomena are inevitably—by their role in preadaptation to the future—“directly indirect.” If extended beyond the immediate perception/action domains, the notion of affordance becomes a subcomponent of general construction processes within the psyche. Immediacy of the perception-action relation in irreversible time gives rise to the need for distancing through construction of signs that are organized into dynamic hierarchies. Cultural psychology of semiotic mediation starts from

Beyond the Mind, pages 79–96 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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80    Beyond the Mind the position of persons as active constructors of their relations with the environment (including construction and reconstruction of affordances) based on their existing and anticipated meanings of such relations. Human beings transcend the existing environmental conditions by constructing new ones, perceiving their limitations, and constructing further new structured meaningful environments. By constructing ever new meaningful affordances, human beings afford themselves further psychological and social development. Gibson’s notion of affordance finds its place within the wider construction, maintenance, and demolition of sign hierarchies. The affordance concept needs to be conceptualized with an open end, facing the future. We perceive that the environment changes in some respect and persists in others. We see that it is different from time to time, even moment to moment, and yet that it is the same environment over time. We perceive both the change and the underlying nonchange. My explanation is that the perceptual systems work by detecting invariants in the flux of stimulation but are also sensitive to the flux itself. (Gibson, 1973, p. 393)

Our contemporary psychology has become used to the notion of affordance, following the explanation of that concept by James Gibson. He developed it on the basis of his action and perception research program in the 1960s–1970s. Gibson’s theoretical constructions were tentative—he felt much better in devising experiments than building theories. When he did the latter, he moved cautiously between various general concepts, trying to fit what their meanings afforded with the empirical domains he worked with—landing airplanes, driving cars, and looking for whole patterns of movement of human bodies. The focus on movement—of the perceiver and actor, or of the flux of optical arrays crossing the observer’s perspective—was central to his contributions to perception research. The affordance concept is an interesting case as its elaborations—over two decades—are mostly based on Gibson’s notes that were published after his death (Reed & Jones, 1982). According to his notes, affordances are properties of the environment relative to the perceiver/actor. Thus, “the affordances of things are what they furnish, for good or ill, that is, what they afford the observer” (Gibson, 1982/1967, p. 403, emphasis in original). The affordance is a concept that characterizes relationship of the environment with the actor in non-symmetric ways: “Affordance of something is assumed not to change as the need of the observer changes. The edibility of a substance for an animal does not depend on the hunger of the animal. The walk-on-ability of a surface exists whether or not the animal walks on it” (Gibson, 1982/1972, p. 409). In analogy to the competence/performance contrasts for the cognitive human beings, affordance can be thought of as the competence of the

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environment. The “performance of the environment” depends, for Gibson, on the perceiver/actor who may use some of the competence (affordances). The affordances for behavior and the behaving animal are complementary—yet the environment is there first, and the action “fits in” with that. Affordances do not cause behavior but constrain or control it. Gibson here attempted to transcend the subjective/objective dichotomy by making the latter dynamic and the former automatic. As designated by Gibson, an affordance can have a wide field of possibilities. Thus, An aperture or gap in an enclosure affords entry and exist. It also affords vision within the enclosure by admitting illumination (sunlight) It also affords looking through (both looking out and looking in) It also affords long-term respiration (breathing fresh air). Note that all the complexities of doors, windows, shutters, grilles, and panes of glass, etc. get their utilities from these basic affordances (e.g., the misperception of a glass door is a real danger in modern buildings. (Gibson, 1982/1976, p. 414) Gibson was involved in an effort to characterize complex events through their constituent sets of affordances. Yet the key issue is that affordances— however many or however complex they are—are not amenable to change. The person’s relations to these can change—the mother’s breast that affords sucking for an infant no longer would be usable for adult males. Yet— as an object, it remains suckable-upon. Gibson explicitly distinguished his notion of affordance with two neighboring concepts from the 1920s–1930s—Kurt Lewin’s Aufforderungscharacter (invitation character or valence) and Kurt Koffka’s demand-character (Gibson, 1982/1973, p. 409). Both of these concepts—indeed prerunners for Gibson’s affordance—are not fitting for Gibson because of the phenomenological and symmetric nature of the terms. Phenomenological views on person–environment relations can involve the notion of construction— while Gibson’s rootedness in the new realism of E. B. Holt (Charles, 2011) would rule out any notion of construction. Gibson’s anticonstructionist stand that got its form in the 1950s’ discussions of immediacy versus mediation in perception leads him to go beyond his immediate colleague at Smith College—Kurt Koffka—in the direction of looking for environmental structures that constrain behavior.3 The role of the perceiver/actor was to “pick up” the affordances that exist in one’s relations with the object. However, human beings make new objects—and create new

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affordances with these objects. These new affordances involve the emergence of distancing and—as a reflection upon it—semiotic mediation. It is here that the vehement denial of the cognitive construction idea that has been associated with Gibson and his disciples reaches its end, and the direct perception/ action perspective becomes productively synthesized with the notion of construction of sign hierarchies (Valsiner, 2007, 2014). Some disputes in the history of science block the development of that science itself,4 creating an arena for proliferation of “normal science” in the sense of Thomas Kuhn. I consider the dispute between the camps of adherents to direct and indirect perception to have played such inhibitory function. The positive kernel of Gibson’s affordance concept—the dynamic immediacy of coordination of the properties of the object and the subject of action—has been turned into a travesty of opposition between the “direct perception” and “constructionist” adherents that turn the issue into an analogue of a football match.

Relating With the Environment: Perceiving, Distancing, and Acting How would Gibson’s direct perception/action perspective contrast with one that starts from the axiom of construction? Let us accept Gibson’s premises on the flow of the perception/action cycle that involves our adjustment to the properties of the environment. How can we create relative stability in that flow? If the flow is continuous—like in the case of water pouring out of the spring, or water tap, we adjust our body to create temporary stability (Figure 5.1). In Figure 5.1, the flow of water affords capturing it with cupped hands— a temporary and inefficient solution for creating a water reservoir, and also less than optimal way of further transportation of the liquid (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.1  Capturing the flow.

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Figure 5.2  Acting with the captured liquid.

The water affords such capture only within some temperature range—before the hands get burnt, or frozen. We create substitutes—less convenient than hands in terms of availability, yet protected from immediate damage to our bodies. The invention of containers—cups, bowls, bottles, and so on—that allow the distancing of human hands from the affordances of the liquid are conceptually equivalent to creating a barrier for turning the direct perceptual act (and action that corresponds to that) into an indirect one. Mediation of the act starts from distancing (Figure 5.3). The constructed barrier here remains a part of the perception-action event—the mediating barrier fits in between the affordances of the liquid

Figure 5.3  A constructed tool to handle the affordances of the liquid: distancing by creating a barrier.

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and those of the hand. This relationship becomes generic (Figure 5.4). The actor here constructs an asymmetric form of mutuality, working against the immediacy of the perception–action event. All human cultural adaptation consists of construction of such barriers—borders that become parts of the act of relating with environment. First of all, these are barriers for perceiving and acting, followed by creating signs that regulate the flow of action. Human immediate perception and action is sign mediated—except for extreme conditions of time pressure or uncertainty (Figure 5.5). Gibson’s direct link of perceiving and acting fits well with the latter, but not with the former.

Figure 5.4  Asymmetry in mutuality in person–environment relation. Present Moment

S

Past

The Act

Future

Irreversible Time

Figure 5.5  Sign mediation of immediate perception-action events.

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What Gibson’s perspective on perception-action events did not consider—and what I here do—is axiomatically starting from the notion of asymmetry of irreversible time. Gibson rejected James’ concern with pastpresent-future distinction in the case of events: William James was bothered by the puzzle of the junction of past and future in his description of the stream of consciousness. He never doubted that they were separate but what would “the present” be? The borderline was not sharp; he could only suggest that the present goes a little way into the past, and perhaps the future. But this is simply a muddle. It will not do. Perhaps it is a false puzzle and the two are united in the fact of occluding edges. For an occluding edge the present hides the past and also hides the future. During locomotion what is being concealed “goes into the past” and what is being revealed “comes from the future.” But actually of course one simply apprehends the whole environment. (Gibson, 1982/1975, p. 396, emphasis added)

Gibson’s theorizing here takes the turn opposite to that of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics. His nondevelopmental and nonconstructionist stance is visible here as it eliminates the notion of irreversible time from possible inclusion in the scheme. Time is included as an analogue to space—in the form of locomotion in space. The past and future are translated into the issue of visibility during locomotion (“occluding edge”). The final point—“simply apprehending the environment”—brings the theoretical system to its closed conclusion—the reality is to be experienced as it exists, by the locomoting person who navigates around occlusions. It is precisely at this junction where cultural psychology rejects Gibson’s axioms of direct “apprehending environment” and builds on the alternative axiom of constant construction of signs that form sign hierarchies.5 Gibson’s insistence on immediacy of perception/action is not denied—but rather subordinated to the constructed and reconstructed sign hierarchies under the looming impact of the events in irreversible time. Gibson’s translation of time into space (and locomotion in space) assumes symmetry, while in the case of all biological, psychological, and social systems, irreversible time is asymmetric, with the miniscule present being the border point (Figure 5.6). It is precisely an act of the border crossing from past to future that new cultural means become constructed to handle the affordances available in the environment along the needs of the actor’s goal orientation. This entails distancing from the environment while remaining in the role of control over it (Figure 5.4b above). A concrete example of such distancing is a quasi-cup (Figure 5.7).

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b f

c

a d

g e

Figure 5.6  The “broom of time” (asymmetry between past and future).

Figure 5.7  A cultural artifact of distancing-while-in-control: a spoon as a “quasicup.”

A spoon is a very ordinary tool that combines an elongated handle together with an abbreviated cup at its end. Its invention entails the protection of the spoon user from direct access to the properties of the substances transported by the spoon (e.g., hot liquids) while still making it possible to work with these substances. One part of the constructed object (the “cup”) is well fitted with the demands of the substances (liquids) the object needs to handle. The other part attached to the first—the handle—distances the actor from the immediate contact with the substance, while maintaining the possibility to act with it. Human construction of safety devices—from condoms and medical gloves to bomb shelters in case of direct action, and from apprehension towards novelty (together with curiosity) to institutional safety instructions—are all examples of such distancing-while-remaining in contact.

Finding the Critical Object: From the Hand to the Handle An appropriate object for such comparison could be the handle. For Gibson the handle belongs to the “objects affording manipulation and related

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Figure 5.8  The handle: distancing that creates arena for meaning construction.

activities,” within which it is defined as “a graspable object attached to a portable object” (Gibson, 1982/1971, p. 405). However, there is more to the handle than the obvious function of graspability, movability, and pourability (if attached to a vessel of liquids). A handle is a distancing device, and as such, leads the handler away from immediacy in the perception/action system (Figure 5.8). The handle of a coffee cup affords the drinking from the cup without being subjected to the heat of the liquid. A look at the handle from the perspective of cultural psychology can be seen in the analysis by Georg Simmel, who was caught at the crossroads of interpreting ancient Greek vases—with handles—as art objects and as practical vessels (Figure 5.9), at the same time: As a piece of metal which is tangible, weighable, and incorporated into both the ways and contexts of the surrounding world, a vase is a segment of reality. At the same time, its artistic form leads an existence completely detached and self-contained, for which the material reality of the metal is merely a vehicle. . . . This dual nature of the vase is most decisively expressed in its handle. The handle is the part by which it is grasped, lifted, and tilted; in the handle the vase projects visibly into that real world which relates it to everything external, to an environment that does not exist for the work of art as such. (Simmel, 1959, pp. 267–268, emphasis added)

Functional Role of Aesthetics in Affordances What Gibson purposefully misses—the aesthetic role of the handle—is crucial for understanding the multiple functions of the handle. Aside from

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Figure 5.9  Illustration of Simmel’s idea.

the acts of grasping, lifting, and tilting the handle, it is the aesthetic function that the handle plays for the agent—the handler of the object with a handle. By acting upon the environment through the use of an object that includes a handle the person creates a meaningful link between oneself and the world. Hence the issue of decoration of the handle of the object is of no small importance (for Simmel, quite contrary to Gibson): Our unconscious criterion for the aesthetic effect of the handle seems to be the manner in which its shape harmonizes . . . the world on the outside which, with the handle, makes its claim on the vessel, and the world of art which, heedless of the other, demands the handle for itself. Moreover, not only must it be possible for the handle actually to perform its practical function, but the possibility must also be manifest in its appearance, and emphatically so in the case of apparently soldered handles, as opposed to those apparently shaped in one movement with the body of the vase . . . The contrast between vase and handle is more sharply accentuated when, as frequently happens, the handle has the shape of a snake, lizard, or dragon. These forms suggest the special significance of the handle: it looks as though the animal had crawled on to the vase from the outside, to be incorporated into form only, as it were, in an afterthought. (Simmel, 1959, p. 268, emphasis added)

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Simmel’s point corrects Gibson’s simplified utilitarianism of the affordance notion—while affording a practical action, the objects that human beings have constructed guide them towards symbolization in ways that are external o the ongoing action in the here-andnow setting. The two worlds—here-and-now (AS-IS) and there-and-then (AS-IF in Vaihinger’s terms) are constantly mutually linked because of the inevitable flow of irreversible time. The latter opens the door to constructive imagination—while “being here” I can imagine “being there”—where I am not, or—not yet. We act in practical contexts with objects that we have decorated by ornaments— which, by themselves, are of no use for our practical action. In the beginning these could have been constructed to be symbolically functional—to ward off “evil eye” or bring luck. By the present time these ornaments may have become mere decorations. Yet they are important for us now—as they were long before psychology as science was born. The affordances of objects afford the construction of semiospheres around the objects, which would link the mundane action object with cultural meaning systems far beyond the immediacy of action.

Constructing Dynamic Sign Hierarchies— And New Affordances Humans directly relating with the environment leads to indirect means of relating with it. Affordances may start from biologically established congruence between the perceiving and acting systems, yet this is only a starting point of constructing the analogue of what Gibson labeled “higher order invariants”—not in perception, but in signification. In Figure 5.10, I present a generic depiction of sign hierarchies as the person moves along within one’s subjective experiencing of the surroundings. The encounter with the environment gives rise to a first-order sign (X) that becomes the organizer of the ongoing and changing experience (see Figure 5.5, above). Signs operate as inhibitors—Sign X delimits the set of possibilities for experiencing, or the set of affordances of objects that are being experienced. However, the construction of sign hierarchies need not be finished— the emerged sign (X) can give rise to the emergence of the next level of the hierarchy (Sign X + 1) that inhibits the first level sign (X), releasing the experiencing from the constraints of the constructed first sign. If X refers to the focus on curiosity (“what is that that I am experiencing?”), then Sign X + 1 brings in its blocking (“whatever it is might be dangerous”). The next construction level (X + 3) may inhibit the inhibitor (“but I want to explore it!”), overcoming the caution constructed at the previous level. The

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Figure 5.10  Affordances created within dynamic semiotic hierarchy.

person moves on in the array of affordances the meaning of which has been constructively organized through three levels of the sign hierarchy. The construction of sign hierarchies can move towards further generality, in which at some level a bifurcation point between abandoning the construction and developing a qualitatively new hypergeneralized meaning of the experience (super naturality bifurcatioin point). If the hierarchy construction is not abandoned it leads to new synthesis of meaning—of a generality of construction of new values, prejudices, or supernatural explanations. The meaning of everything becomes imbued by new meaning at Sign X+4 level. Persons become committed to patriotic fervor and volunteer to go to wars, become suicide bombers, and unquestionably become involved in genocides. Or they may start to look all food objects in the world through the hypergeneralized belief in “eating healthy” and calculating calories at every moment of encounter with anything that affords

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being eaten. Human psyche is open to religious and quasireligious conversions through the synthesis of hypergeneralized meanings in the sign hierarchy. Doubt disappears, and life looks simple. Normative psychology (Brinkmann, 2011) becomes possible through the processes of sign hierarchy construction—norms, personal and social, are the emergent properties of the immediate experiencing of the world as it flows from past towards the future. Speaking about affordances, the same object gives us a vastly different ways of acting—all results of immediate meaningful perception (which is mediated by the history of sign hierarchy construction). The simple fall of liquid out of the clouds—otherwise known as rain—affords getting wet (“I might get wet”) in Affordance Zone 1, and the person may immediately open the umbrella. Another person—operating after becoming converted to “rain cult”—would equally immediately go out to get wet (“rain brings health to my body”). Both actions—opposite as they are—are immediate, but the reasons for the deep realism for these actions are mediated by the sign hierarchies.

Conclusions: Affordance Needs to Be Viewed as Having an Open End How can one rescue the feasible notion of affordance from becoming yet another ideologically overdetermined term in psychology that is much discussed, fought over, and then abandoned? I have claimed in this chapter that the opposition between the two “archrivals”—the proponents of direct and indirect perception/action ideas—has been unproductive. Kono (2009, pp. 368–369) provides a critical example that subordinates the functional use of the affordance notion to that of culturally constructed structures. The postbox is a box the affordances of which are very similar to those of garbage cans or “recycling centers”—objects of certain kind (size, smell, etc.) can be inserted in these boxes, but it is not expected that the objects inserted might be taken out by the inserter6 (in contrast to any other box where reversibility of the use of in-put-ability afforded by the box can be reversed by take-out-ability of the same structure). Anybody can put objects into a postbox, but only socially designated actors (postman, or the legitimate owner of the mailbox) can take these out. The existence of such social constraints upon affordances of an object illustrates the relevance of nonimmediate understanding in the context of immediate encounter with the object. Culture is indeed important as a delimiter of the whole sets of affordances of a particular object (Valenti & Good, 1991), yet the confusions about the meaning of culture that have been rampant in psychology

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(Valsiner, 2007) have made it more than difficult to situate the positive program of the affordance notion in a wider theoretical framework. What kind of framework could the latter be? Kono (2014) attempts to use the ActorNetwork Theory (ANT) in that role—to elaborate on how the niche of the organism becomes created. This is elaborated through the notion of socially extended mind (SEM) that could take the form or an ANT (actor-network theory) where the uses of affordance notion can be inserted. Networks that include “partners” of agents and of objects of action (which act back) seem to be operating based on system of affordances. Yet SEM has “difficulty to analyze the interactions with opposition, antagonism, or conflict among a subject and its surroundings” (Kono, 2013, last paragraph). Obviously, the mutual affordances of the ANT-partners are not viewed as resisting, or opposing, the actions of the others. Gibsonian affordance concept fits the notion of fit (correspondence)—rather than nonfit—between the actor and the object of action. Yet social relations between minds—be these personal or socially extended—are filled with oppositions, ignoring and neutralization, as well as outright conflict. These varieties of experience are diminished by CANT (constrained actionnetwork theory—Valsiner, 2012, p. 267). Networks are constrained by hierarchical semiotic mediation. Affordances can be viewed as the borders of nothingness and nonnothingness (Bang, 2009) are being established. One could here point out that the future is always open to uncertainty—in this sense nothingness (at this present) as future is that, and the nonnothingness (which has already happened). The affordance notion needs to be conceptualized with an open end—oriented towards the future. Maybe an immunological model can serve as an example (Figure 5.11). The key analogue here is in the antibody being given with a standard (invariable) and variable parts. For thinking of affordance—between the immediately available (established in the past) and not yet available (future nothingness)—one can reconcile the notions of immediacy and mediation in the niche construction. Together with immediacy in the use of objects (the Gibsonian orthodoxy, or “somethingness”) emerges the near-affordance openness to modify the given functional use in the looming future. Yet it is only a potential (“nothingness”) that is looming at the actor at full speed, most likely to be passed by as the immediate perception/action system is sufficient, or constrained by lack of time for anything else than “picking up” the affordances in rapid action (Figure 5.12a). But when the action fails—that is, the coordination of the acting organ and the affording object declines—the structure of affordance is up to modification. The affordance becomes open to innovation under the looming pressures of the future becoming the past (Figure 5.12b).

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Figure 5.11  A schematic presentation of the immune system.

Figure 5.12  Two ways of functioning of affordances—actor from past linked with object from future in irreversible time (a) direct perception-action flow; (b) breaking the flow, leading to affordance modification).

Figure 12b is the starting point for sign mediation through construction of semiotic hierarchies. It is the misfit within the affordance structure that moves on in the irreversible time. What the perspective of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics as I have outlined it here offers is the link between the socially set structure

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that limits the possible set of object’s affordances, and the immediate “pickup” of these affordances itself. That link entails person-based, intentional construction of new ways of acting with objects the affordances of which are both perceived directly, and recognized by conventions. The immediacy of “picking up” and “using” affordances is here subordinated to the person as an active constructor of one’s environment, and through it—of oneself. Ecological psychology cannot fail in its liaison with cultural psychology if it leaves behind the ideological wars against “constructionism” and appreciates the flexibility of construction of ever new affordances by the creative human mind.

Acknowledgment This paper was prepared by the support of the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology to the Niels Bohr Professorship Centre at Aalborg University.

Notes 1. Presentation at the Japanese Psychological Society meeting, Sapporo, September, 19, 2013 (Let ecological psychology encounter cultural psychology for its expansive application to socio-cultural phenomena—and hopefully not fail in such application). 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark 3. I here purposefully bypass all the voluminous disputes between the “immediacy” and “mediation” of psychological functions that have raged in psychology since the 1950s (see Costall, 1995; DeJong, 1995; Noble, 1993; Reed & Jones, 1979; Sharrock & Coulter, 1998; Withagen and Chemero, 2009). The best existing contextualization of James Gibson’s contributions can be found in Heft (2001). 4. See Valsiner (2012) on the role of the fight between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften in 19th century German intellectual circles as a deterrent to development of qualitative methodologies of the study of higher psychological functions. 5. It is interesting to note that the “early Gibson”—of the 1940s and 1950s—addressed the issues of such mediated nature of the human psyche—yet through the concept of surrogates (Gibson, 1982/1954). For Gibson, a surrogate could be defined as “a stimulus produced by another individual which is relatively specific to some object, place, or event not at present affecting the sense organs of the perceiving individual” (Gibson, 1982/1954, p. 243). Human beings are “chronic makers of surrogates” (p. 244). Gibson’s interlocutor in that was with Charles Morris and his version of semiotics. 6. Of course this differentiates the post box from garbage box or recycling box— where volunteers or not-yet-socialized children may examine the contents of the throw-away objects.

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References Bang, J. (2009). Nothingness and the human Umwelt: A cultural-ecological approach to meaning. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 374–392. Brinkmann, S. (2011). Towards an expansive hybrid psychology: Integrating theories of the mediated mind. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45, 1–20. Charles, E. (Ed.). (2011). A new look at new realism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Costall, A. (1995). Socializing affordances. Theory & Psychology, 5(4), 467–481. De Jong, H. L. (1995). Ecological psychology and naturalism. Theory & Psychology, 5(2), 251–269. Gibson, J. (1982/1954). A theory of pictorial perception. In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 241–257). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gibson, J. (1982/1967). What is perceived? In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 401–403). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gibson, J. (1982/1971). A preliminary description and classification of affordances. In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 403–408). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gibson, J. (1982/1972). Affordances of the environment. In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 408–410). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gibson, J. (1982/1973). On the new idea of persistence and change and the old ideas that it drives out. In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 393–396). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gibson, J. (1982/1976).The theory of affordances and the design of the environment. In E. Reed & R. Jones (Eds.), Reasons for realism (pp. 413–416). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Heft, H. (2001). Ecological psychology in context. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Kono, T. (2009). Social affordances and the possibility of ecological linguistics. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 356–373. Kono, T. (2014). Extended mind and after: Socially extended mind and actornetwork. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 48(1), 48–60. doi:10.1007/s12124013-9242-2 Noble, W. (1993). What kind of approach to language fits Gibson’s approach to perception? Theory & Psychology, 3(1), 57–78. Reed, E., & Jones, R. (1979). James Gibson’s ecological revolution in psychology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 9, 189–204. Reed, E., & Jones, R. (Eds.). (1982). Reasons for realism. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Sharrock, W., & Coulter, J. (1998). On what we can see. Theory & Psychology, 8(2), 147–164. Simmel, G. (1959/1911). The handle. In K. H. Wolfe (Ed.), Georg Simmel, 1858– 1918 (pp. 267–275). Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

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Valenti, S., & Good, J. (1991). Social affordances and interaction. Ecological Psychology, 3(2), 77–98. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Valsiner, J. (2014). Invitation to cultural psychology. London, England: SAGE. Withagen, R., & Chemero, A. (2009). Naturalizing perception. Theory & Psychology, 19(3), 363–389.

6 The Concept of Attractor How Dynamic Systems Theory Deals With Future1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The notion of attractor—a state of the dynamic system in towards which it moves in the present—has accomplished a major task of including future into the theoretical models of the social sciences. Together with this achievement comes the disadvantage of creating a limitation—the attractor states are given as idealized states. The formal notion of attractors has been descriptive of dynamic processes, rather than explicative of their generation. The attractor concept has introduced history to formal models in its minimal form—directionality of the system as it moves towards a future state—overlooking the possibilities of selective guidance of the future by formal properties of the past. A theoretical extension of the attractor concept is provided and linked with a dialogical perspective on the self. The notion of attractors is complemented by a mechanism of feed-forward constraining by the dynamic system of its own movement between order and disorder.

Beyond the Mind, pages 97–113 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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In the recent two decades the dynamic systems theory (DST) seems to become increasingly widely used in psychology—often on its developmental side (Lewis, 1995, 2000; Smith & Thelen, 1993; van Geert, 1994a, 1994b, 2002). It has the appeal for psychologists that most of other recent formal analysis methods have lacked. The DST is sensitive to nonlinearity of processes, it builds its models upon phenomena of variability, and it allows the researchers to see unity within the diversity (Aslin, 1993). Last (but not least), the DST has introduced the notion of a future state of the system— that of attractor state—into its theoretical core. In a discipline where future is largely ignored—as it entails behavior that is not yet present—such theoretical insight is certainly revolutionary. Yet each revolutionary move has its own limits. The goal of this chapter is to chart out the theoretical potentials that DST might for a dialogical perspectives upon development of the self. I do that through a conceptual analysis of one of the concepts used in DST— that of the attractor. This concept is critical for finding out how DST makes sense of time-dependency of systems dynamics.

New Focus: From Points to Trajectories The DST has introduced to biological and social sciences the focus they need—that on dynamic processes. These dynamic processes include emergence of novel structures from the relations between previously existing ones, under some circumstances of the system–environment relations (such as far from equilibrium states—Nicolis, 1993). This makes DST into a fitting suitor for developmental sciences that have suffered from the absence of models that take emergence of novelty into account (Fogel, 1999; Lewis, 2000; van Geert, 2002). At least in formal terms, the DST has introduced a focus on the history into the models of sciences where it is applicable. The central descriptive unit of the dynamic focus is the notion of trajectory—movement through time. In contrast, in the nondynamic universe of knowledge that unit was the time-freed trajectory—a point. A trajectory is the depicted trace of a point moving through time. Like in the case of ontological (time-free) depictions of points, the trajectories are characterized by their coordinates (n-1 structural coordinates, plus the time dimension). Trajectories represent the outcomes of dynamic processes. These outcomes can be described by their direction—extrapolating from the previously observed part of the trajectory to its continuation—or from an expected domain of continuation to the present. The latter is the basis for the introduction of the notion of attractors.

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What Is Attractor? For a dynamic system, the attractor is where it will eventually end up. The notion of attractor entails that of tending towards—dynamic processes can be observed tending towards a relatively stable state of the system. The region of the state space to which all nearby trajectories tend is called attractor (Clark, Truly, & Phillips, 1993). An attractor is the smallest unit that cannot be itself decomposed into two or more attractors with their respective separate basins of attraction.

Types of Attractors There exist different kinds of attractors. A simple example of an attractor is the fixed point of origin towards which a dampening pendulum arrives—a fixed point of rest where all trajectories converge (Figure 6.1). This attractor can be found in linear systems. For example, a freely moving pendulum will slow down and come to rest in the lowest point. In general sense, the point attractor represents the case of mathematical infinity. Real processes of course will never reach infinity, yet the attraction for that infinity is the attractor for them (Van Geert, 1994b). In self-excitatory systems—that function in nonlinear fashion—one finds limit cycles as attractors (Figure 6.2): When a system is on a limit cycle, it oscillates with a certain frequency and amplitude that are a function of the system parameters only, not of the initial conditions. The stability of this attractor is revealed by the fact that trajectories outside the limit cycle spiral inward while trajectories inside spiral outward toward the limit cycle. (Kelso, Ding & Schöner, 1993, p. 18)

Figure 6.1  Fixed point attractor.

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Figure 6.2  Limit-cycle attractor.

The Limit Cycle Attractor Represents a Closed Trajectory in Which the System Will Settle The attractor of quasi-periodicity (or torus attractor) arises in higher-dimensional systems and takes the form of an m-dimensional torus (Figure 6.3). This is describable as a region that “walks” around a large “doughnut” shape outside surface area, never repeating exactly the same path. This attractor represents processes that stay in a confined area yet move around within it. Both limit-cycle and torus attractors are deterministic and nonlinear. With increased nonlinearity in the system, new forms of attractors can appear. Thus, a strange attractor is the limit that is set on the functioning of a chaotic system (Sprott, 1993). It shows stable processes in dynamic variability. The processes are the same—yet their outcomes never repeat themselves.

Figure 6.3  The torus attractor.

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Figure 6.4  Strange attractor.

Each event produced through the influence of a strange attractor is new—it may be similar but not identical. The strange attractor acts upon the system as a whole, “gathering” the trajectories within a range of its domain. Differently from the first three attractors, the strange attractor is sensitive to the initial conditions of the system. Thus, in the example of mathematical model of weather (see Figure 6.4), the “butterfly effect” is due to the minimal differences in initial conditions leading to vast differences in the flow of the processes. A small alteration in an ecological balance in one place can lead to big changes elsewhere. Yet the whole field of different effects of minimal differences remains closed to innovation—as the contours in Figure 6.4 remain closed. The strange attractors—despite the unpredictability of their specific outcomes—allow novelty of deterministic kind to emerge in a conditionssensitive way.

What Is Attractor Basin? Attractors specify the direction where a dynamic system is going—but what about its origins? The latter have been conceptualized as attractor

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Figure 6.5  Two attractors (point, limit cycle) with basins, distinguished by separatrix.

basins. Here an analogy with geographical phenomena is used to clarify the concept: The idea of basins of attraction and steady-state point attractors is essentially the same as the idea of a mountainous region with hills, ridges, valleys, lakes and the water-drainage system. Just as a mountainous region may have many lakes and drainage basins, so may a dynamical system have many attractors, each draining its own basin. Therefore, it is natural to conceive of the state space as being partitioned into disjoint basins of attraction. When released from an initial state, the dynamical system is on a trajectory lying in only one basin, and the system flows to that basin’s attractor. This restriction means that each disjoint basin leads to only one attractor and thus that the different attractors constitute the total number of alternative long-term behaviors of the system. (Kauffmann, 1993, pp. 176–177, emphasis added)

In Figure 6.5 we can see this picture involving two separated (by the plane of separatrix) attractors with their basins. The attractor basin is the whole set of possible trajectories that “feed into” the given attractor (and no other attractor).

Changes in Attractors and Attractor Basins The crucial issue of developmental science is the emergence of new mechanisms that take over control (and sometimes replace) their earlier

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counterparts in the development of a system. While it has been recognized in DST that “the entire attractor layout changes with learning, not simply the coordination pattern being learned” (Kelso, 1995, p. 171, emphasis added), it is far from clear how that transformation takes place.3 As was seen from Kauffmann’s description of relations of different attractors (with their basins), the changes in the system are viewed as shifts between different existing attractor/basin states, rather than the emergence of new attractor/basin systems through coordination of the existing ones. This is in line with a number of fashionable metascientific notions—“modularity” and “context-specificity,” for instance—but bypass the central question of development. When the issue of transformation of attractors is addressed, the first answer is to assume the movement from a stable dynamic system into a chaotic state where previous attractors (with their basins) begin to disappear. In the case of “weak instabilities,” the previous attractors become attractor ruins, with the behavior of the system characterized as chaotic itinerancy (Tsuda, 2001, p. 798). The dynamical orbits are temporarily attracted to different attractor ruins (A to F in Figure 6.6a)—some of which are former point attractors; others, limit cycle, torus, or strange attractors. The crucial importance in the dynamic process in Figure 6.6a is that it traverses the domains of these former attractors, yet do not become “captured” by any of them. Tsuda has considered the whole structure on instability to be itinerant attractor, with its two-dimensional structure (Figure 6.6b) indicating the moment of escape from a fixed moment. Other authors have labeled such quasi-instable processes cycling chaos or heteroclinic cycles (Rowe, 2001). The notion of itinerant attractor begins to approach the kind of depictions needed for developmental processes. It is at the level of quasi-instability of the system where the determinacy of some “fixed-state cyclicity” of the system becomes replaced by an irreversible—yet patterned—developmental landscape (an analog to Waddington’s (1940) “epigenetic landscape”). The periods of instability in a differentiating and hierarchically self-organizing system (Werner, 1957) are all temporal unfolding of the basic probabilistic epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1997). In the process of development there exist states in the observable phenomena when their form vanishes from our field of observation and becomes temporarily unclassifiable (Valsiner, 1997, pp. 115–124). The notion of cycling chaos in the theoretical side of DST may map successfully upon that feature of developmental phenomena.

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(a)

(b) Figure 6.6  Schematic drawing of chaotic itinerancy (a) Dynamic process moving in quasi-instability through attractor ruins (A, B, C, D, E, F); (b) A two-dimensional representation of a chaotic transition (from Tsuda, 2001, p. 799)

The Attractor Concept Brought Into Psychology The notion of attractors borrowed to psychology from DST is inherently paradoxical when their status as theoretical concepts is viewed either from

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the standpoint of developmental science or from dialogical views on self. On the one hand, the attractor notion allows formalization of the process by which a system is moving towards some future direction(s). Thus it eliminates two of the stumbling blocks from psychological science—its overlook of processes and its fear of introducing concepts that refer to future. Teleology is an unpopular idea for science—yet some form of it is inevitable in theoretical developmental science. On the other hand, the use of the attractor notion (and DST perspective as a whole) creates a new problem—the dynamic processes are described as their unfolding over time can be charted, yet the composition of the systems that give (as output) the nice trajectories that move from attractor basins to their attractors, remain uncovered. The use of attractor notion only opens the door halfway for a developmental and dialogical analyses of the developing systems.

Convergence of Dynamic Processes: Ontology of Attractors There may be good reasons for the DST concepts to be successful only halfway—and those may be within psychology and its propensity for borrowing new terminologies. Most of the areas where DST thinking has become widespread entail the presence of cyclical processes in behaving (e.g., mutualities in interaction—Beek & Hopkins, 1992; Fogel, 1993). In developmental psychology itself the notion of development is often left to be vague and compress microgenetic and ontogenetic levels into a mix where observation of dynamic processes in a here-and-now setting is taken to represent ontogeny. Thus, success in using DST models in describing the nature of walking (of children—Thelen & Ulrich, 1991, or of adults—Clark et al., 1993) need not tell us much about developmental transition from one state to another. The algorithms of DST that allow the generation of qualitatively varied ontogenetic curves (van Geert, 1994a, 1994b, 2002) are themselves not amenable to change given some state the system has arrived. The ontogenetic known end states of development—such as vocabulary sizes or any intermediate or adult states in development (such as cognitive stages) can be used as assumed attractors to demonstrate how the same algorithm generates a variety of developmental trajectories all converging on that preestablished “attractor.” The borrowing of the attractor concept from DST into psychology is thus limited. It does fit with the need to consider future orientation of developing systems (as attractors are states of the dynamic system towards

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which its chaos-generating underlying processes are “drawn” to equilibrate the system). Yet the attractors are assumed to be ontological givens—they are just properties of the functioning of the dynamic systems, the system does not “make” (or “break”) them in any active way. Simply under some circumstances the dynamics of the system becomes “drawn to” an attractor (even of a chaotic kind), under others—may “break loose” by circumstances and enter into “cycling chaos.”

Freedom From the Past: No Functional History, but Future Direction While DST models are sensitive to the input parameters to “grow” their trajectories (van Geert, 1994a, 1994b), it turns out that they are designed to be blind to input from the past of the same growing process, as well as ahistorical in general. The historical focus of DST models is limited to the time that it takes to run the generation of a trajectory given the varied input—while the output is set by the attractor that the model will be “drawn to.” Attractors exist in the future of the given dynamic system and are not dependent upon its past. They are free both of the immediate past and from the long-term past that led to the dynamic system to its emergence. This is all the more surprising if we compare it with the claims of DST that it—in contrast to its predecessors—takes the history of the system into account. The difference here is on the focus of description—indeed, the depictions of developmental trajectories reflect the dynamic outcomes of at least the microhistory. At the same time, construction or making of the history of the dynamic system itself is not explained in specific terms. The order somehow emerges from chaos—in unpredictable ways and without attention to the system that makes it happen. In fact, the whole appeal of the DST in contemporary psychology has been based on the possibility of describing the emergence of novelty (history) without making assumptions about how (and by which agents) it is being constructed. The focus on coordination in DST is free of assumptions of construction (Lewis, 2000, p. 39).

Using Time There are two ways to take time into account in the case of development— either it is a parameter of unfolding the dynamic system’s performance or it is an inherent duration (in Bergson’s sense) which is the constructive evolutionary stage for the organism’s facing the future. It is obvious that the DST models use time in the first sense (see Figures 6.1–6.6 to verify that

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practice). In contrast, constructionist theoretical schemes in developmental and self psychology move towards reconstruction of a Bergsonian duration notion as part of making sense of the systems that develop. Two notions of novelty correspond to the two perspectives on time. The DST models operate with novelty that is preassumed to come about at some moment in the functioning of the dynamic systems. Thus, the regular (deterministic) unfolding of the trajectory of a dynamic system in itself is not viewed as novel—yet the sudden perturbations that unpredictably diverge the trajectory into some new direction would be novel. Thus, novelty is depicted as an unpredicted change in some monotonicity of the trajectory. In the DST models, novelty is formal property of the breaking of monotonicity of the trajectory. For the sake of simplicity, let us call that macro-formal novelty. In contrast, the constructionist perspective on time (duration) in development entails novelty at every moment. At every moment, the developing organism is assembling its tools for adaptation to the expected next encounter with the inevitably unknown new environment. The necessary uncertainty leads to the overproduction of preadaptive tools—action plans, signs, and so on in human case; anticipatory behavioral schemes in case of nonhuman species. Likewise, the work of the human immune system can be viewed as constantly operating for the immediate future encounters of the body with the environments—the production of antibodies to protect against further encounters with viruses is construction of a biochemical means for protection in some time in the future—possibly at the next moment. Obviously there is no special “homuncular agent” involved in the making of antibodies—it is the organism’s constructive system itself that is preadapting the body for the future. Even repetition of a previous construction is novel in this sense—as it is de novo creation of a means to face the future. This kind of constant novelty construction can be called microsubstantive novelty. It is oriented towards the next encounter with the environment. What is the connection domain for these two novelties? The microsubstantive novelty is the locus for construction of any trajectory of a developing system. Once the microsubstantive novelty has been created, its fit with the environment may lead to macroformal novelty creation. What DST models allow us to do is to have in mind the whole richness of possibilities of emergence of macroformal novelty (van Geert, 1998). These models, however, are not meant to provide us an insight into the underlying processes behind that kind of novelty. For developmental science, the DST notions in general—and the attractor notion in particular—need substantial reformulation or complementation in order to transcend the heuristic

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value of being appealing metaphors (Izard, 1995) and become substantive theoretical concepts.

Complementing Attractors: “Repulsors” and “Directors” As becomes evident, even the “local history”—of the unfolding trajectory— is free from its own history in the making. The models do not (although they could, in principle) make use of their own documented past (any part of the already unfolded trajectory) in the movement towards the future (Valsiner, 1994, p. 368). The attractor is assumed to “attract” the present processes towards an equilibrium state somewhere in the future, but there is no conceptual equivalent to them in the immediate past of the trajectory. For example, some parts of the already traversed directory could act as a “repulsor” (i.e., the negative counterpart of the attractor in the past). This may be a period in the development of a system—represented by some part in the trajectory—that “pushes” the dynamic system “away” from its traversed conditions. Chapman (1988) has emphasized the role of distancing from the previous states of the organism as crucial for development. The “repulsor” regions of the trajectory may be viewed as the bases for activation of the attractor basins. Otherwise, the basin metaphor retains passivity of the dynamic system changing only due to the immediate encounters with the environment, without actually considering its past in the present. Furthermore, at any given moment in the developmental process even as a “director” can be conceptualized. This fits the notion of self-regulation—both at biological and semiotic levels (Valsiner, 2001). The “director” is a state of the system—represented as a part of the trajectory—that generates a feed-forward signal for the system if it were to reach a specifiable area in the future. Such “director” would not be put into action if the trajectory does not reach that region, but if it does, it would act as a constraint emanating from the past guiding the making of the future (see Figure 6.7). Figure 6.7 is an elaborated version of Figure 6.6a—an itinerant attractor whose return from the “wandering indeterminacy” state (through move into trajectory y instead of x) into a limit cycle (D → B → C → D →, etc.) is blocked by a forward-oriented constraining signal generated at the attractor ruin D. The assumption added here to DST notion is that at some moments in time (but not all) a dynamic system can generate a feed-forward message that operates as a “director” for guiding the dynamic process itself towards its future. This would fit the biological realities of signal amplification and desensitization mechanisms in biological systems being generated in unison (Koshland, Goldbeter & Stock, 1982).

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Figure 6.7  A past-coordinating dynamic system—how itinerant attractors evolve.

Attractors Within a Dynamic Dialogical Self It may be that the dialogical self theory of Hermans (2001, 2002) would be an appropriate field for substantive use of the attractor notions. Yet the question remains—what kinds of dialogical relationships, and between which sides of the self system, is it reasonable to look for? Hermans’ theoretical system has been a hostage to his own method of the study of Ipositions—a technique where different I-positions are assumed, explicated by the person, and contrasted with one another. Even as Hermans moves theoretically towards setting the contrasting I-positions into motion, the dialogicality that is being investigated is between different positions, rather than within each of them in the tension towards the direction towards an objective and away from some past event.

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Figure 6.8  Self as a system of dialogical I-positions: tensions of attraction and repulsion.

An effort to conceptualize the dialogicality within the dynamics of movement of I-positions is given in Figure 6.8. Here two I-positions (A and B) are viewed as on a trajectory of transition. A is on its way from the domain of Internal I-positions to External (and possibly Outside)—to use Hermans’ classification of these positions. It is “repulsed” by a part of the past experience (range A-) and is moving in the attractor region A+. In contrast, B is on its way towards becoming an internal I-position, being “repulsed” by B–. For both A and B, the dialogicality that creates their movement is the tension between the past and the direction of the desired repositioning.

General Conclusion: Constructive Dialogue Between DST and Dialogical Self The dynamic systems theory (DST) has had a clearly positive catalytic effect for the development of ideas in developmental science. It has pushed the conceptual schemes of the latter to a disequilibrated state—from which new models of thought might emerge. Yet, as a testimony to the pervasiveness of equilibration processes, the “attractor state” for the use of the

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attractor concept so far remains of the kind of a closed cycle (limit cycle)— the use of DST concepts seem to move towards a cyclical reiteration of their metaphoric value, rather than to new breakthroughs. The DST perspective is not new in the history of psychology. Its use of attractors is a good example of a dynamic Gestalt perspective in contemporary psychology—the dynamic systems strive towards attractors similarly to the Gestalts (in the Berlin tradition of Gestalt psychology) were viewed as striving towards “good form.” What is absent in the depiction is any notion of “the Gestalter”—an active agent who projects one’s psychologically constructed ideations towards one’s future. It seems that the old dispute between Berlin Gestalt psychology and the Ganzheitspsychologie of the Second Leipzig School in German context of the 1910s–1920s (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000, Chapter 7) becomes here reenacted in a new form at the intersection of DST and contemporary constructionist developmental psychology.4 As DST borrows its basic ideas into the mathematicophysical sciences of today, it may remain forgotten that these physical sciences took their ideas from the same thought systems that were central to science of end of the 19th century. This includes the perspectives of Franz Brentano (van Geert, 2002, p. 663) and Henri Bergson. It is probably the evolutionary thought of Bergson that has been at the intersection of both nonequilibrium thermodynamics (a la Prigogine—see Nicolis, 1993) and developmental science of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. The linkages of the notion of attractor in DST with William McDougall’s (1909) “hormic psychology” are worth further inquiry. All in all, the formal models brought (back) into psychology from physics at the end of the 20th century after these very same ideas had remained dormant or forgotten in the discipline is an example of slow and nonlinear progress in psychology as a science. The attractor notion reflects the tentative nature of accepting the notion of self-organization in DST. The emphasis in the DST models is clearly on organization (based on the “self” relating to the environment), but the self remains a passive participant in the flow of dynamic processes that sometimes lead to novel structures. A somewhat similar problem exists in the thinking of the dialogical self—its multivoicedness of the internal and external dialogues is supposed to dominate over the core of the personally central agent—the person who moves towards some (and away from other) I-positions. Yet it is the person—not his or her I-positions autonomously conceived—who leads one’s life. A theory of dialogical self cannot exist without a central point—and that point is the personal world.

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Notes 1. Paper presented at the 2nd InternationalConference on Dialogical Self, Ghent, Belgium, October, 19, 2002. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, USA. 3. Possibly the problem here for DST is the narrow focus on learning as “process of acquiring skills” (Kelso, 1995, p. 159), rather than use the term to capture generalization of the capacity for creating and solving new problems. 4. In a most contemporary vein, the notion of “chaos” was listed as one of the complex qualities in the Ganzheitspsychologie tradition.

References Aslin, R. N. (1993). Commentary: The strange attractiveness of dynamic systems to development. In L. B. Smith & E. Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to development (pp. 385–389). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Beek, P., & Hopkins, B. (1992). Four requirements for a dynamic systems approach to the development of social coordination. Human Movement Sciences, 11, 425–442. Chapman, M. (1988). Contextuality and directionality of cognitive development. Human Development, 31, 92–106. Clark, J. E., Truly, T. L., & Phillips, S. J. (1993). On the development of walking as a limit-cycle system. In L. B. Smith & E. Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to development (pp. 71–93). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through relationships. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fogel, A. (1999). Systems, cycles, and developmental pathways. Human Development, 42, 213–216. Gottlieb, G. (1997). Synthesizing nature/nurture. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hermans, H. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural Positioning. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 243–281. Hermans, H. J. (Ed.). (2002). Special Issue on dialogical self. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 147–280. Izard, C. E. (1995). Commentary [on M. Lewis, 1995]. Human Development, 38, 103–112. Kauffmann, S. A. (1993). The origins of order. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kelso, J. A. (1995). Dynamic patterns. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kelso, J. A., Ding, M., & Schöner, G. (1993). Dynamic pattern formation: a primer. In L. B. Smith & E. Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to development (pp. 13–50). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Koshland, D. E., Goldbeter, A., & Stock, J. B. (1982). Amplification and adaptation in regulatory and sensory systems. Science, 217, 220–225.

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Lewis, M. D. (1995). Cognition-emotion feedback and the self-organization of developmental paths. Human Development, 38, 71–102. Lewis, M. D. (2000). The promise of dynamic systems approaches for an integrated account of human development. Child Development, 71(1), 36–43. McDougall, W. (1909). An introduction to social psychology (2nd ed.). London, England: Methuen. Nicolis, G. (1993). Nonlinear dynamics and evolution of complex systems. In J. Montangero, A. Cornu-Wells, A. Tryphon & J. Voneche (Eds), Conceptions of change over time (pp. 17–31). Geneva Switzerland: Fondation Archives Jean Piaget. Rowe, D. L. (2001). Dynamic neural activity as a chaotic itinerancy or heteroclinic cycles? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 827–828. Smith, L. B., & Thelen, E. (Eds.). (1993). A dynamic systems approach to development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sprott, J. C. (1993). Strange attractors: creating patterns in chaos. New York, NY: Holt. Thelen, E., & Ulrich, B. (1991). Hidden skills: A dynamic systems analysis of treadmill stepping during the first year. Monographs of SRCD, 56, 1. Tsuda, I. (2001). Toward an interpretation of dynamic neural activity in terms of chaotic dynamic systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 793–847. Valsiner, J. (1994). Commentary [on P. van Geert, 1994a]. Human Development, 37, 366–369. Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44, 84–97. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Van Geert, P. (1994a). Vygotsky’s dynamics of development. Human Development, 37, 346–365. Van Geert, P. (1994b). Dynamic systems of development. Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester/Wheatsheaf. Van Geert, P. (1998). We almost had a great future behind us: the contribution of non-linear dynamics to developmental-science-in-the-making. Developmental Science, 1, 143–159. Van Geert, P. (2002). Dynamic systems approaches and modeling of developmental processes. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 640–672). London, England: SAGE. Waddington, C. H. (1940). Organisers and genes. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Werner, H. (1957).The concept of development from a comparative and organismic point of view. In D. B. Harris (Ed.), The concept of development (pp. 125–147). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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COFFEE BREAK

2

Why Are Dynamic Perspectives Hard to Take? Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

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art II includes texts that turn a number of static concepts—identity, affordance, attractor—into dynamic forms. As such, a very central call for moving from the focus on formal linear relations (exemplified by correlations) to the focus on models that include structures of resistance in the dynamics of the overcoming of such resistance (“membrane models”). This focus change is profound—where most of contemporary research in psychology ends—establishment of correlational relations—the investigation only needs to start. Psychological functions are regulated by borders that operate like biological membranes—only their building blocks differ in their nature. A special role among these models belongs to TEM—Trajectory Equifinality Model—established in 2004 in collaboration with Japanese

Beyond the Mind, pages 115–119 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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colleagues but becoming fully available in English only a decade later (Sato, Mori, & Valsiner, 2016). TEM is a methodological solution to the issue of irreversibility of time and the processes of meaning-making. That process happens on the border of FUTURE and PAST, and includes both imaginary (future and past nonoccurred possibilities) and real (actual life course history) components. This step—unification of real and imaginary components into one scheme—allows us to investigate the border conditions of the PRESENT. The PRESENT is the border between FUTURE and PAST. That connection gives form to human experience in its perennial transformation in the irreversible time. A developing process links the past with the future in the present, making the boundary between present (including elements from the past) and the future the real space where the novelty can emerge. Past and future, possible ad actual—and their intertwined relations—are here considered as a conditionally permeable borders (Marsico, 2015, 2016; Marsico & Valsiner, 2017). Looking at the border of the PRESENT is a productive trick of temporarily stabilizing the structure of psychological functions within the flow of FUTURE → TO → PAST dynamic flow. The PRESENT is always a stable— even if miniscule—“membrane” between the FUTURE and the PAST. It is at that border where development happens. Our (GM and JV) dialogue concentrated on how the dynamic features of the flow of experience could be captured. The usual fashion in psychology of today is to focus on dynamic system theory (DST)—but is there more in DST than a passing fashion? GM: So—why is it so difficult to handle dynamic issues in psychology? JV: Heraclitus once had the insight of being unable to step into the same river twice . . . but we are eager to forget that when we enter into our swimming pools. GM: What do you mean? What is the connection between Heraclitus and a swimming pool? JV: A swimming pool includes slow inflow/outflow of water—the regime for that is set up by human beings—together with its “enculturation” by way of disinfecting chemicals being regularly thrown into the pool. All this human-produced pollution of natural water in the swimming pool is presented as an act of “making the water clean” so that different persons can enter “the same swimming pool” not fearing that it is “dirty”—made so by the persons before them. So—by cultural meanings applied to the “slow moving river” of a swimming pool it has to be made “dirty” (by cleaning

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chemicals) to be “clean” (for human beings to share “the same” water that is believed to be “clean”). So—in culturally constructed worlds we invent signs that make it possible to believe that we can step into the same pool again—be it that of a swimming pool or a beach. Cultural meaning systems work against the simple recognition of the uniqueness of every life experience. We turn what is merely similar into the category of “the same” (Sovran, 1992). It gives us stability in the flow of instability—a “cognitive economy” that views stability in amidst constant change. GM: But such cognitive myopia—seeing stability in change—is necessary for any science. One needs clarity. JV: Yes, of course. All our theories are stable—even if they cover the dynamic functioning of instabilities and even of the moments of synthesis of a new phenomenon (e,g., Lev Vygotsky’s account of the synthesis of a hypergeneralized feeling through the last sentence of a short story—Valsiner, 2015). We live in a constant flow of uniqueness but adjust to it by general principles that are themselves not unique. This stability of explanations is located at the abstract—theoretical and metatheoretical— levels of scientific inquiry. At the empirical level the fluidity of the phenomena needs to be preserved. GM: So that is why you try to reconstruct the affordance concept— reversing Gibson’s insight into a new form of “constructionist holism”? JV: Yes, the affordance concept turned forward into a version of a dynamic semiotics would be most fruitful. Especially if the very act of construction of affordances themselves becomes elaborated. GM: You seem to try a similar trick with the notion of attractor in the dynamic systems theory (DST). DST present attractors as ontological givens—dynamic monads of a kind. You seem to view the attractor dialogically (in relation to the repulsor) and introduce a kind of “fuzzy teleology” into the DST. Any teleology is firmly rejected by DST, and by much of sciences as a whole—yet you bring it into your theoretical schemes through introduction of the notion of director (of the attractorrepulsor relations) in conjunction with the focus on chaotic decline of attractors (“attractor ruins”). Are you not denying all that DST has brought to science—the focus on futures without teleological implications? JV: No, I am not deconstructing DST. I just add the necessary agency to it—which is located within the dynamic system itself. The director orients the attractorrepulsor system as the dynamic system

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moves towards its goal state. It makes the emergence of new attractors possible and provides direction to the move from past to future. DST in its future orientation has overlooked the past— and the relevance of the past for moving towards the future. In the 1990s I had an interesting dispute with Paul van Geert on the issue—why is DST excluding its own history, and how could it take into its scheme the past history of the dynamic system (Valsiner, 1994)? The development of TEM over the last decade is an answer to that question. And more needs to be done—methodology of psychology needs to become based on the general theory of open systems (Valsiner, 2017). GM: I notice that TEM (and TEA, its sequel) was first developed in collaboration with colleagues in Japan, and only slowly made available to the English language audiences. Why so? JV: The ideas for TEM emerged in the context of my seminars at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto in 2004, and benefitted from the original ways of thinking by the research group of Tatsuya Sato and his colleagues. That research group was (and is) very wellversed in the history of psychology and has deep understanding of the primacy of qualitative methods in the study of almost any psychological phenomenon. It has been the Japanese scholars who have been on the forefront in developing these ideas and making them public. It is a good example of how the “center of gravity” for theoretical innovation in the 21st century has moved away from its traditional “power bases” of Europe and North America. Innovation in psychology nowadays can come from any country—Japan, China, India, Chile, Brazil, and so on—as scholars there may still be carefully thinking of how to construct theoretical systems. If that focus disappears—as it has in the Occident where the amassing of empirical evidence without much thinking of what the evidence affords, prevails—the science of psychology is up to its own nonlinear historical trajectory that has plagued it for over two centuries (Valsiner, 2012) GM: But in Part III of our book, you do emphasize one new theoretical system—that of dialogical self theory—that has clear Occidental origins. JV: Yes, Hermans’ highly creative axiomatic move—considering two statements expressed over time (“I am happy” . . . ”I am happy”) not as repetitions of the same but as a dialogue of two similar statements—has opened the door to highly innovative efforts in the study of the self. The power of this axiomatic change is shown

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by its entrance into psychology in non-Western countries, Japan in particular. But the reader can see (in Part III) how I modify the dialogical self theory in ways similar to that of introducing a dynamic sign hierarchy—the notion of promoter sign does that job. Needless to add that this is not original—I just carry over the notion of promoter gene from genetics to the dialogical self theory.

References Marsico, G. (2015). Developing with time: Defining a temporal mereotopology. In L.

M. Simão, D. S. Guimarães, & J. Valsiner (Eds.). Temporality: Culture in the flow of human experience (pp. 1–18). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.

Marsico, G. (2016). The borderland. Culture & Psychology, 22(2), 206–215. doi: 10.1177/1354067X15601199 Marsico, G., & Valsiner, J. (2017). Making history: Apprehending future while reconstructing the past. In R. Säljö, P. Linell, & Å. Mäkitalo, (Eds.), Memory practices and learning: Experiential, institutional, and sociocultural perspectives (pp. 355–372). Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Sato, T., Mori, N., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2016). Making of the future: The trajectory equifinality approach in cultural psychology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Sovran, T. (1992). Between similarity and sameness. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(4), 329–344. Valsiner, J. (1994). Commentary (on P. van Geert’s Vygotskian Dynamics of Development). Human Development, 37, 366–369. Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Valsiner, J. (2015). The place for synthesis: Vygotsky’s analysis of affective generalization. History of the Human Sciences, 28(2), 93–102. Valsiner, J. (2017). From methodology to methods in human psychology. New York, NY: Springer.

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Dialogical Nature of Being

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7 The Promoter Sign Developmental Transformation Within the Structure of Dialogical Self1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The dialogical self is a construct that brings into developmental psychology a new way of theoretical thought—thinking in dualities. Human psychological development is explained by transformations of constantly changed I-positions. Such transformations are mediated by signs. The whole semiotic mediation guarantees the person’s psychological distancing from the here-and-now setting. This distancing creates dialogicality within the self-system, within which dynamic reorganization takes place. Its ontogeny is guided by promoter signs— generalized meanings of field-like form that orient the self’s here-meaningmaking in any new here-and-now setting. These signs are parts of the semiotic mediating processes where higher-level signs guide the range of openness of the sign hierarchy itself for further transformation when that is needed. This function of the promoter sign makes it possible for the dialogical self to both alter and maintain its I-positions. The promoter sign is also the mechanism for translating particular experiences of the microgenetic level to that of ontogeny. Beyond the Mind, pages 123–146 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Developmental psychology may allow the entrance of dialogical thinking into its theories—but what would that mean for that venerable but always troubled (Cairns, 1986) discipline? It opens a new discourse field for talking about complex phenomena with a developmental focus in a discipline that has had hard time finding its subject matter—development (Cairns, 1998). While the label—development—is widely in use, it often refers to the study of intermediate outcomes of developmental processes (such as tracing agerelated changes in some performance characteristics). A study—even a longitudinal one—that records such outcomes over ontogenetic time has no access to the processes that generate these outcomes (Valsiner, 1997). Our contemporary developmental science—even after over 150 years of separate existence3—knows very little about basic processes of development (Valsiner & Connolly, 2003). The dialogical self (DS) perspective also has no claim to a successful study of development. It emerged in the context of mostly nondevelopmental area of psychology—personality theory and psychotherapy. Yet its advances set up a stage for a possible merge with contemporary developmental science. Development—if the interactionist and transactionist voices in the discipline are to be taken seriously—can be explained as some kind of a dialogical process, while thinking about it in terms of a unitary, monological, or essentialist ontology leads to theoretical impasse. Yet the crucial question is—which kind? How can one conceptualize the dialogical self so that the notion of duality that it entails is theoretically productive4—rather than yet another nice term psychologists use?

The Structure of the Dialogical Self (DS) and Its Dynamics The DS theory is a holistic – structural—perspective. It divides the complex whole—labeled “the self”—into functional subparts: The dialogical self is conceived as social— not in the sense that a self-contained individual enters into social interactions with other outside people, but in the sense that other people occupy positions in the multivoiced self. The self is not only “here” but also “there,” and because of the power of imagination the person can act as if he or she were the other. (Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992, p. 29, added emphases)

This “multivoiced self system” can entail any number of parts—from two (e.g., ego and alii) to some (e.g., the different notions of “me,” as well as that of “the generalized other” in George H. Mead’s thinking—Dodds, Lawrence & Valsiner, 1997), to a high variety of subcomponents (Mikhail Bakhtin’s “multivoicedness”—Bakhtin, 1981). The crucial feature of DS that

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corresponds to developmental perspectives is the recognition that the person can act in terms of AS-IF, rather than in terms of WHAT-IS. There would be no developmental theory possible if scientists assumed that developing organisms can only act in the WHAT-IS domain. The basic indeterminacy in development (Fogel, Lyra, & Valsiner, 1997) as well the probabilistic nature of epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1997) render developmental science to concentrate on the AS-IF domain, adding to it the temporal component—acting AS-IF{WHAT IS NOT YET} (Baldwin, 1915; Vygotsky, 1966). The DS can be characterized through levels of intersubjectivity (Coelho & Figueiredo, 2003) and traced for changes in psychotherapy contexts (Hermans, 2001b; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 1995, 2003). Thus, DS theory shares the basic ethos of social nature of human development with the socio-cultural developmental perspectives. Yet that social nature is not directly investigated—it is presumed to have led to the present (usually adolescent or adult) forms of the DS.

I-Positions on the Move The core of the DS structure consists of varied I-positions that are spatially distributed between three concentric zones, and can be dynamically relocated between them (see Figure 7.1). The three zones allow the researchers to set up differently located relations between I-positions: External positions refer to people and objects in the environment that are, in the eyes of the individual, relevant from the perspective of one or more internal positions. . . . In reverse, internal positions receive their relevance from their relation with one or more external positions (e.g., I feel a mother because I have children). In other words, internal and external positions receive their significance as emerging from their mutual transactions over time. (Hermans, 2001a, p. 252, emphasis added) Outside EXTERNAL

A(ext)

INTERNAL: A(int)

Figure 7.1  DS structure of the fields of loci of I-positions: internal, external, and outside (after Hermans, 2001a, p. 253).

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In Figure 7.1, an internal I-position A(int) is in a systemic mutual feedforward relation with an external I-position A(ext). This perspective on feedforward loops between internal and external positions is an implementation of George H. Mead’s original look at the ongoing relation between the I and the ME (Mead, 1912, 1913; also Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000, Chapter 6).

Meaning-Making All DS theory is based on the construction of meaningfulness of the self in relation with others. Meaning construction makes it possible for the self to create different—distanced in space and time—I-positions (Hermans, 1996a, 1996b, 1999, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2003; Hermans & HermansJansen, 2003). The person is constantly involved in the construction of a dynamic structure of I-positions. Such positions are organized in an imaginal landscape. In this conception, the I has the possibility to move, as in space, from one position to the other in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I fluctuates among different, and even opposed, positions and has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between characters in a story, involved in a process of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each character has a story to tell about its own experiences from its own stance. These characters exchange information about their respective ME-s, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self. In this multiplicity of positions, some positions may become more dominant than others, so that the voices of the less dominant positions may be subdued. (Hermans, 1996b, pp. 10–11, added emphases)

So, each I-position creates a “voice” which relates to other “voices” (of other I-positions) in a dynamic relation of dialogicality. Even repetition of a similar statement is a contrast of “voices”—an autodialogue. A person who keeps repeating the same cliché in one’s mind to oneself (“I am fine” . . . “I am fine” . . . “I am fine”), or to others (while being forced to doing so by automatized interaction rituals like the “how are you?”—“I am fine” obligatory sequence) is involved in an act of self-dialogue: {FINE?  NOT FINE} →  {FINE NOW?  NOT FINE}  → and so on. The notion of “voice” has a double character. First of all, it can be observed in the domain of the phenomena—a person’s introspective selfreport—such as: I think mainly in dialogue form. Then I hear inwardly the intonation and usual expressions of the other person. The dialogue form does not always

The Promoter Sign    127 occur with equal clarity, but is very persistent during intensive mental application. The monologue appears in isolated cases, chiefly in thinking about my own person. In the inner dialogue the partner is constantly changing. I cannot say that either sex is predominant. Children are rarely partners, and indeed only when I am preparing lessons. The person imagined as partner is probably determined by the subject matter being thought of. It is, I think, usually someone with whom one has often before discussed such matters. Especially when in any spoken debate something has made a deep impression on me or if I have been offended or insulted in any way, I find it usually the people concerned who are the partners in my silent thinking. (a teacher’s account—in Katz & Katz, 1936, p. 22)

Such reported phenomena of intrapsychological making of dialogues indicate that the human self is constantly constructing meaning—it creates new dialogues in the mind, proceeds further, and replaces them. Hence the notion of “voice” and “internal dialogue” are psychologically real. However, the notion of “voice” and “dialogue” has been also used at the abstract, formal sense of scientific terminology. Here the phenomenanearness of the term creates a theoretical problem—for theoretical usefulness scientific terms should be fully formalized, while—as they refer to relevant aspects of the phenomena—they necessarily carry some nuances of the meanings of the phenomena themselves. The demand for generalization that operates in the case of scientific terminology requires that the phenomenological richness of the notion of “voice” be avoided. The notion of I-position is a construct one step removed from that of “voice” allows the researcher to distance one’s theoretical discourse from the “voicefulness” of the phenomena.

Heterogeneity of Social Suggestions, Feeding Into DS The DS is social—it is operating under the guidance of the social world of the persons. Personal construction of the complex structure of meanings related with the “I” is embedded in the collective history of the social roles—also defined through narrative activities within a society. The façade of the self-presentation and its actual structure may differ (Meigs, 1990; Rogers, 1975)—what is narrated in the society and what is constructed by the person may set up the framework for actual ways of being that transcend both the social-historical and personal-self narratives. The DS may operate under strict constraints set up within the collective culture to orient the individual persons. In all human societies at all times, such set of social expectations is communicated to every next generation—and reproduced with new features—through myth stories (Boesch, 1991; Gupta

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& Valsiner, 2003), oral histories (Wertsch, 2002), extended public rituals (Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990), mass communication means, and any form of public political discourse. All these domains are regulated by the constraining role of social representations (Moscovici, 1961; Valsiner, 2003b). Social suggestions that are used in collective-cultural interchange are heterogeneous in their nature. At the façade level, freedom from constraints may be dramatically declared in general terms, while there is a corresponding opposite suggestion hidden behind the façade (Gupta & Valsiner, 2003). Thus, something crucial for human life is set up as positively valued (valence  +) by way of contrast to its opposite (valence  –). The latter may be set up in an explicit or (more often) implicit communicative message that is “impending” on the former. By exaggerated emphasis on he positively valenced side (“I am fine”—as from the repetition example, above) the “dangers” or “risks” of the penetration or avalanche of the dialogical opposite (“I am not fine”) may be avoided. Such avoidance strategy looks monological—as it is dramatized—yet it is a dialogical means that distances the opposite, negatively valenced, part— and further enhances the positive valence of the façade. Empirical proof of the “hidden dialogicality” in the “exaggerated monological presentations” can be observed in clinical cases where hyper-compensatory efforts fail, and the person who has been making such efforts, falls into the abyss of the opposite. In general terms—it is thus the functional relation between the two opposing valences within a structure of DS that requires analysis—not the absence or presence of each of the valences. Through that focus, a developmental look at the DS is introduced. Instead, it is the reconstruction of different forms of such relating processes that is the target for researchers’ investigation (Valsiner, 2002b). Heterogeneity of the pattern of socially suggested I-positions creates ambivalences for persons. For people in our present-day world of increasingly urbanizing consumer societies, the ideology of independence and “free choice” may be already an automatically accepted personal desire. If this is the case, the person’s DS is already successfully appropriated by a social power ideology that needs persons to be independently dependent (Valsiner, 1997) on the choices given to them by the obligations to be good consumers of the economic system. Igor Kopytoff’s analysis of the changing gender roles in the United States and its repercussions for the DS provides an example: In America the existential identity is enveloped in a huge mantle of nonnegotiable roles. If an American woman wishes to take on a new circumstantial role (say, that of a professional), she cannot easily trade it for an old one (say, that of her family’s hostess).

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Moreover, if an American woman wishes to chip away at the immanent roles, the dominant liberal social ethos often makes this course action ideologically and pragmatically difficult. An ethos of personal achievement discourages the delegation to others of tasks considered to be properly one’s own. An egalitarian ethos frowns upon the hiring of the less advantaged as servants to do onerous tasks, and it also makes the social handling of the inherently unequal relationship with servants difficult (in a way that a class society does not). An individualistic ethos prizes individual privacy; this makes the presence of servants and their involvement in the intimate details of everyday life uncomfortable (in a way that aristocratic societies do not, with their exclusion of the lower orders from the community of manners and their notorious lack of personal shame before servants). And just when the use of servants becomes increasingly unacceptable, the use of relatives as surrogates for the fulfillment of one’s roles becomes increasingly difficult, for the ethos of antitraditionalism questions the sincerity and the obligatory nature of culturally mandated relationships, including those of kinship, and extols instead voluntary relationships. (Kopytoff, 1990, p. 93) It is needless to add that this ambivalent structure of the DS is a fertile ground for captivation by various social (and economic) power interests. Thus, where the “obligatory nature” of kinship relations becomes diminished (and “voluntary relations” become presented as socially normative), very concrete practical issues of the care of the elderly or the care of children. Both of these (and many other) practical tasks become the prey for market economy—babysitters and old-age caregivers become available for hire, similarly to any other service profession. In parallel, the everyday skills formation in these areas becomes deemphasized and subordinated to the advice of paid “experts.” Social role expectations thus are bound with self-voices in the setup of the I-positions, creating inherently contradictory fields for the structure of internal and external positions (Crawford & Valsiner, 2002, pp. 122–124 for examples). Without doubt the heterogeneity of the I-positions, their movement on the two-dimensional theoretical “self-scape” (as depicted in Figure 7.1) is real, and Hermans’ DS model in its abstractive generalization is true to its underlying phenomena. Yet a crucial next step remains—the focus on integration of the structure of dynamically moving I-positions. It is here that the semiotic mediation idea becomes linked with the theory of I-positioning—human beings create sign-mediated superstructures to regulate the fluidity of the structure of I-positions. In other terms—aside from repositioning of the parts of the DS, there is also abstractive generalization of meaning of such repositioning. This happens through the construction and use of signs. The DS is a semiotically self-regulating self.

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This nature of the self leads our developmental science to an area of highest theoretical complexity—the agent of the regulation of the self is claimed to be the self itself! And—at the same time—the DS perspective accepts the self as being socially constituted. We are faced with the issue that has been for a very long time the puzzlement for thinkers in social sciences (for an in-depth analysis—Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000, Chapter 7)—how is the personal social, and vice versa? A solution to that problem comes when we consider the self to be in perpetual development, and the central constructive (and constructing) agent of that development. The irreversibility of developmental processes sets up the stage where the organism needs to be the core integrator of the variety of the ways in which it relates with its environment. By changing the environment—and letting these changes feed forward to the organism itself—development remains both open-ended (allowing for unpredictability of the next happening) and fixed (in the sense of meaningful expected life events).

New Theoretical Language of DS—Abstract Thinking “In Doubles” The DS theory adds one important feature—an emphasis upon seeing “the double” behind “the single.” The notion of dialogical self (DS) opens the door to psychological theorizing in systemic categories that entail an inherent relationship at least between opposites within the same systemic whole. This kind of theorizing changes cardinally the ontological thinking that has haunted psychology all through its history. In place of theoretical terms of univocal ontology—such as attitude, value, belief, thought, emotion (to name a few), we are suddenly faced with a theoretical language of mutual relationships. At first glance, such terminology looks cumbersome: attitude and counterattitude, value and countervalue; narrative and counternarrative (Ramanujam, 1991), language and antilanguage (Halliday, 1976), belief and nonbelief, thought and nonthought (e.g., the “imageless thought” of the Würzburg School), suggestion and countersuggestion, guidance and resistance (Poddiakov, 2001), or emotion and nonemotion—all seem useless complications to our otherwise clear and simple linear construction of psychology’s general terms. Yet other sciences seem to live comfortably in the theoretical idea-world of matter and antimatter, and immunologists take the conceptual value granted to them by the notion of antibodies (biological “self”  “nonself” distinction) quite seriously. Actually, we may find such doubles already well-grained in our theorizing: ego and nonego, I and not-I (Me),5 narrative and counternarrative, voice and countervoice, and meaning and nonmeaning (A and non-A—Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999), or “three-step analysis” (Marková, 1990)

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are present in the knowledge base of our science. These constructs would indeed be cumbersome (and unnecessary) labels if their aim were to duplicate the number of implied ontological essences of the object of investigation. For example—what would be the theoretical gain from replacing the notion of self—a unitary construct—by the pair of self and nonself? It would create the confusion of finding out about category boundary between the two (e.g., questions like “does phenomenon X belong to self or nonself”?), and it would proliferate the lexicon of potential causal explanations in psychology.6

Relationships: Formal Models Of course mere focus on relations between parts can be of many different kinds, some of which do not guarantee new knowledge for us. The very same notion—relationship—can be formally conceptualized as an entity in itself (e.g., correlational relationships—static assumed links), or as a process (functional relationships). Psychology has usually adopted the former—entity—notion of relationship, and fortified it by the move of method into the role of theory (Gigerenzer, 1991). Furthermore, when actual mutual (functional) relationships are detected at the level of phenomena (e.g., attachment within any mother and child pair as mutual bonding process) it becomes transformed in the data derivation process into an entified correlational relation (e.g., “relation” between mothers-infants attachment categories distribution and something else). If we begin to classify the different kinds of relationships, we discover inductively within some data set; without theoretical guidance for such relations, our efforts will end up in a static picture of the dynamic reality. It is clear that by merely moving from elementaristic classificatory focus to that of looking at formal relationships changes the nature of the actual relations. By replacing a relation as a process by an entified sign of that relationship, the original process is irreversibly lost for further analysis of the researcher (Valsiner, 1986, 2000). In contrast, a formal functional look—a process model of a relationship—allows us to preserve the original nature of the phenomena—albeit in an abstract, generalized form. What would make the difference? The functional ties are necessarily time-extended, since a function of a particular feature of a bond can be studied only over a time period of its relaying between the parts (Marková, 1990—“three step analysis”). Thus, attachment phenomena should render themselves to analysis in terms of formal processes, rather than correlational analyses of outcomes. Correlational analysis is the full-fledged antidote to any study of development. It reduces developmental phenomena to nondevelopmentally fixed data representations. In contrast, the DS theory

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brings to developmental science a search for alternative ways of looking at relationships—the functional transpositions of parts in the whole of a structure of I-positions.

Integrating I-Positions: The Process of Development Hermans’ DS perspective has triggered a discussion about the status of common language uses in the definition of I-positions. Would DS theory be applicable in societies where referencing “the I” is culturally downplayed— such as India, Japan, or Korea (Chaudhary, 2003, 2004; Choi & Choi, 1994; Roland, 2001)? Yet the absence of differentiatd I-vocabulary does not mean the absence of the heterogeneous field structure of the self—since the nature of the common-sense organization of phenomena does not restrict the theoretical terminology construction. Precise mapping of the data level onto the phenomena level in terms of analogues is not obligatory. What is obligatory is the demonstration of the particular forms of mapping between the levels (see Figure 7.2).

High Variability: Between Languages and Within Persons All biological systems produce high variability of forms—and psychological constructs are not different. Variability of the “I” is also the core of linguistic and psychological realities—the terminology of the notion of “I” in different languages provides a heterogeneous set of nuanced forms (e.g., Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2003, p. 538, outline 8 modalities of “I” in the Tongo language; Chaudhary, 2003, p. 481, brings out the relational nuances of “I” in Hindi). Last—but not least—Hermans’ original method—personal position repertoire (PPR)—begins with a standard list of 50

Figure 7.2  Theoretical terms (data signs)—point or field kind—used to represent the fluidity of phenomena of dureé (from Valsiner & Diriwächter, 2005).

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internal I-positions and 40 external ones (Hermans, 2001b, pp. 363–364), to which each person can add ones not represented in the lists. Thus, the person is set out to consider a vast field of meaningfully organized entities, some related to one’s social roles (man, woman, father, mother, child of my parents, professional, colleague, clown), others to self-reflexive meanings (freedom seeker, victim, idealist, independent, warmth seeker, doubter, fighter, betrayer), or affective states (demanding, jealous, guilty, disillusioned, etc.).

Representation of Signs—Nodes or Fields? The absence of I- or self-terminologies in a language may emphasize the “fieldness” (rather than “nodeness”) of the DS. That self is relational (and theoretically best captured by field-like notions) may be the universal feature of the human beings, from which the Occidental entified self as a specifiable object (e.g., my “self” as it “is,” or some entified property of it “as is” (e.g., “my self-esteem”)—are merely a special emergent structures of the field (Valsiner & Diriwächter, 2005)—Figure 7.2 here. In Figure 7.2 the step from the level of phenomena to that of the encoding it at the level of data is depicted. The fluidity of the intrapsychological dialogues (“voices”) can be translated into data (I-positions) in different ways. Some of those allow for signs of node-like forms (e.g., social roles the person carries by way of birth)—of oneself (“child,” “son,” “daughter,” “bastard”) or of others (“mother,” “father,” “grandfather,” “grandmother”). Likewise, societally defined I-positions could be represented in terms of node-like signs (“bus conductor,” “policeman,” etc.). Yet other I-positions may defy representation in node-like sign terms—all relational-I terms lead to the need for field-like sign forms in theoretical representations. Likewise, I-positions of high generality (“warmth-seeker,” “idealist,” etc.) call for the use of fieldlike signs. In contrast, a task of rating one’s self-esteem on a 7-point scale creates a node-like sign—each number used in such rating is not quantitative data point, but a node-like sign that is taken (by the researcher) to represent the underlying reality in quantified terms.7 Figure 7.2 provides also an elaboration for the mapping question—between the levels of phenomena and the data. If we imagine that the data— signs to represent the phenomena—are all derived from the fluidity of the original forms of the phenomena in only one way (usually that one way is the derivation or construction of quantified data-signs, e.g., “5” in Figure 7.2), data construction process creates a huge “blind spot” for any phenomena that are not reasonably represented by node-like signs. The same would be true if all data are derived in terms of field-like signs (fields A and

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B in Figure 7.2)—the differentiated aspects of the phenomena get lost in the data (e.g., I may know for sure that I am 190 centimeters tall—because I have been measured and the fact is encoded in a node-like sign “190”—and an alternative possible representation of that fact by a sign-field of “rather tall” leads to loss of precision in the data). Thus—the encoding of the data in different kinds of signs has to present those aspects of the phenomena that are relevant for the phenomena. Hence the absence of self-talk in a language leads to the question of finding out about the self in terms of field-like, rather than node-like, signs. Any efforts to query respondents in node-like terms (all our questions are semiotic complexes that suggest a certain kind of answering mode—e.g., a rating task suggests construction of quantified node-sign) lead to a selection from the field of reality. Similarly, a narrative elicitation leads to a field-like sign encoding. The two kinds of signs are not exclusive opposites. If one looks at the relationships between node- and field-representations, it is clear that a node is a minimal field, and field—a maximized node—which is internally undifferentiated: expansion NODE

FIELD constriction

The Self-in-Relation as the Universal Case In the most general terms, self is best conceptualized as self-in-relations (Ho, Chan, Poeng, & Ng, 2001)—a semidifferentiated structure where the meaning of the self (whichever ways it may be present in the given language) is bounded both to concrete texture of social role relations on the one hand (the I ← → WE ← → YOU relation in the given society), and to the set of included opposite counterparts (the I ← → ME relations—I-positions in Hermans’ terms) on the other. A number of extensions of the DS perspective lead us towards such extension of the notion of the self into that of self-in-relation. Both psychoanalytic (Roland, 2001) and psychotherapeutic approaches (Gonçalves & Salgado, 2001) have proven that the self systems can be far more complex than simple relations between I-positions. The structure of the DS needs situating itself within a wider structural framework that may begin from role positions, include we-positions, and—last but not least— the I-positions, specify Roland’s suggestion to integrate into DS “a place for differing valences and saliences of various voices and positions. All are not equal. [The DS needs] to incorporate unconscious factors in the saliences of certain voices” (Roland, 2001, p. 314).

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Some of the layering of the DS structure would be cultural-historical— Roland’s example of women’s move into careers in the United States leading to the emergence of guilt over leaving the children begins from an objective change in the social role expectation of one society, consciously approved by the women—who yet construct guilt based on the historical layer of “voice of traditional motherhood” pressed into the hideouts of the unconscious (Roland, 2001, p. 315). Even at the manifest level of conversations between persons—negotiating their structure of I-positions in everyday encounters—the complexity of the coordination of different I-positions can be immense (Chaudhary, 2004). There is an explicit need to advance the DS perspective by explaining the processes of development within the structure of I-positioning dynamics, recognizing the realities of differentiation and hierarchical integration of the structure of I-positions (Bhatia & Ram, 2001, p. 302). Such hierarchical integration may lead to the hypergeneralization of some dominant I-positions into the realm of “upconscious” (Valsiner, 2003a) that—analogously to the unconscious—is not accessible to verbal questioning. What makes it different is the semiotically mediated nature of such “upconscious”—it is a semiotic regulatory field (hypergeneralized values would be an example here) that feeds forward into person’s concrete actions in mundane everyday life by way of giving it affective personal sense.

The Temporal Dynamics of DS Hermans has indicated the possibility to advance the DS theory along the lines of Bakhtinian notion of chronotope and incorporating the dynamic systems theory (Hermans, 2003; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2003, pp. 554–555). Whatever specific directions further development of DS might take, it is clear that it operates with large numbers of elementary components (see Chaudhary & Sriram, 2001, p. 389) that are organized into dynamic structures of relatively enduring kind. Large numbers of constituent components need to become organized into middle-level hierarchical configurations.

Self-Organization Through Semiotic Mediation All development is the construction of the future state of the organism in the present move towards that future (Valsiner, 1997). The future orientation is a necessary aspect of any theoretical model of development. It has been a stumbling block for most theory building efforts in developmental science. It has to conceptualize the possible near futures of the organism—yet such

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conceptualizations can themselves become part of such construction (see Hermans, 2003 for an example of the internalized role of “depression”), and hence move the possibility of prediction beyond the realm of the possible. One is reminded of the classic “Achilles and Tortoise” paradox where the obviously quicker Achilles cannot overtake the slowly moving tortoise. The emerging whole is the narratively structured self (Gonçalves & Gonçalves, 2001; Salgado, 2003) within which dominance relations are established between different I-positions. Within that field of I-Positions, the person can imaginatively move to a future point in time and then speak to myself about the sense of what I am doing now in my present situation. This position, at some point in the future, may be very helpful to help me to evaluate my present activities from a long-term perspective. The result may be that I disagree with my present self as blinding itself from more essential things. (Hermans, 1996a, p. 33, emphasis added)

This “outsourcing” of I-positions into the future may be viewed in terms of an attractor in the framework of the dynamic systems theory (Valsiner, 2002a). Yet there is an inherent paradox in the uses of dynamic systems theory in psychology. While representing formally both the dynamic processes and—at times—their transformation, its future orientation (focus on “attractors”) is not complemented by similar domains of the experienced past (“repulsors”—areas that “push” the developing system as far as feasible from some past experience).

Difficulties of Construction Since the emergence of the theory took place in conjunction with the personal position repertoire, the formal theoretical side of DS theory bears “birthmarks” of that linkage. The empirical procedure leads the respondent to construct the oppositions in a molar entified manner, and specify the relations between the positions—also in a categorical, entified terms. For instance, when I claim that the relation between positions A and B is a “disagreement,” I am assigning a particular category label to some fluid process of my mind. The label “disagreement” does not represent the dynamic process of agreeing and disagreeing. Yet the DS theory needs to explain the fluid, dynamic, functioning of the self both ontogenetically and microgenetically. Here the relationships between theoretically assumed I-positions need to be of dynamic, process kind. In the recent years, the DS theory has been moving towards accommodating itself for these needs, slowly but surely.

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Regulating the Subjective Future: The Promoter Sign The spatial structure of the DS acquires future-oriented temporal extension. This extension comes through setting up specific signs of sufficient abstractness that begin to function as guiders of the range of possible constructions of the future. These signs—or parts of signs—operate as promoter signs (in analogy with the sequences in human genetic organization that promote the expression of other parts of the gene). Every semiotic mediator can be functioning as a promoter sign—guiding the possible range of variability of meaning construction in the future. This happens in the microgenetic (in the sense of Aktualgenese—see Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000, Chapter 7) process in the present—with the help of the past (Figure 7.3). Figure 7.3 is an extended version of the notion of enablement by signs (Valsiner, 2003b, p. 7.7—Figure 3B). Each meaning—sign—that is in use during the infinitely small time “window” we conveniently call “the present” is a semiotic mediating device that extends from the past to the possible, anticipated (but nor knowable) future. The promoter role of these signs is a feed-forward function—they set up the range of possible meaning boundaries for the unforeseeable—yet anticipated—future experiences with the world. The person is constantly creating meaning ahead of the time when it might be needed—orienting oneself towards one or another side of the anticipated experience, and thus preparing oneself for it.

