Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness : The Emerging System of Idiographic Science [1 ed.] 9781623960278, 9781623960261

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Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness The Emerging System of Idiographic Science

A volume in YIS: Yearbook of Idiographic Science Sergio Salvatore and Jaan Valsiner, Series Editors

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Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness The Emerging System of Idiographic Science

edited by

Sergio Salvatore University of Salento

Alessandro Gennaro University of Salento

Jaan Valsiner Clark University

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Making sense of infinite uniqueness : the emerging system of idiographic science / edited by Sergio Salvatore, Alessandro Gennaro, Jaan Valsiner. p. cm. -- (YIS: yearbook of idiographic science) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-62396-025-4 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-62396-026-1 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-62396-027-8 (ebook) 1. Psychology--Research--Methodology. 2. Social sciences--Research--Methodology. 3. Single subject research. I. Salvatore, Sergio. II. Gennaro, Alessandro. III. Valsiner, Jaan. BF76.5.M3155 2012 150.72--dc23                            2012033284

Copyright © 2012 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 Sect i o n I The Puzzle: Language for the Science of Unique Events How Idiographic Science Could Create Its Own Terminology.......... 3 Jaan Valsiner and Sergio Salvatore Commentary: What Should Idiographic Language be Like?........... 21 Carlos Cornejo Commentary: Some Considerations Pertinent to the Language of Idiographic Science......................................................................... 35 James T. Lamiell Commentary: Explaining Social Behavior In Situ: The Study of Points of View................................................................................... 45 Gordon Sammut and George Gaskell

Sect i o n II Communication: Theoretical Obstacle or Innovative Resource? The Language as Object: A Tool of Intersubjective Exchange in Clinical Practice............................................................................... 57 Claudia Venuleo



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The Singular Patterns of Discourse for a Psycho-Idiographic Analysis of Language........................................................................... 77 Giuseppe Mininni, Beatrice Ligorio, and Rosa Traversa Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences: The Study of Meaning-Construction Processes............................... 109 Angela Uchoa Branco Commentary: Idiographic Science: Its Polyphonic Arena and Need for Reflexivity............................................................................ 133 Giuseppina Marsico

Sect i o n III Intervention: The General Applied to the Unique Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy: From Narrative Outputs to the Semiotic-Dialogical Processes.................................. 149 António P. Ribeiro, Miguel M. Gonçalves and Anita Santos Narration and Discourse in the Clinical Dialogue.......................... 177 Maria Francesca Freda and Fabio Milito Pagliara Commentary: Blind Spots and Laziness: Two Ways of Becoming “Stuck”.......................................................................... 205 Philip J. Rosenbaum

Sect i o n I V Methodologies: Growing the Dynamic Analysis Positioning Microanalysis: The Development of a Dialogically Based Method for Idiographic Psychology....................................... 221 João Salgado and Carla Cunha The Role of Language in Researcher–Participant Interaction....... 245 Andrea Smorti and Elia Cardini Commentary: Some Reflections on the Emergence of Multimodal Assemblages of Meaning............................................... 259 Mariann Märtsin

Section I The Puzzle: Language for the Science of Unique Events

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How Idiographic Science Could Create Its Own Terminology Jaan Valsiner Clark University Sergio Salvatore University of Salento

The image of Babel immediately evokes the image of a mishmash of idiosyncratic differences. Creating a utopian universe of 72 (or so1) languages used in that world (instead of a united system) tells us about the human capacity to create mystiques. New sciences are no exception—the emerging idiographic science aims toward unified language use—but still has to live in the booming and buzzing confusion of terminologies inherited from its parent disciplines. Yet (at least in the scientific arena) the original ideas of the Tower of Babel are to be regarded as a constructive aim rather than a tragic condition into which we can fall. People sharing a common activity realize that they are immanently different from each other, yet united. Sharing a project is the source of and the condition for their recognition of what divides them. Dividing is a form of uniting rather than excluding. The human body includes myriad division lines—cell membranes and tissue borders—yet the joint function of such structural decisions is precisely to unify the systemic functioning of the whole organism. Whatever leads to the creation of divisions is more than only an “empty space” that becomes inhabited by absolute idiosyncracies. The very realization that we are unable to coordinate each other’s activities is already a collective product, enMaking Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 3–20 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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tailing the shared idea of something to build together, namely, the Tower. What distances people is a bond—a separation that differentiates and at the same time connects: it differentiates for the sake of connecting and connects for the sake of differentiating. Language is precisely such a bond. It allows us to introduce myriad distinctions, yet the use of these distinct parts is a story of the whole. In our efforts to give form to the return to the centrality of the single case in general knowledge construction (Molenaar, 2004; Salvatore, Valsiner, Strout, & Clegg, 2009, Salvatore, Valsiner, Travers Simon, & Gennaro, 2010, 2011), we come across the need to deal with the issue of how the language uses we encounter in the recent development of idiographic science enable (or inhibit) the move to generalized knowledge. It is a major problem in our contemporary sciences of human beings—the goal of knowledge we need is that of adequacy for each and every particular case. All application of accumulated know-how always necessarily takes place in a here-and-now setting and is aimed at this particular case—a person, a group, a community, a country—that the applier attempts to change, for better or for worse. Yet all (or almost all) generalized scientific knowledge that serves as the basis for such application is based on an unstructured accumulation of individual cases—samples that are assumed to “be representative of” populations. The assumption of transferability of the latter kind of knowledge to the former kinds of application contexts is based on the belief in the “law of large numbers” and on the adequacy of the ergodicity theorem. By now, we know that both of these beliefs are untenable (Molenaar, Huizinga & Nesselroade, 2003; Valsiner & Sato, 2006). The Basis for Idiographic Science: Strong and Weak Models In order to face the issue of the language in idiographic science, a preliminary task is to make it clear what idiographic science means; there is not just one way of seeing the Tower in the process of its construction. “Idiographic” can be associated with qualitative and hermeneutic, in semantic opposition to quantitative and nomothetic knowledge (e.g., Simão, 2011). According to this traditional opposition, idiography is a general frame providing a normative model of the object and of the knowledge of it. This can be viewed as the strong model of idiography, one that entails an ontology, an epistemology, and a methodology. Its ontology is expressed by the foundational statement of the object’s essence: the assumption of the basic and unavoidable uniqueness of the phenomena. Thus, in biological systems, by virtue of their open-systemic nature, each state of affairs is unique. As psychological phenomena are also open systemic products of exchange relationships with

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the environment, each of them is unique as it emerges in irreversible time. An epistemology follows, in the sense of a statement on what we have to consider as knowledge. The uniqueness assumption can lead to the denial of any generalizable knowledge (and a claim that all knowledge is local and unique) describable as such only by poets, politicians, and postmodernist social scientists. The philosophical slogan of the verstehende psychologie of Wilhelm Dilthey looms large in emphasizing such immediacy of the ever-vanishing moments of knowing. Finally, in terms of methodology, the strong model shows how the task of producing knowledge is reduced to experiencing the moment rather than integrating the never-to-be-repeated experiences into a generic form. A more restricted idea of idiography (which could be called the weak model) does not assume the dichotomy idiographic-nomothetic as exclusive separation between two general systems of knowledge: the world of immediate experiences and the science aimed at arriving at generalized knowledge. Rather, idiographic and nomothetic are seen as having a more specific and restricted meaning. From this point of view, the idiographic approach is not equivalent to qualitative research (e.g., Molenaar & Valsiner, 2005/2009 and Salvatore, Tebaldi, & Potì, 2009 provide examples of a quantitative analysis grounded within an idiographic frame). The question of preserving the quality of the experience, which is obviously qualitative and unique, in generalization can proceed by varied trajectories. Some are qualitative, others may be quantitative. What unites them all is the preservation of the systemic nature of the phenomena in the abstracted data. The weak model is our starting point. It is not new, but like all new developments, it is rooted in the previous history of science. In the original formulation by Windelband (1904/1998), idiographic-nomothetic were complementary, not antagonistic forms (Lamiell, 2003; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2011). The following assumptions may be necessary: (a) Regardless of how one may think of their way of functioning, psychological processes produce occurrences that are context specific. This means that the relationship between the dynamics of the psychological process and the phenomena that characterize this dynamic flow is always present and mediated by a contextual condition (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2009, 2011). (b) As a result of (a), it is not possible to depict a psychological process in terms of the behavior of its phenomena as they occur, because those occurrences, as they are contingent upon the context, are not commensurable. The same occurrences (x1, x2, x3) can be the expression of the dynamics in context A and of the dynamics in context B (see Figure 1.1)

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Psychological process α Psychological process β Context A

x1, x2, x3

Y1, Y2, Y3

Phenomenical occurrences

Context B

Context C

Figure 1.1  Psychological processes, phenomenical occurrences, and context.

(c) This means that the occurrences of individuals are not commensurable with each other. Therefore, insofar as we assume that a population is a collection of individuals sharing some given characteristic(s) qualifying the universe of interest, that is, the criterion of inclusion, regardless of the context they are part of,2 we have to conclude that the population is not a suitable frame of reference3 for knowledge of psychological processes. As a matter of fact, two individuals belonging to the same population can provide the same occurrence while having a different connection with the underlying psychological dynamics. As Smorti and Cardini highlight in Section IV in this volume, this can already happen in the performance of the participants in a psychological study. In the final analysis, this is another way of saying that in psychology, the ergodic assumption is not to be accepted, given that intraindividual (temporal) and the interindividual differences are not commensurable (Molenaar & Valsiner, 2009). Introducing the Individext In our perspective, the idiographic is not in opposition to the nomothetic. Rather, it is intended as a theoretical-methodological constraint put in the way of producing nomothetic—qualitative or quantitative—knowledge. The central issue is that we give primacy to individuality (i.e., individual + variability) as a frame of reference, without resorting to the byway of the hypostatization of the population as a theoretical surrogate of the individual.