General General Meaning B

Meaning A

Range of B

Range of A

New Meaning C

Specific

Past

Present

Future

Figure 7.3  The promoter function of signs at different levels of generalized abstraction.

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The signs in the present are promoters of the ranges of possible future meaning making, not specific meanings. The range includes each and every point within the constraints that specify the boundary of the meaning field. Hence each and every possible specific meaning is included in the range that is afforded by the promoter signs. Different semiotic mediators operate in parallel and at different levels of abstractive generalization (see Bühler, 1990, on the role of abstractive generalization in communication). Hence the concurrent meanings in the present are setting the stages for the negotiation of the boundaries of meanings in the future (see Figure 7.3, the context of new meaning C out of the relation of ranges of A and B). Every new experience of the future proceeds through the prism of constructive meaning-making through a semiotic hierarchy of various kinds of signs (Valsiner, 2005)—ranging from hypergeneralized fields (such as all-encompassing feelings or values) to verbally accessible mediators (that can be visible in self-narratives), and finally in the “snippet reactions” to everyday local triggers in a context. How does such future-oriented sign mediation work? Once established—in a generalized version—a sign becomes a promoter sign through canalizing future actions and—most importantly—becoming internalized in the form of feelings. Consider the description (by a Turkish writer) of his deeply ingrained feeling of respect for paper: Whether written on or not, printed or not, I feel respect for every kind of writing paper. I can’t stand the edges of notebooks being curled, or stacks of paper being out of order. After reading the newspaper, I can’t leave it as it is, turned inside out, with pages out of order. For instance, if someone sitting opposite me on a public conveyance raggedly opens the pages of the magazine or book in his hand, with a rip of his finger or a comb, I become upset right then and there. (Nesin, 1990, p. 42)

In the author’s subjective retrospection, that respect was developed by a series of repetitive symbolic events in the childhood—four decades before: In my childhood, whether he could read or write, whether villager or from the city, every Turk would immediately pick up two things from the ground and put them on top of a wall, between siding boards, in a hole in a tree, or some place high above the ground. One of these was bread, the other, printed paper. These two things were not to be stepped on. Bread was “God’s gift” and the printed page was holy. That is to say, he who picked up the bread, first kissed it and touched it to his forehead, then put it in a high place where it couldn’t be stepped on. It would not even be thought that something evil might be printed on the paper. (Nesin, 1990, p. 42, emphasis in original)

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The generalized notion of holy respect was promoted by unity of action prohibition, rituals, and meanings in childhood. Once in place, it pre-emptively set the stage for feeling toward any further encounters with printed materials. All actual encounters with paper (meaning A in Figure 7.3) would be subsumed under the generalized feeling (B in Figure 7.3) over a very wide range of circumstances. It is this process of abstractive generalization of signs—to set up the feeling towards the ambience-to-be-encountered— that is built through the promoter signs. Or, in other terms—generalized continuity of the developing self is the product of externalization of internalized signs that have begun to function as promoter signs. Such signs relate two developmental processes—microgenesis and ontogenesis—with the DS through the process of distancing.

Microgenesis and Ontogenesis, of Distancing Theories of semiotic mediation of human development have not been clear about how the ontogeny and microgenesis of self-regulation are related (Valsiner, 2002b). The whole semiotic mediation system is viewed as a hierarchical regulatory system of meanings that guarantee the person’s psychological distancing from the here-and-now setting (Valsiner, 1999, 2001). This distancing is based on the dialogicality within the self-system—in order to anticipate a future happening, the I-positions involved need to be of different levels of generality (Figure 7.4). Dynamic reorganization of the anticipation of future (Valsiner, 2002c) requires a kind of “three-dimensional self-scape” (Figure 7.5) where some I-positions are not merely dominant over others at the given moment, but set up a range of expectations for future. This kind of quasi-open ended future guidance for the DS is fitting with the developmental notion of adaptation to the given setting as de facto pre-adaptation to a range of possible future conditions—otherwise known widely in developmental psychology under the label of zone of proximal development—ZPD (Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993). I-position B New dialogical state I-position A

Figure 7.4  Distancing and dialogicality.

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Generalized Dialogical Opposition in Signs e.g., “MORALIMMORAL”

Outside EXTERNAL

A(ext) B(ext)

INTERNAL: A(int)

B(out)

Figure 7.5  DS structure as a three-dimensional “self-scape.”

The ZPD notion can be analyzed further in either ontogenetic or microgenetic scope. For its originator—Lev Vygotsky—that zone concept was linking the person’s ontogenetic present with the future-under-construction. The developing person constantly acts above his or her actual—already mastered—developmental competencies and, through such constant probing into the domains of incompetencies, expands the competencies. The person puts him- or herself into a new situation where new problems need to be solved, finds solutions, proceeds to the construction of new problems, finds new solutions, and so on. Through the generalizing role of signs, the person is constantly oriented towards the immediate future of the present psychological processes. In terms of the DS theory, the person is oriented to the transformation of a current structure of I-positions into a new form. Empirical evidence of the transformations of the patterns of Ipositions during psychotherapy are thus the adult developmental examples of the ontogenetic ZPD processes. However, all ontogeny depends upon the life experience—that is, a constant flow of the meaning-making in the course of immediate task situations, and—most importantly—their intra-personal variation (Molenaar, 2003). The DS operates constantly, “online,” moving the self through new situations in some consistent but flexible ways. Dialogical oppositions are constantly being made, let to develop, and overcome by disappearance of

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one of the parts or by new synthesis. The affective generalization—impression—operates in the role of the promoter sign to create continuity for such internal construction of new scenarios of potential reality.

Conclusion: Development as a Quickly Slow Process The theory of dialogical self has provided developmental scientists a challenge—what kind of theoretical models for explaining development are feasible. Given the permanent impermanence of biological and psychological systems—their existence is fully dependent upon their exchange relations with the environment—a theoretical system of dialogical kind may be a solution. All formal generic models are our tools for understanding (and need not map on the common sense phenomena); hence, the use of hierarchically self-organizing sets of structured I-positions may be a reasonable terminology for making sense of the development of the human self. The notion of promoter function of signs constitutes an effort to make sense of the selective transfer of immediate experiences (known through microgenetic processes) to the maintenance of some generalized forms of these for future use. The promoter function as applied here to sign-mediated nature of human development borrows the concept from biology (the promoter zone of a gene, the pacemaker signal in a brain pathway). The promoter signs—future-oriented semiotic means of guaranteeing stability of human ontogeny—may lead to a new understanding of how ontogeny emerges from the constant flow of microgenetic episodes of relating with the environment. Thus problem has remained unsolved, as human ontogeny has been either studied in terms of descriptive stage accounts or equally formal correlational relations between younger and older age cohorts. Both of these research tactics have been based on the study of outcomes of microgenetic processes—hence overlooking the actual loci where novelty emerges at its root. Yet these tactics have detected the age ranges during which ontogenetic qualitative breakthroughs happen. However, merely specifying the age range for some transition does not equal the revealing of the processes of such transition—unless these processes are slow in ways that fit the practical time schedules of longitudinal research programs. The DS theory—with its empirical focus on adult development (especially in psychotherapy) may be in a position to match the longitudinal study schedules and the slowness of ontogenetic change. Hence DS theory could answer critical questions about the transfer of microgenetic psychological transitions to the ontogenetic domain. That such transfer is not of isomorphic kind—not each and every microgenetic advancement has an ontogenetic counterpart—is clear from the enormous overproduction of

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play in childhood, imagination in adolescence, and daydreaming and use of cognitive heuristics in adulthood. It would also create high vulnerability for the ontogenetic life course trajectory if all events of microgenetic kind passed on to change it. Buffering the ontogenetic domain against developments in the microgenetic domains is crucial for successful ontogeny. The hyperproductivity of microgenesis is paralleled by conservatism of ontogenies—similarly, perhaps, to the limited role of ontogeny in the guidance of phylogeny. Development at large—and within it the dialogical development of the self—may entail the unity of speed of local adaptations to specific conditions with slowness of transformation of the ontogenetic trajectory. The person needs to act quickly to develop slowly—a paradox that may play a crucial role in the survival of the fortunate, or maybe of the fittest.

Notes 1. Paper presented at the Symposium (Hubert Hermans, Convener) Developmental aspects of the dialogical self, ISSBD, Ghent, July 12, 2004. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. Probably it is appropriate to consider Karl Ernst von Baer’s initiation of embryology—in 1828—as the starting point of developmental science. 4. In addition to productivity of duality terms in theoretical constructions, this perspective has to face the irrational fights with “dualisms” that recur in psychology. 5. A contrast at times complicated by the language used—Chaudhary, 2003. 6. However, the latter problem has not bothered traditional psychology that quite happily finds a large number of causal “traits” in personality, intelligence, and many other areas. 7. It can be put more generally—psychology’s habit of getting subjects to attribute subjectively quantified values to evaluated fuzzy subjective phenomenological fields is an act of construction of node-like signs, without recognition of their sign-like features (Wagoner & Valsiner, 2005).

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Baldwin, J. M. (1915). Genetic theory of reality. New York, NY: Putnam. Bhatia, S., & Ram, A. (2001). Locating the dialogical self in the age of transnational migrations, border crossings and diasporas. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 297–309.

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Boesch, E. E. (1991). Symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. New York, NY: Springer. Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Cairns, R. B. (1986). Phenomena lost: issues in the study of development. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 97–111). New York, NY: Plenum. Cairns, R. B. (1998). The making of developmental psychology In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 25–105). New York, NY: Wiley. Chaudhary, N. (2003). Speaking the self into becoming? Culture & Psychology, 9(4), 471–486. Chaudhary, N. (2004). Listening to culture: Constructing reality from everyday talk. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Chaudhary, N., & Sriram, S. (2001). Dialogues of the self. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 379–392. Choi, S-C., & Choi, S-H. (1994). We-ness: A Korean discourse of collectivism. In G. Yoon & S-C. Choi (Eds.), Psychology of the Korean people (pp. 57–84). Seoul, Korea: Dong-A Publishing & Printing Co. Coelho, N. E., & Figueiredo, L. C. (2003). Patterns of intersubjectivity in the constitution of subjectivity: dimensions of otherness. Culture & Psychology, 9(3), 193–208. Crawford, V. M., & Valsiner, J. (2002). Phenomenon, methodology and interpretation in the study of meaning: American women constructing themselves as mothers and career workers. Psychology and Developing Society, 14(1), 91–129. Dodds, A. E., Lawrence, J. A., & Valsiner, J. (1997). The personal and the social: Mead’s theory of the ‘generalized other’. Theory & Psychology, 7(4), 483–503. Fogel, A., Lyra, M. C. D. P., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (1997). Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gigerenzer, G. (1991). From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery in cognitive psychology. Psychological Review, 98(2), 254–267. Gonçalves, M. M., & Gonçalves, O. F. (Eds.). (2001). Psicoterapia, discurso, e narrativa: A construção conversacional da mudança. Coimbra, Portugal: Quarteto. Gonçalves, M. M., & Salgado, J. (2001). Mapping the multiplicity of the self. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 367–377. Gottlieb, G. (1997). Synthesizing nature/nurture. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Gupta, S., & Valsiner, J. (2003). Myths and minds: implicit guidance for human conduct. In I. E. Josephs (Ed.), Dialogicality in development (pp. 179–195). Westport, CT: Praeger. Halliday, M. (1976). Anti-languages. American Anthropologist, 78, 570–584. Hermans, H. J. M. (1996a). Voicing the self: From information processing to dialogical interchange. Psychological Bulletin, 119(1), 31–50.

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Hermans, H. J. M. (1996b). Opposites in a dialogical self: constructs as characters. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 9, 1–26. Hermans, H. J. M. (1999). The innovative potentials of agreement and disagreement in dialogical history. Culture & Psychology, 5(4), 491–498. Hermans, H. J. M. (2000). Valuation, innovation and critical personalism. Theory & Psychology, 10(6), 801–814. Hermans, H. (2001a). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 243–281. Hermans, H. (2001b). The construction of a personal position repertoire: method and practice. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 323–365. Hermans, H. J. (Ed.). (2002). Dialogical self [Special issue]. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 147–280. Hermans, H. J. M. (2003). Clinical diagnosis as a multiplicity of self-positions: Challenging social representations theory. Culture & Psychology, 9(4), 407–414. Hermans, H. J. M., & Hermans-Jansen, E. (1995). Self narratives: The construction of meaning in psychotherapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Hermans, H. J., & Hermans-Jansen, E. (2003). Dialogical processes in the development of the self. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 534–559). London, England: SAGE. Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H., & van Loon, R. J. P. (1992). The dialogical self: Beyond individualism and rationalism. American Psychologist, 47(1), 23–33. Ho, D., Chan, S., Poeng, S., & Ng, A. (2001). The dialogical self: Converging East-West constructions. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 393–408. Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction. In J. Brandtstätdter & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self development (pp. 257–282). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Katz, D., & Katz, R. (1936). Conversations with children. London, England: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Kopytoff, I. (1990). Women’s roles and existential identities. In P. R. Sanday & R. G. Goodenough (Eds.), Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender (pp. 77–98). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Marková, I. (1990). A three-step process as a unit of analysis in dialogue. In I. Marková & K. Foppa (Eds.), The dynamics of dialogue (pp. 129–146). Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester. Mead, G. H. (1912). The mechanism of social consciousness. Journal of Philosophy, 9, 401–406. Mead, G. H. (1913). The social self. Journal of Philosophy, 10, 374–380. Meigs, A. (1990). Multiple gender ideologies and statuses. In P. R. Sanday & R. G. Goodenough (Eds.), Beyond the second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender (pp. 101–113). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Molenaar, P. C. M. (2003, July). A manifesto on psychology as idiographic science: Bringing the person back into scientific psychology—this time forever. Invited talk at the 13th International Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Cagliari, Italy. Moscovici, S. (1961). La psychanalyse, son image et son public: Etude sur la représentation sociale de la psychanalyse. Paris, France: PUF. Nesin, A. (1990). Istanbul boy. The autobiography of Asiz Nesin. Austin, TX: Center for Middle-Eastern Studies. Obeyesekere, G. (1981). Medusa’s hair. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Obeyesekere, G. (1990). The work of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Poddiakov, A. N. (2001). Counteraction as a crucial factor of learning, education and development: Opposition to help. FQS:Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(3). Retrieved from http:// www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). Toward a counter-system: Women’s tales. In A. Appadurai, F. J. Korom, & M. A. Mills (Eds.), Gender, genre, and power in South Asian expressive traditions (pp. 33–55). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rogers, S. C. (1975). Female forms of power and the myth of male dominance: A model of female/male interaction in peasant society. American Ethnologist, 2, 727–756. Roland, A. (2001). Another voice and position: Psychoanalysis across civilizations. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 311–321. Salgado, J. (2003). Psicologia narrativa e identidade: um estudo sobre auto-engano e organização pessoal. Maia, Portugal: ISMAI. Valsiner, J. (1986). Between groups and individuals: Psychologists’ and laypersons’ interpretations of correlational findings. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 113–152). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26–30. Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and human development. London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44, 84–97. Valsiner, J. (2002a, October). The concept of attractor: How dynamic systems theory deals with future. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Gent, Belgium. Valsiner, J. (2002b). Forms of dialogical relations and semiotic autoregulation within the self. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 251–265. Valsiner, J. (2002c). Irreversibility of time and ontopotentiality of signs. Estudios de Psicologia, 23(1), 49–59.

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Valsiner, J. (2003a). Upconscious processes in schooling. European Journal of School Psychology, 1(1), 43–56. Valsiner, J. (2003b). Beyond social representations: A theory of enablement. Papers on Social representations, 12, 7.1–7.16 Retrieved from http://www. psr.jku.at/ Valsiner, J. (2005). Soziale und emotionale Entwicklungsaufgaben im kulturellen Kontext. Enzyklpädie der psychologie, 3. Valsiner, J., & Connolly, K. J. (2003). The nature of development: The continuing dialogue of processes and outcomes. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. ix–xviii). London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J., & Diriwächter, R. (2005). Qualitative Forschungsmethoden in historischen und epistemologischen Kontexten. In G. Mey (Ed.), Qualitative Forschung in der Entwicklungspsychologie (pp. 35–55). Köln, Germany: Kölnerer Studien Verlag. Valsiner, J., & Van der Veer, R. (1993). The encoding of distance: The concept of the zone of proximal development and its interpretations. In R. R. Cocking & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), The development and meaning of psychological distance (pp. 35–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1966). Igra i ee rol’ v psikhicheskom razvitii rebenka. Voprosy Psikhologii, 12(6), 62–76. [original 1933] Wagoner, B., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Rating tasks in psychology: from static ontology to dialogical synthesis of meaning. In A. Gülerçe, I. Steauble, A. Hofmeister, G. Saunders, & J. Kaye (Eds.), Theoretical psychology. Toronto, ON: Captus Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

8 Temporal Integration of Structures Within the Dialogical Self1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Contemporary dialogical self (DS) research has mastered the use of dual theoretical terms (opposites within the whole, different I-positions in relations) as well as the notion of dynamics (change in I-positions). What remains to be accomplished is the development of a theory that enables further investigation into the intricate phenomena within the ever-transforming self-organization. It entails the breaking of homogeneity by partitioning of the field through constraints (homogeneous field A + introduced constraint ==> new structured field {A || non-A}) that set the stage for the emergence of structure (defined by specifiable relation between the two subfields, A and non-A). Hence, the question of emerging structure of DS is that of the question of differentiation of the boundary—of the dynamic structure of the constraint “membrane” between the related I-positions. Different formal models of such differentiation are possible, allowing us to specify the concrete features of different kinds of relationships between separated I-positions.

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Fortunately, it is not necessary here to overview the existing notions of dialogical self (DS) here, as that has been done elsewhere (Hermans, 2001, 2002; Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2003). The roots of this perspective of theory construction in psychology build upon the systemic analysis of a whole into its constituent parts (not elements) and elaboration of the ways in which these parts work as a system to produce the high variety of phenomena. The DS theory is another effort in psychology to introduce systemic and dynamic theoretical models into otherwise static discipline. Other efforts of similar kind in the past have largely passed by with temporary effects—and time will show how DS can survive within a field that becomes increasingly dominated by flows of journalistic discourse and selective knowledge presentation strategies.

Basic Ideas in DS Theory The DS theory is a holistic—structural—perspective. It divides the complex whole—labeled “the self”—into functional subparts of two-dimensional3 spatial spread of mutually related components (“I-positions”) that can relocate within the given space-time field. Each of the positions is related to the voices—a term borrowed from Mikhail Bakhtin (1981)—as it has made it possible for psychologists to return to the recognition of multiple relations between parts within the whole. The DS is a “multivoiced self” within which the person is an active agent who can transcend the here-and-now context through imagination to “act as if he or she were the other” (Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992, p. 29), and as if she or he were in a different setting. The crucial focus here is on the constructive nature of the DS—it is a real psychological constitution (Slunecko, 2002) that is created out of the projective unreal materials (anticipatory misinterpretations of the world). So the self is a fictitious nonfiction of the person! The structural scheme of the DS is usually given in some version of the following scheme (e.g., Hermans, 2001, p. 253; here Figure 8.1).

Outside EXTERNAL INTERNAL

Figure 8.1  The zone structure of the DS.

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The different locations of positions are intertwined—in Hermans’ words, External positions refer to people and objects in the environment that are, in the eyes of the individual, relevant from the perspective of one or more internal positions. . . . In reverse, internal positions receive their relevance from their relation with one or more external positions (e.g., I feel a mother because I have children). In other words, internal and external positions receive their significance as emerging from their mutual transactions over time. (Hermans, 2001, p. 252)

What is the main goal in the lives of human beings? The DS theory has a clear answer to that question (that Hamlet failed to answer)—the person is constantly involved in the construction, relocation, and reconstruction of I-positions. Such positions are organized in an imaginal landscape. In this conception, the I has the possibility to move, as in space, from one position to the other in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I fluctuates among different, and even opposed, positions and has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between characters in a story, involved in a process of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each character has a story to tell about its own experiences from its own stance. These characters exchange information about their respective ME-s, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self. In this multiplicity of positions, some positions may become more dominant than others, so that the voices of the less dominant positions may be subdued. (Hermans, 1996b, pp. 10–11)

So, we have a two-layer system: each I-position (theoretical abstraction) creates a “voice” (a quasitheoretical entity—both phenomenologically graspable and theoretically usable) that relates to other “voices” (linked with other I-positions). Within that field of I-positions, the person can imaginatively move to a future point in time and then speak to myself about the sense of what I am doing now in my present situation. This position, at some point in the future, may be very helpful to help me to evaluate my present activities from a long-term perspective. The result may be that I disagree with my present self as blinding itself from more essential things (Hermans, 1996a, p. 33)

This “outsourcing” of I-positions into the future may be viewed in terms of an attractor in the framework of the dynamic systems theory. The spatial

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structure of the DS acquires future-oriented temporal extension (Valsiner, 2002). Yet there is a serious conceptual problem—it is the agent (the person) who creates the future “attractor region” for one’s present movement towards it. In DST, the actual system is not assumed to be the “mover” of its own self—the movement has to come from the interdependence of the system’s relations with the environment. In some ways, the DS theory needs to transcend the dynamic focus of DST by way of allowing a future-projecting person to create one’s own new trajectory through the specified forms of interdependence with the environment. In other terms, the “homunculus” (in DS case—that takes the form of the system of I-positions and their relations) creates the future goal orientation (Valsiner, 2004b), projects it to the unknown future, and by specifying the direction of further development sets the conditions for the processes captured by the dynamic systems theory to work.

Integrating a Different Voice: From I-Positions to We-Positions, and Beyond Hermans’ DS perspective has triggered a constructive discussion about the status of common language uses in the definition of I-positions. Would DS theory be applicable in societies where referencing “the I” is culturally downplayed—such as India, Japan, and Korea (Chaudhary, 2003; Choi & Kim, 2004; Han & Jung, 2004; Roland, 2001)? Thus the crucial question of the DS theory is not reiteration of the multivoicedness of the self, but its dynamic structure. That structure is making (and unmaking) itself in ways that require new versions of qualitative methodology to be put in place to study it. In general, the self is best conceptualized as self-in-relations—both internal and external. Both psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic (Gonçalves & Salgado, 2001) approaches have proven that the self systems are not reducible to simple relations between I-positions—event to a picture of a multitude of such relations. Once again, psychology has—by way of empirical findings rather than through theoretical creativity—returned to the main point that was so clear for Christian von Ehrenfels in 1890—the whole is more than the list of its parts (Ehrenfels, 1988). Furthermore, the structure of the DS needs situating itself within a wider structural framework that may begin from role positions, including we-positions, and—last but not least— the I-positions, specifically. Roland’s (2001, p. 314) suggestion to integrate into DS a place for differing valences and salience of various voices and positions is a way towards creating a structuraldynamic view of the DS as a field. Much of the layering of such DS field

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structure would be cultural-historical. Roland gave an example of women’s move into careers in the United States leading to the emergence of guilt over leaving the children, which begins from an objective change in the social role expectation of one society, consciously approved by the women—who yet construct guilt based on the historical layer of “voice of traditional motherhood” pressed into the hideouts of the unconscious (Roland, 2001, p. 315). Similarly, the role of semiotic construction of the personal deity (Valsiner, 1999) indicates the hierarchization of the field. After borrowing from Bakhtin the liberating theoretical idea of plurivocality, the DS theory necessarily needs to reconstruct the hierarchical order within the plurivocal domain in order to explain the integration of the DS (see Figure 8.2). Even at the manifest level of conversations between persons—negotiating their structure of I-positions in everyday encounters—the complexity of the coordination of different I-positions can be immense (Chaudhary, 2003). Where multiplicity reigns, hierarchical order is in the making. The question is not whether it emerges, but how does it emerge? Of course it is tempting to explain this process of emergence through already widely used labels—such as internalization/externalization, guidance by social representations, and the like. Yet such labeling may close the door to

Generalized Dialogical Opposition in Signs e.g., “MORALnon-MORAL”

Outside EXTERNAL

A(ext) B(ext)

INTERNAL: A(int)

B(out)

Figure 8.2  DS structure as a three-dimensional structure (based on Valsiner, 2004a, Fig. 5).

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inquiry, rather than open it. Let us try to link the DS notion of the (dynamic) field of I-positions with the notion of generalization. The act of generalization allows the self at the given here-and-now setting to transcend it both in space and time through the connective process of semiotic mediation. Semiotic mediation makes it possible to create new regulatory levels—sign fields—that canalize the dynamic processes of reconfigurations of the DS.

Going Beyond the Givens: Generalization in Irreversible Time All generalization entails abstraction. In the form of classic (logical) explanation, generalization is “to recognize likeness that had been previously masked by difference; to recognize the likeness is also therefore to recognize these differences as irrelevant, and disregard them from the point of view of the general conception. Such recognition is abstraction. (Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 1, 1901, p. 408, emphasis added). Generalization here entails the move of reflexivity from the level of direct comparisons (finding differences) to that of a generic level where these differences are subsumed under the general conception.4 The general concept makes it possible to consider the detected differences as if these are irrelevant for understanding of the whole nature of the issues at stake. The centrality of abstraction in generalization allows for the use of signs that expand the psychological horizons of the self. In Karl Bühler’s semiotic5 look at human psychological functions, the principle of abstractive relevance (Prinzip der abstraktiven Relevanz) was necessary to set up a possible dominance relation in the coordination of different sign fields. Not only by intrapersonal mental generalization, but also by its corresponding interpersonal arbitrary consensus can obvious differences within one sign-field be purposefully overlooked, under the control of an abstracted aspect. In Bühler’s terms, “the perceptible here and now need not enter the semantic function. Rather, it may be only that this or that abstract factor is relevant for its calling to function as a sign” (1990, p. 52). The abstract convention can be set up to overrule the emergence of complex nuances of understanding. It can be posited that the personal understanding and the abstractness of the signs involved in its process are in a constant tension, which may lead to novel construction of both abstract meanings (from extension of the previous semantic field of the abstract sign, to the invention of a new one) and new personal (intuitive-looking) understandings of subjective overgeneralization (see Figure 8.2—the sign field of MORAL  non-MORAL).

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Roots of the Dialogical Self: From Graz to Nijmegen The DS theory is a European invention—with deep roots in World’s philosophy integrating both East and West. What remains to be accomplished is the development of a theory that enables further investigation into the intricate phenomena within the ever-transforming self-organization. Within our previously established dialogical approach (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998; Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999), signs are conceptualized in terms of duality opposites—A and non-A. We can trace back the origin of conceptualizing meanings in terms of constructed opposites to the philosophical system of the “Graz School” in psychology led by Alexius Meinong (Albertazzi, Jacquette, & Poli, 2001; Amseder, 1904; Mally, 1904; Meinong 1900/1969, 1907). Meinong’s Gegenständstheorie is one of the rich roots for the DS theory. The acceptance of the whole as the organizer of the relations between the parts was the difficult conceptual issue that the Austrian-German philosophical tradition of Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, and Carl Stumpf left for the 20th century to solve—without success. Meinong emphasized the unity of opposites with the same whole as I am apprehending an A, I also apprehend a non-A in some sense. So we have to do with a difference regarding what is apprehended . . . a difference regarding what stands opposite [gegenübersteht] each intellectual experience as its object [Gegenstand]. . . . In the non-A, then, there is a further objective factor, the “non,” as it were, supervening on the A. (Meinong, 1902/1983, pp. 14–15)

Meinong understood the basic asymmetry between the two components of representation: The non-A operates as negativum in relation to A. Negativum is always built on the basis of the positive concept (the inferiora). Thus, it is not possible to think of “non-red” without having a notion of “red” on the basis of which the negativum is built up. Furthermore, the negativum emerges not only on the basis of the inferiorum, but in-between that and a wide open field of possible objects which are clearly different from it. As Meinong explained, The idea of the negativum does not develop originally from the A alone; instead, there is also given an X, of which it may be or at least is asserted that it is not A, in quite the same way that the similarity must, to begin with, be established between A and some other, second object, Y. And just as abstraction then sets to work on the special complex AY formed by means of comparison—so that from the idea “Y similar to A” there is formed the idea “similarity to A” or “similar to A”—so too might an abstract representation “something that is not A” or simply non-A develop out of complex of another sort, AX, or out of the idea “X is not A.” Along with the original

154    Beyond the Mind duality of the fundamenta, the matter of the producing activity is also settled: What is accomplished by comparison in the other case is here accomplished by judgment—negative judgment, naturally. (Meinong, 1902/1983, p. 16)

Meinong’s insights into the processes of meaning construction moved along the same trajectory of thought—for understanding individual minds—that a century later the DS theory has moved in its efforts to make sense of the dynamic nature of the self.

What Happens at the Boundary: How I-Positions Are Reconfigured Thus, all regulatory processes of I-positions change are located at the boundary of the bipolar sign fields (A  non-A). These boundary processes are two-way “membranes of meaning transition” (to use a biological metaphor here). They break the homogeneity by partitioning of the field through constraints. In Figure 8.3, a hypothetical sign-field regulation system of the dynamics of I-positions reconfiguration is given. It presumes that any move in the I-positions is based on the dynamics of the reorganization of the sign-field that contains the opposites (A and non-A—see top of Figure 8.3). non-MORAL “IMMORAL” Generalized Dialogical “MORAL”

Outside EXTERNAL

A(ext) B(ext)

INTERNAL: A(int)

B(out)

Figure 8.3  Canalization of the DS structure by a dual sign field.

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If this perspective is feasible, the question of the boundary processes in the A  non-A field becomes crucial for the reconfiguring of the I-positions. These boundary processes are the loci for emergence of new personal meanings for the self in its full polyphony of I-positions. The structure of the generalized A  non-A sign field sets up canalizing constraints for the movement of I-positions. Thus, a particular sudden “jump” in the A  non-A field leads to instant repositioning of I-positions—George Sand as a young girl created a special “personal shrine” for herself that dwelled upon its secrecy. The moment the secrecy was lost, the whole “shrine” lost its personal value and was demolished (see Oliveira & Valsiner, 1997). Both the dual sign fields (A  nonA) perspective and the DS theory provide a positive correction to the vicissitudes of our social sciences. In the latter, it is fashionable to fight the perils of “Cartesian dualisms”—yet the whole perspective of DS is based on the premise human experience is dual. Its duality is that of the unity of stability and dynamism. Only through that duality can we consider the human psyche as an open system—in its development. The human mind maintains itself as open-ended and dynamic—its socially organized forms (stability) that operate in always unique contexts that are given by the irreversible nature of time (the dynamics of forms). Combining these two within one single theoretical framework would entail the creation of a substantive science of social being.

The Boundary—As Viewed by Charles Sanders Peirce The centrality of the boundary is not new in theory building in the social sciences. It was crucial in Kurt Lewin’s field theory and in the philosophy of semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Peirce superimposed the mathematical demonstration of infinity from a geometric realm to that of time. If one were to explain infinity in case of dividing a line into subsegments this division—creating boundaries within a temporal continuum—this process can be continued infinitely, with the result of dividing the line into infinitesimally small (and ever smaller) subparts. If, instead, a geometric figure (line) there is the time, the time too can be divided into similar infinitesimally small segments (moments). Such argument leads to a rather counterintuitive outcome—there is no “present”! Any present occurs within the infinitesimal time moment between the past and the future. As such, the experiencing organism cannot perceive it as “the present.” All perception of the present, and reflection upon it in ideas, is already the next present’s reconstruction of the immediate past. Obviously, this kind of thinking is precisely the opposite of our intrapsychological feelings

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that “we are” within “the present”—remembering the “past” and looking towards “the future.” The irreversibility of biological time leads to our creation of the illusion of the “present” as a mental stabilizing mechanism. Thus, the notion of the present is a boundary in the personal division of the past and future. For Peirce, “the present is half past and half to come” (1892/1923, p. 219). Peirce arrived at the notion of the present as a boundary through an example of the color of the boundary between different surfaces (see Figure 8.4): Suppose a surface be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course no part can be both red and blue. What, then, is the color of the boundary line between the red and the blue? The answer is that red or blue, to exist at all, must be spread over a surface; and the color of the surface is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point . . . as the parts of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of any ordinary point upon a curved boundary are half of them red and half blue, it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In a like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time; and what is present to the mind at any ordinary instant, is what is present during a moment in which that instant occurs. (Peirce, 1892/1923, p. 219, emphasis added)

The question—phrased ontologically in Figure 8.4—is impossible to answer. It becomes possible—yet with the addition of extra theoretical challenges—it becomes a basic question for human life (see Figure 8.5). Yet the transposition of the physical question (color of the boundary of two surfaces) to the process of organic growth of consciousness by Peirce can be viewed only as an effort to indicate the role of the present as a boundary. As an infinitesimal boundary between the past and the future, the present is the birthplace of the next present. In Figure 8.5, the “blue of the future” is

Is this boundary red or blue?

Figure 8.4  Peirce’s “Boundary Question.”

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Time

Figure 8.5  The “boundary question” within irreversible time.

being turned into “the red of the past” through the processes of transformation at the boundary. Differently from the mere being of a physical boundary (e.g., the red & blue nature of the boundary of surfaces in Peirce’s example), the moving boundary of the present is not that of a copresence of the past and the future (as some kinds of existential “surfaces”), but a process of emergence. Peirce recognized this difference of the flow of consciousness-in-time (Peirce, 1892/1923, p. 220).

The A  non-A Boundary: A “Dialogical Membrane” Let us take Peirce’s ideas and relate them with the semiotic constraining fields (Figure 8.3). What follows is the need to provide a theoretical model of how the semiotic regulation becomes organized at the boundary negotiation. Figure 8.6 provides a hypothetical look. It is assumed that all meaning making entails inherent intentionality (in the sense of Brentano and Meinong)—and constitutes a vector that has direction. As we operate in a duality domain, each vector {A(x)} has its opposite countervector {non-A(x)} that is in general opposite in its direction. The boundary zome between the A  non-A fields—a semiotic “membrane”—becomes a “dialogical membrane” when the system of the two oppositely directed vectors moves to the synthesis of new meaning (B, with its corresponding non-B field). The boundary is structured—some parts of it are permeable, others, not. The inner core of the boundary contains a landscape of obstacles that the two vectors encounter, and “bounce off” from. If the structure of the obstacles affords it, the two vectors do meet (and create a new synthetic meaning B. But that is not a taken-for-granted result—in most of our meaning construction efforts we may “get stuck.” Most of our meaning-making efforts are failures—only some become consolidated and arrive at a clear

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Figure 8.6  A model of the boundary of the A  non-A field.

final form. Such hyperproductivity of human mental ideation has been demonstrated well in the microgenetic studies of thinking (for overview, see Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000, Chapter 7). In settings of constant uncertainty of the impending future, the best adaptation strategy is abundant production of generative materials under the established expectation that the overwhelming manifold of those is shared by biological evoluitiuon and psychological development.

General Conclusions: Semiotic Regulation of I-Positions Configurations This paper was an attempt to relate the DS theory of Hermans—that focuses on the relation of dynamic configurations of I-positions (a theoretical construct) with the plurivocality of “voices” (a phenomenological construct

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with theoretical implications)—and the semiotic autoregulatory perspective (Valsiner, 1999, 2001). What emerges as a result is a pattern of semiotic regulation of the making and changing of I-positions. That semiotic regulation is an ongoing, continuous process, while the change in I-positions constitutes a discrete act of repositioning. A version of such move is depicted in Figure 8.7. Reconfiguring of the structure of I-positions from Time 1 to Time 2 is mediated by the continuous semiotic regulatory process that only at some new time moments sets into action the reorganization of I-positions. A crucial role is played in this mediation by generalization processes—the semiotic fields arrive at states of generalization that allows them to distance from the previous “here-and-now” setting and become functional in a new “hereand-now” setting in goals-directed ways.

T Outside I M E

EXTERNAL

INTERNAL 1

T I M E 2

S E M I O T I C M E D I A T I O N

Outside EXTERNAL

INTERNAL

Figure 8.7  Re-configuring the I-positions through intra-psychological flow of semiotic regulation.

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In summary, the theory of DS is moving our understanding of how human selves function in very new directions of intellectual inquiry. Yet these directions are not without their predecessors—long before the DS theory began to emerge on the Dutch lowlands of Nijmegen, its mentalist counterparts were emerging in the little Austrian town of Graz in Styria, and in the mind of a rebel American thinker—who never managed to get an academic position—on the American East Coast. All in all, the DS theory is in a position to lead the making of psychology of the self into a serious science the models of which are similar to contemporary genetics. Yet psychology’s methodological orthodoxy has delayed this development over the past century—a lesson about what “progress” is in a discipline remains hidden in this history.

Notes 1. Keynote lecture at the 3rd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Warsaw, August, 28, 2004. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. Or three-dimensional (Valsiner, 2004a) introducing semiotic control hierarchies on top of the self-scape of positions. The need for the dynamic hierarchical regulation also arises if we take G. H. Mead’s tentative efforts to conceptualize the “generalized other” and try to advance that idea (Dodds, Lawrence, & Valsiner, 1997). 4. Notably, the discourse about what generalization is takes a different (behavioristically flavored) form a hundred years later that is free of the notion of hierarchy of levels of whole  parts relations. Encyclopedia Britannica (2004) explains generalization as “in psychology, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli. For example, a dog conditioned to salivate to a tone of a particular pitch and loudness will also salivate with considerable regularity in response to tones of higher or lower pitch.” 5. Bühler himself used the term sematological (Bühler, 1990, pp. 52–54).

References Albertazzi, L., Jacquette, D., & Poli, R. (Eds.). (2001). The school of Alexius Meinong. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Amseder, R. (1904). Beiträge zur Grundlegung der Gegenstandstheorie. In A. Meinong (Ed.), Untersuchungen zur Gegenstanstheorie und Psychologie (pp. 51–120). Leipzig, Germany: J.A. Barth. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. (Original work published in 1934)

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Chaudhary, N. (2003). Speaking the self into becoming? Culture & Psychology, 9(4), 471–486. Choi, S-C., & Kim, K. (2004, August). Monological and dialogical nature of Intersubjective emotion of Shimcheong (心情: Felt mind and emotion). Paper presented at the Symposium The dialogical nature of affective processes: empathy re-considered, at the 3rd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Warsaw, Poland. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. (1901). Generalization (p. 408). New York, NY: MacMillan. Dodds, A. E., Lawrence, J. A., & Valsiner, J. (1997). The personal and the social: Mead’s theory of the ‘generalized other.’ Theory & Psychology, 7(4), 483–503. Ehrenfels, C. (1988). Über “Gestaltqualitäten” (1890/1922). In C. von Ehrenfels, Philosophische Schriften. Vol. 3. Psychologie, Ethik, Erkenntnistheorie (pp. 128–167). München, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. Encyclopeadia Britannica. (2004). Generalization. Encyclopedia Britannica Premium Service, Gonçalves, M. M, & Salgado, J. (2001). Mapping the multiplicity of the self. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 367–377. Han, G., & Jung, T. (2004, August). Cheong (情:) A Korean illustration of the narrativized mind state. Paper presented at the Symposium The dialogical nature of affective processes: empathy re-considered, at the 3rd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Warsaw, Poland. Hermans, H. J. M. (1996). Opposites in a dialogical self: Constructs as characters. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 9, 1–26. Hermans, H. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture and Psychology, 7(3), 243–281. Hermans, H. J. (Ed.). (2002). Special Issue on dialogical self. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 147–280. Hermans, H. J., & Hermans-Jansen, E. (2003). Dialogical processes in the development of the self. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 534–559). London, England: SAGE. Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H., & van Loon, R. J. P. (1992). The dialogical self: Beyond individualism and rationalism. American Psychologist, 47(1), 23–33. Josephs, I. E., & Valsiner, J. (1998). How does autodialogue work? Miracles of meaning maintenance and circumvention strategies. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61, 68–83. Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction. In J. Brandtstätdter & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self development (pp. 257–282). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Mally, E. (1904). Untersuchungen zur Gegenstanstheorie des Messens. In A. Meinong (Ed.), Untersuchungen zur Gegenstanstheorie und Psychologie (pp. 121–262). Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth.

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Meinong, A. (1969). Abstrahieren und Vergleichen. In R. Haller & R. Kindiger (Eds), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe (Vol. 1, pp. 445–494). Graz, Germany: Akademische Drück- und Verlagsanstalt. (Original work published in 1900) Meinong, A. (1983). On assumptions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Original work published 1902) Meinong, A. (1907). Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften. Leipzig, Germany: R. Voigtländer. Peirce, C. S. (1923). Chance, love and logic. London, England: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner. (Original work published 1892) Roland, A. (2001). Another voice and position: psychoanalysis across civilizations. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 311–321. Slunecko, T. (2002). Von der Konstruktion zur dynamischen Konstitution. Wien, Austria: WUV Universitätsverlag. Oliveira, Z. M. R., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Play and imagination: The psychological construction of novelty. In A. Fogel, M. C. D. P. Lyra, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes (pp. 119–133). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26–30. Valsiner, J. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44, 84–97. Valsiner, J. (2002, October). The concept of attractor: How dynamic systems theory deals with future. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Dialogical Self, Ghent, Belgium. Valsiner, J. (2004a, July). The promoter sign: Developmental transformation within the structure of Dialogical Self. Paper presented at the Symposium (Hubert Hermans, Convener) Developmental aspects of the dialogical self. ISSBD, Ghent, Belgium. Valsiner, J. (2004b). Dialogues with personal futures: Strategic meaning construction and its functions. In A. U. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 227–248). Stamford, CT: Greenwood. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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3

Dialogical Semiosis in Irreversible Time—Why Make it So Complex? Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

P

art III of our book was dedicated to the dialogical self theory—and through this break we move on to the infinities in aesthetics (Part IV). Notably, the chapters here cover the thinking of recent years (2014–2016) with the notable exception of the effort to make sense of surrealist paintings (dated to 1997). So the roots for trying to make sense of the human psyche through the highest creativity of our human being are those designated as art. Yet through the focus on art comes another fascination—that with the erotic suggestions of the human body, its curious self-titillations (e.g., flagellation), and its projections into the human-built world of architecture. From the playful realities of children’s mealtimes (in the 1980s and 1990s), the meta-theoretical gaze moves to the realm of sensuality as the

Beyond the Mind, pages 163–167 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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basis for all human being (Valsiner, 2003). It is the sensuality of our bodily relating with the world at large—not sexuality—that guides our ways. Feeling the pleasure of underwear, getting the compliments for the beauty of underwear, enjoying the shower, bathtub, or swimming pool, or the bodily warmth of another human being—are all sensual moments of being. Walking barefoot on grass or feeling the sweetness of ice cream in one’s mouth are all meaningful sensual encounters. It is the first biological and cultural membrane—the skin—onto which our cultural organization of being human is constructed (Nedergaard, 2016). The skin is the absolute border that links our bodies with their environments—precisely 100% of coverage of the body volume with clearly specified conditional openings for the transfer of substances through the barrier. A number of abstract concepts become targets of inquiry in the papers in Sections III and IV. Temporal integration of sign hierarchies into the map of I-positions in the dialogical self could overcome the static nature of the maps of multivoiced self. Structure can be set to move in a functional direction—but how are these directions set? Many theoretical questions remain to be clarified, and parts of our dialogue may work towards it. GM: Why do you write about infinity—even in plural—infinities? Where do you take this idea? JV: The starting point here was William Stern who introduced the notions of “inner” and “outer” infinities into his scheme of PersonEnvironment- which still was a very static, time-free scheme:

The idea of infinity—the openness of the psyche as it is (now) to as it could be (at next moment) leads to the extension of the notion

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beyond the static image of Stern. It became further specified when I started to look at the suggestions that different forms in architecture entail. Here the Einfühlung notion—taken from the aesthetic thinking of Theodor Lipps—becomes added. The result is the dynamics of feeling into the environment with feeling forward from there into the interior of oneself (and so on) provides the notions of infinities a psychological elaboration. Finally—in comparing nature and human-made buildings—we arrive at the tension between linear and spiral infinities. I am tempted to see that latter tension as the most basic—straightening a curved line and curving a straight line leads to all possible forms of nature and culture. The creative play with points, lines, and planes by Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee provides a connection point between cultural psychology and art. Art emerges from the psyche—not vice versa. GM: You introduce the notion of vector again—after its failure in the theoretical system of Kurt Lewin in the 1930s–1940s. Do you expect it to be productive now in cultural psychology, after failing in the past? JV: I think that moving from point-based language—which all psychology uses, verbally or nonverbally (i.e., in assigning real numbers to phenomena)—to a language that includes direction in the real and potential features of a present state of a phenomenon. Introducing vectors seems a natural step in this direction. So—if I say “I am X,” I simultaneously imply “I am no longer nonX” and “I am not yet beyond X.” This is a version of ontology of movement, not of stationary being. A point is on a move on some trajectory—even if the trajectory is not visible. GM: But you emphasize that the vectors guide our attention (AGVs— attention guiding vectors) in ways that involve the whole context. Some of such guidance is inherently contradictory—“look there” and “do not look there” can be encoded into the same frame; for instance:

JV: This example is a case of direct opposition, examples of which are widespread everywhere. Our AGVs create oppositional

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tensions—ornaments are filled with such tensions that surround our periphery of social suggestions. GM: But here you imply tension based on oppositely oriented suggestive triangles. Can you prove that the tension exists? JV: As long as our experience of any ending triggers an opposition— “this ends here but it should continue”—the tension is perceivable. The notion of end symbols (Endigungsymbol—from Theodor Lipps [1906]) shows how human beings mark the endings of what they create in buildings, and even on one’s own body. Hats, hairdos, shoes, finger nail colors, and other cultural artifacts indicate the marking of the locations where tensions of meaning construction are suggested. GM: Your recent examples of phenomena—linked with the issues of the sublime and the aesthetic—are increasingly non-verbal and nude. Bare backs, underwear, and images of hair seem to capture your attention—are you trying to cross the borders of the social norms of what is presentable as scientific evidence? And then you also horrify your readers with images of flagellation. This all may link somehow with your earlier interest in surrealist paintings. What is the point in all these exposures? What do you theoretically win from it? JV: No, I am not testing such boundaries—even as I know they exist. For me the human body is the arena where cultural psychology works—observing the acts of its covering and uncovering, and the meaning systems that are created to present these acts. As long as a version of psychology focuses on the body, all of the body in any version is presentable—similarly to the use of body in anatomy. In fact, for cultural psychology, the various curiosities of covering different parts of the body that lead to complicated and awkward performance of daily tasks is of particular importance. GM: If I understand it all correctly, no matter how complex are the phenomena, your theoretical system centers on tension between differently directed opposites that at times lead to a new synthesis of new opposites. JV: Yes. GM: But still—is it necessary to be so complicated?

References Lipps, T. (1906). Die ästetische Betrachtung und die bildende Kunst. Hamburg, Germany: Leopold Voss.

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Nedergaard, J. I. (2016). Theory of semiotic skin: Making sense of the flux on the border. Culture and Psychology, 22(3), 387–403. Valsiner, J. (2003). Sensuality and sense: Cultural construction of the human nature. Human Affairs (Bratislava), 13, 151–162.

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SECTION

IV

Aesthetics of Infinities

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9 The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a Dialogical Research Program1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The German psychologist, aesthetician, and philosopher Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) was known at his time for his proposed alternative (“The Munich School of Phenomenology”) to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and for his active opposition to efforts to reduce psychology to the study of elementary phenomena. He is the carrier of the notion of Einfühlung (“feelingin,” or “sembling,” partially known in English as “empathy”) from German 19th-century aesthetics into psychology. Lesser known today are Lipps’ efforts to develop “aesthetic mechanics”—a psychology of architectural forms that trigger affective oppositions in the viewers by way of contrast between the physical end of the forms and their implied continuity. This contrast links Lipps’ analyses of architectural forms—in the opposition of finite versus infinite feelings—as a dialogical process with our contemporary Dialogical Self Theory (DST). Specific examples from Lipps’ analyses, reformulated in terms of DST, demonstrate how dialogicality is encoded into material relationships of human beings. Beyond the Mind, pages 171–197 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Can dialogical self be completely nonverbal? Can it be presented—by human beings to themselves—through organization and reorganization of the material objects among which we all live? Answers to these questions are crucial for specifying the outer borders of the dialogical approaches in human psychology. In case of positive answers to these questions, any theory of dialogical self opens the door to understanding of human history across generations. Human beings and their living dialogues have no permanence, but the results of their actions become encoded in objects they create and that survive their makers across history. If the structures of burial grounds, monasteries, fortifications, and dwellings could give us evidence of the dialogical nature of human actions, the possibilities of reconstructing the functioning of human selves across historical time can become possible. Methodologically, historical and archaeological research techniques can then be included among the variety of approaches that have been established in the recent two decades in the study of dialogical processes within the self (Hermans & Gieser, 2012). My goal in this paper is to take a new look at the early perspectives on psychology of architecture that emerged in late 19th century in the context of German aesthetics and psychology. The work of Theodor Lipps is particularly interesting as an effort to bring a psychological phenomenological perspective to the analysis of architectural forms. Lipps’ work cannot in itself be considered dialogical in its core, yet his theoretical elaboration of relevant psychological concepts—Einfühlung, Gegenstand, and apperception—set the stage for further development of a research program on dialogical self based on meaning oppositions encoded into architectural objects.

Where Are We? We are here. The “here” may mean a great variety of places, yet for each and every person and at any time moment, there is some “here” (“where I am”) that sets up the contrast with “out there.” Our lives involve the space between the position we are in and the horizon we create outwards, starting from that position. That space is filled with objects that we encounter, some of which we have created ourselves. The luring snowy mountaintop—or the infinity of the ocean with no land in sight—set the borders of our natural horizons for us. The cathedral or mosque at the end of a street is the horizon set up by human-made environment of a town. Architecture is the arena on which cultural meaning systems are introduced into our encounters with the Umwelt without a single word. Words are not needed when we experience macroforms3 of human environments

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Figure 9.1  Macro-forms of human-made environment (Dresdener Frauenkirche).

We may encounter the imposing architectural objects in awe that relate to the ruin or to the precise reconstruction. Destruction and construction are equally powerful in triggering silence in our experiencing selves. Both the destroyed and reconstructed buildings are macroforms that are experienced through the holistic (Ganzheit—see Diriwächter, 2013) systems of our meaning construction that proceed through the dominance of the pleromatic channel in the meaning-making process (Valsiner, 2006, 2014). That channel leads the affective meaning making through generalized abstraction to hypergeneralized feeling into the object in which the verbal encoding of the experience becomes muted.4 The dialogical nature of human meaning-making becomes freed from the verbal language imperative, giving way to the regulatory interplay of different levels of field-like signs (Valsiner, 2014). Words are not necessary for the enjoyment of a sunset or of a music performance. There exist other ways in which human beings create understanding of their Umwelten through the dialogicality encoded into the human-made world. The basis for such meaning making is there in the nonhuman species (Uexkyll, 1982), yet it is developed in the human species through the invention and use of signs. The key to such development is the uncertainty of the immediate future consequences of one’s own actions that is being preemptively used through signs. All this happens in the process of movement—human beings move around and construct meanings as they encounter changes in their relations with the immediate environment (Kharlamov, 2012). Not only are human beings constantly moving themselves—some aspects of their environment are moving naturally in relation to them. Sun

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and moon are observed as if moving, rivers flow, rainstorms hit, and clouds move. It is a favorite pastime of young and old human beings to watch the movement of clouds, “seeing” in these various images that give the mind a sense of the reality of the tenuous; contribute to turn man’s thoughts and perhaps his prayers upward; and to give a sense of reality to heavenward things which a moon dweller would not know. Nothing makes the imagination so plastic; impels it through so polymorphic realms by suggestion. Cloud animals predominate for children, because animal shapes are more varied; but for youth, they more often suggest the many aspects of higher life. We also find here the same contrast between sentiment and science. The feelings are not edified by learning that clouds are aqueous vapor or by memorizing their names or studying their laws in meteorology. (Hall, 1903, p. 100)

The special relevance of creating meaning in the downward  upward axis is paralleled by that in the lateral extension. Human beings extend their cultural space outwards from their bodies—through creating clothes, dwellings and gardens (McGovern, 2004; Yoon, 1994)—so that their egocentered point of being (the central I-position of “myself here and now”) becomes expanded into the environment and creates the Umwelt. By acting upon objects, the persons create—through the resistance by,5 and modifiability of, these objects—their life space.

Object Versus Thing—Contrast Between Gegenstand and Ding Psychology’s original operating language—German—has been replaced by English through a sequence of historical circumstances. The result is the emergence of new perspectives, and loss of old ones, as the ways of thinking in psychology as science largely depend upon the common language. Nuances of German, as that was the linguistic framework shaping psychology in the 19th century, are lost in the English translation. Thus, in our ordinary translation, two German terms—Ding and Gegenstand—can be habitually considered synonyms and translated as “object” into English. The contrast, however, is important. Things exist independently of actors, while objects imply particular relation with an actor. Objects “object” to human actions— as they are a part of the established relation Actor    Object. Things do not have such relationship; they exist independently of the actor. Things can be made into objects—a thing that existed next to us for years may become relevant for some newly developed action plan, and it turns into an object.

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Figure 9.2  A scene in the middle of a busy urban shopping street.

The notion of object was characterized in the 19th–20th century German language psychology by the old-fashioned German term Gegenstand. This objection can take different forms. It can be direct and passive (e.g., resistance of a locked door to our attempts to use the key), indirect and active (weeds growing in our garden can undermine our cultivation act), indirect and passive (the diminishing ozone layer of earth undermining our life quality), or direct and active (champagne striving to get out in all directions of the bottle we have just managed to open). It is particularly important in relations of the actor with the world of other living beings. Consider the example in Figure 9.2. A man is kneeling down in the middle of the busy shopping street. The passers-by can notice him, and the meaning-making system is set into action (see Kharlamov, 2012). Possibly the man becomes recognized as a “beggar” (rather than: “a person in the middle of his prayers” or “a man fallen because of some neuromuscular insufficiency”). Through the immediacy of the interpretation by the passers-by, the man, previously not related to them (operating as Ding, located in the urban space, in between other “living things”—people), becomes related as an object—Gegenstand (Figure 9.3). Gegenstand involves opposites (A and non-A) that coexist at the same time (if A, then it is not true that non-A exists—in accordance with classical 2-valent logic). The opposites not only co-exist, but are mutually related as vectors oriented in nonconcordant directions (Figure 9.3). The directions A (Dir-A) and non-A (Dir-non-A) are processes with opposing directions.

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Dir A A THING: Entity No internal structure No change

CAN BE RE-THOUGHT

Dir non-A

(AS GEGENSTAND Includes process structure that grants both stability and change)

Figure 9.3  Making of the Gegenstand out of a Ding,

The beginning of relating with the Ding leads to the Gegenstand—which is a dialogical relation set up by the actor in relation to the object. It is the meaning-maker (in the example—any passer-by) who sets up the dialogic relation: THIS IS A BEGGAR   AND HERE I AM MYSELF, FACING THE BEGGAR As is obvious from Figure 9.2, the passers-by act precisely in their role (of passers-by)— they pass by the kneeling man. The dialogical nature of the scene is not visible in Figure 9.2 but is implied by us looking at the figure, projecting ourselves into the roles of people in the picture. The scene has created a challenge—a border—for our understanding of what is going on (Figure 9.4). The scene that looks straightforward—a man kneeling down in the middle of a public area— can become a dialogical puzzle within the self of a person who passes by. The passer-by in the scene in Figure 9.2 has a number of ways to deal with the inherent dialogicality of the peripheral encounter (see NEGOTIATING BORDER CROSSING in Figure 9.4). The setting evokes some response—ranging from pretending not to notice the event, to negative stigmatization (“these beggars should not be allowed into public space”), to intensive personal soul-searching (“how could I, heartlessly, pass by that poor person, not giving him anything!”). Notice that all these options (and others, not listed are many versions of response in between) are self-contemplative—they are freed from decision to act by the actor oneself.6 The encounter is past—the passer-by by now has reconstructed an equilibrium that it triggered. Figure 9.4 is a modified structure of Gegenstand that takes into account the cultural traditions of a given society together with personal construction of transformation of the object into a new form. The person relating—here

The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a Dialogical Research Program    177 Individual sets up conditions for negotiating “border crossing”

The border is a structured zone with potential trajectories of passing through that can force the movement of the border to a new location

History of the given society, operating through the individual, sets up the border zone as a structure of constraintes that include potential transit zones

Figure 9.4  Elaborated structure of Gegenstand.

and now- with some noticed aspect of everyday life (“event”) can create the boundary based on the internalized nature of the social norms (“this is X”—“but X is not allowed”), yet enters into negotiation (within oneself—as the DST has amply illustrated in many applications) of how to transcend that border and turn it into a new form (“I want X, X should be allowed”). The Gegenstand has a triadic structure—the two opposing (dialogical) components (“I act towards the boundary”) and its opposite (“the boundary resists my action”), together with the third component (“I want to pass through this boundary”). Each of these can be characterized as vectors (with direction) rather than point-like entities. The focus on triadic models within the DS theory can allow the structure of the self to acquire temporal dynamics (Ragatt, 2012, p. 42). Analyses of psychotherapy processes point to the need to bring the notion of dialogicality into a relationship with a third, direction-giving meaning structure (Gonçalves & Ribeiro, 2012). Dialogue is important as a process of transcending its own current form, through a trialogical structure. By elaborating the structure of the Gegenstand (as in Figure 9.4), we will be able to bring back into psychology (and insert into the system of DS) a relevant psychological notion that scientific psychology has ignored for a century—the will. The will—depicted as a vector in the Gegenstand—is a

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crucial component for any transformations of the world. The person acts willfully to change natural objects into a culturally organized form—the hunter destroys nature (kills animals) in order to provide food to his or her family, Antoni Gaudi plans to build his La Sagrada Familia in a way that— even (or maybe because) as it stays unfinished—ends up fascinating many people who visit Barcelona. Some objects become generalized into a field-like form that loses concreteness—yet are used in everyday life practices. These generalized objects allow us to organize our daily activities precisely because they are “total objects” (Gesamtgegenstände—Lipps, 1907a, p. 141). “Weather” is perhaps the best example of such total object—it is nebulous (cannot be located in any particular place, but it is seen everywhere), we are aware and interested in it (and its change) and can (sometimes endlessly) talk about it. We develop a special science—meteorology—to study its patterns and employ beautiful announcers of tomorrow’s weather forecast by TV stations. All these actions concerning the weather are real—yet the total concept of weather itself remains omnipresent yet nebulous. We cannot “get rid of the weather” as such (even after much complaining!), as it is a Gegenstand that relates us with the environment through our invented sign (the word “weather”) that organizes our relations with the world.

Why Gegenstand Is the Central Focus for Human Psychology Gegenstand is an object that is in relation with the actor and can “stand against” the actor. It can be viewed as the constitutive unit of analysis of the Umwelt—the two concepts go together. Umwelt of the human beings—part of the whole environment that is functionally linked with the actor—consists of a system of Gegenstands. It forms a subpart of the total environment of the person which consists of things (Dinge). As long as we describe persons located in their environments, the persons and everything else in the environment are “things.” The very moment we start to think of person–environment relationships the “things” become objects. The dialogical self theory is from the outset based on Gegenstand (not Ding). In the tradition of the dialogical self theory (DST), dialogicality can exist only in case of the Gegenstand (and not in the case of a thing that stands out exclusively separated from other things). Gegenstand is inclusively separated with an actor—real or potential.7 In a dialogue between persons, both participants act in the role of a Gegenstand in relation to each other—they relate, yet they resist the other’s ways of relating with them.

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Psychology of Architecture: The Object World of Primary Importance Next to our clothing, it is our places of dwelling that are of primary importance for the survival of the species of Homo sapiens. The contest here is more directly with climatic conditions than with dangerous predators of other species. Building dwellings for oneself, and for others, is a major step in the development of autonomy of the human beings. The dependence on natural shelters in the forms of caves is replaced by constructing buildings of whole variety of kinds and in many places. Looking at architecture is thus a theme for psychological investigation. It is also a topic for aesthetics—not only the immediate functional role of the dwelling is of importance, but its aesthetic qualities have major psychological relevance. It is in the context of second half of the 19th century in Germany that the specific interest in the psychological issues of architecture emerged. The leadership role in this was in the hands of aesthetics-interested philosophers and art historians—who nevertheless were learning from the psychologists of their time. Thus, Robert Vischer (in 1872—see Vischer, 1873/1994, p. 92) introduced the notion of Einfühlung (“feelingin”8) in the context of looking at external forms, largely borrowing from Wilhelm Wundt’s earlier writing in the 1860s. Later in that century, the notion of Einfühlung became central in Theodor Lipps’ theorizing. It was Heinrich Wölfflin in the 1880s who introduced the notion of psychology of architecture. For him, different geometric forms used in architecture carried inherent meanings of affective kind, as result of the human dialogue with the material from which dwellings are created: Matter is heavy; it presses down and wants to spread out formlessly on the ground. We know the force of gravity from our own body. What holds us upright and prevents a formless collapse? It is the opposing force that we may call will, life, or whatever. I call if force of form [Formkraft]. The opposition between matter and force of form, which sets the entire organic world in motion, is the principal theme of architecture. (Wölfflin, 1886/1994, p. 159)

This opposition is easily observable when human beings are fascinated by the lightness of the appearance of Gothic churches that guide our psyche upwards and completely overlook the massive nature of the stones that are used to build such “light construction.” (Figure 9.5). The massive nature of the building materials is turned by the architect into a huge cathedral or a mosque with the resulting feeling of lightness.

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Figure 9.5  Antwerpen Cathedral.

Architects’ dialogue—making the heavy material take macroscopic forms that leave the impression of lightness—is perhaps best exemplified in the construction of water fountains (Figure 9.6). A fountain is an effort of cultural reversal of a waterfall—to set up conditions for the water to flow against the forces of gravity. Whichever engineering solution to this task may be put to practice, it is the psychological function of being able to see streams of water bursting upwards—only to end up falling back onto the ground. The particular aesthetic feeling for the observers is created by the flow.

From Architecture to Psychology: Theodor Lipps’ Phenomenological Program The German psychologist, aesthetician, and philosopher Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) was known at his time for his proposed alternative (“The Munich School of Phenomenology”) to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and for his active opposition to efforts to reduce psychology to the study of elementary phenomena. It is in his work that the notion of

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Figure 9.6  The dialogue of the upwardly striving water with natural gravity.

Einfühlung—used in the architectural discourse of Vischer—acquires central role for psychology. Yet—even as known in history of the discipline as the primary promoter of the Einfuhlung concept—it was not the central feature of his theory. Einfühlung was the axiomatic grounds for developing an account of apperception in the context of personal aesthetic feelings. It is through the systemic link of these two notions that Lipps’ intellectual contributions become linkable with our contemporary DST. Lipps’ main work was closely linked with München, where he was professor of philosophy for two decades—from 1894 until the end of his life (1914—Anschütz, 1915; Bokhave & Schuhmann, 1991). It was in the 1890s that München became a European center of arts (Jugendstil activities of artists were taking place in Schwabing). Prior to that, Lipps had held professorship in Breslau (Wroclaw, 1890–1894), as well as being extraordinarius at University of Bonn (1884–1890). His original education was in mathematics, theology, and philosophy— not an unusual combination for scholars in the 19th century. The philosophical direction was dominated by his interest in aesthetics, while his style of thinking in his later work could be viewed as

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mathematical. His main way of argumentation was to analyze key phenomena as those felt through his intuition. Lipps in his student years migrated through four substantive European universities— first in Erlangen and Tübingen (where he studied Protestant theology), followed by Utrecht and, finally, Bonn. It was in Bonn that he graduated with a thesis on Herbart (Lipps, 1874) and became Privatdozent in 1877. In order to earn his income, he worked as the private tutor (Hauslehrer) in the family of the famous chemist Kekulé and wrote his major work Die Grundtatsachen des Seelelebens (Lipps, 1883). His interests moved from psychology into aesthetics and ended up in the last decade of his life in basic issues of philosophy. Yet the main issue—phenomenology of “feeling into the world” (Einfühlung)—remained his identifying term all through his life. It is precisely in the late 1880s and early 1890s—at his transition from Bonn to Breslau—that Lipps became interested in the psychological analysis of architectural forms. This happened in parallel with his interest in phenomena of tragedy (Lipps, 1891a) and humor (Lipps, 1898). The first sketches on different architectural forms were published in his Breslau period (Lipps, 1891b), followed six years later already in München (Lipps, 1897b). The publications of 1891 and 1897 can be considered as preliminary sketches for further generalization that came in early 1900s—in his major work on Einfühlung (Lipps, 1903a) and aesthetics (Lipps, 1903b, 1906). In accomplishing the theoretical innovation of his system of phenomenology, Lipps had to deal with issues of space (Lipps, 1907b, 1907c, 1907d). His illness that struck him down from 1908 onwards prohibited him from further progress in his ideas and led to his giving up his popular lecturing practice. He was first of all an introspective scientist who reflectively analyzed his own experiences, looking for generalized theory. After his death, a retrospect on him in the American context expressed this succinctly: “He was by temperament logician rather than psychologist; but a strenuous logic is indispensable to psychological theory; and Lipps’ criticisms were always of positive value, though his constructive work—ingenious and suggestive as it undoubtedly was—did not find general acceptance” (American Journal of Psychology, 1915, p. 160). Of course, as psychology was moving in the direction away from a focus on subjective phenomenology, Lipps’ work remained largely abandoned in psychology before World War I even in Germany and was not developed further later. He was appreciated—not without criticisms (Wörringer, 1908/1987)—in art circles and aesthetic philosophy (e.g., Lee, 1907).

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For Lipps, aesthetics was psychology. This idea came from the belief that the subject matter of all psychology was human conscious awareness (“Die Bewusstseinerlebnisse sind das Gegenstand der Psychologie”—Lipps, 1907a, p. 2). Such awareness was to be viewed at the link of two basic processes—Einfühlung and apperception—both operating through the structure of Gegenstand. That makes the Gegenstand operate in time—albeit, interestingly, not in irreversible time. Lipps could have adopted Henri Bergson’s introduction of the notion of irreversible time, which became available in the 1890s, but he did not. Lipps’ phenomenological perspective, even if including dynamic aspects, remains principally ontological. That ontology did include the contrast between what is not yet and what is to be—through the notion of apperception. Lipps particularly emphasized the apperception of Gegenstand (Gegenstandsapperzeption—Lipps, 1902a, p. 16). With Einfühlung as the basis for relating with the world, leading to construction of an object (Gegenstand) out of a thing (Ding), it was the process of prehensive recognition of the action possibilities (object conditions) and anticipating the outcomes. In that, the dialogical nature of all encounters with the environment is hidden. To attempt a synthesis of ideas across the 20th century—Lipps’ theory (developed between 1883 and 1908) can offer the subjective and constructive complement to James Gibson’s affordance perspective (developed between 1960 and 1979). The useless rift between “direct” and “constructive” nature of perception (and action) would be overcome by such construction. Psychologists all too often create unnecessary fights around their own invented ideological oppositions, mistaking theoretical juxtapositioning of ideas for fierce fights between ideologies.

The Role of the Other Lipps’ axiomatic basis in Einfühlung made the role of the other—person and nature— inevitably relevant for his theory. The actor (self) feels into something (or somebody), and through that—into oneself. The apperceptive movement into the other entails feeling oneself in that other.9 In accordance with his phenomenological focus, Lipps (1900) insisted on the self-centered nature of Gestatqualität—the Gestalt is not in the world, but in the self relating with the world. The affective nature of encountering a Gestalt—not only visual but primarily musical—leads to taking over that experience for oneself—the Gestalt quality becomes, according to Lipps, self-quality (Ichqualität). The pleasure of hearing a musical composition is created within the self in relation with the music—not in the melody as it exists, neither in the person who exists autonomously.10

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While for Lipps (1907d) the self (Ich) was undoubtedly the central point of all experience, it is the flow of encounters with the innumerable objects outside if the self that allow the self to develop. Sympathy with other selves (fremden Ich) works for the self itself (Lipps, 1907e)—“I feel with you in order to feel myself”—could be the general notion that specifies Lipps’ look at the relevance of the other. The other need not be a person (whom one “understands,” “sympathizes with,” or chats with on social occasions), but any object of aesthetic kind. The decoration of one’s home with flowers, a domestic animal, a fictional character in a novel, or watching a full moon are all parts of the other.11

Lipps’ Typology of Objects For Lipps, as well as for his contemporaries, the notion of Gegenstand was generic.12 Possibly its width of usages, together with gradual disappearance of the relationship focus from psychology Lipps (1902b, pp. 7–8) offered a typology of four kinds of objects. That typology reflects the various theoretical « voices » of the turn of the 19th/20th centuries: The empirically real Gegenstand (empirisch-reale Gegenstande)—an object that exists and is available for the actor through one’s sensory systems. The intuitive Gegenstand—an object that a person constructs in one’s thought (mathematical notions, numbers, colors, continuity of tones (melody) or colors Fantasy Gegenstand—objects that are made up by the mind from real elements into nonreal wholes. Images of the Devil are of such kind. Imaginary Gegenstand—objects one can think of, but cannot imagine (e.g., round quadrangle13) (Lipps, 1902b, pp. 7–8)

Lipps and Raumaesthetik The general issue of space was crucial for Lipps all through his life (Lipps, 1891a, 1907c). All architectural wholes are created in space, and through filling the space with solid constructs interspersed with openings. Yet what matters for the human beings is the highest—aesthetic— constitution of space. The issue involved for humans is the inner freedom of form. (Innere Freiheit der Form—Lipps, 1903b, p. 245)

Lipps claimed that his efforts were meant to create a theoretical system of “Aesthetic Mechanics” (Ästhetische Mechanik—Lipps, 1903b, 1906). This was meant to find elementary forms that are parts to the whole in the

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objects that persons affectively relate with and play a role in supporting the feelings that the conscious experiencing unfolds. Hence the interest in architecture—here we have human-built forms that suggest to the persons to feel into them in some general direction. The direction could be encoded in the fixed form; its actual evocative power of feelings is of course up to the experiencing person. Between late 1880s and second half of the 1890s, Lipps undertook a systematic effort to analyze a selected set of architectural forms (Lipps, 1891a, 1897a). Not surprisingly, the ones that caught his eye were vertically oriented forms (church towers, columns) as well as extensions in the horizontal direction (“bulges”). His work on these forms entailed careful examination of various feelings that he himself—as his main and only research participant—projected into these forms. Coincidentally, the various architectural forms allowed for demonstration of various visual perception illusions, that, after the description of the Müller-Lyer illusion (1889), led to many experimental efforts to look at human perception. Illusions were popular among psychologists at the time—yet their functions in everyday life were not considered. Demonstrating experimentally that an optical illusion exists led psychologists to discuss the reality or nonreality of perception as such, rather than the role of such illusions in human experiencing. Simple tricks in interior design such as covering walls of a small room with mirrors—to create the illusion of a larger room—have been used over the centuries. Lipps took an experiential rather than experimental approach to optical illusions, demonstrating their dependence on the inclusion of Gestalts (Figure 9.7). The most crucial focus in Lipps’ “architectural sketches” of the 1890s is the focus on the end of the contour. It is here where all dialogicality of architectural forms begins. The ongoing continuous phenomena is given an end—yet the allgemeine apperzeptive Einfühlung (Lipps, 1903b, p. 241) leads the person to attempt to move beyond the marked ending. The result is a

Figure 9.7  Analogue of the length illusion embedded into forms used in design.

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dialogical opposition—tension between the and . Lipps was eager to find out how such end symbols are set up in architectural objects.

The End Symbol (Endigungssymbol) Our lives are filled with markings of endings—of sentences in written texts (e.g., punctuation marks at the end of written sentences), routines of ending telephone conversations. Lipps expanded that notion to architectural forms. The central assumption of such extension is the person’s active exploration of the architectural forms—the movement that is “felt into” the static form that is given to the experiencing person. Looking at simple geometric forms (Figure 9.8) illustrates his idea. Forms a and e in Figure 9.8 illustrate upwardly open movement that is supported by the end symbol of each case. Forms b–d entail ending symbols that stop the upward movement, yet in different ways. The dialogical movement starts at the end symbols (Figure 9.9) and builds up affective tension about upward movement. Lipps’ emphasis on the upper end of buildings (Der Spitze) was linked with the look for endings of forms. (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

Figure 9.8  Creating an end to a form.

Figure 9.9  Lipps’ schemes of contrasting Spitze of buildings (Lipps, 1897b, p. 379).

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Figure 9.10  The end symbol of the human self-presentation (Femme au Chapeau, Henri Matisse, 1905).

End symbols are constructed in the case of all human-made forms— sometimes in excessive forms. Hats (Figure 9.10) or soldiers’ boots—in contrast with high-heeled shoes—set up the affective Endigungsymbol for the human body in its various social presentations. The tension that such symbols evoke can be illustrated by archaic forms of human construction such as a Stonehenge (Figure 9.11). Situating a horizontal slab of stone on top of two vertical ones puts an end to the upward direction of movement in our experience and redirects it back towards the base. Yet the space above the Endigungsymbol remains free for our imagination to wander. The result is a dialogical tension in our experience, guided by the physical form.

Psychology of Columns Much of Lipps’ contemplation about architectural forms concentrated in the classic Greek columns. Columns (Säule) are architectural elements of both physical function and carry with them social suggestions. How the

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Figure 9.11  Dialogical tension created by an Endigungsymbol.

latter are encoded into the forms of the columns was a question that fascinated the early scholars of the psychology of architecture. Thus, Heinrich Wölfflin characterized the classic Greek Doric order (see also Figure 9.12): The whole lower half of the temple, from the capital downward, displays no decorative forms; neither the stylobate nor the column shaft carries a decoration. In the case of the stylobate, we have the raw mass lying heavily on the ground, scarcely achieving the simplest form; in that of the shaft, we expect the effort and concentrated strength that the fluting clearly expresses. . . .  What happens above the columns? The entablature, which is the load to be carried, is a massive horizontal member. (Wölfflin, 1886/1994, p. 179)

Lipps was particularly interested precisely in the top part of a Doric column. Here two psychological processes enter into a dialogical relation—the column in our perception extends vertically upward, while its massiveness lets us trace the power of gravity that extends vertically downward. In addition, the column extends horizontally—yet in ways that leave the feeling of compression. The vertical upwards  downwards “dialogue” within the architectural whole of the building in which the column is a part becomes coordinated with the restricted horizontal extension.

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Figure 9.12  Columns of Doric order (Paestum).

Lipps subjected the top parts of the column—the triglyph in the Doric columns and volute in the Ionian ones—to his phenomenological analysis. The contrast between Doric and Ionic columns (Figure 9.13) has been the target of interest for most 19th century aesthetic philosophers, who would even anthropomorphize the columns—very much along the lines of Lipps’ favorite notion of Einfühlung:

Figure 9.13  Ionic columns.

190    Beyond the Mind With Ionic architecture . . . a striving toward freer movement asserts itself. There is no longer a desire to carry such a heavy load. The column is unburdened and the lighter impression is principally achieved by having it discharge its excess of force into the volutes. . . .  In comparisons of the Doric and Ionic orders, I have often heard it said that the Ionic holds its head freely upright, whereas the Doric bends the head down. (Wölfflin, 1994/1886, p. 180)

The specific architectural details of the top parts of the two column types that were analyzed by Lipps are outlined in Figure 9.14. The echinus    triglyph suggestions of movement in the Doric case, and the elaborate horizontal extension of the volute in the Ionian case were the particular details that caught his eye. What is at stake here is the direction of the dialogical tension of the observer’s experience through these details. The Doric order suggests a way outwards—upwards—through the curvature of the echinus combined— further up—by the triglyph. The rest of the direction of movement is in the reverse—downwards. The massive order of columns orients upwards so as to return downwards, to the base, with an experience of power. Lipps analyzes the spiral endings of the forms of the volute (Figure 9.15). The spiral form is interesting from the point of view of its

Figure 9.14  The dialogue in stone that starts at the top.

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Figure 9.15  The spiral horizontal extension in the Ionic order.

Figure 9.16  Lipps’ focus on spiral endings.

dialogicality—in contrast with a straight line that ends as drawn (CONTINUE   non-CONTINUE opposition), the spiral ending (as an extension of the straight line) creates the dynamics of movement of restricted lateral extension (Figure 9.16). It is restricted (as the volute ends at certain extension from the base of the column, and at the same time, it guides the feeling of movement precisely into the point of ending of the spiral (which can be seen to extend to infinity in its depth.)

Beyond Raumästhetik: The Dialogical Extensions in the Corinthian Order Interestingly, Lipps was not interested in the Corinthian order—the third of the “classic three.”14 Working on the implications of the Doric and Ionic

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capitals was sufficient for his theoretical purposes of demonstrating how apperception works in the creation of Gegenstand. The inherent dialogicality of that process is pregiven by the axiom of Einfühlung—feeling in another necessarily requires the other that relates to the self. If we were to continue from where Lipps finished in around 1906–1908 and develop a coverage of classic column types within the DS framework a century later, it is the Corinthian in all of its highly varied transformations15 that would be of interest as a Gegenstand for the DS. Attributed to the Corinthian architect and sculptor Callimachus (5th century BC), the Roman philosopher Vitruvius (On Architecture Book 4; see Rowland, & Howe, 2001) provides a possible account: It is related that the original discovery of this form of capital was as follows. A freeborn maiden of Corinth, just of marriageable age, was attacked by an illness and died. After her burial, her nurse, collecting a few little things which used to give the girl pleasure while she was alive, put them in a basket, carried it to the tomb, and laid it on top thereof, covering it with a roof-tile so that the things might last longer in the open air. This basket happened to be placed just above the root of an acanthus. The acanthus root, pressed down meanwhile though it was by the weight, when springtime came round put forth leaves and stalks in the middle, and the stalks, growing up along the sides of the basket, and pressed out by the corners of the tile through the compulsion of its weight.

The story focuses on the dialogical relation between life and death and between nature and human construction—all through the experiencing of the other through the experience of a tombstone (taken over by nature). The abstracted result becomes encoded as the Corinthian capital (Figure 9.17). It can include the spiral forms of Ionic volute, in addition to a variety of floral forms. The interweaving of the dialogical oppositions HORIZONTAL    VERTICAL movement feeling as encoded in the form of the column with the NATURAL    CONSTRUCTED opposition (as encoded into the form of capital ornamentation) makes the Corinthian capital most fitting for the basic investigation into DS—of course not of the DS of the columns (which are just particular sculpted stone constructions) but of the people who plan, construct, and appreciate the columns. The locus of the capitals is set from the beginning to be in the peripheral field (vertical position), which nevertheless can easily become focus of attention (looking upwards).

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Figure 9.17  The Corinthian capital.

General Conclusion: The Silent Dialogue With Oneself— Stones in Tension As we can learn from Lipps’ efforts to develop his “aesthetic mechanics,” architectural forms used in building construction encode dialogicality in their suggested ways of experiencing. Constructing buildings has not only been functional for what is to happen inside but also what kinds of directed experiences are possible for people who observe them from the outside. The DST may benefit from extension of its theoretical focus onto the material perceivable worlds of human construction. Psychology at large is moving towards renewed interest in the analysis of iconic images (Wieser & Slunecko, 2013), and dialogicality can be discovered in our experiencing stone constructions—or their destructions16—in everyday lives. Different I-positions can be viewed as temporarily binding with different objects in everyday lives. Such encounters—by their implicit dialogicality encoded in the environment—would amplify or attenuate the ongoing processes of self-regulation. The person—the dialogical self—gets constant triggering for further dialogicality by experiencing the immediate environment. Both the self and the material world are ready for development through their dialogical encounters with each other.

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Acknowledgment The preparation of this paper was made possible by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant from the Danish Grundforskningsfond of the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology.

Notes 1. Invited Lecture at the 8th International Conference on Dialogical Self, Den Haag, August, 21, 2014. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark 3. I distinguish macro- and micro-forms of environment in relation to the proportion of the observer’s body size. A human figure (e.g., that of Michelangelo’s David with its height of 5.17 meters) can be an environmental macro-form for any regular-size human observer. Its desk copy of 20 cm of height is a microform of environment. Both kinds of forms saturate our culturally constructed human environments. 4. Similar muting happens in the experiencing of music or art, entering into symbolic buildings like churches and mosques, as well as affective moments of grief. 5. Such resistance is particularly noticeable in the case of gardening—where the cultural organization brought into the setting by the person is constantly being resisted by natural conditions of undesired growing plants (“weeds”), variable conditions of light and water, and so on. 6. The person has not reported the “beggar” to city authorizes (to have him removed from public), neither has s/he returned to the spot to give some—conventionally small amount— to the “beggar.” As Theodor Lipps has formulated it succinctly, “Sympatiegefühl is Selbstgefühl” (1898, p. 223—“feeling of sympathy is feeling about one’s own self”). 7. James Gibson’s affordance concept is a partial illustration of the Gegenstand nature of objects. Objects are characterized by affording some (rather than other) forms of acting to the person. They afford the action by resisting the action from moving off its afforded course. Using a fork (historically a compromise between a dagger and a spoon) as if it were a spoon for eating soup might be possible, yet resisted by the specific form of the fork. Adding Gegenstand to affordance in this example entails the cultural notion that a fork is a normatively inappropriate tool to use for eating soup. 8. Vischer contrasted Einfühlung with other directed feelings—Anfühlung (attentive feeling), Zufühlung (immediate feeling) and Nachfühlung (responsive feeling—Vischer, 1873/1994, pp. 106–107). The need to distinguish these feelings can be seen as recognition of the boundary between past and present in the act of feeling into the world. 9. The meaning of Einfühlung is in the “Objektivirung meines Selbstgefühl—mich Fühlen in einem Andere” (Lipps, 1903b, p. 237) 10. The focus on “internal” and “external” I-positions in DST is directly parallel to Lipps’ perspective.

The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a Dialogical Research Program    195 11. Lipps’ Einfühlung was axiomatically linking person with all objects, human, animal, or inanimate. Psychology has mispresented the concept—especially in its English translation as empathy—as if it pertains to other human beings. That presentation eliminates Lipps’ main focus on looking at apperceptive processes in person–environment encounters. 12. This took the form of statements like “Gegenstand an sich ist alles, was fur mich Gegenstand werden kann” (Lipps, 1907a, p.21). By claiming the centrality of the person’s construction of the borders of the object—fully in line with the role of the experiencing subject—the theoretical value of the concept was muddles for 20th century psychology where precise objective definitions of terms were appreciated. Yet Lipps’ seemingly “voluntaristic” claim can be seen as a counter-claim to Kant’s “Ding an sich” notion and has defined borders through the human use of sign systems. For him, the object cannot go beyond what is thinkable (Die “Undenkbarkeit” ist ein Verbot des Gegenstandes—Lipps, 1907a, p. 62). 13. Examples of such objects were crucial in the ontological discussions of the Graz School of Alexius Meinong at the time. 14. All the three emerged and developed in parallel: the Doric (located in middle of mainland Greece) and Ionic (located in Asia Minor, Anatolia of today) orders can be traced back to 6th century BC and represent the two major mutually competitive ancient Greek ideologues. The Corinthian order can be traced to the city state of Corinth in the 5th century BC. 15. Extending as far as the Hellenistic expansion to Gandhara and syntheses with Indian architecture 16. The experiencing of ruins (Simmel, 1908/1959; Wölfflin, 2004) is an interesting example of how human experiencing can include romanticization of buildings that are in a state of decay.