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Second, from a complementary point of view, this constraint concerns the definition of the individual. The individual is not the same as a mere living being. The individual is a theoretical-methodological concept, not an empirical one. An individual is a unit of analysis whose variability in time can be assumed as however inscribed within the same field. We propose a neologism in order to differentiate this concept of the individual from the canonical one: individext, that is, the individual-in-the-context. Along similar lines, Toomela (2010) is thinking about the idea of the idiographic when he underlines that individual occurrences should be concentrated in a narrow temporal range in order to make them comparable. Contextuality is not an empirical matter. It is a theoretical construction of the object. In other terms, it is the theoretician who defines what has to be considered as context (obviously according to a given theoretical framework). In so doing, she/he places constraints on what one can consider as individual in that study, establishing the conditions of validity of her/his statements. From this point of view, every collection of occurrences can be regarded as an individual from a given point of view: a farm, a couple, a group of people, a soccer team. At the same time, as Toomela (2010) points out, being one person is not enough to make an individual, if the kind of analysis entails a type of context that changes across the temporal windows of the analysis of the person. Is There a Need for a Shared Ontology of Language? The term ontology of language is used here to refer to a very basic issue: what kind of relationship we assume between language and the world. Some authors claim that idiographic science is inherently linguistic. For instance, in Section II in this volume, Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa distinguish (following Ferdinand de Saussure) between language, langue, and parole, asserting that the latter, as the act of using language, is the one in which idiographic science is interested. Others  consider language as a medium for sense making, yet do not see it as its exclusive tool. The analysis of the sense making occurring within the psychotherapy process performed by Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos in Section III of this volume is focused on the patient’s talk, yet it considers such talk as a way of accessing something that goes beyond this, namely, the patient’s global attitude toward critical life events. The difference between these two general ways of conceiving the language (world relationship) is partially linked to a broader or narrower definition of language. Above all, this distinction has an effect on the definition of the sense of dealing with language. In the first case, where sense making equals

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linguistic dynamics, we observe that language is taken as the object of analysis. The second approach considers language from a methodological standpoint—as a fundamental source of data—referring to extralinguistic features of communication. Obviously these two approaches are not necessarily polarized. Nevertheless, it is worth making a distinction between them, because in the first case, one is interested in how the language works; in the second case, in the fact that this working produces something else (ideas, social activity, etc.). And because this distinction concerns the traditional separation between idiographic-nomothetic, it is important to address it in order to go beyond the idio-nomo separation according to an idiographic science aimed at producing general knowledge out of ever-unique particular phenomena. Basic Features A second issue concerns the field conception of the linguistic dynamics. The fundamental idea is that language (or in general, sense making) is utilized in circumstances; and these circumstances—their relationship with the linguistic phenomenon—are part of the linguistic phenomenon itself. Different basic features can be distinguished: contextuality, situativity, and contingency. • Contextuality means that the linguistic dynamics are (inter)dependent on a symbolic and/or formal frame (cultural models, narrative structure, systems of values, etc.) having a superorder regulating role. • Situativity means that the linguistic dynamics are (inter)dependent on the social interaction and the way people exchange their identities through communication. In other words, sense making is a pragmatic act. Situativity conceives the field as local, shaped/conveyed by the person’s sociocommunicational agentivity. Persons act (communicating with others) in goal-oriented ways. This is how they create unique situations. • Contingency views meaning as the emerging product of the way people use language. This means seeing sense making as the by-product of the linguistic dynamics as they produce themselves through the temporal dimension (hence the use of the term contingency). Contingency provides the temporal organization of signs with the role that situativeness gives to social dynamics. Therefore, sense making acquires the status of a self-referential process—a dynamics of signs producing other signs in an endless process of differentiation and transitive hierarchization. Obviously this does not mean giving up the “social.” Rather, it means considering the social as what is shaped by (rather than what is shaping) sense making.

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Idiographic Science and the Languages of Psychology The question of theoretical language for idiographic science is embedded in a wider context: what kind of language is suitable for psychology as a science in general? This question can be addressed in terms of existing common languages: Is psychology better off using English rather than German (as we know, historically it was the other way round), German rather than French, French rather than Esperanto,4 or Japanese rather than Latin? All these languages that exist to organize our lives are possible for psychology (or any other science, as long as these sciences deal with commonsense objects), but are they sufficient for generalized knowledge? However, science is not for purposes of stating the obvious (i.e., describing), but for explaining; and to explain, it needs to distance itself from the particulars through abstraction and generalization. Explanation goes beyond description if it provides a basis from which to specify the nonobvious (or not yet observed) features of the phenomena. Here is where most common languages fail. Surely they allow for some kind of generalizations (as part of our common sense), but they are not set up to transcend that common sense (Valsiner, 1985). Commonsense language can be very rich, and psychological worlds can be described through theorems of common language (Smedslund, 1997), yet that does not guarantee that it can be a productive basis for scientific generalizations. The debate about whether psychology’s scientific language needs to be close or far from the common language continues from time to time (Siegfried, 1994). Here we continue along the lines of the claim made earlier (Valsiner, 1985, 1994) that it needs to transcend the common language of any kind. A version of such transcendence can be seen in the notion of hypergeneralized semiotic fields (Valsiner, 2005). But still, the question remains: In what ways would psychology’s language transcend the commonsense? An old study (Valsiner, 1986) indicated that ordinary human beings—from experienced psychologists to inexperienced undergraduates—make a similar inferential error in their interpretation of correlational results. While they were given data based on a (large) sample, they promptly interpreted the correlational result (based on the interindividual variability within the sample) as if it were applicable to the individual case. They intuitively assumed the ergodic standpoint, while psychological phenomena are nonergodic (Molenaar, 2004, 2007). Furthermore, it was the fusion of the generic and particular single cases that made the transfer from the interindividual to the intraindividual frame of reference possible (see Figure 1.2).

10    J. VALSINER and S. SALVATORE This is X (“therapist,” “client,” “mother,” “child”) CONCRETE SINGULAR X is Y (whatever characteristic) CONCRETE SINGULAR Xs are Y (whatever characteristic) GENERALIZED PLURAL (implying: ALL Xs are Y) X is Y (whatever characteristic) GENERIC SINGULAR (implying: EACH X is Y) X is Y (whatever characteristic) DEDUCTED CONCRETE SINGULAR X should be non-Y—VALUE-ADDED IMPERATIVE SINGULAR

Figure 1.2  The unwarranted “jump” from the inductive to the deductive line of reasoning in psychological common language use.

This fusion happens as a result of coordination of the inductive and deductive decision-making lines. Inductive generalization—starting from the data based upon (and available only due to) interindividual variability—moves to exclude the outliers and arrive at the homogenized generic case (“each and every singular X is somewhat P” → “all X are P”). In other words, inductive generalization turns a heterogeneous class (where interclass-member variability is evident) into a homogeneous class in which each and every member of the class is the same as each other member. In terms of set theory, inductive generalization replaces fuzzy sets by crisp sets. It is a cognitive strategy of homogenization; a result of inductive generalization that reduces similarity into sameness (Sovran, 1992). Quality Versus Quantity, Rather than Quantity to (New) Quality How is this transposition possible? It entails the separation of quality (P) from the quantity (interindividual variability of the quantity of P in single cases). So, by positing a certain quality (P) present in each and every member of the class (while allowing for its quantity to vary between members of the class), such transition becomes possible. It merely entails a change of focus from quantity (where interindividual variability is important for calculating correlation coefficients), to the abandonment of the coverage of variability in favor of the average. The average is made to represent the quality. As such, the presence of a given quality is presumed; it is posited a priori and is assumed to be ever-present. As a result, no new qualities can be discovered through the quantitative approach in psychology. The nature of the quality implied is not under investigation; it was posited from the beginning by the axiomatic assumption that it exists. For instance, if I, as a researcher, apply a “standardized test X” (“intelligence,” “personality,” “self-esteem”) to some persons, I pre-assume that the quality studied by the test X is present “in” these persons; and what is to be discovered is only

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its quantity. My application of the test cannot discover the absence of the quality (i.e., there is no absolute “zero score” in a standardized test, only deviations from normative averages are observable; neither is it possible to have absolute negative values for the quality assumed as“this person not only lacks characteristic X but has {THAT MUCH} of anti-X”). Inductive generalization works only from instances observed, and the absence of instances is not evidence from which general knowledge can be created. The absence of something may mean its inhibited (and therefore nonmanifest) presence (or even such a powerful presence) can only appear by being absent (for zero signifiers; see Ohnuki-Tierney, 1994). Furthermore, this shift from quantity to quality in the course of inductive generalization is completely “blind” to any phenomena of ambivalence (unity of A and non-A), to development (state of affairs in which the presumed quality A is only emerging—“zone of proximal development” [see Valsiner & van der Veer (1993)], or to the disappearance of a quality formerly present—“my self-esteem has completely disappeared”) and to the multiplicity of quality. The Hegelian focus on psychological phenomena—oppositions that lead to “dialectical jump”—is ruled out by this way of applying the QUANTITY< >QUALITY pair of concepts to phenomena. The Abnormal Nature of the Normal Distribution In the case of open systems, uniqueness grows, rather than being reduced. Hence there is a paradox: The uncritical use of the assumption of normal distribution—the bell-shaped 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)

By this singular look at the mismatch of the axiomatic basis of the statistical method and the nature of psychological phenomena, Maruyama has elegantly cleared 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 are not merely characterized by their variability, but they generate increasing variability.

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Inductive Generalization is not Sufficient It becomes obvious that the realm of inductive generalization is insufficient for science. It allows only a narrow class of generalizations—homogenized entities—to be the result of such generalization. Furthermore, the end result (quality) is predetermined by the underlying assumption of such quality, hence Jan Smedslund’s (1997) critique of empirical psychology as being pseudo-empirical is very accurate. Psychologists “discover, ”through the study of “individual differences,” what they already know (posit) to be present in their subjects, and in the form (homogenized entity) that their common sense prescribes. It is possible to say “my child is friendly with strangers” on the basis of the shared common sense of any language in which the notion of friendliness is present. Further “proof” of that through the measurement of the child’s “extroversion” level does not add any novelty (other than replacing a commonsense label with another one—“my child is extrovert”). Scientific generalization on an inductive basis—so-called “evidence based” generalization—is insufficient. It requires a deductive counterpart. This deductive counterpart is part of the practice of application of (inductively derived) psychological knowledge. As is seen in Figure 1.2, moving beyond the generic case takes the form of the deductive forward translation of the generic case—from each X is Y to this single X is Y. Furthermore, the context of application of psychological knowledge takes place in a valuesadded context (VAC)—one’s particular social values are inserted into the concrete application (from X is Y to either X should be Y or X should be non-Y—see Figure 1.2). These social imperatives are extrascientific, just as all the applications of a science are extrascientific. The intervention in the school curriculae on the basis of a psychological theory of school learning is not (and cannot be) an inherent part of these theories themselves. This external nature of interventions makes any application of any science open to the local interests of the agents of social values. From some standpoints, demonstrating the rigidity in a person’s feeling is a “problem,” from others a “virtue”; and appropriate intervention is needed so as to overcome or enhance it. Furthermore, it accentuates the relevance of matching knowledge: any application of generalized knowledge is necessarily singular (here and now), whereas general knowledge may be of single-case (single system) or of populational origin. If it is the latter, it is vulnerable to the cognitive fusion error described in Figure 1.2. However, it is here that the issue of language use in specifically idiographic science becomes relevant. Having demonstrated the inadequacy of inductive generalization from samples to populations (and through generic cases to new single cases), what are the barriers of language use that the new idiographic science faces?

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Units of Analysis for Idiographic Science The traditional reduction of complex phenomena into their elementary constituents has been a failure since the beginning of psychology in its empirical form. The need to conceptualize a suitable unit of analysis led Lev Vygotsky to formulate the general idea of what a unit of analysis needs to be like in psychology: 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] (Vygotsky, 1999, p. 13)

Such generalization arises through the formal operations the researchers perform on the phenomena to make sense of them. Its root metaphor has been the contrast between water (H2O) and its components (oxygen and hydrogen), widely used in making the point of the primacy of the Gestalt over its constituents in the late 19th- to early 20th-century developmental theorizing. The recent successes in chemistry—going beyond the phlogiston theory and moving to the language of formulae in the 1830s— have been a good example for psychology. Quite obviously the properties of water are not reducible to those of either hydrogen or oxygen. Hence, the whole—water—is more than a mere “sum” of its parts. Furthermore, it is universal: the chemical structure of water remains the same, independent of whatever biological system (e.g., human body, cellular structure of a plant) or geological formation (e.g., an ocean or a coffee cup!) it exists in. Multiplicity in Unity: From Point-Like to Field-Like Generalizations We are used to generalizations that are assumed to make an abstract point, such as: concept: “freedom” property/function “X” 3.14

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ANTITYPE can be set for contrast

The AVERAGE is treated as the PROTOTYPE (but can be used as an ANTITYPE for another setting of prototype)

An IDEAL POINT is treated as the PROTOTYPE

Figure 1.3  The making of prototypes out of distribution of heterogeneous phenomena.

All these are semiotic tools to denote an abstraction of some kind—all usable for some purposes (and not others). What they represent are cases of abstracted unity in multiplicity—the complex multiple reality is turned into an abstract point that preserves—in a generalized way—all the relevant (for the present purposes) properties of each and every specimen in the realm of phenomena. In terms of the traditional population-based approach of inductive generalization, the point-like abstraction takes the form of a prototype (see Figure 1.3). It is usual to treat the average of an obtained distribution as the prototype (Valsiner, 1984). Alternatively, a prototype can be set as an ideal point outside of the observable distribution (e.g., the prototype of “ideal beauty”) The making of a prototype may be combined with the making of its opposite (“antitype”). In what location on the distribution map of the actual phenomena such prototype< >antitype contrast is created is the choice of the creator. For example, in much cross-cultural psychology, the comparison of groups using averages treats the discovered average result of Society A as the prototype against which the average data of Society B is compared. If in Society A (which may be the researcher’s own) it is discovered that phenomenon X (e.g., mothers talking with their not-yet-verbal infants) has high frequency—in contrast to Society B (where mothers do not bother to talk with their infants when the latter cannot talk yet), it is likely that the Society A findings are construed as the prototype rather than those of Society B. The opposite—treating Society A’s cases as delusional (i.e., assuming that nonverbal infants understand the talk is a kind of a delusion) in contrast to the prototype of Society B—may be rejected as inappropriate. Likewise, prototypes, such as “ideal character,” can be set in regions of distributions never experienced in practice. Looking at children’s religious devotion, Josephs (Josephs & Valsiner, 1999) found that children accept the ideal of “religious devotion,” encoded in physically unreal acts like parts of miracles (Jesus walking on the water), through the connection—“I could do that too if I believed enough.” Creating unreal ideals is a strategy of

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social organization (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956). Equally important in that construction is the construction of antitypes with the deterrent function of avoidance. The antitype of having a “demon lover” was of great emotional strain for Christian women in the middle ages, and a topic for diagnostic criteria for the Inquisition. The study of antitypes is usually absent in psychology, in which only the observables rather than the possible nonobservables are considered. The presence of antitypes can be explicitly detected by a new look at statistical inference (von Eye, Mun, & Mair, 2009). The average can be made into an antitype (rather than prototype) in the case of setting the ideal beyond the bounds of (so far) observables. An athlete trying to set a world record is striving to achieve something as far away as possible from the average. Since it is possible to set an infinite number of prototypes and antitypes within a field of phenomena, the new development of idiographic science needs to solve the language problem of how such multiplicity can be abstractly depicted. A point-like sign is a constricted version of a field-like sign (see Figure 1.4). Conversely, a field-like sign is an expansion of a point-like sign. Field-like signs entail generalizations that allow for heterogeneity within the field—the structured nature of the generalization. This feature becomes important for idiographic science because of its acceptance of the notion of equifinality. All open systems are characterized by equifinality, which requires the acceptance of heterogeneity at the abstract level. Yet such acceptance is not possible through the use of point-like signs, since those signs cannot represent the abstract possibility of multilinearity of trajectories to the same end (equifinality) point. By stating, “X emerges through learning” (in which the verbal sign “learning” is an abstract, generic, point-like sign representing all the phenomena of the actual learning processes), we do not denote the {1 + n} different possible trajectories by which the X comes into being. What kinds of alternatives exist to this “blind spot” of point-like abstractions? expansion Field

Point constriction

Figure 1.4  The transitions between point-like and field-like signs.

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The Field Language of TEM (Trajectory Equifinality Model) The TEM was initiated by Tatsuya Sato (Sato et al., 2007; Sato, Watanabe, & Omi, 2007), and an analysis of its language use may be an appropriate example. The TEM involves looking at the relations between the actualized and the nonactualized (yet possible) courses of developmental events at the nearest past bifurcation point and comparing it with the present moment’s view of the zone of future possible courses, bounded by the borders of the conceived possible (see Figure 1.5). What we see in Figure 1.5 is the “TEM language” for depicting a unique moment of future-making in its minimal form. Two crossings of border are involved: those of time (the constantly moving relation between the past and the future, “sliding” forever forward in irreversible time); and of the actual (A) and the possible (of the past—B, of the future—C to D). There is a metalevel tension (between A< >B and C< >D) included as well. The image in Figure 1.5 is a field depiction—one that includes the uniqueness of every moment (through the “sliding” of the past/future border in irreversible time) while maintaining the generic structure of the process that is applicable to each and every unique moment. C

Field of possible feature trajectories bounded by C and D A D

B

PAST

present

FUTURE

Figure 1.5  The minimal unit of analysis of developmental trajectories in the TEM model.

How Idiographic Science Could Create Its Own Terminology    17

The minimal field unit of TEM in Figure 1.5 is an example of a structured field sign, which is an answer to the units of analysis issue that has plagued the social sciences for more than a century. It is an example of moving beyond the usual signs of real numbers, encoded in the cultural practice of “measurement” (Rudolph, 2006; Valsiner & Rudolph, 2008). The minimal unit of Figure 1.5 is a generalized starting point for empirical analyses of the phenomena of development. Yet it does not depict development itself; for that purpose, it is important to map onto that unit the particular construction processes that overcome the C< >D tension and lead to the emergence of the future-turning-into-the-past. Conclusion: New Ways of Looking at Language for Idiographic Science All generalizations are based on particulars (Freeman, 2004), yet our science has been a hostage to our common language in its usual ways of generalization in point-like abstract signs. Here that notion is expanded to show that point-like signs are constricted versions of field-like signs, which would have a theoretical advantage because they accommodate the heterogeneity of trajectories that lead to an equifinal state. The example of the language of the TEM model illustrates a case in which the generic notions of the actual and the possible are maintained together within a minimal structured unit of analysis. The description of the process is maximally general—applicable to each and every individual case—while all the applications would be maximally unique. The unity of generality and particularity is possible if the language of explanation is set in ways that bridge the universal and the particular—still representing the universal. Notes 1. Even the number of languages in the Babel myth is left unclear 2. On the other hand, the specification “regardless of the context they are part of” is inherent in the concept of population. This is because two individuals cannot by definition share the same context, unless one assumes a factual notion of context as in commonsense (on this issue, see Toomela, 2010). 3. Usually this frame of reference works in complementary ways: (a) as the way the description/measurement of the occurrence acquires reliability (i.e., considering the individual description as being affected by a casual error associated with measurement and the average collective description as the way this error is handled/eliminated); and (b) as the range of variability that, insofar as it is associated with a given distribution of probability, can be used as a

18    J. VALSINER and S. SALVATORE fundamental criterion in attributing meaning (in terms of statistical “significance”) to any comparison between two (sets of) occurrences. 4. See the efforts at the 6th International Congress of Psychology in Geneva in 1909 to introduce Esperanto as the language that could unify psychology (de Saussure, 1909).

References de Saussure, R. (1909). Unuformigo de la scienca terminaro. VI Congres International de Psychologie, 482–499. Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Freeman, M. (2004). The universal through local. Culture & Psychology, 10(2), 239– 248. 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. Vol. 2. Being human (pp. 101–114). Lengerich, Germany: W. Pabst. Lamiell, J. T. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage. Maruyama, M. (1963). The second cybernetics: Deviation amplifying mutual causal processes. American Scientist, 51, 164–179. Maruyama, M. (1999). Heterogram analysis: Where the assumption of normal distribution is illogical. Human Systems Management, 18, 53–60. 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. Molenaar, P. C. M., Huizinga, H. M., & Nesselroade, J. R. (2003). 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. Molenaar P. C. M., & Valsiner, J. (2009). How generalization works through the single case: A simple idiographic process analysis of an individual psychotherapy. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1, pp. 23–38). Rome: Firera Publishing Group. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1994). The power of absence: Zero signifiers and their transgressions. L’Homme, 34(2)(Whole No. 130), 59–76. Rudolph, L. (2006). Spaces of ambivalence: Qualitative mathematics in the modeling of complex fluid phenomena. Estudios de Psicología, 27(1), 67–83. Salvatore, S., Tebaldi, C., & Poti, S. (2009). The discursive dynamic of sensemaking. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1, pp. 39–72). Rome, Italy: Firera.