References Anschütz, G. (1915). Theodor Lipps. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 34, 1–13. Bokhave, N. W., & Schuhmann, K. (1991). Biografie der Schriftens von Theodor Lipps. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 45(1), 112–130. Diriwächter, R. (2013). Structure and hierarchies in Ganzheitspsychologie. In L. Rudolph (Ed.), Qualitative mathematics for the social sciences (pp. 189–226). London, England: Routledge. Gonçalves, M., & Ribeiro, A. P. (2012). Narrative processes of innovation and stability within the dialogical self. In H. Hermans & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of dialogical self theory (pp. 301–318). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hall, G. S. (1903). Note on cloud fancies. Pedagogical Seminary, 10, 96–100. Hermans, H. J. M., & Gieser, T. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of dialogical self theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kharlamov, N. A. (2012). The city as a sign: A developmental-experiential approach to spatial life. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 277–302). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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Lee, V. (1907). La sympathie esthetique. Revue Philosphique de la France et de l`Etranger, 64, 614–631. Lipps, T. (1874). Zur Herbart’schen Ontologie. Bonn, Germany: Karl Georgi. Lipps, T. (1883). Grundtatsachen der Seelenlebens. Bonn, Germany: Max Cohen. Lipps, T. (1891a). Der Streit über die Tragödie. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1891b). Ästhetische Faktoren der Raumanschauung. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1897a). Raumästhetik und geometrisch- optische Täuschungen. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Lipps, T. (1897b). Zur Psychologie der Suggestion. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Lipps, T. (1898). Komik and humor. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1900). Zu den “Gestaltqualitäten.” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 22, 383–385. Lipps, T. (1902a). Einheiten und Relationen. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Lipps, T. (1902b). Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Lipps, T. (1903a). Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung und Oreganempfindungen. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 1, 185–204. Lipps, T. (1903b). Ästhetik: Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1906). Die ästhetische Betrachtung und die bildende Kunst. HamburgLeipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1907a). Bewusstsein und Gegenstände, Psychologische Untersuchungen, 1, 1-203. . Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. Lipps, T. (1907b). Die physikalische Beziehungen und die Einheit der Dinge. Psychologische Untersuchungen, 1, 560–606. Lipps, T. (1907c). Zur Frage der Realität des Raumes. Psychologische Untersuchungen, 1, 607–640. Lipps, T (1907d). Das Ich und die Gefühle. Psychologische Untersuchungen, 1, 641–693. Lipps, T. (1907e). Das wissen von fremden ichen. Psychologische Untersuchungen, 1, 694–722. McGovern, S. (2004). The Ryoan-Ji Zen Garden: Textual meanings in topographical form. Visual Communication, 3, 344-359. Müller-Lyer, F. C. (1889/1981). “Optische Urtheilstäuschungen’’ Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie. Physiologische Abteilung 2(Supplement), 263–270. Ragatt, P. T. F. (2012). Positioning in the dialogical self: recent advances in theory construction. In H. Hermans & T. Gieser (Eds.), Handbook of dialogical self theory (pp. 29–45). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Rowland, I. D., & Howe, T. N. (Eds.). (2001). Vitruvius: Ten books on architecture. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Simmel, G. (1959). The ruin. In K. Wolff (Ed.), Georg Simmel, 1858–1918 (pp. 259–266). Columbus: Ohio State University Press. (Original work published 1908)

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Uexkyll, J. (1982). Theory of meaning. Semiotica, 42(1), 25–82. Valsiner, J. (2006, June). The overwhelming world: Functions of pleromatization in creating diversity in cultural and natural constructions. Keynote lecture at International School of Semiotic and Structural Studies, Imatra, Finland. Valsiner, J. (2014). Invitation to cultural psychology. London, England: SAGE. Vischer, R. (1994). On the optical sense of form: A contribution to aesthetics. In Empathy, form, and space (pp. 89–123). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art. (Original work published 1873) Wieser, M., & Slunecko, T. (2013). (Theories are) more than words: Why images are significant to theoretical psychology. In A. Marvakis, J. Motzkau, D. Painter, R. Ruto-Korir, G. Sullivan, S. Trilivia, & M. Wieser (Eds.), Psychology under new conditions (pp. 299–306). Concord, ON: Captus. Wölfflin, H. (1994). Prolegomena to a psychology of architecture. In Empathy, form, and space (pp. 149–190). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art. (Original work published 1886) Wölfflin, H. (2004). Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe. Wörringer, W. (1997). Abstraction and empathy. Chicago, IL: Elephant Publishers. (Original work published 1908) Yoon, H-K. (1994). The different geomentalities, two different gardens the French and the Japanese. GeoJournal, 33(4), 471–477.

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10 The Bare Back Dialogical Self in Action1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract I will extend the framework of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics onto the dialogical self theory (DST) through the focus on the person’s presentation of the self in creating the end symbol (Endingungsymbol in terms of Theodor Lipps) of the body through one’s back. The back side of the body is (a) evolutionarily important in establishing social relations in various species before Homo sapiens (grooming), (b) physiologically sensitive area of the body (relaxation via massage), (c) potentially open sensory input channel (vision substitution) and, lastly, (d) an arena for projecting one’s intrapsychological feelings into socially visible cultural display. The empirical investigation in this presentation is elaborated on the basis of Eva Gonzales’ (b. 1849 d. 1883) impressionist painting Le Chignon (dated to 1865–1870). Use of art as data creates a two-layered analytic task for the DST as it allows us to highlight the real-life phenomenon (cultural presentation of the back, or of any other aspect of the body) together with the dialogical nature of the artist’s focus on that phenomenon. All human negotiations of the dialogical self make use of

Beyond the Mind, pages 199–216 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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200    Beyond the Mind culturally created objects—externally observable tools or intrapsychological sign fields—the investigation into which would widen the access possibilities of DST to the dynamics of human self-dialogues.

The biological body is the basis for our psychological being. It is completely enveloped by skin, on which grows hair. This basic statement of human anatomy is fascinating as it is the first mutual touching arena for the body to encounter cultural framing. The hair covers the skin, and becomes trimmed, colored, sculpted, displayed, and hidden—all for human selfpresentation purposes. Changing the way hair covers our bodies is a human cultural invention. Our nearest relatives in the animal world—higher primates who take constant care of one another’s fur by grooming—have not invented the profession of hairdressers. It is the profoundly human self-reflexive activity to worry about hair, cut and turn it into various forms, and fuss about the results of such transformations. Human cultural inventions are played out on the skin. And these inventions are dialogical in their nature. It is precisely on the skin where the dialogical self theory (DST) and cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics perspectives find a common ground for making sense of the human psyche.

The Skin and Its Covers: Hair on the Bare Back The social presentation of one’s skin and hair to others is governed by social norms— ranging from not showing any of it and covering it with a headscarf to letting it flow loosely in the air. Human beings cultivate their body hair in ways similar to that of gardens—in a way we can claim that we all have gardens on our heads. We can trim the hair similarly to the use of a lawnmower—or let it grow into long forms that turn into matted locks (Obeyesekere, 1981). Or just let it grow, to create a cover for the back—a kind of functional veil (Figure 10.1). The ways in which the hair is oriented on the background of the back is a perpetual object of body presentation for most human beings. It is also an arena on which societal dialogues are being performed—in everyday moral discourses about the hair and the back (Figure 10.2). It is the view of the back that becomes an arena of dialogues about the self and society. The contrast between Figures 10.1 and 10.2 tells us a story about the dialogical nature of the exposure of the back. The part of the body that one cannot observe directly oneself—without mirroring devices—becomes dialogically important. That importance gets further focus in artists’ representations of the human body—which frequently involve depicting it as

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Figure 10.1  The growth of hair as cover to the back.

Figure 10.2  Social censoring of the back (U.S. war propaganda during World War I).

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Figure 10.3  Eva Gonzales’ Le Chignon.

viewed from the back. Some of such depictions are relevant in the present context (Figure 10.3). Eva Gonzalès was not a major figure in the French impressionist movement—a fact that that makes her particular work especially interesting. She was a dedicated artist, well connected with the artistic and literary circles of Paris at her time as she was the daughter of Spanish-background French writer Emmanuel Gonzalès. In painting, Eva was the student of Edouard Manet (1832–1883), who, among his other paintings, painted Eva Gonzalès at the canvas (see Eva Gonzalès, n.d.). She was also a model for other impressionists’ paintings. Eva Gonzalès died young—at age 34—in childbirth. What was the painter accomplishing with Le Chignon? None other of her remaining paintings were similar to Le Chignon in its topic of underlying implications. Its title leads the viewer to look at the knotted hair—while the canvas is actually dominated visually by the bare back. It can be viewed as a part of the social negotiations of the border of art and everyday realities of living. The implications in the context of French society at the time centered on the dialogue around the morality of display of the nude body in paintings, on the one hand, and the aesthetics of the body, on the other.

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The body—exemplified by the voluminous presentation of the bare back— is set up to guide the viewer’s focus towards the hair. Yet the hair is arranged in a knot, and the focus from the hair is thus directed away from the back. The viewer is faced with an iconic dialogue between the “disciplined” hair and “desirous” bare back. The nature of the skin is presented artistically in its dialogue with the culture of the hairdo. The painting tells us more than its name implies. No regular image of the hair habitually organized as a knot would convey a similar image. The painting, as it is titled The Knot (Le Chignon), is not about the stated content (the way of arranging the hair) but a dialogue that involves an affective tension. Of course creating such dialogical tension for the viewer is the prerogative of any artist. The artist depicts different aspects of a scene in a whole—an imaginative Gestalt—that can be interpreted through the viewer’s established cultural code of Einfühlung into such Gestalt. The dialogue—which can be seen as high affective tension—encoded into Le Chignon is the artist’s commentary on social issues in the given society at the time. For us in the 21st century, the issues relevant in 1860s France may be remote. Yet we can pick up the tension. The historical period in France around the 1860s—exemplified by the scandals around the paintings of nude figures by Edouard Manet and Gustave Courbet—was clearly an arena of contestation of the moral structure of social representations. In this wider social ambience, Le Chignon is not a simple depiction of a woman’s pinning up her long hair in a knot and exposing her bare back to the mercy of the painter, and of the viewers. It is a social dialogue about women’s relations with the normative structure of a given society at the given time. The use of women’s bodies in social negotiation of moral norms is of course known since we have entered into dialogues with what really matters in human societies. The honoring and ambivalent relations to the various goddesses of love and fertility ever since the building of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon are all mediated through social practices involving the female body and its social visibility. That visibility has rarely been outside of the sociomoral compass of societies in which women’s bodies are—by necessity or desire—publicly displayed.3 The dialogical self is socially renegotiating itself through the endless everyday decisions about how to dress, how to organize one’s hair for different occasions, how to appear “proper” in public, while the internal desires of the self suggest the teasing of the socially normative others by ambiguous display of one’s body at the border zone of “proper”  “nonproper.” Human living in social environments is that of teasing the social borders set up for maintaining social order. Conversely, individual acts that operate towards breaking the existing norms

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while pretending to act within their accepted confines are the places where social transformations of self and society begin.

Normativity as the Root of Dialogue There is nothing biologically evaluative about hair or skin. The normativity of human bodily exposures begins with social norms—and is communicated through the system of meaning-making of any person’s dialogical self system. General social norms for presenting the body involve the show (or nonshow) of the hair in public (through various versions of headscarves), requiring that married women should wear their hair in a special form (e.g., ancient Roman “proper”—that meant “married”—women were required to wear the hair in the form of a knot). In various museums in Europe and North America in the second half of the 19th century, it was considered “improper” to display classic marble Greek sculptures with all displayed genitals—so genital coverage techniques were put into practice. The dialogical opposition NUDE  non-NUDE is a personal dialogue that is sociomorally overdetermined by meaning (Obeyesekere, 1990)—the same person who wears almost nothing on a beach (a contraption called “bikini”) with pride would feel ashamed if happened to be seen in one’s similarly (little) body-covering mini-wear in public.

The Language of the Image: Vectors and Volumes How are the dialogical tensions created in the image? How can the human meaning-making system immediately feel into the image of a body in socially normative ways? No verbal discourse is needed to recognize one or another view of the body—from “pornographic” to “aesthetic.” And such recognitions are often absolute—jumping to opinions before thinking. The contrast between the directions indicated by the hair form vectors that orient the viewer of the social display of the whole body. Together with the markers of the solidity of the scene—the volume—our meaningconstruction system coordinates the volumes and vectors projected onto the scene. The hair in Figures 10.4 and 10.5 is the material location of the vectors, while the back constitutes the volume. The bare back is an example of a volume, while the arrangement of the hair gives us the directional vector that orients our gaze. It is the relation between volumes and vectors, as well as between various vectors themselves, that leads to the making of dialogical relations within an image and between images.

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Figure 10.4  Hair being pulled upwards (fragment from painting by Theo van Rysselberge, Sitzende Akt, 1905). The arrangement of the hair is being pointed upwards, away from the back).

Figure 10.5  Loose hair (pointing downwards) covering part of the back.

The constitutive terminology of vectors and volumes originates in the field theory of Kurt Lewin, mediated by Rudolf Arnheim. For Arnheim, “a vector is a force sent out like an arrow from a center of energy in a particular direction” (1988, p. 4). The vectors implied here are projections by the viewer into the viewed scene starting from an imaginary central point. They are the results of the relation of the viewer with what one observes and what could be imagined to extend beyond the visible scene (Figure 10.6).

206    Beyond the Mind The “scene” is a line: Vectors that can be projected into the “scene” Counter-vectors that make the observing dialogical

Figure 10.6  Projection of vectors into an observed scene.

Figure 10.6 provides the minimal explanation of a vector system that is created for scenes that human being experience. The example is given for visual scenes, yet the basic idea fits other modes of experiencing, such as music4 or haptic or tactile exploration. The observed “scene”—a simple line that is extended on both ends until the drawing stops—is phenomenally extended as if it were to continue beyond its ends. The vectors projected into the line do the job of such imaginary extension. The vectors operate with countervectors that operate to set borders up for such extension. These borders are the arena for dialogical nature of in these imaginary border regions—where the vectors of imagination stop under the impact of countervectors. The vectors are set up in relation to volumes—contexts of being, in contrast to vectors as suggestive of acting. The bare backs in Figures 10.4 and 10.5 are volumes for the purposes of observation. As volumes they have external borders—yet their impact upon the experiences is that totality that is within these borders. They set the stage for the directional nature or arranging the hair—as vectors—upward and away from the base volume (Figure 10.4), or downward and upon the volume (Figure 10.5). The volume is definable by its form (Figure 10.7) which sets up the prevalent direction of the vectors by its asymmetry. The “bird”—the volume—oriented in different orientations leads to different directions of the vectors. The volume gives rise to its inherent vector systems that can take different orientations (Figure 10.8). The two external forms in Figure 10.8 are similar and could be interpreted as a “drop” (left side) or “flame” (right side), yet their internal dynamics are directly opposite. The downwardly oriented main move vector (large arrow) leads to a myriad of similarly directed vectors in fortifying the direction of movement in the direction specified by the assumed gravity (“drops fall”). The meaning attributed to the form initiates the projection of the vectors. In contrast, the meaning of the “flame” attributed to the same volume leads to projection of upwardly oriented vectors, again on the basis of general meaning assertion “this is a flame.” The asymmetry

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Figure 10.7  Mutuality of the form of the volume and the vectors (Arnheim, 1988, p. 15).

Figure 10.8  Rudolf Arnheim’s analytic scheme: vectors within a volume (Metzger, 2008, p. 158).

of upwardly and downwardly oriented vectors is set by reality—the gravity (Figure 10.9). The horizontal and vertical planes are not isomorphic. As can be observed in Figure 10.9, Geometrically there is no difference between up and down; dynamically, the difference is fundamental. In the field of forces pervading our living space, any upward movement requires the investment of special energy, whereas downward movement can be accomplished by mere dropping or by mere removing any supports that keep objects from falling. . . .

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Figure 10.9  Asymmetry of observing: vertical versus horizontal plane (Arnheim, 1988, p. 17). The horizontal cross acknowledges its geometric symmetry. The two bars have the same function, and the point at which they cross is clearly the balancing center of the figure. In the horizontal plane all spatial directions are interchangeable unless they are given some particular role. Since all points of the horizontal figure have the same relation to the ground, the two bars balance each other and thereby establish the center around which the figural forces are evenly distributed. . . . How different is the perceptual effect of the same figure in the upright position! Here a vertical symmetry axis, namely, the vertical bar of the cross, gives the figure a spine. From the vertical axis the horizontal bar spreads sidewise in both directions, like the branches of a tree or the arms of a person’s body. The center breaks the unity of the horizontal bar and transforms it into a pair of symmetrical wings. The vertical, by contrast, barely acknowledges the crossing (Arnheim, 1988, pp. 16–17)

Gravity is an inevitable constraining factor for vertically oriented processes. Our bodily experiencing it from infancy (trying to become bipedal) to old age (trying to stay bipedal), linked with experiencing impacts of gravity externally, prepare us for meaning construction through cultural artefacts. Fascination with waterfalls becomes translated into construction of fountains (Figure 10.10). The enjoyment of a fountain is completely generated by the forceful upward move of the water, which reverses its direction to the opposite.

The End Symbols of Form Human construction of objects is filled with the definition of end symbols in all varieties. The first construction of the end symbols is that of the

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Figure 10.10  Fountain as entailing the end symbol (where upward movement is reversed).

Figure 10.11  The end symbols (Endingungsymbol) of the human body (Lipps, 1906).

body itself—all parts of the body that stand out in any perceivable ways can become marked by an end symbol (Figure 10.11). All parts marked with grey are body endings that become specific targets for the cultural set-up of end symbols. The examples of hair (and its coverage—hats, headscarves, etc.) and shoes on the other end of the body have been usual targets for end markers. Similarly all the bulges—of the

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breasts and of the bottoms—as well as long extensions of the body (noses, ears, necks, ankles, etc.) are up for various forms of decorations. Human beings create their cultural bodies, building upon the skin (Nedergaard, 2016) primarily in specific locations of social visibility. An end symbol can be set up on any part of the skin if culturally made to be relevant. Hair forming has been for centuries a major task of building temporary sculptures (hairdos) of nontemporary material (hair) to mark the upper end of the body. In Figure 10.12 are presented two versions of 15th-century hair sculpting skills that are similar to Figures 10.2–10.4. The long loose curly hair of Venus (Figure 10.12a) guides the viewer’s look downwards from the top towards the center and lower parts of the body. In contrast, the elaborately decorated knot of a young woman in Figure 10.12b guides the viewer towards imaginary elevation of the beauty of the face further upwards, and, through the curvatures in the knot—back diagonally towards the face.

  (a)

(b)

Figure 10.12  The Endigungssymbol of hairdos (15th century) (a) Botticelli studio Venus; (b) Antonio de Pollaiulo Young Woman.

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Dialogical Self Through the Semiotic Skin We are all naked—before we get dressed. This trivial point introduces the first dialogical opposition that distinguishes cultural subjects from their natural counterparts. In terms of the dialogical self theory (DST), the dialogical relations with oneself start from the skin. The NUDE  non-NUDE opposition is the basis for creating the cultural layer of semiotic skin (Nedergaard, 2016) on any part of human body. The tension described above of the vectors projected into the hair in the volume of the back—dialogicality of the body begins from the border—the skin that not only envelopes the body in full, but also anchors higher level I-positions firmly on the skin (e.g., “I-as-a-young person” is a position that can either be anchored within the system of calculating life years, e.g., “I am 23 years old,” or—more directly and visibly “my skin is that of a young person”). The production of high varieties of creams and lotions that should keep the skin young (looking) is of any use (and profit) only if the way the skin looks is of relevance for the dialogical self. The dialogical self map that has been the core of DST since early 1990s as it charts the location of I-positions (inner–outer–external—Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010; see applications in Hermans & Gieser, 2012) and their relations can be mapped onto the scheme of the body and studied through the person’s body-related concrete actions. For example, the relationship between “I-as-autonomous-person” relating with “I-as-my-parents’child” can become investigated when the particular adolescent is trying on new lipsticks of varied colors. Statements like “I love this color but my mother would freak out if she saw me wearing it” are indicative of the person’s active relating of different I-positions. Human imagination operates in the making of such I-position relations—mostly to be abandoned as parts of the expanding “intermediate Gestalts”5 that are efforts for imaginative “trying out” without actual consequences. The dialogue that is evoked by the application of material substances onto the skin—temporarily or permanently—would be the experiential arena where DST and cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics meet. That dialogical relation with the world through the skin—which is the ultimate and total end symbol of the body—becomes fixed in the case of tattoos. The latter often are located on the back—and can occupy large area of the total volume of the back (Figure 10.13). The body modification in Figure 10.13 is remarkable by its coverage of the full back side of the person. As such, it is of the kind of high personal hiding (i.e., it is very unlikely that the whole drawing pattern gets public exposure under any social circumstances) while allowing for the dialogic

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Figure 10.13  Making the bare back speak: Dialogue on the skin.

relation for any part of the skin adjacent to the flower ornament. Furthermore, as with any backside tattoos, it is not immediately visible to its bearer. She was the one to decide to have it, visibly hide it on her back, and use the knowledge of its “being there” in her dialogues with herself. The skin becomes an object for permanent location of a cultural tool—an ornament on the body—that operates by “being there” rather than being constantly observed by the self. It is a personal-cultural tool that exists on the skin— but works within the dialogical self through its imagined form. The massive nature of the tattoo in Figure 10.13 brings me to a generalization about the ways in which the dialogical self operates, coordinating the dynamic structure of I-positions. The dynamics of the dialogical relations between these positions moves through material construction of a meaningful object (Gegenstand) that serves as the carrier of the dialogue, and (at times) leads to emergence of new I-positions. Figure 10.14 is an effort to describe that process.

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Figure 10.14  The Dialogical Self in action through culturally created objects (Gegenstand).

The use of cultural tools—objects on skin, or different functional wrappings of the body—are the material mediators for the processes of dialogical self. The relation between I-positions (“I-as-X” and “I-as-Y”) becomes constructively projected into a material action—putting on these (rather than other) shoes for this (rather than other) occasion, deciding to have a tattoo in a place others cannot see (or will see), even if I myself cannot, go shopping for new clothes (without buying any, or buying—only to return these on the following day)—are all examples of material acts explainable only through the functioning of the dialogical self. It is here that the investigation of mundane everyday practices of our consumer societies—as well as artistic descriptions of everyday lives long past in history—serve as potential data sources for further illumination of the complexities of the dialogical self.

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Conclusions: From Dialogues on the Skin to Theories About Dialogicality The starting point of this essay was an occasional encounter in an art museum with Le Chignon. From that encounter emerged the general idea—communicative messages present in various art forms are veritable phenomena for both cultural psychology and DST to work with. Art is an important data source for cultural psychology, similarly to literature (Barani, Yahya, & Talif, 2014; Brinkmann, 2009; Freeman, 2011) and music (Adorno, 2002; Klempe, 2016). Precisely because communicative messages encoded into art forms go beyond the here-and-now mundane life conditions and trigger creation of imaginary worlds for the experiencer, the work of artists is a form of social practice of experimental psychology—albeit without “control, conditions” or “random samplin.g” In a way, art-as-experiment is a technique that is a version of Aktualgenese—the genesis of some new form of reality—through the processes of imagination with which the recipients of the art messages are ready to feel into, despite their novelty. I here looked at the back—and its framings. The back side of the body is important in a multitude of ways. First, it is evolutionarily important in establishing social relations in various species before Homo sapiens (e.g., grooming). Face to face interaction in most species involves aggressivity; front to back relation in grooming is peaceful. Secondly, the back of the body is a physiologically sensitive area used in many ways (relaxation via massage, potentially open sensory input channel for vision substitution). Thirdly—and most importantly—it is an arena for projecting one’s intrapsychological feelings into socially visible cultural displays that extend outwards from the biological body and its cover by skin. The dialogical nature of mundane actions in everyday living can become a strategic source for data for further development of the dialogical self theory.

Acknowledgments The preparation of this paper as made possible by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant by Danske Grundforskningsfond.

Notes 1. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Dialogical Self (Symposium: The Dialogical Self in Action: When the structure of I-positions become culturally displayed, Lublin, Sept 10, 2016 at 10.30–11.30. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark.

The Bare Back    215 3. The best example (of many) is the “upper breast cloth” controversy that erupted to social unrests in 1858 in Travancore, South India (described in Hardgrave, 1969, chapter 2). Lower-caste women who had traditionally been prohibited from covering their breasts in public (which was upper-caste privilege) started to do so, encouraged by Christian missionaries’ efforts to eliminate such “indecent exposure” of the human body. The result was intercaste conflict where the vigilantes from upper castes started to rip off lower-caste women’s breast covers to restore the social distance between the castes—for them, the “indecency” was not in bodily exposure but precisely the socially inappropriate covering of the body. The situation required governmental intervention and subsequent renegotiation of socially appropriate clothing styles. 4. The recognition of a tune—from limited tones that have been heard—involves projecting the established vector from the sounds already heard to those anticipated to complete the Gestalt. 5. The notion of “intermediate Gestalt” was introduced in the 1920s in the studies of Aktualgenese of perceptual images. Before the final image was attained, the person produced a high variety of intermediate forms that vanished once the clarity of the final image was achieved.

References Adorno, T. W. (2002). The dialectical composer. In T. W. Adorno, Essays on music (pp. 203–209). Berkeley: University of California Press. Arnheim R. (1988). The power of the center. Berkeley: University of California Press. Barani, F., Yahya, W. R. W., & Talif, R. B. (2014). “Virtual Fictional/Factual Positioning”: Mediating dialogical concepts in psychological and literary studies. Theory & Psychology, 24(6), 755–774. Brinkmann, S. (2009). Literature as qualitative inquiry: The novelist as a researcher. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(8), 1376–1394. Eva Gonzalès. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Eva_Gonzal%C3%A8s Freeman, M. (2011). Toward a poetic science. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45, 389–396. Hardgrave, R. L. (1969). The Nadars of Tamilnad: Political culture of community in change. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hermans, H. J. M., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hermans, H. J. M., & Gieser, T. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of dialogical self theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Klempe, S. H. (Ed.). (2016). Cultural psychology of musical experience Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Lipps, T. (1906). Die ästetische Betrachtung und die bildende Kunst. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss.

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Metzger, W. (2008). Gesetze des Sehens. Eschborn, Germany: Dietmar Klotz. Nedergaard, J. I. (2016). Theory of semiotic skin: Making sense of the flux on the border. Culture and Psychology, 22(3), 387–403. Obeyesekere, G. (1981). Medusa’s hair. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Obeyesekere, G. (1990). The work of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

11 Torturous Tension of the Real and the Unreal Looking at Surrealist Paintings1 Jaan Valsiner2

The reality of Surreal art does not transcend ordinary life because of special powers the artist exemplifies; rather, it shows how art is free to manipulate the ordinariness of life. —Altieri, 1984, p. 96

Surrealism is a word. It is a word widely used, scandalized, and eventually turned into a category that includes varied presentations of artists’ intentions. Yet there is a rub. By becoming socially institutionalized, the category of surrealism becomes legitimate as any other kind of art. Art appreciating lay public can pass by a surrealist painting in a museum in full comfort that the immediately challenging and perhaps disturbing painting is a recognized token of that specific kind of art, executed by their specific rules. Such recognition of a painting as surrealist makes it ordinary, safe, and psychologically undisturbing. No matter what is in the painting, the label—and Beyond the Mind, pages 217–228 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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its social acceptance—brings the painting into the psychological zone of tolerance. A curious transformation occurs—artists’ revolt against rules becomes recognized as an alternative set of rules. Sometimes legitimacy of the art establishment is gained through intense and scandalous self-advertisement. The manifestos, public quarrels, and ideological disagreements within the “camp” of surrealists—with Breton and Dalí as best-known fighters—served at the time to create a scandalous public attention that helped the establishment of the socially legitimate category of “THIS (whatever is being claimed) BEING surrealism.” Such identity labeling neutralizes the actual communicative messages—paintings—and trivializes their understanding. This is particularly well expressed in the case of the “surrealism” label, where rhetoric claims for artfulness were made about immediate experiencing processes, outside of the control of the social mediation.3 Obviously, such rhetorical claims themselves were not emanating from the unconscious but were part and parcel of the “public relations” of the making of the political party (which Breton’s egocentered construction of surrealism functionally was).

The Power of Painting The only reality of art is the art itself—and not discourse about it being art. Let us pretend that social discourse about surrealism—as a “movement”— did not exist, but the paintings did. The question of psychological interest is the immediate contact of a viewer with a painting that presents—by some intention of the painter—realistic scenes or objects in combinations and contexts that are perfectly unrealistic. Such combinations may look curious, disturbing, or funny. It is far from the neutral representation of reality. It is as if reality can be easily recognized—yet it is no longer that recognizable reality of everyday lazy psychological comfort: By insisting on transformational forces in the work too loose, too apparently whimsical, and too tied to representational particulars within a disjunct whole, these Surrealists deny the possibility of the art work serving primarily as testimony to the idealizing and synthesizing powers of mind that produced it. There is no Cubist experiment in the fourth dimension and no reliance on displaying a power to make the visual conceptual. Surrealism taunts us by suggesting that the conceptual can be made visible, that the contents rather than the power of the mind are capturable within something that plays on disjunctions within a two-dimensional space of relations not amenable to our schemes for attributing depth to experience. (Altieri, 1984, p. 96)

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It is a remarkable psychological phenomenon that real combination of the objects and their contexts can lead to aesthetic synthesis. The meeting—on a dissection table—of a sewing machine and an umbrella (Balakian, 1986, p. 191) is not necessarily an example of disorder of objects misplaced, but it creates the meaning of novel objects precisely through the violation of the habitual knowledge of these. The depiction of objects no longer represents what they are but presents a new perceptual challenge to the meaning-making system of the viewer. The viewer is enchanted—being both disturbed by the distortions and fascinated by the unexpectedness of the distorting solutions.

Two Directions of Synthesis in Meaning Creation The challenge to human meaning-making that surrealist paintings create is complex: Instead of allowing art to transform quotidian realities into higher synthesis, they demystify spirit by mystifying the literal processes of making sense. Instead of forcing the depths of subjective feeling into objective images, they construct an impersonal dance of perceptions generated by the pure play of surfaces. This materialism is not naturalism; it maintains a mystery, but the mystery must be earned entirely within empirical models of perception. (Altieri, 1984, p. 96, emphasis added)

Indeed, the crucial feature is the impersonal dance of perceptions that puts an obstacle on the otherwise well-established road of making sense of ordinary reality. The work of René Magritte is indeed an appropriate philosophical elaboration of this kind of synthesis. For example, consider the combination of an egg and a cage: We are all familiar with the bird in a cage. Interest is heightened if the bird is replaced by fish or a shoe; but although these images are curious, unfortunately they are accidental, arbitrary. It is possible to obtain a new image which will bear close scrutiny by its definitiveness, its rightness: this is the image which shows an egg in the cage. (Magritte, 1976, p. 3)

In a general sense, the way the surrealist psychological synthesis works begins with ordinary things. The visual world of everyday life is filled with human-made decorative objects that are for consumers’ immediate consumption and recycling. These objects fail to become those of art (and are not meant to), while they can be perceptually complex (yet drawing only minimal and superficial meaning-construction by the person). Alternatively, these can be mass-produced simple objects that—for reasons of personal

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possessiveness of fashion for them—are embedded within a complex personal meaning network. A plastic cup with the signature of Christian Dior may turn a minimally complex perceptual form into a maximally complex personalized value-object. Yet most of the objects that fascinate mass consumers are neither perceptually complex nor meaningful. They are decorative—the most superficial designation of the meaning of an object. Or they are functional—a toilet bowl in a bathroom is a functional means of catering to physiological needs. When Marcel Duchamp sets it up in an exhibition, he creates the tension of suggesting that such functional object might be moved into the realm of art. That suggestion has been accepted by some and rejected by many. The phenomenon of a regular toilet bowl in an exhibition is the question of the crossing of the boundary between consumer and art object domains. Within the domain of art objects, the reality of perceivable forms can lead to increased subjective abstraction through direct meaning construction. Here the synthesis takes place within the abstract domain, through the insertion and constructive use of complex meanings. This synthesis is quickly distanced from the perceptual world—the latter’s images do not continue to torment the meaning-maker. The surrealist route maintains the locus of the searched-for synthesis close to the perceptual images. The search process is prolonged by the visual images, which do not allow the viewer to reach an easy solution to the usual trivial problems, of the kind “what is it here?” Instead, the image is inherently contradictory, maintaining the tension between opposites, potentially leading to nonverbal synthesis of abstract kind. That synthesis need not occur; the encounter with the image may remain for long time—or even perpetually—in the state of a torment. If the synthesis emerges along route 2, it need not occur in words. It takes the form of higher, overflowing the person, an abstraction of the feeling. Such generalized feeling about the world—uniting the real and unreal in one generalized whole—may constitute the highest-level abstraction human psychological system affords. Words may be poor mediators in this holistic relating with the world. In fact, the label super-realism may fit here better. Realistic depictions in impossible or unexpected combinations create a perceptual challenge that forces the viewer a synthesis of the perceptual image. This constitutes a complex psychological process that is deeply personal. The artist somehow captures the viewer’s readiness to immerse oneself in that process of visual synthesizing—whether it results in actual synthesis or not. How is that possible? An analysis of some—admittedly subjectively selected—paintings can

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provide an answer. The work of the Catalan artist Angel Planells is my target of investigation.

The Crime-Master of Superrealism: Angel Planells Angel Planells Cruañas was born on December, 1, 1901 in Cadaquéz, in Catalunya. He stayed in his native town for the first 16 years of his life, getting (through his father) acquainted with a number of artists of his time. In 1917–1920 he was an apprentice in the lithographic engraver’s studio in Barcelona, after which he returned to Cadaquéz to help with family business. In the same year, he established his first contacts with Salvador Dalí, another nascendent of that little town on the Mediterranean. Their close relationship lasted until the 1940s. Dalí (who left for Madrid in 1922–1926, followed by establishing himself in Paris) maintained Planells’ contacts with the burgeoning small crowd of young men (and a few women) who were eager to build a style of viewing of the realist world in ways that surpassed it. That movement grew out of the mental cadaver of dadaism, which by that time had exhausted the public by crying out “da-da” very loudly and unproductively. Dalí supplied Planells with pertinent literature on surrealism, yet the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe and Isidore Duchasse’s Les Chants de Maldoror could be considered Planells’ main literary sources, until his reading of Andre Breton’s manifesto in 1924. Before that, Planells had lived through his military service in Morocco (1922–1923). In the second half of the 1920s, Dalí’s friends from Paris began to come over to Cadaquéz for summer holidays. As a result, Planell became friendly with René Magritte (who spent the summer of 1929 in Cadaquéz). Both of them were loners in their quests for an artistic life philosophy. Thus they remained on the margins of the otherwise hyperideological and scandalsnourishing new movement of painters (Dalí), writers, and film-makers (e.g., Buñuel), all reigned by the holy pope of surrealism, Andre Breton. Like many of his contemporaries, Planells was involved in literary endeavors, aside from painting, yet his main credo was that of translating his subjective mental images onto the canvas. Planells started to expose his paintings in 1928, first in the gallery of Barcelona merchant Josep Dalmau. In 1929 he participated in two exhibitions in Galerías Dalmau, began to publish literary work (automatic writing), and moved in 1930 to live in Blanes. He had his first individual exhibition in 1930 in Galerías Dalmau, followed by one in Madrid (Salon de Heraldo) a year later. There were two more individual exhibitions in Barcelona in the 1930s.

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His paintings were viewed as authentically superrealistic—or as mere followings of Dalí, depending upon the viciousness of critics (de Carpi, 1986, pp. 84–85). Thanks to Magritte, Planells’ paintings became known in France and Belgium. In 1934 he participated in the Intervention Surréaliste exhibition (with Magritte, Brauner, Giacometti, Ray, Duchamp, Ernst) in Brussels. Aside from the interdependence with Dalí and Magritte, Planells highly valued the meticulous painting by Vermeer and had his relation with Hieronymus Bosch. A central question for Planells was the autonomy of human beings. Are we all mannequins? Do we control our lives, or are these lives transformed through eternal exchange with the world. The fascination with “automatic writing” that persisted among surrealists indicated the former. Yet the decisions a painter makes were not automatic. The artist builds transitions from the real to the superreal. Planells’ paintings are built on transformation of objects into others. For example, a woman’s body emerges from the locks of hair in Crim Perfecto, 1929—see Figure 11.1). Unexpected juxtapositions of ordinary objects give us extraordinary impressions. It is notable that in the same period of painting his superrealist canvases, Planells also painted very realistic scenes from everyday life (cf. Angel Planells, 1996). Planells was dragged into the Spanish Civil War—in 1938 he was mobilized and sent to the front. After his return, he moved from Blanes to

Figure 11.1

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Figure 11.2

Barcelona, and in 1943 he married. It is around this period when the second painting that is analyzed here—Strange Players (Los Extraños Jugadores, 1942—Figure 11.2) was painted. In 1948, the friendship between Dalí and Planells broke down. Planells worked as art teacher at Escoles Pies de Barcelona in the 1950s and continued painting. In 1975, he exhibited his paintings from 1929–1974 in Galeria René Metras in Barcelona. This was his first individual exhibition since 1934. There were two more (in 1980 and 1981). He died on July, 23, 1989. Planells’ closeness to Dalí over the 20-year period undoubtedly had its role in his imagery. Yet he was not a mere “disciple” of Dalí’s scandalous “genius,” but rather a careful painter who put a high value on technique (Planells admired Vermeer), and who created both realistic and superrealistic paintings. The details in Planells’ paintings—most notably hands—are given in stylized concreteness that Dutch painters would have appreciated. Probably his closeness to René Margitte was as crucial for his painting as that of Dalí. I claim that Planells created his unique personal message on the basis of closeness to both Magritte and Dalí, yet followed neither of the two. The two generic themes that led to Planells’ synthesis are those of violence to innocence (a Daliesque topic) and transposition of objects and surfaces from their ordinary state to an extraordinary one (a la Magritte). On the basis of these two, Planells developed his synthesis—that of

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disturbing and dangerous, yet simultaneously appealing in its beauty of forms—of the sensual world (see also Serraller, 1991, pp. 647–648.)

A Crime It covers a canvas of 41.5 by 41 centimeters (see Figure 11.1). The composition of Crim Perfecte can be seen as an example of the tension between tranquility, sensuality, and violence. The painting entails transposed surfaces— the sea is turned into the face and transposes into clouds in place of the beard that is Magritte-like. The same is the case for the sky with two clouds in the background. The neck of the figure merges with the ground, being distinguished from it only due to the long massive braids that are shown to vanish into the ground. In fact, the usual image of support (i.e., head and hair are supported by neck) is here reversed—the hair, braided in increasingly feminine forms, is the support for the whole head. The neck is fused with the background, and can be imagined only due to the delineation of the background space provided by the braids. At the same time, the emerging feminine forms dominate the move from down to upwards. The clouds in the background give the reader an image of a hazy femininity that floats in the air. The braids that emerge from the unknown downstairs infinity gradually take the form of increasingly explicit feminine beauty, as one observes the move upwards, the becoming of the body out of the voluptuous braids. On the top of that movement is a crystallization of the feminine form into an almost marble sculpture, with missing arms and head. In the center of the face, the brick wall penetrates the waves to create a nose. The eyes—spheres upon spheres that leave shadows upon their backgrounds—are united through the brick-wall and fish image that creates the nose (see Figure 11.2). A pipe emerges as a quasi-chin, while remaining a pipe. Here the closeness to Magritte’s theme of This Is Not a Pipe can be noted (Magritte’s first play with the image is dated to 1928–1929). Yet the pipe becomes almost a telephone, while the white clouds almost become the smoke from the pipe. Yet all these transformations remain tentative, titillating; the viewer is never sure of these (or any other) interpretations. The violent cut of the knife into the waves of the cheek creates the horror emerging from tranquility. A closer examination reveals the blood from the cut falling upon the clouds-in-the-sea, and the knife coming close to incising into the emergent feminine form of the braid. Yet the cutting misses the braid. Instead, blood is bursting out upon the clouds, harmonizing with the color of the lips, which are also of voluptuous feminine form.

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The violence has direction in the painting—from right to left. The handle of the knife is continuous with the already broken hole (where the name of the painting is inserted); the knife cuts into the cheek, and on the far left,the half-scissor hurts the ground (see Figure 11.1). This ballistic trajectory of violence crosses over the dynamics of feminine sensuality (growing through the braids and corroborated by the lips. The imaginary “moustache”—made of mushrooms, a weight, and a spinning top on the surface mark the solidity of the surface above the lips. The same can be seen on the left (Figure 11.1) of the marking of the ground. Yet it is unclear whether that surface is solid of liquid—like it is unclear in the background how the surface on the horizon might be both sea and sky. The two movements—of violence and sensuality—are creating a tension in the background of double surfaces. Inside the face, the waves of the water turn—in the direction of downwards—into a kind of blue surface (which supports ordinary objects: top, weight, mushrooms), followed by the merge with the clouds. The exterior of the face has an opposite play of surfaces— the ground turns into sky (or sea, which itself turns into sky) on the horizon. All in all, we can observe unity of both clearly painted recognizable objects (knife, broken garlic, broken wall, half of scissors) and objects that emerge from others (feminine figure from braids, clouds from sea). Their positioning within the whole is what creates the structure of the message, forcing the viewer towards imaginarial, rather than verbal, synthesis. Note that the moments of violence are given through the actions of clearly depicted objects, within the dreamy general scene of interdependencies of clear and unclear forms.

A Game Sensuality vanishes in a game, and that may be the grand crime of human life. Planells painted Els Estranys Jugadors (Figure 11.2) in 1942—after living through the Spanish Civil War and being a distant observer of World War II. Here we see the sensuality theme gone—femininity is here replaced by the suit-wearing female cadaver-person (the left figure) who guides the faceless male main player in the center of the painting. The chessboard—given by its rectangularity—transforms into an irregular shape in the direction of the right. The right-side background provides a number of ordinary objects in desert-like conditions. The loaf of bread blocks the closed window; so do the half-beaten-in nails. The environment is cracked, the clouds dull. The tree has died—its trunk reveals a dynamic agony of a dying creature, whose top is stripped from bark. Yet the forms of the top growth remain ambiguous.

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While being a dead tree, the image also can be viewed as an indefinite animal involved in an agonistic cry similar to the sentiments that have been depicted by Edvard Munch. Yet this interpretation is tenuous—as always in surrealist paintings, it is possible (and hence tension-providing), while remaining unclear. In the middle of such world, the player—guided by the cadaver-woman’s hand penetrating the dumb-bell head—is making a move. The “extra hand” that emerges from the tie of the player points in the same direction as that of the cadaver-woman, indicating the field of action in the game. Yet as the field merges with the background, the action field is but a limited circumscribed area of the wider field (see Figure 11.2). The game is being played under instruction and on a regular chess table as the world around is devastated in its desertion. Yet the game continues, and the next move is being made.

The Hour Between the Crime and the Game The two paintings analyzed above are separated by 13 years and by the transition from peace to war. What is special about Planells? The selection of his work—and of the two paintings in particular—had something to do with the efforts to make sense of the Catalan background of painting. A number of painters who come from Catalunya—of course Dalí again is the best known, but others are no less creative—have been notable within the loose category of “surrealism.” The two paintings by Angel Planells seem to allow us to arrive at a tentative conclusion about how the surrealist imaginationpromoting visual wholes function in the meaning-making process.

General Conclusion: The Perfection of the Crime of Surrealist Painting As demonstrated through the examples, psychological tension is created not only through the juxtaposition of familiar objects in unfamiliar or experientially impossible locations. Different objects are also given in their transformation states; the composition of the whole canvas, which at first may seem arbitrary or chance-based, guides the viewer towards a new synthesis. Yet that synthesis is made visually as difficult to reach as possible—the painting includes visual-affective “puzzle” that cannot be rationally solved. Paintings like those analyzed here include a perceptual and meaning-constructive “trick.” They create the tension from their apparent disorganization, which actually is a form of organization. In the words of

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René Magritte, “If the word chance exists, its meaning is in effect the same as that of the word order. It can be demonstrated that chance obeys a certain order, that it is the order of order, that order is due to chance, that this is so by chance” (to André Bosmans, January, 13, 1959—Torczyner, 1985, p. 49). The artist is the creator of new challenges. In relating with the materials, the artist both opens the possibilities inherent in them and distances the art object from the realm of everyday objects. Another Catalan artist, Antoni Tàpies, has remarked: Like a researcher in his laboratory, I am the first spectator of the suggestions drawn from the materials. I unleash their expressive possibilities, even if I do not have a very clear idea of what I am going to do. As I go along with my work I formulate my thought, and from this struggle between what I want and the reality of the material—from this tension—is born an equilibrium.

{extc}There is sometimes in my work a refusal of certain realities: artificial realities, entirely fabricated needs. There is, for example, the world of advertising and its colors. Unconsciously I seek and imagine another color, a dramatic, deep color capable of expressing essential values. I have to rediscover the true color of the world, as it is when not denatured by banal advertising. The color does not exist in itself. I need an interior color. (Tàpies, 1996, p. 55) Surrealist paintings create the interior form and color of the world, in opposition to horrors of war, peace, and banality of advertisement. By making us visually uncomfortable, puzzled, or irrationally elated, it guides us not to be satisfied with the assumed stability of our world. That process is visual-affective—meaningfulness may emerge through tension-filled relations between images within a whole. Such tensions are further enhanced through the play of surfaces, as well as through utilization of contrasts between those and apertures within them (see discussion of windows in Smith, 1984). The paintings lead to a process of image-ful “feeling-with” the world at large in the viewer. Here, again, the uselessness of the label “surrealism” becomes obvious. The tension the viewer experiences in looking at the paintings—for example, the two by Angel Planells—is unique to the paintings. Yet the affective synthesis—if it emerges—relates the person with this curious world, which is mundane and marvelous, calm and threatening, in its fullness. And that world is the core of human existence. The paintings remain as silent agents who trigger the scream of living in the viewer. The crime is indeed perfect.

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Notes 1. Chapter that was initiated by observing the Hale-Bopp comet in 1996 at Donegal. The manuscript—finished in 1999—was meant for Robert Wyatt (Ed.), Visual Meaning—a book that was never published. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. For example, Breton claimed surrealism to be based on “pure psychic automatism, by which is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought’s dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations” (Chipp, 1968, p. 412).

References Angel Planells. (1996, January–March). Catalogue of exhibition. Barcelona, Spain: Generalitat de Catalunya. Altieri, C. (1984). Surrealist “materialism.” Dada/Surrealism, 13, 94–103. Balakian, A. (1986). Surrealism: The road to the absolute. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chipp, H. B. (1968). Theories of modern art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. de Carpi, L. G. (1986). La pintura surrealista Española (1924–1936). Madrid, Spain: Ediciones ISTMO. Magritte, R. (1976). Secret affinities. Houston, TX: Institute for the Arts, Rice University. Serraller, F. C. (1991). Enciclopedia del arte Español del siglo XX. Madrid: Mondadori España. Smith, S. H. (1984). The surrealists’ windows. Dada/Surrealism, 13, 48–69. Tàpies, A. (1996). I am a Catalan. In K. Stiles & P. Selz (Eds), Theories and documents of contemporary art (pp. 55–57). Berkeley: University of California Press. Torczyner, H. (1985). Magritte: The true art of painting. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams.

12 Dialogical Relationship Between Open and Closed Infinities Jaan Valsiner

Abstract Any dialogical relation involves dynamic—constantly transforming—parts of the system—here designated as infinities. Infinities are forms that can be imaginatively extended into an infinite extended state. I will analyze the system of social suggestions encoded into ornamented environment of human lives in architectural forms. Based on an analysis of the palmetto antefix. I will define two kinds of infinite forms—open (linear) and closed (spiral) and analyze their dynamic relation within ornaments. The open infinity of an extending line is in constant dialogue with the potential ending of this infinity in a spiral end, and vice versa. The complexities of the relations of these two kinds of infinite forms are considered to be implicit guidance devices of affective atmospheres in human life Umwelts. Ornaments are externalized forms of the dialogical nature of human living.

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We decorate our environments. These decorations—ornaments—are not occasional “attachments” of what we haphazardly prefer to see as merely “beautifying” our lifeworlds. They encode various meanings in the form of {Anon-A} oppositions that involve inherent tension between the opposing parts within the whole. These tensions we project into the environments, and through that we further guide the feelings of our minds as if those were impending upon us from within our environments. By decorating ourselves and our environments, we are transforming ourselves into ever new ways of being human. The search for our self-guidance through the objects to which we project our dialogical nature starts from the need to decorate the most intimate areas of the human body (Figure 12.1). It ends in the decoration of macro-environments: parks, gardens, city plans, and so on. The elaborate ornamentation of the flower bed arrangements of the royal gardens of Versailles provides the observer the coverage of the space from the self towards the horizon—with human-made geometric forms forced upon nature. The psychological issue involved is the purposeful control of the whole visual field. Landscape architecture builds on the human interest in panoramas in their immediate living quarters. Many aristocratic landowners found their intimate self in the gardens they created (Frank, 2011). Moving outwards from the nearest-to-body private textile ornaments, we can observe a massive act of ornamenting almost anything human beings touch upon in their lives. This is an act of constructive externalization— the goal of which is further feedforward to equally constructive internalization in the future. But how is that process organized? First of all, our modifications of the environments are goals-oriented and materials-limited. Building a garden out of a forest requires an image of the future of what kind of form the new cultural modification of nature should take (Frank, 2011). We project our aesthetic sentiments upon the nature we hope to control. Yet the gardener is completely dependent on the

Figure 12.1  Ornaments on closest textiles to the intimate regions of the body.

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biological growth conditions of the grass, shrubs, trees, and other biological factors (nature of the soil, irrigation possibilities) of the location of the place for where the garden is designed. Secondly, all ornamentation is a construction of highly recursive forms (Beckstead, 2015). Patterns used in ornaments may be of multiple roots—emulating plants, mythological scenes, or geometrical figures—but all of them come with an avalanche of many recursive versions of the similar base plan. Thirdly, all of these recursive patterns have forms which are definable by their borders. The psychological impacts of the relating with the ornaments is based on the dialogical nature of the borders of the forms—where the given form and its imagined extension (nonform) meet, in our affective apperception. These meeting places are end symbols (Endigungsymbol—the notion introduced by Theodor Lipps in the 1890s in his efforts to build psychology of architecture—Lipps, 1891, 1897). A schematic generic form of the end symbol is given in Figure 12.2. It reminds us of an abstract Stonehenge—its top horizontal bar counteracts the suggested upward movement of the vertical bars. This is accomplished by the “stop” signal for the vertical movement of our focus. The horizontal bar guides us into a sidewise detour, feeding into the “gravitational” opposite direction from top towards the bottom. The upward movement of our flow of experience is suddenly stopped by a border. Its real-life architectural examples can be found in Doric columns (Figure 12.3). Doric columns are massive as they guide our gaze upwards. As Laugier (1755) indicated, the Doric capital is the least elegant of all the

Figure 12.2  The end symbol (Endigungsymbol): Dialogical nature of gravity and anti-gravity.

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Figure 12.3  Doric columns in the Athena Temple, Paestum, 5th century BC.

capital orders. In his terms, a Doric column “seems continually to threaten a ruin” as “the eye is hurt, the imagination fatigued, to see these large quarters of stones thrown into the middle of the air” (1755, pp. 82–83). The focus our visual gaze gets from the architectural units—columns— is the tension between looking upwards and forceful stopping of that look at the end of the columns. The columns simultaneously enable our freedom of the gaze and inhibit it. They leave us in limbo—similarly to most of the life events in everyday life. We feel we “want to go ahead” in anything we do and simultaneously we feel suggestions of “you’d better stop” or “don’t stand out from the others.” Architectural forms are suggestions for dynamics of the psyche that are encoded in stone. This is the special trick that we—as human beings—play upon ourselves by creating architectural spaces: Just as architecture should always look as if it were about to speak, all the while remaining utterly silent, the most powerful architectural symbols are perhaps those engaged in the process of representing something. What they truly embody is a movement towards representation, a dynamic captured in the material of the building, something like a figure on the verge of appearing. (Picon, 2014, pp. 148–149, emphasis added)

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This “movement towards representation” is a crucial feature to understand architecture as a dialogical form of our relating with the environment. Importantly, that move is not about representation of (something) but representation for (something else, what is not there, not visible, nor not yet thought of). It is here where the processes of imagination become relevant partners to our perception of the human-made worlds In its manifest form all architectural objects seems at first glance fully monological—a building here is a material fact, similar to the space between buildings clearly specifiable as a “street” or “yard” or “square.” A space of natural kind—made by human landscape or city architects—is a “park” or “garden.” Architectural objects are constructed for the future—either the immediate future of people in the given society at the given historical time, or for people encountering them any time in the far-away future. The builders of San Pietro in Rome had no idea of how tourists in the 21st century might be flocking into it, half-naked and with cellular phones in their hands. Ornaments—being everywhere—are also important functional features in architecture. The specific way of decorating the buildings indicates that something more than a mere building—or its entrance as a functional whole in the wall—was intended (Figure 12.4). Why decorate entrances in ways that do not regulate the entering into, or departing from, the building? The role of ornaments is to fill our peripheral sensory systems with

Figure 12.4  A decorated entrance. For the functional purposes, the ornamentation of the entrance (and of the whole façade of the house) is superfluous.

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images of cultural suggestions for feelings about living one’s life in the everyday world. This is being accomplished by any “added accent” to ordinary material objects—decorating handles of knives and daggers with abstract patterns, or bringing myth-stories to the walls of living quarters by hanging up tapestries.

Attention Guiding Vectors (AGVs) and Their Convergence/Divergence Flows Architectural forms are wholes that cannot be reduced into their elements. For making sense of their ornaments, we need a generalizable analytic scheme of the total wholes (Ganzheit structures) that are functional in the case of such complex wholes. The difficulty in creating an analytically synthetic formal language for making sense of these wholes is hindered by our usual cognitive orientation for analysis in service of one or another classification of elements. The popularity of devising classificatory “coding schemes” where the properties of the whole are eliminated in the very first act of the analytic effort abound in the social sciences. The use of human cultural construction of macroscopic wholes—paintings, sculptures, architectural forms—as data makes the invention of new ways of understanding such wholes a primary task for science. Built upon the pioneering ideas of Rudolf Arnheim (Figure 12.4)—I establish the concept of attention guiding vectors (AGV) that I posit to be in operation in the relation of the viewer and the scene the viewer encounters. In their theoretical nature, the AGVs are similar to James Gibson’s affordances (“demand character” of the object that is in direct relation with the perception/action possibilities of the perceiver). Yet AGVs have two features that make them distinct: (a) they are vectors that indicate direction for our inquiries, and (b) their functions are subordinate to the nature of the whole in which they are a part. They are projections into the material environments used to create cultural objects. They communicate goal orientations of the agent who creates the object through its context: “life”

compare

“life”

We create meanings—even from abstract modifiers added to signs. The whole is set by the meaning attributed to the form—be it a “drop” (left side of Figure 12.5) or a “flame” (right side). That contrast also illustrates the divergence and convergence of AGVs—the falling “drops” interpretation of the meaning of the form leads to projection of varied-oriented

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Figure 12.5  Directional nature of forms: shaped volumes with attention guiding vectors (AGV)—after Rudolph Arnheim (Metzger, 2008, p. 158).

vectors into the form, while the upwardly acting “flame” triggers the seeing of the direction through convergence of AGVs—they all lead the figure to give us an upwardly oriented suggestion. The best architectural example of the skillful combination of convergent and divergent AGVs is the construction of water fountains (Figure 12.6). By forcing the convergence of a water stream pushed artificially upwards, it is guaranteed that the divergence of the drops of water falling downwards creates an affective contrast. It may be similar in the latter part to watching a natural waterfall (e.g., the natural power of water in Foz de Iguaçu).

Figure 12.6  A cultural dialogue created through gravity of water flow: a fountain.

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In contrast with natural waterfalls, fountains are different. They entail human organization of the flow of water in ways that make it possible to observe its falling downwards. This convergence of the AGVs in water that is pushed upwards—set up by the pumps to move against gravity—is not there in natural waterfalls. It is a human cultural invention to push water upwards until it begins falling downwards—a dynamic dialogic event (compare with Figure 12.1). As the fountain provides us with an ever-changing flow of falling water, we as observers might be fascinated by its natural beauty. Yet that beauty—as we project it into the falling water streams—is a purposeful cultural construction. It is a culturally created dialogical event for our personal viewing pleasure To summarize—we experience inherent dialogical relations within our environments. We can project these onto the naturally observable scenes— such as the panoramas of mountain ranges or the horizons on the sea. We also create them culturally, in our architectural constructions. The dialogical nature of such constructed space—and objects in it—can be seen as a “silent foundation” for the psychological processes that going in the dynamic structures of the dialogical self. A particular example of such dialogical foundation for our relating with the world are the end symbols of buildings—roofs, minarets, and other towers—and particularly the decorations of the very ends of these upwardly oriented structures.

The Top Ending of a Building: The Antefix The antefix is the decoration of the top end of the roof. It terminates the place in the roof where the final tiles meet—and is thus the end symbol of the building. It is a location that is often richly ornamented—even in very tall buildings where the decoration is not visible to viewers down below. The decoration often takes the form of a palmette (Figure 12.7)—a special ornamental form that came to use 5th century BC in Greece. In that form of floral ornament, the leaves are oriented radially upwards, not fused with one another. Their orientation is radially up and sidewise—covering the range of 180 degrees (Riegl, 1893, p. 210). The dialogical nature of the palmette antefix is set up by the structured unity of linear and nonlinear vectors embedded in one whole. The whole orientation of the Gestalt is upwards—yet with a dialogical twist—the dominance of suggestions for turning our orientation upwards is tempered by intermediate stop suggestions (Figure 12.8) The projected AGV analysis in Figure 12.7 gives evidence for two kinds of upward orientations—one that radiates upwardly towards infinity of open

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Figure 12.7  The Parthenon Athena Temple palmette antefix.

Figure 12.8  AGVs inserted into the palmetto antefix.

space, at the 180-degree range (light grey arrows), and the other that begins in upward orientation but then curves spirally into an infinite ending point (dark grey arrows). We get the image of a truncated move upwards. The upward orientation is tempered by the suggestion of “being caught” in the “eye” of the curving spiral. Historical examples of ornaments give us a high variety of such dialogical relations encoded in decorating wholes. The vase decoration in

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Figure 12.9  An antique Greek vase decoration (Riegl, 1893, p. 204).

Figure 12.9 embeds the antefix pattern of Figure 12.7 in multiple forms that close in (through spiral enclosure) and turn downwards all but one of the palmette patterns included. The dialogue within the ornamenting pattern can be also completely closed—the freedom of movement fixated within the borders set. Each of the interiors of the figures are upwardly oriented—yet constrained by the external contour, which in its summary orientation is also upwardly oriented. Yet that orientation stems from the baseline spiral foundations that both enable and constrain the dialogue A real-life example of a social living pattern communicated through these abstracted decoration schemes could be compared to “democratic

Figure 12.10  Decorations from Pompeij houses (Riegl, 1893, p. 282).

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family” in which parents pretend that they are equal with their children and where all family decisions are made by joint consensus. They purposefully overlook the simple social power role relationship that is already encoded in the intergenerational asymmetry: from birth onwards, the parents have “fate control” over the children, no matter how much the “local democracy” ideal of the family may be propagated. Similar predicaments are frequent in social politics—a democratically elected radically “right”-(or “left”-) oriented politician may be subtly pressured to give up the striving for a leadership role. Dialogues on the borders of democratic governance need not themselves be democratic. The examples of dialogical nature of ornaments lead to the question— what kinds of “graphic positions” are the basic partners in such dialogue? The basic contrast is between lines—straight and curved—that create an infinite variety of graphic patterns.

Two Infinities in Forms: A Silent Dialogue In Figure 12.11, we can observe basic dialogical nature between the basic elements of any figure—point and line. We can trace their inherent dialogicality—between two infinite possibilities of transforming into each other. It is here where imagination enters as central into the picture: we observe a point but can imagine its continuation into a line, we observe a line that stops at some moment—and we imagine its continuation beyond its end. The inevitable border of the line is the final point in it (Kandinsky, 1926). Like in the case of Figure 12.2, that point is the end symbol for the line. Our imagination continues the line beyond that final point. Architectural and various other visual design forms unite the two opposite infinities into their simple natural and abstract move between the point and the line in the case of curvatures (Figure 12.12). Nature provides us with many examples of curvatures, including the natural spirals (Figure 12.12a). In our ornamenting acts, we use the spiral forms almost everywhere. “Open infinity” (point becoming infinitely imaginable line beyond its end point)

“Closed infinity” (open line becoming infinitely constricted point)

Figure 12.11  Infinities of dialogue between line and point.

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Figure 12.12  The spiral as a dialogue of open and closed infinities. (a) natural form; (b) dialogue of the two ends of the line. (Lipps, 1891, p. 84)

The two infinities I posit are united in the spiral form. It can be read in either direction—that of a point (inner end of spiral) extending to become an open line, or vice versa—a line moving into becoming the end point (closed infinity). Interestingly, in mathematical presentations of spiral forms it is the former reading—from end point to linear infinity—that prevails (Figure 12.12b). Each spiral turns into a line and each line may end up in a spiral—which in other terms becomes an infinite point.1 Theodor Lipps (1891, 1897) took a special interest in the Ionic column volutes with their spiral endings. In abstract terms, a spiral can become a straight line, and vice versa. Let us consider the end points of the line in Figure 12.12b, as a dialogical unity of two opposites. As the line in both ends can be extended infinitely—to the space (let us call it “linear infinity”) or into the “black hole” of the “eye of the spiral” (let us call it “closed infinity”). Closed infinity is “closed” as the line “ends” in the point of the eye of the spiral. Yet it is “open” as it proceeds to be an infinitely small point (in two-dimensional imagination) or an opening of the point into a new infinite line oriented into the 3rd dimension (depth). In contrast, the linear or open infinity of the straight line is open to continue into an imaginative infinity, while it is closed by its own end symbol (the last visible point in the line—compare with Figure 12.2).

Coordinating the Dialogue of Two Infinities in Architectural Gestalts Even as the two infinities are in a dialogical relation within each form (point as line, and line as point), in architectural forms we can observe dialogical relations between differently accentuated forms (Figure 12.13). Here spiral

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Figure 12.13  Transitions between infinities (fragment from Figure 12.4).

endings of different sizes finish up lines of different orientations (light grey arrows on the right side). At the same time, the whole Gestalt is guiding our attention upwards (red arrows in the right side). Figure 12.13 can be characterized as upwardly moving guidance with occasional stops. The orientation upwards (dark grey arrows) is not confined into any spirally initiated enclosures. Instead, the spiral forms are presented as a contrastive parallel to the upward orientation, directly implying a move to the “closed” infinity in only three locations (right side view, symmetric to the left side).

Simple Objects in Everyday Life With Dialogue of Two Infinities The tension between spiral and linear forms—closed and open infinities— is surrounding us in our daily lives in ornamentation close to the body (underwear and overwear), surrounding the body (textiles on linen, tapestries, ceiling painings, wallpapers, kolam,2 computer screens, etc.) and protecting

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Figure 12.14  An alpana entrance ornament from Bengal (Gupta, 1983, p. 144).

the borders of our space (gates, doors, etc.). Figure 12.14 illustrates a pattern of alpana—the decoration in front of a Bengali house, made daily by women with chalk, to mark the symbolic link between the home (inside) and the public world (outside) An entrance is always a physical place with psychologically dialogical functional structure. It may be symbolically open (“my door is always open for you!”) while it can be physically closed by a series of locks and security systems. Ornamenting is often working on the symbolic marking of the doors (Figure 12.15). Here we have a simple metal protection device on a door that encodes the dialogical nature of the open and closed infinities. In contrast to other examples (above), the door decoration in Figure 12.14 is dominated by the closed infinity patterns (spiral forms) that transfer into one another. The door is closed—not only physically, but also through the prevailing ornamentation pattern (compare with Figure 12.1).

General Conclusion: Dialogically encoded Umwelts Human beings decorate their environments—turning these into meaningful forms that are best labeled—following the tradition of Jakob von Üexküll—Umwelts. An Umwelt is an organism-centered substructure of the

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Figure 12.15  A metal decoration of a door: protecting the border.

environment that carries species-specific and (in human case) personal meaning (Chang, 2009). The central claim in this paper is that in human worlds—filled with ornamenting almost any object people handle—the Umwelts are dialogically encoded by various forms of oppositional meanings. These meanings operate at the intersection—on the border—of what is observable and what is implied beyond the observable, through our imagination. I posit that the dialogues in the Umwelt that involve imagination are between two kinds of infinities—“open” (linear) and “closed” (spiral). The recurrence of these general patterns in ornamentation is overwhelming— from door decorations to that of the body, equally well as in gardens and wallpapers—we can observe the tensions between these basic forms. Such tensions constitute the inherent dialogicality of the world that human beings have created. What I have discussed here can be considered to belong to the roots of the dialogical self theory (DST). Demonstrating that dialogical self has its externalization in the culturally built environments—where imagination and reality feed forward into each other—provides a foundation for the analyses of DST at higher level of its organization in terms of I-position structures. The inherent dialogue is created in human active transformation of their natural environments into culturally organized Umwelts. The unity of person and environment is necessarily dialogical in its nature.

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Acknowledgments The preparation of this paper as made possible by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant by Danske Grundforskningsfond. Suggestions by Pedro Bendassolli, Dany Boulanger, Pina Marsico, and Luca Tateo on an earlier version of this text are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes 1. If one moves from 2D to 3D images of the line turning into point—the point is an infinite line extending into depth of the 3rd dimension. Hence it is infinite in its nature. 2. Kolam is the term depicting daily renewed ornaments in front of houses in Tamil Nadu (Steinmann, 1988).

References Beckstead, Z. (Ed.). (2015). Cultural psychology of recursive processes. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Chang, R. S. (Ed.). (2009). A new look at Umwelt. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. Frank, S. (2011). Mein Garten ist mein Hertz: Ein Kulturgeschichte der Gärten in Deutschland. Köln, Germany: Dumont. Gupta, E. M. (1983). Brata und alpana in Bengalen. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag. Kandinsky, V. (1926). Punkt und Linie zu Fläche. Bern, Switzerland: Verteli Laugier, M. (1755). An essay on architecture. London, England: T. Osborne and Shipton. Lipps, T. (1891). Ästhetische Faktoren der Raumanschauung. Hamburg-Leipzig, Germany: Leopold Voss. Lipps, T. (1897). Raumästhetik und geometrisch- optische Täuschungen. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Metzger, W. (2008). Gesetze des Sehens. Eschborn, Germany: Dietmar Klotz. Picon, A. (2014). Ornaments: The political architecture and subjectivity. Gloucester, England: Wiley. Riegl, A. (1893). Stilfragen. Berlin, Germany: Georg Siemens. Steinmann, R. M. (1988). Kolam: Form, Technik und Verwendigung einer im Wandel begriffenen rituellen Volkskunst Tanil Nadus. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 113(2), 207–232.

13 The Flagellating Self 1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The framework of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics and dialogical self theory (DST) will find an interesting empirical analytic object in the historically recurrent act of flagellation, as depicted in European art: Using Albrecht Dürer’s Die Geisselung (versions of 1497 and 1512) together with The Penitent (Der Büssende,1510) as a starting point, I will show how the system of I-positions becomes elaborated in the act of flagellation, linked with the dynamics of the self-purification goals that can also have psychodynamic interpretations. This personal-cultural internalization process has regularly become externalized to become part of collective cultural dynamics as Shi’a Ashura rituals and European movements of public display of flagellants (Francisco Goya’s Procesión de disciplinantes 1812–1819) indicate. Still, it is not the psychoanalytic interpretations that can give us explanation of the purposeful self-harm that flagellation entails, but a new look through the semiotic dynamics perspective that borrows moments from psychoanalysis and develops DST further in introducing the notion of future-oriented purpose.

Beyond the Mind, pages 245–264 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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246    Beyond the Mind Boys begin swinging the chain-and-knife scourges at an early age. I saw boys as young as five or six grasp a wooden handle and awkwardly jerk the scourge in a half-cycle to fling the chains towards their backs. The knives fastened to the end links cut at their young shoulders for a few moments before older boys brought the novice flagellants’ session to a close. Teenagers and young men more vigorously whipped the scourges around one side and then the other, knives fleetingly slicing their backs, new dribbles of blood sprouting with each stroke. After friends forced an end to the frenzied devotion, they bathed and donned white tunics. When they reappeared, the red stains slowly spreading over the backs of their snowy clean garments were dramatic badges telling of sacrifice and spiritual zeal. (Hegland, 1998, p. 248)

This description of a ritualistic enactment of public self-flagellation in the Shi’a Ashura celebration of martyrdom serves as a dramatic entrance point to the general issue of human relating with one’s body, and marking on the body life events that are socially mandated and made personally relevant. “Being beaten” is a regular occasion in human lives—in its direct, or metaphorical, sense. It has been a form of punishment—applied by political powers to selected victims or by parents for disciplining the unruly offspring. Yet the activity of beating oneself is a transformation of such life events that is of interest for understanding the human psyche. Somehow the act of physical punishment directed at a selected other becomes turned into a cultural tool to handle the dialogicality of the self by personal action that is given a new direction of meaning. “Being beaten” by the person oneself becomes a self-purification tactic that can be brought out to public domain as an example for others in a ritualistic context (Hegland, 1998, 2003; Lea, 2004). I think that looking at the phenomena of other-flagellation and selfflagellation in the context of the dynamics of meaning-making by the self is an important—yet difficult—challenge for our understanding of the human psyche. Dialogical self theory (DST) can benefit from being confronted with the socially instituted practices of flagellation and its relations with self-flagellation. Even if social practices of flagellation may perhaps be extinct in many of our contemporary societies by now, these practices were widespread over human history; they went through the historical transition from social into personal practices, and their roles in both are completely based on meaning construction. Flagellation is a meaningful act of relating to a body—of others, or of myself—and not a simple act of violence. What makes the phenomena of flagellation interesting from the perspective of DST is its gradual internalization from the social practice that relates to the other, to a new practice that focuses on the self. It involves purposeful violence towards the body—physical injuries that are valuable

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as building up the layers of the semiotic skin (Nedergaard, 2016a, 2016b). Similar valuation of damages to the body have been later—19th century and beyond—presented in relation to scars obtained in battles or duels. Breaking into the biological skin—a damage that may heal, or stay forever—becomes a personally valued cultural artifact. Physical pain becomes cultural when it is evoked in the setting that is socially set up for achieving some goals. Historically, the act of flagellation has been part of punishment rituals in many societies, often linked with the practices of public executions. Before the condemned person is finally executed, he or she is beaten as part of the public ritual of execution. Probably the best known example of such inclusion in the Occidental world heritage is the whipping of the Christ at a pole prior to his execution through hanging from the cross. Many depictions of that act exist in European art.

Art as Evidence: Dialogical Self Encoded Into Einfühlung Into the Object The presentation in art has purposive authorship. Artists engage their audiences into dialogues about social, moral, and at times political matters. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a keen commentator on the social worlds of his times—of the decades before the Protestant Reformation started in Europe and during its upheavals (Panofsky, 2005). Dürer’s personal life course is filled with intense relating with theological, social, intellectual, and artistic circles of his contemporary German, Italian, and Low Countries societies. He reflected on human ways of being within the contexts of their societies, while, of course, making living from his artistic creativity along the lines of the art market demands of his times. Depictions by artists are oriented towards some goals of their own in the given society at the time. They are subjective commentaries upon the social themes of discourse, adding to these their particular affective flavor. They do not depict reality as it is (or was), but create a message of what kind of as-if world the depicted facet of reality might lead to. Such messages are often encoded with iconic subtlety filled with meta-level reflection upon the reality—irony, sarcasm, or didactic preaching. Figure 13.1—coming from his earlier work (he was 26 at the time) illustrates Dürer’s look at the public nature of the beating of the victim (Christ) in the setting of pre-Reformation Europe. Dürer presents a Biblical version of the story, albeit from his own humanistic standpoint. In Dürer’s depiction, a number of Biblical details of the scene are transformed into a new form of the artist’s visual commentary. The crown of thorns—supposed to

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Figure 13.1  The Flagellation (Albrecht Dürer, 1497).

be an extra torturing and humiliating device for the accused—is found on the ground abandoned by the crowd, next to the dog. Christ is depicted frontally for the viewer, while the whippers are almost disappearing in the crowd as a whole. There is a clear biblical link in this imaginary presentation. According to the interpretations of the Bible, it was the angry crowd who demanded the punishment of the perpetrator (Christ), while the local administrator (Pontius Pilatus) was not convinced there was a reason for the punishment in the drastic manner of beating, to be followed by execution. Yet the crowds wanted to see blood flowing—and the spectacle of public beating made that desire fulfilled. The social power of the crowd prevailed—an act of exaggerated local democracy in the Roman society at 33 years AD. Figure 13.1 depicts the imaginary scene of the public beating in great variety of details—the heterogeneity of the crowd becomes unified (“We want him beaten, and dead!”).

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DST and Explicit Social Dialogues: Learning From Dürer How is such presentation of suffering (Figure 13.1) made possible at the intersection of N different dialogically operating selves? DST has outlined the dialogical self as a version of a “mini-society”—yet in that role it needs to consider the collective moves of a society between the extremes of wellstructured social order (hierarchical totalitarian order built on fully transitive relations) and a completely ill-structured order (the haphazard moves of a crowd, which can at times become united in specific goal orientation). Human social lives involve many examples of temporarily unifying the structures of I-positions—political parties and clubs of football fans excel in the methods of such homogenization of crowds in a particular direction. A closer examination of Figure 13.1 provides us with a differentiated view of the collective that involves high heterogeneity of I-positions depicted by the artist. The generic theme here is collective humiliation by the crowd. While two of the figures are set up to be the actual beaters (standard practice in such punishment form at the time), all the others are “participating” in the collective act with different personal versions of distancing from it—yet maintaining focus of attention on the act. Persons in a crowd—even if it acts in unison—are differentially involved in humiliating the victim through their unique I-position structures that give rise to their public participation in action. I-positions within the dialogical self become temporary we-positions in crowd actions, feeding further into the internalized functioning of the I-positions system. Of course Dürer’s version in Figure 13.1 is a fiction—created by the artist who creates a commentary upon the present social life on the basis of images telling the story about a supposed event that happened nearly 14 centuries before. Dürer— like any other artist—encodes into his work a hypergeneralized meaning field about the ordinary cruelties and pleasures of people in society, as these are viewed through his own subjective lens. Such encoding references backwards—in Figure 13.1 to the events of 33 A.D.—and forwards—to our times in the 21st century. The author—writer, artist, or ordinary person—is involved in the virtual positioning of one’s own dialogical self structure in creating a public message that is distanced from reality, yet still relates to it in some new capacity. Such capacity may entail valuation of the real—yet in ways that remain embedded in the message. The message, so to say, “teases” the recipient. In introducing the notion of VFP (“virtual fictional/factual positioning”) as an extension of DST, The horizontal and vertical movements of the author within his/her own selfspace enable him/her to enter into a continuous dialogical relationship

250    Beyond the Mind with his/her own self and the external world and, on another level, his/her fictional world. In this dialogical world view, the author pictures the world through the eyes of his/her hero and thus creates a “field of vision” which is an arena for the competition of various viewpoints. (Barani, Yahya, & Talif, 2014, p. 763)

Dialogical self thus works at multiple planes at the same time—regulating its own ways of being and commenting upon the society to which it fully belongs. Not only do writers and artists do that—any ordinary person inserts into his or her own personal world some fictional positions that mediate their relations with themselves. What aspects of his social realities of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries did Dürer encode into his graphic images? His personal humanistic credo in reflecting upon the European society in its pre-Reformation years is thoroughly analyzed (Hass, 2000). While creating illustrations for the standard story of the Bible—Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—his message to his contemporaries (and to us) continues to trigger affective tensions. Figure 13.2—presenting two of his engravings from 1510–1512— gives us some possible hints. Figure 13.2a is another look at the act of whipping—supposedly of Christ. In the image here, the crowd has faded off, leading us to focus on the vigor of the act by the two whippers (compare with Figure 13.1 where both are almost invisible within the humiliating crowd). No crown of thorns is detectable in Figure 13.2a—the scene is presented as that of two dedicated men whipping a third one. The dynamics of the whipping act is accentuated by the body positions and facial expressions of the whippers. The adamancy of their acting is encoded into their facial expressions and in their bodies involved in whipping—while the victim at the pole is depicted in a body position to endure the torture. The scene in Figure 13.2a was part of Dürer’s Small Passion series—a book including total of 37 illustrations of the life-and-death course of Christ. The book was meant for public consumption as a devotion-promoting text. Yet—what kind of devotion was promoted by Dürer? And why would his implicit suggestions keep puzzling us, centuries later? Dürer’s series was nominally about Christ’s passions—yet what the image in Figure 13.2a guides us towards observing the passions of the others— in Figure 13.1 the passions of the crowd who humiliates the victim of the beating, and in Figure 13.2a the passion entailed in the act of whipping—of the other. The passionate whipping of the other—a psychological phenomenon of basic interest—becomes the focus of the artist’s presentation.3

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Figure 13.2  Acts on the body: from whipping the other to whipping oneself. (a) Albrecht Dürer Die Geisselung, 1512; (b) Der Büssende, 1510).

The question asked becomes that of general human psyche—how can assignment of a power role to a person lead her or him to invade the lives of other persons and create various forms of bodily invasions? The history of human inventions of torture technologies is a material excursion into the functioning of the dialogical self in its societal contexts. Invasions into the human body have for centuries been arenas for social control over the otherwise uncontrollable minds and hearts.

Dialogues With the Whip: DST and Self-Flagellation Acting violently towards the skin is not only a phenomenon of acting upon others—it can become turned towards oneself. Figure 13.2b illustrates another passion linked with whipping by the whipper—in this case, of oneself. The passive whipper is kneeling in front of an altar, with a whip relaxed over his shoulder. No fervent act of beating (as in Figures 13.1 and 13.2a) is depicted.

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The person is involved in what in the history of Catholic religious system is called “taking the discipline.” Importantly it was the arena of the upper back (“upper discipline”) that was the target of invasions into the body for “taking the discipline” (Largier, 2007, pp. 441–442. The discipline was carefully kept aside from acts of aggression—the value of the discipline was in its spiritual impact on the one who was assigned—by others or self—to “take” it.

History of Internalizing Flagellation The monastic tradition of self-flagellation for purification purposes emerged in the Christian religion slowly—out of the punishment of others (as in Figures 13.1 and 13.2a). By the 11th century, it became part of the test of one’s spiritual purity, as advocated by St. Peter Damianus. In the centuries that followed, the practices of collective self-purification through regular whipping of oneself proliferated all over Europe. While first a strictly monastic tradition, by the mid-13th and 14th centuries it episodically turned into public ritual practices in different times in Europe. The wider social context for these was dramatic—it coincided with plague epidemics (Largier, 2007). The practices of valued self-injuries would become externalized to be publicly visible—in the public processions of the disciplinantes in the local communities (as later described by Goya—Figure 13.4). They came to local communities to present their sufferings for the sake of their religious commitment: “Membership encompassed every occupation and trade. Flagellation in reverence to Christ and as a form of sharing his sufferings constituted an important ritual in the religious life of these fraternities, and this activity was believed to procure the salvation of those who engaged in it” (Nakash, 1993, p. 179, emphasis added). The notion of “taking the discipline” has been an accepted reference to the practice of self-flagellation in the Catholic traditions. It is a deeply spiritual act—connected with the self-inflicted bodily pain. The instrument for the whipping was presented within the unquestionably accepted meaning system (Figure 13.3). With the whip deeply signified—no part of it left without relevant meaning (the handle carrying the double unity of brotherly love and love for God), the physical act of using the tool on the body would be well prepared as a monological act of “mortifying” the mischievous, rebellious, or otherwise sinful body. The roots of flagellation are thus dialogical, while the act itself is a unidirectional goal-oriented intervention using the unity of all generalized values—translated into the structure of the whipping instrument. The person who would “mortify” one’s body has psychological goal—set by oneself and by the religious institution—to overcome the

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Figure 13.3  The meanings inscribed into the whip (Largier, 2007, Figure 1.9).

present state of affairs. Two interesting moments are worth mentioning in the medieval European monastic self-flagellation rituals: (a) who prepared the instruments—often these are given by the head monk calling for the ceremony, and (b) it was customary that the self-hitting takes place in darkness (Largier, 2007). These features add to the semiotization of the whip (Figure 13.3) in specifying the social guidance (by the monastery) to individual persons to enter into a dialogue with oneself through the selfbeating practice. It amounts to socially guided constructive internalization demand. At some times—and circumstances—the monastic rituals were made into public rituals among many other religious demonstrations, of which there were many in medieval Europe. Christianity has no privilege in inventing public displays of body-invasive ritual acts. The acting upon the body—through self-inflicted pain— is presented as the act of disciplining the self through the body in many religious systems. In other similar cultural traditions, the Shi’a practices of public collective self-flagellation during the Ashura festivals involve a similar participation in the suffering of the martyrs—the originators of the given branch of Islam. The public performance of the rituals has been over

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Figure 13.4  Francisco Goya Procesión de disciplinantes (1812–1819).

centuries concentrated on the body-hurting aspects—often tempered by local lawmakers who have tried (and failed) to not let the public to observe the public bloody acts of dialogues with the self. Both the Christian and Shi’a manifest acts of “attacks” on the body—by whips and chains—are framed by meaning constructions that turn the obvious immediate meaning of the act (pain) from a potentially negative feeling context to its opposite. The damage to the body becomes a meaningful act of spiritual importance—and acquires overwhelming positive aura for the person involved as well as other participants in the ritual.4 What usually goes unnoticed in the description of the external (bloody) aspects of the rituals is the dramatization of the meaningfulness of the act—the poetic expressions of suffering that are produced interspersed with hitting or cutting into the skin (Flaskerud, 2005; Mottahedeh, 2005). The skin-invasive hits are painful markers of the suffering narrative that is being enacted in public. The public display of wounds of various kinds—those obtained in duels,5 or on battlefields (Glancy, 2004)—have for centuries been a semiotic vehicle for negotiating Self  Society relations. But by which process within the dialogical self is such transformation of painful acts into enjoyable ones possible? Can such transformation be explained by reference to the indeterminate “black box” of the unconscious desires for performing masochistic acts and cherishing these publicly?

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The historical process of attacking the body for meaningful results has come by the full circle—from beating of the Other in public (Figures 13.1 and 13.2a), to self-beating for intra-self-purification in private (Figure 13.2b), and to episodic presentation of the act of self-purification in public rituals (Figure 13.3), over the last two millennia. That the move— public by others/nonpublic by self/personally public in ritual—plays a psychological role in the making of the dialogical self is to be expected. The dialogue with oneself—mediated by physical acts upon one’s own skin—is brought out to be observed by others for the sake of further internalization of the values involved. No other personally relevant skin-oriented act gets similar public exposure—there is no hairdressing, or skin tanning, visible in publicly central places in urban environments. It would be slightly ridiculous to see ardent sunbathers setting up their relevant activity context in the middle of a central square of a medieval city like Lublin, rather than on a beach. Yet the disciplinantes would perform their ommegang (walk around) like any other religious procession in the most visible locations in town. How can DST—the invention of the end of the 20th century—make sense of it? Having been originally built on the existing meaning system referencing the person (i.e., the common-sense notion of “self”), DST accomplished an important step to go beyond the common sense by turning a singular term into a polyphonic concept, defining it through the multitude of constantly interrelating I-positions (Hermans, 2001, 2012, 2015; Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Such constant interrelating allows for various forms of relationships between the I-positions to be defined—ranging from total independence (zero dialogicality) to harmonious interdependence, on to contradictory relationships of rivalries, tensions, conflicts (and their maintenance as well as resolutions), and, finally to the emergence of new I-positions (synthesis). The body—from skin (as its border) inwards—has been by far less central for DST. Yet—given the history of goals-oriented cultural rituals that are supposed to guide the psyche in socially desirable directions—that is an interesting underemphasis. There has been no systematic coverage of on-body based I-positions (“I-as-my skin,” “I-as-my-nose,” etc.), nor does the construction of I-positions penetrate the organism under the skin (e.g., “I-as-my-heart” or “I-as-my-intestines”)—despite the fact that (metaphorically speaking) persons report their hearts “lost” (“I left my heart in San Francisco” as the classic song suggests) or worry about the intestines “acting out.” The practices of beating upon the skin—but not penetrating through it in directly invasive ways (Nedergaard, 2016b)—are interesting for DST by their happening on the border of the inner biological body and the

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ephemeral reflection upon the self. A penitent who regularly “takes the discipline” attacks one’s own skin with visible and (painfully) feel-able results—with the goal of affective generalization that turns the immediate pain into its symbolic opposite. The pain becomes “sharing,” “feeling with” (the martyrs or Christ), and “participating” (e.g., through hurting myself I feel how Christ “participates” in my life). Pain becomes pleasurable through semiotic mediation. How does such process proceed?