How Idiographic Science Could Create Its Own Terminology    19 Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2009). Idiographic science on its way: Toward making sense of psychology. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.) YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1 pp. 9–19). Rome, Italy: Firera. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2011). Idiographic science as a non-existing object: The importance of the reality of the dynamic system. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, J. Travers Simon, & A. Gennaro (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 3, pp.7–26). Rome, Italy: Firera. Salvatore, S., Valsiner, J., Strout , S., & Clegg, J. (Eds.). (2009). YIS: Yearbook of Idiographic Science (Vol. 1). Rome, Italy: Firera. Salvatore, S., Valsiner, J., Travers Simon, J., & Gennaro, A. (Eds.). (2010). YIS: Yearbook of Idiographic Science (Vol. 2). Rome, Italy: Firera. Salvatore, S., Valsiner, J., Travers Simon, J., & Gennaro A. (Eds.). (2011). YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 3). Rome, Italy: Firera. 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., 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 socio-cultural psychology (pp. 82–106). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Siegfried, J. (Ed.). (1994). The status of common sense in psychology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Simão, L. (2011) A dialogue at stake: An essay on the path to an idiographic psychology. In S. Salvatore, A. Gennaro, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Making sense. Generating uniqueness. Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 4). Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Smedslund, J. (1997). The structure of psychological common sense. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sovran, T. (1992). Between similarity and sameness. Journal of Pragmatics, 18(4), 329–344. Toomela, A. (2010). Methodology of idiographic science: Limits of single case studies and the role of typology. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, J. Travers Simon, & A. Gennaro (Eds.) YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 3, pp. 13–36). Rome, Italy: Firera. Valsiner, J. (1984). Two alternative epistemological frameworks in psychology: The typological and variational modes of thinking. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 5(4), 449–470. Valsiner, J. (1985). Common sense and psychological theories: The historical nature of logical necessity. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 26, 97–109. 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. (1994). Uses of common sense and ordinary language in psychology, and beyond: A co-constructionist perspective and its implications. In J. Siegfried (Ed.), The status of common sense in psychology (pp. 46–57). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 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.

20    J. VALSINER and S. SALVATORE Valsiner, J., & Rudolph, L. (2008, July 21). Who shall survive? Psychology that replaces quantification with qualitative mathematics. Paper presented at the 29th International Congress of Psychology, Berlin, Germany. 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. Weidmann, C. Kobl, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning (pp. 215–251) Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript. 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: Lawrence Erlbaum. Von Eye, A., Mun, E-Y., & Mair, P. (2009). What carries a mediation process? IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43(3), 228–247. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Vygotsky, L. S. (1999). Myshlenie i rech (5th ed.). Moscow, Russia: Labirint. Windelband, W. (1998). History and natural science. Theory & Psychology, 8(1), 5–22. (Original speech 1894, published 1904)

Jaan Valsiner is a cultural psychologist with a consistently developmental axiomatic base that is brought to the analyses of any psychological or social phenomena. He is the founding editor (1995) of the Sage journal, Culture & Psychology. He is currently professor of psychology at the Department of Psychology, Clark University, Massachusetts. He has published many books, the most pertinent of which are The Guided Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) and Culture in Minds and Societies (New Delhi: Sage, 2007). He has edited (with Kevin Connolly) the Handbook of Developmental Psychology (London: Sage, 2003) as well as the Cambridge Handbook of SocioCultural Psychology (2007, with Alberto Rosa). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (Springer, from 2007) and History and Theory of Psychology (from 2008, with Transaction Publishers). In 1995 he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in Germany for his interdisciplinary work on human development, and Senior Fulbright Lecturing Award in Brazil 1995–1997. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, and The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] Sergio Salvatore is professor of dynamic psychology at the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. His scientific interests encompass the psychodynamic theorization of mental processes; the theory and the analysis of psychological intervention in clinical, scholastic, organizational, and social fields; psychotherapy research; and the methodology of empirical analysis of sociosymbolic dynamics. He is associate editor of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Rivista Psicologia Clinica—RPC Review of Clinic Psychology, and Psicologia Scolastica. Address: Department of History, Society and Human Studies, Via Stampacchia, 45, 73100 Lecce. E-mail: [email protected]

CommentarY

What Should Idiographic Language be Like? Carlos Cornejo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Abstract In this commentary, I analyze Valsiner and Salvatore’s argument about the need to construct a language for idiographic science. I present the original version of the concepts nomothetic and idiographic by Wilhelm Windelband and later misunderstandings about them. I argue that these misunderstandings are partially motivated by inconsistencies by Windelband himself. In particular, he defined “idiographic knowledge” as logical singular propositions; and, at the same time he suggested that it is knowledge by intuition. Furthermore, Windelband’s original definition of idiographic knowledge is paradoxically written in nomothetic language. From this analysis, I evaluate the adequacy of Valsiner and Salvatore’s two claims for an idiographic language: to incorporate abductive inference and to use field-like signs instead of point-like signs. In the first case, we have a new way to better approach intuition. In the second case, systems theory language allows a more accurate description of psychological phenomena. Nonetheless, I argue for the primacy of ordinary language over systems-theory language.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 21–33 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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The question of what is the appropriate language to refer to psychological phenomena, or how it is to be created, which was raised by Valsiner and Salvatore in this volume, offers the opportunity to contrast at a metatheoretical level the kind of relation that scientists tacitly assume between language and reality. Valsiner and Salvatore further specify some criteria that a technical language should satisfy in order to adequately take account of psychological phenomena. This proposal follows Wilhelm Windelband’s (1980/1894) statement that psychology consists (as does every natural science) of discovering the general laws of mental phenomena; but that psychology methodologically proceeds upon a subject matter whose descriptive richness may well suggest that the discipline belongs to the domain of the humanities (the Geisteswissenschaften) rather than the natural sciences. The making of psychological knowledge involves advancing toward general laws from complex facts, which by themselves can be exhaustively described as particular occurrences. Valsiner and Salvatore undertake precisely this task. To fairly appraise whether and in which sense their proposal succeeds, it is necessary to determine precisely what Windelband said and what he suggested. Windelband’s Project and its Reception Windelband originally introduced the nomothetic/idiographic distinction in 1894, on the occasion of his becoming Rector of the University of Strasburg (Lamiell, 1998). The oral presentation was entitled Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft (English translations, Windelband, 1980, 1998) and presented the state of the art in the separation between the natural sciences and the humanities (in German, Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften). The dissimilar development of these two streams of thought throughout the 19th century had arrived at its maximum tension in Windelband’s time. In the same year as Windelband’s discourse, Wilhelm Dilthey officially declared the independence of the “sciences of the spirit” from the dominant “natural sciences,” stating that nature is to be explained, while the spiritual life can only be understood; introducing the equally long-lasting epistemological distinction between explanation and understanding (Dilthey, 1894/1968; see Groeben, 1997). Dilthey reclaimed different goals and methods for the human sciences instead of directly applying the methods of the natural sciences to human affairs, as positivism and experimentalism postulated. Windelband’s exposition was oriented toward rescuing psychology from its uncomfortable position between human and natural sciences. His strategy was to shift the axis of the polarity from the subject matter (either extensional nature or historical spirit) to the methods. Since psychology is interested in extracting general laws of mental life, it belongs to the set of nomothetic disciplines, not to those of idiographic disciplines, whose purpose

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    23

is instead “to reproduce and understand in its full facticity an artifact of human life to which a unique ontological status is ascribed” (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 176). The new distinction “nomological and idiographic sciences” coincides fully with natural and human sciences, with one important exception: psychology. After Windelband, this discipline obtained a place in the pantheon of natural sciences. Note that, since Windelband did not offer a substantive connection between subject matters and methods, he was saying that psychology is a natural science just because it uses the methods of the natural sciences. But this is exactly what we knew before Windelband and the main point of criticism by antipositivists like Dilthey. No matter how substantive-free Windelband’s distinction may be, historical fact is that its reception was quite different from the original intentions of the author. Accounts describe that it was imported to the English-speaking world by means of the translation of Introduction to Philosophy (Windelband, 1921), and later popularized by Gordon Allport through his Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (1937; see Lamiell, 1998; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). We know as well, that psychology misunderstood both neologisms. On the one side, psychology understands nomothetic knowledge as the search for laws valid for groups or aggregates, instead of searching for laws for all people (Lamiell, 1998, 2003). By doing this, psychologists tacitly sustain ontological claims about their subject matter: “Nomotheticity has been taken to mean ergodicity of psychological phenomena—that is, the assumption according to which the individual’s variability of the psychological flow over time is structurally identical to the inter-individual variation within a given population” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 821; emphasis in original). Phenomena occurring in the human conscious experience are unwarrantedly supposed as distributed within an abstract aggregate of persons, by definition, interindividual differences. Thus, psychological phenomena are supposed as heterogeneously distributed in population (such as physical traits like eye color or left-handedness) or even normally distributed as measurable physical traits (such as height or velocity).1 However, as Lamiell (1998) rightly pointed out, what is generally true of aggregates is not generally true of persons: “modern trait ‘psychology’ is much less a psychology than a demography exploiting a psychological vocabulary” (p. 34, emphasis in original). On the other side (and more importantly for our present purposes), psychology has misunderstood the original sense of the term idiographic. By antipodal contraposition with nomotheticism, equivocally understood as the study of groups, idiographic has been equated with the study of individual persons (Lamiell, 1998). To be sure, in Windelband’s article, idiographic includes first the entire domain of the historical disciplines. Idiographically approachable subject matters are “the nature and life of an individual person or an entire nation; the definitive properties and the development of a

24   C. CORNEJO

language, a religion, a legal order, an artifact of literature, art, or science” (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 75). In addition to that, contemporary psychology receives and uses idiographic as an antithesis of scientific. Since the latter is represented in present times by nomothetical psychology, idiographical approaches are erroneously perceived as opposed to and even in rivalry with scientific psychology. Lamiell (1998) comments that this contemporary understanding is totally different from Windelband’s original sense of idiographic. For Windelband, nomothetic and idiographic disciplines are both scientific, since the two are parts of the same set of the empirical sciences (empirische Wissenschaften). What distinguishes empirical sciences from philosophy and mathematics is that they require the verification of facts on the basis of observation. A corollary of all the aforementioned misunderstandings of Windelband’s neologisms is its dichotomization. The official reception of them (and their popular version) tell us that they represent different and irreconcilable credos: either you seek the uniqueness of the psychological phenomena or you search for their general lawfulness (tertium non datur). However, this dichotomy does not follow from Windelband’s perspective, as Salvatore and Valsiner (2010) rightly point out. Two Senses of Unique It is convenient to understand what exactly is the source of so many confusions about the nomothetic/idiographic distinction. For the purposes of this commentary, I concentrate on the equivocal understanding of idiographic knowledge.2 Let’s remember that the first claim in Windelband’s paper is to examine the division between natural and human sciences in the light of logics, because the distinction does not offer, in Windelband’s opinion, a clear and definite categorization of psychology, and “a classification which produces such difficulties has no systematic basis” (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 174). Windelband seeks the “systematic basis” in the “modes of investigation” of the diverse sciences, not in their “contents of knowledge.” He is trying to develop a new classification criterion that renders the very same classification that we know, and which eliminates the error of putting psychology in the wrong part of the division. As we know, for Windelband, the purpose of natural sciences is the discovery of laws; while human sciences search for exhaustive descriptions of an artifact of human life to which a unique ontological status is ascribed. Operating with this classification criterion, “psychology falls unambiguously within the domain of the natural sciences” (Windelband, 894/1980, p. 176).