The Hedonistic Cycle Figure 13.5 sets a stage for the semiotic mediation processes that can be seen as involved in body-related social practices. Even if set up on the example of pain resulting from flagellation hits (i.e., hits purposefully delivered—by oneself or another—on the skin, in contrast to accidental hits the body happens to receive), it could cover the processes of meaning construction also for other kinds of body contact (e.g., squeezing, caressing, massaging, applying various body lotions, etc.). The biological impact upon the real skin triggers a meaning construction (“pain,” “touch”) that becomes affectively generalized through the affective generalizing filter (GOOD  nonGOOD). These would be reactive parts of the meaning-making system— with a dialogue about whether a particular feeling is positively or negatively

Desire for MORE

HYPER-GENERALIZED SIGN FIELD that overwhelms all Psyche

THE HIT GENERALIZING VALUATION (GOOD non-GOOD) AVOIDANCE SURFACE OF THE BODY

X = “PAIN!!” non-X

Figure 13.5  The hedonistic cycle of pain.

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evaluated by the dialogical self.6 Yet for the future-oriented relevance of the given act performed on the skin, such reactive meaning-making would not suffice.7 What is at stake is not generalized meaning construction of affective kind (“I like the feeling,” “I hate the feeling” on my skin), but the hypergeneralized feeling-field that starts to function as a promoter sign for the future. That proactive part of the meaning-making based on the particular “events” (a hit by a whip, touch by my father, “overdose” of ultraviolet light in the tanning studio, etc.)—but hypergeneralized beyond verbal reflections—is what most body-related rituals are aimed at. The hypergeneralized sign field leads to the desire to continue, or repeat, the cherished experience. Thus the person “taking the discipline” hits him- or herself again. The pain produced becomes not only pleasurable (“good”) but deeply needed by the person, beyond any words.8

Hyper-Generalized Sign Fields and “I-Prisons” The hyper-generalized state of the dialogical relationship with oneself— with body and the psyche treated together—can be seen (in terms of DST) as a temporary non-dialogical state (“I-prison”) which is transcended at the next move in the self-to-body-to-self cycle (Figure 13.4). The notion of “I-prison” can also take on stable state of affairs: The person can be so identified with a position that he has no access to any different position. Take the example of a person who describes himself as “depressed.” Suppose that, at the same time, other people and even professionals see this person as depressed. Depression then becomes his identity, a way of functioning in society. It becomes a basic story in his life and there are no other stories, or themes, available. The sense of the self is fused with the experience of depression. This happens when emotions are so overwhelming that the person is stuck in them and no movement in the direction of another position is possible. (Hermans & Hermans Konopka, 2010, p. 307)

The goal of social institutions is often to support the movement of persons—through their own “free will”—to such “I-prisons”—temporarily or permanently. Therapy instituted for a “depressive patient” is a ritual of liberating him or her from an “I-prison.” Promising spiritual salvation is another form of moving a person from the “I-prison” of I-as-sinner to that of I-as-believer. From the point of view of the social coordination of the personal acts of dialogue with the body, the episodic social appearances of the “disciplinarians” in public domains provide the social proliferation of the story of their identity. Social restrictions upon such processions that local authorities in varied locations have episodically put on such processions

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indicate the social dialogue of letting the social presence of such identities become part of the public arena. Making such public appearances becomes a personal necessity for the persons whose dialogue with themselves is private and body-focused—accepting all the ambivalences such public exposure may bring.9

Creating the Lingering Futures The Hedonistic Circle model (Figure 13.5) does not lead a practitioner of any body-related strains-filled practices into “I-prison”—at least not on a constant basis. It allows for regulation of the level of semiotic mediation (i.e., not all body-acts become treated through hypergeneralization—many fade to become ordinary ritualistic acts of no overwhelming feeling). Figure 13.6 illustrates the function of the ritualistic actions in the guidance of one’s further development. The crucial issue is the generation of futureoriented approximate but affectively imbued potential future atmospheres for the person. Getting rid of one’s “existing sins” is not merely a transaction of commerce about the past or the present, but an opportunity for the future—to stay within a general affective atmosphere that would guide the particular actions in ever-new and unpredictable contexts. Marking the triggering of such hypergeneralized affective fields through ritualistic pain— attack upon the surface of the skin—is the link between the body and “the soul” that is supposed to build overwhelming value system for oneself. The use of meaningful (sign-mediated) acts in the process of coordinating I-positions through bodily acts is the potential birthplace for

I-Position that grows to dominance (“I-as-sinful”) and leads to emergence of sign S that triggers act B

PRESENT MOMENT S

CATALYTIC FIELD: HYPER-GENERALIZED sign field that orients the Self towards the future (PROMOTER SIGN that by its affective abstraction extends towards the FUTURE and flavors all of the currently emerging PRESENTs)

B Past

The Act

Future

IRREVERSIBLE TIME

Figure 13.6  Semiotic dynamics of self-purification: Organizing the dialogical self in the indeterminate future.

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promoter positions. The cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics perspective adds to the DST the focus on meaningful bodily rituals, some of which are made powerful through the sensation of pain. The specific sensation that becomes understood as “pain” is unique to person and context of its invocation. Yet the framing of such sensation in a semiotic context allows for parallel actions of similar meanings, leading to the intersubjective acceptance of these as “sharing.” Body-invasive rituals performed in public are new opportunities for the development of the dialogical self.

Conclusion: Bridging Dynamic and Structural Foci in DST The importance of psychonalysis in the context of phenomena of flagellation rituals in human history is that it is not necessary for any theoretical explanation, while its phenomenological observations are profound. It has accomplished its role by drawing our attention to complex phenomena of a body-invasive kind (Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990), but its explanatory power— due to the reliance on limited versions of mythology and the assumption of the unconscious—are not necessary for the present context. In this paper, I have replaced the notion of “unconscious” by the notion of hypergeneralized sign field (Figures 13.5 and 13.6). That field would also have no explanatory power in itself—there would be no difference in causal attributions of desire to be beaten is caused by the unconscious versus the desire to be beaten is caused by the upconscious (i.e., the hypergeneralized affective field). Both causal statements are equally inadequate as they presume an entity (“unconscious”/”upconscious”) that is assumed to be a cause for some outcomes. Causality operates in the human psyche through catalytic cycles that are open-ended towards the future. In fact, the discourses about direct causality (“A causes B”)—commonsensically accepted and useful in everyday life for their cognitive economy10—are misleading for the construction of theoretical language for understanding the human psyche. The whole history of DST is an example of creating a scientific language that allows the researchers to capture features of the self that are masked as if nonexistent in everyday language use (Hermans & Gieser, 2012). Multiplying oneself into a “society” of I-positions—an act that seems nonsensical from the rational perspective of the “Occam’s Razor”—actually opens new opportunities for the theory of the self. It allows the theorist to look at their relations—the internal structure of the dialogical self—and for the therapists to take actions. By sharing the notions of “self” and “voice” with common language, the DST takes on the role of a “bridging theory” (Hermans, 2015) in the relations of dialogical science and (usually) monologically presented everyday life. DST can also perform such “bridging functions”

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in relation with other theoretical systems—psychoanalysis (through the notion of “shadow I-position”) and cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics (through the notion of a “promoter position”). However, the “bridging dialogue” between different theories has its metatheoretical (“metapositional”) constraints. The basic axioms of the systems limit—but do not eliminate—such dialogues. The ontological versus developmental axiomatic split is the most general constraint upon linking of theories. A description of a system in a static state (structure) is “blind” to its transformation to a new form. Likewise, a theory that emphasizes the constant “flow of the world” is limited in its capturing of the structure within which such flow happens. In other terms, the classic Heraclitan saying that one cannot step into the same river twice leads to the overlooking of the riverbanks that make the river possible in the first place. The focus on hypergeneralization of sign fields—the central tenet in the present paper—is in contradiction with two axiomatic moments that are widely accepted in psychology. First, generalization through abstraction takes place in the form of context-freed abstract concepts (e.g., in mathematics the notion of infinity is easily definable as N = N + 1). Second, structures are based on transitive relations (if A > B and B > C then A > C). Both of these are not accepted in the present theoretical system—abstract generalization can happen in both concept-like and field-like forms, and in all systems that develop, it is intransitivity that needs to be at the base of theoretical arguments. From these changed axiomatic bases, the dialogical self generalizes from and with the richness of its relations, through specific action rituals, for the setting of future orientation for the self. From that perspective, flagellation phenomena are not esoteric aberrations of the human psyche temporarily gone awry, but expectable, and powerful, key moments in the progression of the dialogicality of the self. What is added to the dynamics of I-positions here is the transition—at relevant times—to specific ritualistic actions that feed forward into hypergeneralized meaningful ways of being in the indeterminate future. What makes the notion of hypergeneralization functional in our explanatory system is its location in the vertical model where the highest level frames the following moves on the lower ones. It also legitimizes the use of approximate terms in otherwise well-structured theory building. Some aspects of reality—especially that that is yet to come—are necessarily vague and unpredictable. That generic “aboutness” needs to find its way into a theory, rather than be replaced by seemingly precise estimations (e.g., subjective probability estimates). The abstracted hypergeneralized field mediates the constant movement between the opposites, all generated by the model. In a similar way, Albrecht Dürer’s humanistic exposition of

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the passions for beating and being beaten in his own social environments continue to guide our thinking about dialogicality of the self six centuries later—where actions upon the skin can take as escalated a form as the practices of flagellations afforded in the past.

Acknowledgments The preparation of this paper as made possible by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant by Danske Grundforskningsfond. Discussions with Hubert Hermans and Vinny Hevern were instrumental in fine tuning of the arguments about dialogical self theory. I am also grateful for feedback on an earlier version of this paper from Jensine Nedergaard, Dany Boulanger, Pedro Bendassolli, Luca Tateo, and Pina Marsico.

Notes 1. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Dialogical Self—Lublin, September 10, 2016, at the symposium Dialogical Self Theory and Psychoanalysis. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. Five centuries later—in the context of the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Maslach, & Haney, 2000) the process of escalation of violence towards victims through the social role mandated disciplining actions was documented. Ordinary young men—put into the role of “prison guards” in a quasi-artificial experiment—steadily increased their coercive and aggressive tactics, humiliation, and dehumanization of the prisoners day by day. The staff had to remind the guards frequently to refrain from such abuses. However, the guards’ hostile treatment of the prisoners, together with arbitrary and capricious displays of their dominating power and authority, soon began to have adverse effects on the prisoners. (Zimbardo et al., 2000, p. 2001) 4. Almost all religious traditions known have used some action upon the body to facilitate one or another spiritual—in ordinary terms psychological—outcome for the persons involved. This includes hanging from the hooks in Buddhist festivals (Obeyesekere, 1981, pp 142–149), fire walking, body-piercing, and so on. All body-related actions in any religious context involve action upon the skin—the fully finite and total border zone of the body. Through impact on that material border zone different directions of meaning construction are promoted. 5. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) reported from his trip to the University of Heidelberg in Germany in the 1870s about the personal displays of duel wounds in public: Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, because. the scars they leave will show so well there; and it is also said

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

that these face wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. (Clemens, 1880, p. 64){\ntext} A similar touch of the same part of the body would lead to completely opposite valuations if performed by a close person (act of love) versus an unknown passer-by (act of body violation). Reactive meanings here are sufficient for the acts of entertainment—that need to cover specific extents of time, without leaving anything (but a desire of more of such temporary experiences) for the future. Contemporary consumer society with its proliferation of entertainment activities—focusing on reaction rather than pro-action—guarantees the proliferation of polyphonic dialogical self with rapidly emerging and vanishing dialogical relations that become extinct when replaced by others. The dialogical self this way loses time perspective and becomes focused upon the infinitely extended present, with no future reflections needed. A completely secular version of self-flagellation—without hitting—of our contemporary times is the need for physical exercise—on a private treadmill or in a fitness studio. The whole body is “pushed” by the act of exercising to fatigue—all framed in the hypergeneralized feeling “healthy.” A Swedish woman married to an Islamic husband decides to go out in Swedish context wearing a headscarf. The husband does not insist on that, but she feels the need to do it for her own identity. She knows that the Swedish public would look at her very differently once she does it—so she hesitates. Finally she does it—and gets the expected treatment (see details in McGinty, 2006, pp. 127–151). It is easy to make sense of a common language statement “aspirin is good against flu” than to dive into the elaboration how the chemical structure could possibly do it. Yet for scientific enterprise, it is the latter that is necessary for use. Language of science and common language are two different sign systems that are mutually intelligible only in specific border areas of the encounter of the two fields.

References Barani, F., Yahya, W. R. W., & Talif, R. B. (2014). “Virtual fictional/factual positioning”: Mediating dialogical concepts in psychological and literary studies. Theory & Psychology, 24(6), 755–774. Clemens, S. L. (1880). A tramp abroad. Hartford, CT: American. Flaskerud, I. (2005). “Oh, my heart is sad. It is Moharram, the month of Zaynab.” In K. S. Aghaie (Ed.), The women of Karbala (pp. 65–91). Austin: University of Texas Press. Glancy, J. A. (2004). Beating of beatings (2 Corinthians 11:23–25). Journal of Biblical Literature, 123(1), 99–135.

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Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97. Hass, A. (2000). Two devotional manuals by Albrecht Dürer: The “Small Passion” and the “Engraved Passion”: Iconography, context and spirituality. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 63(2), 169–230. Hegland, M. E. (1998). Flagellation and fundamentalism: (Trans)forming meaning, identity, and gender through Pakistani women’s rituals of mourning. American Ethnologist, 25(2), 240–266. Hegland, M. E. (2003). Shi’a women’s rituals in Northwest Pakistan: The shortcomings and significance of resistance. Anthropological Quarterly, 76(3), 411–442. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 243–281. Hermans, H. J. M. (2012). Dialogical self theory and the increasing multiplicity of I-positions in a globalizing society. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 137, 1–21. Hermans, H. J. M. (2015). Dialogical Self in a complex world: the need for bridging theories. EJOP: European Journal of Psychology, 11(1), 1–4. Hermans, H. J. M., & Gieser, T. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of dialogical self theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hermans, H. J. M., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Largier, N. (2007). In praise of the whip. New York, NY: Zone Books. Lea, V. (2004). Mebengokre ritual wailing and flagellation: A performative outlet for emotional self-expression. Indiana (Berlin), 21, 113–125. McGinty, A. M. (2006). Becoming Muslim: Western women’s conversions to Islam. London, England: Palgrame MacMillan. Mottahedeh, N. (2005). Ta’ziyeh: A twist in history of everyday life. In K. S. Aghaie (Ed.), The women of Karbala (pp. 25–43). Austin: University of Texas Press. Nakash, Y. (1993). An attempt to trace the origin of the rituals of Ashura. Die Welt des Islams, 33(2), 161–181. Nedergaard, J. I. (2016a). Theory of semiotic Skin: Making sense of the flux on the border. Culture and Psychology, 22(3), 387–403. Nedergaard, J. I. (2016b, September). Dialogue in deep invasions: Scars creating dialogical fluidity and become mediators of the self. Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Dialogical Self, Lublin, Poland. Obeyesekere, G. (1981). Medusa’s hair. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Obeyesekere, G. (1990). The work of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Panofsky, E. (2005). The life and work of Albrecht Dürer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., & Haney, C. (2000). Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, transformations, consequences. In T. Blass (Ed.), Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm (pp. 193–234). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

COFFEE BREAK

4

The Sublime Movement Between Infinities Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

P

art IV of this book took the readers to deeply sensual domains of human ways of being, arriving at the dynamic subtlety of the sublime—a transitory state between the mundane and the beautiful. Most of the existing philosophical and psychological perspectives have treated the beautiful (aesthetic) as an opposite to the mundane—losing the boundary between them. The beautiful even becomes specified as being beyond the border of the mundane—to be kept separate from the latter. The aesthetic is for the pure pleasure of the beauty—without links to practical life. This worldview is of the static kind—while in this book it is the dynamic side of the psychological functions that is prioritized. Within that dynamic move between the mundane and the aesthetic, the intermediate state of the sublime gains its central role. It was Edmund

Beyond the Mind, pages 265–267 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Burke (1729–1797) who, in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), introduced the sublime: Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant of terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is the source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible: but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience. (Burke, 1757, pp. 13–14, emphasis added)

This kind of understanding of the making of the sublime by the human psyche gives us interesting possibilities for formal presentations of the affect in terms of emerging helical dynamics of the feeling tone The sublime is created by human actions through imagination—the affective primacy of the human psyche is crucial here. The spatial aesthetics of architecture is built upon the assumptions of the sublime—there remains something suggested but not immediately perceivable in the architectural forms. These forms tease us—architecture works like music (Picon, 2014, p. 147). Despite their completeness the forms nevertheless feel to us as if they continue beyond their end symbols. The musical effects of architecture are granted by the imagination that transcends the ends. The unity of the real and the imaginary is constantly being exercised—by us, ourselves. The two infinities—spiral and linear—are of the kind of events that keep us constantly on the move to learn the next state of the affairs of the lines. How is a line an “event”? Ontologically speaking, such a claim would be nonsense. Yet—developmentally—any line emerges by some process of its making. A human being draws a straight line that ends at some point. Our imagination may lead us to see its end vanishing into nonline— the line drawn is straight. Yet in the mathematical imagination of Nikolai Lobachevsky on February, 23, 1826, the imaginary line does not end but continues on an infinitely large sphere to link with the other end of the same line. This totally counterintuitive idea has revolutionized geometry over the past two centuries. Psychology as science continues to be in dire need for such breakaways of ideas, beyond socially overdetermined common sense. How could that be done? GM: Still I wonder about infinity—in this case about the centrality of spiral forms—why are you focusing on these? What is the theoretical gain from a focus on the eye of the spiral indicating the infinity into depth?

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JV: Spiral forms are the most ordered nonsymmetric curves that can be viewed to proceed in both directions—towards the “eye” of the spiral (the infinite point in its middle—that for me defines the spiral infinity), or in the opposite direction—away from the eye, towards the turning of the curved line into a straight line (“linear infinity”). In different representations, either one or the other direction is emphasized—usually the one outwards from the eye. I focus on the “inward” view as it flows into the infinity of the eye. In reality, both views coexist—so the spiral actually is the unity of the two infinities. The outer end of the line proceeding from the spiral becomes a line. GM: But this sounds like useless philosophy—one can ask “so what?” JV: Indeed. But usually “useless philosophies” turn out to be in the center of basic science—towards which psychology has long way to go. All natural forms are curvilinear—there are no straight lines in nature. And the image of the spiral is first found in nature—in seashells. Its uses in science—especially the three-dimensional helical models of DNA—have been productive abstractions in biological science. GM: Philosophies aside—what could be the role of such abstract infinities for psychology as science? In Part V of our book, you write about the role of culture in making psychology theoretically coherent—but how would the images of spirals help here? JV: All phenomena of development—of organisms, and of histories of sciences—proceed along some nonlinear paths. There are periods of high creativity in psychology at some times in some countries—in North America in the 1890s, in Germany and Russia in 1920s, in Spain in the 1980s. These periods of innovation are interspersed with periods of “normal science” production (in terms of Thomas Kuhn). Our concern for innovation in psychology is also helical in its history—in 2017 we borrow ideas from 1920s, 1850s, and maybe 1760s. Ideas in sciences are rare; empirical practices keep us busy in our workplaces.

References Burke, E. (1757). A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful. London, England: R and J. Dodsley. Picon, A. (2014). Ornament: The politics of architecture and subjectivity. Gloucester, England: Wiley.

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Regulation in Societal and Interpersonal Processes

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14 Culture Within Development Similarities Behind Differences1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Culture is the center of human life—which has been viewed in psychology in two ways. The newly developing cultural psychology views culture as inherent socially constructed organizer of each and every human mind in its social relations (it belongs to the general psychology). The semiotic perspective in cultural psychology focuses researchers’ interests on self-organizing sign systems— as cultural regulators of the human mind. Such regulators orient the mind towards its encounters with the always uncertain future and are thus the core for making sense of human development. We live culture in each and every moment of our human existence.

Cultural psychology is a new and quickly growing area in psychology. Interestingly, the term culture has been difficult to use in both everyday and scientific discourses in the history of human societies (Jahoda, 1993). Different features of what have been considered central for culture—language, folk Beyond the Mind, pages 271–291 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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traditions, and so on—have been viewed as relevant for psychology since 1860s. In that respect, cultural psychology was at the roots of all psychology becoming an autonomous science (in 1870s). However, psychology has attempted to avoid looking at higher psychological functions—the domain of culture (e.g., the “American tradition” of behaviorism). Crucial questions of the functioning of the human mind are embedded precisely within the affective and mental complexity of human living that entails the reality of freedom of acting and feeling, construction of poems and computer programs, travels to the previously unknown places on Earth and in outer space. Culture has been a value-laden term—“having culture” has been usually viewed as better than “not having culture.” This kind of attribution has been part of the colonial conquest of the European societies over the past centuries. History, as it is represented in such common language uses of the notion culture, entails social marking of ingroup/outgroup relations. Such historical implications have been an obstacle for developing culture as an object for basic science. Culture as a term in science needs to be seen as free of socially applied and value-based connotations. It is a general—abstract—scientific term similar to gravity, electricity, organism, infinity, determinism, and so on. In the recent two decades, psychologists have started to use culture in their talking and writings. Two branches of psychology make use of the notion culture—cross-cultural psychology (CCP) and cultural psychology (CP) have gained prominence in psychology. These two disciplines have clearly different arenas for knowledge construction. An analysis of cross-cultural psychology’s ways of creating scientific knowledge is described elsewhere (Valsiner, 2003). CCP is a branch of differential psychology—as it focuses on the differences between societies. Its relevance for CP is in providing material about diversity of solutions to similar problems of everyday living all over the world. Thus, the data gathered by CCP are useful for CP, but all explanations for the “cross-cultural differences” that CCP reveals need to come from CP, as the latter maintains the primacy of theory over accumulation of empirical data. What is outlined here is the way in which cultural psychology as part of general psychology creates its basic knowledge.

Cultural Psychology as a Branch of General Psychology Cultural psychology—a new direction at the intersection of social and developmental psychology on the one hand, and cultural anthropology on the other—is an effort to create a general social science where human orientation towards changing the world is included in the domain of science. As culture is a result of evolutionary process—it is one where the biological

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evolution has overcome itself. It has given way to cultural construction of out environments—and through that—of ourselves. Human beings orient themselves towards the future, create images of the future that become goals, and handle the possibilities of both reaching and failing to reach these goals. This is accomplished through tools of an ideal kind—signs that are linked with different material carriers—and constitute the semiotic mediation perspective (Valsiner, 2000, 2007; Valsiner & Rosa, 2007) within cultural psychology. But why was the emergence of culture as semiotic mediation inevitable? Most nonhuman species have been proven to adjust to their environments quite sufficiently without the invention of such special instruments. An answer to this question may be in the realm of increasing variability of the ecological demands, uncertainly of their futures, and—most importantly— perception of such uncertainty of the futures on the basis of experiences of the past. Such perception requires memory functions to link these past experiences with the immediate perception/action field.

Who Is Being Studied in CP? Culture can be exemplified within different psychological processes by which persons interact with their worlds. Each person is expected to change in some direction in ways that become temporarily stable—yet lead to further change. Cultural psychology begins from sampling of an individual person together with his or her participation in social institutions (e.g., V in Figure 14.1). It is the individual case—studied as an integrated system in its interaction with environment—that is the basis for all scientific data in psychology. It builds on the notion of life-course trajectories exemplified by the trajectory equifinality model (TEM—Sato et al., 2007). How does generalization proceed, based on individual cases? Based on the systemic analysis of the individual-in-social-context, a generalized model of the cultural functioning of the person is constructed. That systemic model is further tested empirically on the basis of another selected individual (e.g., z who belongs to two societies), which leads to the modification of the systemic model. The modified model is further tested on a selected individual case, and so on. It is the study of persons who simultaneously are parts of multiple social groups (family, work collective, etc.) and who coordinate various social roles (“son” to one’s parents, “parent” to one’s children, “husband” to one’s wife, “bus driver” at work, “tourist” during a trip elsewhere, and so on). The person in CP is viewed as constantly in movement, coordinating different culturally

274    Beyond the Mind Levels of organization

HUMANKIND

G E N E R A L I Z A T I O N

PARTICULAR SOCIETY A

P

Q

x

y

systemic model modified

PARTICULAR SOCIETY B

S

T

z

U

V

v

Social Institutions within the society

Individual persons

systemic model

Figure 14.1  Generalization based on structurally situated individual cases in cultural psychology. (Valsiner, 2003, Valsiner, 2001, p. 36)

constructed parts of one’s own self (Valsiner, 2007). Ambivalence is the central feature of human psychological functions (Abbey & Valsiner, 2005). Together with the analysis of each person as a culturally functioning system, the generalized model becomes applicable to human beings in their generic state. Such generalizations thus apply to all humankind, as these are seen to generate the interindividual differences between persons. A cultural-psychological model of the human mind is applicable in China, India, Russia, the Americas, and other places of the world. Certainly there are differences between these areas of the world—as CCP has amply demonstrated—but the important goal for science of psychology is to see the universality of the human beings behind these differences.

Cultural Psychology and Developmental Science Cultural psychology is part of the psychological science that is oriented towards discovery of basic fundamental principles. Thus, cultural psychology

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is part of general psychology as a basic developmental science (Cairns, Elder, & Costello, 1996). It is important to understand the key concept of development in contrast with its opposite (nondevelopment).

Contrast of Perspectives In most general terms, nondevelopmental and developmental perspectives are opposites that deal with the same phenomena. They can be contrasted, but not eclectically mixed (Valsiner & Connolly, 2003). The study of transformation addresses issues that the study of “things-as-they are” finds superfluous, unnecessary, or even “error.” The nondevelopmental perspective is based on the axiom of identity: X = [is] = X Based on this axiom, it makes good sense to ask questions about “what is personality?” “what is intelligence?” “what is memory?” These are questions of the inherent quality as it is seen in X. It is assumed that what is manifested on the observable exterior of the system—or its classification—is isomorphically connected with a matching inherent quality. So—we see a fourwheeled vehicle in the street, recognize that “this is a CAR,” and by that category assertion imply “the car is a car because of its car-ness.” Of course the car moves not because of that projected mystical quality of “car-ness” in it, but by way of a constructed engine that needs fuel we put into it. Or—likewise—you are not very likely to accept somebody’s claim that your bicycle moves because of its “bicycle-ness” inherently present in it!

The “Psychologist’s Fallacy” The car/bicycle example is purposefully absurd—to bring out the analogue with psychology: we meet a person whom we consider “highly intelligent” . . . and then follow to explain that by assuming that his/her way of acting is due to “high intelligence.” The labeled external perception has been projected into the person as if it were the cause of the former! What looks absurd in the car or bicycle example passes without notice in psychology. This contrast is in itself very interesting, as psychology for over a century seems to be caught in what William James once called “psychologist’s fallacy”: The great snare of the psychologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report. . . .  The psycholo-

276    Beyond the Mind gist . . . stands outside of the mental state he speaks of. Both itself and its object are objects for him” (James, 1890, p. 196). Another variety of the psychologist’s fallacy is the assumption that the mental state studied must be conscious of itself as the psychologist is conscious of it. The mental state is aware of itself only from within; it grasps what we call its own content, and nothing more. The psychologist, on the contrary, is aware of it from without, and knows its relations with all kinds of other things. (James, 1890, p. 197, emphasis added)

Our vulnerability to this fallacy—over 100 years—comes from the discounting of the primacy of theory for guiding empirical investigations. In our contemporary psychology, what are accepted as “theories” are largely class labels (e.g., “cognitive theory” or “sociocultural theory”) or terms that specify the kind of labeling that occurs (e.g., the “theory of cognitive heuristics”). Under these “umbrella theories,” the basic disconnected empirical work—done with the consensus of “measurement”—dominates. The result is a hyperproductivity of empirical data combined with conceptual confusion. Psychology has not found its way to basic sciences over the 20th century—it is left for the present one. The starting point is clear understanding of its axiomatic bases.

The Developmental Perspective If the nondevelopmental perspective rules out questions of development from that axiomatic basis—why ask a question of HOW X BECAME TO BE X, if we already know that X is X—then its developmental counterpart is based on the axiom of becoming. It takes two forms: Y– – –[becomes]– – –> X X– – [remains = maintains itself]– –> X Or, when seen in a united Figure 14.2—the two perspectives are two sides of the same system in “steady state” and in transformation. Both becoming and remaining are processes that guarantee both relative stability and change in the case of development. In the case of remaining, the particular system that is maintained in its general form depends upon constant innovation of the form by new parts. Biological organisms maintain themselves by the processes of new cell production and old cell death, while the form (the structure of the organism) in general remains the same. Thus, the axiom X– –[remains]– –>X is not the same as the identity axiom of nondevelopmental perspectives – – X  =[is]=  X. In the case of

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becomes X

X becomes WHATEVER NEXT

Figure 14.2  Development of a system in “steady state” and transformation.

remaining, the process of maintaining innovation is implied, whereas in the case of the identity axiom, no process (that makes the identity) is implied. The identity axiom is blind to the processes that make the identity possible. In a similar vein, nondevelopmental psychology is blind when questions of development are asked.

Dynamic and Hierarchical Nature of Development Developmental science investigates transformation of structures at different levels of generality—phylogeny, cultural history, ontogenesis, and microgenesis. Gilbert Gottlieb’s perspective of probabilistic epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1992, 1997, 1999, 2003; Gottlieb, Wahlsten & Lickliter, 2006) which is built on the contributions of Zing-Yang Kuo to psychology (Kuo, 1967— see analyses in Gottlieb, 2000; Lickliter, 2000) is the central paradigmatic framework in contemporary developmental science (see Figure 14.3). Four levels of organization—genetic, neural, behavioral, and environmental— are linked together through future-oriented processes. The model demonstrates how no direct connections between genes and behavior are possible (as the neural activity buffers such connections while environment guides behavior). Thus, there can be no “gene for intelligence” or for any other complex psychological phenomenon in the genome—yet the latter remains centrally important for all of our living. As can be seen in Figure 14.3, development takes place through the relationships between levels (and not by “causation” by any one level). The new formations at any level (A in neural activity, B in behavior) start to function in relation to their adjacent levels.

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ENVIRONMENT

BEHAVIOR

NEURAL ACTIVITY

GENETIC ACTIVITY

I N D I V I D U A L D E V E L O P M E N T

B

A

PHYLOGENETIC ESTABLISHED RELATIONS

Figure 14.3  The general idea of probabilistic epigenesis (after Gottlieb, 1992, p. 186).

How Are the Levels Linked? It is the specific structural conditions of the relationships of the levels that come into being—and vanish—in the organism’s life course. Furthermore, the propensity notion of probabilism is expressed in the form of concrete transformations of messages between the levels. It is the coactional system between levels (Gottlieb, 2003, p. 7) that by its nature acts in a probabilistic manner. This separation of levels of organization is inclusive—we distinguish them for the purpose of looking at their relations. Inclusive separation violates the basic starting point of classical (Aristotelian/Boolean) logic that excludes the coexistence of opposites (“if A then not non-A”). Instead, the coexistence is axiomatically presumed— “if A then there must be non-A.” Inclusive separation is a tactic that is at the basis of dialectical logic—it is impossible to think in terms of contradictions (and their overcoming) between opposites if these opposites are not distinguished within the same whole. Inclusive separation presumes the whole within which the separated parts remain united.

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What Does Probabilistic Mean in This Model? The episodic nature of probabilistic epigenesis at the level of individual development brings the meaning of probabilism in the theoretical frame into the realm of propensity (in contrast to the other two notions of probability—frequentist and subjective). Propensity entails recognition of the set of structural possibilities of an event happening. Thus, in a set of two equal options—like two sides of a coin tossed—the structure of the coin (thin round plate) and the environment of tossing (e.g., hard surface) determines the propensity probability of either side coming “up” as 1/2—prior to any actual tossing of the coin.3 If the structural conditions are changed—for instance, the coin is tossed in a sandbox where the option of landing on its edge needs to be included—the probabilities of outcomes are changed. The structure of the coin and its action environment determine the probability of future happening.

The Asymmetry of Time: From Past to Future All developmental science operates under the inevitable constraint of irreversible time upon the developing systems. The result is the unity of determinism (of the past) and indeterminism (of the future) within the processes that operate in the present (see Figure 14.4). Paradox of any science Past option Z

Option A

Option Field C

Option B Past option X PAST

Past option Y

FUTURE

Before present < > After present PRESENT ACTUALIZED PAST =

Figure 14.4  The actual determinism of the past linked with the indeterminism of the potential future.

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that makes sense of irreversible processes is in the static nature of the models themselves (Fogel, Lyra, & Valsiner, 1997). The model that explains the generation of the unique is not unique—and ephemeral—itself. In Figure 14.4, we can observe the actualized past trajectory of development (which has emerged, eliminating the unrealized other possible trajectories—X, Y, Z) that is the basis for creating the next step within itself— within the field of potential options A, B, and C. The unity of certainty and uncertainty—a tension between the known past and yet-to-be known future—is the central arena for all developmental processes. In other terms, the developmental process is a membrane that allows for some possibilities of the uncertain future to become actualities of the past. We are all makers of personal certainty—deciding where we are, who we are, who we would like to be, and so on—always facing the horizon of the future. The focus of inquiry is here moved from the essences of A and B which are declared to be “related” (e.g., “correlated” in statistical terms) to the structure of their actual relating process. This focus would be new in psychology—yet in biology it is well established (Figures 14.5 and 14.6). What is crucial is to understand the functioning of the membranes and their conditions of permeability (letting some substances under some conditions pass through the membrane, but blocking their passage under other conditions).

The Focus on the Boundaries Developmental science focuses on the boundary of the past and the future. Of course, the focus on boundaries has been prominent in field theories in the social sciences—most usually linked with the legacy of Kurt Lewin (1936). The notion of boundary-related behavior was central for Relation as a non-focused link

Relation as a membrane A

A

B B

Figure 14.5  The membrane nature of relation between levels.

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Figure 14.6  A depiction of the cell membrane in biology.

Lewin’s field theory and is brought back to our attention for further advancement. In analogy with biology—where field-theoretic elaborations also lead to the study of boundaries (Beloussov, 1998)—we can call for the creation of a new kind of theories in psychology. That class of theories will be that of “psychological membranes”—of process mechanisms of the ways in which such membrane-like phenomena both enable and suppress the relations between adjacent parts of the dynamic system. The functional structure of the boundary is what becomes our target of investigation. As an old Igbo proverb says, “A boundary is not the point at which something stops . . . A boundary is the point from where something begins to be present” (Beneduce & Taliani, 2006, p. 442). Psychology’s focus on its phenomena is therefore best oriented to what happens at the boundaries—rather than “in” (or “out”) of what the boundaries link together. Biology accepts such reality as fully given. The depiction of the cell membrane (Figure 14.6) illustrates how structure of the membrane generates uneven possibilities of binding of chemicals.

Psychological Boundary Theories The study of boundary phenomena was pioneered by William Stern (1935) in his personological account of the human mind (Figure 14.7) and by Kurt Lewin (1936) in his look at person–environment relationships

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Figure 14.7  William Stern’s depiction of the boundary of the “internal infinity” of the mind and the “external infinity” of the environment.

(Figure 14.8). Stern sets the present boundary between the person and the world to be the locus of synthesis of any kind of novelty. Yet his scheme is not developmental—there is no inclusion of irreversible time depicted anywhere in it. Similarly, the functional depiction of interpersonal relations in Lewin’s case excludes development. The notion of development has been very slowly becoming established in 20th-century psychology (Valsiner, 2006) as the formal thought models needed it to have been constrained in their development by the axiomatic systems of nondevelopmental kinds. Cultural regulators operate not only in the human mind but also in the

Figure 14.8  Kurt Lewin’s contrast of Germany and the United States in interpersonal relations (Lewin, 1936, p. 283)

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development of ideas in different sciences (e.g., the notion of objectivity— Daston & Galison, 2007). In the diagram drawn by Lewin after 2 years in the United States, the resistance against communication from outside is represented by heavier lines (versus lighter ones) within the concentric layers of closeness that designate the person. Layer 5 is the utmost subjective, deeply intrapersonal layer. In the “U-Type” (United States), that layer is protected by very strong resistance boundary for outsiders’ penetration, while the other layers (1 . . . 4) can be crossed in the interpersonal domain with relative ease. In contrast, the “G-Type” (Germany) allows only the outermost layer (1) to be easily accessible. The major boundary here is between layers 1 and 2, with minor resistances at later boundaries. A number of contrastive predictions emerge from Lewin’s scheme. In a traditional cross-cultural perspective, he claimed, The American is much less likely to respond with anger, or at least with open anger, to the hundred small misfortunes of everyday life. . . .  The American reacts generally to such accidents more from the point of action (he considers what has to be done to remedy the situation), the German more from a moral point of view (he considers whose fault it was). Furthermore, such incidents are less likely to touch central regions of the person. In other words, the range of events which correspond to the peripheral, non-private regions, seems to be comparatively greater for the American. . . .  As the private field includes more layers of the G-type, he is likely to act more emotionally. (Lewin, 1936, p. 285)

Lewin’s depiction is structural here—yet all living is dynamic. It is a good example of how generic comparisons of societies (the CCP perspective) provide material for cultural psychology. In the latter case, the question of construction of the sets of boundaries in Figure 14.8 and of the conditions under which these can be overcome. Each person creates one’s own personal-cultural structure of one’s self’s boundaries, and rules (set up by signs) for entry into varied layers of one’s self for different carriers of social roles in one’s immediate environment.

The Semiotic Turn in Cultural Psychology: Regulation of the Boundaries of the SELF//OTHER and PAST//FUTURE The semiotic turn in cultural psychology builds on the notion of a constantly meaning-making universe (Boesch, 1991; Chaudhary, 2004; Valsiner, 2007). Human beings—and probably some other species—cannot help but make

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sense of their relations with environment, generating signs of various kinds that begin to feed forward to their further relations with the world. In a formal analogy, meanings are for humans what web spinning is for spiders— the webs are needed, they are made all the time, they may be destroyed— yet they appear in any possible or impossible location over and over again. Cultural psychology—in its semiotic focus—provides a fresh start for psychology of higher psychological functions—feeling, thinking, will, and, most importantly,feelings of beauty, self-fulfillment, and humanity. Being social entails becoming distanced—thus, the intimate privacy of our minds is a result of cultural construction. It is the capacity and propensity to make and use semiotic devices that allows human beings to become distanced in relation to their immediate life contexts. The person becomes simultaneously an actor who is immersed in the given “situated activity context” and a reflexive agent who is distanced from the very setting in which he or she is immersed. This duality is relevant for transcending the adaptational demands of the here-and-now context and guides the development towards increasing autonomy. Yet any autonomy is a result of the immediate dependence upon the here-and-now context (as the open-systemic nature of any developing system—be it biological, psychological, or social—entails). Psychological distancing always includes the context within which the person is, and in relation to which the distancing takes place. The person does not “go away” from the context—that would be as impossible as staying alive under cessation of our supply of oxygen. The person creates a distance—by way of semiotic mediation—in relation to the here-and-now context. It takes the form of I reflect upon this context in which I am a part. This reflection—which is cognitive and affective at the same time—allows the psychological system to consider contexts of the past, imagine contexts of the future, and take perspectives of other persons (in the form of empathy). Without distancing, no considerations by a person of contexts other than the given here-and-now would be possible. Cultural regulation is semiotic (sign) mediation that is part of the system of organized psychological functions. These functions can be intra-personal (i.e., the functioning of a person’s intra-psychological processes while being involved in experiencing the world: feeling, thinking, memorizing, forgetting, planning, etc.). The cultural relating with the world is trialogue that involves one internal feed-forward loop that is coordinated with two social relations loops—ME  ME and ME  YOU (Figure  14.9). For example, a person, observing a sunset, who says to him- or herself (in the mind) “I like this” is involved in an act of intrapsychological semiotic regulation of his or her feelings. Likewise, observing emotionally

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Figure 14.9  Pathways of cultural regulation of the self.

upsetting scenes becomes first “discussed” within the self (I  ME). Complexity of such intrapsychological semiotic mediation devices can include created hierarchies. One can create—in the intrapsychological system—an “alter ego,” with whom one can enter into lengthy internal dialogues. Such dialogues involve the use of signs, including in ways that entail hierarchical relations between those.

Centrality of Abstracting Generalization The signs used in regulation of conduct are simultaneously memory devices—they allow one to retain the general affective context of a particular encounter with real life—or one’s own imagination. The highest level of semiotic encoding is that of hypergeneralized values that human beings live by—but which are out of their arena of direct access to verbalization (Valsiner, 2005). The value of “absolute nothingness” would be not one of absence of anything, but fullness of everything of the full richness of life experience that is so overwhelming that it “captures” the person’s feeling in full and is closed to verbal analysis. Most of our socialized values become such hypergeneralized semiotic fields. However, the capacity of semiotic hypergeneralization can also create the opposite phenomena to those of socially desirable human values. By

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Regulator that blocks generalization

SEMIOTIC MEDIATOR BLOCKS The REGULATOR becomes blocked itself—AND IF THE REGULATOR FAILS (disappears, is deactivated) we get ESCALATION

HYPER GENERALIZED DEPRESSIVE FEELING for all contexts = “DEPRESSION” in clinical psychology’s discourse

Figure 14.10  The process of semiotic regulation of the hyper- generalization processes in the onset of depression.

the same mechanism of regulation of the meaning-making system we can explain the emergence of psychopathology. For example, depression from the standpoint of cultural psychology is a failure of the semiotic self-regulatory system that allows a depressively oriented ideation to cascade into a hypergeneralized state and establish itself in a “steady state” (see Figure 14.10). Usually, psychology—especially clinical psychology—starts from the end. It distinguishes—diagnoses—states of depression after those have come into existence. Yet the critical knowledge for science is to find out how these states can come into existence. Any effort of “prevention”—a term widely used in contemporary psychology—requires that latter kind of knowledge. This functional look at depression or other overwhelming psychopathological phenomena (panic attacks, maniacal episodes) as exaggerated versions of the ordinary (regulated) states allows for both prevention and rehabilitation possibilities. In cultural psychology this extends to the areas of social practice, education, and clinical psychology through its focus on the developmental processes of cultural kind.

How Opposite Meanings Generate Each Other Semiotic regulators are doubles—they consist of a manifest core (A, B) and its surrounding field of further transformation (non-A, non-B). As emphasized above—in the case of inclusive separation, that is—we make a distinction

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(A is not “non-A” in order to bring into focus the particular relationship between A and “non-A”—cf. Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999). The dynamics of such dialectical relationship is depicted in Figure 14.11. A particular double meaning {A and non-A}—“happy” (with the background field of “nonhappy” on the basis of which “being happy” can be understood) proceeds to generate new meaning within the non-A field (“I do not know how I feel but I am not happy”; “I feel frustrated,” “I feel neutral,” “I am unhappy,” “I am sad”). There are many possible opposites potentially emerging in the non-A field—not only “sad.” Yet as the meaning-making process moves on, one of those can emerge as dominant (B = “sad”) and the dynamic field is transformed into {B and non-B} dialectics of “sad” and “non-sad.” In turn, the meaning “happy” can grow within the non-B field, leading to the new dominance of “happy” (in contrast with “non-happy”) in the person’s affective meaning system. It would be easy to see on the basis of

NON-A

new sign B emerging from non-A… “neutral” Æ “sad”

The context for the sign:

A = “happy”

“NOT-A”

B—a new sign = “sad”

NON-B Includes potential for: “neutral” “happy”

Figure 14.11  Dynamic unity of opposites in meaning-making.

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the dynamics of meaning in Figure 14.11 how the escalation/de-escalation processes depicted in Figure 14.10 are organized. If the meaning double “Happy and non-Happy” operates as a cultural regulator of the emerging depressive feelings, then in its “HAPPY>non-happy” dominance phase these depressive feelings are successfully suppressed—they do emerge in some form—as microgenetic “intermediate gestalts,”4 but fail to become generalized. The “HAPPY>non-happy” regulator guarantees that this generalization cannot happen (e.g., “I feel kind of depressed today but I am in general happy, so it is a passing mood today”). If the cultural regulator undergoes a transformation into “NON-HAPPY> happy”/“SAD>non-sad” the situation changes. The occasionally emerging depressive ideation has now no counterpart in the regulatory system, and an occasional depressive feeling may turn into a general mood change. The person may say, “The last few days I have felt depressed, but I hope it will not last.” The depressive mood has emerged in a “steady state”—with a future-oriented circumvention strategy (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998)—“but I hope it will not last”—attached to it. Future-oriented circumvention strategies are generalized regulators (“I hope . . . ,” “I wish . . . ,” “I am sure that . . .”) which need to generate new specific ones. If that does not happen—or if the other state of regulator “SAD>non-sad” prevails, depressive feelings can hypergeneralize to overtake the whole of the person’s subjective world—and the clinical diagnosis of “depression” may follow.

General Conclusion: Culture Is in Our Immediate Experience The central idea of this very complex journey through cultural psychology and developmental science is simple—culture as signs-based regulator is functioning in each and every moment in our lives as human beings. Culture is central in the minutest details of our everyday living (Chaudhary, 2004). It is invisible (as we need not be conscious of it) and rapid (as the nuances of meanings and their regulation may take place, or as escalation of some feeling or thought occurs before it could be restrained). Human flexibility of invention of new ways of being is the result of such cultural regulation. As is to be expected in the real world, the efforts to control ourselves turn into their opposite—to liberate ourselves from previous convenient confines. That dialectical process leads to new confines—from which we move on to become free, only to find yet new self-limits that we need in order to proceed. Freedom comes from working on the boundaries of our limits—and psychology as science is that of transfer processes through the various personal, social, and ecological “membranes” we live by in our lives.

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Notes 1. Da Xia Forum Lecture at East China Normal University Shanghai, June, 4, 2008. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. This example is a rare occasion where all three probability notions happen to coincide. By our subjective look at the structure of the coin and of the tossing environment, we may arrive at subjective probability of the outcomes being 1/2th—also prior to actual tossing. If we proceed with N trials of actual tossing, we arrive at the same result empirically (frequentist probability). Yet the coincidence is a special case here—as all the “heuristics” tradition in cognitive problem solving has proven at the intersection of frequentist and subjective probability notions.

References Abbey, E., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Poetiken des Selbst: Zwischen Ambivalenz, Bedeutung, Formlösigkeit und Wandel. Psychologie & Gesellschaftskritik, 29, 3/4 (whole No 115/116), 133–149. Beloussov, L. V. (1998). The dynamic architecture of a developing organism. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Beneduce, R., & Taliani, S. (2006). Embodied powers. Deconstructed bodies: spirit possession, sickness, and the search for wealth of Nigerian immigrant women. Anthropos, 101, 429–449. Boesch, E. E. (1991). Symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. Berlin, Germany: Springer. Cairns, R. B., Elder, G. H., & Costello, E. J. (Eds.). (1996). Developmental science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Chaudhary, N. (2004). Learning to culture: constructing reality from everyday talk. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Daston, L., & Galison, P. (2007). Objectivity. New York, NY: Zone Books. Fogel, A., Lyra, M. C. D. P., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (1997). Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gottlieb, G. (1992). Individual development & evolution: The genesis of novel behavior. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gottlieb, G. (1997). Synthesizing nature/nurture. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gottlieb, G. (1999). Probabilistic epigenesis and evolution. 23rd Heinz Werner Lectures. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Gottlieb, G. (2000). Zing-Yang Kuo: Personal recollections and intimations of developmental science. From Past to Future: Clark Working Papers in History of Psychology, 2(2), 1–12. Gottlieb, G. (2003). Probabilistic epigenesis of development. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 3–17). London, England: SAGE.

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Gottlieb, G., Wahlsten, T., & Lickliter, R. (2006). The significance of biology for human development: A developmental psychobiological systems view. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (pp. 210–257). New York, NY: Wiley. Jahoda, G. (1993). Crossroads between culture and mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York, NY: Holt Josephs, I. E., & Valsiner, J. (1998). How does autodialogue work? Miracles of meaning maintenance and circumvention strategies. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61(1), 68–83. Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction. In J. Brandtstätdter and R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self development (pp. 257–282). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Kuo, Z.-Y. (1967). The dynamics of behavior development: An epigenetic view. New York, NY: Random House. Lewin, K. (1936). Some social-psychological differences between the United States and Germany. Character & Personality, 4(4), 265–293. Lickliter, R. (2000). Kuo’s epigenetic vision for psychological sciences: Dynamic developmental systems view. From Past to Future: Clark Working Papers in History of Psychology, 2(2), 39–51. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Sampling reconsidered: Idiographic science and the analyses of personal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 82–106). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Stern, W. (1935). Allgemeine Psychologie auf personalistischer Grundlage. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and human development. London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2001). Comparative study of human cultural development. Madrid, Spain: Fundacion Infancia y Aprendizaje Valsiner, J. (2003). Culture and its transfer: Ways of creating general knowledge through the study of cultural particulars. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online readings in psychology and culture. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1013&context=orpc Valsiner, J. (2005). Affektive Entwicklung im kulturellen Kontext. In J. B. Asendorpf (Ed.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie. Vol. 3. Soziale, emotionale und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung (pp. 677–728). Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. Valsiner, J. (2006). Developmental epistemology and implications for methodology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 166–209). New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Valsiner, J., & Connolly, K. J. (2003). The nature of development: The continuing dialogue of processes and outcomes. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly

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(Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. ix–xviii). London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J., & Rosa, A. (2007). Contemporary socio-cultural research: uniting culture, society, and psychology. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 1–20). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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15 How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel?1 日本の心理学が行儀のよい反逆児に変身するために “Nihon no shinrigaku ga gyougino yoi hangyakuji ni henshin suru tameni”

Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The role of science—Wissenschaft—is to generate new knowledge on the basis of what is previously known. Hence any scientist is caught in a dilemma between honoring what is known and striving towards what is not yet known— thus denying at least some of what is known. This ambivalent situation creates a special difficulty for psychology as a science, as it is deeply guided by the cultural-historical framework of the given society. As a “European invention,” psychology carries the backgrounds of the occidental cultural history in its axiomatic base, and hence has been limited and unable to build a universal science of psychology. This base is organized by a core belief—a meta-axiom—of the divisibility of the phenomena into separate and independent (mutually exclusive) categories. In contrast, the Japanese cultural-historical base guides

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294    Beyond the Mind researchers towards the acceptance of nondivisibility of the phenomena— advocating the inclusive separation of the phenomena by way of their partitioning. Both meta-axioms involve making distinctions (separation)—while the boundary introduced by such distinction is treated differently in the European (particularly Anglo-Saxon) and Japanese thought. The meta-axiom of inclusive separation includes its opposite—the exclusive separation—as a special case where the particular relationship introduced by division is that of exclusion. In contrast, exclusive separation denies its inclusive counterpart (if A—then not non-A). Hence, the Japanese meta-axiomatic base is a fitting starting point to the development of psychology as a universal science, and the Japanese cultural-historical background allows psychology to overcome its cultural limitations of the past. History of primate research in Japan has demonstrated how one branch of science in Japan has been productive as a “well-behaving rebel.” During all those years there was a feeling of direction, of going straight toward something concrete. It is . . . very hard to express that feeling in words. . . . But I have it . . . in a way visually. . . .  From Holton, 1988, p. 387

The author of this confession was moving towards his invention—relativity theory—in ways that in his European context would usually be considered appropriate for an artist rather than a scientist—a distinction introduced only in the 1830s in English. In his ways of thinking, Albert Einstein—who has been presented to communities of scientists as the quintessential scientist, often even presented as a hero—was navigating the ocean of abstract ambiguity—knowing the general direction of where to proceed, but needing to fill in the mosaic of details. This movement was not expressed in language but in intuitive imagination-filled reasoning. The abstract and the concrete go together in science—and the beauty of solutions is in the former. Where the abstract ideas are put into practice requires a different elegance of thought—what phenomena to select as an object of study and how to approach them. Aside from this glimpse into the reality of making science, Einstein’s example may have a secondary message for psychology. He dismissed—on theoretical grounds—the primacy of inductive empiricism in science. Given where psychology has developed over the 20th century, that move would qualify him not only as a rebel, but as an enemy of the “real” [i.e., “empirical”] science. A claim of the primacy of abstract theory is a heresy in our contemporary psychology—yet very much needed if the discipline were to find its general focus. For that, being a rebel—breaking the confines of consensual truths—is inevitable.

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Many Ways of Being a Rebel Why does a scientist need to be a rebel? Why raise this possibility in a context where harmony—rather than rebellious forms of conduct—is appreciated? Any science—in the sense of Wissenschaft or knowledge making—is inherently an ambiguous realm of human activity. Consensus is never a final decider of scientific truths—although it may be an intermediate platform for investigation into phenomena. Thus, science builds upon the wellknown and much-believed-in—and hence has a dogmatic side—while its goal is to generate new knowledge of the not-yet-known or not-yet-understood aspects of the world. Scientists create a consensus and use it to study a phenomenon—with the result that the consensus is broken and replaced by a new one in the making. From that viewpoint, science is inevitably a rebel—but a well-behaving one—one who respects the harmony of the known while attempting to overcome it. That latter effort is an act of destruction of the old—yet it is based on the act of relating with the old. This may include rejection of the history of the given science—exemplified by practices of not referring to papers published a long time ago, or unreflective following of the current fashions in the given science. For example, fascination with new technology in psychology (uses of fMRI or new statistical “packages” for data analysis) without clarifying the research questions is an act that at first glance seems to be progressive—new technology often helps in a science. Yet its use for answering questions that have been found out to be theoretical dead-end streets (such as “whether the left or the right part of the brain is responsible for function X” or “what is the interaction effect of variables X, Y, Z?”) does not guarantee productive use of such new technologies. The technology is good—but the thinking of psychologists needs to use the technology in a constructive, rather than repetitive, way. Putting new technology into the service of research questions of no future is an example of a genocide of knowledge. In contrast, carefully situating the construction of new knowledge in the context of the past of the given discipline is a way of locating where—and how—new breakthroughs emerge. The latter requires that the scientist be a “well-behaving rebel”—one who is constructively destructive—uses the previous knowledge to crush it and replace it with new knowledge. It is a basic dialectic of development—overcoming of the previous state of affairs on the basis of that state of affairs. Yet it is a qualitative “leap” in knowing—not merely a quantitative accumulation of knowledge. Such breakthroughs happen at different historical moments in different countries—ideas migrate between societies and become linked with the core life concepts of these societies.

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Science as an Eternal Migrant: Homeless in All of Its Homes Scientific knowledge does not proceed on a path of linear progression. Instead, it moves by a series of steady states, regressions, rapid breakthroughs, useless activities, and disputes. The phenomenon of imitative science (Chen, 2008) is one of the moments of nonlinearity in the development of a science—its “linear plateau” of a kind. Under such conditions, research continues to be done by established procedures, data continue to accumulate, and the local scientific community may reify itself by giving awards to selected best imitators of “the right kind” of science. Yet no new knowledge emerges from such active research program. Increasing international migration of scientific expertise under the conditions of globalizing economies leads potentially to a new form of “intellectual colonialism”—the export of a scientific perspective that fits in the social context of one country (and is fortified by social consensus) to other countries (where it becomes a cherished symbolic object of a “cargo cult”) can lead to exploitation of the richness of cross-cultural variability of raw materials for the social goals of only a few “power holders” in the given discipline. The need for developing appropriate psychology in different societies around the world has been on the agenda for over two decades (Moghaddam & Taylor, 1986), yet it is far from being accomplished by this time. Ideas in science tolerate no boundaries of political or geographic divisions. They are constantly on the move. The imitation of the ways of doing things may be that of borrowing models from another science (e.g., as psychology has tried it from physics), or from the practices in another country (such as imitative use of North American psychological practices—a recent historical development after 1930s [Toomela, 2007]). IQ tests and popular psychology texts proliferate all across the globalizing world. Psychology’s proliferation is by force—rather than by dialogue:“The reason U.S. psychology is being exported to different countries around the world has more to do with the status of the United States as the sole military superpower in the world than it has with the scientific merits of U.S. psychology” (Moghaddam & Lee, 2006, pp. 163–164). Psychology is an article of intersociety exchange—a commodity of cultural relations—before it is a science. The suggesting donor of the Western psychology provides the meta-message: This is “the right kind” of psychology. Obviously, such linear suggestion of the “correct” ways of doing psychology does not happen in a social vacuum. It creates its own

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opposite—nonimitative science—that searches for solutions in contrast— yet also interdependently—with its imitative side. Yet there are counteractions to the conformity of imitative science. Our symposium here is a testimony to that dialogue of the two united-yet-opposite directions. This tension is not particular to psychology in Japan. It can be seen—in different time periods—in psychology in other countries of colonial heritage (India—Paranjpe, 2002) or in countries located between Europe and Asia (Turkey—Gülerçe, 2006) or as the recipient of outmigration from Europe. The tension can give rise to dominance reversals—which may only seem to be solutions of “declarations of independence.” As Anand Paranjpe has remarked, “The uncritical acceptance of Western models in India may be as dangerous as the frequently naïve fascination for Eastern techniques of meditation and for the fabulous ‘altered states of consciousness’ they promise” (Paranjpe, 2002, p. 37). It is the set of social representations in the cultural history of a society that either blocks or enables a particular perspective to find its base in one or another country. In France, psychoanalysis got its grounds on the foundation of Catholic confession (Moscovici, 2007); in the United States, the European kind of psychology was modified to fit into the local socioreligious moralistic context (Dolby, 1977). That allowed Wundtian experimentation—which is sufficiently distant from the subjective wanderings of a person—to occupy the position of science until the pragmatism of behavior of rats took over its place. The fate of different European psychological exports was just the contrary in Argentina where Wundt’s kind of psychology failed to get rooted, while neurosciences and psychoanalysis have flourished (Taiana, 2006).

The Special Case of Japan: Potentials and Impotencies Japan is perhaps a good example of a case of such contrast where irreconcilable directions—that of imported psychology in contrast with knowledge growing out from one’s own cultural-historical traditions—are in conflict without seeming to be in conflict. That special way of uniting the opposites within a harmonious whole gives the science both its “normal version” (in the sense of Thomas Kuhn) and its “revolutionary”—or better called “clandestinely subversive”—directions at the same time.

Japan, Myself, and the Ambiguity of Innovation There exist socially promoted stereotypes of Japan as filled with following others and imitating others directly. Yet all social stereotypes—even if

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agreed upon by both “insiders” in Japan and “outsiders” in the rest of the world—tend to be conceptual blinders. It is not what Japan is like that creates a “Japanese psychology”—as if it were a distinct category. Instead we need to explore how new knowledge gets created by the Japanese—based on the Japanese cultural heritage and the universal education in science. The latter entails erudite knowledge of European and North American knowhow all through the history of psychology in Japan. I would like to describe here my impressions of giving talks in the United States and Japan (where I first visited in 2004). In the U.S., one encounters a pattern of active reaction: after one’s talk there may be a flurry of questions, comments—often so much that there is not enough time to answer. But when you start discussing particular issues on the following day you may hear generic (usually positive) evaluative statements, such as “it was great!”—but rarely is there further elaboration of ideas. In Japan I encountered a very different pattern—rarely did I encounter immediate questions (which could be due to the language barrier as well). But on the following day I regularly have people approaching me with a message: “I was thinking about what you said . . .  I did not completely understand X, please explain it to me.” This subdued and low-key response is the birthplace of innovation—we need to transcend our eagerness to shower the presenter with lavish praise (or equally extensive condemnation), and think through what the message of the talk was. It is somewhere here where the “well-behaving rebels” can emerge— thinking through the messages, finding unclear parts in them, asking for clarifications, and—eventually—moving beyond the messages. It is the potential for further development of ideas and practices by the people in the audience that, in the long run, determines its value. The question of productivity in science is that of creative synthesis of novelty based on the careful knowledge of the phenomena. It is not the disjunction of either imitative or creative, but a conjunction of both imitative and creative.

Benefitting From Ambiguity: A Case From History of Physics in Japan The history of the study of free electron flows in physics—tracing these in the discharge chambers to demonstrate their dynamics—could be used as an example. In a careful effort to replicate a study done in Italy, young Japanese physicists Sigenori Miyamoto and Shuji Fukui in 1957 had to build their own hydrogen tubes to generate the pulse needed to trace the free electron flow. Their homemade pulse generator provided a variety of

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Figure 15.1  Pulse shapes in time: square and nonsquare (synthesized by the author, based on Galison, 1997, p. 478, Figure 6.18).

nonsquare wave pulses—while the original experiment used square wave impulse generator (Figure 15.1). As a result Miyamoto and Fukui found inconsistency—in higher pressure conditions, their nonsquare wave generator provided pattern similar to the original experiment, while in lower pressure conditions there was variability—sometimes a photographically detectable trace was generated, sometimes not. It turned out to be a result of imperfect equipment—yet one that opened to door to qualitative rethinking of the processes involved. This failing imitation of the others’ experiment led Fukui and Miyamoto to the discovery of optimal conditions for the electron track recordings— short impulses in high-pressure tubes (Galison, 1997). Obviously there are benefits of having not the very best equipment. Fukui and Miyamoto created a systemic device—discharge chamber—that could test various trajectories of free electron flows under varied pulse generation conditions. Had they succeeded in using a square wave generator, their discovery could not have happened—as the stimulation by square waves includes the variable conditions of nonsquare waves (see Figure 15.1), masking them as if triggered by square waves.

Unity of the Objective and the Subjective in Science Science is a deeply subjective activity field. Scientists are passionate human beings—their insistence on the “objectivity of the fact” is a deeply ingrained subjective belief. It is well known in contemporary sociology and history

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of science that the cherished quality of objectivity in science is a result of cultural-historical construction (and reconstruction—Porter, 1992, 1994). Nobody by now can doubt the adequacy of the heliocentric model of our planetary system (although the consensus before Copernicus did). Yet our immediate perceptual evidence tells us that the sun circles the earth, rising in the morning and setting in the evening. It becomes obvious that the subjective reality of a scientist is central for all science—aside from striving for (objective) knowledge about one’s object of study, the scientists are passionate actors—intrinsically motivated to dedicate their lifetimes to their quest for knowledge. In this regard, the subjective value of the research participants—monkeys or humans—or even of objects (“home feeling” in office or laboratory, treating one’s apparatus or computer as a “good friend”—who sometimes “fails to cooperate”). Science is deeply human enterprise, filled with passion, dedication of the self to the quest for knowledge—even if at times it becomes externally framed in terms of social fame, markers of social “success” (titles, grants, and invitations to keynote speakers). This passion for knowing—exploring the territories beyond the horizons—unites scientists around the world and all over the history. Scientists are lucky people who are obsessed with what they want to explore. However, behind the unity—equifinality—of the exploration predicament are the various cultural-historical trajectories through which scientists of different backgrounds come to study their shared objects. The unity of the scientist and his or her cultural-historical context is omnipresent in any country and historical period. The birth of modern psychology in its European cradle in the second half of the 19th century was fully embedded within the field of classical music that served as the phenomenological basis for Gestalt psychologies (Ash, 1998; von Ehrenfels, 1890). Educated European children learned to play classical music—or at least listen to it—as an inevitable and important part of their upbringing. In a similar vein, science in Japan is the benefactor of the relations of humans with nature (Kalland & Asquith, 1997). In that, it is part of the wider cultural construction of human beings through their metaphoric relations with nature—in both aesthetic construction and (equally aesthetic) destruction.3

Cultural Prisms for Understanding Science in Japan (and Elsewhere) Japan has been an enigma to outsiders—especially to those from Occidental countries. It is probably not so much the history of Japan’s seclusion from outsiders in the past, or the general focus on the unity with nature

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(rather than that of “conquering it”) that has created the mystery. Ideas about “the other” often circle around through the “self” rendering what one understands of the other’s understanding of the “self” seemingly comparable. The making of a meaning goes through the other—not in formal contrast of the self against the other, Thus, arriving at intercultural consensus on “Japanese feudalism” (hokensei) at the Tokugawa period entailed the first assertion about hokensei, followed by westerners who visited Japan in the late Tokugawa period [who] discovered a system similar to what was referred to as ‘feudalism’ in their own country’s historical narrative. Naturally the perception of westerners that ‘Japan is a feudal state’ became known to the Japanese. Japanese who listened to explanations of what feudalism was cannot be blamed for thinking it was something similar to hokansei. Today, the term hokansei is accepted as the equivalent of feudalism. (Ishii, 2007, p. x)

It is more likely that outsiders have tried to build their understanding of Japan—or any other country of “the other”—on premises that may fit with theirs—but not with the world understanding in Japan (Kuwayama, 2004). In my terminology outlined above, efforts to make sense of Japan may have been phrased in terms of exclusive separation—while it is the inclusive separation that could fit better with the phenomena.

Danger of Pre-Set Exclusive Oppositions A good example of the misfitting premise is the use of the exclusive contrast of INDIVIDUALISM versus COLLECTIVISM as it is applied to societies—as if one or the other of these characterize both “the society” and each and every person who belongs to that society. There is an implicit consensus in cross-cultural psychology that both the violation of levels of analysis (the personal level equated with that of society: “this Japanese person is collectivistic” becomes “the Japanese are collectivistic”), and paralleled with it—the use of exclusive separation (“if X is collectivistic—X cannot be noncollectivistic”) rather than inclusive one (“if X is collectivistic then X is also noncollectivistic”). If we refute this double axiomatic superimposition, we get “This Japanese person—a scientist, a psychologist—is at the same time collectivistic and noncollectivistic.” Relating to the world as a scientist entails intransitive rather than transitive relations—with open ends, yet conservative reliance on what is known. Thus, scientists are necessarily “well-behaved rebels.”4 From here on one can study the processes of imitation and nonimitation of scientific traditions in the discipline. Creating general—scientific—knowledge

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begins from a personal (and culturally guided) act of breaking out of the confines of the already known and exploring the new horizons. All inquiry into the new is framed—guided—by the cultural history of the scientist’s lifeworld (see Miner, 1956). The cultural prisms for making sense of the other involve the projection of the self outwards onto the other—thus creating a set of always limited—or cultural-historically positioned—view upon the other. Perhaps the most dramatic superimposition of such “outsiders’” cultural blinders is the insertion of gender as an organizing principle into the views of “the others.” While the biological fact of male/female role differences is clear, this need not be isomorphic at the cultural level. Thus, the British colonizers’ insistence on the primacy of gender oppositions projected into the Yoruba society in Nigeria overlooked the centrality of seniority (Oyewumi, 1997). Likewise, the construction of Hinduism in India has been an act of social projection of the British into the complex realities of the Indian subcontinent (Oddie, 2006). In the outsiders’ look at Japan, that positioning has overlooked a central feature of unity of variable aspects of the society—of the town and of the villages, of the various social classes, of the history of international closed/open state of political access. In other terms—they have selected some typical (or seemingly typical—by their exotic or puzzling nature) to refer to the whole of Japan. Yet these newly constructed signs—true for a limited or historically transient aspects of the history of Japan—mask the reality of the ordinary Japan (Komatsu, personal communication). This can be observed vividly in the Gion district of Kyoto where foreign tourists wait patiently in crowds, ready to photograph the brief sightings of a maiko or a geisha. They consider these theatrical images to be “real Japan”—rather than mundane worlds of commuting in trains, eating miso nikomi in a kiosk in a railway station, encountering the care of the white-gloved taxi driver and the inconspicuous opening and closing of taxicab doors, and the myriad of other little everyday features of living. Japan-the-ordinary—even if different—relates to other societies by emphasizing the closeness of being human—while Japan-the-extraordinary creates the myth of the “exotic other.” In our contemporary social sciences we are constantly confronted with the need not to get caught in “the tourist act” (Gillespie, 2006).

The Ambiguous Nature of a Society The Occidental world looks into the person—rather than person’s relationships. In respect to Japan, the self—or the soul/spirit (seishin—see Moeran, 1986, p. 75) has at times been viewed as the center of intrinsically motivated inquiry in human life (Figure 15.2)

How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel?    303 JAPAN seishin (“spirit”) muskin (“no heart”) giri (“loyalty”) raman shimbo shikkari urbari

nintai kurō ganbaru etc.

GROUP MODEL

THE WEST kojinshugi (“individualism”)

kokoro (“heart”) ninjō (“spontaneous feeling”) sawayaka azayaka odayaka ōraka etc. SOCIAL EXCHANGE MODEL

kosei (“individual”)

wagamama (“selfish”) musekinin (“irresponsible”) etc.

NEGATIVE RECIPROCITY

Figure 15.2  Moeran’s model of the system of the spirit in Japan (Moeran, 1986, p. 75).

The beneficial feature of the system of the soul in Figure 15.2 is its systemic character. However, the building of the system remains Occidental—all components and their relationships are given as fixed, point-like entities, while the crucial aspect of Japanese general cultural terms is their purposive metaphorical vagueness (Komatsu, Inamori, Mukoyama, Nishioka, & Sakai, 2008). As the collective discussion5 of this model prior to our symposium indicated, also the various components of the model and their location within the structure could be disputed. Yet perhaps the greatest limit of this figure—and of many other similar figures—is that it tends to present the Japanese cultural system as if it consisted of a multitude of point-like conceptual nodes (e.g., kokoro, kosei, ninjo, etc.) that are somehow mutually linked by clear logical relations of fixed oppositions (denoted by two-sided arrows). What gets lost in this depiction is the ambiguity of major organizing terms included in the scheme, as well as of the relationships. Ambiguity is the core of human generalizing concepts—semiotic mediators—that organize human lives—not only in Japanese (Komatsu et al., 2008) but also in other languages (e.g., the meanings of individualism and collectivism—discussed above in psychology—are inherently vague in English, not to speak of other terms like rights, duties, love, etc.). I claim here that it is precisely such metaphoric vagueness of the cultural realities in Japan at the general life-philosophical level that gives sciences in Japan both an advantage in knowledge construction and difficulty in being understood by recipients of their knowledge in other loci of cultural-historical traditions.

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Primate Research in Japan: Scientific Benefits of Strategic Anthropomorphism Primate research in Japan has been enveloped by a general notion of unity of the human sciences and nature. It has been closely linked to anthropology—both physical and social—rather than being separated from the study of human species by being charted out as “the study of animal behavior.” The roots of this nondistinction in science in Japan are in the cultural history; the development of Buddhist thought in Japanese history has made the counterpositioning of monkeys and humans in science an unlikely opposition (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1987). In Japan, the study of animal species is built on the unity of the human and animal worlds—rather than their exclusive opposition. As Tetsuro Matsuzawa emphasized, The chimpanzee is the bridge to other living organisms who are sharing the earth with us. By understanding chimpanzees, you can understand the unique position of humans and also their responsibility. The human is just one species among the millions or tens of millions of species living on earth. This biodiversity is very important, indeed, essential, for all the ecosystems of our earth, and it is threatened by human activity. (Matsuzawa, 2006, p. 5, emphasis added)

The emphasized parts in this quote reflect the respectful self-inclusion in nature and the moral imperative (responsibility) of the species. This collective responsibility is a relation that emerges from inclusive separation of humans (we are unique but we are parts of the world) from nature. A comparable statement that would characterize the sciences in the Occident would entail segregation of the human species from the others and a focus on the “conquering” of nature. As the founder of the “second cybernetics”—science of heterogeneity amplifications—commented, the difficulty in most of the Occidental sciences is it its epistemological, rather than intellectual, limitations (Maruyama, 1988, p. 12). This epistemological limitation is best exemplified in the understanding of similar—yet conceptually different—scenes: In my lectures to architects in the U.S., I often show slides of Japanese garden designs . . . and ask them to find the design principles. They usually say: “naturalness.” When I ask them by what they mean by “natural,” they say “random.” They are triply wrong. First, the gardens are very carefully designed, using principles of interaction among heterogeneous elements which enhance the individuality of each element. Second, nature is not random: nature has its own patterns. Third, heterogeneity does not mean

How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel?    305 randomness. Interactive heterogeneity generates patterns away from randomness. (Maruyama, 1992, p. 197)

Innovation in science starts from basic assumptions. It is here where we have an excellent example of how a particular research tradition in Japan has produced substantively new knowledge—an example of a “well-behaving rebel,” perhaps.

“The Kyoto School” and Its Negotiations Science is a building project—creating a solidly standing house of objective knowledge—yet in configurations that are subjectively pleasing. Any good house needs a fitting foundation. The cultural assumptions of Japanese cultural history have created an atmosphere where the meta-axiom of research has allowed the area to develop beyond the “mainstream” of the given field. The tudy of primate societies and social-cognitive capacities that has flourished in Japan since the late 1940s is an example of how a research field has become such “well-behaving rebel”—without a rebellion! At the first glance, the achievement of new insights into primate lives seems to be based on “extrascientific” (from the Occidental standpoint) perspective. It would be quite unusual to find a ritual of thanksgiving to the research participants—animals—in Western laboratories, yet such rituals of kanshasai (Asquith, 1986) and prayer rituals for monkeys’ souls—ireisai— are common in Japanese research laboratories. In the Occident, it is not respect for the research participants, but their separate legal power (“informed consent”) that becomes semiotically marked. Something is done— through an act of conduct—in relation to the other. What that something is marks the hypergeneralized meaning field of relating with the other. Both prayers for “monkey souls” and the ritualistic descriptions of the research procedures (and the symbolic acts of signing “consent forms”) are semiotic regulators of the social roles of the researchers. In one case (that of Japan), such regulation enhances the connectedness of the researcher and researchee, creating a symbolic partnership. In the other, it separates them, by granting “the other” their “inalienable rights”—while releasing the researcher from the burden of treating “the other” as if s/he is similar to him- or herself. “Schools” in science are inherently ambiguous social units. On the one hand, they unify the direction in which a particular group of researchers works—thus potentially adding to the collective clarification of knowledge through mutual enrichment and critique. However, on the other hand, the formation of a “school” may lead to the establishment of traditions of

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socially normative orthodoxy that stop active inquiry and replaces it by rhetoric activities. History of psychology is rich in such “rhetoric cycles” both on the phenomenological side (psychology in USSR from 1930s to 1970s; Freudian psychoanalysis after 1920s) and on the empirical side (American “behaviorism” since 1913). All of these fixations are catalyzed by the cultural-historical conditions (Dolby, 1977; Valsiner 2003, 2004)—first of all resulting in the general value orientations: In most Eastern belief systems, the human soul can reincarnate in many shapes and forms, so all living things are spiritually connected. A man can become a fish and a fish can become a god or goddess. . . .  The study of animal behavior in Japan has never been contaminated by feelings of superiority or an aversion to acknowledging humanlike characteristics in animals. (de Waal, 2003, p. 294)

The “Kyoto tradition” in primatology started in 1948 (Takasaki, 2000) and has been built around the philosophy of Kenji Imanishi (de Waal, 2003; Imanishi, 1984, 2002). It is a deeply philosophical tradition that builds both on Kitaro Nishida’s (Nishida, 1990; Yusa, 2002) “philosophy of nothingness” and on the dynamic unity of person and nature that characterizes the work of Piotr Kropotkin and Jakob von Uexkyll. Both of these traditions rejected the “war focus” of the relationship of organisms with one another— emphasizing the processes of cooperation and functional making of one’s environments (Umwelt—see Chang, 2009). While emphasizing the unity of species and their settings, the “Kyoto tradition” rejected the Darwinian notions of “war” for survival. Survival is a coordinated—yet not tension-free— linking of the organisms with their environments. Such linking is embedded within fluid and hierarchical structures of social relationships. The critical conceptual breakthrough that the Imanishi tradition brings to our understanding of primates (and into psychology at large) is the acceptance of a variety of forms of interdependence between parts of the same whole. Conflict (“war”) is only one of these—and one that is the least constructive for the maintenance and development of open systems. Various forms of coordination—often brought together under the general term harmony—constitute the breeding ground of evolution and development (in ontogeny, as well as in history). Such coordination—taken to mother–offspring relationships in the study of primates (Macaca fuscata) leads to the recognition of learning-bysupport (rather than learning-via-outcomes). The monkey offspring learns from his mother “to be more precise, from her attitude and expression, he can learn first ‘what the problem should be’” (Imanishi, 1965, p. 35).

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Here Imanishi applied the Freudian notion of identification to the offspring–mother relation of the monkeys—something that Western scientists are over-trained never to do. Yet the context of axiomatic unity of the living world makes the transfer of explanatory theoretical concepts acceptable. The focus on harmony here is open-ended—it is the “feeling into” the other’s expectations of the immediate future—which in itself is uncertain. Learning takes place by socially supported opportunities for observation— rather than by feedback from the erroneous outcomes. Imanishi actively brings into the thinking of primate worlds explanatory terms from human psychology—psychoanalytic notion of identification. The focus is on approximate—ambiguous— preadaptation to the impending future—rather than learning from the past (through trial and error). This general orientation to transfer of acquired new techniques to the offspring is the hallmark of the research on higher primates (Matsuzawa, 2006). However, there have existed tensions on the border of the “Kyoto tradition”—both within Japan, and within the international primate research community (see Strum & Fedigan, 2000). The negotiations involved have resulted in the pressures of diffusing the distinct philosophical-empirical perspective into a wider field—with a loss of their focus. Thus, Some primatologists felt that Imanishi and Itani made a canopy under which many worked, and that although that paradigm has had negligible influence for many years, the Japanese have not subsequently developed their own method and theory . . .  Several (students and professors) have said they feel that Japanese copy from the West, yet Western paradigms are not fully satisfactory. Japanese researchers study ecology, behavior, and wide range of problems, and they write in English, but, some say, they do not have a larger picture; one commented that there is “no perspective now” on Japanese studies, and no idea. (Asquith, 2000, p. 175, emphasis added)

This exercise of anthropology of science (questioning Japanese primate researchers about their view, from “inside outwards”) reveals an interesting ambivalent structure. The creation of a “canopy” as something under which different empirical work (=theory as an umbrella) is implies disconnection between levels of knowing—a very “Western” idea—after all the popular “in” theory of primate research—sociobiology—is a similar “canopy.” It can be claimed that the metatheoretical starting point—strategic anthropomorphism (Takasaki, 2000, p. 163)—in the primate studies of the “Kyoto school” has paved the way for a creative alternative to the Anglo-American domineering model of sociobiology by emulating the evolutionary

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process into the wider context of the interrelated world of living things (Imanishi, 1984, 2001). In the Imanishi tradition, Evolution, i.e., the unfolding of self-development of the world of living things, is implicitly assumed in this worldview. Imanishi’s view of evolution, or “history,” is inseparable from his view that the society of living things is composed of elements existing in space. In this view, an evolutionary pathway is simply an extension of the “society of living things” existing across time. In comparison with sociobiology or behavioral ecology, which attempt to explain the world of living things in the tradition of Darwinian theory of evolution, “Imanishian biosociology” has an upside-down paradigm structure. (Takasaki, 2000, p. 163, emphasis added)

Thus, thanks to the specific starting point in Japanese cultural history, the notion of evolution can be widened by eliminating the obligatory notion of “fight for survival” that has plagued the Anglo-American evolutionary discourse. Instead, one is left with a dynamic hierarchical model where individual adaptation is embedded within multilevel social organization of the species. What can we generalize from this glimpse into the “Kyoto tradition” in primate research in Japan? It is clearly a tradition well located within the cultural-historical context of Japan—situated in the middle of special relationship of humans and monkeys prior to any science, well phrased in the general philosophy of the living beings—and, on the side of the empirical research program, meticulously detailed both in its experimental and ecological-observational work. Precisely because of such unique context has the “Kyoto tradition” provided general science of evolutionary anthropology a clearly innovative perspective—looking at the dynamics of multilayered forms of social organization in the lives of primates. This focus—and subsequently its empirical “fill-in” with data—would have been impossible under conditions (usual in the West) of separating “the animals” from “us, the humans”—by a boundary of culture, or of evolutionary distance. The ambiguity of general ideas in Japan is a breeding ground for new scientific approaches that, in the equally ambiguous philosophical worlds of the Occident, are covered by “conceptual blinders” that have been in place over centuries.

Two Ways to Create a Contrast: Inclusive and Exclusive Separation The act of making distinctions is not merely that of distinguishing two parts of a field (A and B), but implicating the kind of border between them

How Can Psychology in Japan Become a Well-Behaving Rebel?    309 A A

B B

Figure 15.3  Exclusive (left) and Inclusive (right) forms of separation of A and B.

(e.g., {A || B} that establishes and maintains the distinction). The border || can be built on the basis of the exclusive meaning of the disjunction “or”— if A then not B, and if B then not A. Likewise, it can be built upon the conjunction nature of “or”—where the disjunction indicates connection. The latter I have called inclusive separation—“the target is differentiated from its context, but the context is retained in the subsequent analysis because it is considered to be interdependent with the phenomenon” (Valsiner, 1997, p. 24). That kind of separation is on the basis of any systemic account where parts of the system (or system and its environment) need to be distinguished in order to be related. Exclusive separation denies the possibility of the separated parts—they can be classified into mutually exclusive categories (A or B), thus defocusing from their potential forms of relatedness (Figure 15.3). Figure 15.3 (right hand side) is further supported by a traditional Igbo proverb: “A boundary is not the point at which something stops. . . . A boundary is the point from where something begins to be present” (Beneduce & Taliani, 2006, p. 442). The focus in inclusive separation reorients our focus of attention from the “center” (or “essence”—of A or B) to the “boundary zone” where A and B encounter each other (or “the membrane”). The question of causality becomes replaced by elaboration of the system of “boundary conditions” and their possible modifications. By creating the boundary zone between A and B, the act of inclusive separation creates the field for inquiries into the processes involved in the boundary zone. In contrast, the left-hand figure reifies the essential status of “A-ness” of A and “B-ness” of B by constructing a formal relation between them. What has been the figure becomes the ground, and vice versa.

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Hierarchical Orders: Fixed, Dynamic, and Transformational The notion of hierarchical order has created deep ideological divides in the theoretical thinking of psychologists (Matusov, 2008; Nicolopoulou & Weintraub, 1996; van der Veer, 1996a, 1996b). It is easy to see, looking at the inclusive and exclusive separation scheme (Figure 15.3), that these disputes are byproducts of the two ways of distinction. The exclusive separation maps directly to the notion of linear hierarchy (that honors the relation of transitivity: A > B, B > C, A > C). It gives us static, fixed hierarchies (A > B > C) in which the dominance relation (designated by >) is not elaborated. In contrast, the inclusive separation maps on cyclical hierarchies— which are intransitive in their logical order (A > B, B > C but not A > C6). Here the relationship (>)—rather than the positioning of the parts—is the focus (Poddiakov and Valsiner, 2014). In terms of real life—it is the phenomena of transformation of social role relations that show the centrality of the mutual inclusiveness of the parts within a whole. The notion of carnivalization (coming to psychology from the literary work of Mikhail Bakhtin) entails temporary reversal of hierarchical power (A > B > C may temporarily become C > B > A). During Hindu temple festival in Puri working for the symbolic saving of the community from impending disease (smallpox), The Brahmins are useless and become secondary to untouchables or lowcaste persons who take charge of things and are in centre stage. The Brahmins are totally helpless to heal and therefore to renew the community. Even the king, if he is to participate in removing the disease, must become an untouchable sweeper. Thus, healing and renewal are in the hands of those low in the hierarchy, those close to earth on the return path of the chain of life from the deities to the earth. . . . The hierarchy is circular for at nodal points, the lowest becomes the highest; it corresponds to a non-logocentric system of thought where order is attained through disorder, health through disease, renewed life through death. (Marglin, 1990, pp. 137–138)

Occidental science has had great difficulty understanding such cyclical and constantly transforming social role relations in India—and in other parts of the world, including Japan. The exclusive separation—fortified by the narrow interpretation of untouchability—creates conceptual blinders against seeing the mutuality of the separated parts of the social system. The manifest rituals of exclusion of the caste of the “untouchables” in the history of Hindu societies have charmed the occidental interpreters away from seeing the mutual interdependence of the different social groups in the actual process of everyday living.