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    25 At this point, we have before us a purely methodological classification of the empirical sciences that is grounded upon sound logical concepts. The principle of classification is the formal property of the theoretical or cognitive objectives of the science in question. One kind of science is an inquiry into general laws. The other kind of science is an inquiry into specific historical facts. In the language of formal logic, the objective of the first kind of science is the general, apodictic judgment; the objective of the other kind of science is the singular, assertoric proposition. Thus this distinction connects with the most important and crucial relationship in the human understanding, the relationship which Socrates recognized as the fundamental nexus of all scientific thought: the relationship of the general to the particular. (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 176)

Windelband frames the polarity of the general law/unique case in general/particular (or type/token) logical schema. But this move involves a pun in the notion of unique. “Unique” means “unrepeatable, nonimitable”; for example, when I say that my daughters are unique. But additionally, unique means “single,” for example, when I say that the Earth has a unique satellite. There are many objects that are unique (in the sense of unrepeatable), but not singular. The Earth, for example, is certainly unique in the sense of being the only planet that we inhabit; but evidently it is not unique, since there are countless more planets in the universe. The former sense is what matters when we are conducting human studies. The latter sense of unique is the only sense that a formal analysis can capture. It corresponds to an arithmetical characterization of the object. There is no synonymy between unique and singular. So, the claim that the natural and human sciences embody the logical relationship between general and particular propositions does not follow. The strictly logical framework from which Windelband extracts the new classification system of sciences imposes a second difficulty, namely, that logic functions as metalanguage to make order among the empirical sciences. The problem of this procedure is that, since logic is a formal modeling of objects and events, it cannot give a substantive account of the deepness and complexity of a unique event, in the nonarithmetical sense of the word. Logic attends to formal features of the phenomenon, but cannot capture its essence. By extension, logic is nonsensitive to meaning nuances. Paraphrasing Bergson (1903/1913), logic goes around the object, but cannot enter it. The issue is problematic because logic cannot but work nomothetically: Suppose we consider the following question: what has logical theory thus far made of this crucial antithesis which distinguishes the specialized sciences? . . . The entire development of logic betrays the most decisive preference for nomothetic forms of thought. This is easily explained. All scientific research and verification assume the form of the concept . . . Our entire traditional theory of concept, proposition, and inference is still tailored to the Aristotelian prin-

26   C. CORNEJO ciple according to which the general proposition is the focal point of logical investigation. One need only leaf through any logic textbook in order to be convinced that the great majority of examples are chosen from mathematics and the natural sciences. (Windelband, 1894/1980, pp. 176–177; emphasis added)

Thus, by using a logical structure as a criterion to support the distinction, Windelband is sustaining metacriteria of a nomothetical nature when describing idiographical knowledge. This nomothetic bias was in operation when Windelband offered a new interpretation of the goal of human sciences: “to reproduce and understand in its full facticity an artifact of human life to which a unique ontological status is ascribed [in] . . . the singular, assertoric proposition” (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 175). The latter version loses the properly idiographic nature of human knowledge; it simply retains its logical form. The new version, at least in its literal expression, fails in recognizing that the ultimate goal of the human sciences is bringing an alien experience into new life. It is fair to add that Windelband was completely conscious of this contradiction at a metalevel. His article, especially the final third of it, is full of commentaries suggesting that idiographic knowledge is not merely what is contained by the term singular, assertoric proposition: The historian’s task, on the other hand, is to breathe new life into some structure of the past in such a way that all of its concrete and distinctive features acquire an ideal actuality or contemporaneity. His task, in relation to what really happened, is similar to the task of the artist, in relation to what exists in his imagination. This is the source of the relationship between historical accomplishment and aesthetic creativity, the kinship between the historical disciplines and belles lettres. (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 178)

He describes the aim of history as “resurrecting what is forgotten in a new form of life” (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 179), observing the predominance of perceptuality (Anschaulichkeit 3) in this discipline. In fact, no matter how nomothetically Windelband defines psychology, he explicitly states that the only way to understand a formal law of mental phenomena is the intuitive knowledge of persons: When historical proofs are reduced to their purely logical form, the ultimate premises will always include natural laws of events, in particular, laws of mental events or psychological processes. Consider someone who has no idea at all concerning how men in general think, feel, and desire. It would not only be impossible for him to comprehend individual happenings in order to acquire knowledge of events and processes. He would already have failed in the critical determination of historical facts. (Windelband, 1894/1980, 183)

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    27

All these statements cast doubts as to whether universal, nomothetic propositions of psychology really explain singular cases. If the general/ particular relationship were exclusively logical, the transition would be warranted. However, Windelband himself says, General laws do not establish an ultimate state from which the specific conditions of the causal chain could ultimately be derived. It follows that all subsumptions under general laws are useless in the analysis of the ultimate causes or grounds of the single, temporally given phenomenon. Therefore, in all the data of historical and individual experience, a residuum of incomprehensible, brute fact remains an inexpressible and indefinable phenomenon. Thus the ultimate and most profound nature of personality resists analysis in terms of general categories. From the perspective of our consciousness, this incomprehensible character of the personality emerges as the sense of the indeterminacy of our nature—in other words, individual freedom. (Windelband, 1894/1980, p. 184, emphasis added)

At this point, it is clear that “idiographic knowledge” is not the statement of singular propositions. What is the utility of general laws if they do not apply to singular cases? Can a law be universal and at the same time not be applicable to all cases? Windelband (1894/1980)was fully conscious of this paradox and ends his article with this highly skeptical statement: “The law and the event remain as the ultimate, incommensurable entities of our world view” (p. 185), which is his confession that the gap between natural and human sciences is still there, even after his attempt to overcome it. It is my impression that part of the later misunderstandings of the concept of idiographic resides precisely in inconsistent definitions in the original text. Windelband says idiographic knowledge is defined by logical singular propositions; but, more importantly, he suggests it is the knowledge by intuition (Anschauung). This latter sense of idiographic is what survived of the term in psychology during the 20th century. His descriptions of what is idiographic constantly refer to the idea that the logical form of single (or even universal) propositions cannot exhaustively express the nuances of the phenomenon. There always remains in the verbal description of an individual experience a “residuum of [the] incomprehensible, . . . an inexpressible and indefinable phenomenon.” Windelband seems to accept that life exceeds propositional language. This belief echoes the Romanticist criticism of the Illuminist faith in the expressive possibilities of language: How unspeakably difficult it is to convey the particular quality [Eigenheit] of an individual human being and how impossible it is to say precisely what distinguishes an individual, his way of feeling and living . . . If this is so, what happens when one tries to master an entire ocean of peoples, times, cultures,

28   C. CORNEJO countries, with one glance, one sentiment, by means of one single word? Words, pale shadow play!” (Herder, 1774, as quoted in Berlin, 1976)

For Herder, the profoundness of human experience is thus beyond language. Similarly, as Windelband argues, idiographical knowledge is not accurately encrypted in general propositions. The uniqueness of the experienced object vanishes whenever I try to reach general propositions, since when I abstract, I see the object as one of many, not as this particular one. The very existence of this ineffable residuum turns as incomplete or unsuccessful any attempt to exhaust the consciousness contents in language. Particular propositions cannot grasp the certainty and wholeness of the contemplative Anschauung—the moment when you feel into yourself the why and what for of a human action. This is what Windelband was trying to reach when he introduced the neologism idiographic. The subsequent debate around the concept, including its miscomprehensions, can be better understood when we pay attention not to its rather scanty logicist definition but to what we recognize beyond Windelband’s words. The Form of an Idiographical Language How does Valsiner and Salvatore’s proposal deal with the idiographical (in the interesting sense of the term)? Starting from the axioms that doing science requires explanation and that explaining requires generalization, they detect that the kind of statements that psychological science produces are dubitable. First, generalizations in psychology are usually based on the erroneous assumption that interindividual variability (the one that we find within a statistical sample), is equivalent to the lively variability of the psychological fact. Thus, the sampled average of a psychological quality replaces the unrepeatable nature of the psychological fact. When the average replaces quality, properties of numbers, such as homogeneity and formality, cover the nuances and profoundness of the psychological subject matter: “As a result, no new qualities can be discovered through the quantitative approach in psychology. The nature of the quality implied is not under investigation” (Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume, p. 10). A methodological consequence of this is, argue the authors, that generalization via induction is not sufficient in psychology. Second, the deductive application of the generalized propositions is another source of confusions. The “generic singular,” previously constructed via induction, is translated into a “deduced concrete singular.” This is of course in direct contradiction to Windelband’s caveat that all subsumption under general laws is useless in the analysis of the single, temporally given phenomenon. Moreover, the application of generalized knowledge to the “deduced concrete singular”

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    29

often proceeds with the addition of value judgments, which renders “valueadded imperative singulars.” How can we overcome these difficulties? What kind of language should we use to consistently advance from idiographic descriptions to nomothetic explanations? Valsiner and Salvatore make two important suggestions: to consider abduction as complementary to inductive and deductive modes of inference; and to move from point-like generalizations to field-like generalizations. Abduction Valsiner and Salvatore promote rescuing the forgotten third kind of logical inference: abduction. Introduced by Charles S. Peirce at the beginning of 20th century, abductive inference presents a “backward move” from a unique particular observed to a conjectural cause of it: The surprising fact, C, is observed If A were true, C would be a matter of course Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true (Peirce, 1935, p. 117) For Peirce, this is the logical structure of the explanatory hypothesis. Its conclusion is only conjectural, but through it we gain new knowledge. It implies examining the “mass of facts” and letting them suggest a theory (see Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). Thanks to this mode of inference, “the [psychological] occurrences are connected in an organic picture” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 827). Interestingly, what Peirce (1935) describes as abduction, is coincident with what we termed above as intuition or Anschauung. Where else does the new idea come from? It cannot come from deduction, since the latter is a mode of reasoning that does not add something new. It does not come from induction, because the connection between conjectured cause and observed fact is not a formal one: it implies a substantive relationship. We build an organic picture of the quality of the relationship between a possible cause and a certain psychological fact when we have an intuitive comprehension of the wholeness. To be sure, event and possible cause are not linked in a formal way; there is no quantitatively optimal ratio between number or scope of psychological events to obtain a representative sample of the “real” relationship with the conjectured cause: “In other terms, by definition, the model of the exemplar [the psychological occurrence or observed event] is the local model of the subset of occurrences conceived