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The Other Side: Epistemological Limitation in Psychology in Japan While Maruyama (cited above) saw how European mindsets limited basic understanding of the world, he proceeded in the direction of overcoming it making use of his Japanese cultural heritage in the service of scientific generalization. Here his cultural heritage—and the contrast with that of his European interlocutors—served as the grounds for overcoming the epistemological limitations of “the other.” Yet there is an epistemological obstacle also present in the Orient—the Eastern science is fact-oriented. It tries to communicate with the truth, not through generality and abstraction as Western science does, but through specificity and objectivity. Yet these are not the same—a phenomenon that is specific need not in any sense be “objective”— or specificity of a real object (or fact) does not grant its objectivity. A possible result of the study of empirical kind—and psychology is mostly filled with such studies—may lead to a vague belief that a specific fact represents the absolute truth, and hence interpretations and hypotheses should be avoided because human discursive intellects conceal the reality. Through this conceptual blinder, the strength of the Japanese epistemological stand—the relationship between the vague general metaphoric ideas and meticulous depiction of singular specimens (the phenomena)— becomes lost. Instead of looking for new generalizing principles, psychologists in Japan limit themselves to the description of “the facts.” Skilled experiments and detailed observations on a specific phenomenon of course are very important—yet they need to speak the language of generality rather than be accumulated as “contributions to the literature” (Valsiner, 2000). The tendency of Eastern science to stress specificity and particularity makes it practical—yet science as Wissenschaft is oriented towards generalization, rather than practicality. That is why the “well-behaving rebels” are eagerly awaited in psychology worldwide.

General Conclusion: Is the “Well-Behaving Rebel” Already Here? Participants to this symposium will probably differ greatly in answering this question, with a focus—that triggered the set-up of this symposium—on the simple imitative nature of much of psychology in Japan. Yet the emergence of such rebels is not an instantaneous “social mutation” in which large cohorts of researchers in leading universities and laboratories one day wake up to see the shining sun of Western psychological practices fade and leave them free to be creative. Being creative needs careful preparation in the art

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of going beyond what is given, questioning it, and without much ado—doing something usual and “accepted” in a new way (Maruyama, 1963, 1988; Matsuzawa, 2001; Sato, Yasuda, Kido, Takada, & Valsiner, 2006). Psychology worldwide is in tension—between the “mainstream” that has emerged in the social-historical context of relatively few (mostly AngloSaxon) societies, and the rest—distributed all over the world, recognizing the limitations of the “mainstream,” fighting against it and focusing on the phenomena (Cairns, 1986; Chaudhary, 2004), which necessarily are those of individual cases (Molenaar, 2004) rather than samples (Valsiner & Sato, 2006). A return to holistic perspectives as a theoretical frame (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008) enables the reconnection of complex phenomena and theoretical generalization.

When a Prophecy Has Failed . . . Where Is a New One? Because of the deep belief—prophecy of becoming a science—that facts are truths, the reality of psychology as Wissenschaft leads us to look elsewhere. Psychology—of the “data-driven” (read “Western”) kind—exported as a commodity to other cultural contexts—has failed on both ends of its knowledge construction. First, it has given up its careful phenomenological acuity—capability to observe and investigate human psychological phenomena without getting rid of their quality at the first encounter. Instead of descriptions of deep introspections—which we cherish in reading authors like Joyce, Oe, Dostoyevsky, or Naipaul—we encounter in psychology a myriad of data of such introspections in the form of ratings. Secondly, psychology has failed to arrive at general knowledge—getting caught in between the post-modernist belief that such knowledge cannot exist and the inductive generalization focus on the overwhelming adoption of statistical inference as if it were “the scientific method.” By being close to their cultural-historical roots is why Japanese scholars have an advantage in this new development within psychology. First and foremost, it is the connection of the miniaturized specifics of phenomena and the overwhelming metaphoric general vagueness of theoretical thought (Komatsu et al., 2008) that creates feed-forward loops for scientific innovation. Both our examples above—from physics and primatology—illustrate that point. A very general implicit field of ideas guides the very concrete studies of scientists, feeding further into the general ideas. The cultural history of any given society is both a privilege and hindrance for reaching new discoveries in science—hence the need to build new knowledge carefully on the cultural heritage that is different from the hegemonic

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social institutions in a given science at the given time. As Frans de Waal has pointed it out, We should not be deceived by the West’s scientific hegemony: it is as unrealistic as that of one country thinking it can order the rest of the world around. The study of nature cannot be left to single priesthood who all think the same. Each culture is too wrapped up in its own relation with nature to step back and see it as it is. To gain a full picture requires scientists with all kinds of backgrounds, who together take on a task equivalent to examining images in a range of fun-house mirrors. Somewhere in that heavily distorted information resides the truth. (de Waal, 2003, p. 298)

Acknowledgments This paper grew out from the intellectual challenge Shing-Jen Chen provided to the author in the past three years—and it has led to productive inquiry. Koji Komatsu and Tatsuya Sato provided guidance and relevant materials for my continuing inquiry into the ways of thought of Japanese scientists and their dependence on the creative vagueness of the Japanese language.

Notes 1. Paper presented at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Psychological Association, Sapporo, September 21, 2008. Symposium: From Import to Innovation (The Future of Psychology in Japan). Organizers: Shing-Jen Chen (Hokkaido University) and Jaan Valsiner (Clark University) 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. “Falling like a beautiful cherry petal” was the metaphor used by the Japanese state to promote the sacrifice of soldiers in the war—Ohnuki-Tierney, 2002, p. 38. 4. In contrast to “disconnected rebels”—insurgents, anarchists, robbers—and their counterparts among the power holders who suppress any aspect of rebellion and demand complete honoring of static transitive social hierarchies—tyrants, generals, mothers-in-law, and so on. 5. Participants in the discussion were Tatsuya Sato, Akinobu Nameda, Koji Komatsu, Shing-Jen Chen, and Koichi Negayama—to all of whom the present author is deeply indebted. 6. The nature of “but not A > C” can be multiple: if A = C then the system A–B–C becomes reduced to A–B; if the relation between A and C is indeterminate then the system is open to qualitative development of incorporating new parts (D) into it, and so on. Simple closed cycle of intransitive kind {. . . A > B > C > A . . .} is closed for developmental transformation, within it all parts are equal in their dominance over other parts—equality by constant cyclical dominance.

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Valsiner, J. (2000). Entre a “Democracia da Literatura” e a paixao pela compreensão: Entendendo a dinâmica do desenvolvimento [In Portuguese: Between “democracy of the literature” and passion for understanding: making sense of the dynamics of development]. Psicologia: Reflexão e critica, 13(2), 319–325. Valsiner, J. (2003, June). Functional forgetfulness in psychology: Social functions of ignoring and glorifying in the making of a social science. Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Conference of International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), Istanbul, Turkey. Valsiner, J. (2004). Glory and misery of fame in psychology: Hero myths in the making of a social science. History of Psychology and Psychology Studies, 6, 21–26. Valsiner, J., & Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS): How can psychology’s methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning (pp. 215–251). Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript. van der Veer, R. (1996a). The concept of culture in Vygotsky’s thinking. Culture & Psychology, 2, 247–263. van der Veer, R. (1996b). On some historical roots and present-day doubts. Culture & Psychology, 2, 457–463. von Ehrenfels, C. (1988). On Gestalt qualities. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundation of Gestalt theory (pp.  82–117). München, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. (Original work published 1890) Yusa, M. (2002). Zen & philosophy: An intellectual biography of Nishida Kitaro. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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16 Culture in Human Development Theoretical and Methodological Directions1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Culture remains an ill-defined category in modern cultural psychologies, yet the implications from the use of the term are fundamental for psychology at large. I translate the notion of culture into that of sign-constructive psychological processes. From such a semiotic and developmental perspective, culture is an inherent organizer of human psychological existence. Human beings generate their own psychological development by way of construction of systems of signs. This construction is aided by the system of meanings within the collective-cultural realm. Sign construction allows for generalization (through decontextualization) of the signs and further recontextualizations. Emergence of abstract complexity of signs is an inevitable component of human development. Psychology’s methodology becomes adequate to its phenomena if the open-ended semiotic generativity in development is taken into account.

Beyond the Mind, pages 319–333 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Psychology in the 1990s includes a relatively sudden increase of interest in complex issues of human psychological functioning, which by a generic term are labelled “culture.” As is appropriate in case of any generic term, its use in scientists discourse is more frequent than efforts to make its meaning clear. I claim here that culture is an inherent organizer of human psychological development. It is not external to the person—persons do not “belong to” culture; rather, culture “belongs to” the psychological functions of individuals. This perspective is semiotic in its focus—building upon the focus on signs that represent selected aspects of the person’s relation with the world. These “relations with the world” entail personal subjective reflection upon the present, past, and possible future psychological constructions, made possible by the capacity to make, use, and abandon signs. Human personal subjectivity is the axiomatic starting point of any psychological analysis.

Presentation of Experience by Signs: Static and Dynamic Perspectives Signs “stand for” something else—in generic terms, they present that something else. The possibility for such presentation—let X “stand in” for Y—can have three temporal orientations. First, the sign can re-present some facet of already lived-through experience. Secondly, the sign can co-present a present experience that is being lived through by way of its concurrent construction. Finally, the sign can pre-present some possible future experience. The unity of these three foci of presenting allows for distancing of the reflecting agent (person) from the immediate here-and-now context. The signs-mediated world is a world of relative autonomy for the person. This autonomy can be conceptualized in either static (nondevelopmental) or dynamic (developmental) terms. Within a nondevelopmental framework, signs that mediate in person– environment relations are treated as givens—something that “is there” (=exists) and through its existence mediates whatever it represents, for the given meaning maker. Here, signs can be described “as they are,” and their referents clearly specified (e.g., X stands for Y, Z, and W). This framework allows for the creation of dictionaries of the meanings of signs, as well as for heated disputes about what a given sign means in a particular perspective. Thus, questions whether appearance of oblong objects—lamp-posts, cucumbers, or Pinocchio-noses—in a person’s dreams means “penis,” or whether these imageries present themselves or one another belong to the realm of static perspectives on sign mediation.

Culture in Human Development    321 Present Moment

The sign S is made to REPRESENT the state of affairs (Y)—it “stands in” for Y in “some capacity” The sign EMERGES as something (S) starts to PRESENT the state of affairs (Y)

The state of some affairs (experience) Y

S

The sign has OPEN END towards future—once in place it can regulate new encounters when need be

The state of some affairs (experience) Y

Past

The Act

Future

Irreversible Time

(a)

(b)

Figure 16.1  (a) Sign as static REPRESENTATION; (b) Sign as dynamic PRESENTATION.

Developmental viewpoint on signs differs cardinally. Signs are viewed as themselves emerging, constructed, mediating devices that emerge as the person constructs them, and which are transformed in the course of ongoing experience. Thus, signs are always in the process of (re)construction, and their precise referents are constantly semiclear. That semiclarity is a necessary part of the process of semiotic mediation, rather than a deficiency of the signs. In Figure 16.1, the contrast of the static and dynamic perspectives of sign mediation is given. In the case of the static view (Figure 16.1a), a sign that is claimed to represent some state of affairs (experience) operates in a time-free meaning field. It is based on associative ties (S associates with Y and thus can operate as a “sign of Y”). Furthermore, it is possible in terms of Figure 16.1a to have anything represent anything else—known under the label of arbitrary encoding. It is widely used in mathematics (e.g., “I take X to stand in for Y”) The contrastive case is given in Figure 16.1b where a sign operates within irreversible time. Some experience (Y) is given to the person in the flow of forward-flowing experiencing the life-world and becomes encoded by the emergent sign (S) which gives meaning to the present ACT in which the person is involved, as well as prepares the person for future similar encounters. The sign is open-ended towards the future.

Necessary Indeterminacy in the Semiotic Mediation Process The semiclear nature of the nature and meanings of signs is a natural byproduct of development. There are three sides to this making of semiclarity.

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First, the personal experience that signs are made to mediate is indeterministic itself. Development entails bounded indeterminacy (Valsiner, 1987)—at every time moment, the exact happening at the next one is uncertain, yet the general direction and range of possibilities may be determinable. In other terms—the very phenomenon that a sign is created to represent is inherently ambiguous. Signs can only be semiclear because their referents are constantly changing. The referents are changing because of the irreversibility of time. Secondly, the process of sign-construction is open. The ways in which signs may emerge from boundedly indeterminate experience are filled with ambiguities, especially as generalization is part of sign construction. Any generalized sign is ambiguous both in relation to its context of emergence: It emerges on the basis of the given context yet becomes generalized far beyond it. In any new context of its recontextualization, it can be put to “narrowed-down” usages that are again ambiguous in relation to the generalized version of the sign. Thus, the nature of sign construction leads to the ambiguity of the sign. Finally, the signs themselves entail duality, which itself is  ambiguous. When construed from a dialogical perspective, each sign—when constructed—produces its opposite which operates as its “shadow” field of contrast. Thus, for signs—words like “potato,” “justice,” “happiness,” contrastive fields of their opposites (“non-potato,” “non-justice,” “non-happiness”) emerge cogenetically (see Herbst, 1995). These fields of opposites (or antisigns)—especially as these themselves are ill-defined—create oppositional tension with the signs, which is the basis that makes the exact use of a sign in a particular context unique (i.e., as described in the second reason for ambiguity, above). These three realms of dynamic processes—experience itself, its relating with the constructed signs, and the duality of the signs themselves— guarantee that the semiotic mediating devices are temporary constructs that include potential for their transformation. Thus, it is all too well known with what ease love turns into hate in human world, or with which ease war emerges from peace (Simmel, 1906). Possibilities of constant reconstruction of the signs used to make sense of a social setting can lead to semiotic modulation of roles, relationships, and feelings.

Some Examples A woman says of her boyfriend “he doesn’t really love me”—implying the new contrast between “love” and “really love.” The latter is a new level

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of sign construction, notable for its affective and nebulous nature of the qualifier “really,” The affective generalization obtained via such construction can be profound for the person. It can lead to goal-oriented discursive claims of the form “If you really loved me, you would do X (or not do Y)”— a recontextualization of the constructed meaning that can have profound implications at the level of experiencing, or actions. Similarly, social groups would utilize such constructions in their efforts to make sense of novelty (which is often a problematic new event). In public accusation of a person (who had been playing the role of a goddess) after a failed firewalking ceremony in India, semiotically set conditions create meaningful traps: “You are the goddess—you know everything—so you tell us. If you don’t, we’ll know you are a fake, sitting here with no goddess in your body—and we’ll beat you so hard that you’ll really straighten up” (Freeman, 1981, p. 321, emphasis added). Generalized claims like these indicate the potential of the semiotic system to instantly allow creation of meaning complexes. The cultural regulatory power of the latter is exactly in their general, ill-defined, in a way “nebulous,” character. Uses of such generalized complexes allow for explanation of everything without risk to the explainer (e.g., the use of omniscient nature of language by fortune-tellers—see Aphek & Tobin, 1990). Yet the duality between the constructed meaning complex and the referenced experiences remains.

Historical Roots of the Developmental-Semiotic Perspective, and Extension The duality of the structure SIGN REFERENT is recognized in both the static and dynamic perspectives. The focus on generalization via signs is rooted in Karl Bühler’s Organon model—and in particular in the focus on generalization as emerging from the ambiguity of message boundaries (Bühler, 1934/1990). There is inherent ambiguity—or tension—present in this triangular structure, which leads (according to Bühler) to abstracting generalizations by human psychological systems (see Figure 16.2). Adding the notion of irreversible time within which human experience leads to abstractive generalizations to Bühler’s scheme would turn the Organon model into a completely developmental scheme (Figure 16.2). Signs operate as cultural organizers of the unfolding psychological relating to the contexts of experiencing in a here-and-now setting. Such relating is triggered both by the immediate setting and the person’s futureoriented preconceptions of the setting. All psychological adaptation is

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GENERALIZED AND ABSTRACTED MESSAGE “OBJECT”

“expression”

“SENDER”

TIME

“appeal”

“RECEIVER”

Figure 16.2  Karl Bühler’s Organon Model with addition of abstracting generalization.

sign-constructive and future-oriented, since the reality of irreversibility of personal experiencing does not allow for “returns” to the previous settings. What is possible is emergence of a new here-and-now setting which is similar to some previous one, but never the same (see Sovran, 1992). “Sameness” of human reflexive making of categories is an example of abstractive generalization. Thus, a class of events denominated as “X” is a construction of the abstracting human mind and constitutes a preadaptation for detection of similar—but not same—events as those might unfold in the future. We live in a universe of unique encounters with the world—yet we turn their uniqueness into time-freed categorical systems. While the actual experiencing process never repeats itself, its complementary signconstruction process creates the moment of interpretive stability—by way of category (X) formation of similar-looking aspects of experience—in the personal psychological world of a sign-constructor, thus transcending the “flow of duration” (Bergson, 1907/1945) by way of constructing a temporary, stable, semiotic, self-scaffolding means for reflection. Established signs preorient the person to expect something recognizable in the future. Once the future arrives, it is either made sense of by way of the established signs or new signs become constructed to make sense of it.

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Cultural Organizers Operate Within the Person’s Psychological System Cultural organizers (or regulators) are a system of meanings that regulate the reflection (both cognitive and affective) and action. These meanings are constructed by the person’s psychological system, under the constraining guidance on behalf of various social agents in the person’s social world (other persons, social institutions, messages encoded in the environment as reflecting different value systems, etc.). Such “social guidance” can be simultaneously oriented towards variable (often opposing) objectives, putting the constructing person in the middle of ambivalent interpretations of a given situation, or into moral dilemmas that cannot be solved by existing schemes of social norms. Hence the need for centering the constructive process within the individual person. In psychology, the core of psychological phenomena is possible only because of the existence of personal psychological worlds, known directly only to the persons themselves. This central feature of psychological phenomena once guided the development of the introspectionist methodological orientation in psychology, which was superseded by the focus on the objectivity of behavior (Danziger, 1990). Still, the psychological experiencing is possible only in unison with a person, and not possible without a person. For instance, social institutions or social groups cannot experience anything as units unless they are constituted by persons, who bring some of their intrapsychological worlds to create a group or institutional phenomena. The person is the core of social phenomena, exactly because ontogenetically the personal–psychological worlds emerge through participation of social input from other persons.

The Social World Is Heterogeneous, and Therefore Ill-Defined The reality of social worlds is always heterogeneous, changing, and filled with unclarities, redundancies, and illogicalities of the guidance the “social others” provide for the developing persons. The developing person is socially guided (“assisted,” “directed,” “forced,” etc.), yet all this goalsoriented “input” is only rarely monolithic. It entails mutually contradictory, or unlinked, or inconsistent demands or expectations upon the developing person, thus making it necessary for the person to become the agent who synthesizes these “inputs” into one’s own personal psychological system of feeling, reasoning, and acting. It is the personal synthesizing task of the “social input cacophony” that sets the person up as the necessary central agent (as well as the field

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within which phenomena appear) for cultural-psychological perspectives in psychology. The invention of semiotic mediation in human phylogeny is a coping device with uncertainties of living on the one hand, and social expectations on the other. The “avalanche” of social suggestions can be constructively coped with by a person through cultural organizers. The developing person constructs such semiotic means—signs—personally on the basis of the “semiosphere” (including language) in the process of experiencing the polyphonic “input” from the social suggestions emanating from other persons. Cultural organizers are thus intrapsychological phenomena—yet their emergence is based on sociogenetic nature of human ontogeny. Cultural organizers are products of the internalization/ externalization process. They are future-oriented functional products—as constructed, they regulate the development of a here-and-now state into its next version in time. Simultaneously, they become functional in longer-term feed-forward processes: They can be constructively evoked at times in the more distant future to organize a specific impending encounter with the (always) novel conditions of the environment.

Similarity of Theoretical Construction: Cultural and Genetic Regulators The notion of cultural organizers entails a direct analogy with the notion of regulator genes in modern genetics of protein synthesis. In the latter, specific systemic relations between regulator genes make it possible (or impossible) for a particular protein structure to be built. It can be argued that in human psychological functioning, the role of regulation of the generative possibilities of the human mind takes precedence over charting out the full set of human semiotic possibilities. Yet, it is at the notion of hierarchical and modifiable regulating systems where this analogy stops. In contrast to the realm of genetic regulation, the semiotic system allows for flexible construction of new regulators. New signs can be constructed and appear in dominant locations in the semiotic regulatory system. This dynamic nature of the semiotic regulation process is a curse for psychologists (whose hopes of describing structures of such mediating systems are crushed by the immediate change of the system), yet that flexible regulation is crucial for the role it plays in human psychological lives—allowing for highly flexible adaptation through changing presentation of the phenomena.

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Open-Ended Sign Construction and Its Implications: Flexibility and Redundancy Given the propensity towards constructing ever-new signs and changing the specific meanings of the existing ones, as well as the flexibility of operating simultaneously (as well as successively) at various levels of abstraction, the human psychological processes can be inherently infinitely open to new ways of reflecting upon any situation. This excessive openness is a necessary result of the future-oriented adaptation efforts, which follow from the inevitability of irreversibility of time. Each “here-and-now” situation in the life of a human being is inevitably unique and novel, and it is through the construction of the system of cultural organizers—semiotic devices—that the person can function with remarkable coherence across these unique situations. This coherence can be guaranteed through overproduction of signs— since every new future context of experiencing is necessarily unknown, the best preadaptation for this would be 1. production of many signs that can be equally applicable in the expected situation 2. allowing for emergence of hierarchical systems of relations between these signs (which can be “fine-tuned” to the emerging novel situation through alterations of the systemic properties of the hierarchy) 3. allow for flexible distancing (and equally flexible relinking) of different sign-complexes to any new context The combination of these three features of sign construction guarantees both the redundancy (i.e., the same setting is overcontrolled by multiple meaning systems) and flexibility of the human cultural regulators systems. The relevant question for understanding of psychological processes is not what they are like (in a presumed “true” static state), but what forms they may take if challenged by specifiable contextual conditions. Psychology as science has had a miserable track record in treating the latter task—the usual focus on “prediction of behavior” ideology has derailed the science from the course of making sense of the conditional-genetic nature of psychological processes (Lewin, 1927).

Fruits of Redundancy: Relevance of Ignoring Probably the major implication of this emphasis on redundancy and flexibility of both the set of social suggestions and in the case of human

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psyche—both mediated by the cultural organizers—is the acceptance of the idea that most of human development takes place through active ignoring and neutralization of most (but not all) of the social suggestions to which the person is subjected in one’s everyday life. Thus, a kind of “purposeful incompetence” in many realms of everyday life is a basic coping device for human psychological systems. In order to guarantee relative stability of the persons’ developing psychological systems, these systems need to be well buffered against social suggestions of immediate kind. The latter may be filled with dramatisms, hurting efforts, declarations of love or hate (or both of those), yet the impact of such single episodes as having “long-term effects” of any direct kind need not be taken for granted. Hence, what is usually viewed as “socialization efforts” (by social institutions or parents) are necessarily counteracted by the active recipients of such efforts who can neutralize or ignore a large number of such episodes, aside from single particularly dramatic ones. The relevance of the notions of coconstruction (Valsiner, 1994a, 1994b) and bidirectional culture transfer (Valsiner, 1989) is of theoretical value here, keeping our researching minds from assuming the commonsensically prescribed (yet inadequate) assumption of unidirectional “socialization” by the adults of the young. What we can observe in reality is the parallel, interlinked functioning of parenting and filiating processes (see Valsiner, Branco, & Melo Dantas, 1997).

Implications of Ignoring: Development Is Slow and Conservative This makes us to recognize human ontogeny as a slow and conservative process, where the loci of openness to social input are largely made available by the intrasystemic organization of the cultural organizers. It is the emerging system of such organizers that makes some of the incoming social suggestions to be accepted as “input” for further construction of the personality, while dismissing others with the help of various buffering strategies. In other terms, human ontogeny is relatively conservative in the emergence of novel psychological—semiotically mediated—phenomena that would be preserved. There exists a contrast between immediate flexibility of construction and reconstruction of the signs in a here-and-now setting and the maintenance of the constructed generalizations and nuances. Microgenetically, human semiotic adaptation to here-and-now settings is overproductive—yet only a few of these products transfer to the level of ontogenetic development.

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This problem is not unique to the development of cultural regulatory systems. Similar issues exist (and are unresolved) in evolutionary theory— the emergence of local adaptations (idioadaptations) does not necessarily lead to new qualitative level in the development of species (aromorphosis—see Sewertzoff, 1929). Likewise, it is not automatically the case that a microgenetically described episode in a particular context of child’s life (even a traumatic one) would become causal for the child’s ontogenetic progression. Ignoring of aspects of here-and-now events takes place twice— first in the setting itself (not letting the conditions—social suggestions— into the psychological system), and, secondly, by way of not letting some of the semiotically mediated experiences of a moment to play further role in ontogenetic progression. These two levels of “buffering” by active ignoring of particular episodes guarantees the psychological resiliency of human cultural regulation of experiences.

Implications for Construction of Methodology Nice ideas in psychology may be expressed at times, yet their longevity is always a question in a science that unabashedly emphasizes that it is “empirical.” Psychology seems to be moving between periods of self-doubt (“crises”) and proud self-assertions of its basic science nature. In neither state is it acting productively—boasting and lamenting are but two states of maintaining a status quo. In reality, it is the ways in which new theoretical ideas and grasping of the phenomena of interest become mutually connected that guarantees either arrival at new knowledge, or at practices of production of many studies of limited general knowledge value. In its recent history, psychology has succeeded in the latter more often than in the former. Hence the question of methodology is of central relevance. By methodology I do not refer to a set of methods (which is a usual implication of the use of the term in recent psychology), but to an “epistemological cycle”—the process of investigator’s actions that includes general axiomatics, understanding of phenomena, constructed theories, constructed methods, and—last but not least—the constructed data (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). The data have to represent the selected aspects of the phenomena, in ways charted out by theoretical constructions. The “goodness” of the data is possible to evaluate only within the “methodology cycle” in terms of their consistency with the other parts of the cycle, and not independently. This view on methodology is not new in science. It builds on the continental European traditions of basic sciences (Asendorpf & Valsiner, 1992).

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It is meant to counter the “post-modernist” efforts to view all knowledge as necessarily fragmented (localized to a given setting), which interestingly supports the hyperempiricistic ethos in psychology. Unless psychological knowledge is of generalizable value, it is not scientific knowledge at all. From the semiotic-developmental perspective that I outlined above, a number of requirements for methodology necessarily follow: 1. Preservation of time in the construction of units of analysis. If the notion of irreversible construction of cultural organizers by persons is assumed, then naturally the temporal frame that would allow to represent this emergence process needs to be present in the empirical data. This may entail the use of mutually overlapping temporal units for detection of emergence processes (e.g., Unit 1 entailing A–B–C Unit 2 C–D–E , etc.—see Valsiner, 1995). Parts of semiformed (therefore difficult to classify) phenomena may be natural parts of the time-preserving units. 2. Psychological science studies dynamically transforming structures (not “variables”). Given the semiotic generativity assumed in the present persoective, psychological experiments cannot be viewed to entail simple changing—by experimenter—of “independent” variables to check their “effect” upon the “dependent” ones. In fact, there cannot exist “variables” in the strict sense of this term (i.e., quantitative entities that can be varied at experimenter’s will, independently from one another, and of the interpretations that research participants attribute to these). Instead, the experimental situation is constructed (and reconstructed) by the experimenter in its total structure, which is expected to elicit in the subject a process of coacting and cothinking. The latter processes would be the targets of analysis—equivalents of the traditional talk of “dependent variables,” Clearly the folk model of “quantification as objectivity” (see Valsiner, 1987, Chapter 5) disappears from use in the case of this modification of the experimental method, and the focus is on the routes of transformation of a structure into novel forms. 3. The definitive empirical source for data derivation is the single case: a particular person studied in his or her negotiation process with the particular here-and-now setting. Generalizations in this perspective are made from single cases to the generic functioning of the personality system. The empirical task of the researcher is first to analyze—the systemic functioning of single personality—and then to aggregate knowledge of the ways in which the system works, across persons into a generic model. The process of such postanalysis aggregation is that of reapplication of the generic model (created on the basis of a single case) as a hypothetical pattern to new selected single

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cases. The latter may be selected on the basis of information about the standing of the case within a sample (thus leading to a combination of case-based and sample-based information—still with the primacy of the former). In fact, selection of cases from different ranges of the sample (i.e., using information about inter-individual differences)—from extreme ends and from the middle of the distribution—may help the inductive side of the generalization process. If the hypothesized generic model of the single case (and based on one single case, say, drawn from the middle range of the sample distribution) is demonstrated to function in cases who are “outlayers” in the distribution, the researcher is on her (or his) way towards basic knowledge. This strategy is well-known in linguistics, where adequacy of a theoretical proposition is tested on singular examples from language, testing for extreme cases that may refute the proposition. Finding of such single countercases forces the theoretical system to reconstruct, or at times may lead to the abandonment of the system.

Final Point: Consistency in Psychological Thought This paper had the goal of presenting a cultural-developmental perspective on psychological processes. It is not relevant to try to locate the perspective outlined here within the usual (synchronic) “landscape” of “theories and systems” in psychology. It is irrelevant whether it becomes classified into “social,” “cognitive,” “ecological,” “Vygotskian,” “Piagetian,” or any other category. Instead, the story that unfolded was about consistency in psychological theorizing and methodology construction. If the goal of a psychologist is to set up a system of theoretical kind that axiomatically presupposes irreversibility of developmental time, semiotic mediation, and flexible construction of psychological systems, then very clearly specifiable needs to orient the empirical research efforts accordingly follow. Requirement for strictly scientific methodology in psychology is thus an imperative for maintaining consistency between all various sides of the “cycle” that make up methodology (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). Mere labeling of one or another perspective “scientific” by socioinstitutional convention or power—without maintaining consistency—may lead to hyperproduction of empirical studies of no generalizability value, or to mere proliferation of “literatures” in a given content domain. Even if “postmodern” ideologies that praise “local knowledge” and doubt generalizability may provide sufficient social legitimization to fragmentation of psychology’s knowledge at large, it is doubtful whether such construction of psychology is anything more than social value construction on the basis of pseudoempiricism (to use Smedslund’s

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term—see Smedslund, 1994, 1995). Having this doubt (in postmodernist thinking) in mind, the present effort was but an act of bounding the otherwise increasing indeterminacy of what psychology in, in the end of the 20th century.

Notes 1. Invited lecture at the XXVI Interamerican Congress of Psychology, São Paulo, July, 9, 1997. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA.

References {ref}Aphek, E., & Tobin, Y. (1990). The semiotics of fortune-telling. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Asendorpf, J. B., & Valsiner, J. (1992). Three dimensions of developmental perspectives. In J. B. Asendorpf, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Framing stability and change (pp. ix–xxii). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Bergson, H. (1945). L’Evolution créatrice. Genève, Switzerland: Éditions Albert Skira. (Original work published 1907) Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. In G. Misra (Ed.), Psychology in developing societies. New Delhi, India: SAGE. Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. (Original work published 1934) Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Freeman, J. M. (1981). A firewalking ceremony that failed. In G. R. Gupta (Ed.), The social and cultural context of medicine in India (pp. 308–336). New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House. Herbst, D. P. (1995). What happens when we make a distinction: An elementary introduction to co-genetic logic. In T. Kindermann & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Development of person-context relations (pp. 67–79). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Lewin, K. (1927). Gesetz und Experiment in der Psychologie. Symposion, 1, 375–421. Sewertzoff, A. (1929). Direction of evolution. Acta Zoologica, 10, 59–141. Simmel, G. (1906). The sociology of secrecy and of secret societies. American Journal of Sociology, 11(4), 441–498. Smedslund, J. (1994). What kind of propositions are set forth in developmental research? Five case studies. Human Development, 37, 280–292.

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Smedslund, J. (1995). Psychologic: common sense and the pseudoempirical. In J. A. Smith, R. Harré, & L. van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking psychology (pp. 196–206). London, England: SAGE. Sovran, T. (1992). Between similarity and sameness. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(4), 329–344. Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester, England: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1989). Human development and culture. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath. Valsiner, J. (1994a). Culture and human development: a co-constructionist perspective. In P. van Geert, L. P. Mos, & W. J. Baker (Eds.), Annals of theoretical psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 247–298). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1994b). Co-constructionism: What is (and is not) in a name? In P. van Geert, L. P. Mos, & W. J. Baker (Eds.), Annals of theoretical psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 343–368). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1995, September). Meanings of “the data” in contemporary developmental psychology: Constructions and implications. Gastvorträg am 12. Tagung der Fachgruppe Entwicklungspsychologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, Leipzig. Valsiner, J., Branco, A. U., & Melo Dantas, C. (1997). Co-construction of human development: Heterogeneity within parental belief orientations. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and the transmission of values (pp. 283–304). New York, NY: Wiley.

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COFFEE BREAK

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Why Developmental Science? Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

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rticles in Part V covered different versions of passionate claims for the value of developmental axiomatic systems for psychology as science. This insistence may look curious—or even obsessive. Yet it is based on the basic assumption that in the case of irreversible time—which governs all living organisms—it is only an explicitly developmental framework that can acquire the basis for the science of psychology as a whole. Why that basic axiom? Why refusal to accept the (seemingly) simpler axiom of ontological being (“X exists”) rather than insist upon the complexity of “X exists in the becoming of X”? The key here is in viewing stability—a steady state of a system—as a temporary stabilization point in the life-course development of the system. Superficially, the two look the same in their current view:

Beyond the Mind, pages 335–336 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Ontological axiom: X is X Developmental axiom: X is in becoming X Yet the focus on becoming is the crucial feature. X emerges from whatever was before and becomes something different later. In the human case, that “something later” involves sign-mediated construction of life-worlds (see our Yokohama Manifesto—Valsiner et al., 2016). Psychology as a science is that of cultural complexity. It is at that junction of knowledge construction where basic psychological science is not only developmental but also cultural—the second major theme in the articles included in Part V. The difficulty in this symbiosis is that both developmental and cultural psychologies are still theoretically underdeveloped. The whole 20th century has had a history of episodic acceptance of developmental axiomatics in psychology with their immediate dismissal (Cairns, 1986). Cultural psychology, in contrast, has been developing in the last three decades only—and in a context of the rest of psychology that is increasingly theory-phobic and fashion-conscious. So—much metatheoretical and theoretical work is needed for a synthesis.

References Cairns, R. B. (1986). Phenomena lost: Issues in the study of development. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 97–111). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J., Marsico, G., Chaudhary, N., Sato, T., & Dazzani, V. (Eds.). (2016). Psychology as the science of human being. New York, NY: Springer.

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Cultural Processes Within Society

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17 Civility of Basic Distrust A Cultural-Psychological View on Persons-in-Society1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Cultural psychology is a hybrid of social and developmental psychology on the one hand, and of cultural anthropology on the other. In this paper I will analyze the collective-cultural processes that set the stage for individual citizens of a society to develop trust in the benevolence of its social institutions. I will demonstrate that such trust is a necessary organizational illusion that functions as a promoter of social cohesiveness of social groups and guides the internalization of the acceptance of the meta-level “just world” sign-field by individual persons. Guided by such fields, persons are likely to take the risk of trusting the public communicative messages of social institutions and become involved in both constructive and destructive acts. Such nonreflexive “basic trust” in the social authorities is needed both for a social system to function and for individual persons to legitimize their actions. Yet civil society cannot remain nonreflexive, and it is through the development of social reflexivity that the basic characteristic of human survival—basic distrust in social institutions—is developed. The latter is illustrated by the Galis and Haviv model of discursive inaction in case of genocides. Beyond the Mind, pages 339–362 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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What can cultural psychology say about society in general—and of civil society in particular? At the first glance it would be inappropriate all together for anybody working in psychology to say anything about society. The two areas of investigation—into the human psyche and into the social worlds—may be best treated in their own rights as two qualitatively distinct forms of organization. However, a perfectly legitimate research target is the relationship between these two distinct levels. There is the connection—real human beings make up “the society” and then treat it as a power that they need to obey (Valsiner, 1999). The personal need to obey may be supported by their protests against that very obeying—while involved in the act of obeying (cf. Milgram, 1974). Persons change themselves through the society by assuming prescribed roles and acting accordingly (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). Last—but not least—they may act upon the subjective feelings of their personal duties in relation to “the society” (Moghaddam, 2003). All these varied feed-forward processes coproduce persons and their society. These processes are culturally organized—but how?

The Cultural Nature of Persons  Society Relationships The set of relations of persons and societies is not unitary, but multiple. There are correspondences between levels, rather than similarities. The relations operate with high degree of redundancy. In the ideational domain, human actions are made meaningful by the actors—with the result of invention of “the society” as an invented—yet objectively existing3—reality. Psychological characteristics of persons feed into the ways societies are created—leading further to the metagenesis (Koch, 1986, p. 10) of individual consciousness. This process of emergence of both personal subjectivities and societies’ systems of values, prejudices, and other social representations is based on the actions of real human beings (Valsiner, 2003a, 2003b). It cannot be reduced to the psychological functioning of any individual or a population of individuals. Individuals are not mere replicas of any society (or its texts, or of their language)—nor are societies viewable as “hyperpersons.”

Cultural Psychology: Focus on Semiotic Mediation Human beings create their societies—and narratives about their societies—through the unity of symbolic actions and construction of signs. Signs become sign complexes—generalized meaning fields that are difficult (or

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impossible) to define. As a result of that difficulty sign complexes are flexible to use as meaningful orienting and constraining devices (Valsiner, 2005). The core notions of this intellectual project—civil society, trust, risk—are all examples of such hypergeneralized meaning complexes. They gain their social usefulness through their prioritized affective tone (preference) and vagueness of reference. Human meaning construction is reflexive of the uncertainty of human being (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999, Chapter 13) that is an inevitable part of living with the constraints of irreversible time. Human actions are overdetermined by meanings (Obeyesekere, 1990)— they make sense to the actors and observers through signs of various levels of generality bundled together and usable in particular life settings. By creating and using signs of various forms of iconicity and abstraction, human beings regulate their relations not just merely with the world as-it-is, but also set the stage for the world as it could (or should) be. In this sense, the notion of society is a moralistic—in contrast to purely ontological—term.

Collective and Personal Cultures The persons  society relation can be viewed as a dynamic relation of subjective and objective (Simmel, 1908) or personal and collective (Valsiner, 2000, Chapter 4) cultures. The notion of personal culture includes not only personal subjective phenomena of the mind, but also their externalized and objectified counterparts. The latter make the personal culture publicly visible, as every aspect of personal reconstruction of one’s immediate life-world reflects that externalization. Thus, the personal system of created meanings becomes projected to the world through personal arrangement of things that are important for the given person. (Valsiner, 2000, p. 55)

This public visibility of personal meanings feeds into the interpersonally constructed collective culture that is composed of externalizations of personal cultures of different persons who are mutually linked through social ties (Valsiner, 2000). Collective culture is the place where societies are being constructed. The dynamic relation of persons and societies is highly variable in its all three components—persons, society, and their relation. Still, on the basis of such high variabilities, relatively stable relations can be maintained. Cultural psychology investigates the organizational forms that make such consistency-based-on-fluctuations possible (Valsiner, 2001a, 2004a). This happens though the invention, internalization and externalization, and

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suggestive promotion of sign complexes. Human psychological variability is constrained—and by that guided—by semiotic mediation. Signs are the third component in the person–environment relations (Nöth, 1994, p. 44). It is through semiotic construction that goals-oriented transformation of the old duality into a new one becomes possible. Human beings create their meaningful parts of the environments— their Umwelts. Human Unwelts are extended to the depth of constructed meanings. Signs are used to regulate the boundaries of the experiencing the Umwelt and thus constantly reconstructing it. Human cultural self-regulation is bidirectional: Under the guidance of the field of social suggestions, the persons actively negotiate their personal life-worlds—through involvement in the collective cultural processes—with the immediate social input functional in their Umwelts. The incoming messages from the collective-cultural domains may be neutralized, rejected, or accepted with modification by the active persons within their personal-cultural spheres. These active recipients may generate countermessages that are externalized to become parts of the collective-cultural highly variable set of social suggestions.

Active Agency: The Counter-Messages Game The person  society relations hence include a reflexive structure of various levels of depth (Lefebvre, 1977)—anticipation of some noncompliant tactic by the recipients makes the social institutions (who are promoting a particular message) use tactics of limiting the possibilities of success of the countermessages. One of the general strategies of overcoming the mutual countermessaging “game” in the field of collective culture is the increase in the redundancy of the messages oriented at key social values. The same value orientation may be promoted in parallel in various forms that have different kinds of forms of iconicity (Nöth, 2001). Such redundant cultural organization of the human Umwelt is the only reasonable adaptation to the uncertainties involved in open systems. Since open systems are not controllable, their functioning can only be regulated by way of entering constraints into as many locations of the system’s transactions with the environment as possible. The ideal of social control efforts is full control of the field within which the person is located. Yet the social institutions that attempt to accomplish that task necessarily fail in specifics. Their best bet to diminish the persons’ counteractions is to control the outer boundaries of the field where the persons are located and suggest different directions for feeling, acting, and thinking. If the outer boundaries of the field are firmly controlled, the specific actions of the person within those boundaries can be left to one’s own

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devices. With well-controlled field boundaries, any option of conduct that the person devises is acceptable, except for one—leaving the field. Yet the boundaries of the human meaning-making field involve both the here-and-now settings and possibilities to transcend these through meaningful invention of new desired states, meanings, and goals. Human beings can conform to action control while escaping from the fields of acting by free intrapsychological ideation (Lawrence, Benedikt, & Valsiner, 1992). Once it is possible for the person to escape from the field, the socialinstitutional guidance of any actions the person might undertake within the field becomes crucial.

Duality Within Meanings Human meaning-making is a dialogical process (Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999; Marková, 1990; Salgado & Hermans, 2005). It entails the constant making of differences within one’s life experiences between what was (past), what seems to be (present), and what is expected or desired (or feared) to be (the future). Of course the making of such differences requires the use of signs. Semiosis entails the constant making and remaking of otherness (Nöth, 1994; Simão, 2005). Oppositional relations between signs in this process are the necessary vehicle for making sense.

Sign and Counter-Sign Complexes When a human constructs meaning to relate with their world, the field of opposites is automatically implied at every moment. Meaning arises in the form of complexes of united opposites. A sign that is constructed immediately coconstructs its opposite—a countersign. This idea can be traced back to the philosophical approach of Alexius Meinong. He claimed, As I am apprehending an A, I also apprehend a non-A in some sense. So we have to do with a difference regarding what is apprehended . . . a difference regarding what stands opposite [gegenübersteht] each intellectual experience as its object [Gegenstand]. . . . In the non-A, then, there is a further objective factor, the “non,” as it were, supervening on the A. (Meinong, 1983, pp. 14–15)

Meinong understood the basic asymmetry between the two components of representation. The “non-A” operates as negativum in relation to A. Negativum is always built on the basis of the positive concept (the

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inferiora). Thus, it is not possible to think of “non-red” without having a notion of “red” on the basis of which the negativum is built up. Meinong’s insights into the processes of meaning making can be extended in our contemporary efforts. The opposition A vs. non-A grows by the “positive comparison” (of similarities to A) and “negative judgment” (contrast with not-A). The starting point is thus the distinction A and nonA, which is a whole inclusively separated (Valsiner, 1997a) and systemically integrated by the connection and. That connection can take different systemic forms.

Organization of the Non-A Field The second type of indeterminacy is associated with non-A. In addition to being more-or-less context-dependent, and grounded in the “internal” field of indeterminacy of the A-field, the ‘meaning’ (A) is knowable only because of its relation to the (implicit) field of its opposites (non-A). Meaning is given through the presence of “internal” and “external” fields of indeterminacy. In other terms, A is “foregrounded” and non-A becomes “backgrounded” (Linell, 1992). Meaning is thus a phenomenon of contextual highlighting (and shadowing) and foregrounding (and backgrounding). These processes establish ill-defined——fields of A and non-A. The very action of “foregrounding” A automatically “backgrounds”—but does not eliminate—the non-A. The two mutually complementary—yet differentiated and opposing—fields, A and non-A, are not “equal partners” in the meaning-making process. It is precisely their unity in inequality that makes the meaning-making process possible. The marked part of the dual complex (A) is “structurally more complex, provides more specific information, occupies a subsequent position in a serial order” (Nöth, 1994, p. 42). Yet the openness to transformation of the well-differentiated A is guaranteed by the little differentiated non-A. Non-A in this elaboration is not a field of unused, “ready” meanings, but rather a yet-to-be-differentiated field of meanings-to-be. Hence, the two poles in this theoretically created opposition are not equal. One is describable in discrete terms (as a single word, with all of its semantic field, e.g., this word means this or that, and the meaning can be expressed by similar synonyms X, Y, Z), while the other is describable in terms of partial fit of the opposites, quasiwords, subfields of feeling e.g., “not really A, X, Y, Z, but something else . . . can’t describe it,” etc.). Our A and nonA dual unit is more strictly given on the side of the A-field, and purposefully fuzzy on the other. It is further posited that the indeterminate part (non-A) of the dual system A and non-A is the locus within which major transformation of the meaning takes place.

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The duality of sign complexes leaves a number of our basic hypergeneralized meanings (Valsiner, 2001b, 2005) that are potent for further development through their opposites—at the level of personal cultures, the move from LOVE  non-LOVE into non-HATE  HATE. The “non-HATE” field now includes the former LOVE in an undifferentiated state. Such transitions within meaning fields are well known in psychodynamic accounts.

Transitions in Social Reality Human meanings need to be open to transformation to their opposites— given the presence of such opposites in reality. The reality of events within societies calls for such flexible transformations—PEACE  non-PEACE may become WAR (  non-WAR—see Simmel, 1904, on the transitions between conflict and non-conflict), or JUSTICE  non-JUSTICE may become EXPLOITATION. The crucial meaning complex—TRUST  non-TRUST—that exists for our understanding of societies is of similar kind. All these meaning complexes facilitate the meaning making in real world, where for individuals and groups, social life is a type of dialectical process that involves successive experience of high and low, communitas and structure, homogeneity and differentiation, equality and inequality. The passage from lower to higher status is through a limbo of statuslessness. In such a process, the opposites, as it were, constitute one another and are mutually indispensable. Furthermore, since any concrete tribal society is made up of multiple personae, groups, and categories, each of which has its own developmental cycle, at a given moment many incumbencies of fixed positions coexist with many passages between positions. (Turner, 1995, p. 97, emphasis added)

It would be adequate to consider human societies as always being on the move—hence mostly in a quasidifferentiated state. Any society exists in its movement towards some (and away from other) objectives. Likewise, at any moment, different persons are in different relations with the social whole. There is no—and cannot be—any equal participation in any society.

The Notion of Civil Society Extended A society may be considered CIVIL only if we consider its nonmanifest opposite (“non-CIVIL”) as the inevitable part of the whole. That side serves as the potential for transformation of the meaning. The whole notion of civil society is an invention of the cultural histories of Occidental countries in the past three centuries. As such, the focus has been usual to the sociocentric power positions—societies other than Western ones have been viewed

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as “noncivil” (“barbarian”—cf. Nöth, 2002; “amorally familist”—cf. Benigni & Valsiner, 1995). In contrast, the CIVIL versions of society have presented themselves as being based on persons’ voluntary participation in social events (in contrast to nonvoluntary, governments’ coerced participation), focus on collective action (in contrast with noncollective, i.e., individual and individualist, action), and sharing of public interests (in contrast to nonpublic, private and patented, interests). All these oppositions are of the exclusive kind (Valsiner, 1997a)—as they follow the notion of the exclusion of the opposites. Following the duality-based semiotic framework outlined above, the use of inclusive separation of the opposites could be applicable to the notion of civil society. The three features of the above description—participation, collectivity, and sharing—will then become tensions between mutually included opposites: VOLUNTARY > non-VOLUNTARY participation COLLECTIVE > non-COLLECTIVE action SHARING > non-SHARING With this extension, any society in its current state can be characterized by different forms of resolving these three tensions. How each of the opposites becomes valued in the social myth construction depends upon the importation of semiotic catalytic conditions (see Valsiner, 2000, pp. 74–76). These conditions constitute the “third” component for guidance of the dual sign into a new form. Let us consider the decision by an adolescent about participation in the democratic political processes of a country (Valsiner, 1997b). Any participation by a person in any social group is inherently ambivalent, and the voluntary  nonvoluntary nature of such participation may depend upon the particular subjective circumstances of the person. A 17-year-old Hungarian adolescent explains his nonparticipation in the newly introduced democratic system: Neither I nor my family nor anyone of my acquaintances took part in political life earlier. I didn’t like politics. And still I don’t, because as a child I couldn’t talk about it. I don’t support a political program of any kind. And I am so very uninterested in it that I haven’t even thought about which party’s program I could accept. Actually none of them. They can only promise. (Van Hoorn & Komlosi, 1997, p. 243, emphasis added)

Here a general ego-centered hypergeneralized meaning (“I do not like X”) is sufficient for solving the participation  nonparticipation tension.

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Myths as Collective-Cultural Constrainers The creation of a set of social reflections upon the societies themselves is a process in which real human beings create myth stories about the abstract entity—society—where they believe to live in, participate, die in (and for). Such myth stories are used as a support for their individual lives within these societies. Myths, fairy tales, and, in our modern societies, wide popular consumption movies and “trash literature” are all semiotic complexes that are guiding the internalization and externalization of basic values in human lives (Valsiner, 1997a, 2004b). The social suggestions encoded in such holistic semiotic complexes are expected to work through the person’s active relating to the complex and establishment of intrapsychological counterpart models within one’s personal sense systems (mythemes— Boesch, 1991, p. 121). Myth-stories are usually simple stories about events, yet some of the events are of the kind that transcend the everyday life practices. For example, there is often a quick and unusual transformation of characters in the myth—a person becomes an animal, or vice versa. This contrast might be important by itself—fairy tales and myths create some domains of actively promoted imagination, while bypassing other possible domains of thought. Rapid and varied changes in the image content are exaggerated in fairy tales, whereas simultaneous combination of ideas belongs to the domain of ignored possibilities. A fairy tale or a myth-story avoids all thinking that is in any way complicated and replaces complications by exaggerations of temporal transformations of unexplained nature.

Functions of Myth Stories How does a myth-story work when the listener creates its morale and makes it work for one’s personal culture? Dialogical processes are operating both within a myth (as reflected in different tensions implied in a given myth-story, with its foreground/background distinctions), as well as between different myths (Gupta & Valsiner, 2003). In the latter case, a “main myth” may have its opposite “countermyth” within the same society. Thus, if in the main myth a particular characteristic (e.g., women being subservient to men) might be consistently promoted, then its countermyth may entail the promotion of the opposite idea (men subservient to women). The purpose of construction of myths is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an impossible achievement if . . . the contradiction is real), a theoretically infinite number of states will be generated, each one slightly different from the

348    Beyond the Mind others. Thus, myth grows spiral-wise until the intellectual impulse which has produced it is exhausted. Its growth is a continuous process, whereas its structure remains discontinuous. If this is the case, we should assume that it closely corresponds, in the realm of spoken word, to a crystal in the realm of physical matter. . . .  Myth is an intermediary entity between a statistical aggregate of molecules and the molecular structure itself. (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, p. 229, emphasis added)

The myth is thus quasidifferentiated (but not fully integrated) text that—due to its “loose ends”—allows something for everybody, while promoting specific generalized values. The functionality of the story is in the repeated insertion of semiotic material that “gives man . . . the illusion that he can understand the universe and that he does understand the universe” (Lévi-Strauss, 1978, p. 17). This is made possible through the “bundle”kind nature of the message: The true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning. Relations pertaining to the same bundle may appear diachronically at remote intervals, but when we have succeeded in grouping them together we have recognized our myth according to a time referent of a new nature. (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, pp. 211–212, emphasis added)

The constructive act of human imagination is built on the “as-if” kind of thinking and feeling. Narratives evoke scenarios of different kind—which in principle could happen with real or imaginary personages in real or unreal situations. Such construction charts out the field of possibilities for acting, thinking, and feeling—often on material far removed from the everyday context. Such removal allows for a “free play” of scenarios for conduct, as the everyday realities do not enter their immediate corrective force upon those. Popular novels of different—romantic, heroic, or any other—kind carry the same canalizing function in the written domain (Johansen, 1998; Zittoun, 2006). Yet perhaps the most prominent domain in cultural canalization of human subjectivities is the audio-visual domain—of radio, film, and television.

Redundancy The very same general meaning—a value—would be brought into the person’s life experiences simultaneously in different forms, and are carried by different members of the social network. Thus, the notion of civil society may be brought to the people in the given country through a high variety of simultaneously active communication channels. These messages can come

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from anybody—intentionally or just in the course of ordinary everyday interactions and from television and radio messages. The meanings can be present in the multiplicity of public activity contexts.

Staged Public Dramas: Guidance of the Feeling Fields It is in itself remarkable how important different kinds of public ceremonies are important for their organizers and their participants. Ceremonies are collectively created dramatic events. They may be organized locally—or these may be parts of specific symbolic travels away from home location (pilgrimages and their contemporary versions—tourist trips—Gillespie, 2007). Public dramatisms have been often created around events of punishment as that is defined in the given society. The legal penal system of a society, in its power functions, has the notion of public punishment very acutely in its repertoire. Criminals have been punished—from their execution to whipping—in public places all through the European history. In New England, from the 17th century onwards, public punishments were turned into carnival events: Advertised well in advance, they attracted large crowds: drums played, the participants marched in procession, and ministers gave long sermons replete with details and graphic language. The criminals about to be punished for “black-mouthed oaths,” “filthy drunkennesses,” “vilest debauchery,” and so forth were asked to play their part. Confessions provided the penultimate excitement before the final act took place. Executions often became the most talked-about event of the year and drew immense crowds. . . . For James Morgan’s execution in 1686, crowds began to gather in Boston a week ahead of the event. Some came at least fifty miles. On the Sunday before the hanging, two distinguished ministers preached sermons on the crime; and on the Thursday of the execution, Increase Mather preached a sermon to a crowd of five thousand, the largest theretofore gathered in New England. Vendors sold written broadsides, which, like theater programs, summarized the details of Morgan’s crimes. (Daniels, 1995, p. 101)

The theatrical nature of public punishments involved coordination of mutually related social roles. Similar functions can be found in other rituals—military parades, weddings, court cases, college graduation ceremonies.

Promoting Unconditional Trust Why would persons easily accept the meaning suggestions by social authorities? A neighboring country may easily become that of “enemy” when a war

350    Beyond the Mind begins, or “friend” after it ends. Persons can operate with prejudices that are merely suggested to them—but as these become internalized into the personal culture they can antedate changes in the society. (Valsiner, 2004b, pp. 229–230)

Formal schooling is used to enhance uncritical trust in the authorities. The development of cognitive (mental) functions has two facets—that of knowledge creation and that of mediating specific functions of social control. The main finding from comparisons of formally schooled and not-schooled persons in the realm of solving reasoning tasks is the mastery of automatized acceptance of the task to assume the deductive reasoning scheme at an instant (Luria, 1976). A syllogism may be given to a person: MAJOR PREMISE: All metals are heavy. MINOR PREMISE: Aluminum is a metal CONCLUSION: Aluminum is heavy Formal schooling leads the syllogism solver to accept the major premise at its face value—in good faith, trusting the authoritative source that makes the all-encompassing (all X are P) assertion. By following the rule—if ALL X are P and A IS X, it follows that A is P. Yet in reality, the authority figure cannot have full knowledge about each and every case of X and operates at the level of categorized generalization (if X is a homogeneous class and a sample of As in it are all P, all X are P). This “formal schooling effect” is not an effect of schooling per se, but of the internalization of the social position of assuming the correctness of the suggested position. The person becomes internally ready to immediately recognize and uncritically accept the task as a given and apply to it the a syllogism and uses the deductive line of reasoning to solve it, necessarily accepting the assertion of the person who gives the task without questioning whether deductive logic is applicable to the given content material. The nature of the contents can include not just statements of ontological kind, but also moral prescriptions. Consider, for instance, a syllogistic task that could have been set in the context of Salem, Massachusetts, at the time of the late 17th century witch hunt: MAJOR PREMISE: All witches should be burnt at the stake. MINOR PREMISE: Tituba is a witch. NO-DOUBT CONCLUSION: Tituba should be burnt at the stake. DOUBTING CONCLUSION: But I know Tituba, she is a nice person, not a witch . . .

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The syllogism here is filled with a socially provided imperative action for concrete occasions—based on the socialized acceptance of the basic deductive logical form. The social effectiveness of this unification of the logical form with social meaning contents depends fully on the uncritical (“no doubt”) acceptance of the given meaning in the prescribed logical position of major and minor premises. The person has to relate with the source of the social suggestion “this is a syllogism with appropriate fillin” through the established dominance of trust within the TRUST  nonTRUST duality. In the “doubting conclusion” above, however, the personal experience counteracts the power of socially established effect of formal schooling, leading to the build-up of the non-TRUST field of the relation to the source, based on personal experience. It is at the level of personal life experiences—and informal education—that persons can resist the suggested social messages and develop their unique ways of understanding that go beyond these (Poddiakov, 2001).

The Central Issue of Basic Trust and Basic Distrust If the development of my argument here is adequate, the key goal in human socialization efforts is the suggestion of basic trust in the authority figures. From policemen to parents to presidents (see Hess & Torney, 1967), the ontogenetic life story of human beings is that of promotion of the hyper-generalized feeling field of “I must trust them → I can trust them.” The establishment of such field-like affective sign (Valsiner, 2005) serves as a catalyst for any actual meaning-making efforts that link the syllogistic form with sociomoral content. The full form of the syllogism described above is then in actuality: A says to me: All X are P this leads to either

There is no doubt in my mind that A can be trusted AND I see that Q is X Therefore Q is P

There is a great doubt in my mind that A can be trusted AND I see that Q is X BUT I do not know if Q is P or not

The centrality of the catalytic meaning TRUST  non-TRUST is then the crucial feature of any relationship between a person and others—persons or social institutions. Yet the duality involved here is in and by itself

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constantly in the process of inherent tension—for the resolution of which further semiotic mediators need to be summoned (Valsiner, 2001c). In the social sciences one finds the primary focus on the TRUST side of the duality structure—with the making of the communion with the object of trust (e.g., a deity, a parent, a friend, an ideology) an ideal marked by positive affective tone. Yet—when it comes to person  society relations it might be an outgrowth from the non-TRUST field—a generalized version of basic distrust—that may fit the needs of understanding society. It becomes obvious that the development of the basic TRUST  (dis) TRUST complex in a society requires proliferation of generalized imperative functions of signs. The meaning complexes take the form of hypergeneralized affective fields (Valsiner, 2005) that operate to cover the whole personal-cultural field of the human being. Hence—human deep subjectivity in all of its uniqueness is a result of active social construction in the person  society relations.

Indeterminacy in Meaning Generalization The above example of syllogistic reasoning—with its undoubted and doubted decision trajectories—is an indicator of the movement of generalization and degeneralization (contextual specification) of sign construction and use. Generalization necessarily entails indeterminacy of abstraction. Thus, language construes the human experience—the human capacity for experiencing—into a massive powerhouse of meaning. It does so by creating a multidimensional semantic space, highly elastic, in which each vector forms a line of tension. . . .  Movement within this space sets up complementarities of various kinds: alternative, sometimes contradictory, constructions of experience, indeterminacies, ambiguities and blends, so that grammar, a general theory of experience, is a bundle of uneasy compromises. No one dimension of experience is represented in an ideal form, because this would conflict destructively with all the others; instead, each dimension is fudged so that it can coexist with those that intersect with it. (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999, p. 522)

Indeterminacy of generalization has a number of consequences. First, there is a resulting variability of reception, understanding, and application of cultural knowledge (Menon & Shweder, 1994). Secondly, there may come to exist conflicting meanings within the same corpus of knowledge. A good example are conflicting belief orientations that may be expressed through proverbs within the same language, such as “A spanking comes straight from heaven” vs. “A good houselord doesn’t beat his animals”

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(implicitly— “let alone his children”; but also possibly— “this doesn’t apply to children”). The belief orientations of persons are usually internally inconsistent (Valsiner, Branco, & Melo Dantas, 1997). This inconsistency is their functional strength—rather than illogicality. Proverbs are fixed means of guidance of actions through semiotic means—in contrast to the openended nature of metaphors in the same function (Johansen, 2005). A third result of the indeterminacy of generalization in the construction of meaning is that the implicit categorization of reality which is established is left functionally open—or vague and interpersonally unevenly distributed. This speaks to the assumption that culture is comprised of something like schemas or patterns that are handed down in “tidy packages” (successfully or unsuccessfully). In fact, the packaging is nothing like tidy, although the labels used might appear to be so. Instead, the communicative process that guarantees continuities in cultural meaning systems is based on high variety of ways of talking (and nontalking), redundancy of messages, and internally inconsistent. Talking and social acting are coordinated only at times, while at others talking displaces acting, or acting—may displace talking.

Habits of Talking The human species is unique—its facility to talk in all imaginable contexts flourishes over time and advancements in technology.4 Talking is a derivative of acting. It can progress further and become a quasi-autonomous activity—talking for the sake of talking. It is in that case that talking becomes disconnected from acting—and can displace acting. When that happens, the goals for talking become located in the act of talking itself—whatever it is that is talked about becomes immaterial (Valsiner, 2002). Talking is done by persons towards some other persons—yet within a social order of society. It can function in two ways—when it leads to acting, and when it does not. Social discourse can be institutionally channeled so that some previously taboo topics are not only turned into ones that can be spoken of, but which must be talked about. In other terms—one opposite (of enforced silence) becomes the other (enforces “talking through”). Whoever determines the transition from “may not talk” to “must be talked about” has the fate control over the active inactivity of the doers—if it is made certain that the new openness (talk) does not threaten the existing social order. This latter method of social regulation of discourse is widely utilized in the so-called “open societies”—which, by showing off openness to the public talk about sensitive matters, actually close these matters from the

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domain of action (Valsiner, 2000, pp. 124–126). By guiding persons to talk about an issue, the human practice of discourse—the “field of talk”—becomes segregated from the “field of action.” Talk becomes action in itself— and thus limits its own proliferation.

Semiotic Demand Settings (SDS) Human life proceeds through negotiation between the perception and action that unite the actor and context, and the suggestions for feeling, thinking and acting that are proliferated through communication. Semiotic demand settings (SDS) are human-made structures of everyday life settings where the social boundaries of talk are set (Valsiner, 2000, 2002). Any domain of human personal experience can become culturally guided by some socioinstitutional focusing of the person’s attention to it in three ways. First, there is the realm of NO-TALK—the subfield of personal experiences that are excluded. The rest of the field is the MAYBE-TALK. Experiences within that field can be talked about—but ordinarily are not, as long as there is no special goal that makes that talking necessary. Most of human experiences belong to MAYBE-TALK. The third domain of talking—the HYPERTALK—is the socially (and personally) highlighted part of MAYBE-TALK that is turned from a state of talkability to that of obsessive talking. How is the HYPERTALK domain created? It starts from the social marking of the highlighted zone. The suggested focus (see Figure 17.1) can

Figure 17.1  Semiotic Demand Setting (from Valsiner, 2000, p. 125).

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operate in two ways. First, it guides the person to reflect upon the focused experience—the zone of “promoted talking.” Secondly, it provides the blueprint for talking in socially legitimized ways (Discourse ways marked by numbers 1 and 2, leading to Opinion A and Opinion non-A, respectively). The acceptability (or non-acceptability) of opposition is thus enabled. Figure 17.1 describes a case relation between the two opposing opinions within the field of promoted talking. By engaging persons within that subfield—and encouraging opposing viewpoints—the SDS guarantees that through hypertalk in this domain the attention is not taken to “side stories” (the maybe-talk zone) and is prevented from touching upon the “taboo zone.” It is obvious that here the real differences between “open” and “closed” societies disappear—both kinds of societies disallow talking about “taboo zones,” but the “open” ones guide people to hypertalk in some area of meaning construction (while the “closed” ones have no promoted talking zones). Each of the three discursive domains—NO-TALK, MAYBE-TALK, and HYPERTALK—are in parallel either connected or disconnected with the action domain. The NO-TALK domain is most likely to remain connected with action domain even if the MAYBE-TALK and HYPERTALK are disconnected. An example of that case may be a society where individuals “step in” to “correct”—by action—anybody’s violation of the NO-TALK zone boundaries. The state of disconnection from action makes these topics open for talk—as the reality of ordinary living is not threatened by it.

The Uncivility of Human Societies: Participations in Genocides Genocides have happened in the world all over its history—and certainly these are not the most civil of human inventions. Once discovered (and labeled as such), genocides become objects of talk for a variety of people-ininstitutions. As a recent analysis (Galis & Haviv, 2005) indicates, the different positioning of these institutions creates different ways in which people in the civil society participate in the discourse about a civil war somewhere else (see Figure 17.2). Figure 17.2 shows the distancing of the discourses about genocides into different layers of externally increasing distance from the actual event. Galis and Haviv (2005) developed the model on the basis of a half-year longitudinal investigation into the reporting of the Darfur crisis in Sudan in the second half of 2004. What was remarkable in the case of the unfolding genocide was intense talk at distance—both geographical and political—about it, which was paralleled by no actions. The general model

356    Beyond the Mind Victims Survivors

Perpetrators

Media Governments International Community

Figure 17.2  Competing interests in the discourse of genocide.

of discourses about genocides that emerged (Figure 17.2) combines the abstracted features of distance, social institutional objectives, and boundaries between different institutions. Thus, the field of real action (involving genocide victims and genocide producers) may be left untouched by the hyperactivity of talking about genocides. At the same time, governments talk with one another (and with the media), international community organizations (NGOs) may talk with the producers of genocides to find out about the realities of help to the victims, and so on. In the Darfur case, for example, the United Nations, the African Union, the United States, UK, Nigerian, Sudanese, and other governments were all involved in active hypertalk about whether the events in Darfur fit their legal definitions for genocide, how grave the situation in the field is (reporting multiple large numbers of displaced and killed people), and how important it is to stop it. Yet in the middle of such hypertalk, no action was undertaken. The actual life situation in the loci of genocide proceeded by its own local negotiations, while the societies far removed from the field were involved in the activity of talking about the horrors and the need to stop the ongoing conflict. The present application of a cultural psychological perspective onto the issue of civil society ends at a seemingly paradoxical note—in order to find

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out about the civility of any society it is necessary to look at the moments of its traversing through the opposite (noncivil) states. Thus, in order to understand how democracy (Moodie, Marková, & Plichtová, 1995) or human rights (Shi-Xu, 2006) work and are socially represented, one needs to examine the process of overcoming (and blocking) nondemocracy and violations of rights. What we take for granted as mutually irreconcilable opposites in accordance with classic logic may be better considered as unified opposites (e.g., Sinha & Tripathi, 2001, on the unity of individualism and collectivism).

Conclusion: Society in Tension Between Civility and Noncivility Through the lens of cultural psychology, we can observe the potential “blind area” in occidental discourse about civil society. Civil society is marked with positive value in that discourse—in contrast to its opposite counter-field (noncivil society). Yet in the history of humankind, various kinds of acts of destruction—be those uses of nuclear bombs, or starting of wars—have happened in the past history of the societies in Europe and North America where self-congratulatory claims of being civil (democratic, depending on voluntary participation, and sharing) have been fixed in their self-reflections. The contrast usually made is with their so-assumed “noncivil” others in Africa, Asia, or elsewhere. At the same time, the history of collective organization of these “other” societies—through families and kinship networks—becomes overlooked. Participation in one’s kinship network organization is somehow seen as part of “noncivil” societies—while participation in voluntary organizations belongs to the “civil” side. The difference may be in something else—the people involved in the civil society discourse may be sufficiently removed from crisis periods in their own histories and from interest in the development of other societies. The realities of the world “out there, elsewhere” may be knowable only in the reflection on it through creating new myth stories of “help” and “concern.” Distancing leads to exclusive separation—“we” (the “good, civil society”) are aghast about “their” (the “backward” and “uncivil” society’s) engagement in local wars and are ready to undertake military interventions to “help” them to overcome their “backwardness.” The notion of civil society is thus best treated as a meaning complex of hypergeneralized kind that guides the creation of myths about different societies. In actuality of meaning construction, it is the duality of the sign that provides for the use of the sign complexes. To mark the benevolence of

358    Beyond the Mind CIVIL non-CIVIL {general view of society} the relation is regulated by Semiotic Catalyzer TRUST non-TRUST This relation is regulated by other dual semiotic complexes that the person has internalized as well as on the basis of immediate social conditions COMPLEX X COMPLEX non-X

Figure 17.3  Semiotic regulation of our reflection upon society.

society in respect to the persons entails inherent opposite of trust—a kind of basic distrust—may serve as a flexible organizer of the meaning field. In sum, we may speak of a double tension system when we (as persons) consider society as an abstract entity. We posit a dynamic relation of two levels (Figure 17.3). What follows from Figure 17.3 is the double dependence of the target meaning (in our case—that of “civil society” on the hierarchical meaningmaking process. First, there is no entity without its opposite—hence, in order to understand what “civil society” means, it is not sufficient to reiterate the declared characteristics of the positively marked whole (“participation,” “collective” action, “sharing”) but analyze the states of the given society in its historical periods when some forms of the opposites emerge from the nonmanifest counterparts of these characteristics. Thus, the move to limit participation in the “open/civil society” by some groups of persons on the basis of quickly proliferating prejudices, or the consensual decisions to bomb a neighboring or some far-off country, or the nonsharing of property—are the domains where the dynamics of “civil society” can be investigated. Secondly, the dynamics of the CIVIL  non-CIVIL society complex depends on the dual relation with some semiotic catalyzer. Here we play out the TRUST  non-TRUST complex in such function. Any of these catalyzing complexes may in their own turn be regulated by other meanings. Without doubt, the present view is aimed at widening the perspectives of the “talkability zone” of the civil society discourse towards the “taboo zone” (see Figure 17.1 above). From the perspective of our value-maintaining everyday talking about civil society, a suggestion to look at how that very same society deals with horrifying events like the dropping of bombs or dealing

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with immigrants is clearly politically incorrect. Yet it is in the movement between the opposites within the duality—regulated by “the third” (another opposition)—that basic knowledge about society becomes possible. In this paper I have analyzed the collective-cultural processes that set the stage for individual citizens of a society to develop trust in the benevolence of its social institutions. I demonstrated that such basic trust is meaning complex that involves its opposite (non-trust). What follows from my analysis is that positively flavored unipolar terms— “civil society,” “human rights,” “justice,” and so on—are necessary organizational illusions that functions as a promoter of social cohesiveness of social groups. Their use guides the internalization of the acceptance of the meta-level “just world” feeling by individual persons. Such illusions are needed by human living— perhaps for the sake of reducing the complexity of multifaceted ways of being into a personally acceptable understanding of oneself—and of the society. For the social sciences, however, it is the dynamic relation of these desired states of meaning with their opposite counterparts that give us a window of opportunity to make sense of the tumultuous human condition.

Notes 1. Paper that should have been presented at the Symposium Risk, Trust, and Civility, Toronto, Victoria College—May 6–8, 2005. Actually dated July, 4, 2005. http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/risk/distrust.pdf 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. As is obvious for anybody showing one’s passport at border crossings, paying taxes without protesting it as a form of robbery, belonging to armies or political parties and thereby putting one’s life at risk, and so on. The reality of “the society” shows in a myriad of forms of everyday life organization—yet these forms are based on myths created by humans. The imaginary flows into the real—and vice versa. 4. Consider the varieties of adaptations to cellular phone uses as examples.

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18 Higher Education in Focus Insights Through the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory1 Jaan Valsiner2

T

his book is important. It brings to wider audiences a contemporary, theoretically grounded, look at higher education (and education in general) that builds on the best traditions in developmental psychology and education. The theoretical approaches covered in this book, as well as the presentations of empirical cases, create a multisided picture of the varieties of the social changes that are going on in education at large and postsecondary education in particular. Such changes happen everywhere in our time of increasing globalization. What is at stake is a coordinated solution to knowledge construction, its dissemination, and the move in contemporary societies into the mode of consumerism of entertainment. When human societal history up to our century is that of wars and suffering of other kinds, that of ours seems to Beyond the Mind, pages 363–374 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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be a continuous flow of advertising of various forms of “having fun”—even ones that bring suffering to others. Both pleasure and pain become articles of consumption. This social mentality enters educational contexts as well, starting from the early childhood level, but ending in settings of higher education. Education, by some view, should “be fun,” rather than devoted mastery of the knowledge in its two versions—knowledge that is already known, and that which does not exist yet. The latter is the focus of innovation—higher education can be the breeding ground for mastery of the ways in which to generate new knowledge. Certainly it is based on the mastery of the existing knowledge, but with the possibility of openness to its further development. That focus on the new—based on the old—has been the hallmark of universities over centuries.

The Brave New World of Training for Consumption: The Illusory Freedom of Choice The social organization of human societies changes. Our contemporary world is that of choices. With the dominating focus on consuming, making choices becomes preferred to creating (new) choices—at least for the wide audience that now can buy many things rather than be forced to invent them. This is reflected in the contexts of higher education—students (those who study) are turned into clients (those who use services provided). There are serious repercussions from this societal change. Education becomes a part of the service industry rather than a context for innovation. As such, the critical question is—whom does it serve? Increasingly, contexts of higher education incorporate techniques of training for students to become knowledgeable consumers of the vast array of choices they are provided by mass production of consumer products. Intellectual challenges of creating new forms of living are replaced by learning how to make “the right choices”—set up by various social power groups in business and politics. Education is in danger of becoming a version of fast (slightly intellectual) nourishment of the mind. In the midst of such intellectual pauperization of higher education, the coverage in this book is much needed—what is happening in the higher education systems all around the world is troublesome if we take the need for new knowledge construction seriously. What is at stake is the location of innovation efforts. Universities—under the slogan of becoming more linked with the “needs of the given society”—are in the process of surrendering new knowledge creation tasks to other institutions—research institutes, if they exist, or private companies of specific profit interests. Universities thus increasingly become mere transmitters of established knowledge. But

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transmitting what is already known blocks the emergence of new knowledge—that what is not yet known. This book carries a message of counteraction to the social tendencies in contemporary higher education where the ethos of business practices seems to take over from the historical credo of continuity of knowledge construction. The latter is slow and intellectually painstaking—and “does not sell” easily at the marketplace. Higher education is the arena where the future of knowledge creation in contrast to “package knowledge” sales to the “consumers”3 is determined. It is the young—educated rather than trained—minds that carry on the role of innovation in science, technology, and arts. Their education transcends any evaluation system that a university uses to assess the “progress” of students, or a government introduces to evaluate the quality of a given university. The social context of such evaluation systems needs to be understood by its own role in the transformation of a society.

The Giants Who Are Us The banner under which the various approaches are brought together is CHAT (cultural-historical activity theory)—and the names of Lev Vygotsky and Alexei N. Leontiev are present on many pages of this book. There is an interesting tendency here to present the contemporary CHAT and its applications to education as if “standing on the shoulders” of the “giants” of the past—among whom John Dewey probably should be mentioned before Vygotsky and Leontiev come to the stage. Dewey’s contributions to the philosophy of education in the English-speaking countries (and beyond) fits the set of historical social representations better than the aesthetic roots of Vygotsky’s intellectual quest or Leontiev’s negotiation of continental European philosophy with the Soviet ideological contexts. In reality, the approaches of CHAT in this book borrow more productively—and constructively—from the theoretical ideas of our contemporary giants—Yrjö Engeström, Michael Cole and his experiments with the “5th Dimension,” Dorothy Holland, Jim Gee, Jean Lave, and Barbara Rogoff. Among these giants, Harry Daniels’ work—not yet applied to higher education—would make a new look at higher education possible. Here the legacy of Basil Bernstein enters the scene. This building upon the theories that have emerged in the recent decades—based on, but not reducible to Vygotsky’s or Dewey’s contributions—makes the sociopolitical claims in this book particularly powerful. These claims are particularly important to get a wide public arena in our time where the institutions of higher education are in a deep crisis of both their identity and economic base.

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Magic of Participation All of the contributions to this book, seen together, counter the efforts of educational institutions to turn higher education into an institutional practice of “assessments” of various curricular based “performances.” Instead, education—and especially higher education— relies on students’ participation in the knowledge co-construction processes. However, participation is no simple matter: “Participation in the social practices, including participation in discourse, is the biggest bootstrapping enterprise human beings engage in: speaking is necessary for learning to speak: engaging with contexts is necessary for recognizing and dealing with contexts” (Daniels, 2006, p. 47). It is interesting to note the agentive function attributed to the act of participation—the person participates in an activity—without the corresponding reverse part of the system (the activity participates in the person). This is a major oversight—proven by the examples of musicians whose play of an instrument—obviously an agentive act by the person— simultaneously entails the activity participating in the person. A violin player whose whole body reverberates with the music is not just “playing the melody,” but the melody is simultaneously “playing the person.” In order to see how participation in activity in a here-and-now context matters, one needs to look beyond that context—how such participation leads to the development of the activity-in-person. Here lies the key to what is often labeled “professional identity”—a generalized part of the personal culture that reverberates within the person long after the situated activity contexts have been a matter of the past. Psychology students’ professional development over three years of study at the university sensitizes them to assume a position focused on psychological issues of others after the studies are over (Kullasepp, 2006). Engaging with contexts of higher education requires a sociological understanding of what the social meanings of “higher” and “education” mean. In this respect, the present volume is important as a powerful voice in the contemporary consumerist society where education is increasingly turned into a commodity—higher education produces certificates (BS, MA, PhD degrees) as its primary outcome. And—as is the case with all commodities—the value of such certificates on the market of governmental and academic positions is open to inflation. By producing increasing numbers of PhDs, the higher education system undermines its own value in societies and defeats the purpose of knowledge generation that it has usually carried. In opposition to such homogenization in administrative practices, the contributions to the present volume amply demonstrate how the processes of knowledge coconstruction in real-life teaching/learning practices are

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creative, and could be even more so. There is a heartfelt concern about the future of higher education that permeates the whole volume. This gives the book a utopian touch—it is rather unlikely that the contemporary administrative powers of higher education would easily accept the CHAT-based suggestions for improving educational practices. However, without trying, one never knows—hence another reason to give this book an appropriate and active advertising backing. It should reach that subgroup of educational administrators who might worry about the future of postsecondary education as it is under serious jeopardy by being cut in different countries undertaking general budget cuts and funded by private business interests solely for the purposes of future narrow profit making.

A New Kind of Working Class: The Knowledge Workers This book should become a leading source in our understanding of the social and psychological realities in postsecondary education that are in place within our developing societies. Aside from systematically promoting the cultural-historical activity (CHAT) perspective, it also addresses key issues in where the whole notion of higher education is moving in the 21stcentury society. It is interesting to see the parallels here with those of the Industrialization Era of the 19th century—where the new predicament of factory workers emerged as the industries moved out of the social structures of manufacture to those of large-scale factories of mass production. As we well know, that social transformation led to the homogenization of the large masses of workers who, as imaginatively pointed out by Karl Marx, had nothing to lose but their chains. Now, in the 21st century, we observe a similar process of proletarianization of the intellectual activities as work. The notion of knowledge workers who are produced by higher education in increasingly large numbers and assessed by institutions as to their readiness to become parts of the “factories of knowledge production”—in businesses, government agencies and NGOs, and even in educational systems modeled after businesses—suggests the parallel between the 19th and 21st centuries here. It remains to be seen if the new proletariat of knowledge workers becomes united to create new kinds of havoc within the social institutions that need them. There is of course a difference with the factory workers of the 19th century—while then and there the conveyer belts were located in one factory, in the case of the knowledge proletariat of the 21st century, that factory floor is the whole world. Successful computer hackers and maverick stock traders demonstrate the dangers of knowledge that goes beyond the

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information given (by social institutions in the context of postsecondary education). Revolts by knowledge workers are more dangerous for the holders of contemporary social power than all the revolutionary barricades of the 19th century ever were. Will there be another revolution of 1917 in 2017—not in St. Petersburg but on the London (or Doha) Stock Exchange? Time will, of course, tell—but at the present we have first examples of the impacts of collective actions by the underclass of (mostly unemployed) “knowledge workers.” References to the use of new technologies in bringing about “the Arab Spring” seem to indicate the potential that the young knowers have that can topple the old oligarchs. However, the result need not be further “democratization” of democracy-phobic social institutions— be these governments or ministries of education—but a new form of carefully guarded social practices with a democratic façade. The latter is—in a microcosm—debated by the various contributions to the volume. Systems of higher education allow such facades to emerge and flourish—together with greater student participation comes the stated need of universities to “contribute to societies”—assuming the latter are “democratic” in their nature, rather than guarded by the social class of civil servants who inhabit ministries of education. Viv Ellis (2013) emphasizes that the university . . . has been disengaged from society, has had its public functions removed by the state and replaced by the right of government to ‘represent’ public interests in all spheres. The university’s role in the creation of the publics has been lost. The student becomes a consumer whose choices will be guided by market rationality and, outside the individual’s investment in their economic futures or the university’s position in global rankings such as the Shanghai Jia Tong, there need be no relation to society. (p. 200)

Here is a potential paradox—what is labeled “democracy” can take many forms, some of which are governmentally guarded and non-democratically determined by the power hierarchy of a ministry. To whom does “contribution to society” belong—to the democratic populace? Or to the (democratically or otherwise) elected representatives of that populace? Or to the civil servant in a ministry who speaks eloquently about “democracy” while introducing business practices to schools and universities? A careful sociological or political sciences’ based analysis of the connection of higher education systems with the Realpolitik of “democratic societies” might be useful. For example—on the introduction of the “Bologna system” in European universities and its implications—for “neoliberal” and “democratic” goals for higher education. Are democratically approved top-to-down administrative practices any better than similar demands given by a king, an emperor, or the governor?

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Different contributors detect this basic tension in their contributions to the book—and suggest ways to overcome it. Their search for solutions is substantive, theoretically elaborated, and probably slightly utopian. Yet utopias are important for making actual social change. But there are not many arenas where these solutions can be put to practice. The efforts described by Gordon Wells (2013) in his chapter illustrate the complexity of the efforts in an undergraduate context. Viv Ellis (2013) believes change can be implemented by teacher education: As a good example of a democratic and powerful mode of knowledge production that grows out of hybrid practices (academic and professional; instrumental and reflexive; personal and political) and of dialogue between researchers and research subjects and research “end-users.” In working in the hybrid spaces between universities, schools and communities, teacher education can bring together diverse actors with varying interests and expertise to create knowledge that can meet multiple tests of rigour in intersecting networks of practice. Conceptualising teacher education as hybrid knowledge-creating practices or as an activity rich with potential for a more democratic mode of knowledge production also requires that we think through the power differentials in bringing people together—teachers and professors, children and students, parents, members of communities. The implication is therefore one of struggle–of competing interests–in which there is something for everyone to give up as well as for a collective, democratic gain. (p. 200)

Ellis’ arguments are crucial for the volume as education of educators is probably the only arena that can insert novel ways of acting into otherwise fatigue and bureaucracies dominated practices of teaching—at school or university level. How can teacher education—setting up professional roles within the non-democratic institution as a “school-that-serves-clients” while “delivering the curriculum” to these very “clients”—enhance its democratization? There is a double standard in this discourse—the nondemocratic goals (“production” of societally fitted “knowledge workers” that fit precisely to the needed “slots” in a constant flux of contemporary societies, determined by business interests) and the advertised “client orientation.” The contemporary education and higher education systems are operating under the influence of this contradiction. Still, its success depends upon the educational system as a whole, it is not surprising that the idea of “participation in a community” is found to take a different form in Singapore.4 The key question remains—the meaning of community remains ill-defined. It can mean anything from the person’s immediate social context to the whole of humankind. It is not clear how that community is organized—yet it is revered in the most positive

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ways. Individuals are expected to contribute to the community, find their identity in it, and not be suspicious of it. Community benevolence is not to be doubted—precisely as it acts as a superordinate social system that creates the conditions for social life.

What Happens in Higher Education: Coordinating Genres At the highest level of post-secondary education—writing MA or PhD theses is indicated as multigenre writing (Russel, 2013, p. 86) as their writers are Caught between the activity systems of the institution and its requirements, on one hand, and the discipline and its practices on the other, newcomers to the genre and activity of the thesis/dissertation bring their own sociocultural history and take an active role in learning to write it. Disciplinary enculturation is less a slow absorption or unconscious, passive assimilation and more a conscious, often chaotic battle, though often hidden from view. (Russel, 2013, p. 84)

The active knowledge constructor—“the learner”—is the target for efforts to guide her/him to learn what is expected, or maybe what is new and useful, but not dangerous for the social system as such. Such selectivity of potential future knowledge moves ahead of any democratic decision making— a feature that democratized educational contexts would poorly recognize. Or, better said—the fears of uncontrollable futures limit the extent of democratization of educational practices by the power holders in the present. How can such analysis proceed? Harry Daniels has suggested that there is need to analyse and codify the mediational structures as they deflect and direct attention of participants. In this sense I am advocating the development of cultural-historical analysis of the invisible or implicit meditational properties of institutional structures that themselves are transformed through the actions of those whose interactions are influenced by them. (Daniels, 2010, p. 381, emphasis added)

While Daniels’ research program has concentrated on comparisons between schools of different kinds, an equally compelling prospect is to analyze the heterogeneity of social suggestions within a school. If we take Daniels’ ideas to the analysis of colleges and universities, we may gain a better understanding of what the notion of higher means in our contemporary higher education. It is precisely the invisible curriculum of the institutions of higher learning—that of endless reorganization plans, institutional review panels, faculty evaluation practices, prolonged and meaningless committee meetings—that keeps academics busy in paperwork and reduces their

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creative time—these are all phenomena that need to be analyzed as a major part of situated activity contexts in higher education. Instead of the ideal of pedagogy of inclusion (Daniels et al., 2006), we have in higher education a social practice of exclusion—of the academics from their own creative resources. Among the latter, making space for nonfragmented time is crucial. The social practices of scheduling various kinds of committee meetings all over worktime fragments the time available to knowledge creation. Instead of sitting in committee meetings and giving lectures to classes filled with students and their laptops,5 the academics have the basic right for time for the creation of new knowledge. Such basic right is often overlooked in the contemporary higher education contexts. In the context of higher education, the act of inclusion would take the form of exclusion of the educators and students from sociopolitically mandated shared time expenditure contexts. To be included in the actual teaching/learning process, the instructors and students need to be excluded from spending time off their main task—knowledge reconstruction.

Conclusion: What Do We Learn? What can be learned from this book? Very much indeed. The reader gets a glimpse into innovative applications of CHAT, which is a framework that provides a fresh look at the educational practices. That has been accomplished elsewhere for school education. In this volume, this is extended to higher education contexts, with similarly fruitful results. What we also learn is the honest desire by educationalists and researchers to improve “the society.” Yet we are kept in the dark about what that “society” means, what forms it takes, and how it actually scaffolds the efforts of the CHAT (and other) researchers to “contribute to” itself. The counterprocess to contribution to society is distancing of the researchers from the society—by its institutions. Institutions are often wary of the possible insights upon themselves that academics may produce or may want to use the input from research for particular shortterm political benefits. So—universities are ambivalent institutions from the perspective of power holders—whether these were the aristocratic rulers of small German lands with universities in each of these in the 19th century, or in the 21st century, various versions of democratic governments around the world. While universities may produce humble civil servants to take their roles in the power structures, they—at times—can be breeding grounds for student-led revolts and revolutions. Or the researchers in universities can see through the political game plans of the politicians, exposing those to our ever-scavenging mass media, requiring communicative repairs to the political images. With these fears being real, it is not surprising that the view of the

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active academic who honestly “participates in society” through trying to be of help in solving relevant social problems is potentially ambivalent. Academics might be asked for advice—but its implementation depends on the political agendas of the time and place, rather than on research evidence. So—the best strategy for politicians looking at academics is to be distantly friendly and apprehensively noncommittal. That kind of distancing—both by the power-holders of the academics, and by the latter from politics—is rarely under consideration when social sciences—and scientists—look at their own roles within the society. This is an oversight in the field—which needs to be analyzed as a basic social process. Predictably, frustrated social scientists and educators are often in the habit of complaining that their best suggestions are passed by—or actively dismissed—by policy makers and the profit-interested entrepreneurs. But the social functions of such buffering from the realities of social action by the actors has not been studied in general. The practitioners of any caliber—school teachers, principals, small (and big) powerholders at ministries, and, finally, ministers, kings, and CEOs—have all the good reasons to be suspicious of research. This is not a matter of poor understanding. Societally speaking, new knowledge is potentially dangerous—repackaged old knowledge is known not to be, while promising profitability. Talking of “evidence-based” areas of knowledge (medicine is the usual target here) as if these were “gold standards” of the ideal knowledge is an act of appropriation of institutionally fitting knowledge, rather than making our knowledge “solid.” Doing that is merely a labeling trick—substantiating one fashionable (“solid”) belief with another. One can do that with knowledge that is fixed—but not with the one that is emerging: Scientific discovery reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. (Polanyi, 1962, p. 135)

So—higher education cannot be a place for simple transfer of knowledge because the frontiers of science are not about knowledge but about processes of its creation. Following CHAT renders the notion of universities becoming parts of the “entertainment service industry” ridiculous.

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Contributions to this book provide ample demonstration of such kind. But it still remains to be seen how effectively the perspectives based on CHAT can change the course of institutional homogenization of the sphere of higher education. Meanwhile—the reader of the present volume can gain valuable insights into the small realities of the ongoing social processes in higher education.

Notes 1. Valsiner, J. (2013). Higher education in focus: Insights through cultural-historical activity theory. Rejected by G. Wells and A. Edwards (Eds.), Pedagogy in higher educations: A cultural-historical approach. Cambridge University Press. This general conclusion has been rejected by the editors. Jaan Valsiner decided to make it and some others available online; see this webpage: http://jaanvalsiner.wordpress.com/the-rejected-papers-project/. The rejected papers project includes papers that were summoned by the journal or volume editors, who at times very actively insisted that their publication projects could not live without these solicited contributions. Yet, after receiving the texts, they refused to publish them, sometimes because their “peer review systems” suggested such verdict. These papers are made publicly available here as they may contain some ideas that are valuable in themselves (only the readers can decide), and the symbolic act of rejecting them would only accentuate their value. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. In contemporary administrative practices of universities, one can hear the talk of students “as clients” and “customers,” and various evaluation systems of “customer satisfaction” are increasingly introduced as parts of “academic quality.” Higher education in the 21st century faces a global takeover by business practices that would necessarily transform the meaning of knowledge and its transfer to new generations. 4. “In Singapore, the students did not see themselves as participating in a community of early childhood educators. Instead, they saw themselves as planning to participate in the community of early childhood practitioners, mostly in the role of directors of early childhood centres. Their resistance to our intentions to engage them in the wider community obliged us to broaden our sense of what participation in communities meant and raised questions about how to maintain the focus on learning to engage in practices with historical legacies and meanings that might link individuals together into meaningful groups, or communities” (Tonyan & Auld, 2013, p. 218). 5. The laptops—paired with wireless connections—make the notion of a “class” (a group of people held in a particular room for a specified time) ephemeral. While being held in such temporary confinements, the students can transcend the boundaries of the immediate situated activity and be involved in many others. Organizing activities of students by specific class times in the 21st century is an administrative practice that has lost touch with the new technological re-

374    Beyond the Mind alities. Adhering to that practice fragments the time of both instructors and students, rather than reorganizing it around new knowledge construction tasks.

References Daniels, H. (2006). The ‘social’ in post-Vygotskian theory. Theory & Psychology, 16(1), 37–49. Daniels, H. (2010). The mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings: a study of the transformation of children’s services and professional work. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(4), 377–393. Daniels, H., Brown, S., Edwards, A., Leadbetter, J., Martin, D., Middleton, D. . . . Warmington, P. (2006). Studying professional learning for inclusion. In K. Yamazumi, Y. Engeström, & H. Daniels (Eds.), New learning challenges: Going beyond the industrial age system of school and work (pp. 79– 101). Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press. Ellis, V., (2013). Teacher education in the public university: The challenge of democratsing knowledge production. In G. Wells & A. Edwards (Eds.), Pedagogy in higher educations: A cultural-historical approach (pp. 198–214). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Kullasepp, K. (2006). Becoming professional: external and intrapsychological level in the service of professional identity construction of psychology students. European Journal of School Psychology, 4(2), 335–345 Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Russel, D. R. (2013). CHAT and student writing. In G. Wells & A. Edwards (Eds.), Pedagogy in higher educations: A cultural-historical approach (pp. 73– 88). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Tonyan, H. A., & Alud, G. (2013). What does “transformation of particiaption” means in a univerity classsroom? Exploring university pedagogy with the tool of cultural historical theory. In G. Wells & A. Edwards (Eds.), Pedagogy in higher educations: A cultural-historical approach (pp. 215–227). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Wells, G, V., (2013). Taking responsabilitiey for learnign: CHAT in a large undergraduate class. In G. Wells & A. Edwards (Eds.), Pedagogy in higher educations: A cultural-historical approach (pp. 60–72). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

19 Communication and Development Breaking a Communion1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The notion of communication—as it has usually been viewed in the social sciences—entails some kind of exchange of messages that are encoded into forms that are mutually (consensually) “shared” by the communicating partners. This model of “sharing” (“intersubjectivity,” “communion” of meanings or ideas) cannot be used when issues of human psychological functioning and development are considered. Human development entails social relations and interaction between participants whose relations are unequal in power and responsibility (e.g., parent–child, teacher–student relations), and where the goal orientations of the participants are ambivalent. This is manifested in the unity of efforts by the powerful “social other” to enhance some aspects of child’s development while simultaneously suppressing others. In such relations, notions of “sharing” and “symbiosis” cannot explain the process of development. Communication can be viewed as a hypergame where partners cannot have complete knowledge of one another’s sets of strategies at any time moment, and where such strategies are constantly being constructed

Beyond the Mind, pages 375–395 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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376    Beyond the Mind in accordance with fuzzy goal orientations. The role of metacommunicaton in this case is the relative stabilizing of the hypergame and constraining the limits of its fluidity. Communication in this case becomes a semiotic process of coconstruction of different understandings of the participants, constrained by the metacommunicative framing.

Introduction: “Sharing” and the Process of Communication Contemporary development of psychology’s efforts to make sense of communication as a process, and especially the differentiation of that process into the levels of communication and metacommunication (communication about the ongoing communication), leads to the need to have a different look at the issue of understanding in social interaction. Interestingly, the result of such transfer of the question of understanding from the research realm of social interaction to that of communication and metacommunication provides a rather complex light on the issue. If previously the interpersonal understanding could be taken for granted (as the basis on which social interaction could take place), then the present focus makes such understanding look rather complex, and in any case—something to be explained, rather than something that explains other issues. Understanding between human beings is an admirable goal for human existence, even if it may be difficult one to achieve. Emphatically, we all like the idea of “sharing”—yet what does it mean? Surely we have no difficulty to apply this concept to physical objects—we can easily share a newspaper I have bought today, yet if you insist upon sharing the ice-cream I have just bought, and I let you have a bite, the readiness to share may strictly depend upon the semiotic determination of our relationship (or on my premarking of the object as either “sharable” or not) Making sense of sharing in case of psychological objects is even more complicated. The basic idea of sharing of persons’ subjective worlds is an ideal towards which persons, utopian societies, and institutions seem to recurrently work. Yet this is complicated by the fact that sharing the subjective phenomena is only possible via their externalization, and through the process of communication. In human lives, “sharing” may be one of the ambiguous activities, since any object that is shared—be it physical property or externalized information about a person’s subjective sphere—becomes potentially expropriated by others (and made their own, or used in the activity of “trading” for other benefits). A robber may ask you to share your money with him (or her), a charity drive may ask you to share your money with all the “poor and hungry of the World” (in reality, your donations may be used for a Christmas party

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of the institution’s headquarters). You share your intimate thoughts with your friend, who then turns these thoughts into a “tradeable commodity” in the system of interpersonal gossip, which may feed back upon you in unfortunate (for you) ways. A scientist shares with colleagues the latest results of one’s experiment, only to find that he or she is plagiarized by the colleagues. A company (wisely) does not share the designs of the new technological device in-the-making with its competitors, yet the competitors would try to get to share it by way of industrial espionage. Thus, sharing is an inherently ambiguous act, similar to most other forms of human conduct, where episodes of mutual benevolence are often interspersed with goal-directed acts of malevolence—wars come after peace, and peace succeeds wars. Rich countries “help” the poor ones as long as such “help” is not undermining their wealth; once that happens they can send military forces into another country to burn farmers’ successful harvest of a cash crop. Jealous boyfriends look with suspicion upon the flirting by their seductive girlfriends—yet the feeling that leads to this action (and its possible effects) is based on possession-like definition of their positive feelings towards the other. Parents tell their children to be friendly with strangers but not too friendly, and not with every stranger. Human understanding is inherently ambiguous—and this is recorded in the wisdom that is maintained in cultural texts and narrated between persons (within, and across, generations).

Myths as Reflections of Ambiguity, and Communicative Disambiguation Actions by human beings, directed towards other human beings, are in reality filled with ambivalences. People are simultaneously close to, and distant from, one another. They can create and extinguish human life and can both construct and heal psychological miseries. The ambiguity of human psychological functioning is encoded into myths and countermyths (Gupta & Valsiner, 1996; Ramanujan, 1991) and is afforded by the omniscopous nature of human language (Aphek & Tobin, 1990). The unity of opposites is often encoded into myth stories that circulate between persons and make up a relatively stable part of the collective culture (Valsiner, 1989). As myth stories about cultural heroes or tricksters may be told in many ways, these figures are often given in complexity of including opposites within the same whole. Thus, the “trickster” figure of Kalapalo (from Alto Xingu area of Central Brazil)—Taugi—is a symbolic “master of all trades”: Dressed in a gleaming headdress of oriole and macaw feathers, his fearful appearance signals to people that he is about to confront and intimidate

378    Beyond the Mind them. So frightening is this potent anger that in the stories about Taugi, his future victims sense they are “done for” they see him entering their settlement. And yet, in his guise as a “father” to humanity, he is portrayed as kind and helpful, winning respect from the advice he gives. His empathy is such that Taugi is said to be present at people’s funerals as a father, mourning the death of his children. It is in such contexts that he enacts the complex feelings the Kalapalo associate with grief: sadness, anger, lust for revenge, ultimate resignation. (Basso, 1996, p. 57)

In a similar vein, unity of opposites is evident in the figure of Kali in Hindu mythology appears as both life-giving and life-destroying force (Freeman, 1981; Menon & Shweder, 1994), who may switch from one to the other opposite under specific conditions. These conditions are culturally constructed through ritual enactment (e.g., of “firewalking ceremony”— Freeman, 1981), the success or failure of which operates as either a confirmation of the meaningful interpretation of concrete issues, or forces their meanings to be renegotiated. Ambiguity of the meanings of acts is culturally open—to be capable for renegotiations. For example, the closest person to a child, who has created the child—the mother—can be simultaneously viewed as the most dangerous to that very child. In the Sohari (Omani) belief in the “evil eye”— “lover’s eye” (en ilmuhibb)—directed by the mother to her own child under some circumstances, is believed to surpass the dangers of “outsiders’“ malevolent intentions expressed by “eyeing.” Thus, in case of en ilmuhibb, Every person is prone to it, toward relatives, if their love is strong enough. Consequently the mother is the most dangerous source, followed by other close relatives. According to Sohari belief, the effect is caused quite inadvertently, indeed very much against the agent’s will. All a loving mother need to do is look at her child and think of him as the most wonderful child of the world. Instantly the child may fall sick. (Wikan, 1982, p. 242, emphasis added)

The ambiguity here operates as a constraint upon the mother’s feelings toward her own child, not allowing the feeling to escalate. Since feeling is part of the mother’s personal culture (Valsiner, 1989), no external “social rule” system can effectively regulate it. Instead, the collective-cultural system is oriented towards guiding individual women towards reconstruction of this belief within their own subjective worlds, and thus making the belief effective by the mother’s own construction of caution in the looking at her baby. Why would the unity of opposite roles of persons—real or mythological—be encoded in the collective culture? Why would symbolic redefinitions of objects in the world be at times attempted? Why would it be necessary for a president of a country to declare tobacco to be a “drug” —in the

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middle of a social fight for “health” in so-called modern countries (Gupta & Valsiner, 1996)? Such declaration is as much a semiotic disambiguating act, as is its opposite—declaring some chemicals to be “safe” and “beneficial.” The latter amounts to accepting that the adding of chemical preservatives to food “improves” the latter as “food”—rather than the opposite (i.e., makes the “food” into a “drugged” substance). From time to time, the public lives through dramatic reversals in this unipolar disambiguation (e.g., the “mad cow disease” scandal in Europe in 1995–1996).

Reduction of Ambiguity Through Semiotic Means: Construction of “No Doubt” Semiotic mediation reflects the complexities of the persons’ world not only as these are, but—simultaneously—as the world is desired to be. Thus, semiotic mediation is both a process of making meaning and guiding the person towards some desired transformation of the world. The world is inherently ambiguous—despite its present seemingly clear state, this can change at any moment—and semiotic mediation reflects the conditionality of the states of the world. Thus, cultural heroes, mothers, tricksters are employed in myth stories and discourse in general to reflect the possible (conditional) changes of their conduct from one extreme to another. In this respect, a semiotically mediated world is a “personally cautious world”—different possible scenarios for what might happen with a person under different conditions. Yet, at the same time, semiotic mediation reflects the desired (i.e., goalsoriented) reflection upon the world. This may make it possible to ignore the ambiguity of the conditional world, and represent the world in terms of unipolarity of a desired sign. Here is where ideologies narrow down human complexity of reflection—with clear purpose. “Dialogue” in the case of an ideological crusade is not a desired form of interaction; if it is claimed to be of value it is a framework of superimposition of the ideologist’s missionary claim to gain control over “the other.” Political “dialogues,” as well as advertisements in mass media that manifestly use the notion of “dialogue” are aimed at disambiguating “the other’s” field of conduct. The process is simple—a domain of human actions that previously had not been highlighted, becomes now singled out as an “area of concern”; the concern then becomes reflected upon in ambiguous terms (guiding the persons towards constructing their personal worries about this), and—finally—are disambiguated again, but now through making the disambiguating agent to be in control of relieving the worries. A domain X becomes made into a “problem,” and the solutions to that problem become available as paid-for “services” by an exclusive set of “professionals” who are “well-trained” to solve precisely

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these “problems.” The professional services of child psychology and education specialists need not differ much from advice that grandmothers could give, yet its value is produced by the professional construction of the “problem” and its “cure.” The disambiguating strategies surely rely upon semiotically constructed values that would make the external control of the issue acceptable. In many societies of our time, the generalized complex of “freedom of choice” is utilized in this process. Some years ago, when U.S. telephone companies were “demonopolized” (and many new companies could compete for the same customers), TV commercials of the text like “now you have the choice for your provider of telephone services. . . . We hope you to make the right choice” began to appear. The new ambiguous situation for the clients—who had not had to bother about the “right” to “make choices” about telephone companies prior to that time—was immediately made into a domain of discursive activity, by goal-oriented agents who controlled fully their version of provision of the given knowhow. The “right do decide” (between telephone companies) was culturally created within an existing set of possibilities, each of which (if chosen) would gain full control over the given relation with the client who had decided in their favor. The ambiguity of deciding (among options not revealed in full to the prospective “clients”) was generated socially, and immediately this set the stage for various goal-oriented efforts of disambiguating the situation. The latter operates with signs that exclude their opposites—thus creating certainty and eliminating doubts. The crucial test of the advertising efforts would be to look for any signs of doubt about the advertised product itself, communicated in the advertisement text. This is particularly interesting in the case of products that are necessarily inherently ambiguous—all medical “drugs” carry inherent ambiguity with them (not different from any other substance usable in human existence, tobacco and alcohol included). Medicines can both cure and kill; which of the two scenarios works in a given case is in principle indeterminate. Thus, particular “side effects” of a medical drug for a particular person cannot be predicted, and long-term “safety” of a drug is not testable in principle (e.g., which pharmaceutical company would wait for 20 years to test the lack of long-term negative effects of a drug that needs to capture the market now?). These are inevitable, inherent ambiguities of human life in the “modern world,” which are ideologically turned into semiotic unambiguity (e.g., “drug X is SAFE”). Thalidomide was “safe” as a drug administered to pregnant women until cases of congenital bodily malformation were discovered—in low frequencies, compared to the wide use of the drug. Yet it was sufficient to lead to banning of the drug. Asbestos in the architectural environment was once viewed as “safe”—and in our

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present time, examples of quick abandonment of asbestos-infested buildings can be reported.

“Ideological Humanism” in Psychology Psychology is clearly borrowing from the social construction of disambiguated phenomena that exist in the social life. It habitually uses mental models (as axioms) that emphasize symbiosis, harmony, or indivisibility between human beings and between humans and their environments. There seems to exist an inherent tendency in psychology to avoid the use of terminology of negative connotation (e.g., cf. the case of “conflict”—Valsiner & Cairns, 1992). Psychology builds on the utopia of being a humane science, emphasizing the positive aspects of the human condition (Lang, 1997). Nevertheless, it remains inherently guided by the social orientations in the given society at the given time (Valsiner, 1996). This “ideological humanism” of psychology leads theoretical issues of communication (and metacommunication) in the direction of emphasizing the commonality of the persons who are involved in communication. At one level of approach, it is a simple question of figure/ground distinction—or the question (asked about a half-filled glass of water) “is that glass half-empty or half-full?” Communication between people entails both commonalities (“shared codes”) and noncommonalities—yet which of the two sides is used as the basis for constructing theoretical models is a decision guided by the background ideology. Communication can be seen as keeping up of communion between persons or as a process of constant breaking of the communion. These two directions set up axiomatic emphases on different parts of the same whole, but with implications that lead the constructed theories to irreconcilably opposite pathways.

Communication as Overcoming of Communion In this chapter, I outline a perspective on communication that makes use of the notion of constructed intersubjectivity and goal-oriented subjectivities. The starting assumption for this analysis is the ontological primacy of personal subjectivity.3 The only psychological reality known to us—or which can be directly knowable—is that of my personal subjectivity in the here-and-now moment. The only “data collector” about psychological phenomena who has “online” access to these phenomena is the person within his or her immediate encounter with the world.

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Since this present moment is itself of miniscule duration (i.e., the present moment is an infinitely small time unit), our psychological system “works” between the experiences of the past (which are reconstructed in the present moment) and the expected or possible experiences of the future. The latter are likewise pre-constructed as expectations in the present. The paradox of our psychological world is that its apparent constancy in time is constructed by way of constant construction of psychological phenomena within infinitely small time moments of the ever-moving present. This relative constancy of psychological phenomena is achieved by way of Gestalt-formation over time (e.g., cases of music, see Krueger, 1928; Werner, 1926) and in the case of higher psychological functions—via semiotic mediation (Lang, 1997; Valsiner, 1998). Human psychological functioning entails simultaneous embeddedness in a culturally organized context and psychological distancing from that very context (Bullough, 1912; Sigel, 1993). Personal subjectivity allows us to transcend any here-and-now setting, at the level of our reflection.

Communication Under Conditions of Distancing and Inequality Despite our hopes for equality, we are all unequal. Full equality in the sense of “sameness” would be a biological impossibility (at the least), as it implies homogenization of the class of specimens within a species. No two persons are exactly alike (even if twins), and communication between persons necessarily starts from a starting position of their difference and the inevitability of their taking exactly the same position relative to the setting in which they are embedded. Even in cases of maximum similarity (e.g., monozygotic twins), being in the same setting, it is not possible to simultaneously assume the same perspective towards some object (which is “shared” by way of being in the setting). Such positioning in the same location can only be successive (one first, then the other), which means that in any moment of simultaneity, communication between the two entails coordination of different perspectives. Hence, environments are “shared” between persons only in terms of a generalized abstraction (e.g., all human beings “share” the environment of Earth), yet in terms of exact positioning of oneself, each individual occupies a unique position (e.g., my present geographically specifiable “spot” of location is uniquely mine, and no other person exists in that same spot). The same is true for communicational positioning—people involved in communication are necessarily based on different perspectives. Yet, using

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metacommunicative devices, they can attempt to believe that they are “sharing” the perspective. The social world creates further differentiation between communicating persons—beyond the “geographically located uniqueness” described above. Human development entails social relations and interaction between persons whose relations are unequal in social power and semiotically constructed notion of “responsibility.” Thus, parent–child or teacher– student relations are set up by the social roles of the relating persons as unequal—parents and teachers are in control over the life-worlds of their children and students (even if the latter are active coconstructors of their life spaces). Social power is constantly being created semiotically, thus amplifying the difference of positions of the persons who are involved in communication. Communication is always between unequals—in terms of their positions—and the issue for a theory of communication is how the particular version of inequality of positions becomes transformed as the process of communication takes place. Various versions of inequality of positions are encoded into the context of the interrole relations in communication. Let us consider the following list: 1. I know that my position is different from you, and mark it semiotically [example: a parent says to the child, “I am your parent”] 2. I know that my position is different from you, but mask the difference semiotically [example: a parent says to the child, “We are a family”] 3. I know that my position is different from you—I being dominant over you—and mark it by way of maintaning my dominance [example: parent says to the child, “I will always be your mother (or father)”] 4. I know that my position is different from you—I being dominant over you—but mask it [example: parent says to the child, “you should make your own decisions!” implying “but I determine which are the right ones”] As can be seen from these examples, positioning of communication partners is asymmetrical by default, but the asymmetry can be masked as symmetry (or even reversal). In such relations, notions of “sharing” and “symbiosis” cannot explain the process of development. Nevertheless, studies of human psychology often assume such notions. Mothers (in the U.S. middle class) may consider their infants to be “equal partners”—when they show off their babies to others—while retaining full control over the babies during changing of diapers. This would amount to the example (2)

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above—the construction of illusion of equality between partners whose starting relationship (parent  offspring) is necessarily asymmetric. In fact, claims about “sharing” or “symbiosis” made by interaction partners are most likely to be metacommunicative tactics, used for partners’ goal directed actions. The mothers of supposedly “equal” infants are creating the metacommunicative unity of “sharing” in order to live up to their social utopia of mother-baby symbiosis. All claims by mothers that “my baby understands me” (or “my baby is the only one who understands me”) can be seen as metacommunicative tools in the mother’s “autodialogue” with herself (Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999), aside from the obvious possibility that it has the function of showing off to the investigator their motherly qualities.

Goal-Oriented Nature of Human Conduct In the reflecting upon the present moment, persons construct orientations for future, which they may try to follow (goal orientations). Acting in a here-and-now setting is necessarily acting for the future—since every action is moving the person from the present moment towards the next (futurethat-becomes present) moment. This is the case when future objectives are the basis for such action (e.g., Mikhail Basov’s apperceptively determined processes), as well as when the action depends upon association with the immediate past (Basov’s associatively determined processes—see Basov, 1931/1991). A person’s orientation towards the future is of the kind of direction towards some field of objectives, rather than towards precisely set goals (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). Precisely set goals can emerge within the direction towards some ill-defined field that the goal orientation defines, in nonstrict terms. This guarantees flexibility in goal systems (i.e., the person can easily remake the goals once the changing circumstances support such change). It also is a necessary preadaptation to future which is necessarily partially indeterminate. At the level of personal reflection about action, the goal orientations become constructed in terms of belief orientations (Valsiner, Branco, & Melo Dantas, 1997). Belief orientations are psychological constructs—unifying affective and mental reflexive functions of the human psyche—that can act as personal-cultural organizers of the goal orientation specification in any new moment. Being based on goal orientations themselves, belief orientations operate as a next general level of organizers of human conduct. Belief orientations are semiotically constructed (i.e., take the form of some version of signs), while goal orientations entail a person’s construction of action-orientations within the flow of perceptual information. Goal

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orientations can be reflected upon semiotically (e.g., a person being able to state “I want X” or “my goal is Y, or if unattainable, then Z”), whereas belief orientations are always semiotically encoded. Human communication (and metacommunication) process entails both goal-oriented actions (in case of specific efforts to communicate), and belief-oriented positioning of the person in a relation with the other persons involved in the process. Some of this positioning may be constrained by preset social roles (e.g., the social role of mother is culturally preset, in coordination with that of the baby—both becoming actualized together when the baby is born). Similarly, the election of one’s next-door neighbor to be the president of the university would immediately—and simultaneously—reorganize the previous relationship between “equal” next-door neighbors. Roles and counterroles (Oliveira, 1997) are phenomena of cogenetic kind (see Herbst, 1995). They emerge (and decay) together, they make distinctions between persons, setting up the background for their communication process. Still, within this preconstrained field of role-based positions, numerous aspects of the communication process are to be jointly constructed, and reconstructed. This may entail reconstructing the preconstrained field itself (reconstruction of roles—see Oliveira & Valsiner, 1997). Cases of role reversals in the communication process, even if temporary (e.g., mother pretending to be a child, and allocating to the child the role of mother), can be seen to prepare the ground for role reconstructions. Yet that ground can be protected against actualization of the efforts to reverse the roles in reality—the pretend nature of the role reversals may accentuate the present status quo of the roles. It is here that metacommunicative messages begin to appear in full relevance—the difference between change-oriented acting in terms of “as if” change of roles, and that of change-aversive function of similar acting, needs to be clarified via metacommunicative signals.

Example of Goal-Oriented Changes in Communicational Positioning The issue of positioning of the person in various communicative contexts has been of serious concern to persons who conceptualize communication. Ragnar Rommetveit’s example of “Mrs. and Mr. Smith” may provide a good illustration here. Mr. Smith is a husband who has started to mow the lawn in his front yard, on a Saturday morning. This ordinary act can lead to a variety of communicational positionings by persons who refer to it:

386    Beyond the Mind What is going on in Mr. Smith’s garden . . . may under different dialogically established background conditions be made sense of in a variety of different ways and brought into language by expressions such as MOW THE LAWN, BEAUTIFY THE GARDEN, ENGAGE IN PHYSICAL EXERCISE, WORK, ENGAGE IN LEISURE-TIME ACTIVITY, and NOT WORK. A neighbour prying into the miserable relations of the Smiths may even tell us that he “sees” Mr. Smith AVOID THE COMPANY OF HIS WIFE. And this may indeed also be the way in which Mrs. Smith, left alone in the kitchen with the morning coffee in front of her, makes sense of what is going on. . . . We hear her say “He is once more avoiding a confronta . . .” At that moment her bitter voice is drowned by the sound of telephone, and she picks up the receiver. It is her friend Betty who is calling, and Betty initiates their chat by asking: “That lazy husband of yours, is he still in bed?” To which Mrs. Smith answers: “No,” Mr. Smith is WORKING this morning, he is mowing the lawn. A short time afterwards Mrs. Smith receives another call, this time from Mr. Jones, who, she tacitly takes for granted . . .  wants to find out whether Mr. Smith is free to go fishing with him. He asks: “Is your husband working this morning? And Mrs. Smith answers: “No,” Mr. Smith is NOT WORKING this morning, he is mowing the lawn. (Rommetveit, 1992, pp. 25–26, emphasis added)

This example provides for a rather realistic account of how quickly the position of the same person in communicative relations can change. The process of coordinating the positions of the communication partners is considered attunement (Rommetveit, 1992, p. 26)—the reflexive stance of A relative to uncertain hints from B (and counter-attunement—the reflexive stance of B relative to A). The communicative actions evoke complex combinations of attunement and counterattunement, based on the unity of communicative and metacommunicative channels. Let us analyze what was happening in Rommetveit’s example, by extending it to the realm of coconstruction of different attunement patterns between communication partners. Let us assume that Betty could have said any of the following to Mrs. Smith: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

That lazy husband of yours, is he still in bed?” That husband of yours, is he still in bed?” That husband of yours, is he in bed?” That husband of yours, what is he up to?” That husband of yours, is he working?” That husband of yours, is he mowing the lawn?” That husband of yours, how is he today?”

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The bold-faced parts of these messages can be claimed to be explicit metacommunicative markers (at the level of language use) that mediate 4 the relationship between Betty and Mrs. Smith. The implication of “being still in bed” can be explicitly escalated (“lazy”), or de-escalated (in case of (3)—a simple question about the location of Mr. Smith is interpretable as implicit message of metacommunicative kind). The underlined part of the messages can be viewed as implicit “interpretive fields” (for Mrs. Smith) which are inherently ambiguous on Betty’s side. Yet the ambiguity on one side may call for co-constructive complementation by the other. Dependent upon Mrs. Smith’s view of Betty’s goal-orientations (and belief-orientations about the character of Mr. Smith), each of the fields (3), (4), (5) and (6) can become interpreted (by Mrs. Smith) as if it were an explicit effort (by Betty) to modify their very womanly relation. An analysis of the metacommunicatvely marked fields (Betty’s (1) (2)) leads to different possible constructions on behalf of Mrs. Smith, each dependent upon Mrs. Smith’s assumed position relative to Betty’s. This position can be convergent, divergent, oppositional, or neutralizing. Let us extend the example to see how Mrs. Smith could interpret Betty’s messages (1) (2) and answer accordingly, from each position, in Table 19.1. It is clear from this extension that mere attunement to the other (and counterattunement by the other) is insufficient to characterize the ongoing communication process. The positioning by Mrs. Smith is coconstructed with Betty’s implied message, and can take a number (in our example, 4, but the number is not a given) of directions. Note that some of the directions (divergent, oppositional) may lead to a similar response (“No, Mr. Smith is working . . .”), or may result in direct confrontation (“You are mean”) if the oppositional stance is carried out into direct communication process. TABLE 19.1 Position

Interpretation

Possible answer

CONVERGENT:

“Betty understands my problems.”

“It took me much effort to get him out of bed, now he is working . . .”

DIVERGENT:

“Betty has weird ideas about my husband”

“No, Mr. Smith is working . . .”

OPPOSITIONAL:

“Stupid cow, it is none of your business what happens in my life”

“No, Mr. Smith is working . . . ”

“I know you are envious, but I make no issue out of your little bites”

“Oh, he is fine . . . but what about you and me having coffee together later today?”

NEUTRALIZING:

“You are mean!”

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However, communication process entails re-negotiation of positions. As Rommetveit suggested, Consider . . . the following plausible continuation of Mrs. Smith’s chat with Betty. Betty, having been told that Mr. Smith is working (mowing the lawn), says: Is he really? Is he WORKING HARD? The sustained topic . . . is in this case determined by the interrogator’s concern about Mr. Smith’s alleged laziness. Betty was the one who set the perspective at the very beginning of their conversation. . . . It is nevertheless Mrs. Smith who has brought her husband’s activity in the garden into language of WORK. (Rommetveit, 1992, pp. 32–33)

Human communication this entails quick assumption of positions and their maintenance. The positions assumed by different communicating partners are necessarily different, even if these can converge at times. Furthermore, the particular positions can be presented in different disguises, some of which entail emphasis on their difference, and others, the creation of the image of similarity of the perspective. Communication about the relationship of one’s position to another’s position can be viewed as metacommunication. Metacommunication is thus very important mechanism in viewing communication as a version of hypergame.

Human Communication Process as Hypergame The example of Betty and Mrs. Smith has thus far been displayed as if we had full understanding of Mrs. Smith’s set of different positions relative to Betty’s question. This assumption is questionable in case of quick communication processes, where messages are constantly created, by participants who do not have direct access to the immediate goal orientations of the other. It is therefore more adequate to consider the communication process in terms of hypergames, where any assumed intersubjectivity is constantly being violated by way of constructing novel strategies, due to the constantly changing goal orientations. Hypergames constitute a development within formal systems based on the notions of game theory. Hypergames are games where one or more players are not fully aware of the nature of the game situation. This unawareness may include lack of knowledge of the consequences of their own and other players’ different choices. The players may have an inaccurate understanding of the preferences of others, or they do not possess full and correct information on the range of options available to other players. Furthermore, they

Communication and Development    389 may be unaware of the identities of all the players involved in the game. (Fraser & Hipel, 1979, p. 805, emphasis added)

The following characteristics of hypergame are present in Betty/Mrs. Smith’s telephone conversation: 1. Mrs. Smith is not aware what state Betty is in exactly at the time of asking about Mr. Smith, even if she knows that Betty’s moods vary remarkably. 2. She does not know the full set of meanings that Betty could use to refer to Mr. Smith, and the full set of connotations Betty might use (e.g., “that lazy husband of yours” can be meant by Betty as an offense, or as a joke—which it is not directly determinable at the moment). 3. The latter amounts to inadequate understanding of Betty’s preferences (joke or offense). 4. Mrs. Smith is unaware about the possibility that somebody else— some Mrs. Jones—may have told Betty about a nasty remark—real or invented—that Mrs. Smith has made about Betty behind the latter’s back, and Betty’s offense upon the husband is thus actually a game played by Mrs. Jones via Betty, and not Betty by herself. The relevance of gossip is thus central for setting up new hypergame spaces, as it increases the lack of knowledge of who the players are, and what they try to achieve. The uncertainty of interpretation and open-endedness of strategies guarantees that metacommunicative processes may play an important role in the complex variety of communication process. They may temporarily stabilize the conditions of a hypergame in the form of a “steady state”—turning the hypergame situation temporarily into a simpler game within which the partners become aware of the “rules” (each other’s goal orientations, set of possible strategies). This would give the communication process some possibility for mutual certainty (which could be what is usually called “assumed intersubjectivity”—Rommetveit, 1979). It could also be that the role of metacommunicative frames (Branco, 1996) is in this temporary stabilization of the hypergame.

Formal Elaboration Let us try to specify the communication and metacommunication strategies in the case of hypergames, if formal terms. There is a set of possible

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initial positions—PIP—(based on the social roles, or goal-orientations) of two communicating agents, that “set the stage” for the process:

Agent A: PIP(A)= {W, non-W, Y, non-Y}

(1)



Agent B: PIP (B)= {Q, non-Q, Y, non-Y}

(2)

The denotation in both cases includes specific positions (W, Y, Q) and their opposites (non-W, non-Y, non-Q) within the same set, to indicate the flexibility of the assumption of the initial position. If I am the “boss” (W) and you my “inferior” (Q), I can (at the beginning of our conversation) assume the position of non-”boss” (non-W), while you may assume the position of non-”inferior” (non-Q). We can be chatting amiably on the basis of such assumptions, yet I remain actually “the boss” and you remain “the inferior.” However, we can also chat amiably as two men (both assuming Y), or even as two transvestites (both assuming non-Y). The situation becomes more complex if we eliminate two limitations upon the PIP structure: (a) that the set is closed (which is the case in both (1) and (2)), and that (b) one and only one PIP can be assumed. There can be PIPs of Agent A that B does not know about, or which are in the process of emergence (same for A’s knowledge of B). Or either partners can simultaneusly assume more than one position (I can chat with you both as “the boss” and “non-boss” at the same time). These conditions introduce the uncertainty of the hypergame into the (1) and (2). Let us now assume that both agents can utilize open-ended lexicon of one’s own in the process of communication. Some parts of the lexicons are similar between the partners (i.e., the “shared code” in usual terms), yet the valuative preferences may be different—marked by + and – signs in the lexicons):

Lex A = {P+, Q–, S, T, U, V, . . . [unknown]}

(3)



Lex B= {P–, S+, T+, W, Y, Z, . . . [unknown]}

(4)

As can be seen, besides the overlap (P, S, T) there are non-overlaps in the lexicons, and differential valuations within the overlap (P+ vs P–; S vs. S+, T vs. T+). The communication partners do not know that. Furthermore, if we assume that the lexicons will change in the course of communication (a developmental assumption), then the lack of knowledge between the two partners is enhanced.

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Finally, we need to specify the sets of goal orientations for A and B:

GO A = (K, L, [unknown]}

(5)



GO B = (M, L, [unknown]}

(6)

Combining now the PIPs and GOs, we arrive at a structure of a decision process that looks approximately as follows: Decision 1: Agent A specifies the current PIP of B, and vice versa. The result may be convergent PIPs (e.g., A views B as Y, B views B as Y, B views A as Y, and A views A as Y), or divergent PIPs (any other combination). Decision 2: based on decision 1, A decides about GOs of one’s own, and of B, and B does the same about A and about B. The result is determination of convergent GOs (based on convergent PIPs, e.g., A claims L for oneself, and thinks that B claims L, B claims L for oneself and thinks that A claims L), or divergent GOs (all other combinations of GOs and with all divergent PIPs). Decision 3: based on decisions 1 and 2, both A and B decide to use some of their lexicons for meta-communicative purposes—either to maintain divergent or convergent PIP  GO combinations, or transform these into another state. What this play with formalization demonstrates is that—purely theoretically—communication (as viewed at the intersection of two persons, and assuming for each an initial role, goal orientations, and lexicons) is a process dominated by fluidity, which can be temporarily canalized by turning some parts of the communicative lexicon into metacommunicational stabilizing signals. “Sharing” is a very special case in this model—one that presumes the overcoming of hypergame nature of the communication by mutuality of PIPs, GOs, at least parts of the lexicons. If this theoretical construction is adequate, then it is primarily through metacommunicative framing that any communication can take place at all! Implications of such discovery for empirical investigation of communication and metacommunication are of course profound.

Conclusion: Communication as Unity of Flexibility and Fixity The position I have taken on communication (and metacommunication) in this paper emphasizes the fluidity of the ongoing process, which is

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constrained by persons’ individual constructive efforts. The persons construct their interpretations of one another’s intentions, their own intentions (goal orientations in communication), and communicate messages. Metacommunicative messages may be viewed as constrainers of otherwise highly fluid processes in which certainty is coconstructed episodically, rather than a given. Thus, states of “assumed intersubjectivity” are means to the end of regulating the otherwise all too fluid communication processes, rather than constitute an end in itself. Perhaps this reversal of theoretical perspective—from “sharing” of communicative messages to dynamic constraining of the flow of constructed meanings (that masks itself as a “communion”)—would help to make sense of both the power of communication to create stability of meanings between persons, as well as to be open to immediate changes in the meaningful reflection upon the world. Rapid changes in meaningful actions occur in parallel with remarkable fixity of meanings in communication process. Both of these extremes are generated by the same general mechanisms of communication. It is certainly a grand difficulty for the social sciences to conceptualize extreme opposites as parts of the same whole.

Acknowledgements This paper was written when the author was a visiting professor at the Laboratory of Microgenesis of Social Interactions, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de Brasilia, in 1997. A preliminary work-out of these ideas was presented orally in the same Laboratory in July, 1996. The support by the Fulbright Foundation by a Serial Grant that allowed for repeated stay in the Laboratory in years 1995–1997 is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes 1. Paper presented at the XXVI Interamerican Congress of Psychology, São Paulo, July, 8, 1997, within the Symposium Communication and metacommunication: Theoretical and methodological problems. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. The focus here on ontological primacy must not be confused with ontogenetic primacy of the social experiences in the emergence of human psychological functions. Personal subjectivity emerges ontogenetically through the person’s relating with the culturally organized world, and once it has emerged, becomes relatively autonomous in respect to that world. In that autonomy, personal subjectivity has ontological primacy over the person’s being embedded in social contexts.

Communication and Development    393 4. Actually, Mr. Smith is here merely an outside object—a perceptual object and a social illusion. He does not appear in the communication process in any other way than any object of reality about which communication occurs—see Karl Bühler’s Organon model (Bühler, 1932, 1934/1990). Instead of Mr. Smith, Betty could have asked about Mrs. Smith’s new dress, her yesterday’s visit to a cinema, or about the weather. In all these cases, Mrs. Smith’s counter-attunement could co-construct a specific—Mrs. Smith’s personal-cultural version— set of understandings of Betty’s relation to her, and appropriate answers.

References Aphek, E., & Tobin, Y. (1990). The semiotics of fortune-telling. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Basso, E. (1996). The trickster’s scattered self. In C. L. Briggs (Ed.), Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and inequality (pp. 53–71). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Basov, M (1991). The organization of processes of behavior. In J. Valsiner & R. Van der Veer (Eds.), Structuring of conduct in activity settings: The forgotten contributions of Mikhail Basov. Part 1. Soviet Psychology, 29(5), 14–83. (Original work published 1931) Branco, A.U. (1996, September). Metacommunication processes in child-child interactions: theoretical and methodological issues. Paper presented at the Second Conference for Socio-Cultural Research, Geneva, Switzerland. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9(1), 35–64. Bullough, E. (1912). ‘Psychical distance’ as a factor in art and an aesthetic principle. Journal of Psychology, 5(2), 87–118. Bühler, K. (1932). Das Ganze der Sprachtheorie, ihr Aufbau und ihre Teile. In G. Kafka (Ed.), Bericht über den XII Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie (pp. 95–122). Jena, Germany: Gustav Fischer. Bühler, K. (1990). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Original work published 1934) Freeman, J. M. (1981). A firewalking ceremony that failed. In G. R. Gupta (Ed.), The social and cultural context of medicine in India (pp. 308–336). New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House. Fraser, N. M., & Hipel, K. W. (1979). Solving complex conflicts. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, smc-9(12), 805–810. Gupta, S., & Valsiner, J. (1996, September). Myths in the hearts: Implicit suggestions in the story. Paper presented at the Second Conference for SocioCultural Research, Geneva, Switzerland. Herbst, D. P. (1995). What happens when we make a distinction: An elementary introduction to co-genetic logic. In T. Kindermann & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Development of person-context relations (pp. 67–79). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction: Dissecting the flow of semiotic activity. In J. Brandstädter & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self-development (pp. 257–282). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Krueger, F. (1928). The essence of feeling. In M. L. Reymert (Ed.), Feelings and emotions: The Wittenberg symposium (pp. 58–86). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Lang, A. (1997). Thinking rich as well as simple: Boesch’s cultural psychology in semiotic perspective. Culture & Psychology, 3(3), 383–394. Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali’s tongue: Cultural psychology and the power of ‘shame’ in Orissa. In S. Kitayama & H. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture (pp 237–280).Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Oliveira, Z. M. R. (1997). The concept of “role” and the discussion of the internalization process. In B. Cox & C. Ligthfoot (Eds.), Sociogenetic perspectives on internalization (pp. 105–118). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Oliveira, Z. M. R., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Play and imagination: The psychological construction of novelty. In A. Fogel, M. Lyra, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes (pp. 119–134). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Ramanujan, A. K. (1991). Toward a counter-system: Women’s tales. In A. Appadurai, F. J. Korom, & M. A. Mills (Eds.), Gender, genre, and power in South Asian expressive traditions (pp. 33–55). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rommetveit, R. (1979). On negative rationalism in scholarly studies of verbal communication and dynamic residuals in the construction of human intersubjectivity. In R. Rommetveit & R. Blakar (Eds.), Studies of language, thought and verbal communication (pp. 147–161). London, England: Academic Press. Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. H. Wold (Ed.), The dialogical alternative: Towards a theory of language and mind (pp. 19–44). Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press. Sigel, I. E. (1993). The centrality of a distancing model for the development of representational competence. In R. R. Cocking & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), The development and meaning of psychological distance (pp. 141–158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J. (1989). Human development and culture. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Valsiner, J. (1996). Social utopias and knowledge construction in psychology. In V. A. Koltsova, Y. N. Oleinik, A. R. Gilgen & C. K. Gilgen (Eds.), Post-Soviet perspectives on Russian psychology (pp. 70–84). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Valsiner, J. (1998). The guided mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Valsiner, J., & Cairns, R. B. (1992). Theoretical perspectives on conflict and development. In C. U. Shantz & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), Conflict in child

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and adolescent development (pp. 15–35). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Valsiner, J., Branco, A. U., & Melo Dantas, C. (1997). Co-construction of human development: Heterogeneity within parental belief orientations. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Handbook of parenting and the transmission of values (pp. 283–304). New York, NY: Wiley. Werner, H. (1926). Über Mikromelodik und Mikroharmonik. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 98, 74–89. Wikan, U. (1982). Behind the veil in Arabia: Women in Oman. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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20 The Clicking and Tweeting Society Beyond Entertainment to Education1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Educational systems in any country and historical time are parts of their constantly changing societal contexts—feeding into changing of these contexts. Ours is that of moving from production to consumer society—with an additional feature of equating mass media messages about selected aspects of social reality with that very same social reality itself (ontologization of the message). Information acquires the role of entertainment (“infotainment”), and the ritualistic acts of generating media messages (“one liners” by politicians or celebrities; creation of public scandals on political, financial, or sexual topics; “public apologies” for social or private breakings of social or moral rules) have become relevant (and sometimes dominating) parts of our everyday lives. Traditional borders have been eliminated by information technologies (while new borders are erected within these technologies—we live in “passwords and patents” society). All these societal changes provide a new challenge to education at all levels—from kindergartens to universities. Solutions are possible, but not obvious.

Beyond the Mind, pages 397–414 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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While taking a U-Bahn in Berlin, I noticed the display promising the passengers news in the form of INFOTAINMENT. This very creative unification of “INFOrmation” with “enterTAINMENT” suddenly gave me an insight where to look for the problems—and solutions of the problems—that we detect, complain about, and fail to solve in our dedication to the tasks of higher education. Our problem detection is usually focused on the narrow issues of our educational efforts, while the roots of these go far beyond the borders of universities or secondary schools. Education may be built on the assumption that it is information that needs to be reconstructed as knowledge is transferred from generation to generation. For innovations that go beyond the knowledge of the previous generation, that is necessary—the learners not only accept the existing knowledge but coconstruct future knowledge. Yet the societal orientation to knowledge can change— promoted by the avalanche of consumer orientation—that makes entertainment increasingly central in human lives. Thus, the hybrid infotainment is not an occasional clever word, but an indicator of a total cultural complex (Brinkmann, 2008) that reorganizes our lives as well as social sciences to focus on the ways in which human beings can satisfy their newly developed needs for entertainment. The large and looming question for the social sciences is—given the escalating imperative for entertainment in our societies, what role can education play under these circumstances? Or—what does “society” need “education” for? I am here presenting an analysis from the perspective of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics (Valsiner, 1999, 2014a). In this perspective, the focus is on the specific features of the educational processes that take place within a wider societal framework that directs these processes towards valuable social outcomes. The latter are often presented as the “needs” of “the society.”

“The Society”—A Beautiful Fiction Some words seem so obvious in their meaning that we never stop to ask if what they denote really exists. “Society” is one of those words—it subsists (as an abstract object of high relevance), yet it cannot be precisely pointed to as an existing object.3 Yet it is precisely through such abstracted subsistence function that “the society” becomes more powerful than any of its existing counterparts ever could be. Nobody is ready to give one’s life for the sake of a real society—for example, The Royal Society (established in 1652)—but would habitually do that for their nations’ sake (for “the society” as a subsisting abstraction). The “industry” of guidance of human beings towards doubt-free acceptance of the basic premises of societal beliefs succeeds through generalization from the notion of a particular society or collective entity to “the society” as a whole.

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Any move of such generalization from “a” (social group) to “the” (valued) “in-group” and further to the hypergeneralized notion of “the society” is built on the construction of internalized trust within the psyche of each (and—importantly to social institutions—every) person in the given social field. The process of mutual inclusion starts from “I” and ends with “we—the society”: I (as I am) → I and you (WE two) → WE (I, you, and others here) → WE all (all who can be listed) → WE as “the society” (all of WE who can be listed and others who cannot but who must exist since all of us listable do exist= SOCIETY is INFINITE as a hypergeneralized concept)

The reverse move gives us imperatives, like “You {=YOU AS YOU ARE} must do X for the good of The Society!”

The notion of trust—and its corresponding TRUST  non-TRUST dynamics (Valsiner, 2005)—is a strictly subjective phenomenon (Figure 20.1). The key issue of Figure 20.1 is the indeterminacy of the Non-A (nonTRUST, non-DISTRUST) fields in these dialogic oppositions. Alternatively to {non-TRUST → DISTRUST} trajectory there are other growth alternatives—{non-TRUST → HATE} or {non-TRUST → POLITENESS}.

non-“TRUST” “TRUST”

emerging new meaning

emerging new meaning

“DISTRUST”

non-“DISTRUST”

Figure 20.1  The TRUSTnon-TRUST dynamics cycle.

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The roots of the internalized TRUST  non-TRUST cycles are social— the person constructs one’s own personal meaning of trust on the basis of various social suggestions like “trust me!” and “don’t trust that other person!” Or—in hypergeneralized versions—phrases like “one cannot trust anybody anymore” and “we must trust X!” we can observe fixed monologization of the dialogical process. Persons establish their own figures for trusting—and are ready to surrender their personal agency and control over their fate to such invented external authority figures (Valsiner, 1999). The personal construction of generalized (and hypergeneralized) trust has its counterpart in the collective construction of the “no-doubt” status for the agents-to-be-trusted. Parents must be trusted by their children, schools must be trusted by parents, a ministry of education must be trusted by the school principal, and so on. Yet trust is never guaranteed—it is a process of constant negotiation (TRUST  non-TRUST; see Valsiner, 2005, and Figure 20.1 here). The sociomoral imperative “X must be trusted!” works only and only if the underlying TRUST  non-TRUST process excludes the possibility of “non-TRUST” moments growing into DISTRUST. Once this happens, the potential of any coordination through dialogue with the other side is no longer possible.

A Life-Course Example: Loss of Trust The emergence of distrust can happen out of very small events in personal lives. A young 10-year old boy is brought up by his father so as to respect nature and not damage it. One day, in the garden with his father and aunt, the boy observes the aunt cutting flowers from the flowerbed. She then gives the cut flowers to the boy asking him to go and take them to his mother as a present. The boy is horrified by the act of the aunt’s “killing of the living flowers” and hits the aunt. The father—who had been promoting the nature-loving ideology all of the boy’s life—gets angry at the boy and lashes out towards him. The aunt proceeds to punish the boy for his aggressive act. The act to correct the little 10-year-old “terrorist’s” behavior is successfully over. Decades later, the boy—by now a well-known German philosopher Günter Anders—recollects that story as the specific key moment when he lost his trust in his father—the famous German psychologist William Stern. The son and the father grew psychologically apart, both understanding that the little parental punishment episode meant the collapse of the trust of the boy in the father’s credo of loving nature. It was not the boy, but the aunt, who should have been punished—for “killing” the living flowers. At least by the father’s personal credo—of course we of the wider society at large never

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punish the sellers of cut flowers, who must have performed the same flower decapitation operation as the boy’s aunt did. We do punish people who take flowers away from the cemetery. The son of the famous but inconsistent father changed his name from Stern to “The Other” (Anders—see Lamiell, 2003, pp. 25–26 for full description of this episode).

Trust in Social Upheavals In the dynamics of TRUST  non-TRUST processes seemingly little everyday events can escalate to major psychological (and social) turmoil. An opera performance of Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici) in Brussels on August 25, 1830 was meant to celebrate the birthday of the Dutch king William I, but it triggered a patriotic fervent that activated the Belgian revolution and secession from the Netherlands. It is not surprising that art can be socially subversive and sometimes trigger escalating changes. The seriousness of construction of censorship systems indicates it social dangers for the current stakeholders of “the society.”

Internalization of Trust and Avoidance of Doubt Before any external social censor comes into action, it is important to the social stakeholders to promote the development of internalized trust— disallowing the move to nontrust. This requires the eradication of doubt. Doubt is a psychological operator that may enable the emergence of DISTRUST from non-TRUST. Blocking it from emergence is a crucial task of social control over the minds of human beings. If successful, the absence of doubting makes the non-TRUST socially usable in the political organization of “the society”—creating the social roles of haters-of-anything-foreign (non-TRUST → HATE) or volunteer spies to report all the suspect acts of selected “others.” Inhibiting doubt happens through canalization of the Gegenstand—in the form of Double Gegenstand (Figure 20.2). The most usual form of blocking any doubt is to have an opinion. An opinion—deeply and strongly believed in—blocks any further thinking. Social institutions today—ever since the focus on the importance of crowds became politically evident as a result of the French Revolution—are involved in a mind-boggling array of opinion polls and customer satisfaction surveys in any imaginable and unimaginable (see Figure 20.3) place in our everyday practice. Of course the “customer” is appropriately appeased when she is told that “your opinion is important to us!”—never mind in what kind of awkward places the sentiment is expressed. But behind the other-friendly façade what

402    Beyond the Mind Example: Full trust in the major premiss of the firstform syllogism (a la A. Luria in Central Asia): “All bears in X are white” “Z is in X” “What color of bears are in Z?” The institution sets up rules that block the emergence of the counter-direction—together with the desired direction

Figure 20.2  How the DOUBT is blocked from emerging (Double Gegenstand).

Figure 20.3  A customer satisfaction survey in the WC of Frankfurt Airport.

is at stake is a power game—the administration presents its image as if it were customer-inclusive. Furthermore, behind this gesture of symbolic power transfer from those really and truly in control (i.e., the whole institution taking care of the given public facility) is the act of promotion of the formation of discrete opinions. The forced choice format of such opinion polls guides people to “make up their mind” in a way that excludes the consideration of any other way of relating to the object of evaluation. So options like “it is GOOD but could have BEEN EVEN BETTER” or “it is BAD but I understand your personnel is grossly underpaid” cannot appear in such opinion

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polls. What we—imprecisely, since it is an infinite term—call “the society” is by now become a training ground for creating, fixing, escalating, and preserving fragmented yet affectively value-laden opinions. Even the waiter who approaches you in the middle of your meal asking “is everything all right?” is suggesting that you—a polite person—would say “yes,” thus creating a discrete positive opinion about a so-so eating experience. Opinions become an additional currency— secondary to money4—in the life of the society.

Elaborated Abstraction: From Productionto Consumption-Oriented “Society” The subsisting abstraction “the society” is easily given further predicates.5 In the 21st century, the well-disputed cogito, ergo sum slogan is left far behind. Instead, we are guided to live with “I consume—therefore I exist” notion. How could such transition of the human mind happen? The impact for our ecological habitat of such transition is immense—the abandoned ideas of the philosophers of the past do not require municipal garbage dump sites with all their characteristic smells, while similarly abandoned consumed products seem to overload the Planet Earth with such unappealing areas within city planning. The real challenge of becoming “consumer society” it its outcome—the impending future of “garbage society” (unless the “recycling society” manages to save the planet). In any case, the idealistic notion of the society becomes increasingly materialistic—yet ideologically overdetermined as before.

Hybridizing “the Society” The fashion for postmodernist ideologies that swept across Europe since 1960s have left an interesting and in some ways paradoxical heritage. On the one hand, deconstruction of any structure—social, theoretical, aesthetic—has done away with traditional structural powers in their hierarchical stability. The postmodern worldview deconstructs the structure of institutions and replaces it with the fluidity of ever-changing social networks. The “network society” is the result of change from industrial to consumer society—which can also be seen to gain the label “experience society”—the focus is on personal participation through experience, shared via the fluid networks (Brinkmann, 2008, p. 92). The rapidly increasing focus on networking becomes something different in the consumption-oriented society than merely the beautiful image of “being in touch” with other human beings. Social participation becomes a form of economic exchange. The rapid and overwhelming success of

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inventions of the kind of Facebook constitute the empirical proof of such transformation. We personally experience consumption—be it food, a tourist trip to a faraway country, or the purchase of a new fancy object—and “share” it by announcing it to our 2,250 (or more) Facebook “friends” via the Internet. The personal worlds become hybridized with the social networks, in the mind-boggling myriad of exchanges of the thumbs-up “I like it” messages, attached to the most trivial publicly announced experiences. It is not only the objects we consume but also the public announcements about the acts of their consuming that become new “social capital” in interpersonal relations and in the institutional value construction of the consuming subjects. Such transformation of social relations into “social capital” has direct implications for the role of education at all levels. Together with such transformation come agents—“brokers” or that kind of “social capital” who take over the border control positions in the otherwise (seemingly) uncontrollable dealings in such capital through such fluid networks. The new label I want to suggest in this presentation—that our society is increasingly that of the “clicking and twitting” kind—illustrates such takeover of external borders of the networks. Bruno Latour’s notion of ANT (actor network theory) overlooks precisely such borders; a more accurate presentation of the fluid networks is CANT—constrained actor network theory (Valsiner, 2012, pp. 267–268). In our enthusiasm about the immediate freedom of reaching large audiences (via Twitter) we overlook the fact that the technological limit of 140 characters sets a limit upon what kinds of messages are possible to transfer through that channel. Likewise, the rapid escalation possibility to inquire about the world at large through a click can cross the invisible borders of ending up as a suspect of many kinds of socially illegitimate acts, to which your naïve curiosity obviously does not belong.

Social Homogenization of Heterogenized Strata of Society Ironically, the focus on flexible social networks creates a new version of control structure—who controls the external limits of the heterogeneity is in power control over the escalated number of “free choices” that can be made within these constraints. One can understand this when considering a phenomenon one could call “the IKEA effect.” Every day, 50 thousand people go to IKEA stores to find furniture for their homes and return with it in deep belief that they are creating their personally unique home environments. The simple fact is that all the many choices possible in IKEA are fully predetermined by the outer borders of the (admittedly wide) choices IKEA provides. In other terms—the widened choices are all homogeneously heterogeneous. What the consumer—faced with escalated demands to make

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choices—does not attend to is the preset (mass-produced) extent of all the choices. This combination of heightened heterogeneity of personal choices (with all the personal resources going for this) with complete homogenization of that heterogeneity is the general characteristic of the “networking society.” In terms of classic social psychology, this amounts to full field control by the provider of all of these choices. Whatever choice is being made by an individual, all of them are made within the range of opportunities provided by the producer of these choices. Control over the fluid and rapidly flexible networks is established through monopolizing its borders.

The Escalating Homogenizer: Mass Media as the Maker of “Infotainment” The “knowledge society” needs knowledge, but under the conditions of escalating heterogeneity of the focus on consumption the question—what is knowledge as social capital?—becomes central for making sense of social processes and answering the questions about future roles of education. Much has been said about “media effects” in our contemporary lives. It is the control over communication channels at all levels—their ownership, the ways in which messages are generated and in which forms they arrive in the life-worlds of their recipients—that guides the social life in any society today. It is in these channels where the emergence of doubt is either ruled out or enhanced.

Ontologizing Messages The increasing role of the mass communication media in the dealings with “social capital” leads to the replacement of ongoing processes by turning these into labeled “entities” that carry affective value-added loadings. The notion of “breakthrough” is an ontological label—expected from the applicants for European research funding before the process of promised grant-funded research has begun. Researchers are guided to give promises for outcomes that at the given time cannot be pregranted. If these fail—and are still claimed—the ontologization takes a reverse turn, and the “breakthrough” becomes “fraud.” The process of ontologization creates new symbolic order that begins to operate as social capital. Equating the mass media messages about selected aspects of social reality with that very same social reality itself creates the illusion that the message is real—in the guided direction of value that is added to it through framing it as entertainment. Information acquire the

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role of entertainment (“infotainment”), and the ritualistic acts of generating media messages—“one liners” by politicians or celebrities, creation of public scandals on political, financial, or sexual topics. The emerging genre of “public apologies” for social or private breakings of social or moral rules have become relevant in the ways of how “infotainment” operates in our everyday lives. Traditional borders have been eliminated by information technologies—while new borders are erected within these technologies— we live in “passwords and patents” society.

Summary: Trusting “The Society” While Doing Education? The analysis of the society—within which education in general subsides—is given through the angle of basic TRUST  non-TRUST opposition (Valsiner, 2005) as developed to look at the phenomenon of “civil society.” It turns out that there is very little ontologically “civil” in societies labeled to be that. Likewise, the role of the society in the social guidance of advancement of ideas that transcend socially accepted dogmas may in 21st century not be very different from the times when Giordano Bruno challenged the prevailing understandings about the world. The difference may be only in the form of the annihilation of the doubter—instead of burning, the social isolation of the mind may be the more humane method. When analyzed from the perspective of TRUST  non-TRUST opposition, it is obvious that “the society” as an abstraction cannot be either trusted or distrusted. That would amount to (yet another) act of ontologization. Instead, the structure of the processes that relate advancement of knowledge (Wissenschaft) with the various forms of building (and rebuilding) of the systems of Bildung. The specific administrative reorganization of universities in Europe (and increasingly worldwide)—the Bologna process—is the most recent and the most total of such efforts of change in our futures of knowledge construction.

The Bologna Process: Social Guidance of Science Through Higher Education The grand international experiment with higher education that we are all observers and coparticipants in—and we somewhat tenderly call “the Bologna process”—is of course a radical administrative transformation of a social institution known for its monastic privileges, into a set of comparable cases transparent enough for external social regulation.6 It has gained acceptance beyond Europe (e.g., Kazakhstan becoming one of the participants) and its impact to other continents is an important topic to

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consider (Brunner, 2009). Controversies around it abound—it is a “topdown” political rearrangement of the higher education systems with limited voice given to the actual practitioners and the students—at least at its inception. Yet, as a system implemented for economic and administrative reasons, it is there to stay. Looking at it from the angle of social guidance of science (Valsiner, 2012), the Bologna process is an experiment in relocating borders—of students’ visions of where they might study, of administrators’ visions of what the value of a degree from “that other country” might mean, and—last but not least—creation of a flexibly movable army of “knowledge workers” (persons with bachelor or higher degrees) to cross any border of country or language in Europe when economically necessary (Dima, 2009; Mény, 2008). Like many other trans-European projects, it can be viewed as an effort to organize administratively sustainable flow of the resources. In this case, the “resources” are those of “human potential”—knowledge resources. Students in universities are about to become graduated as workers employed in knowledge-based areas of social life. Such a “knowledge worker”—a young person with a degree at any of the three levels (bachelor, master, doctorate) of the interchangeable degree can be prepared to perform one—or two—of the functions of knowledge. First of all, all people act in parallel in the use of knowledge. This is the first function—the educated person needs to operate in one’s life tasks with sufficient and fitted kind of knowledge. If the life task is to make choices between pregiven options, evaluate comparatively different given options, and give further symbolic value to the options selected (and one’s choices made), then the kind of new knowledge needed is that of well-prepared consumers. The masses of consumers need to be prepared to make evernew choices between increasing varieties of actively promoted options— quickly and efficiently. They need to be able to develop their intuitive skills in operating in such choiceful environment with pleasure. This is exemplified in our social contexts by the knowledge consuming society where “clicking” and “twitting” become the primary means of success. Schoolchildren, and increasingly university students, are prepared for that life task through the proliferating testing mechanism—that of multiple choice tests. Outside of educational contexts, they are guided towards the same by way of opinion polls. The task is: itemize (fragment the complex of knowledge into elements), then choose (“the right choice”), and then evaluate the chosen option not only as sufficient but in superlative terms (e.g., thumbs up “I like it” in Facebook). The consumer society leads the knowledge society in the direction of a fascinating yet simple order in the society—“they consume, and enjoy—while we govern.”

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Who are the “we” here? The second function of knowledge use is creation of new knowledge. Here the other side of the story—knowledge-producing society—emerges. The knowledge workers here are no longer involved in infotainment but act as “knowledge artists” who create new knowledge on the basis of the previous one. Since any new knowledge is ambiguous as to its potential uses—chemical weapons and chemotherapy to cure cancer start from the same research source—the work of the “knowledge artists” is carefully watched by “knowledge managers,” “knowledge brokers,” or “knowledge commanders.” The relationships with knowledge become differentiated and hierarchically integrated. Knowledge becomes a result of social negotiation, where collective social actors—some within science and education, some outside—negotiate the general directions of development of knowledge.7 Inside sciences, the process of knowledge production moves increasingly from being an individual act to a collective one. While Nobel prizes are still given to select individuals for ground-breaking ideas, often the empirical proof of these ideas is published in articles of authorship surpassing the number 500! So the society becomes differentiated into the crowd of knowledge users, and the corporation of knowledge producers. Behind the democratic façade—all consumers are equal—lingers the stern reality that some consumers are also producers and managers of the new knowledge—which is fed into the consumer world for further profits. Some consumers are more equal than others. Of course the notion of differentiation of a social organism—the society—into parts of unequal resources and power is no news in human history. Such differentiation has been the case in all forms of societies we know. Even the utopias of socialism and communism produced their own—administrative—power structure. So it is no surprise that behind the “clicking and twitting” consumer society exists a guild of “click-makers” and “twit-brokers” who play the guiding role in the future of production of new knowledge, and their canalization means. The questions for the future of higher education remain solidly in place: Education to whom? By whom? For what goals? By what methods?

Creativity in a Consumer Society: How Can Higher Education Succeed? Innovation will prevail no matter what form the social context (the society) in which activities of higher education may be embedded; its goal is to produce new knowledge (or creators of such new knowledge) that goes beyond the current knowledge base of the given discipline, and, correspondingly,

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of the given society at the given time. Not starting with such an “elitarian” or “revolutionary” (depending on one’s position) assumption would lead to the reduction of innovation in science (and technology) to the lowest common denominator of the current fashionable demands of the “consumer market” of infotainment, rather than exploration of the domains we do not yet understand. This is perhaps the biggest obstacle for the current reforms in higher education. The “market mentality”—thinking in terms of various outcomes of research and their social presentation value for the society—is in deep contradiction with the processes involved in the production of knowledge. Reliance on the outcomes (and their market-based evaluation) is a post-factum act in relation to the processes that led to that outcome. Scientific innovation cannot be “market determined” (even if administrative evaluation systems attempt to turn it to be so8). Michael Polanyi has made that very clear—any scientific discovery reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things yet unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. (Polanyi, 1962, p. 125)

Knowledge creation is always ambiguous—rather than secure accumulation of “the data” by a socially legitimized procedure, science moves ahead of the society, not behind. It deals with ambiguities that might become new knowledge—but are not that yet. Yet most of higher education is oriented towards preparing the learners precisely for “the basics” of the given science that are nonambiguous in their established forms. The whole analysis here leads into a complex set of questions. What features should have the modern education? How can we promote continuity of development of new ideas within a societal context where entertainment is moved to the idealized (and commercially profitable) arena of everyday life activities?

For What Tasks Is a University to Prepare the Young Generations? I translate this question into a societal one—how can the producer role in selected areas of personal expertise be promoted in the context of

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consumer society? In other terms—how can the value of constant search for innovation be inserted into the educational systems so that it can become internalized as a basic feature of the personality to move towards the aim of development of new ideas? Some of these ideas could lead to the establishment of “harmonic and intellectually free communities,” which may—but also need not—be fitting the society as a whole. It is probably more realistic to replace the beautiful social representation of “harmonic” and “intellectually free” communities with those of MUTUALLY RESPECTFUL and INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS representations. Merely “respect” would not be sufficient—it can lead to fixed social hierarchies of a laboratory or university department where all members are in established social relations with one another, show due respect on all occasions, yet develop no new knowledge. Only if the mutual respect is paired with intellectual curiosity to look for something new—based on the complementarity of different perspectives (mutually respectful to one another) can the intellectually “free” atmosphere be created. It would not be “harmonious”—since there would be many—yet respectful disagreements between the researchers as they move into exploring the not yet known worlds. Respect for other persons does not need to mean acceptance of their ideas without doubt. Rather the opposite—on the secure base of mutual PERSONAL respect can the DIFFERENCES IN IDEAS lead to new dialogues of establishing new knowledge. Lack of such differences in ideas—homogeneity of perspectives—leads to orthodoxies that cannot produce new knowledge. A few concrete suggestions for universities follow from this idea. A focus on history of the given science in the university curriculum would not be an anachronism, but a grounds for preparation of the young scientists to respect persons with whose ideas they might (for good reasons) completely disagree. Learning about the history is not for stigmatizing the “wrong ideas” of the past (and their makers) but to get a glimpse into the intellectual search by the predecessors (and the reasons why they failed9).

Going Ahead—Beyond the “Bologna Process” and EHEA The fundamental changes that the administrative exercise—labeled the “Bologna process”—has introduced in the area of higher education can be endlessly disputed, but that would have no effect on the system that has been fiscally and politically put into place. Its general implications are clear—it widens the base of higher education and makes it possible to compare academic accomplishments in various countries. As such, it turns the higher education systems in all countries into a part of the consumerist

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society, reducing and eventually eliminating the “monastic privileges” that universities had traditionally enjoyed since the middle ages. In one of the recent discussions about the European education systems, the issue of distancing of higher education from governmental control became a discussion topic. The changes in European higher education since 1999 have been profound. They have reoriented the work of university staff in the direction of increasing focus on research and move away from traditional lecturing (Jacob & Teichler, 2011, pp. 32–34)—yet the production of comparable education outcomes (degrees) does not guarantee any orientation towards the production of new knowledge. The concentration on the accountability of credits10 does not support progress in ideas. The promotion of scientific innovation is not accountable for the number of ”work hours” a scientist uses to arrive at a Nobel Prize-level idea—perhaps to be canonized as such by the Nobel committee some decades later. In other terms—the accounting of science in terms of “work hours” can be effectively neutralized when we evaluate the actual productivity both in science and in preparation for it in universities. Assessment of the processes of turning in the direction of innovation (Valsiner, 2011) can effectively replace that. The same suggestion of neutralization of the function (rather than “fight” against) can be applicable to the use of multiple-choice testing procedures—even if these are in place (and administratively efficient—can be evaluated by computer programs) it is the qualitative elicitation of the borders of one’s creative thinking11 that may end being relevant for evaluating the new candidates for scientific novelty. To summarize—a way to innovation in the educational systems towards enhancing intellectual creativity needs to neutralize both opposing tendencies in the academic life—the rigidity of sticking to old models of unidirectional (professor-to-student) teaching, and its opposite rigidity of replacing intellectual innovation by public accounts of socially negotiated outcomes (numbers of publications, ratings, etc.). It goes without saying that in some disciplines, and countries, that can be done more easily than in others. But the general idea—neutralization, rather than opposition—seems to be a way to create the “freedom space” for intellectually curious intellectual communities where mutual critique pertains to ideas, not persons, and where new solutions to complex scientific problems emerge from the heterogeneity (and not homogeneity) of the scientific community. If universities manage to guide students to such social roles of knowledge producers, progress in science is guaranteed. Even if our lives become ever more embedded in a consumerist society, that has its own ways of progressing.

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Acknowledgment The preparation of this paper was supported by the Danish Ministry of Science and Education Niels Bohr Professorship grant.

Notes 1. Invited paper for Humboldt-Kolleg, Education and Science and their Role in Social and Industrial Progress of Society, Kyiv, June 13, 2014. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. Here I use the contrast introduced by Alexius Meinong in the end of the 19th century distinguishing objects (Gegenstände) that exist and subsist (Meinong, 1904). The history of the society indicates its move from a real existing group of united persons (e.g., NAMA—North American Mycological Society)—that does exist, consisting of N members and their organizational framework—to a generalization about indeterminate large collectives of persons who—as “the society”—subsist (while personally, and through their kinship groups, they do exist). Using subsisting notions allows for social discourses that go beyond the reality in its here-and-now contexts: utopias, heterotopias, and so on. It is interesting that social control over the human mind can be accomplished either at the minimal distance (intrapersonal self-control, interpersonal control via close relations) or at the maximum abstracted distance (personal concrete contributions to “the society,” “the noble cause,” etc.). It is at the intermediate range of closeness where such control becomes an object of economic relations—exemplified by the paid services provided by mercenaries, lawyers, psychologists, and many other service professions. Yet there are borders beyond which economic relations cannot easily go—the purchasing of indulgences in the Catholic Church led to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and the idea of paying your mother for the services of providing a breakfast would be rejected. 4. Of course there are cases where the opinions become directly translated into monetary terms—fees paid to former politicians for speaking engagements (where they say nothing new, just repeat their “opinions”) or expert advice fees or expert salaries. 5. Such as “network society” or “experience society” or “production versus consumer” society (Brinkmann, 2008, p. 91). 6. As stated at on March 12, 2010 in an anniversary celebration: “The Bologna Declaration in 1999 set out a vision for 2010 of an internationally competitive and attractive European Higher Education Area where higher education institutions, supported by strongly committed staff, can fulfil their diverse missions in the knowledge society; and where students benefiting from mobility with smooth and fair recognition of their qualifications, can find the best suited educational pathways” (paragraph 3 of the Budapest-Vienna Declaration). http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/2010_conference/ documents/BudapestVienna_Declaration.pdf

The Clicking and Tweeting Society    413 7. The media-escalated discourse of Worldwide “ratings” of universities as to their “excellence,” the establishment of “excellence centers” of research in different countries, and the uses of journals’ “impact factors” to evaluate scientists’ research productivity can all be analyzed as processes of such negotiation. 8. For example, using “popularity criteria”—of citation frequencies and impact factors of journals—for academic evaluation of scientists’ work. This tendency takes its extreme form in evaluating scientists on the basis of how many items in popular mass media their research has generated. Through that step the guidance for future scientific activities is guided by the “market value” for the news-making enterprise of mass communication media and hence determined by the lay audience (through the implemented rating systems). This problem is particularly acute for the social sciences where the distance between scientific knowledge and popular expectations is historically limited and closely watched by the social power holders. For a successful solution of the problem, one can look at the engineering sciences (e.g., the Mars Lander project). 9. For example, the fundamental turn in modern genetics since the 1960s into epigenetics (Valsiner, 2014b) is a triumph of the original philosophical ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose Philosophy of Zoology (published in 1809) led to the stigmatization of his ideas already during his lifetime. The ridicule of the Lamarckian giraffe whose neck grows due to trying to get food from leaves on treetop has been a widespread social representation showing the ridiculous nature of Lamarck’s general ideas. The deeper thinking—beyond the unfortunate example—could be ignored. 10. Tom Boland (Chief Executive, Higher Education Authority of Ireland) setting up discussion: “The issue of the ownership of higher education has become particularly important in the context of the current stress on our knowledge based economy and society. The preoccupation of governments with higher education and its central role in economic and social development potentially holds a danger–a danger that in its quest for accountability and reassurance, governments will weaken the walls of separation which in many countries for centuries have protected the higher education system from undue government involvement. In doing so governments will damage irreparably that which it most needs to cherish–an independent, innovative, higher education system.”(Dubrovnik, September 27, 2012) 11. A credit is a “quantified means of expressing the volume of learning based on the achievement of learning outcomes and their associated workloads” (Bologna Follow-Up Group, Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area, 2005, p. 29). This formulation of credit completely bypasses any focus on the psychological issues of teaching/learning that feed into scientific innovation. 12. That can be accomplished by very simple means—testing a person in what kind (and even how many—if quantification matters) metaphoric extensions can a person generate. The focus here is on “pushing the mind” out of the ordinary trajectories of thought, towards innovation, not towards reproduction of the known.

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References Brinkmann, S. (2008). Changing psychologies in the transition from industrial society to consumer society. History of the Human Sciences, 21(2), 85–110. Brunner, J. J. (2009). The Bologna Process from a Latin American perspective. Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(4), 417–438. Dima, A.-M. (2009). The Bologna Process and private providers. Management in Education, 23(4), 182–187. Jacob, A.-K., & Teichler, U. (2011). Der Wandel des Hochschullehrerberufs im internationalen Vergleich. Bonn-Berlin, Germany: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. Lamarck, J. B. (1908). Philosophic zoologique. Paris, France: Dentu L’Auter. Lamiell, J. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Meinong, A. (Ed.). (1904). Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig, Germany: J. A. Barth. Mény, Y. (2008). Higher education in Europe: National systems, European programmes, global issues: Can they be reconciled? European Political Science, 7, 324–334. Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Valsiner, J. (1999). I create you to control me: A glimpse into basic processes of semiotic mediation. Human Development, 42, 26–30. Valsiner, J. (2005, July). Civility of basic distrust: A cultural-psychological view on persons-in-society. Paper that should have been presented at the Symposium Risk, Trust, and Civility Toronto, Victoria. Retrieved from http:// www.semioticon.com/virtuals/risk/distrust.pdf Valsiner, J. (2011, September). Assessment and its discontents: A view from cultural psychology. Keynote presentation at the 11th European Conference on Psychological Assessment, Riga, Latvia. Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Valsiner, J. (2014a). Invitation to cultural psychology. London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2014b). Epigenetik und Entwicklung: Drei Kontrollmodelle. In V. Lux & J. T. Richter (Eds.), Kulturen der Epigenetik: Vererbt, codiert, übertragen (pp. 151–164). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

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Relating with Society—By Going Beyond the Practically Useful Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

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rticles in Part VI showed some healthy skepticism about efforts to idealize “the society” as a value in itself. First of all, the issue of oppositional tensions within a “society” was focused upon: Are we talking about a society of “consumers” or that of “producers”? Or of “loyal citizens” who accept all innovations meant to control them as if these liberate them? There is a prevailing notion in the sciences that they should be “practically useful” for society. Yet it is never clear what is “useful” and for whom—as “the society” is not a homogeneous benevolent network of actors but divided, mutually distrustful and oppositional social forces that at times go to war, and at other times fight in courtrooms. What is useful for prosecution is not useful for the defense, and vice versa. Universal claims of usefulness cannot fit in a field divided into various directions of interests and aspirations.

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Some of these interest groups gain the dominant position in the determination of the social discourses of “usefulness.” In our present time, this dominance is located at the channel of informational relationships between science and society where the messages from one to the other are generated by administrative communicators and their journalistic enhancers. This leads to journalistic over-determination of the meaning of “usefulness” of a science. An example that brings this notion home would come from the biological sciences—whichever new scientific result is being communicated to the “public,” it is presented through the promise that it can lead to the making of “new drugs” to cure diseases. The social representation of new medicines—for health care—has the overwhelming halo effect on the presentation of the social usefulness of such research, at least from the institutional point of view. What is completely missing from the picture is the promise that the new discoveries might lead to the production of new recreational or performance-enhancing drugs for the pleasure of the drug addicts, professional athletes striving for excellence, or merely people on holiday. In psychology, such journalistic over-determination of meaning takes a different form—yet it is completely aligned with the institutional goals of the places in the social order where psychology is being declared as “useful.” Instead of “making new medicines,” psychology’s role in society is presented as “making new assessment tools” or “new manuals for psychotherapy” or “guidelines for local administration.” All these social representations indicate the institutional definition of what “usefulness to society” should mean—psychology needs to produce tools that maintain the present social order, rather than transform it. Here one can see the inherent conservatism of psychology as it is evaluated from a “usefulness to society” point of view—it represents the goal orientations of social institutions that regulate the society and keep their own social and political power. The neutral nature of scientific knowledge in psychology becomes challenged here in an interesting way: GM: So, if I understand you correctly, psychologists are (in practice) slaves who follow the agendas of their owners? But that would be most horrible scenario for any science—how can anything new be discovered under such circumstances? JV: True, that is why little new emerges in the recent social history of psychology (Valsiner, 2012), or—if it does—it usually happens at times of societal turmoil of political or economic kinds. GM: So—psychology becomes “revolutionary science” (in Kuhn’s sense) only at times of revolutions? If so, its hope (as science) is in social turmoil—but we all prefer to live in the comforts of social stability.

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JV: I hope this need not be so—if it were to be, psychology would follow social dynamics of a society, but as a human science it needs to be ahead of it. Science can be useful for a society if it leads the latter, and not when it fulfills the existing needs that are valorized as such by the prevailing social powers. GM: But current needs once satisfied lead to new needs. Why should psychology not become useful for satisfying current needs? For example—a school principal now needs assessment techniques to select out the most “intelligent” children—for giving them extra opportunities to excel in some field. Why would psychology not satisfy this need? JV: This is what Alfred Binet did a hundred years ago—the result was the proliferation of intelligence tests and the area of “research on intelligence” that implies the assumption that intelligence is something that exists—as an entity. Psychology is filled with such entities, which are constantly being “measured” and cross-correlated for discovery of “relations.” It has led science nowhere over the 20th century. Even worse—the practical value of these tests as selection instruments continues without doubts. GM: But people survive such educational testing, and the ones who reach higher education are now well prepared to generate new knowledge. However, you seem skeptical about our present higher education system too. JV: The role of higher education is crucial—for preparing young people to develop new ideas that go beyond the expected “usefulness” for a society. Here, active involvement of young scholars in all stages of research is important—beyond making them into “knowledge proletariat” who get hired from one project, then another—without establishing their own core philosophy of the work they do. GM: The questions “what is knowledge?” and “what are ‘the data’?” seem to be important for you for over three decades. JV: Yes, our difficulties begin from “the data”—are these equal to phenomena? Can quantification in psychology lead to interpretable evidence? My answer is—no. Quantification is not granting psychology with the kind of data that are needed.