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as pertinent” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 827). The appearance of the term pertinence is indicative of the relationship supposed between event and cause that decisively entails content; so that it is a person who sustains this relationship and does so from an intuitive understanding of the whole situation. Two objects are pertinent only from the point of view of a person. In other words, pertinence is a meaningful relationship, not a formal one. Now the question can be reformulated in this way: Where does a person obtain the intuition of a cause? The authors contend that “The theory orients the research to pick exemplars as probable useful cases for the sake of the scientific enterprise” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 828). Certainly the theoretical background plays an important role in the emergence of a pertinent connection; but so does all our tacit knowledge. Our complete bodily knowledge is in action whenever we comprehend aspects of the world. My intuition does not come from an intellectual engagement with the object. Completely on the contrary, the primary source of intuition is the nonintellectual, pretheoretical knowledge that is necessarily involved in every act of knowing. Necessarily because we are not minds; we are persons. From the fact that every act of knowing implies an organismic involvement, Polanyi (1958) concludes that knowledge is always personal: “Every act of personal assimilation by which we make a thing form an extension of ourselves through our subsidiary [i.e., tacit] awareness of it, is a commitment of ourselves; a manner of disposing of ourselves” (p. 61). There is no abduction, therefore no novel ideas, without a personal commitment. Field-Like Signs Instead of Point-Like Signs Valsiner and Salvatore argue that typically, science operates with point-like signs that reduce the complex multiplicity of reality to an abstract unity. These are the usual abstractions in science that transform the varieties of cases and instances into one prototype or average case. Instead, a real idiographic science should capture, in an abstract way, the multiplicity of prototypes and antitypes (the latter being the symbolic antipode of the prototype). A possible candidate is the field-like sign, which is the expanded version of the point-like sign, entailing generalizations that “allow for heterogeneity within the field . . . [field-like signs] represent the abstract possibility of multilinearity of trajectories to the same end (equifinality) point” (Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume, p. 15). This suggestion goes exactly in the direction of grasping and describing “in its full facticity” the human phenomena. Valsiner and Salvatore expand the basic building block of nomothetical science—the “concept.”4 The concept is a static, nontemporal entity, whose richness resides in its abstract nature. Its great hazard is reification: whenever a dynamic process, e.g.,

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    31

a psychological fact, is conceptually reconstructed, it is in jeopardy of being mummified. Language is seen as a system, not as an action; meaning is seen as semantic contents rather than an experience in permanent development; intelligence is seen as a factor or endowed capacity rather than a contextualized skill. It seems also that we need another way to approach the complexity of the psychological fact. We need to capture its temporality, the irreversibility of time, the permanent evolving stream of contents, the ample field of consciousness exceeding focal awareness, the affective deepness of experience, and so forth. Whenever we move in the direction of more accurately describing psychological phenomena, we are making idiography; we are breathing new life into objects, persons, and events in such a way that we re-create within ourselves all of their concrete and distinctive features. Interestingly, Valsiner and Salvatore make this expansion by means of a lexicon provided by systems theory (e.g., equifinality, multilinearity, trajectory). Doubtlessly, dynamic-systems theory and developments in nonlinear mathematics have been great tools for recognizing, via more compelling modeling, more complex aspects of psychological life that did not figure for statistically minded psychologists. However, it is relevant to raise the caveat that systems-theory language allows us to see other aspects of psychological facts, but not all of them. It is a useful tool; but it is just a tool. It helps us to express aspects that were until now inexpressible; but (whether unfortunately or fortunately) the residuum of incomprehensibility is still there. It is worth remembering that systems-theory language was born with the aim of constructing a general language crossing many disciplines and subject matters. A “system” is in fact anything that has a border; or even more, whatever any observer can distinguish from an environment. Such high abstraction is the consequence of the view that its principles should apply to everything suitably labeled as a system (person, family, cell, society, machine, etc.) The risk of this abstraction at higher levels is that it loses what is specific to each of these systems. Both persons and machines, for example, may well be seen as systems for certain purposes; but for many other purposes, they are completely different and incommensurable. The question here is in which language we perceive the differences between persons and systems. Which language are we using when we intuit that the important aspects of psychological facts are neglected or hyperreduced in the nomothetical language of scientific psychology? The answer is this: our ordinary language. We know in advance that people are not machines and that the systems-theory language probably does not exhaust the psychological phenomena because we have a preunderstanding of it in our native languages. Thus, when Salvatore and Valsiner (2010) write, “According to our proposal, idiography is the recognition of the dynamic and systemic nature of psychological objects and therefore of their uniqueness (yet not irreducible incommensurability)” (p. 829; emphasis added), I have

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the impression that they mean exactly the reverse: Idiography is the recognition of the uniqueness of psychological objects and therefore its dynamic and systemic nature. Our intuitions of the world and of ourselves are initially expressed in ordinary language, which has therefore primacy over any technical language (whether systemic, formal, psychoanalytical, or whatever). It is against this tacit background of knowledge that we ponder the acceptability of psychological explanations. It is against this background that we evaluate whether systems-theory language captures the complexities of psychological phenomena more accurately than the present nomological language of psychologists. But at the same time, the background is a source of skepticism, whether or not such an abstract language can re-create the life of concrete human experience. This background is nothing less than the residuum of incomprehensibility described by Windelband: the very reason why idiographical inquiry exists and goes on. Notes 1. This is partially a consequence of the “statistical revolution” that took place during 1930–1940 (Gigerenzer & Murray, 1987; Gigerenzer et al., 1997). 2. This is of course not to say that confusions of nomotheticism are less important or less complex. It has already been mentioned in the previous footnote that the wrong general equivalence-like aggregate can be reconstructed by observing the importation of statistical reasoning in the social sciences. I would also add that this reconstruction has to take into account the psychometric way of understanding psychology, the history of which is completely different from that of experimental psychology. 3. Anschaulichkeit is translated as “concreteness” by James T. Lamiell (1998). Here I follow the translation of Guy Oakes (Windelband, 1894/1980). 4. Windelband himself stated that “all scientific research and verification assume the form of the concept” (1894/1980, p. 176).

References Berlin, I. (1976). Vico and Herder: Two studies in the history of ideas. London, England: Hogarth. Bergson, H. (1903/1913). An introduction to metaphysics. London, England: Macmillan. Dilthey, W. (1894/1968). Ideen für eine beschreibende und zergliedernde psychologie. Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften 1894 [Ideas for a descriptive and analytical psychology: Communications of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin]. In W. Dilthey (Ed.), Gesammelte schriften (Vol. V, pp. 139–240). Stuttgart, Germany: Teubner.

What Should Idiographic Language be Like?    33 Gigerenzer, G., & Murray, D. J. (1987). Cognition as intuitive statistics. London, England: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1997). The empire of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Groeben, N. (1997). Einleitung: Sozialwissenschaftliche psychologie- Konzeption zwischen natur- und geisteswissenschaft [Introduction: Cultural psychology between natural sciences and human sciences]. In N. Groeben (Ed.), Zur programmatik einer sozialwissenschaftlichen psychologie. Bd. 1: Metatheoretische perspektiven. 1. Halbband: Gegenstandsverständnis, menschenbilder, methodologie und ethik (pp. 1–26). Münster, Germany: Aschendorff. Lamiell, J. T. (1998). “Nomothetic” and “Idiographic”: Contrasting Windelband‘s understanding with contemporary usage. Theory & Psychology, 8(1), 23–38. Lamiell, J. T. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Peirce, C. S. (1935). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vol. 5). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge: Toward a post-critical philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Between the general and the unique: Overcoming the nomothetic versus idiographic opposition. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), 817–833. Windelband, W. (1921). Introduction to philosophy. London, England: Unwin. Windelband, W. (1980). Rectorial address, Strasbourg, 1894 (G. Oakes, Trans.). History and Theory, 19(2), 169–185 (Original work published 1894) Windelband, W. (1998). History and natural science (J. T. Lamiell, Trans.). Theory & Psychology, 8(1), 5–22 (Original work published 1894)

Carlos Cornejo is associate professor in psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He teaches history of psychology, psychology of language, and philosophy of psychology. His research interests include theoretical and empirical aspects of meaning construction, figurative language, and pragmatism in psychology. Address: Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, 7820436 Macul, Chile. E-mail: [email protected]

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Commentary

Some Considerations Pertinent to the Language of Idiographic Science James T. Lamiell Georgetown University

Abstract The present treatise is a reflective commentary on the contribution to this volume by Valsiner and Salvatore. Consistent with their views, this commentary argues that the quest for idiographic knowledge can be reconciled with nomothetic knowledge objectives. However, questions are raised about the coherence of the concept of maximal uniqueness. It is argued that there is a need for a clear distinction between “uniqueness” and “individuality,” and that it is concern for the latter rather than the former that is central to the objectives of an idiographic science. Finally, it is reemphasized in this commentary that the individual differences paradigm for personality research really is not and has never been nomothetic in the sense intended by Windelband, and hence that the long-standing practice of referring to the traditional paradigm as nomothetic should be steadfastly opposed.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 35–44 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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A half a century has now passed since Robert R. Holt sought to dismiss as utterly oxymoronic all talk of an “idiographic science.” In an article published in 1962 under the title “Individuality and Generalization in the Psychology of Personality,” Holt referred to the nomothetic-idiographic distinction as “one of the hardiest perennial weeds in psychology’s conceptual garden,” and he expressed the hope—“fondly but nonetheless ardently”— that, through his article, he would be able to lay to rest that “Teutonic ghost which haunts and confounds much of modern psychology” (p. 377). Holt concluded his 1962 article thusly: There is no need for a special type of science to be applied to individual personalities, and the attempt to promulgate such a science fell into hopeless contradictions and absurdities. Today, [the] terms [nomothetic and idiographic] continue to appear in psychological writing but largely as pretentious jargon, mouth-filling polysyllables to awe the uninitiated, but never as essential concepts to make any scientifically vital point. Let us simply drop them from our vocabularies and let them die quietly. (p. 402)