Reference Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

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Constructing Basic Human Science: Idiographic, Dynamic, Phenomena-Focused

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21 Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology Constructions and Implications1 Jaan Valsiner2

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sychologists like to talk about “the data.” By talking about “the data” their identities become formed, ingroup/outgroup relationships are being set up, and time is being filled in. In this process, “the data” acquire an almost omnipotent role of being the Final Judge of all claims in the science of psychology. In this role, the de facto deified “data” acquire personalized characteristics, which can be observed in the discourse of psychologists. Thus, psychologists can be heard or observed to talk in some (or all) of the following ways: “The data show (or demonstrate, or prove, or [verb X]) that [Y]” “According to the data, [X] is [Y]” “The data do not allow us to conclude that [Y]” “We must consult the data in order to [X]”

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The data are assumed to have the capacity for speech, and well­established agency: “Let the data speak for themselves!” Like any other personified entity, the data become an object of adoration. pride, jealousy, and desire for possession: “[colleague X] has better data than [colleague Y]” “Our data are by far the best there exist in the literature” “We need some hard data, not merely anecdotal evidence!” “The data are objective . . .” “We must have more (or better) data before we dare to say [X]” “It is not possible to trust the data of [study X]” “I want to play with the data” “We must collect more data” The humanized character of the data may be also rather complex: “My data have given me hard time to make sense of them” “I don’t know what to do with my data, they resist all efforts of analysis.” So—psychologists have constructed for themselves an alter ego, a “significant other,” or an imaginary companion in their pursuits: the data. The whole range of human characteristics can be projected into that significant other, and he (or she!) can be presented as the very convenient and consensually accepted supporter for any statement the author of a study may decide to utter. The data are the God of Objectivity in contemporary psychology! Nevertheless, it may be worth a careful study how that God of Objectivity is evoked in psychological discourse, and how the turn to “the data” in different locations in such discursive practices may actually guide the construction of knowledge. My goal in this presentation is to set up a context of the research process in psychology (with a particular focus on developmental psychology) that would illuminate the uses of the talk about “the data” in actual research practices. This goal obviously undeifies the role of the data and returns our focus to the process of knowledge construction as a whole.

Social Construction of Objectivity Objectivity In psychological research is not created by “the data.” Instead, the data are constructed in accordance with the conceptualization of

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“objectivity” as that notion is socially set up in a given discipline at the given time. In the history of psychology, three folk models can be observed to guide scientists’ ways of thinking about objectivity of their activities. These models are older than psychology as a separate discipline; only their application in psychology may take on discipline-specific features (e.g., the self-inclusiveness of the scientist within the phenomena to be studied). Historically the oldest is the personal-perspectival objectivity, which emphasized the actively objectivity-constructing nature of specially educated persons, who are well acquainted with the phenomena and therefore can reach an understanding how these phenomena function. The personalperspectival model of objectivity prevailed in 18th- and early 19th-century natural sciences (Daston, 1992). In psychology, it survived to the end of the last century, especially in the case of introspection experiments where the authorship for the studies was legitimately attributed to the introspecting subjects (Danziger, 1985). The acceptance of personal-perspectival objectivity coincided with the artisan or alchemist role of the scientist in the context of precapitalist societies. According to this model, “objectivity” is reachable exactly because a person is devoting one’s observational and inferential powers towards creating it. Undoubtedly persons of this kind can come up with inadequate conceptualizations, and disputes between scientists are widespread—yet it is believed that the active person is the locus where new understanding emerges. By the second half of the 19th century, the model of aperspectival objectivity became an accepted social norm in the natural sciences. Instead of communicability between specialists (i.e., disputes between personal perspectives of specialists), the commonality of perspectives became emphasized. It was as if science moved from an artisan’s workshop to a factory floor of a manufacture of objectivity: Aperspectival objectivity was the ethos of the interchangeable and therefore featureless observer—unmarked by nationality, by sensory dullness or acuity, by training or tradition, by quirky apparatus, by colourful writing style, or by any other idiosyncrasy that might interfere with the communication, comparison and accumulation of results. . . .  Subjectivity became synonymous with the individual and solitude; objectivity, with the collective and conviviality. (Caston, 1992, p. 609)

Such collectivity needed to get rid of idiosyncrasies—both in the phenomena under study, and between the minds who collectively and interchangeably studies those phenomena. Averaging became the socially desired and glorified way of reduction of heterogeneity to homogeneity.

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In child psychology, the model of aperspectival objectivity is evoked every time when researchers carefully train their so-called “blind observers” to apply their not-so-blind categorization systems to complex phenomena, demonstrate some conventionally accepted level of intercoder agreement {e.g., 70 or 80 or more %) between the observers, and assume that this exercise of conformity training adds reliability to their substantive claims. Conversely, if the personal­perspectival objectivity model were to be evoked, the researchers would overcome their own blindness (about the “blindness” of trained observers), educate their observers to understand the theoretical perspective from which the object phenomenon is analyzed, and then proceed to look carefully at the instances of interobserver agreements (i.e., the 30 or 20 or less percent of the cases), since a dialogue about disagreements would be heuristically valuable. Finally, by the end of the 20th century we can observe the spreading of corporationistic objectivity models. These models entail establishing control over the objectivity of scientific production by way of setting up specific generic “brand names” of quality and operating at the level of comparison of such brand names (e.g., “data from research group X are more adequate than from research group Y”). A version of this kind of objectivity can be seen in presentations of results of research from well-established groups, which may include almost tachistoscopic presentations of data of any form on slides, without any explanation of their meaning. The function of such presentations is the same as of TV commercials, where the value of a brand name is propagated in ways that purposefully limit access to the actual data, their methods of construction, and actual explanations, while creating an illusion of the public access to the objective data. The data presented by a representative of a research corporation are assumed to be objective because of the brand name, no critical insider in the corporation is allowed to question the data (and/or their construction methods), and relevant aspects of the data construction processes may even become legally protected against rival groups trying to replicate the studies. A precedent of the latter occurred around the Utah “cold fusion” case (Taylor, 1991) where rival institutions of scientific fields resorted to the use of legal manoeuvres to protect their respective control over the “data” and procedures of their production. By the end of the 20th century, science becomes a commercially and legally socialized enterprise, where artisanship or smallscale data production has given way to “data factories” organized similarly to large business corporations. Objectivity thus becomes a label that is applied to selected facets of the social activity of “research” by the public relations or marketing departments of the given enterprise and ends up a rhetoric rather than descriptive device in communication within “the literature.”

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The Realm of the Data: A Values-Laden Heterogeneous Field Any cross-section of a science at a given time can provide us with information about co-existence of the three models of “objectivity.” Psychologists’ discourse about “the data” is in the center of negotiation of various applications of these models. Hence the variety of personified and glorifying statements about “the data” from which I began in this presentation. If we were to examine what become labeled as “the data” in contemporary psychology, we will be faced with a myriad of forms. Yet the notion of “the data” goes undefined and becomes a side-product of explaining the notion of “measurement,” as the following explanation (aimed at American undergraduate students) reflects: “The process of attaching meaning to numbers is known as measurement, and numbers that have meaning are often called data” (Thorndike, 1982, p. 9, emphasis added). But how does this process of “attaching meaning” proceed? In other terms, how are “the data” constructed? That it is a process of construction of meaningful symbols follows from the claim above. But how would it be different (or not) from any other symbol construction activity of human minds and their social practices? Let us start from the term that has become almost irresistible in the technical jargon of talking about “the data” (see Figure  21.1). As can be seen from Figure 21.1a, the meaning of a “data point” is a purely projective (and, in this respect, constructive) entity. Surely a data point in and by itself does not tell us more than whatever it is designated to represent. Without explicating such representation, the data point is moot. In other words—contrary to the saying that “the data speak for themselves,” the lonely data point depicted in Figure 21.1 cannot speak for itself, unless

9 (a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 21.1  Data point as the starting point for semiotic construction: (a) a single datapoint; (b) a quantified single datapoint; (c) an irregular-shaped single datapoint.

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we help him by providing an interpretational framework. For example, the data point can be assigned some numerical form (Figure 21.1b) or a complex graphic form can be used for that (Figure 21.1c). In all these cases, our “data point” requires contextualization. We accomplish that by indicating some one-to-one relationship between our data point and some specifiable aspect of the phenomenon of our interest. Such construction of the meaning of the data point follows general principles of semiotic construction. Thus, to follow C. S. Peirce’s well-known classification of signs (into icon, index, and symbol), Figure 21.1a can be made to mean just a dot (icon), or drawing made by somebody using a graphics program (index), or indicator of presence (rather than absence) of something (symbol). Figure 21.1c can be constructed to mean some insect it may resemble (icon), or a result of letting ink fall on paper (index), or a symbol of aggressive tendencies in human personality (symbol). All these functions of the data point are our semiotic constructs, made possible by some physical realities, yet given their final meaning by our constructions.

Creating “Figure”/”Ground” Distinctions Notice that in this construction of the meaning of the data point we have done nothing different from what is traditionally referred to as establishment of the nominal scale. Setting up any framework for the data point entails abstraction of some characteristics of the phenomena from the complex of the original object of investigation. That abstraction has simultaneously two sides—focusing on some aspects and constructing them in some novel form and defocusing on other aspects of the object of study. The latter equals purposeful forgetting of some aspects of the phenomena— for the sake of making sense of the others-in-focus. Data construction thus starts as a differentiation of some designated “figure” from the “ground,” and subsequent construction of the meanings for the figure. Construction of meaning for our data point (and his or her siblings) need not (but sometimes can) equal recognition of the meaning of the data as representing the selected phenomena. On the basis of the tension between constructionist and ontological sides of the data-making activity, a basic controversy around the nature of the data has unfolded in psychology.

Data Viewed From Representationist and Operationist Perspectives Claiming that data are symbolic representations is nothing new in psychology. Since Helmholz and up to S.S. Stevens (i.e., until the 1950s–1960s), the

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question of how the data represent the phenomena had been an important theme (Michell, 1986; Nunnally, 1967, Chapter 1), which led to caution in the selection of data-analytic strategies. If the data were of quantitative kind, the nature of their scaling properties—whether they would fit nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio scale—was to be determined. The result of this diagnosis would lead to rules of “permissible” operations to be performed with the data in the course of data analyses. Analytic schemes were expected to honor the properties of the original scale rather than transfer numeric depictions from one scale to another (e.g., treating ordinal scales as if those were interval scales, etc.). In contrast, the borrowing of the operationism of Percy Bridgman (1927) from physics led to the proliferation of “anything goes” kind of quantification in psychology. While Stevens’ representational view of measurement entailed limits on the permissible ways of handling the measurements so that their representational value (of whatever phenomena these measurements reflected) was not to be lost, then the operationism fused the distinction of the data and the phenomena and glorified the process of data construction as if that process itself equalled knowledge (e.g., Bridgman’s claim that “the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations”—1927, p. 5). Psychologists—who by the 1950s had become believers in empiricism as science and had accepted illusionary unity of “the statistical method” (see Gigerenzer, 1993; Gigerenzer et al., 1989)—could find this kind of operationism a welcome solution to their theoretical problems. Namely, operationism allowed them not to bother about defining their concepts but just measure whatever they claimed to study. From a representationist perspective, the often-used statement that “intelligence is what intelligence tests measure” would be utter nonsense, or an example of magical thinking (along the lines discussed by Horton, 1967). Not so from the operationist viewpoint—from that standpoint it would be a sufficient definition of “intelligence” as it is exemplified by the operation of its measurement. In more general terms, the two perspectives can be contrasted in their look at how quantification works in psychological measurement. Both representationist and operationist perspectives agree that measurement involves making numerical assignments to things. However, according to the representational theory, the numbers represent an empirical relational system, which is thought of as an objective structure existing quite independent of our operations. Numbers are used as a convenience and are, in principle, dispensable. This is not so, according to operationism. According to it numbers do not point beyond themselves

428    Beyond the Mind to a scale-free realm. Rather the data on which measurement is based are inherently numerical. They are numerical because the operations involved produce numbers. For the strict operationist, science is simply the study of our operations and not the study of a reality that is thought to lie beyond them. (Michell, 1986, p. 404)

Operationism was taken over by psychology as a cargo-cult phenomenon from physics, beginning at the end of the 1930s. Gordon Allport traced its advent in his analysis of psychologists’ ways of conceptualizing their issues (Figure 21.2). The discourse on operationism on the pages of 14 highest-rated (by Allport’s 30 selected colleagues) psychology journals of 1938 was only beginning, as Allport’s analyses showed. Yet he predicted its explosive growth: “The course of this magic concept is onward and upward, leading somewhere into the world of tomorrow” (Allport, 1940, p. 11). Indeed, the following decades—particularly the 1960s—led to the colonization of psychology by operationist legitimizations of the data as given by our operations, and the core of worries moved to the pervasive question of how to analyze them. In any case, the explosive growth of operationism was a convenient excuse for psychologists to keep doing whatever they had been doing in their empirical work anyway and stop worrying about major theoretical issues. Together with that, the question of what the data represent disappeared into the oblivion. It became a question that was carefully avoided and translated into technical questions of how to operate with the data (i.e., how to handle and analyze them). The “empire of chance” had succeeded in colonization of psychology’s empirical enterprise (Gigerenzer et al., 1989). The meaning of “the data” had become a nonquestion for psychology, and

Figure 21.2  Gordon Allport’s detection of the advent of operationism in psychological discourse (Source: Allport, 1940, p. 11).

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    429

the socialized quest for ever more and increasingly conventionalized kinds of data has dominated ever since.

Construction of Symbolic Remove: Levels of Data Reconstruction When we look at “the data” as semiotic constructions (based on some access to the reality of phenomena) we can immediately address the issue that each new operation in the process of data construction and analysis (=reconstruction) entails construction of new meanings. Thus, by each next step in operating with the data, we may build up a symbolic remove of the constructed meanings from the original phenomena. Each new step adds to the previously constructed meanings, hopefully, in ways that help to construct general knowledge on the basis of always particular data. This sequence of symbolic remove can be described by a hierarchy of levels: from Level 0 (phenomena) we move to Level 1 (data), from there to Level 2 (some version of “data aggregation”), followed by Level 3 (“data analyses”) and Level 4 (“interpretation” of the results, or some version of “meta-analysis”). Each level may entail its own technical language where specific terms are constrained to be used in specific defined ways. Semantic extensions occur when the same terminology becomes used at an adjacent level (e.g., transfer of the term “effect”—of ANOVA language at Level 3 to be used at Level 4—in interpretation). The additional set of meanings that emerges at the transition of discourse to the next level entails possibilities for a greater variety of interpretations. Not all of those are substantiated by the previous level (even as they may be possible ones), and some are promoted by mental heuristics or sociopolitical or moral assumptions that the interpreting person uses, implicitly or explicitly. The greater the symbolic remove of the data-handling work from their origins, the greater is the possibility for both innovative and ideologies-affirming generalizations. Psychology’s recurrent problem is the absence of ways to make distinctions between the latter. In contrast, psychology’s appropriation of operationistic thinking has led to the construction of a number of rules for actions at medium levels (Level 2 and Level 3) of the symbolic remove.

Consensual Regulation of Data Construction and Analyses Operationism led to another preoccupation in psychology—construction of social rules of how to operate with singular data points (such as in Figure 21.1). In order to actually be able to make statements about the data. Each step made in the process of “handling” the data points entails

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some kind of symbolic remove relative to the phenomena these data were to represent. Of course, this is important only if a representationist view of the data is used; for the operationist view, that was not an issue. Figure 21.3 depicts different possible conceptualizations of the symbolic remove. All these conceptualizations are social conventions—but as such they are based on different epistemological and philosophical premises. Thus, in Figure 21.3a, we can observe a “naïve realist” model, in which the data equal phenomena (albeit in some selected aspect), and data analyses lead to direct interpretability of the data for the sake of accumulation of knowledge. This model can be viewed as bearing some semblance to Gibsonian “direct perception” as applied to the construction of the meaning

Figure 21.3  Models of symbolic remove in data construction.

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    431

of the data. The issues of transitions from phenomena (denoted by ?) to interpretation are not addressed in this model, or are only mentioned if “obstacles” are assumed to exist on the way of direct interpretation. Here belongs the widespread slogan, “Let the data speak for themselves!” In Figure 21.3b, a model that could be called “progressivist” is described. Here the power of knowledge construction is believed to be enhanced by specific data-analytic techniques (X) and following the rules of interpretation of the results of the analysis (Y). Notice, though, that the process of transformation of phenomena to the data (?) remains unquestioned. The data are the starting point for our scientific inference through the ever-complex and sophisticated data analysis techniques. A psychologist who endorses this model will be easily persuaded to move from F-tests use to those of ANOVA, from there to MANOVA, or to find LISREL techniques believably superior to those of other kinds of factor analysis, often without any knowledge of what happens with the data in the process of their analyses. Finally, in Figure 21.3c, a model that could be labeled “sceptic constructivist” is given. Here, each transformation of the “symbolic capital” (in analogy of Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” idea) from phenomena to the interpretation of the analyzed data is viewed as a constructive step, where different routes of transformation would lead to different constructions of the issues, and where each further step of symbolic remove (relative to the phenomena) at least potentially increases the difficulties of interpretation. Thus, a psychologist who assumes this perspective is not ready to believe in the “new possibilities” afforded by some newly advertised (and consensually accepted) statistical data-analytic scheme, but would like to figure out in which ways that scheme fits with the aims of making sense of the issue under investigation.

Social Processes That Canalize the Selection and Use of These Models It has never been a secret in the history of data analysis methods in psychology that potential skepticism about the methods produced for the “market” of empirical psychology have been promoted at the level of persuasion, rather than through deductive proof. The “halo effect” of these (quantitative) methods belonging to “mathematics” (as the “pure gemstone” of science), together with presentation of “the statistical method” as uniform objectivity-granting device (which it is not—Gigerenzer, 1991, 1993) have been successful strategies for proliferation of the use of ever-new methods. As a market-oriented production enterprise, socially institutionalized forms (corporations) necessarily do their best to guide psychologists’ thinking in the direction of their most favorable model (which is obviously that of “progressivist” kind—Figure 21.3b). In some ways, scientists’ adoption of

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the “naive realist” model may be a reaction to the ever-increasing language use changes that go together with the “progressivist” model. By way of social conventions, analytic methods introduce new terminology, which becomes loosely related with common-language terms, sometimes in ways that facilitate retranslation of the data-analysis discourse into everyday discourse. For instance, a psychologist can talk about having found a “gender effect” after using F-test ANOVA, or MANOVA (where “effect” has its specific technical meaning) and move to interpret it in terms of ordinary language terms (i.e., causally). Smedslund’s (1988, 1994) criticism of psychologists’ work as often being “pseudo-empirical” is worth serious consideration In this context: if the end results of MANOVA or LISREL applications to some data produce results that could be derived from the (causalistic) implications of ordinary language terms, the whole exercise of complicated data analysis can be considered futile. The empirical efforts in this case are simply misdirected—instead of leading to some knowledge that is new (relative to what is encoded in our language), these efforts merely reify what we knew— through unsystematic historical encoding of meanings in language. Let us look at some of such social rules, and their resulting states of symbolic remove. Rule 1. Data are “collected” over time The lonely data point (given in Figure 21.1) is complemented by many others of similar kind, all detected within some time period. This operation entails (1) decontextualization of each data point—as specified by “collection” notion; and (2) accumulation of data points—treated as the same points across the time of observation. This process is depicted in Figure 21.4. What is obvious in this case is that the data have become separated (liberated?) from their spatial and temporal contexts. Whereas this liberation makes the data amenable to psychologists’ multitude of data-analytic strategies, there is a problem: If the data were assumed to represent the phenomena, that representation no longer is adequate. As we will see later, this constitutes a major problem for developmental psychology—even if it can be theoretically ignored by nondevelopmental psychology. Rule 2. Nature of the measurement scales can be ignored at will Even as the meanings of the four scale types—nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio—have been emphasized in psychology (Stevens, 1946), it has become a socially conventionalized rule to ignore the scale type and “feed” the data into analytic procedures that seem subjectively convenient fashionable, or socially conformity-demanding (e.g., by way of explicit or implicit

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    433

Figure 21.4  Accumulation of nominal scale datapoints over time.

editorial policies of journals). Again, the application of this rule fits very well with the operationist credo, and not with the representationist one. As a result of application of Rule 2, we can extrapolate from Figure 21.4. The accumulated data points over time remain nominal scale phenomena. However, the accumulated frequencies of these data points are easily treated as if those were ratio scale phenomena. Indeed, a “true zero” (absence of the observations) exists for such scale; the intervals between “scale values” are defined in terms of equality (i.e., each observed instance is assumed to be the same, thus each increase of +1 in the frequency count can be assumed to be equal to each and every other one). Negative values are not possible (i.e., there cannot be any “collection” of frequencies of instances of opposite kind, e.g., a frequency of –3 instances of some category is not possible). And the criterion of invariance over transformations (scale remaining the same when multiplied by a constant) is also satisfied. Thus, frequency counts can be further submitted to various kinds of analyses that presume interval or ratio scale properties. However, in this process of move from nominal to ratio scale through accumulation of frequency count, an interesting transformation of the property under study takes place. The focus of investigation becomes shifted from the detection (and labeling) of the target object in its ontological state (i.e., presence, or absence, at the given time) to treating the recurrence of

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the target object as if it were the property of the object under investigation. Jean Piaget’s youthful deconstruction of this rule in his research practice in around 1919–1920 is a good example of this contrast. In the practice of intelligence testing, the recurrence of “correct”-designated answers was consensually made to reflect the child’s intelligence. Piaget, in defiance to his superiors, refused to accept that assumption. Instead, he charted out the specific intelligence test item as a task environment. Each individual item poses the problem for the child’s intelligence, and irrespective of whether the child ends up solving the task in “correct” or “incorrect” ways, that intelligence has been put to concrete practice. Recurrence of the use of intelligence in case of other tasks does not automatically add any new features to that intelligence. It may—in case the task provides new challenges—or it need not, yet in both cases the child’s intelligence cannot be represented by a frequency count of answers designated as “correct” by adult test-makers. A similar example that is of crucial relevance for developmental psychology (as will be shown below) is the practice of accumulation of time units over periods of observation. By its nature, time in development is irreversible process. At the level of nominal scale allocations, we may specify some time intervals by superimposing a unit of some designated size (larger than infinitely small moment). The irreversible nature of time creates the ordinal time t2 and that after time t1). Since the unit size of the time period can be specified, and an arbitrary zero-point established (e.g., at the starting moment of observation), we may treat time as interval scale phenomenon. Yet scaling of time eliminates the irreversible time from our data. We can accumulate the frequency of time units that contain target X and contrast it with time units of observed target Y, yet the time units in this kind of application have stopped being units marking the flow of irreversible time. Rather, these units have been made into properties of the observed X and Y. As such properties, the frequency counts of time units do not differ in nature from the example above. Aggregation of time units over the irreversible time of observation has eliminated time as time from further consideration and created new properties of the targets of investigation. From the nominal and ordinal kind of phenomena, interval and ratio-scale type data are being constructed. Rule 3. The data are presented as constituting a homegenous class (even when the heterogeneity within the data is used for their analyses). It is remarkable with what ease information about variability within the data is either forgotten or overlooked in interpretation even if such information is presented (see Figure 21.5).

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    435

SMDI Subscale

Mean

Standard Deviation

Percentile

T-Score

Low Energy

1.58

1.62

50

50

Cognitive Difficulty

1.93

1.61

45

49

Guilt

2.89

1.66

65

54

.94

1.32

58

52

Social Introversion

1.65

1.27

60

50

Pessimism

1.92

1.05

78

57

lnitability

2.99

1.03

93

65

.86

1.09

50

50

1.37

1.25

85

65

7.57

73

56

Low Self-Esteem

Sad Mood lnstrumental Helplessness Total SMDI

15.8

Figure 21.5  An example of routine presentation of empirical data in a table.

In Figure 21.5, I have selected an occasional example from an empirical paper. Even when the information about variability is presented, its relevance is conventionally ignored. The author(s) of the table in Figure 21.5 conveniently ignore the blatant fact that the means of most of the scales cannot be treated as representing the samples in any way. Examples of tables like that abound in psychology at large, and in child psychology in particular. It is easy to locate data presentations in major journals (e.g., ChiId Development) where the reported means are low, and reported standard deviations high, in relation to the means. Almost any observational study of children where the target categories are in general of low frequency in the sample, and yet may occur in few children for whatever reasons, during the observation period, would render this result. As information about variability within the sample, such results should caution the scientists against conclusions based on differences between means. Variability of the objects of investigation may be the object worth study, rather than an errorto be hidden or forgotten. However, the persistent overlook of variability is not merely an oversight in the case of psychology as science. It is a result of specific strategy of symbolic remove (as described above). It has been based on the reluctance of psychology to assume a theoretical model of its phenomena that allows for Indeterminacy. Instead, ways to find deterministic relationships—through making those at the Interpretation level of data handling abound. The history of this insistence interestingly includes turning variability into a technical feature of data analysis and then pretending that it does not exist anymore. As Gigerenzer has pointed out:

436    Beyond the Mind [Analysis of variance] . . . entered psychology in the mid-1930s and, after World War II, became the most used research “tool” in experimental psychology. This statistical model has been used in psychology as if it were the battlehorse of Claude Bernard’s determinism: (1) Analysis of variance, It was assumed, can answer the question whether a causal relationship exists between variables. However, influenced by David Hume, psychologists of this century were somewhat reluctant to speak of causes in print.

{extc}Instead one spoke of “effects” only, of the effect of X on Y, or of “conditions” an expression well chosen for its ambiguity without damaging the Idea of necessity. In the terminology of analysis of variance, causes and effects were replaced by “independent” and “dependent” variables. (2) Analysis of variance was based on the principles of isolation (of a few “independent” variables and the “dependent” variable), and control (of other relevant variables), and (3) it was used in accordance with the nomothetic ideal, that is, treating Individual differences simply as the “error term.” What was considered as psychologically important were mean values only; distributions and dispersions were viewed as reflecting some technical “assumptions” concerning the applicability of the instrument. Psychological theories were not about those “assumptions.” (Gigerenzer, 1987, p. 16)

Mechanisms of Overlooking Mere demonstration of “blind areas” in psychologists’ viewing of “the data” is not sufficient for rehabilitation of cases of such acquired blindness. It is necessary to explain the mechanisms which make such overlooking possible. Using technical devices (such as ANOVA) leads to a meta-level “symbolic remove” that goes beyond the raw data and operates with multisemantic meanings of “interaction,” “effect,” and “significance.” By way of fielding in terms of Karl Buhler (1934/1990)—these technical terms simultaneously within the fields of technical data analyses (Level 3), psychologists’ interpretive theoretical schemes (Level 4), as well as within the fields of meanings that psychologists’ common language shares with laypersons, meaning transfer from operationist to substantivist discourse is made possible. Let us consider an example: a “main effect” of “gender” upon some test scores (Level 3 talk) becomes transferred to the discussion at Level 4 (in journal articles, this transfer may fit with the compositional distinction between “Results” and “General Discussion” sections). There it becomes guided by implicit beliefs about reality linked with “gender” in everyday terms. If the “main effect” in our example pertained to a difference of some mean scores on X, between male and female subjects, then we can follow the intrusion of implicit assumptions about “men” and “women” in different ways

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    437

that “main effect” may be discussed, given what is that X. For example, let the “main effect” mean that the average score of females is higher than that of males. Now let X be “filled in” with different content material (all intuitively meaningful in our common knowledge): (a) “aggressivity”; (b) “verbal fluency”; (c) “mathematical capacity.” The same technical “main effect” at Level 3) would resist interpretation at level 4 (e.g., “aggressivlty”), or be accepted as a matter of course (“verbal fluency”), or be questioned further (“mathematical capacity”). If the specificity of filled-in content (of a Level 3 “main effect”)” makes such dramatic difference at the phase of scientific interpretation, then surely our tacit belief system guides psychologists’ scientific interpretations in its own directions. Psychology thus is in danger of reifying already existing beliefs and is unlikely to provide surprises. It should be clear in this example that the transfer of meaning from technical uses at Level 3 to general discussion in Level 4 is merely an illusionary transfer. The data need not “tell us” anything new about the meanings we carry with us as socialized interpreters of psychological issues. Jan Smedslund’s criticism of psychology’s “pseudo-empirical” research (Smedslund, 1994) is focussed exactly on this issue: certain statements about empirical reality follow deductively from our constructed meanings and do not require inductive proof by empirical evidence. Certainly one can formulate other rules of how data are reconstructed in our empirical habit-fields. Whether the set of rules is complete or not (surely it is not!) is secondary to the major question—what is basic knowledge in psychology, and how are “the data” linked with its construction? This question is rarely asked—and even more rarely answered—in contemporary psychology at large.

Developmental Psychology and Construction of the Data Our complex of issues is even more problematic, if we ask the question of the role of the data in an explicitly developmental investigation. Nondevelopmental psychology has not taken interest in development—hence these concerns are of no relevance from its point of view. However, developmental psychology may accept explanation of what development is, along the following lines: Individual human development involves incremental and transformational processes that through a flow of interactions among current characteristics of the person and his or her current contexts, produces a succession of relatively enduring changes that elaborate or increase the diversity of the person’s structural and functional characteristics and the patterns of their environmental in-

438    Beyond the Mind teractions while maintaining coherent organization and structural-functional unity of the person as a whole. (Ford & Lerner, 1992, p. 49, emphases added)

Each of the emphasized facets of this definition is in grave contradiction with the rules of data handling that were outlined above. Instead of abstracting from the spatiotemporal context, developmental data construction leads to the necessity of utilizing time-preserving analytic units in the empirical research. Such units would be characterized by time-based description of transformation of the phenomenon under study in a specifiable direction. Data points that are decontextualized from space and time eliminate access to the processes of development (as outlined by Ford and Lerner) from the very first step in data construction. Secondly, the emphasis on emerging diversity in the phenomena under study requires from the methods to preserve the variability within the phenomena when data are being derived. This applies both to intraindividual variability (or variability of the same developing system in its relationship with its context over time), and to interindividual variability (i.e., variability between the systems within their environments). In the received practice of child psychology, it is usually the latter kind of variability that is under attention (the so called “study of individual differences”), but that variability is rarely used as the phenomenon under study. Thirdly, the maintenance of coherent organization requires from data derivation procedures the use of molar-level systemic units of analysis (i.e., refusal to reduce the phenomena to their elements). This entails analyses of specific phenomena in terms of their systemic organization of the individual case. Accumulation of such cases is not a mere summarizing (or “piling-up”) operation in order to gain sufficiently large numbers of cases to make statistical analyses legitimate. Instead, it becomes a pointed replication of the discovered principle on which the system (of the unit) operates, in case of other units. General knowledge about development grows through replication of generic theoretical models from one single case (as a system) to the next. This view on general knowledge is an alternative to the “sociological assumption” (appropriated within the statistical methodstalk) that generalization proceeds from “samples” to “populations.” Aside from conceptually misfitting with the goal of generating developmental knowledge, the latter route of generalization is unusable because the notion of “population” can never be fully specified (i.e., its boundaries of inclusion and exclusion of specimens are always semi-open).

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    439

Implications for Data Construction Developmental psychology—if it follows the assumed nature of development consistently—sets up rather unusual (for the rest of psychology) expectations for the construction of data. It forces the practicing scientist to stop and rethink some of the meanings of the “received views” that legitimize uses of some (versus other) kinds of data. Let us consider the case of interobserver agreement as an example (see Figure 21.6). If development entails processes of differentiation and de-differentiation (which is the classic notion of developmental processes, emphasized in various versions—Goldstein, 1933; Werner, 1957), then necessarily over

Figure 21.6  Development depicted (and detected) as a process of differentiation and de-differentiation (from Valsiner, 1994b, p. 63).

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time our target phenomenon provides us (as observers) with different “pictures” of development. For simplicity’s sake, let us use the (obviously wrong) assumption that each observer has full and (by oneself) “unbiased” access to these pictures. At some time periods (1–9 and 22–31 as depicted in Figure 21.6), the “picture” presented is well-differentiated (i.e., has clear organizational form). Our observers have no difficulty in reaching an agreement—possibly complete agreement—about the form of that “picture.” However, at periods of de­ differentiated state of the developmental process (times 10–19 in the figure), the observers would have a hard time detecting any specific forms, and if they do so, they may end up disagreeing with each other in a major way. Now, it is exactly at the periods of such de-differentiated state that the process of development (to a new differentiated form) is taking place. Thus, the developmental process itself—due to its nature—disallows our “unbiased observers” an access to the actual processes of development. In contrast, it is the results of development —clearly differentiated forms—that can easily be ascertained. If we add to this example two (more realistic) conditions: 1. all observers are ego-involved in the observation, and co-construct the data (=no “unbiased” observer exists), and 2. our consensual rules in child psychology require the use of those data about which interobserver agreement is sufficiently high; and corresponding discarding of data with low interobserver agreement, then we reach a conclusion about a paradoxical state of affairs in developmental psychology: data construction rules appropriated from nondevelopmental psychology without careful analysis of their relation with theories of development guarantee the elimination of access to empirical evidence about development, beginning with the very first empirical research step (i.e., derivation of data from the phenomena). How can such paradoxical state of affairs be overcome?

Frames of Reference In order to create this framework, we can utilize different construction plans, or as I call them, frames of reference (Valsiner, 1987, Chapter 3). Four different frames of reference are declared to exist: 1. The interindividual frame of reference entails some form of comparison between semantically reconstructed phenomena (i.e., data). For such comparisons, relations between the data

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    441

points need to be defined. This is accomplished by some rule of comparison, for which 2. The intraindividual frame of reference entails a look for the organization of the data point within itself. In our example, our previously impenetrable data point (in Figure 21.1a.) becomes “transparent” as its internal organization becomes revealed and interpreted. The object of investigation is here assumed to be self-organized—yet without a focus on its relations with the surrounding environment. 3. The individual-ecological frame of reference situates an object of investigation in the context of its immediate surroundings. The object is viewed as a representation of an active phenomenon that exists thanks to its transaction with its context. It acts upon the contexts, transforms those, and the renewed context participates in the transformation of the data point itself. Obviously, this frame of reference fits developmental phenomena, since those phenomena (as open systems) exist only due to their continuous relations with the environment. 4. The individual-socioecological frame of reference extends the previous representation in the direction of defining a regulatory relationship between the object of investigation and some other agent about the process of transaction with the context. The relation of these active agents—and their mutual regulatory relationships—needs to reflect the goal-oriented processes within the phenomena that regulate transformation of the actors in contexts. The individual-socioecological frame of reference entails teleology, at least in the form of constant construction of expectations about the future. Obviously, if the notion of development is taken seriously, it is only the last two frames of reference that are adequate for a concisely developmental construction of the data from the phenomena. The individual-ecological frame fits all biological phenomena (characterized by development), and the individual-socioecological frame is meant for developmental psychology and (if that discipline were to exist!) developmental sociology. In psychology at large, the interindividual reference frame has been used in the majority of studies. Therefore it is not surprising that much of the data as constructed in psychology (including child psychology) provide no access to the study of developmental processes (see criticism of the discipline in Benigni & Valsiner, 1985). Simply, the investigators have opted to use a misfitting reference frame, for whatever reasons. Once the choice is made, information about processes of development is lost and cannot be recreated by later efforts.

442    Beyond the Mind

Units of Analysis of Developmental Processes Having lamented psychology’s overlook of the constructed and symbolic nature of “the data,” and developmental psychology’s success in eliminating empirical study of development from its focus, the question arises of how the empirical research enterprise might find its way out of the deadend street of its eclectic mixing of any theory with almost and kind of data. Obviously, a major step is the adjustment of the reference frame—if we talk about human development, the individual-socioecological reference frame is the most appropriate starting point. Other reference frames can be combined with it (e.g., the interindividual one, leading to comparisons between systemically investigated single cases), yet in order to be consistent with theoretical claims about development, the empirical analysis needs to remain consistent. This consistency is the target of frequent talk about units of analysis. It is clear that units of analysis in the study of human development cannot be elements of a complex phenomenon. Although breaking down the complexity into its elements is easy (and widely practiced) operation. It would render units (data) that have lost the systemic nature of the developmental phenomena. This argument is not new in psychology—thanks to the Gestalt psychological traditions since the beginning of this Century, the recognition of synthetic complexity beyond the elements is at times emphasized. Yet how can we conceptualize these units? It follows from the individual-socioecological reference frame that such units must include the following information: 1. Time sequence (at least in its minimal form of t1 –> t2 transition) must be retained within the unit. 2. The relation between the developing person and the environment must be specified as transforming over time. 3. The directions of regulatory actions of the “other” must be specified—in the context and/or over time. In formal terms, such unit is given by a 2 × 3 table:

t1   aR b1   w R (a R b1) t2   aRb2   w R (a R b2)

where t is time, a is the developing person, w is the “other,” and R denotes the relationship. In more simple terms, consider the following example of transaction of a mother and child.

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    443

t1: The child is about to take an object t2: The child abandons the effort

M: “No!” M: “Good!”

This example is very close to the three-step units of analysis of dialogical processes suggested by Markova (1990). However, its simplicity is deceiving—in reality our research efforts (if we try to study development) are by far more complex. Figure 21.7 includes the de-differentiation phase of Figure 21.6, upon which researchers’ efforts are graphically superimposed. The investigator may try to focus on some seemingly organized part of the de-differentiated “mess” (e.g., indicated by A). However, the fact that this location seems better organized than the rest of the phenomenon does not necessarily mean that its role in actual differentiation process is relevant. This may become empirically provable if the researcher hypothesizes that if at t1 an intervention at A occurred, then there will be a consequent emergence of any of the forms {B, C, D, and ?.} and not some other specifiable forms {non-B, non-C, non-D} .which are the logical opposites of the posited expected forms. The form ? in the expected set denotes the possible openness of the microgenetic process—a novel form can emerge that

Figure 21.7  What do we do when we derive data from complex psychological phenomena? A microgenetic example.

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could not be predicted by the researcher’s previous understanding, yet that novel form does not undermine that understanding. In contrast, if any of the “antiforms” (i.e., {non-B, non-C, or non-D}) were to emerge in this microgenetic context, the researcher’s hypothesis is proven wrong at the level of the specific unit of analysis.

Overlap Between Units The assumption of independence of various data points—an axiomatic starting point for all non-developmental psychology’s data construction— cannot be accepted in case of developmental units of analysis. This claim has rather dramatic consequences for the construction of data. In frequent classroom demonstrations of the powers of probabilistic thinking, nondevelopmental psychology operates with examples of “drawing black or white marbles from a container.” It is assumed that all of these marbles are independent of one another (e.g., none of them is glued to another), and hence these can be drawn independently of one another each time the drawer’s hand does the job. The “random” retrieval of such marbles would immediately become impossible if we were to expect the marbles being laid out in the container in some order, and if the drawing of one marble now would lead to the drawing of another marble next time. Whenever there is structural organization of the marbles in the container, drawing single marbles “randomly” amounts to a constructed illusion. In case of developmental phenomena, the assumption of independence of adjacent units of analysis that occur in time is even more problematic. Construction of discrete boundaries between units already poses both practical and (even more severe) theoretical problems (e.g., what is the beginning—or end—moment of a “behavior” or “thought”?). The actual flow of developmental phenomena— in microgenetic processes as well as in ontogeny—is continuous and heterogeneous. As was shown above (Figure 21.6), the flow of such phenomena (organized into personal duration—to use a term of Henri Bergson) may at times provide easier bases for detection of categories than at other times. Despite this practical ease (or difficulty) of creating discrete categories from the flow of duration, a major theoretical issue emerges: If we were to separate data points A and B (which are next neighbours in the flow of irreversible duration), can the processes that in reality lead to the transition from A to B (or transformation of A into B) be studied? The numerous users of Markovian (and other) sequential analytic methods would say yes—and proceed to examine empirically determined transition frequency matrices from t1 to t(1+n). However, in these matrices, the making of summary data by eliminating time (as was

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described In Figure 21.4) takes place. For example, in a Markovian analysis of some empirical transition from category A to category B, all instances of such adjacent A → B transitions are summarized across the time of observation. The resulting data accumulation allows for comparison of frequencies (treated as probabilities) as if each transition (e.g., A → B and B → C) were separate from one another. However, such axiom of separateness (independence) of adjacent transition may be unrealistic. Thus, in comparison of A → B and B → C, B may be a part that actually “bridges” the transition from A to C (in cases of sequences A → B → C). In such cases, A → B and B → C are not separate transitions (that could be called “independent” of each other), but parts of one developmental process. In case of developmental phenomena, units of analysis may be preferred to possess temporal overlap with one another, as described in Figure 21.8. In that figure, the continuous flow of duration is described in the form of transcription of actions and speech (of children and a teacher). Each transcribed event can be further categorized (e.g., as “demand,” “refusal,” etc.). So far, the figure describes very ordinary practical matters in child psychologists’ empirical work (e.g., how to assign categories to transcribed materials). Yet it is the next step that deviates from the received practice— the units of analysis are set up so that their time extension partially overlaps with other units. In more general terms (refer back to Figures 22.6 and 22.7 as well), the suggested units include “triplets” (X → unclear state → V) or “duplets” (unclear state → Z) in between which overlaps are not only allowed, but expected.

Methodology as a Process Together with deification of “the data,” psychology has translated the meaning of “methodology” to become a synonym of “method”—quite a change, relative to the traditional continental European sense of using that term (Asendorpf & Valsiner, 1992, p. x). Quite obviously, the proposals for developmental data constructions would require reverse translation of “methodology” to go beyond concrete issues of “method.” Methodology as used here entails a systematic relationship between theories on the one hand and data construction processes on the other (Kindermann & Valsiner, 1989; Winegar & Valsiner, 1992). It is of crucial relevance to emphasize the socially constructed (or constructively derived) status of “the data.” The data are never objectively existing entities that are independent of the investigator’s perspective and activities, but only results of a specific

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Figure 21.8  Units of analysis and duration.

stage in the empirical research process. It is the theoretical (implicit or— preferably—explicit) structure of thought and practical actions of the Investigator that channels the investigator’s construction of data (Valsiner, 1991). Theory determines the general direction in which data construction methods are being derived; the nature of the phenomena under study adds specific constraints to the creation of methods (see Figure 21.9).

Meanings of “the Data” in Contemporary Developmental Psychology    447 Assumptions about the world

Theory

Intuitive experiencing

Phenomena

Constructed methods Derived “Data”

Figure 21.9  Methodology as a cyclical process (from Branco & Valsiner, 1997).

Different consensually accepted social suggestions that are shared by psychologists, and often labeled in ways that provide for their social legitimacy and act as de facto social imperatives (e.g., the widely held belief among psychologists that science equals quantification), enter into the methods construction process. Methodology is the process of goal-oriented thinking and interventional procedures used by the investigator in interaction with the investigated phenomena, which leads to construction of new knowledge. This new knowledge is constructed in a dynamic methodological cycle where the general assumptions (of the researcher) about the phenomena set constraints upon theoretical constructions. The latter set constraints upon the construction of methods in conjunction with the accessibility to the phenomena in the research process. Finally, the interaction of the methods and the phenomena leads to the construction of the data. The data can, in their turn, constrain further construction of theories (yet jointly with general assumptions); the latter may reorient our view of the world in general. Thus, the methodology cycle entails mutually constrain in relations between assumptions, theories, methods, phenomena, and data. The data in this scheme do not occupy the singularly central place in this scientific enterprise. Yet they are crucially important part of the cycle as a whole.

Social Regulation of the Methodology “Cycle” Why add to psychology’s prolific (even if at times confusing) discourse about “the data”? After all, any statements about “the data” are immediately

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“fielded” within ideological discourses about issues relevant for science, and psychology as belonging to this reputable club (e.g., “objectivity,” “quantifiability,” “nomothetic” versus “idiographic” perspectives, etc.). If the individual-socioecological frame of reference is claimed to be fit for human development, then it should be equally important for the development of developmental psychology. Much of psychology’s construction of its research enterprise is based on negotiations with social institutions outside of science (Valsiner, 1988, 1994a). These negotiations are about the assumptions about the world as those are promoted from some social institution’s goal-oriented perspectives. The prevalence of interindividual reference frame in psychological research may be an outcome from the practical tasks for which psychology earned its role in Western societies (i.e., selection of personnel). Or similarly, the proliferation of the intraindividual reference frame may have been promoted by the “healing task” of the “soul” assigned previously to shamans and medical doctors. The “soul” could thus be treated as a problem in its own right, separately from any implications as to the contexts (i.e., society’s specific conditions) within which the “problem” actually emerged. Interestingly, some of our contemporary talk about “context” proves the latter point. Not every approach in psychology that claims to be “contextualist” is necessarily such at all. Rather, we can see efforts to talk of “context influences” (or “effects”) on some result of development in terms of the intraindividual reference frame. The resulting person (e.g., a delinquent adolescent) is viewed as being causally “produced” by a “context” (e.g., a “family environment” that differs from that of the normatively accepted one). By projecting the assumed intraindividual causal system to the person’s environment, the researcher merely changes the contents that fill in a version of the intraindividual reference frame. Thus, many longitudinal studies of children’s development within social contexts are not developmental studies (in the sense of gaining access to the process of development within the contexts).

General Conclusions: Data as Symbolic Capital . . .  but What About Basic Knowledge in Developmental Psychology? I have claimed in this presentation that new knowledge about human development is possible if the data represent some selected facets of developmental phenomena. This entails an explicit acceptance of the representationist perspective on the data (and rejection of the operationist stance).

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Furthermore, I wanted to illustrate the notion of “cyclical consistency” within the process of methodology—in which different components of the process set up mutual constraints and lead to the derivation of data about development if the goal of study of development is proclaimed. This contrasts with the fashions-driven practices of violating the scale properties of the data in order to submit them to another newly marketed analysis package, which is declared to have “greater potential” than previous ones. The latter is socially constructed symbolic capital that becomes usable in the economic processes of organization of the given field of science. Hence the fashion­consciousness of psychology in the area of methods and data-analytic strategies is not at all “blind” surrender to suggestions by modernity, but rather construction of a discipline’s social institutional system. “The data” become symbolic capital—they can be exchanged, bought and sold, invested, and presented on appropriate occasions (such as conferences, or in publications). The particular events of such presentation may be evaluated by social institutions. For example, in an unnamed European country, academic research groups are evaluated on the basis of a scale where one publication in English gives the author—and the research group—twice the number of “evaluation currency units” than a publication in the home language. Even if such evaluation rules can be presented as efforts to guide scientists towards international exchange of their research results, their nature as institutional constructs remains unaltered. However, there might exist “side effects” to this transformation of the data into symbolic capital and its flow. By following fashions, psychologists may distance themselves from the phenomena by way of increasing the hurdle of interpretability through increased symbolic remove. Substituting theoretical analysis by operation with common language meanings renders psychological conclusions increasingly imprecise—yet believable both by psychologists and laypersons. However, believability may be a poor basis for science, since it makes psychology to follow the changes in the meaning systems of laypersons and perform the function of self-fulfilling prophecy for laypersons’ applications of science of psychology in ever complex situations in societies—usually in service of social institutions. The unfortunate hostage that is captured in this situation may be our basic knowledge about human development. How that “hostage crisis” is resolved is largely the matter of any particular psychologist, yet at least awareness of the issue may be of some benefit in our quest for knowledge.

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Acknowledgements This paper was prepared thanks to the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Press of 1995, which allowed the author a longer stay in Berlin. Discussions with my German colleagues were helpful in giving form to a number of issues discussed in this paper.

Notes 1. Gastvortrag am 12. Tagung der Fachgruppe Entwlcklungspsychologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Psycho/ogle. Leipzig, 27. September, 1995. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA.

References Allport, G. W. (1940). The psychologist’s frame of reference. Psychologlcal Bulletin, 37(1), 1–28. Asendorpf, J. B., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (1992). Framing stability and change: An investigation into methodological reasoning. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Benigni, L., & Valsiner, J. (1985). Developmental psychology without the study of processes of development? Newsletter of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, 1, 1–3. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9(1), 35–64. Bridgman, S. (1927). The logic of modern physics. New York, NY: MacMillan. Bühler, K. (1934/1965). Sprachtheorie. Jena-Stuttgart, Germany: Gustav Fischer. Danziger, K. (1985). The methodological imperative in psychology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 15, 1–13. Daston, L. (1992). Objectivity and the escape from perspective. Social Studies of Science, 22, 597–618. Ford, D. H., & Lerner, R. M. (1992). Developmental systems theory. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Gigerenzer, G. (1987). Probabilistic thinking and the fight against subjectivity. In L. Kruger, G. Glgerenzer, & M. S. Morgan (Eds.), The probabilistic revolution (pp. 11–32). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gigerenzer, G. (1991). From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery in cognitive psychology. Psychological Review, 98(2), 254–267. Glgerenzer, G. (1993). The superego, the ego, and the id in statistical reasoning. In G. Keren & C. Lewis (Eds.), A handbook for data analysis in the behavioral sciences: Methodological issues (pp. 311–339). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Gigerenzer, G., Swljtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Kruger, L. (1989). The empire of chance. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goldstein, K. (1933). L’analyse de l’aphasle et l’etude de l’essence du langage. Journal de Psychologle, 30, 430–496. Horton, R. (1967). African traditional thought and Western science. Africa, 37, 50–71; 155–187. Kindermann, T., & Valsiner, J. (1989). Strategies for empirical research in context: Inclusive developmental psychology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Cultural context and child development (pp. 13–50). Toronto, ON: C. J. Hogrefe and H. Huber. Markova, I. (1990). A three-step process as a unit of analysis in dialogue. In I. Markova & K. Foppa (Eds.), The dynamics of dialogue (pp. 129–146). Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester. Michell, J. (1986). Measurement scales and statistics: A clash of paradigms. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3), 398–407. Nunnally, J. C. (1967). Psychometric theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Smedslund, J. (1988). Psycho-logic. New York, NY: Springer. Smedslund, J. (1994). What kind of propositions are set forth in developmental research? Five case studies. Human Development, 37, 280–292. Stevens, S. S. (1946). On the theory of scales of measurement. Science, 103, 667–680. Taylor, C. A. (1991). Defining the scientific community: A rhetorical perspective on demarcation. Communication Monographs, 58, 401–420. Thorndike, R. M. (1982). Data collection and analysis. New York, NY: Gardner Press. Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester, England: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1988). Developmental psychology in the Soviet Union. Brighton, England: Harvester Press. Valsiner, J. (1991). Integration of theory and methodology in psychology: The legacy of Joachim Wohlwill. In L. Mos & P. Van Geert (Eds.), Annals of theoretical psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 161–175). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1994a). Reflexivity in context: Narratives, hero-myths, and the making of histories in psychology. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Explorations In socio-cultural studies (pp. 169–186). Madrid, Spain: Fundacion lnfancla y Aprendizaje. Valsiner, J. (1994b). Bidirectional cultural transmission and constructive sociogenesis. In W. de Graaf & R. Maler (Eds.), Sociogenesis reexamined (pp. 47– 70). New York, NY: Springer. Winegar, L. T., & Valsiner, J. (1992). Re-contextualizing context: Analysis of metadata and some further elaborations. In L. T. Winegar & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Children’s development within social context (pp. 249–266). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Werner, H. (1957). The concept of development from a comparative and organismic point of view. In D. B. Harris (Ed.), The concept of development (pp. 125–147). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

22 Listening to the Screaming Knowledge Pathways to Quietude1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Knowledge is noisy in our contemporary society. It is indeed screaming— through the activities of its voice managers: journalists, science administrators, bloggers, and so on. Once some understanding of the world becomes established in the role of knowledge, it becomes a target for multisided efforts for social appropriation—as a communicative message from science to the society (journalistic appropriation), as an interlocutor for thinking of scientists themselves (scientific appropriation), as a possible source for profit (patenting appropriation), as a source of personal or institutional moral value (affective appropriation), and as denunciation as waste “of resources” (nihilistic appropriation) or even as “danger to morality” or its opposite—solution to all (or most) social problems (political appropriation). Each of these appropriations are dialogical processes within which the interlocutors create, maintain, escalate, mute, and overcome disquietude in the relations of meaning systems and their agents—persons in various social roles. Some forms of dialogical processes entail exaggerations of the knowledge-as-message. Creating such

Beyond the Mind, pages 453–477 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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454    Beyond the Mind messages takes place in some social domains—in contrast with others—which form the arena of societal proliferation (ASP) of knowledge. The widely known subdomain of “popularization” of science, or discourses about the “usefulness” of one or another scientific direction or finding, or questions of funding of one or another branch of science—all belong to negotiations within ASP and involve multiple participants with usually divergent goal orientations. Strategies of negotiation of these goal orientations can lead to the overcoming of the perpetual disquietude around knowledge within society.

The world “out there”3 as we experience it is actually the world within ourselves. Edvard Munch understood it very well 120 years ago—as nature revealed herself to him, filling him with an infinite scream4 (Figure 22.1). But how can knowledge be described as screaming? What we know is expected to be solid, objective, and useful. Yet I claim here that in the emerging 21st century what we consider as solid is becoming uncertain, filtered through rapidly changing goal orientations of the creators, retainers, and users of knowledge.

Figure 22.1  The Scream. Edvard Munch (1895, lithograph).

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Knowledge is not an entity, but a process of getting to know. As “getting to know” has varied meanings for different knowers, that process is open to all the streams of desires and imagination as any AS-IF (Vaihinger, 1922) domain is, in relation to its established (AS-IS) counterpart. Knowing is intimately linked with its opposite—nonknowing—and at times purposeful state of ignorance is needed for knowledge to come into being. In all history of the sciences the special status of knowledge is supported by the focus on its solidity—to know is good, makes human beings wise, and guarantees the quality of rationality for science. So—it should be the standard of respectful quietude that should characterize science and the knowledge it presents. Yet this view of knowledge is presentational—knowledge becomes presented as a result of rational way of being, and scientists who create scientific knowledge—rational beings who operate through the laws of logic(s). Such presentation is flawed if applied to both the actual making of knowledge and to the negotiation of meaning of the value of knowledge among various interested social agents who need knowledge for their purposes. The process of knowledge creation is inherently ambivalent. Michael Polanyi pointed to it precisely in his Personal Knowledge: Scientific discovery reveals new knowledge, but the new vision that accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is a foreknowledge of things unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. (Polanyi, 1962, p. 135, emphasis in original)

This description is very far from the image of respectful quietude of knowledge in science that one finds in textbooks on science that pretend to give us the corpus of “established knowledge.” It is also very far from the opposite certainty—that of journalists reporting yet another “dramatic breakthrough” in a science that later turns out to be an equipment error. Instead, what can be seen in the creation of knowledge is a dialogical process of negotiating what is known with what is desired to become known. The results of such desire at times lead to falsifications, mistakes, premature claims of breakthroughs, professional jealousies and power games, and rush to patenting. The construction of knowledge is deeply disquieting in its actual flow, while it presents the façade of respectful quietude to the outsiders.

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Back in 2005, in the presentation here at the Instituto de Estudos Avanzados, I outlined the scheme of how objectivity of scientific knowledge has transformed from the domain of a deeply involved thinker to that of social consensus, ending up with institutional patenting (Valsiner, 2005). The latter was described as If scientific epistemological work moves not merely towards increased collectivity (research teams) but also towards its hierarchical (corporationistic) social organization, then the dominance of the social-ideological functions of communicative messages in “the literature” over their substantive counterparts is likely. (Valsiner, 2005, slide 14)

It is remarkable to feel the quieting effect on the creativity of scientists of the nice substantive phrase—“contribution to the literature”—which leads us to overlook the organizational aspect of that benevolent goal—who determines the borders of “the literature” in a given field of science. The tension between specialization and popularization of the ideas in all sciences is advancing together with the increased opportunities of the knowledge presentations.

The Widening Field of “The Literature” “The literature” in a given area of science presently includes not only written reports (symbolic encoding) but increasingly complex (and multicolored) diagrams (graphic symbolic encoding) along the presentation of photographic and video materials (iconic encoding). Reporting of implementation of scientific findings entails symbolic encoding (verbal or iconic) of indexical signs that are presented to represent knowledge. Redundancy of the presentation is becoming the rule rather than exception. Together with redundancy comes disquietude—is the verbal report of generalized knowledge in a journal (e.g., Science) an adequate representation of the procedures that are used to arrive at the generalization (made available in the “supplementary materials” in an internet version)?—and, last but not least, how both of these relate to the phenomena under study.5 All these together constitute the “literature” in a given field in science.

Who Creates “the Literature”: Basic Disquietude of Knowledge Making In a similar vein, knowledge is non-quiet as a result of its own making. It is not neutral in its value—its applications can both benefit humankind as

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well as to extinguish it. In our contemporary—mass-media centered—societal conditions it is indeed screaming. In the beginning of the 21st century there are good reasons for such statement. There are different “WE-positions”6 that set the stage for the discourses about knowledge moving between silence and screaming. Once some understanding of the world becomes established in the role of knowledge it becomes a target for multi-sided efforts for social appropriation—as a communicative message from science to the society (journalistic appropriation—“this is a breakthrough!”), as an interlocutor for thinking of scientists themselves (scientific appropriation—“what the journalists call a breakthrough needs to be tested”), as a possible source for profit (patenting appropriation—“we should get the ownership of this new result, maybe it is indeed a breakthrough”), as a source of personal or institutional moral value (affective appropriation—“this is a beautiful result”) and as denunciation as waste “of resources” (nihilistic appropriation—“why would we need to spend our money on something that might even not be a breakthrough”), or even as “danger to morality” or its opposite—solution to all (or most) social problems (political appropriation—“this breakthrough will cardinally change our society”). Each of these appropriations are dialogical processes within which the interlocutors create, maintain, escalate, mute, and overcome disquietude in the relations of meaning systems and their agents—persons in various social roles. The result of such processes is a heterogeneous field of discourses where the different WE-positions are in different oppositions and contradictions with one another. The normal state of the processes of understanding knowledge is its nonunderstanding. It is in the dialogue between the strivers-to-know that such nonunderstanding is modified, overcome, or aggravated. This follows from Karl Bühler’s Organon model of communication that is applicable to all human communication processes. The core of that model is the discrepancy in the message between the intentional presentation of the sender and the intentional act of the receiver (Figure 22.2), depicted by the contrast of the circle and triangle in the middle. The Ausdrück and Appell are not generated from the same vantage point—even if they refer to the same object. Some forms of dialogical processes entail exaggerations of the knowledge-as-message and can therefore be described as screaming. When the goal orientations of the sender and receiver diverge, the knowledge that is created in between is rhetorically shrieking. Such screaming takes place in some social domains—in contrast with others—that form the arena of societal proliferation (ASP) of knowledge. The widely known subdomain of “popularization” of science, or discourses about the “usefulness” of one or another scientific direction or

458    Beyond the Mind Objects and states of (Gegenstände und Sachverhalte)

Expression (Ausdruck)

Sender (Sender)

Representation (Darstellung) Appeal (Appell) Receiver (Empfänger)

Figure 22.2  Karl Bühler’s Organon Model.

finding, or questions of funding of one or another branch of science— all belong to negotiations within ASP and involve multiple participants with usually divergent goal orientations. Strategies of negotiation of these goal orientations can lead to the overcoming of the perpetual disquietude around knowledge within society. ASP is structured by social representations that both connect and separate public knowledge about a science from the actual knowledge in the given discipline. What happens if the goal orientations of the different knowledge presenters diverge cardinally? Mikulak (2011) analyzed the case of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella vaccine) where a report of vaccination of children leading to autism (published in 1998) led to a major controversy between medical scientists (demonstrating the nonincrease of autism after MMR vaccination) and laypersons. The latter—parents—would not accept the scientific conclusion—the evoked fear of the impact of the vaccination was sufficient to close any possibility for negotiation. The particular publication—in the trendsetting medical journal (The Lancet)—was removed from the public domain 12 years after it had been published. Such late removal—not for errors in the report, but of the role the report played in the mythological thinking of the popular audience (Klempe, 2011)—illustrates the dominance fight between different WE-[ositions in the ASP. It is not the scientists’ perspective but that of the impressionable lay audience of strong opinions that mattered.7 The issue here is not merely social power distribution between sciences and the social power institutions. The relevant aspect is the social demand for norms of inference. Common sense demands full certainty (“if X is then X is”), while science offers only possible certainty (“if X is (found) then possibly X is”). If it is found that a medical drug at times has negative side effects for some people some of the time (indicating possibility) it becomes easily

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translated into the categorical state “this drug is NOT SAFE.” Conversely, if no such side effects are discovered—which in science does not indicate they might not be there—in the common sense we arrive at the categorical statement “this drug is SAFE.” It is here where the meaning construction practices of the sciences and of the everyday life diverge. The superimposition of strict categorization (“is it X or is it NOT X?”—is this vaccine “safe” or is it “not safe”?) is a socially added imperative onto the dialogical meaning-making process (Figure 22.3). Any meaning (X, Y) imply their opposite counterparts (non-X, non-Y) that relate with the meanings as their contexts. Context of X is the field of possible emergent meanings (non-X) that could develop in dialogue with X (Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999). The context for the notion SAFE is the field NON-SAFE, the context of DANGEROUS is NON-DANGEROUS. It is from the contextual field (non-X, non-Y) that meanings develop in relation with their opposites. The NON-SAFE field (Figure 22.3) can lead to the emergence of DANGEROUS, but also to other meanings (UNCERTAIN, IRRELEVANT, SUSPICIOUS, etc.). The social imperative from common sense demands elimination of doubt. The negation of “non-safe” is demanded to be declared “safe.” This is a qualitative leap beyond the possible experience of ordinary people and scientists working on their research.

non-“SAFE” emerging new meaning

“SAFE”

nd ng ma ni De mea for

NOT “non-SAFE” → what does that mean? Block of meaning transformation emerging new meaning

“DANGEROUS”

non-“DANGEROUS”

Figure 22.3  Social demand for acceptance of meaning.

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The disquietude between these two meaning construction tactics—scientific and common sense—is particularly expressed in medicine. All drugs are chemical agents that—from the perspective of the organism—could be designated as DANGEROUS. Yet the goal for developing new medical drugs is benevolent—to cure, not kill. Hence the determination of SAFETY of the substances that actually are poisons (for the organism) becomes an object of local “symbolic warfare” in ASP.8 A discovery of the possibility that a previously accepted chemical designated as a medical drug might be nonsafe leads to the imperative of generalizing from not discovered non-safely to the positive declaration of safety. This defies the logic of scientific inductive generalization that can only prove differences between conditions, not their sameness.

From Mythology of Induction and (Illusory) Clarity of Deduction to the Disquieting Experience of Abduction-in-Time Logic is a difficult concept for psychologists of today. It is used often imprecisely (i.e., no specification which of the many logical systems is considered—Valsiner, 2009). Furthermore, it is an anachronistic hero in contemporary psychology infested with statistical inference (the inductive line) while still trying to present the scientific arguments in logical (deductive) terms. Sometime in the 1920s and 1930s, the prevalence of logical inference moved to Carnapian logic. As Klempe points out, In the Carnapian logic, observations form the point of departure. An observation is always given through the senses, which implies that an observation is defined in terms of the particular. Thus induction is with necessity a part of this logic, and this is the core aspect of the Carnapian demarcation criterion, namely that verification is depending on observations that can prove that something is true or not. By this Carnap has changed the logical premises for science. The universals do not form the point of departure, but it is regarded as an outcome. There are however two important elements Carnap introduces and includes in science that contrast Aristotle, and those are the role of sensations and the particular. Also Aristotle mentions these aspects, but not as a point of departure for logical and scientific inferences (Klempe, 2011, p. 219, emphasis added)

Of course a solution like this—universals emerging as an outcome— makes any effort to arrive at generalized knowledge scream in horror. It makes universal knowledge limited in generalization (as it depends on observations). Much of the accumulative empiricism of the last 80 years has

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dutifully followed the belief in inductive generalization, with specifiable damage to the epistemology of psychology (Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). A potential solution to turning the cacophony of inductive empiricism into a melody that goes beyond the data collected can be located in the failed effort by Charles Sanders Peirce to develop principles of abductive inference. His efforts failed both by his own reflection on his 37 years of efforts (Pizarroso & Valsiner, 2009) and by his insistence on the use of classical logic. His general scheme of abduction was simple: In a sequence of events, a surprising event (D) occurs: A → B → C → A → B → D It has no explanation within the existing set of causal entities: X, Y But if yet another entity (Z) were to be added, emergence of D is a matter of course In Peirceian scheme the time location of Z is not considered. It is simply assumes to be there (and explain the surprise). Yet it could be located in the past, in the present, and in the future (e.g., the positing of “attractors” in dynamic systems theory). Furthermore, it is unlikely to be a causal entity at all—since the psychological systems are catalytically, not causally, organized (Cabell & Valsiner, 2014). Abduction is inevitable in intervention practices (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2014), and likely to become the core of new psychology (Salvatore, 2015).

General Conclusion: From Screaming Knowledge to the Music of Knowing Knowledge is socially contested—and hence leads to various forms of disquietude. At times it breaks out screaming—in the form of deep divides between normativeness of societies and inferential rules of sciences. Whether it is in the case of yet another discovery that a well-established curative drug is actually nonsafe (e.g., the history of the statin drugs), or that a famous athlete had performed exceptionally well “under the influence” of some performance-enhancing “drug”—the preponderance towards local “mindquakes” on the arena of societal proliferation of knowledge remains a catastrophic mechanism for negotiating the uneasy relations of the common sense with new discoveries. My argument in this paper leads to a surprising—and maybe disquieting—conclusion: striving towards adequate understanding of science by laypersons

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in a society may be a utopian exercise. Instead of transparency of science for the lay public, what is needed is a creation of a subarena of knowledge presentation that satisfies the recipients’ curiosities (Figure 22.2) and provides sufficient legitimization for the funders of science to keep financing the expensive enterprise of moving the horizons of knowing further. Examples of such creation of theatre of fascination with scientific progress are present in areas very far from practical usefulness in our everyday lives where the aweinspiring acts of contemporary science evoke feelings of wonder. Every time the Mars Lander gets stuck in the mud and is subsequently manipulated out of it to continue its slow journey on the surface of the to-be-further-explored planet, we become fascinated by the heroic success of science. Yet moving the Lander on is only a vehicle for gaining access to unique data that are completely nontransparent to laypersons, except for the repeatedly asked question “is there water on Mars?” Astrophysicists have solved the problem of screaming knowledge by differentiating the theatre of negotiations of the value of their work with the society from the actual improvisation of melodies of knowledge by the orchestra of cooperating scientists. Psychologists and other social scientists have their lesson to learn from that—being “useful to society” in direct ways may be actually a useless effort, both for the science, and, paradoxically, to the society.

Acknowledgments Preparation of this paper was supported by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant by Danske Grundforskningsfond, and by FAPESP supporting the Workshop in São Paulo.

Notes 1. Public Lecture at IP-USP-SP São Paulo at the Workshop Knowledge and Otherness: Disquieting Experiences in the Dynamics of Cultural Psychology—October, 13, 2015. This lecture—dedicated to the memory of César Ades—is a continuation of the theme started in 2005 through the presentation at USP-SP: Valsiner, J. (2005). Psychology as a factory: Changing traditions and new epistemological challenges. Invited lecture at Instituto de Estudos Avançados, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, May, 31. This was not written up, only PowerPoint exists (see the annex). Thus the 2015 text is the promised write up. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. Nicely captured by the Australian Aboriginal notion of woop woop, which is a term meaning far away from anything of interest, as in “he lives out in (the) woop woop.”

Listening to the Screaming Knowledge    463 4. As he inscribed in the 1895 painted version: “ I was walking along the road with two friends— the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” 5. Yet the phenomena themselves can be difficult to present as part of the “supplementary materials.” In psychology—a deeply normative discipline with strictly enforced anonymity demands—presenting videotaped materials of real people as the “base phenomena” is often made legally impossible. The situation is better in astrophysics—where comets and other celestial objects may have recognized unique identities without moral norms of their uncovering (e.g., no concept of a “naked comet” exists). Yet here the difficulty is of the mediated kind of visual images from the far-away celestial objects. The photographic evidence of the surfaces of the newly discovered surfaces on the celestial objects are necessarily filtered to render a humanly interpretable (for scientists) and impressionable (for lay public) forms (Biele et al., 2015a, 2015b) 6. In analogy with “I-positions” in the dialogical self theory (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). “WE-positions” are starting perspectives set by the roles of the meaning constructors from which they carve out their particular way of rendering the knowledge. 7. Scientists’ commentary on the public controversy was reflective of the situation: “We used to think that we could publish speculative research which advanced interesting new ideas which may be wrong, but which were important to provoke debate and discussion. We don’t think that now” (Mikulak, 2011, p. 205). The important point is the loss of scientists’ freedom of speech in that part of ASP that overlaps with that of the laypersons’ understandings. The democratic demand of the transparency of what scientists do becomes a hindrance as it superimposes the opinions of the majority upon the (scientific) minority. 8. The dominant statistical methodology can only prove differences between conditions (e.g., “A and B are significantly different”) but cannot prove that failure to find such difference equals sameness. Any sameness claim out of not found differences is a construction that goes beyond the evidence.

References Biele, J., Ulamec, S., Maibaum, M., Roll, R., Witte, L., Jurado, E., . . . , Spohn, T. (2015a). The landing(s) of Philae and inferences about comet surface mechanical properties. Science, 349, 6247, 10.1126/science.aaa9816 Biele, J., Ulamec, S., Maibaum, M., Roll, R., Witte, L., Jurado, E., . . . , Spohn, T. (2015b). Supplementary materials for The landing(s) of Philae and Inferences About Comet Surface Mechanical Properties. Retrieved from www. sciencemag.org/content/349/6247/aaa9816/suppl/DC1 Cabell, K. R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2014). The catalyzing mind: Beyond models of causality. New York, NY: Springer.

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Hermans, H., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in the globalizing society. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction. In J. Brandtstätdter & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self development (pp. 257–282). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Klempe, H. S. (2011). Mythical thinking, scientific discourses and research dissemination. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45, 216–222. Mikulak, A. (2011). Mismatches between ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ ways of knowing and their contributions to public understanding of science. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45, 201–215. Pizarroso, N., & Valsiner, J. (2009, April). Why developmental psychology is not developmental: Moving towards abductive methodology. Paper presented at the Society of Research in Child Development, Denver, CO. Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Salvatore, S. (2015). Psychology in black and white. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2014). Outlines of a general psychological theory of psychological intervention. Theory & Psychology, 24(2), 217–232. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Vaihinger, H. (1922). Die Philosophie des Als-Ob (7th ed.) Leipzig, Germany: Felix Meiner. Valsiner, J. (2005, May 31). Psychology as factory: Changing traditions and new epistemological challenges. Lecture at Instituto de Estudos Avançados, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. Valsiner, J. (2009). Baldwin’s quest: A universal logic of development. In J. W. Clegg (Ed.), The observation of human systems: Lessons from the history of anti-reductionistic empirical psychology (pp. 45–82). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

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23 The Wissenschaft of Social Psychology Paradoxes of Application of Science in a Society1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract All social sciences of our day seem to adopt the politically correct position of the relevance of being of “practical use” for “the society.” It is claimed here that such appropriation of the applied value of a science is an accommodation to the social-institutional control demands on the sciences. While emphasizing “practical use” such demands keep the social sciences away from universal knowledge that might reveal the multiple social functions of the controlling institutions. The semiotic demand settings (SDS) that are set up to regulate what social sciences do (and do not do) guarantee that the development of the given science is nonlinear in its history, and uneven in its social-geographical distribution. The history of social psychology—especially its move between Europe and America—provides evidence of such processes that have resulted in fragmentation of knowledge and reliance on consensually accepted methods. Overcoming these historically set self-blinders by a discipline is needed if it generates general knowledge applicable to all societies.

Beyond the Mind, pages 479–488 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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480    Beyond the Mind “. . . at present, the ‘society’ (i.e., industrial and political groups etc.) puts the questions and suggests what kind of answers should be given.” (Moscovici, 2001, p. 84)

Science—as Wissenschaft—needs relative autonomy from the sociopolitical system of any society. Such relative distancing between science and society is filled with tensions—between the need to produce generalized knowledge, and its concrete social application. Contemporary social sciences may be losing their autonomy by becoming increasingly socially relevant. In other terms, this means that their know-how becomes appropriated by different sociopolitical interest groups in any society. This is not surprising—among many inventions of humankind, knowledge is one of the major weapons of mass construction. As such, it is not neutral—different interest groups position themselves to possess it. Knowledge is social power—but correspondingly—what is considered to be knowledge is defined by social powers. Thus, before World War I, the emergence of applied educational psychology in North America led to the dominance of the institutional power of school administrators—in contrast to teachers—in determining what kind of knowledge about children constituted “socially relevant” knowledge. While for teachers—working with real children—such knowledge used to be about the process of teaching and learning, for the administrators it became to be standardized testing of the outcomes of such processes (and corresponding social redistribution of pupils—Danziger, 1990, pp. 102–106). It is thus of no surprise that the focus on psychological processes has been largely absent from the psychological practices in North America. Similarly, it is no surprise that social valuation of quantified knowledge in psychology prevails under the demands of social order—even if its role in basic knowledge construction in psychology is questionable (Valsiner, 1997, Chapter 3).

Semiotic Demand Settings (SDS) and Talk About Scientific Knowledge Aside from defining what kind of knowledge is prioritized, social institutions set up the field for social discourse about such knowledge forms. This is done through the setting up of semiotic demand settings (SDS—Valsiner, 2000, p. 125). It is through SDS that social institutions guide the ways people feel, think, and act about different kinds of knowledge. The SDS includes three sub-zones in the general field of meaning of the object, separated by boundaries of NO-TALK || TALK (with || indicating

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strict boundary), and within the latter (TALK) zone: MAYBE-TALK and HYPER-TALK (Valsiner, 2002). Any domain of human personal experience can become culturally guided by some socio-institutional focusing of the person’s attention to it in three ways. First, there is the realm of NOTALK—the subfield of personal experiences that are excluded from legitimate discourse. Some of that exclusion is guaranteed by social norms; other is specifically protected by their being of “zero signifiers” (Ohnuki-Tierney, 1994). The rest of the field is the “zone of free movement” (Valsiner, 1997) of talking—the MAYBE-TALK. Experiences within that field can be talked about—but ordinarily are not, as long as there is no special goal that makes that talking necessary. Most of human experiences belong to MAYBE-TALK. The third domain of talking—the HYPER-TALK—is what social institutions actively promote through all means at their disposal. Discussions of “what is science” (in case of psychology), or even about the current state of the social sciences—all are part of the social negotiation through HYPERTALK. By getting participants in that negotiation to state, ad infinitum, something that is being disputed (e.g., “psychology is science,” “psychology must contribute to the society,” etc.), the organizers of the HYPER-TALK guide the formation of social meaning consensus of the given time. The history of social psychology gives us numerous examples of different SDSs that have been guiding that discipline in its various locations.

Social Psychology in the 20th Century: Between Europe and America Social psychology as it exists today has had a complicated history in the last century, and it is bearing its marks in the present. It has gradually moved away from the study of basic human issues and of phenomena of personal experiencing to become a “social psychology of nice persons” (Moscovici, 2001, p. 79). It has become a servant for the narrowly defined applied concerns—of specific kinds. It can be seen as appropriated to be in the service of socioeconomic power of some societies rather than others. This is evident when we look at the other side of the “psychology of nice persons” (of the Western middle-class affluent kind)—where the issues of the “psychology of not-so-nice persons” becomes conceptually defined in terms of “terrorism” (in contrast to “inequality”), “violence” (in contrast to “exploitation”), and “drug trafficking” (in contrast to “profitability of trades”). The talk about which problems social psychology should study—and how—is set up by the SDS mechanisms of the given country at the given time.3

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Social psychology in continental Europe started at the turn of the 20th century from the traditions of French and German holistic traditions (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000). Since the history of both French and German language traditions is filled with internal controversies (Ash, 1998), some of its pioneering traditions (e.g., Ganzheitspsychologie—Diriwächter, 2003; phenomenology—Köhler, 1966) disappeared from the landscape of social psychology after a promising start (Hellpach, 1933). Together with that disappeared the focus on phenomena of everyday life. The European roots of social psychology prevailed in the New World, at least for a while. The New World was a very special social ground for psychology—built on religious grounds, yet pretending to be autonomous of such grounds. In a summary, “American psychology aimed to be a socially relevant science, but not a social science. Its approach was to be that of a natural science, although its ultimate field of application was to be found among members of real societies” (Danziger, 1990, p. 88). Yet the “real society” for the United States has always been self-centered—as that of the U.S. and/or of other countries that follow its missionary zeal of building the “democratic society.” There is a strong autocratic tendency behind the U.S. endorsement of plurality of ideologies that is built on the glorification of the massive public opinion (the “mainstream”), which of course is the target of a whole arsenal of weapons of mass persuasion. This characterization of the U.S. society seems historically robust, as it has been documented already in the 19th century (de Tocqueville’s classic accounts of his travels to America). The paradoxes of development of the European-imported social psychology into the United States followed along this discrepant whole of a social demand. Social psychology in the United States in the first two decades after World War II was a curious synthesis of American texture of societal demands and Continental European emigration of Gestalt psychology traditions. Social psychologists in the U.S. were—in the 1940s–1960s—utilizing their intuitive understanding of basic human phenomena—at the time when the rest of psychology in that country was busy viewing the human psyche through the lens adjusted to look at the behavior of laboratory rats. One can see the juxtaposition of the immigrant and native traditions in the definition of the discipline 50 years ago: “Social psychology is the scientific study of the experience and behavior of individuals in relation to social stimulus situations. Social stimulus situations are composed of people (individuals and groups) and items of the sociocultural settings” (Sherif & Sherif, 1956, p. 4, added emphasis).

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Here the subjective heritage of the European phenomena-oriented investigation go side by side with the outcome (behavior) oriented focus. The emphasis on the relational aspect (person  environment relations) —persons being comes from the European background, while viewing them as “joint products” of person and culture (Sherif & Sherif, 1956, p. 8) pays tribute to the pragmatist ethos. Social psychology was coming close—maybe too close (?)—to basic issues of human experiences in existential social contexts.4 When in the North American context of the 1930s–1960s most of psychology would deny reliance upon internal reflection, social psychologists linked with Lewinian and Allportian traditions were building their work on real-life human experiences—of living in the cities, within groups, and through contexts of wars or schools. The phenomena of everyday living were in the center of attention of classic experimental studies in social psychology (e.g., Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1992; Sherif, 1935; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961). The situation changed by the 1970s. The behavioral orientation in psychology in North America was transformed into a cognitive orientation—in which “mentalistic” terminology of ideas, thoughts,5 and feelings was still out of fashion. Social psychology became divided—part of it viewed itself in historical and social constructionist terms (Gergen, 1982, 1985; Gergen & Gergen, 1984), while the other adopted the new “cognitivist” redefinition of the experimental social psychology. The contrast remained the same as it had been in Wilhelm Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie of the beginning of the 20th century: the experimental tradition building knowledge on the outcomes of psychological functions, while the historical orientation has been trying to make sense of complex phenomena of social representations, narratives, and identity. After World War II, social psychology in Europe has been a story of importation of social psychology back from the U.S. (Graumann, 1988). It is a story of originally European-rooted complex ideas migrating to North America, being transformed into purified forms through a focus on methods (separated from wider theoretical issues), and re-inserted into the European context as a part of the general American missionary effort to proliferate “the most modern” kind of scientific advance. As in case of any missionary activity, it has led to the resistant construction of “the European perspective” in social psychology—which nevertheless tends to follow the metascientific social role relations that missionaries have brought in. While it is obvious that the set of social representations on which the U.S. society has domesticated imported psychology is unique (Moscovici, 2001), the resisting “European” tendency in social psychology has failed to develop its own methodological breakthroughs. The SDS in European countries that

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guides what social psychology does is not different in principle—when the applied needs of a “real” society are seen as guiding forces for the discipline.

Methodology: From Fragmentation to Unity of Knowledge Contemporary psychology operates under SDS that prioritizes methods ahead of methodology. The singling out of methods as a via regia of science has led to the decision-making about appropriate methods being based on the evaluative consensus of researchers. For example, the proliferation of the primarily quantitative and experimental tradition in social psychology has largely adopted the notion of analysis of variance as a metatheoretical scheme and has overlooked the structured nature of the original phenomena (Thorngate, 1986). In fact, the method of analysis of variance has become elevated to the status of a theory (Gigerenzer, 1993). In the retrospect of one of the key figures in the development of social psychology in the 1950s—Leon Festinger—the field has moved towards dealing with small problems using consensually validated methods of high technical precision: But precision of measurement and precision of experimental control are means to an end—the discovery of new knowledge. Too much emphasis on precision can lead to research design that is barren. There is, in my opinion, such thing as a “premature precision”—that is, insisting on precision at the empirical level while, at the theoretical level, concepts are still somewhat vague. It is crucial to accept the notion of vagueness in discovering new knowledge. How can one insist on empirical precision at the beginning of an idea that seems important and promising? If one does, the idea will be killed; it cannot at birth live up to such demands. (Festinger, 1980, p. 252)

Festinger’s idea addresses the core of our knowledge creation—precision of a method can make sense only if the questions asked—based on theoretical precision—are themselves formulated with sufficient generality. For science the issue of methodology is that of a hermeneutic cycle—methodology cycle (Figure 23.1—for earlier depictions see Branco & Valsiner, 1997; Valsiner, 2000, Chapter 5). The cycle entails a constant relationship between general assumptions, theoretical elaborations, phenomena, and—finally—methods. The relations of primacy of a relation between parts is indicated by thickness of arrows—the thick arrow direction dominates over that of the thin arrows. The picture in Figure 23.1 is that of an ideal pattern of relations—not of the ones we can observe in psychology. Methods in this picture are mere tools to translate phenomena into data—in accordance with the nature of

The Wissenschaft of Social Psychology    485 Assumptions about the world

Theory

Intuitive experiencing by the scientist

Phenomena

Method Data

Figure 23.1  The Methodology Cycle.

the phenomena on the one hand and theoretical constructions on the other. This is in line with the European traditions of Wissenschaft.

Socially Guided Access to Phenomena: Autonomy of Human Beings Social psychology has been aware of the social constraints on people’s participation in research (Ceci, Peters, & Plotkin, 1985). As long as psychological research deals with turning the phenomena of the others into the data usable by the researcher oneself, the interchange between two autonomous agents—both research participants—researcher and the subject—remains crucial. The concern for the autonomy of the person is a well-set social representation within North America. It covers the attribution of the label of individualistic society to that of the U.S.— and overlooking of the unity of the person and society (e.g., the U.S. characterized as a special case of close relations between individualistic actions and community conformity—Mead, 1930). Thus, discourse using the idea of concern for the person may mask its opposite function—the interests of a social institution to maintain the persons in their prescribed social roles. Any scientific evidence that may reveal information about such trust is not necessary—unless it works for the needs of the institution. The hyperemphasis on the “protection of the human subjects” that has developed in psychology in the U.S. context (Baumrind, 1964) can be viewed as an institutional defense against the access by social psychology

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to phenomena that can undermine the public presentation of their institutional credos. Thus, in contexts of a democratic governance system, it is symbolically dangerous if the nondemocratic (totalitarian) subcomponent of the democratic institutions is publicly outlined.6 Social psychology came too close to revealing the full nature of human society—its basic mechanisms by which individuals become bound to its institutions—and was distanced from the access to the study of such reality by rhetoric means that build on the ethical concerns of the persons and their (inalienable) human rights (Katz, 1972).