Clearly, the presumption underlying the chapter authored by Valsiner and Salvatore in this volume and, indeed, of the entire volume, is that the stance Holt so stridently adopted in 1962 was thoroughly ill-advised. At the same time, however, the enduring quest for terminological clarity among contemporary advocates for an idiographic science mirrors Holt’s unease over that same basic point and suggests that still more work in this direction is necessary. I offer the present commentary as a modest contribution in this effort. Characterizing the Methods and Knowledge Objectives of Idiographic Science As Valsiner and Salvatore clearly recognize, one of the first orders of business here is to achieve an adequate characterization of idiographic science, something that requires clarity concerning the discipline’s knowledge objectives and methods of procedure. Regarding the latter, Valsiner and Salvatore point out (correctly, in my view) that idiographic inquiry cannot be equated with reliance on qualitative methods. To be sure, such methods will often be employed, but there is ample room within the framework of an idiographic science for the use of quantitative methods as well (cf. Lamiell, 2003, esp. Ch. 9; Molenaar, 2007). Characterizing the knowledge objectives of an idiographic science is a somewhat more complicated matter. It is instructive in this regard to consider the views of the inventor of the neologism idiographic, Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915). In his 1894 Rede, Windelband identified idiograph-

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ic knowledge as knowledge of the sort sought within the humanities (die Geisteswissenschaften), in which the objective is to achieve “a complete and exhaustive portrayal of a particular, more or less protracted occurrence of a unique, temporally circumscribed reality” (1998, p. 12). In idiographic inquiry, Windelband noted, “always, the goal of knowledge is that of reproducing and rendering intelligible a creation of human life in its factuality, . . . [to elucidate] the unique content . . . of an actual happening” (pp. 12–13). Windelband contrasted the knowledge objectives of the Geisteswissenschaften with those of the natural sciences (die Naturwissenschaften). He noted that the latter disciplines are “sciences of law” (Gesetzeswissenschaften), seeking nomothetic knowledge that reveals “what always is” (was immer ist) in some given domain of inquiry, whereas the former, that is, the humanities, are “sciences of events” (Ereigniswissenschaften), revealing in rich detail “what once was” (was einmal war) (Windelband, 1998, p. 13). I think it far from insignificant that for Windelband (and his contemporaries), the expression Wissenschaft (science) was applicable both to those disciplines seeking knowledge of laws (die Naturwissenschaften) and to those disciplines seeking knowledge of historically unique events (die Geisteswissenschaften). For Windelband, the disciplines in both categories were properly regarded as empirical sciences (Erfahrungswissenschaften), as opposed to the purely rational sciences (die rationalen Wissenschaften) of logic and mathematics, and no one who consults the relevant work could fail to see this (cf. Lamiell, 1998). However, most of the historic nomothetic-idiographic debate has been waged in English, and in this language, the term science does not appear in the expression commonly used to refer to what Windelband called die Geisteswissenschaften. On the contrary, science is a term typically reserved for the natural sciences or disciplines modeled thereon (i.e., the social sciences). That is, disciplines seeking nomothetic knowledge—knowledge of lawful regularities of one sort or another—are called sciences, whereas disciplines seeking idiographic knowledge of events in the sense described by Windelband are not referred to as sciences at all but instead as humanities. Aided by this custom of nomenclature, it has been easy for adherents of the view that psychology is properly regarded and prosecuted as a natural science to dismiss proponents of the disciplined quest for idiographic knowledge as non- or even antiscientific. The aforementioned article by Holt (1962) offers one especially vivid (but far from the only) illustration of this: The goal of those who profess an idiographic point of view is . . . understanding [in the sense of verstehen]. That conception [of understanding] is an empathic, intuitive feeling of knowing a phenomenon from the inside, as it were . . . [This] feeling of understanding is a subjective effect aimed at by artists, not scientists. In science, when we say that we understand something, we

38    J. T. LAMIELL mean that we can predict and control it . . . We must recognize that the ideal of an idiographic science is a will-o-the-wisp, an artistic and not a scientific goal. (Holt, 1962, pp. 388–390; emphasis in original)

If this distinctly un-Windelbandian view of idiographic knowledge as somehow non- or antiscientific is something that the 20th century’s most visible and persistent proponent of the need for idiographic knowledge in psychology, Gordon Allport (1897–1967), would scarcely have wished to foster, he certainly did not help his own cause with passages such as the following: The individual, whatever else he may be, is an internally consistent and unique organization of bodily and mental processes. But since he is unique, science finds him an embarrassment. Science, it is said, deals only with broad, preferably universal laws. Thus science is a nomothetic discipline . . . Individuality cannot be studied by science, but only by history, art, or biography, whose methods are not nomothetic (seeking universal laws) but idiographic. (Allport, 1961, p. 9, emphasis in original)

Coupled with his fatefully misguided branding of the so-called common trait procedure for studying individual differences as a nomothetic approach to personality research (cf. Lamiell, 1986, 1987, 1997, 2003; more on this below), Allport’s early characterization of idiographic knowledge as lying outside the boundaries of science pointed the long-running nomothetic-idiographic debate in the wrong direction from its very beginning. The fact that even now, more than a decade into the 21st century, psychology still has need for efforts of the sort that make up the present volume reflects the hugely untoward conceptual consequences of this. My own comments up to this point, therefore, are intended to underscore the importance of the suggestion by Valsiner and Salvatore that idiographic knowledge is not a nonscientific—still less an antiscientific—kind of knowledge. On the contrary, if we would follow Windelband, as Valsiner and Salvatore seem inclined to do, we will recognize and profess the view that idiographic knowledge is knowledge of a sort sought within those empirical sciences—Erfahrungswissenschaften—devoted to the quest for knowledge of events, that is, context-specific occurrences, as they unfold in individual lives in accordance with certain lawful regularities, primarily of a developmental nature. Individuality, Uniqueness, and Idiographic Science An important point on which my own views in this domain differ from most others who have advocated for an idiographic perspective has to do with

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the concept of uniqueness. Certainly, that concept played a significant role in Windelband’s thinking about “personality,” and Allport repeatedly emphasized the need for attention to uniqueness. Here again, however, I think that this is a point on which advocates of idiography have unnecessarily visited trouble upon themselves vis-à-vis their intellectual adversaries. It has long been widely agreed that, ultimately, scientific investigation is devoted to the detection of recurrent patterns or regularities of one sort or another. This does not entail the denial that every event is in some sense unique; it simply insists that, over and above that uniqueness, the events of interest must instantiate some regularity that is, in principle at least, detectable. It is clear from their writing here that Valsiner and Salvatore, too, embrace this view, for they advocate descriptions of developmental processes that are “maximally general—applicable to each and every individual case,” even as the applications themselves would be, contentwise, “maximally unique.” My concern here is to ask, Is it sensible to speak of “maximal uniqueness?” and Is the concept of uniqueness really necessary at all for the purposes of an idiographic science? I would submit that the answer to both of these questions is “No.” The expression maximal uniqueness suggests that uniqueness is something that comes in degrees, and it seems to me that this is a distortion of the very meaning of the term. Something is unique (categorically) if it is the only one of its kind (which would make it a kind unto itself), and it is not unique (equally categorically) if it is not the only instance of its kind (hence not a category unto itself). I can see no middle ground here, and that is what inclines me to regard the notion of maximal uniqueness as untenable. Nor, however, is the concept of uniqueness necessary for the purposes of an idiographic science. Once again, a bit of reflection on the meaning of uniqueness helps to point the way here. It has just been noted that uniqueness means “one of a kind.” This means that in order to even take up the question of uniqueness, there would have to be some way to characterize the entity (object, event) in question as being of some or other “kind” to begin with. Only then would it be possible to investigate whether there is/are any other entity(ies) also of that kind. Moreover, the results of any inquiry into this latter question, whatever those results might be, could not alter the status of entity A with respect to the kind in question. On the contrary, entity A would remain the kind of entity it had originally been found to be. I advocate a nomenclature according to which the initial characterization of entity A as being of this or that kind constitutes a statement about entity A’s individuality at some particular point in time. This (i.e., the possibility of achieving such characterizations) is, in my view, what is crucial to idiographic inquiry. The question of entity A’s uniqueness, that is, of whether it is or is not the only one of its kind, is strictly secondary, and for the scientific purposes of idiographic inquiry, the answer to that question

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(even if it could be achieved, which is not the case; cf. Lamiell, 1997) would be inconsequential. On page 654 of the New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1975 edition), there appears the following entry: idio-. indicates individuality, peculiarity, isolation, or spontaneity; for example, idiolect. [Greek, from idios, personal, peculiar, separate]. I would suggest that the key here is to see “individuality” and “peculiarity” as primary when it comes to understanding the knowledge objectives of idiographic science, and to recognize that while an individual’s idiosyncracies might make him/her unique, they might very well not do so and yet still qualify as reflective of his/her individuality. Actuality and Potentiality in Idiographic Science In the latter pages of their chapter in this volume, Valsiner and Salvatore set forth a general scheme for the prosecution of an idiographic science within which the portrayal of an individuality at some given point in time emerges from the consideration of the actual—what is at that particular point in time—within the broader context of the possible—what is not but might otherwise be at that same point in time (see in particular Valsiner and Salvatore’s Figure 1.5 and the accompanying discussion). I see here a convergence with and potential for fruitful development of ideas that I put forth rather tentatively as part of my call for an idiothetic psychology of personality some three decades ago (Lamiell, 1981). Those ideas were later bolstered in part by empirical investigations into the psychology of lay persons’ subjective judgments about their own and others’ personality characteristics (see, e.g., Lamiell & Durbeck, 1987; Lamiell, Foss, Larsen, & Hempel 1983). A brief elaboration of this point here might prove helpful for purposes of underscoring the potential fruitfulness of the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM) proposed by Valsiner and Salvatore (see also Sato, Hidaka, & Fukuda, 2009). Mainstream thinking in 20th-century personality psychology has long been tethered securely to the notion that meaningful statements about (and hence scientifically viable measures of) some given individual’s personality characteristics must be grounded, whether implicitly or explicitly, in considerations about how that individual differs from others. In the course of formal personality measurement, the relevant comparisons are executed in the process of transforming “raw” scores on some personality trait measure into standard scores. As is well-known, the procedure entails a computation of the difference between an individual’s raw score and the average raw score obtained within the aggregate of which the individual in