Quo Vadis: Group Consensus or New Wissenschaft? Not only are people in the role of research subjects made more inaccessible for researchers—also researchers’ own minds have become secondary to institutionally approved “teamwork.” The role of the individual researcher becomes de-emphasized in favor of the research teams working within research institutions (e.g., CNRS). The assumption that new ideas are born in the normal-scientific (in Thomas Kuhn’s sense) daily labor in research factories seems to diminish the role of the mind of an individual scientist. Such focus is not surprising at a time of institutional takeover of science. Research institutions are social institutions that negotiate their roles with other—nonscientific—institutions within the given society. The latter do not share the objective of science—Wissenschaft —but treat the products of science as symbolic tools in their quests for changing their power positions in the given society. Social sciences become important in society— and by becoming important they lose their importance as creators of basic knowledge. This dynamic has a Möbius-loop nature—importance becomes nonimportance and vice versa. It provides new material for the social psychology of the social sciences. Yet such a loop does not afford new developments—which are very much needed in the social sciences.

Notes 1. Published in French: Valsiner, J. (2005). Les risques d’une psychologie sociale appliqué. Hermès, 41, 91–99. 2. Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA, 01610, USA. 3. History of societies provides some interesting contrasts—in the Civil War times in Russia in 1918–1921, acts of rape were to be talked about not as psychological traumas, but as tests of “revolutionary endurance”—see Valsiner, 1996). 4. Cf. “the real advance made by American social psychology was not so much in its empirical methods or its theory construction as in the fact that it took for

The Wissenschaft of Social Psychology    487 its theme of research and for the contents of its theories the issues of its own society” (Moscovici, 2001, p. 80). The result of this success is its basic unexportability to other societies (in its local, ungeneralized form) and its entrance into the sociopolitical power discourse within the U.S. society. 5. Consider the regular use of the plural form of cognition—cognitions—in lieu of ideas or thoughts—in contemporary psychology 6. Consider Milgram’s (1974, p. 189) explicit inclusion of the U.S. condition with all other societies in the World: “The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to the author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or—more specifically—the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitation of the conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.” (emphasis added)

References Asch, S. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70(9), 1–70. Ash, M. (1998). Gestalt psychology in German culture 1890–1967. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of research: After reading Milgram’s “Behavioral study of obedience.” American Psychologist, 19, 421–423. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9(1), 35–64. Ceci, S. J., Peters, D., & Plotkin, J. (1985). Human subjects review, personal values, and the regulation of social science research. American Psychologist, 40(9), 994–1002. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Diriwächter, R. (2003, June). What really matters: Keeping the whole. Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Conference of ISTP, Istanbul, Turkey. Festinger, L. (1980). Looking backward. In L. Festinger (Ed.), Retrospections on social psychology (pp. 236–254). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gergen, K. J. (1982). Toward transformation in social knowledge. New York, NY: Springer. Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40(3), 266–275. Gergen, K. J., & Gergen, M. M. (Eds.). (1984). Historical social psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gigerenzer, G. (1993). The superego, the ego, and the id in statistical reasoning. In G. Keren & C. Lewis (Eds.), A handbook for data analysis in the behavioral sciences: Methodological issues (pp. 311–339). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Graumann, C. F. (1988). Introduction to a history of social psychology. In M. Hewstone, W. Strorebe, J-P. Codol, & G. M. Stephenson (Eds.), Introduction to social psychology: A European perspective (pp. 3–19). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Hellpach, W. (1933). Elementares Lehrbuch der Sozialpsychologie. Berlin, Germany: Springer. Katz, J. (1972). Experimentation with human beings. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Köhler, W. (1966). The place of value in a world of facts. New York, NY: Liveright. Mead, G. H. (1930). The philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in their American setting. International Journal of Ethics, 40, 211–231. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority. New York, NY: Holt. Milgram, S. (1992). The individual in a social world: Essays and experiments. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Moscovici, S. (2001). Society and theory in social psychology. In G. Duveen (Ed.), Social representations (pp. 78–119). New York: New York University Press. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1994). The power of absence: Zero signifiers and their transgressions. L’Homme, 34(2) (Whole No. 130), 59–76. Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 187, 1–60. Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. Norman, OK: The University Book Exchange. Sherif, M., & Sherif, C. W. (1956). An outline of social psychology. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Thorngate, W. (1986). The production, detection, and explanation of behavioural patterns. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 71–93). New York, NY: Plenum. Valsiner, J. (1996). Social utopias and knowledge construction in psychology. In V. A. Koltsova, Y. N. Oleinik, A. R. Gilgen, & C. K. Gilgen (Eds.), Post-Soviet perspectives on Russian psychology (pp. 70–84). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action. New York, NY: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and human development. London, England: SAGE. Valsiner, J. (2002). Talking and acting: Making change and doing development. Narrative Inquiry, 12(1), 177–188. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

24 Failure Through Success Paradoxes of Epistemophilia1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract Advancement of new ideas—epistemogenesis—entails mutually linked processes of invention and forgetting. The latter can be—paradoxically—accomplished by intensified public discourses about knowledge construction—epistemophilia. I chart out different ways in which interpersonal processes in scientific communities bound with the regulation of scientific knowledge carried out by social institutions. The institutional agents—administrators, science translators, career managers, and so on—insert their suggestive directions into the intergenerational relations between young aspiring scientists and their advisors first of all in the domains of epistemophilia that may—but need not— transfer to epistemogenesis. The result is selective social retention scientific knowledge that acts as guidance for further knowledge construction. Nonlinear historical courses of different sciences—psychology in particular—can be explained by the intergenerational negotiation of the epistemogenesis    epistemophilia relations.

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490    Beyond the Mind Psychology entered 20th century as a promising young science, with new experimental laboratories being established and Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams instigating a new psychological culture. At the start of the 21st century, however, the science of psychology appears in a puzzling state, somehow empty of radically new insights into the human situation. Steinar Kvale, 2003, pp. 597–598

In my 32 years of university experiences in the United States I have failed to understand why first-year undergraduate students in introductory psychology courses are regularly assigned the task of criticism. They are asked to select an empirical article from a psychology journal and write a critique of it—of how the study is done, its methodology, results, and so on. Supposedly this task promotes the development of “critical thinking”—but on what basis? These students have at best a meager understanding of what science is—and their meaning of criticizing may be that of damning a peer for violating some peer group norm. Does such an exercise promote public understanding of science? A critical account of merely one selected paper out of thousands would not represent the whole empirical enterprise in the given science. So—why are such assignments given? To allow aspiring firstyear undergraduates to show off their peaks (or valleys) of intellect? Why would that be of importance for teaching of psychology? Maybe I am wrong in my assumption that such tasks are actually for the purposes of teaching psychology at all? Maybe such tasks are general socialization tasks—played out in the context of introduction to psychology—for dependently independent ways of developing a “critical orientation” to science, and to life in general? Performing such tasks requires seemingly independent decision making—what aspect of the target to select for one’s critique, how to construct the critical argument, how to generalize from one’s critique? Yet all these decisions are framed by the social expectations for the “right” kind of criticisms: chastising the authors on small sample sizes, insufficient literature referencing, nonbalanced conditions, incorrect uses of statistics, and other peripheral technical issues is acceptable and expected. At the same time, critiques of the absence of depth of thought, lack of phenomenological clarity, questioning the reasons of doing the study at all, and so on are unlikely to be endorsed. It seems to me a training ground of the general orientation to peripheral criticism— zone of promoted talking (Figure 24.1)—rather than guidance of young students to the ways of making science. What thinking about the task of criticism in terms of the SDS leads us to is a focus on the opposite—behind promoted talking is that of socially prescribed silence (non-talking), so the task of criticism promotes precisely

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Figure 24.1  The Semiotic Demand Setting (SDS).

the opposite—non-critical acceptance of the target as science after successfully critiquing some target text for superficially visible reasons (“small sample”). The student has affirmed the criticized article as “scientific,” with accepting the notion of bigger sample size being better. It is scientific because it is published in a journal we know is scientific. But how do we know? We deduce from the order of things given to us by social suggestions from the others whom we trust they know. But do they? How did they get to know it? Were they socially guided in ways similar in which they now guide their students? How can new knowledge emerge within such guided social contexts?

Science Under the Microscope of Social Ethics On the side of institutions, contemporary sciences—first of all sciences that deal with human beings—face the cutting social scalpel of ethics—institutional “human ethics committees” (more recently relabeled “institutional review boards” or IRBs) that create the field of hyperactive talkability about some aspects of research. Such institutional regulation mechanisms, originating from the United States, now proliferate throughout the world, all under the important slogan of the “defense of participants’ rights.” When it comes to the analysis of the actualities of the impact of such committees it becomes apparent that the “participants’ rights” involve their data being hidden in a locked filing cabinet, expropriated from their original producer (the person) whose authorship is denied by attributing to

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the data a code. If this were to happen in literature—where the “data” are produced by writers whose names are public knowledge—that would involve a blatant violation of authors’ rights. Imagine that War and Peace would be necessarily recoded as written by “007”—poor Tolstoy would turn around in his grave, and the questions of plagiarism arise. True, there were times when authors assumed pseudonyms—out of the fear of retributions, or to hide their unfavored gender—as in case of George Sand. But that entailed the (self) defense of authors’ rights. Where is the defense of researchers’ rights to gain access to complex human phenomena in 21st-century social sciences? Steinar Kvale’s verdict on the emptiness of contemporary psychology in the epigraph is to be taken seriously as a starting point for an analysis of the social constraining of knowledge construction. The development of psychology since the 1930s has been shown to involve alienation of the data from the phenomena from which they are derived (Cairns, 1986; Toomela, 2007). When the reality of phenomena is lost, complex data analysis software does not help—and the discipline produces ever-increasing data of no real value. Possibly the highest level of looking at psychological phenomena—that in terms of ethics—can give us an insight into the social guidance of the discipline. Ethics is by its nature a social phenomenon that is practiced by persons based on their internalized ethical rules. The latter undergo heavy social guidance and may result in internalized ethical system that goes beyond the social suggestions. In the contemporary socialization efforts of young researchers in the United States, different courses on research ethics become mandated. As always publicly stated, their main concern is the protection of human research subjects. Yet in some features the protection mission shows signs of interference into the epistemological issues of science that have no bearing on the ethics of research. In one drastic example, a mandatory training system includes clear prioritizing of one kind of research—based on large samples—over that of individual case studies, claiming small-scale studies “unethical”: because they waste resources and are just anecdotal—especially when lab animal subjects or human subjects are employed (CITI-Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative—https:// www.citiprogram.org). Judged from this—21st century American ethics perspective—all classic findings in psychology have been “unethical”—as these are based on single case (or few case) studies. B. F. Skinner’s few pigeons or I. P. Pavlov equally few dogs, not to speak of “lack of samples” in psychoanalysis or neuropsychology. Explicit teaching of “research ethics” is the arena of guiding

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the discipline in some socially desired directions. On the worldwide scale, it entails also superimposition of one’s society’s accepted practices—such as the rituals of consent forms and their signing—to others where the meaning of signing various forms can be vastly different. Bringing the ethical argument into the social process of conducting research is unwarranted if we consider the opposite example—research with large sample sizes can be viewed as “unethical” since the materials of so many persons serve only the purpose of calculating the sample average. Or—we could consider some methods unethical since these replace the relevant qualitative psychological processes by simple numeric outcomes. The “Likert scale” is unethical since it does not reveal the psychological functions that enter into a rating (Rosenbaum & Valsiner, 2011; Wagoner & Valsiner, 2005). In sum, we can attach the descriptor “unethical” to any aspect of research—resulting in creating a barrier for the sciences.

Epistemogenesis and Epistemophilia The crucial feature of development of ideas—epistemogenesis—occurs prior to their entrance onto the relations of value negotiations of these ideas. This means that the active—and creative—human being defies some of the socialization efforts one’s previous generation has superimposed on her or him—in the ways science is done. The innovative research tradition of Jean Piaget got its start from the young—23 years at the time—biologist’s interest in the mental processes of children who were supposed to solve the mundane tasks of items of an intelligence tests in a Paris suburb. Had his immediate supervisors been nearby and stopped this “nonscientific” direction from taking off the ground, the developmental science of today would have lacked one of its central paradigms of genetic epistemology. New perspectives emerge from resistance to the suggestions of what “proper science” is, not from following its rules and regulations. Epistemogenesis could be likened to a ship sailing to unknown destinations—rather than a cruise boat making its daily routine trip between well-known tourists spots,3 each of which has a stated social value in a tourist guide. The tourist can decide which value s/he prefers—while the explorer has no idea of the value of the destination one is about to reach. That value is created in the process of the journey itself, and its initial form may end up very different from the one it acquires when the new knowledge enters into the realm of its social uses.

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Two Processes Epistemogenesis is paralleled by a commentary process—let us call it epistemophilia—that masks the advancement of knowledge by active discourses about the new knowledge. Such discourses carry an important public function—of popularization of the new knowledge. In societies characterized by the centrality of democratic governance such discourses can also feed into further development of that knowledge. Public uses of the knowledge feed into further making of it in directions socially desired. Alternatively—such uses can lead to a stalemate in the development of such knowledge, and its trivialization. How is trivialization of issues possible in psychology? Or maybe it is a socially desired condition to keep a potentially uncontrollable knowledge at a distance from the sensitive areas of social power negotiations as “taboo areas” (see Figure 24.1). While Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience to authority has become widely known in public proliferation of knowledge about social psychology, further investigation into the phenomena of such obedience can be blocked by the “human ethics” considerations in psychology—but not in the military practices. One of the guarantees for trivialization is the dependence of the theoretical buildup of psychology on the common language or publicly accepted consensus of interest. Psychoanalysis brought issues of sexuality into the “zone of talkability” (Figure 24.1)—creating increasing and pervasive flows of discourses on the subject matter that now—a century later—have found their place in the sphere of entertainment. Public uses of psychoanalysis have trivialized the complex theoretical promises of that field in its beginning. Our contemporary disputes about methods—qualitative, quantitative, or “mixed”—may hide away the more pertinent question of the fit of any of these methods to the phenomena under study. Epistemophilia can block epistemogenesis—talking about some new knowledge need not lead to further new knowledge.4 Epistemophilia is also the driving force of the epistemic market. That market (Rosa, 1994) operates in analogy with the financial market—yet with symbolic5 rather than financial currency values: Value in the epistemic market is the relevance and truth attributed to the epistemic product. But this is not a question of all or nothing, nor is it an inherent property of an utterance, it is the result of an attribution of value in reference to an intention and it is also dependent on the style of reasoning used. . . . A non-negotiable part of the truth value of an epistemic product in the market depends on the social authority attributed to its producer, to the “credit” given to his/her products. Certainly epistemic products receive an

Failure Through Success    495 attribution of truth when they have an empirical or pragmatic validation, when they are capable of generating replicable experiences in people different of those who produced them, or when they generate desirable results for consumers. (Rosa, 1994, p. 157, added emphasis)

The “validation” of truth through epistemophilic processes through social consensus is of course an act very far from the original epistemogenetic validation of an idea through its practical use. Endless negotiation of rated value—of stocks in real stock exchange or ideas on the epistemic market—is not equal to the real value of a stock, or of an idea. A highly rated company today ends up in bankruptcy tomorrow—the high rating could have been the last public effort to save the reality through public discourse. But talking about action is not action—the “psychologist’s fallacy” as William James once told us leads our post-modern lives of limited news from the world at the high speed access through the media. The speedier the access the greater the possibilities of the distortions of what is accessed. This makes the processes of epistemophilia by far more prominent in contemporary society than those of epistemigenesis. It may take a long time—sometimes a scientist’s whole lifetime—to arrive at a new idea that may generate new knowledge, while the evaluation of an idea on any grounds can be instant, and definitive. The forgetting of many valuable “idea start-ups” in the history of sciences is due to their premature (negative) evaluation. Likewise, a similarly premature (but positive) evaluation can lead a particular branch of a science to pursue ephemeral goals being well-funded by the fascinated donors. In both cases of evaluation—positive or negative—what suffers is the development of new ideas. Either these are aborted in their embryonic phase or mutinied by excessive praise that eventually does not materialize in concrete outcomes.

Maintaining and Destroying Epistemophilia can be of two forms. First, it can play a maintenance role of knowledge—through enhancing the public discourses around the given set of ideas—providing the necessary conditions for the scientists to develop their knowledge under the cover of fascinated public discourse. For example—as long as the ethos that “human genome projects lead to development of new drugs that will combat a frightening disease X” is in place, human geneticists can investigate many new features of the actual (epigenetic) functioning of the genetic system. Or—as long as psychology can be said to benefit “the society” it can be tolerated by the administrative rulers—kings, tyrants, or parliaments—of that society. If, however, its public reputation were to change to that of producing know-how for the

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opponents of the society to topple the present governing system, the fate of psychology would change dramatically. Maintaining the positive public image of a science is important for the science. The second role of epistemophilia is that of destruction of knowledge. I realized that very clearly while working on my book on history of psychology (Valsiner, 2012) trying to understand why the overwhelming majority of psychological ideas that emerged in Germany in the 19th century—by authors such as Karl Rosenkranz, Hermann Lotze, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Leopold George, and many others have been completely forgotten or delegated to the domain of the “museum of the past” of psychology. At the same time, unlimited praise have been thrown at Wilhelm Wundt for accomplishing a peripheral task—an administrative one—of opening a psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. My finding was simple—they were all casualties to the war between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften that took place in German lands over the 19th century, resulting in psychology being “a natural science.” As such natural science has been declared—as an epistemophilic exaggeration—to be based on the assignment of numbers6 to psychological phenomena, the discipline was destined to a state where important psychological phenomena are never captured by the seeming rigor of the quantitative methods.

The Intergenerational Relations in Science: Between Filial Piety and Patricide Epistemogenesis is necessarily a collective enterprise—involving various generations of knowledge creators. The generations are mixed—in the same research unit one can encounter the old and the young together. Yet their power relations are organized on analogy with father/son (mother/ daughter) relation—mentor/student—or in a patron/client relation—advisor/student. It can also take on overtones of owner/slave relation—doctoral advisor/doctoral student relations on many occasions have a flavor of that kind. Doctoral students are—more often than not—considered to be “cheap labor” in factory-type research laboratories. The conduct of doctoral students may be constantly surveyed—by everyday clandestine observations or by formal “graduate evaluation” sessions. “Behaving professionally” can become a socialization task in the old/ young relationships in science. Years ago, while being on a committee for the final defense of a dissertation on psychometrics, I was astounded by the forceful power of the moral socialization efforts of my psychometric colleagues who were horrified by the young dissertation defender’s language

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use. The young PhD candidate—speaking of vectors—dared to make a comment that “vectors live in space X”—which triggered a uniform condemnation from all other psychometricians on the committee (“vectors do not live!!!”). I—imported to the committee because a token outsider was needed—could not understand why the young man’s (or woman’s) nicely figurative language use could have been so offensive to my esteemed colleagues. Using animistic language in mathematics is usual, and, last but not least—it all happened at the time when Bruno Latour made the animation of objects into an accepted practice in the social sciences. Of course the issue here was not the life or death of vectors, but that of “professional behavior” of a young person soon to be declared to be a PhD. Intergenerational power relations can be worked out through little details, or through manuals of professional ethics. The old/young relation in science is the arena where new ideas from the young are sieved through by both the wisdom and stupidity7 of the old and powerful. Much of the latter is governed by the often invisible hand of the social institutional guidance. Intelligent persons can easily begin acting in demonstrably destructive ways—while established in their institutional roles.8 Nevertheless—human resilience prevails. The young find ways of circumventing all kinds of socialization efforts by the old. In doing that they may become old themselves—and increasingly involved in social regulation of the acting by their own graduate students.

Institutional Intervention: Directing the Energies of the Young Innovation comes from the young. This is known already at the level of primates, and recognized also in the sciences. At different times—usually for extra-scientific reasons—you may become privileged over the old(er). The history of two famous psychologists from the former Soviet Union—Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria—has been told in many versions. Usually these stories have been about young talented scholars who rapidly developed new ideas in the tumultuous intellectual context of the Russia of the 1920s, and whose work became under politically motivated blacklisting in the Stalinist era of the 1930s. Less emphasis has been given to the context of their entry into the science of psychology in the 1920s. Both of them as youngsters—Luria 21, Vygotsky 28 years of age at the start of their work at Institute of Psychology in Moscow—were outsiders to the discipline of psychology. Luria was an aspiring psychoanalyst—corresponding with Freud but never analyzed by him. Vygotsky was a literary scholar.

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Their entrance into psychology was due to the institutional dismissal of older scholars of classical psychological education from the Institute of Psychology in the beginning of the 1920s (Valsiner, 1988). The political ethos of “building a new society” carried over to “building a new science”—and demolishing the old one. The situation seems different in the 21st century where we do not build a universal “new science” on the basis of a philosophical doctrine (turned into a political ideology) but rather invent new disciplines within science and protect their start-ups by talk of their future profitability for “the society.” Science—including that funded by ministries of defense in any country—is presented as benevolent and constructive. Epistemophilic discourses can help to maintain such image.

General Conclusions: Peers, Fathers and Policemen Science develops unevenly in its history—there are periods of rapid advancements, interspersed by potentially long “steady states” of repetition of the same ideas in ever new empirical details (i.e., Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science”), or outlawing a science by political powers (e.g., psychology disappearing from former Soviet Union from 1936 to mid-1960s). In this paper I have outlined the complementary processes of epistemogenesis and epistemophilia—demonstrating how the latter connects the development of new ideas with sociopolitical interests of social power holders. From that standpoint it is not surprising that the tasks for development of all kinds of “assessment techniques” in psychology is of high social demand. Such techniques usually operate on the basis of outcomes of different psychological processes and lead to evaluative claims—a new form of social capital in terms of “ratings”—that feeds directly into the epistemophilia dominated social negotiations. Evaluating Denmark as the country in the World where people say they are “the happiest” does not tell us anything about the ways in which such affective disposition is produced. Nor does it give anybody any guidelines how to keep being happy, or becoming even more—or, realistically, less happy. Social science research can be set up to satisfy the needs of epistemophilia in the actions of social institutions. In amidst that social relation of new ideas and their sociopolitical regulation are the idea-makers—scientists, young and old—whose own relationships determine the actual fate of the germinated new ideas. The intergenerational relation—like that of parents and children—is similarly central to the development of scientists. Here, examples of ardent following of father figures—or equally active efforts of symbolic patricide—recur. On the side

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of the father figures there are of course similar regulatory practices—the older generation scientist, before reaching his or her senility or an administrative post, may either encourage the younger scientist to go beyond his/ her ideas, or follow them without substantive modifications. The egos of the old can block the future for the young. Yet—behind all the interpersonal dramas of the relations between generations is the guiding agency of the social institutions who have a stake in how a given science develops—or is declared to develop. Their administrative regulations of the intergenerational relations guide the whole process of scientific enterprise. As is usual, the proliferation of people’s positions in the social power hierarchy coincides with age. Paternity and policing of the intellectual enterprise may well coincide in the reality of social construction of knowledge.

Acknowledgments I thank Günter Mey for his long-lasting friendship and his longitudinal persuasion to get this article written that resulted in my personal obligation to finally get it done. Kenneth R. Cabell brought to my attention the issues of ethics that otherwise, by my nature, I would have blissfully ignored (and been wrong). The writing of this paper gained support from the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology in the form of a Niels Bohr Professorship grant to Aalborg University.

Notes 1. This paper has been rejected by Journal für Psychologie. Jaan Valsiner decided to make it and some others available online; see this webpage: http://jaanvalsiner.wordpress.com/the-rejected-papers-project/. Thus this text is part of “The Rejected Papers Project.” 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. As Michel Foucault has put it poetically—“for civilization, from the sixteenth century up to our time, the ship has been at the same time not only the greatest instrument of economic development . . .  but the greatest reservoir of imagination. The sailing vessels are heterotopias par excellence. In civilizations without ships the dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police that of corsairs” (Foucault, 1998, p.185, my emphasis added) 4. Maurice Godelier (2003, p. 179) points to an interesting act of substitution: “When asked to define, on the basis of their professional experience, what a sexual act is for them, the anthropologist and the psychoanalyst apparently find themselves in distinct, but from a certain standpoint, similar, situations. Neither is in the habit of observing sexual acts directly in the course of their

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5.

6.

7.

8.

practice. At first sight, it seems that their experience consists of how people do or don’t talk about sex.” Rosa (personal communication, April, 21, 2009) created the notion of epistemic market by analogy with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic market”—“that he relates to symbolic capital, symbolic violence, etc., something he takes to be a real market and not a metaphor.” The market notion in Bourdieu is used as a playground for the habitus—as a specific structured place where people interact. Construction of power relations takes place on these markets. Interestingly, only one kind of number system—real numbers—is used in psychology. From a mathematician’s point of view, such limited scope of number use is strange (see Rudolph, 2013). From a perspective that considers real numbers to represent some psychological reality, it is an axiomatic given. Yet the numbers are assigned by psychologists, not by the reality. My older colleague Roger Bibace at Clark University never forgets the comment made by his doctoral advisor—Heinz Werner—to him as young PhD in the 1950s after a boring talk by some famous professor giving a colloquium— “Never underestimate the stupidity of professors!” A widespread example of this is the experience of receiving back anonymous “peer review” of a manuscript or a grant application that indicates to the author a basic absence of competence, or understanding, by the reviewer—yet the social power of the evaluation stays in place.

References Cairns, R. B. (1986). Phenomena lost. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The role of individual subject in scientific psychology (pp. 97–111). New York, NY: Plenum. Foucault, M. (1998). Different spaces. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault— Aesthetics, method, and epistemology (Vol. 2, pp. 175–186). New York, NY: The New Press. Godelier, M. (2003). What is a sexual act? Anthropological Theory, 3(2), 179–198. Kvale, S. (2003). The church, the factory and the market: Scenarios for psychology in a postmodern age. Theory & Psychology, 13(5), 579–603. Rosa, A. (1994). History of psychology as a ground for reflexivity. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Explorations in socio-cultural studies (pp. 149–168). Madrid, Spain: Fundacion Infancia y Aprendizaje. Rosenbaum, P. J., & Valsiner, J. (2011). The un-making of a method: From rating scales to the study of psychological processes. Theory & Psychology, 21(1), 47–65. Rudolph, L. (Ed.). (2013). Qualitative mathematics for the social sciences. London, England: Routledge. Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(1), 6–20.

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Valsiner, J. (1988). Developmental psychology in the Soviet Union. Hemel Hempstead, England: Wheatsheaf. Valsiner, J. (2012). A guided science: History of psychology in the mirror of its making. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Wagoner, B., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Rating tasks in psychology: from static ontology to dialogical synthesis of meaning. In A. Gülerce, A. Hofmeister, I. Staeuble, G. Saunders, & J. Kaye (Eds.), Contemporary theorizing in psychology: Global perspectives (pp. 197–213). Toronto, ON: Captus Press.

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25 The Human Psyche on the Border of Irreversible Time Forward-Oriented Semiosis1 Jaan Valsiner2

Abstract The psychology of human being is the science of goals-oriented actions that transcend the border of the present and incorporate the past and the future in the process of development (“The Yokohama Manifesto”—Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato, & Dazzani, 2016). Semiotic mediating devices—signs of various forms that operate in dynamic configurations—catalyze the processes of human acting, feeling, and thinking. The border of past and future forms a triple Gegenstand. The triplicate (goal-oriented action, resistance to the action, and reflection upon action) sets up the human condition within which higher psychological functions relate with their lower counterparts through forward-oriented semiosis—making signs, creating sign configurations, and setting up catalytic conditions for the future. The basic structural forms of these relations set up a new theoretical agenda for the science of psychology, maintaining the focus on human subjective self-reflection (the psyche) in its

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504    Beyond the Mind social contexts as the arena for investigation. Focusing on this arena makes it possible for psychology to avoid reduction of its phenomena either to neuroscientific or sociological empirical practices, while benefiting from the theoretical innovations in these adjacent sciences.

Psychology as science has always been theoretically myopic. Over the past three centuries, it has emerged onto the battlefield of the natural (Naturwissenschaften) and soul sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), taking sides, dismissing opponents on ideological grounds, and getting rid of psychology’s own phenomena. The psyche—a somewhat mysterious construction of human subjectivity by psychologists’ subjective perspectives—has been reduced downwards (to behavioral, physiological, or even genetic “causes”) or upwards (treating persons as “texts” in the social domain). The result of both directions of reduction is the same—denial of the intentional nature of human subjectivity, and with it, denial of the focus on development. The latter denial would keep the whole discipline within the confines of the ontological straightjacket set up in European thought by the traditions of René Descartes and Immanuel Kant. The reduction of the dynamic—feeling, striving, and self-reflecting—psyche to categorical classifications in the mind risks the loss of understanding the basic processes of human ways of being.

Roots of Our Troubles: Reductionist Ontologies and Defining of the “Evidence” The dangers of ontology—focus on being rather than becoming—continues with the inventions of new fashions of focus in psychology. In our era of the enthusiastic reduction of the psyche by the triumph of the neurosciences, it might not be unwise to remind ourselves that all such reduction efforts in the history of sciences have ended up with failures. Efforts of physics to reduce chemistry to itself—those by anorganic chemistry to explain away organic chemical phenomena, followed by organic chemistry attempting to explain physiological processes—are all examples of the uncritical reduction efforts. These efforts may be popular, but then they fail (Werbik & Benetka, 2016). The best example of the failure of our contemporary neurosciences in making sense of the psychological processes in terms of the brain functions is the widespread use of fMRI techniques to attempt to study psychological processes. The technique (fMRI) has acquired its prestige by the possibility of displaying beautiful color images of the functioning brain—overlooking the fact that the speed of transmission of signals in the brain is 50 to 100 times quicker than the speed of the blood flow changes (which are the technical basis for the brain images). A method

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(fMRI) that is functioning well for static depiction of the brain functions becomes scientifically mute when applied to the study of the dynamic side of these functions. The obvious halo of new technologies as productive—and fMRI is certainly so in medical practices—need not warrant its uncritical transfer of its use to a field where it misfits with the axiomatic base of the latter. A method cannot define a science, but a science necessarily leads to new methods. A second root for failure of psychology of the 21st century is in its uncritical acceptance of the practices of “evidence-based” perspectives in epidemiology (Bibace, Laird, Noller, & Valsiner, 2005) that—since their invention in the 1970s—have proliferated in the medical sciences and have entered into psychology. The key question here is—what is meant by evidence? Evidence about what, from which sources, and for what purposes? Psychology’s evidence comes from individual systems (i.e., persons as systems, groups as systems, communities as systems, even countries as systems—Valsiner, 1986, 2015). Its evidence is about context-bound unique psychological phenomena which would lose their Gestalt-qualities the very moment they are accumulated across time (within the system) or space (across systems—through statistical aggregations) because these qualities depend on the immediate relations with their contexts. Collected and context-freed data can tell us as much about the phenomena they are assumed to represent as cut flowers in a vase can tell us about the blossoming of the flowers in the garden. The purposes for evidence in psychology are in the understanding of the general processes of functioning of the psyche, rather than accumulating “local knowledge” or inductive generalization based on averages or prototypes (Lewin, 1931; Valsiner, 1984). Random sampling—the “gold standard” of evidence-based psychology—is proven to be not only unproductive but axiomatically impossible in the case of human systems (Valsiner & Sato, 2006). The alternative to that is the trajectory equifinality approach (Sato, Mori, & Valsiner, 2016). This approach opens the door of investigating the relations of what has happened in the past, what could have happened (but did not—by active preference of the person), with the field of possible futures as seen in the present. It includes the flow of time into the unit of analysis. The focus on unification of the arenas of general psychology with those of semiotics is the goal of this presentation. It can be proposed as a way to overcome the two failures of psychology as it has claimed—but not lived up to—the status of science (Wissenschaft). Psychology is a general science of human ways of being (Valsiner et al., 2016)—made available by the uniquely human capacity for creating, using, and abandoning signs. In

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other terms—in the work of the human psyche the centrality of semiotic mediation is the starting point for our investigation. This mediation is timedependent: Human beings do not re-act to “stimuli” but pro-act towards objects that they have made meaningful by themselves.

Need for Generic Unit of Analysis in Psychology There have been many for defining the unit of analysis of the psychological functions that takes into account the sign-mediation of human living and is open to the reality of that living as it is unfolding in irreversible time. The criteria for such unit seem- at first glance—paradoxical. The unit has to be a structure which simultaneously is undergoing transformation. It has to allow access to the process of structural innovation—how one structure comes to be of another form, based on some process of transformation. Lev Vygotsky back in 1927 defined such unit of analysis concisely: Psychology, as it desires to study complex wholes . . .  needs to change the methods of analysis into elements by the analytic method that reveals the parts of the unit [literally: breaks the whole into linked units—metod . . . analiza, . . . razchleniayushego na edinitsy]. It has to find the further undividable, surviving features that are characteristic of the given whole as a unity—units within which in mutually opposing ways these features are represented [Russian: edinitsy, v kotorykh v protivopolozhnom vide predstavleny eti svoistva]3 (Vygotsky, 1982, p. 16, emphasis in original)

The requirement for mutual opposition within systemic unity sets the stage for potential transformation of the unit. A unit is thus a minimal Gestalt within which the oppositional relationships between the parts play a central role (Figure 25.1). Yet the copresence of opposites is not sufficient for access to the processes of relations between the opposites. The historically established image of the unity of the yin and the yang (Figure 25.2) focuses on the unity of opposites—leaving out of the focus the different forms that opposition can take on the border of the two components, as well as the possibility of innovation of the system. Figure 25.2 is an example of Figure 25.1a.

Escaping From Harmony In contrast, a model of a self-maintaining system needs to include the conditions under which the system can transform into a new state, based on inner contradictions that relate with the contextual demands. The

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System AB

A

System CD

B

C

E

D

F

(a)

(b)

Figure 25.1  Systemic unity of an opposition: Contrast between the harmonious and the contradictory dynamic wholes (a) A harmonious system; (b) A contradictory whole.

Figure 25.2  The harmonious unity of opposites in a yin  yang presentation.

Belgian artist René Magritte has hinted upon such escape from the frame (Figure 25.3). The smoke that “escapes” beyond the picture frame that is painted into the picture in Figure 25.3 is a metaphoric example of the system open for innovation within its current dynamic stability (Figure 25.1b). The system maintains itself in a state of dynamic stability that entails a potential—to be actualized if the conditions afford it—for innovation. The harmonious coexistence of the mutually linked parts is only a manifest arena for internal tensions and their regulation to prepare for potential transformation of the system.4 Each “escape” from the current state of maintained stability of a system entails some action against—and beyond—a border. The “escape” is novelty—innovation that transcends the current frame. This focus on emergence is the necessary new perspective that stems from the variability amplification focus of the “second cybernetics” of Magoroh Maruyama (1963), and from Ilya Prigogine’s (1987, 1996) line of ideas of innovation happening under far from equilibrium conditions. The focus of research interests

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Figure 25.3  “This is not a pipe” (R. Magritte): Tension at the border.

becomes transposed from the “central tendency” indicators of a summary distribution to the outlayers of that distribution—the single unique cases documented at each end and the new (not yet documented) cases that are likely (but not guaranteed) to come into existence if our observations were to continue (Figure 25.4). Psychological science—as long as human beings are intentional and can refrain from acting under specific conditions— needs to consider events that do not happen in ways similar to those that have taken place. Index of Central Tendency

Variability Amplification (look at first emerged case)

Variability Constriction (averaging and prototyping)

Variability Amplification (look at first emerged case)

Variability Amplification as Basis for Research (look at newly emerged and about to emerge novel phenomena)

Figure 25.4  Refocusing of psychology’s research interests from the depiction of the central tendencies to the study of emergence of novelty.

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Figure 25.4 provides the contrast between traditional research strategies in psychology (variability constriction—summary of data freed from time, accumulated inductively, and generalized from—on the basis of the indices of the central tendencies of a distribution). This strategy is axiomatically set to be “blind” to emergence of novelty (not represented by the indices of the central tendencies) and to development (as it dissociates the assembled data from the temporal context of their appearance). The belief in the “natural order”—static and immutable, merely hidden behind the “measurement errors”—is guaranteed by the reification of the Gaussian “normal” distribution. Distributions are only collections of specimens arranged by characteristics of the collectables and their accumulated frequencies. They do not represent any of the items in the collection—only the mass accumulation of the collection itself.

Collections in Time A temporal look at the phenomena implies no reification of any form of distribution, but observation of the accruing of the phenomena as they emerge in their novel forms. The notion of border is here given as a generalized metaphor that refocuses our attention of investigation from the inductively accumulated time-free data—characterized by statistically established indexes of central tendencies—to that of the emergence of the single new case that has not been observed before (Figure 25.5). Locations of Emergence of the first Y Phenomenon (novelty)

Previous Emergence of X (novelty)

Inductive Accumulation of X-like phenomena

Irreversible time: past

Locations of Emergence of the first Z Phenomenon (novelty)

Inductive Accumulation of Y-like phenomena

present 1

present 2

Zone of Potential Future Recurrences of Z-like Phenomena (potential new collection)

Figure 25.5  Where the research is located—on the border of the emergence of novel phenomenon (or: the first specimen is necessarily a single case).

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Distribution seen in irreversible time is an account of populational proliferation of a newly emerged phenomenon—similarly in intrasystemic or intersystemic terms. There is no inherent value in the shape of the distribution.5 What is crucial is the location for innovation—at the border of what has been observed (X-like 6 phenomena) and what has not yet been observed (Y-like phenomena). Distributions of phenomena—time- or sizebased—are collections, as emphasized above. They accumulate over time, and depend on the strategies by which they are obtained (“sampling”). As collections they have no value beyond being assembled in ways that get rid of their relations and times of occurrence.

The Minimal Gestalt as Unit of Analysis: The Dynamic Gegenstand The notion of Gegenstand is a concept that has been used in German-language philosophy and psychology up to the 20th century, but not used widely in psychology since 1920s onwards.7 Its reuse can lead to creation of a unit of analysis that lives up to the criteria outlined above.

The Structure of Gegenstand The Gegenstand is an object that is involved in the act of objecting. A simplest structural depiction can be given as →[ ] The Gegenstand includes the directed orientation (→) together with an oppositional barrier ([ ]). The orientation objects to the barrier, and the barrier objects to the orientation. Through that asymmetric combination of parts of the system the possibility of introduction of the notion of irreversible time becomes possible to add to the structure: →[] The PAST  FUTURE oppositional structure of the irreversible time defines the location of the border processes (the PRESENT—vertical line) that constitute the location where all psychological functions take place (Marsico & Varzi, 2016). All traditional lower-level psychological functions—sensation, perception, memory, and so on—happen within irreversible time oriented across the line of the PRESENT towards the FUTURE.

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All the higher psychological functions—intentional goal-orientation setting, thinking in anticipation of the future, processes of imagination, and so on—are willfully8 crossing the border of the PRESENT. Human psychology is a science of intentional processes9 with the centrality of personal agency.10 All these processes of the psyche are constantly interdependent11 with their social context that cannot be separated from these processes. The triple nature of the Gegenstand (Figure 25.6) in the human psyche includes semiotic regulation in three locations. First of all—human activity domains are organized by semiotic mediation at the societal level. A person entering a new here-and-now activity setting (e.g., restaurant, church, office) sets for oneself socially mandated constraints for how to act in this setting. This creates a gap—projected into the immediate future—that is filled in by imagination of as-if kind (“what will happen when I now enter setting X?”—Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013, p. 308). This anticipatory set-up of a border zone is an expansion of the meaning from the as-is state of the present. Imagination is the process through which the oppositional barrier is set up for moving the present towards the future. Hence it is a universal mechanism that at any time moment guarantees the movement towards the future. It is constructive—setting up a border that attracts the movement towards it by the actor. It becomes the border zone to pass through12—and Individual sets up conditions for negotiating “border crossing”

The border is a structured zone with potential trajectories of passing through that can force the movement of the border to a new location

History of the given society, operating through the individual, sets up the border zone as a structure of constraintes that include potential transit zones

Figure 25.6  The triple Gegenstand: acting, counter-acting, and self-reflexive structure.

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a meaningful horizon that is constantly moved ahead once the future becomes past. Both the social texture of the border zone and its personal specification are semiotic processes. The third domain of semiotic regulation of the Gegenstand is the selfreflection about relating with the border. In traditional psychology’s terms, it is an act of objectivation of the move through the “border zone.” In terms of the triple Gegenstand unit here, it is a semiotic tool to find further ways of crossing the semiclosed border. Reflection has a role in regulation of the forward move. The “triple Gegenstand” is set up in irreversible time. It breaks the continuity of the duration—there is no fusion between past and present, but a constant move through the structured border zone (turning the future into past) between the previous and new presents. The absence of fusion entails oppositional relations of two kinds—open trajectories for move to the future through the border, and potential “leap” to new form of the status of the border. The human psyche constantly produces novel phenomena—through the basic universal process of semiosis that involves constant innovations through the interpretant (in terms of C. S. Peirce—Innis, 2016; Stjernfelt, 2014). It is the interpretant that—in Peirce’s terms—innovates the meaning of the Gegenstand (Stjernfelt, 2015).

Setting the Stage: The Making of Time We invent and use signs for living onwards. The reality of living strictly prescribes the road of “no returns” in our life courses. The invention of signs allows us to “tune in” our reflection of our living with that of the flow of irreversible time. The primary invention by way of signs is the making of the distinction between what is (here-and-now, the PRESENT), what was (the remembered PAST), and the imaginary FUTURE. The PRESENT is the necessary “anchor point”—or “border zone”—between the PAST and the FUTURE. By theoretically assuming that border zone, we can begin to consider how the FUTURE—unknowable in principle as it has not yet happened—becomes known—by becoming a part of the PAST. This has been the perennial problem for developmental psychology (Carre, Valsiner, & Hampl, 2016) and is exemplified by the complexity of the theoretical problems Lev Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development has given for psychology (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2014). Psychology over its past has avoided the focus on development (Cairns, 1998; Valsiner, 2012), while for making sense of the psyche, such avoidance blocks the discipline from becoming scientific (in terms of Wissenschaft). The metatheoretical limit upon making sense of developmental phenomena is the contrast between models

The Human Psyche on the Border of Irreversible Time    513 A

B

B A

A

B

(a)

C

(b)

Figure 25.7  Assumptions about time (a) Monotonic process; (b) Polytonic branching.

of time—monotonic (reversible) and polytonic (branching, irreversible)—as depicted in Figure 25.4. Time is usually presented as a dimension similar to those of space (Figure 25.7a). Whether it is assumed to be of linear or curvilinear form, events that take place along that dimension can be compared with one another without assuming that their sequence of appearance (A before B or B after A) has any role for making sense of A or B. In the making of the collection of events in time, it is of no consequence whether A is observed before B, or B before A. Physical notions of time have no historicity (Lyra & Valsiner 2011). In case of open systems—that develop through links with environment— time becomes irreversible. Instead of being a dimension, time becomes life course. The system begins, develops, and vanishes. The sequence of appearance of events becomes central—the sequence A → B is not replaceable by B → A. Parents give birth to children, but children cannot give birth to parents. Efforts to make sense of irreversible time have existed in the occidental philosophy in the past. So have goals-oriented perspectives—that necessarily operate across the border of the PRESENT—been attempted in psychology. We may benefit from a careful re-analyses of the philosophy of Henri Bergson of irreversibility of time, and of William McDougall’s “hormic psychology”—to arrive at a synthetic basis for creating a general psychology of human being. Both of these perspectives have been thrown into intellectual garbage piles by the makers of histories of philosophy and psychology by giving them reverence for once-tried but “proven useless” ideas. I here take them out from the garbage bags and put them into an intellectual “recycling center” for moving towards future in psychology.

The Duration: Contribution by Henri Bergson The philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) has been an important source of inspiration in the 20th century sciences—ranging from physical

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chemistry (Prigogine, 1987) to psychology of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, as well to social sciences (Maruyama, 1978) and the arts (Obrist, 2005; Prigogine, 1996). His focus on the process of experience unfolding in time (duration—duree). Three of his four main works are relevant for the present exposition of ideas come from the period 1889 (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience—Bergson, 1908, 1913) to 1907 (L’Évolution créatrice—Bergson, 1911), with Matière et Mémoire published interim, in 1896 (Bergson, 1906). Taken together these three major treatises set the stage for a new perspective of Naturphilosophie—the German invention of the 19th century—proliferating in the 20th century—with a strong French accent. The central contribution from Bergson to the study of the psyche is the introduction of the focus on irreversibility of time as both the inevitable given of being, and the immediate context of becoming. More precisely— the being is constant becoming. By this simple axiomatic turn Bergson set the stage for developmental science to be central for psychology—together with many conceptual obstacles that his perspective introduces. The first of the latter is the assumption of no distinction at the level of the processes of experiencing—the pure duration: Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states. For this purpose it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer endure. (Bergson, 1913, p. 100)

The focus on release (“lets itself live”) indicates the role of higher-level regulatory (ego) functions that interfere with the endurance of the duration. The dynamic relation between “letting live” and its opposite (“not letting live”—through constraints set upon the flow of experience) is the arena where the reality of enduring is negotiated. Time is crucial. The enduring duration blends together the past and the present—the distinction not inherent in the flow of time, but superimposed on it. Using the example of a melody, Bergson elaborated his focus on becoming-into-the other. The sequence of notes in a melody link the past and present into an organic whole—we perceive sequence of notes “in one another”—linking them into a melody through mutual immersion or penetration: “an interconnexion and organization of elements, each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except in abstract thought” (Bergson, 1913, p. 101). Two issues organize the psyche in Bergsonian notion of pure duration— the focus on whole  parts relation (simultaneous, abstract, separating)

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M

O

X

Y

Figure 25.8  Emergence of choice trajectories through abstraction—out of the duration (Bergson, 1908, p. 135 and 1913, p. 176).

and the focus on enduring (concrete, forward-flowing stream of experience). In Figure 25.8—taken from Bergson’s own presentation—we can observe the ways in which abstraction from the flow of duration breaks the flow of immediacy and introduces categories. For choice to emerge abstraction is essential. The sequence M → O in Figure 25.5 is that of duration, while X and Y become crystalized as possible future trajectories at point O. At that point, we can use the invariable signs X and Y to denote, not these tendencies or states themselves, since they are constantly changing, but the two different directions which our imagination ascribes to them for the greater convenience of language. It will also be understood that these are symbolical representations, that in reality there are not two tendencies, or even two directions, but a self which lives and develops by means of its very hesitations, until the free action drops from it like an over-ripe fruit. (Bergson, 1913, p. 176, emphasis added)

The processes of abstractive imagination make it possible to operate willfully within the confines of the duration, create the “thing-like” directions, and overcome the hesitations through an emerging feeling of “my will” (to go in direction X rather than Y). The “free action dropping like over-ripe fruit” shows the conceptual “blindness” of the retrospective efforts involved in prospective flow of duration. The phenomena of “free will” are thus emerging in the irreversibly forward-moving flow of experiencing as an abductive backward projection from the proceeding duration.13 As the moment of the move along trajectory O → X is in process, the hesitations of the past dialogue with the abstracted alternative (O → Y) are

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forgotten. The result is the specification of an outcome (categories X and Y) together with the loss of the focus on the origin of the categories.14 The directions O → X and O → Y “thus become the chosen (choses), the real paths into which the highroad of consciousness leads, and it depends only on the self which of them is engaged (qu’au moi de s’engager indifferement)” (Bergson, 1913, p. 176). Figure 25.8 is similar to Figure 25.7b, and the notion of constructed bifurcation is at the heart of semiotic mediation of psychological processes (Innis, 2016; Sato et al., 2016). It is in the situation described in Figure 25.8 that the sign mediation can emerge—without the “hesitations” as to next move within the duration no emergence of any mediation is necessary. In his critique of Bergson’s philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1912, p. 347) pointed out that Bergson’s philosophy is not for those “whose action is built on contemplation.” And that of all sciences undoubtedly is. Bergson’s philosophy introduces the centrality of irreversible time— yet, by direct transposing it into duration (which in itself defies the making of borders in its flow), renders the notion of irreversible time useless as a further analytic tool. Analysis—even of hyper-speedy irreversible flows such as duration—requires distancing from it, in the form of contemplation. It is therefore no surprise that philosophers and psychologists after Bergson have had little to build upon beyond the notion of duration. None of the epistemological tools—well-fitting for sciences of the stable phenomena— could fit the irreversible phenomena. Bergson himself would rely heavily on the intuitive grasping of the world—explaining intuition through the conceptual blindness of the abstractive hindsight (see Figure 25.8). In other terms—the functioning of the mind in the flow of duration ends up “concealing” the duration itself once it is pushed into a position to reflect upon it. The flow of duration—in irreversible time—allows no distinctions, while the abstractive process—raising above the flow of duration—creates structural distinctions that begin to organize the flow. As such they frame the duration, guiding it in directions that are not part of the flow. Yet—at the same time—they are part of the duration as they guide its flow. Bergson’s paradoxical solution the vitality of living is in the simultaneous acceptance of the irreversible flow and its structuring by abstracted time-reversed organizers. Bergson was interested in how memory enters into the present— rather than how the present leads to future.

The Universe in Irreversible Flow The irreversibility of time received further advancement in the work of Ilya Prigogine, who demonstrated that time asymmetry in natural processes

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occurs even at level of chemical phenomena. Certainly no teleology is applicable at the level of chemical processes, yet the open-endedness for the emergence of novel forms on the basis of the past creates a major revelation in scientific thinking: If the world were built at the image designed for reversible eternal systems by Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. There would be no room for irreversible phenomena such as chemical reactions or biological processes. For unstable systems, which have a privileged time direction, we see a dispersion of the initial volume in phase space. Then we cannot impose initial conditions which would force an ensemble of points to concentrate on a single point. The future remains open. (Prigogine, 1987, p. 102)

If the openness of the future is present already at the lowest possible level—chemical processes—then what happens at the higher levels of structural organization of biological, psychological, and social systems? In these systems we need to posit not merely the emergence of novelty but purposeful making of it— in a setting where the past does not predict or determine the future.15

The Purposeful Nature of the Mind William McDougall (1871–1938) was one of the originators of social psychology (McDougall, 1909). Having been part of the fieldwork on the Borneo (Hose & McDougall, 1912), he could ask relevant social questions (McDougall, 1921). Participation in the Torres Strait Expedition of Alfred C. Haddon and William Rivers in 1898 was further act of widening the experiential basis for purposive psychology. The important shift for McDougall was to introduce change in direction. For McDougall, all re-actions by living matter were pro-actions—they had to do with sustaining and enhancing the life of the organism. Goalsorientations set the stage for the future, while being based on the past. Instincts would be the first “building bases” for the propensities for the future. Propensity entails both the creation of the goal projected as desired onto the future and the efforts to achieve these. We exist as we plan—and make some of the plans into realities. As human beings we may develop social discourses that allow us to reflect upon our purposive actions. However—our capacity to reflect upon our purposes is not equal to the actions themselves. Purposive action can be “covered up” by talk about it—which may deny it, re-present it in various forms, or may fortify it.

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If we assume that human actions are purposive—oriented towards some future goals (which are also purposefully set), the question—what are the vehicles for such pre-emptive orientation of acting?—becomes important. Here a solution is found in turning general psychology of human being— starting from higher psychological functions—into a discipline where sign mediation is central for the bridge to the future. This leads to linking the theoretical general psychology with semiotics—the science of making and using signs. Semiotic mediation becomes the central tenet of human psychology.

How Semiotic Mediation Works At the general level, the functioning of the human psyche is simple: human beings make signs, use them to organize their lives to guide their move to the future, and abandon these signs when these are no longer necessary. Signs “stand in” for something (else than they themselves) in some capacity, and for some purpose. They are made to do this by the sign-makers— human beings—who act in order to “fit in” with the constantly changing environment. As the latter is undergoing constant fluctuations, the notion of “fitting in” (adaptation) becomes that of anticipation of possible and personally desirable future conditions. Human beings are goals-oriented actors who first create the goal-orientations and then—through signs—attempt to pre-adapt to the anticipated conditions. What is a sign? Using the general notion from Charles Sanders Peirce, a sign is something than stands for something else in some capacity. Yet, dependent on the role of the signs in the presentation, representation, and interpretation processes, the signs belong to different categories. Table 25.1 illustrates the different functions of signs. The most frequently used triplet—that of ICON–INDEX–SYMBOL—belongs to the representational domain where semiotics as a discipline analyzes the meaning worlds “out there”—in the complex objects of representations. The same sign—a naturally emerged “snow rabbit” visible on a mountainside (Figure 25.9) as presentation could perform the role of a marker of a general law (legisign—it is the rule that it marks the time of starting to plant), or act in the RHEMA–DICENT SIGN–ARGUMENT sequence (Stjernfelt, 2015). We create signs of different complexity for different purposes—to act (Figure 25.9) or not to act (Figure 25.10). Furthermore—our human capacity to reflect upon our acting, our nonacting, and our reflections upon it all—are all made possible by our sign-making and sign-use. The notion of “you will be fined” (Figure 25.10) for “littering” involves a complex reflection about values. Abandoning an object may happen in matter of fact ways, but purposeful throwing it away is

The Human Psyche on the Border of Irreversible Time    519 TABLE 25.1  Charles S. Peirce’s Classification of Signs Function

Phenomenological or formal categories

Presentation

Firstness

Representation

Secondness

Interpretation

Thirdness

Ontological or material categories Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

A sign is “mere quality”

A sign is “actual existent”

A sign is “a general law”

QUALSIGN

SINSIGN

LEGISIGN

A sign relates with its object in having “some character in itself”

A sign relates with its object in having “some existentail relation to the object”

A sign relates with the object in having “some relation to the interpretant”

ICON

INDEX

SYMBOL

“Possibility”

“fact”

“reason”

RHEMA

DICENT SIGN

ARGUMENT

Figure 25.9  The “Snow Rabbit” as a sign for farmers—“now it is time to plant” (courtesy of Tatsuya Sato).

an act thoroughly semiotically mediated. Places for the latter are specifically constructed, and differentiation of meaningful action (contrast between “garbage” and “recycling”) socially suggested (Figure 25.11). The social suggestion for “re-cycling” of used objects involves the task of classification of objects—for which the signs “paper,” “plastic,” “metal,”

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Figure 25.10  Signs directing us not to act (“do not throw away things here!”).

Figure 25.11  Signs for action: Socially appropriate (and promoted) places for “littering” (note the equifinality of the “garbage” in the bag, after the classification of the objects according to the social norms of “recycling”).

and so on are necessary for the act of putting the throw-away objects into the same plastic container through various-shaped holes (Figure 25.11). The deeply moral slogan of “saving our planet” is a hypergeneralized and personally internalized sign that guides our general relationship with our environments.

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Models of Semiotic Mediation In abstract terms, the functioning of signs within the human psyche is depicted in Figure 25.12. Signs play a double role in the organization of the ongoing flow of experience—that of giving form to the immediate ways of “being in the world,” as well as producing feeds-forward orientation for the indeterminate future. The crucial feature of signs-in-action (or—signs-not-leading-to action—inhibitory signs) is their operation on the border of the PAST and the FUTURE— within the time moment we call PRESENT. This distinction is created by inserting a border—the state of the PRESENT—into the ongoing flow of experience (duration). This border—the PRESENT—is a minimal time period between the PAST and the FUTURE. It becomes an abstract anchor point—an infinitely small time moment that we abstractively project onto our ever-proceeding duration—relative to which the PAST and the FUTURE can be defined. As all our concepts are signs that we have created ourselves, so are the related meanings of the past, the present, and the future. These meanings constitute a triplet in co-genetic logic (Herbst, 1995)—they can exist only together, and depend upon the border (PRESENT) being established. If the notion of the PRESENT is not established, no notion of the PAST or FUTURE is possible. By setting their relationship up in a particular way we re-organize our thinking about time.16 Different ways exist for getting rid of time in our abstractive generalizations. For example, if the PRESENT is infinitely expanded towards both the PAST and the FUTURE, we cease thinking of time as irreversible, and arrive at an ontological, time-free, meaning of our existence. The PRESENT Present Moment

S

Past

The Act

Future

Irreversible Time

Figure 25.12  Semiotic mediation: A sign reorganizes the process of facing the future.

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covers the time period from infinite past to infinite future—and thus the notion of irreversible time vanishes. This extension allows us to present our worlds as if static, and treat their dynamic features as “errors.” In the opposite case, complete constriction of the PRESENT into the infinitely small time interval eliminates it and leaves our reasoning to contemplate the infinitely speedy move in our flow of experiencing—thus turning them into fused unity. We end up in the dissolution of time in the infinite dynamics of the processes—both Heraclitus and John Dewey have arrived at that solution, and Bergson’s emphasis on the basic flow of duration is of similar kind. Conceptualizing human experience as irreversible flow of no time coordinates eliminates the possibility of reflecting upon that very flow. It is precisely here where semiotic mediation enters—to allow us to regulate our experience, and reflect upon it. But how can a sign—emerging and functioning here-and-now—regulate the future—which is in principle not knowable ahead? All the more that the sign used here-and-now may be abandoned after its usefulness has ended. I posit that signs set up feed-forward signals of approximate kinds (Figure 25.13) that catalyze the possible events on the person’s life course. These approximate signs are hypergeneralized, field-like signs—“semiotic clouds” of a kind—to be retranslated into new signs in the future. That future retranslation (contextualization) is posited to happen through setting up catalytic conditions for future experiences.17 The signs created today and for the purposes of today are not “causing” a future event in one’s experience. Instead, they set up the “frame” for such experiences—the demand for children at mealtimes to “wash your hands!” is expected to set up the

Present Moment

Hypergeneralized anticipatory sign

S CATALYTIC SUPPORT

Past

The Act

Future

Irreversible Time

Figure 25.13  Semiotic mediation: How a sign regulates the principally unknowable future.

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hypergeneralized and internalized feeling for “I need to be clean” that translates into specific future contexts as a catalytic condition. The mechanism posited for organizing the in-principle unknowable future by signs that are being made in the present is that of forward-oriented hyper-generalization. Signs that are made to function here-and-now (S in Figure 25.13) become not merely generalized (e.g., the sign S may become generalized into generic concept of “S-ness”: “this way of acting here-and-now is immoral” → the concept of MORALITY  NON-MORALITY in generic terms). “S-ness” is a category created by the meaning-maker. I posit that such formation of generalized category—“choice” category in terms introduced by Mammen (2016)—feeds further into even more general—hyper-generalized—state of the sign (hypergeneralized anticipatory sign in Figure 25.13) that makes the person prepared in general to face future concrete situations where the given meaning system (encoded into field-like signs of infinite borders—but therefore of total “take-over” of the human mind) may become applicable. This would equal “sense category” in Mammen’s terms—which guides the operation of the “choice” categories. The processes of human being are guided by hypergeneralized sign fields operating “downwards”—towards new here-and-now action setting.

From Generalization to Hypergeneralization The process of hyper-generalization involves the centrality of affective marking of the feeling into (Einfühlung) the anticipated situation. The rational discourse about the issues (“justice,” “morality,” “patriotism,” etc.) end at hypergeneralization, while the affective imperative (“I just feel I should act in way X in this situation”) begins to prevail (Figure 25.14). The generalized rational world view becomes nonrationally fortified by deep affective imperatives for “being-in-the-world.” Figure 25.14 illustrates the emergence of the total feeling about an occidental generalized image (Christianity’s meaning complex of the Holy Mary) in its semiotic construction. Starting from ordinary similes in everyday discourse (“you are like Maria” . . . “she is not like Maria”) the generalization process moves to generic categories (“purity” etc.) but does not stop there. It leads to the establishment of hypergeneralized feeling about the values that are attributed to “Maria” image. Any bodily image—concrete or abstract—of any “candidate” for the psychological role of “Mary” in one’s subjective domain is gone. What is left is the overarching feeling of “female holiness” that covers the full totality of the meaning-making mind. It is here where the commonsensically labeled “intuitive understanding” of the

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Hyper-Generalized Feeling Field Imageless feeling of hyper-generalized “Maria” in the totality of subjective worlds of the person

Generalized Feeling of closeness to all that belongs to Maria

which is—to what Maria belongs to, or all what she represents

“sacrifice”

“love”

“You are like Maria”

“purity”

“care”

“You are like Maria”

Figure 25.14  The process of hypergeneralization.

world actually happens—in forms that capture the totality of human reflection of the world without translating it either into words or into images. It is therefore not surprising that all religious systems—as social institutions— develop their specific techniques for fostering such silent but total Einfühlung into the world. When life circumstances demand it, such hypergeneralized sign-fields become contextualized in generic guidance catalysts in the form of general meaning conglomerates (“fatalism,” “happiness,” etc.) that make it possible to endure the ever-dynamic duration of one’s living.

Summary: Psychology With the Focus on Emergent Variability For psychological research this focus on emergence has three major implications: 1. Making sense of the psychological phenomena is possible only when these phenomena are studied while they emerge—rather than predicted before they have come into being, or explained after they have become established—a point made by James Mark

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Baldwin back in 1906 (Baldwin, 1906, p. 2118; see analysis in Valsiner, 2009b). This is an axiomatic requirement that follows from the reality of irreversible time. 2. As an inevitable consequence of (1)—psychology as Wissenschaft is necessarily developmental in its core (Zittoun et al., 2013)—with the empirical focus on the phenomena that are currently in the process of emerging (Figure 25.11). Psychology as normative science (Brinkmann, 2016) is idiographically nomothetic (i.e., builds general understanding from single phenomena—Molenaar, 2004, Valsiner, 2016). The normative methodology for such inquiry is qualitative in its core (Valsiner, 2005) and links reconstructed past events with future imaginary trajectories of living (Sato et al., 2016). 3. Following both (1) and (2), the focus on what are appropriate phenomena for psychology to study leads us to giving equal emphasis to what is observable (usually denoted by the labels of “behavior,” “actions,” etc.), what is implicated within these actions (intentionality—Benetka & Joerchel, 2016; goals-orientedness) and what is implied for the future (imagination—Tateo, 2016; Zittoun, 2016). What is and what might be(come)—the as-is and as-if contrast brought into psychology by Hans Vaihinger in late 19th century (Vaihinger, 1920)—is situated in the dynamic border of the PAST and the FUTURE—the arena of the variably definable “border zone” of the PRESENT. These three expectations for psychological science call for clear definition of the unit of analysis that would honor the assumed nature of the phenomena. I suggest that the focus on a dynamic oriented structure of the Gegenstand (usually translated as “object”—with the focus on the act of objecting) can be such generic unit of analysis. Yet the traditional models of Gegenstand are not sufficient—it needs to be situated on the border of the division between past and future. The recognition of uniqueness of human experiences is not the end, but the beginning of scientific inquiry. Thus—looking at the world from the angle of the physical sciences—Ilya Prigogine summarized his personal experience in science: Our time is one of expectation, of anxiety, of bifurcation. Far from an “end” of science, I feel our period will see the birth of a new vision, one of new science whose cornerstone encloses the arrow of time; a science that makes of us and of our creativity the expression of a fundamental trend in the universe. (Prigogine, 1996, p. 42)

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The beginning of such general psychological science can be found in the return to the study of processes of human being—making meaning in the flow of irreversible time with all of the uniqueness of the present moment in its full affective coloring. It is precisely in this flow of unique experiences that universal principles of the human psyche make the experience possible in its subjective meaningfulness. It is not the intuition, but forward-oriented semiosis that constitutes the universal core of the infinite variability in the human ways of feeling.

Acknowledgements The preparation of this paper was supported by the Niels Bohr Professorship grant by Danske Grundforskningsfond. Pina Marsico’s feedback on a previous draft of this paper was crucial for its improvement.

Notes 1. Invited address at the 31st International Congress of Psychology Yokohama, July 27, 2016. 2. Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. 3. It is important to note that the intricate link with the dialectical dynamicity of the units—which is present in the Russian original—is lost in English translation, which briefly stated the main point: “Psychology, which aims at a study of complex holistic systems, must replace the method of analysis into elements with the method of analysis into units” (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 5). 4. This is captured well in Georg Simmel’s intuition about the dynamics of explicit conflict and nonconflict states (Simmel, 1904, p. 800). Preparations for war are clandestinely going on during peacetime, while preparations for peace happen in the shadow of war atrocities that are often carried out by representatives of “civil societies” with claims of high moral standards and benefits for the humankind (Valsiner, 2005, 2009a). 5. The normative nature of the Gaussian curve (the “normal curve”) is such by social convention. For developing systems it is the Poissonian, rather than Gaussian, distribution that is of use in substantive interpretations. Regular time-freed frequency distributions (which Figure 25.4 is not) would share the same characteristic—novelty is included with frequency =1 only on the extreme borders of the distribution. 6. The specimens within categories X and Y are never the same, only similar. This is the result of “good infinity” in the unfolding of events. That similarity—in contrast to sameness— is crucial for development. 7. The most advanced treatment of Gegenstand that has been produced in psychology was that of Alexius Meinong’s “Graz School” at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries (best overview in Amseder, 1904; for our contemporary analyses, Albertazzi, Jacquette, & Poli, 2001). Its focus was ontological, and the

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

result of the investigation a two-tiered typology (of existing and subsisting objects) that was decidedly time-free. In contrast, here I introduce the notion of Gegenstand into the framework of irreversible time as a result of abstract introduction of the border of the present to create the past-present-future contrast. The flow of our experiencing—duration in Bergson’s terms—is structured by the experiencer by creating such moving boundary within irreversible time. The notion of willfulness of human action grows out of the semiotic structuring of the self—Rosa, 2016, pp. 122–123. It is the capacity for commanding oneself in orientation towards some signs-marked future objective. The inherent intentionality of the phenomena of the human psyche was of course emphasized by Franz Brentano (1874) following Aristotle (Brentano, 1862, 1867). Interesting that focus on intentionality was kept separate from the notion of irreversible time—emerging from the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1916) in the 1880s and 1890s. Brentano’s (1902/1988) coverage of various notions of time references all pertinent efforts prior to the beginning of the 20th century—except that of Bergson (which was available since 1889) William Stern’s personology (Stern, 1935) is a starting point for focusing on the centrality of the maker of the complexity—it is the individual human being who creates one’s goal orientations, makes them meaningful, and acts towards them, making sense while striving for meaning (Salvatore, 2016a, 2016b). Such striving is characterized (Lehmann-Muriithi, Cardoso, & Lamiell, 2016) as centered on values—which are the prime example of hypergeneralized signs which set up conditions for catalytic support for actions. The notion of interdependence is inevitable for open systems—to which all living and social phenomena belong. The living beings are characterized as selfmoving things that bring about their past in order to orient movement with intelligence, that is, selecting relevant aspects of the past. In non-living beings, movement (or lack of movement) is the actualization of all the past trajectory of one thing in its interaction with the rest of matter. In most living things, on the contrary, the past takes the form of motor habits that are constantly changing but concentrating, in a bodily tendency, tracts of the past trajectory relevant for routine action. (Haye, 2013, p. 247){\ntext} In terms of dynamic systems theory, the border zone becomes an “attractor”— yet one that the meaning-making actor has established for oneself (Rosa, 2016; Valsiner, 1999). As such it is a person-initiated construction projected into the future, not an external condition that “attracts” the dynamic process from a distance. It is always built through imagination, projected into the future by the agent, and acted towards as if it were real. The process of abstraction distances the mental process from the immediate flow of duration. Through reconstructive reflection upon the past, the ego can present to itself the abstract image of “retracing” the choice, and through that distancing from duration—makes recognition of “free act” of “choice” in which “contrary action was equally possible” (Bergson, 1913, p. 177, emphasis added). In other terms—decisions about “equal possibility” (i.e., propensity notion of probability) are possible only through abstractive distancing from the flow of duration as retrospective constructions—yet projected into the future. That projection is possible if there is symmetry between past and fu-

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14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

ture—which there is not. Hence probabilistic predictions promising to extrapolate from past to future defy the process of moving to the future. As Mammen (2016) has outlined the contrast between choice and sense categories through an axiomatic deduction, the history of their joint roots has escaped the interest of contemporary cognitive sciences that posits these ontologically, rather than attempts to investigate their history. Which is the basic premise of all open systems that depend in their continuous existence upon exchange relations with their environments. The contrast PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE applies to all models of time—ranging from linear, to curvilinear, to cyclical (Yamada & Kato, 2006). At any time moment in any of the time models, there is the contrast between what has taken place and what has not yet taken place, even if a fully circular model of time is assumed—at any moment the distinction is possible. Psychology has traditionally focused on the discovery of causal relations. Instead, in the framework that emphasizes pre-adaptation to future, it is the catalytic conditions (Cabell & Valsiner, 2014) that constitute the fitting conceptual framework for analysis. “That series of events is truly genetic which cannot be constructed before it has happened, and which cannot be exhausted backwards, after it has happened” (Baldwin, 1906, p. 21). It follows that the only access to phenomena is in their process of happening (emerging) that makes microgenetic (Aktualgenese) perspective central for methodology.

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COFFEE BREAK

7

Why Do Social Sciences Need to Be Basic? Giuseppina Marsico Jaan Valsiner

T

he desire to see psychology—as a science of human ways of being—similarly to the generality of other basic sciences—runs through the whole of this book and its predecessor (Raudsepp, 2017). But what is “basic”? In what ways is physics or chemistry “basic” in contrast to psychology? The object domains of each of these sciences are different—so each of them can be “basic” only in their own domain-specific ways. The contrast implied here is that of BASICAPPLIED. This contrast is not an exclusive opposite (either BASIC or APPLIED) but an inclusive one—what is “basic” relates to the practices (“applied”) and what is “applied” can only be so because the “basic” give it direction. Psychology as science needs adequately abstracted general laws—rather than mediumlevel formal descriptions (e.g., ANOVA-imitating theoretical schemes). For

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that, careful maintenance of the researcher’s gaze turned to the complexity of phenomena is indispensable. Psychology today largely fails in the latter—the immersion in the phenomena is increasingly forgotten. Psychology students start from thinking of studying their interest areas from asking simple questions to others— rather than first delving into their own introspective depths. The result is lack of depth of the questions asked. The second obstacle for delving in depth is the belief in the large sample—leading to data accumulation before analysis. What is needed is analysis before accumulation. Basic features of psychology are visible in single cases—for example, “the boy is crying” is an object of investigation here and now, not awaiting for data accumulated over N different crying boys. It is here where research and application meet—both the parents and the psychologist want to know the reasons for crying, albeit for different reasons. Would the final suggestion—of looking at forward-oriented semiosis— lead psychology further? It is hard to prejudge that. At the least it is a major effort—which obviously can also fail. Yet it points to important features of the human psyche—the constant striving for meaning of some experiences that are not yet here that becomes the focus of investigation. GM: Now, after all the “coffee breaks” and rereading your own papers that have been idling in the drawers over two decades, what is your feeling about them? JV: This has been very interesting experience. I rarely ever reread what I have written, so now it was a systematic goal to learn something from myself, And I did—I was pleasantly surprised about the freshness of the arguments. Even if some of the ideas expressed in the texts were raw and frivolously local (e.g., it seems I have the perverse pleasure to call psychology all kinds of names), the general striving for consistently developmental and culture-inclusive search for abstract models comes through. Remember—these papers were written before their oral (abbreviated) versions were delivered at conferences. So they capture the fresh efforts by me to work through the given topic before bringing it into the public domain. These are “first sketches” for complex texts that later got published, partially borrowing some of the ideas from these first papers. Rereading them now I felt glad I had had this habit of preparing a written version of a paper aside from its representation by a slide show. The papers are thus quasi-oral—the ideas

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ended up in the talks, but the papers remain as testimony of the youthful search for solutions.

Reference Raudsepp, N. (Ed.). (2017). Jaan Valsiner—Between the self and societies. Tallinn, Estonia: Tallinn University Press.

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26 Conclusion Psyche as a Cultural Membrane Giuseppina Marsico

A

t the end of a long intellectual journey like this documented in the book, it is hard to make a final point. The reader could have the feeling of being overwhelmed both cognitively and emotionally. This is what happens regularly to any diligent participant who attends, as much as possible, the always overcrowded Congresses of Psychology anywhere in the world. For the sake of surviving and keeping mental sanity, one should topically select some aspects and make a personal synthesis of what is the “state of the art” of the psychological research and foresees possible future scenarios. This is exactly what I will try to do here. This final conclusion will not be conclusive at all, but will, instead, briefly and probably very roughly outline a new intellectual challenge for continuing the scientific dialogue with Jaan Valsiner and whoever will join in from now on. The question is: “Can we conceive the psyche as a cultural membrane?”

Beyond the Mind, pages 537–544 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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I argue that we have some good reasons for envisage this potential theoretical advancement in how we can conceptualize the psyche in a new key from a cultural psychology viewpoint. In my line of argumentation I will first briefly resemble the main psychological topics discussed in the previous pages, then I will arrogantly and abruptly borrow some concepts about the membrane notion from biology and form the 19th century science and politics, and finally I will discuss the idea of psyche as a cultural membrane, its inherent permeability and the role of the psychocultural channels in regulating the relationship between mind and society.

The Cultural Dynamic of the Psyche Throughout the lectures, the papers, and the “coffee breaks,” this volume provides the general epistemological foundations for psychology as a science in the 21st century. Some of them are here summarized: 1. Psychology is a developmental science in its nature since it assumes that all the human beings (as well as groups, social institutions, communities) are developing dynamic systems in the irreversible time flow. 2. Psychological research needs to focus on phenomenon in its emergence and studies the process of becoming (instead of being). 3. For creating theories of dynamic and meaningful phenomena, a new methodology is needed. The focus on methodology as a cycle, rather than a “toolbox,” means a mutually interdependent process for a productive theoretical build up. 4. The structure of the process and the relations between the processes within the structure is the core of the psychological research. Hence, the nature of the relations needs to be investigated. It may be not always harmonious, but instead the locus of tension creates, from psychological point of view, an intriguing dynamic of opposition/contradiction between subparts of the units. 5. The notion of borders plays a special role here. Developmental transformations take place thanks to the dialectic tension of the parts and their borders within the whole. Thus the crucial question is the generalization and specification of these units under different circumstances or, in other words, the hierarchical integration and disintegration through a basic differentiation process that allows the transformation of flexible forms. This is the quintessential feature of cultural psychology as a developmental science. Assuming that psychological phenomena are axiomatically based

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on a minimum contradictory Gestalt (unit that consists of opposites), this entails some methodological implications. First, it implies the definitive overcoming of the illusion of understanding the integrated wholes of our human experiences through their measurable components. Thus the “empire of the quantitative methods” commonly used in the present-day psychology, dramatically fails in understanding the higher psychological functioning (Marsico, 2015). The Gestalt qualities of these higher functions are not “ontological givens,” rather they are always open-ended self-reconstructing wholes that depend on the relationship of the psyche with the world constantly striving towards the uncertainty of the future (Valsiner & Rudolph, 2012). It adamantly calls for renewed attention to the ever-increasing complexity of the human psyche in its social context. According to Valsiner: The functioning of the human psyche is simple: Human beings make signs, use them to organize their lives to guide their move to the future, and abandon these signs when these are no longer necessary. Signs “stand in” for something (else than they themselves) in some capacity, and for some purpose. They are made to do this by the sign-makers—human beings—who act in order to “fit in” with the constantly changing environment. (this volume).

Hence, forward-oriented semiosis is a perspective that captures the process of human living of personal experiences in everyday lives. It builds on the axiomatic reality of irreversible time, allowing us to make sense of how we transcend the irreversible flow of experience to create more or less stable meaningful worlds for ourselves. These personal worlds are organized by higher mental functions (through hypergeneralized signs) that guarantee endurance and flexibility of the human mind to encounter a wide range of challenges from rapidly changing environments and intentional actions of other human beings. Yet, where all of these process happen?

Exploring the Potential of the Membrane notion Valsiner, in the lecture he gave at East China Normal University (Shanghai) in 2008, claimed that cultural psychology as developmental science has its privileged focus on the border between the past and the future and—in analogy with what has been done in biology (Beloussov, 1998)—we can call for creation of a new kind of theories in psychology. That class of theories will be that of “psychological membranes—of process mechanisms of the ways in which such membrane-like phenomena both enable and suppress

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the relations between adjacent parts of the dynamic system.” (Valsiner, this volume). Psychology should then focus on the borders rather than “inside” or “outside” the bounded areas, phenomena, or events (Marsico & Valsiner, 2017; Marsico & Varzi, 2016). The notion of borders went through a profound change in the last two decades: from border, to bordering, to border zone (Marsico, 2016). Building on it, I will discuss the heuristic power of the notion of membrane that is able to open up the development of different and more holistic approach to border from epistemological, ontological and methodological point of view. The notion of membrane and its permeable feature illuminates the complexity of the human existence in-between.

A Little Interdisciplinary Excursion Aside from biology, where membranes’ work is fully accepted as given reality, the notion of membrane has been productively used in 19th century as a metaphor for science and politics. In the book Membranes, Laura Otis (1999) examines how the biological cell and especially the cell membrane becomes a metaphor of invasion. The period between 1830 and 1930 was the time in which scientists first proposed that the individual cell composed all living things1 and then they progressively start developing vaccines for the contagious disease. Cell theory relies on the ability to perceive borders. For to see a structure under a microscope means to visualize a membrane that distinguishes it from its surrounding. Germ theory on the other hand, evokes the idea of an “inside” and “outside” and of a “penetration” of an invisible germ into the human body. According to Otis (1999), this “penetration” into a “body” and all the anxiety connected to it were present in the social discourse about European colonialism (particularly that of England, France, Spain, and Germany) in the 19th century. While European nations were pleased to expand their territory, they were horrified when the culture, people, and disease they had conquered went somehow back in the “Centre of the Empire” trough their now permeable (economic) membrane. They initial illusion was that of to expand their territorial borders while keeping the integrity of their identity. Reflecting both scientific fears of infection and nationalistic fears of infiltrations, the membrane model bases identity on resistance to external forces, many of which are projections of undesirable internal drives. Penetration of

Conclusion    541 one’s “membrane,” whether by bacteria or by foreign ideas, represents an insult, a subversion of selfhood. (Otis, 1999, pp. 6–7){\ext}

The 19th century apology of independent, autonomous cell that had its political analog in Western imperialism shows all its fragility. Penetrating while being not influenced at all is just a fantasy. Since a border divides and connects simultaneously (Marsico, 2016), inevitably the transits and crossings are in both directions. Connectedness and relationship are essential to the life from the cell to the human psyche. According to Alan Rayner’s biological theory of fluid inclusionality (Rayner, 2017), any living system is constantly in dialogue with its natural neighbourhood on the basis of an interdependent and coevolutionary process involved both the context and the organism. Membranes are, therefore, “agentic organic structures” theologically oriented to regulate the connections of the cell with the surrounding and ultimately the cell’s life itself. But how does all this matter with the psychological functioning?

Psychological Membranes Our psychological life is played on the border between here and there, before and after, inside and outside, past and future. In this vein, the psychological functioning has mainly interfacing properties and the psyche should be conceived as a psychological membrane that, in analogy with a biological system, allows, under specific condition and thank to its permeability, the entry exit process of what is essential for the human psychological existence and the communication with the surroundings. But is not all about a transit regulatory function! Both biological and social sciences operate on phenomena that are characterized by variability amplification—as pointed out by Magoroh Maruyama in his crucial introduction of the notion of “second cybernetics” over half-century ago (Maruyama, 1963). Biological and social systems, open in their relationships with the environment, constantly produce innovation that exactly emerge on the border between the organism and the surroundings. New forms come into being and are being transformed into still newer forms while maintaining generative continuity with the past. This leads to a number of deep changes in the ways in which we need to think about the psychological functioning. My proposal of psyche as cultural membrane is the initial attempt to account for this complex process that happens on the psychological threshold.

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Figure 26.1  The membrane-synaptic cleft.

This is basically a “semiotic threshold” (Eco, 1976) where new processes of meaning-making emerge under the form of channels (Figure 26.1). We as humans constantly create, demolish, and reconstruct channels in our permeable psychological membrane for dealing with the cultural world around us. These channels are built on a semiotic process that both creates the realities and connects them (Kull, 2001). Membranes are, therefore, not only a crossing space, but serve the innovations and the transformations and, ultimately, the human development. These channels are the locations for temporary solutions to a wide range of challenges that human being has to deal with or they can be more durable and serve a larger horizon of purposeful oriented actions. In any case, they are dynamic semiotic tools that can bloom, be used and then dismissed (and eventually replaced in different forms) in our psyche. These channels are intentional and relating with the anticipated futures. They are teleogenetic in their essence acting on the edge of AS-IF relations between the past and the future. In a general scheme (Valsiner, 2007), these can include, for example, those in Figure 26.2. The channels in our psychological membrane set up the new present. Through them the AS-WILL-BE actually becomes created. The theology of the membrane is here evident. It is not just a passage zone, but, while operating on the contrast between the present state (“as-is”) and the desired state (“as-if”) it anticipates the future. The channels are, then, the dynamic

Conclusion    543 Present/Past

Future AS-COULD-BE

AS-IS

AS-SHOULD-BE

(with AS-IS)

AS-MAY NOT-BE AS-WILL-BE (new present) (modified after Valsiner, 2007)

Figure 26.2

semiotic tools purposefully constructed for helping the human development in that constant process of making the future. The idea of psyche as cultural membrane seems a promising conceptual framework to illuminate the way in which qualitative changes occur in the developing system.

Note 1. In 1906 the Spanish neurobiologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934) won the Nobel Prize for proving that neurons were intact, independent cells.

References Beloussov, L. V. (1998). The dynamic architecture of a developing organism. Dordrecht, The netherlands: Kluwer. Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Kull, K. (2001). Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. Semiotica, 134(1/4), 1–59. Maruyama, M. (1963). The second cybernetics: Deviation-amplifying mutual causal processes. American Scientist, 51, 164–179. Marsico, G. (2015). Striving for the new: Cultural psychology as a developmental science. Culture & Psychology, 21(4), 445–454. doi:10.1177/1354067 X15623020 Marsico, G. (2016). The borderland. Culture & Psychology, 22(2), 206–215. doi:10 .1177/1354067X15601199 Marsico G., & Valsiner J. (2017). Spaces in-between: The arena for development. In A. Rayner (Ed.), The origin of life patterns – In the natural inclusion of space in flux (pp. vii–ix). New York, NY: Springer. Marsico, G., & Varzi, A. (2016). Psychological and social borders: Regulating relationships. In J. Valsiner, G. Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T. Sato, & V. Dazzani (Eds), Psychology as a science of human being: The Yokohama Manifesto (pp. 327– 335). Genève, Switzerland: Springer. Otis, L. (1999). Membranes: Metaphors of invasion in nineteenth-century literature, science, and politics. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press;

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Rayner, A. (2017). The origin of life patterns—In the natural inclusion of space in flux. New York, NY: Springer. Valsiner, J. (2007). Looking across cultural gender boundaries. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 41(3-4), 219–224. Valsiner, J., & Rudolph, L. (2012). Who shall survive? Psychology that replaces quantification with qualitative mathematics. In E. Abbey & S. Surgan (Eds.), Emerging methods in psychology (pp. 121–140). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Biographical Notes

Giuseppina Marsico is assistant professor of development and educational psychology at the University of Salerno (Italy), postdoc at Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University (Denmark), and adjunct professor in the PhD program in psychology, Federal University of Bahia, (Brazil). She is a 18 years experienced researcher, with a proven international research network. She is editor-in-chief of the book series Cultural Psychology of Education (Springer), co-editor of SpringerBriefs Psychology and Cultural Developmental Sciences (together with Jaan Valsiner) and Annals of Cultural Psychology: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind and Society (Information Age Publishing, together with Carlos Conejo and Jaan Valsiner). She is also co-editor of Human Arenas. An Interdisciplinary Journal Of Psychology, Culture and Meaning (Springer), associate editor of Cultural & Psychology Journal (SAGE), Social Psychology of Education (Springer), and member of the editorial board of several international academic journals (i.e., Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, Springer). Jaan Valsiner is Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the founding editor (1995) of the SAGE journal, Culture & Psychology and of The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology (2012). He is also the editor-in-chief of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (Springer, from 2007) and the SpringerBriefs series Theoretical Advances in Psychology. In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in Germany for his interdisciplinary work on human

Beyond the Mind, pages 545–546 Copyright © 2018 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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development, and Senior Fulbright Lecturing Award in Brazil 1995–1997. In April 2017 he was given the Hans Kilian Award. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Norway, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.