Some Considerations Pertinent to the Language of Idiographic Science    41

question is a part, and then dividing that difference by the standard deviation of those same raw scores. In a straightforward extension of this sort of thinking, mainstream views about the psychology of subjective personality judgments have widely assumed that such judgments are also grounded, implicitly, in the comparison of one individual with others. Addressing herself directly to this point, for example, Cloninger (1996) argued that although idiographic research focuses on the particularities of the individual case, “implicit comparisons with other people are unavoidable, since any description of a person (for example, ‘Mary is outgoing’) implies comparison with other people, even if this comparison is only in the memory of the one doing the analysis” (p. 5). The position adopted by Cloninger (1996) in this passage accords fully with views explicitly asserted by others before her (see, e.g., Lundberg, 1941; Sarbin, 1944), and seems to have been implicitly accepted by most other mainstream thinkers (for a more extensive discussion of this point, see Lamiell, 2003). Interestingly enough, the would-be thoroughgoing scientists of personality psychology never bothered to put their assumptions on this matter to empirical test, and once the question was pursued empirically, the findings proved rather inhospitable to their views. More specifically, those findings have consistently favored the hypothesis that laypersons’ subjective judgments of their own and one another’s personality characteristics are grounded not in considerations about how the person being judged differs from other persons concurrently or previously judged, but instead in essentially dialectical considerations about what is rather than is not the case about the individual person being judged (for a recent review of this research, see Lamiell, 2009). Nor, I continue to insist, can the essentially empiricist argument be sustained that a judge’s considerations about what is rather than is not the case about a particular individual (oneself or another) must themselves inevitably be grounded in that judge’s experience of relevant individual differences. Indeed, my position, which is essentially rationalist in nature, is exactly the opposite: absent some basis upon which to meaningful characterize a target individual prior to a comparison of him/her with others, no comparison of the target with others could ever be carried out (cf. Lamiell, 2003). Making the point more concretely, to claim that no meaningful judgment of a target individual’s degree of, say, conscientiousness can be made prior to comparing him/her with others is to claim that with respect to the dimension of (high vs. low) conscientiousness, the target individual does not exist, and were this the case, it would never be possible to compare that target individual with others along that dimension! These considerations, then, form the basis for my long-standing belief that an investigative framework structured along the lines of what Valsiner

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and Salvatore have termed the Trajectory Equifinality Model could prove highly fruitful for the purposes of an idiographic science. Reclaiming “Nomothetic” Within the Framework of an Idiographic Science My final observation in this commentary has to do with the nomenclature of “nomothetic” and “idiographic.” My central thesis (one that I have been emphasizing for quite some time now) is that there is nothing inherently antithetical between the close and extended study of individual cases—idiographic inquiry—and the quest for general patterns, regularities, or (even) laws, that is, knowledge of a nomothetic sort. Indeed, consideration of what Danziger (1990) called the “Leipzig” model for psychological research (i.e., the model established by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) and widely embraced among the first generation of experimental psychologists) is instructive here. To be sure, Wundt was not concerned with questions of individuality, and for this reason the label idiographic cannot properly be assigned to the scientific agenda he pioneered. On the contrary, that agenda of Wundt’s experimental psychology was thoroughly nomothetic in nature. However, that agenda mandated experimentation on individual “subjects,” precisely because the quest was for knowledge of “general laws” where “general” meant allen gemein or common to all. Clearly, there would have been no other epistemologically sound basis for pursuing knowledge of general laws (whether of consciousness or of anything else) pertaining to individual cases except through the study of single cases. In this sense, Wundt-ian style experimental psychology had to be individual in order to be general, and, indeed, both of these terms were used in Wundt’s day to refer to the experimental psychology he pioneered. By the time Gordon Allport (1897–1967) sparked the nomothetic vs. idiographic controversy in 1937 (Allport, 1937), the Leipzig (or Wundt-ian) model for experimental psychology had been largely abandoned in favor of that treatment group approach to experimentation Danziger (1990) branded “neo-Galtonian.” In this model, which formed the very basis of L. J. Cronbach’s (1916–2001) famous call for a merger of scientific psychology’s “two disciplines” (Cronbach, 1957) and continues to be widely employed today, the quest for knowledge of what is “true in general of individuals” is prosecuted by methods that at best yield knowledge of what is statistically true on average within populations. The great illusion, of course, is that this latter kind of knowledge is not something radically different from the former. Had Allport (and many after him) not either overlooked or chosen to ignore the full implications of this radical difference, it is doubtful that mainstream personality research would ever have come to be regarded as suited

Some Considerations Pertinent to the Language of Idiographic Science    43

to the quest for nomothetic knowledge in the sense originally intended by Windelband. For the purpose of a psychology of personality/individuality, traditional individual differences research most certainly is not and has never been truly nomothetic (Lamiell, 1986), and this is why I think it important that contemporary challengers of mainstream thinking, such as Valsiner and Salvatore, insist on reclaiming the term nomothetic as one applicable to the scientific goals they wish to pursue even as they are advocating fidelity to the need for idiographic knowledge. The point here, I think, is of direct and crucial relevance to the following observation by Valsiner and Salvatore in this volume: We . . . need to deal with the issue of how the language uses we encounter in the recent development of idiographic science enable (or inhibit) the move to generalized knowledge. It is a major problem in our contemporary sciences of the human beings—the goal of knowledge we need is that of adequacy for each and every particular case. All application of accumulated know-how always necessarily takes place in a here-and-now setting and is aimed at this particular case. (p. 4, this volume; emphasis added)

It is the embrace here by Valsiner and Salvatore of the goal of achieving generalized knowledge, even as fidelity to the individuality of particular cases is maintained, that points to the need for rescuing the term nomothetic from the entirely illegitimate use of the term that has so long prevailed. What must be made crystal clear and adamantly insisted upon is that the penetrating study of individual cases, far from being antithetical to the quest for knowledge of a genuinely nomothetic sort, is part and parcel thereof. References Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Cloninger, S. C. (1996). Personality: Description, dynamics and development. New York, NY: Freeman. Cronbach, L. J. (1957). The two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 12, 671–684. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Holt, R. W. (1962). Individuality and generalization in the psychology of personality. Journal of Personality, 30, 377–404. Lamiell, J. T. (1981). Toward an idiothetic psychology of personality. American Psychologist, 36, 276–289.

44    J. T. LAMIELL Lamiell, J. T. (1986). What is nomothetic about “nomothetic personality research?” The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 6, 97–107. Lamiell, J. T. (1987). The psychology of personality: An epistemological inquiry. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Lamiell, J. T. (1997). Individuals and the differences between them. In R. Hogan, J. Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 117–141). New York, NY: Academic. Lamiell, J. T. (1998). “Nomothetic” and “idiographic”: Contrasting Windelband’s understanding with contemporary usage. Theory and Psychology, 10, 715–730. Lamiell, J. T. (2003). Beyond individual and group differences: Human individuality, scientific psychology, and William Stern’s critical personalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lamiell, J. T. (2009). The characterization of persons: Some fundamental conceptual issues. In P. Corr & G. E. Mathews (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of personality (pp. 72–86). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Lamiell, J. T., & Durbeck, P. (1987). Whence cognitive prototypes in impression formation? Some empirical evidence for dialectical reasoning as a generative process. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 8, 223–244. Lamiell, J. T., Foss, M. A., Larsen, R. J., & Hempel, A. (1983). Studies in intuitive personology from and idiothetic point of view: Implications for personality theory. Journal of Personality, 51, 438–467. Lundberg, G. A. (1941). Case-studies vs. statistical methods: An issue based on misunderstanding. Sociometry, 4, 379–383. Molenaar, P. C. M. (2007). Psychological methodology will change profoundly due to the necessity to focus on intra-individual variation. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 41, 35–40. Sarbin, T. T. (1944). The logic of prediction in psychology. Psychological Review, 51, 210–228. Sato, T., Hidaka, T., & Fukuda, M. (2009). Depicting the dynamics of living the life: The trajectory of equifinality model. In J. Valsiner, P. C. M. Molenaar, M. C. D. P. Lyra, & N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 217–240). New York, NY: Springer. Windelband, W. (1998). History and natural science. Theory and Psychology, 8, 5–22.

James T. Lamiell is professor of psychology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1982. His primary interests are in the history and philosophy of psychology, with a particular focus on the works of William Stern (1871–1938). His major publications include Beyond Individual and Group Differences: Human Individuality, Scientific Psychology, and William Stern’s Critical Personalism (2003, Sage), and William Stern (1871–1938): A Brief Introduction to His Life and Works (2010, Pabst Science Publishers, Germany). E-mail: [email protected]

Commentary

Explaining Social Behavior In Situ The Study of Points of View Gordon Sammut University of Malta George Gaskell London School of Economics

Abstract The social sciences have long struggled with a terminology that is multifarious and polysemic. The present call to establish a common and clear conceptual framework for idiographic science is a laudable aim. In this chapter, we further efforts for strict thinking by identifying the point of view concept as the primary object of inquiry for idiographic science. Idiographic science aims at a situational explanation of human social behavior. At this level, the individual is more than a cognitive-processing entity. Individuals are social subjects in social relations that relate together in a shared sphere of human activity that involves everyone’s idiosyncratic outlook contemporarily. For the individual, this outlook constitutes a point of view that makes reality what it is for the individual. Through the study of points of view, idiographic science Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 45–54 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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46    G. SAMMUT and G. GASKELL can provide an explanation of human social behavior as it occurs in situ, given the conditions and contingencies in which it takes shape.

The problem of a common language of concepts has plagued the social sciences for a very long time. Terms such as attitudes, beliefs, social values, the self, the social, culture, and others have all been used in very different ways across the social sciences. Nowhere is this language deficit more evident than in the very process of scientific inquiry itself—methodology. In the social sciences, methodological undertaking has been hampered by the requirement of explicit adherence to an empirical paradigm, often either quantitative or qualitative. The distinction between the two is not merely one of focus, it is an epistemological divide about what, with reference to human social subjects, can be known, as well as how it can be known (Baum, 2004; Farr, 1996; Marková, 1982). For this reason, certain authors have called for a different language for qualitative research and quantitative research, arguing that terms such as sampling, validity, and reliability do not generalize from quantitative to other forms of scientific inquiry (see Bauer & Gaskell, 2000). In this volume, Valsiner & Salvatore’s proposal for a terminology for idiographic science reiterates this calling for clarification of terms and is intended to provide social scientists with a clear conceptual framework for undertaking the study of human subjects. It is also intended to provide additional understanding of the parameters of the findings of such research. Bateson (1972/2000) explicates the nature of progress in science, arguing that advancement happens as a result of a cycle of loose thinking and strict thinking. In periods of loose thinking, scientific inquiry is unconstrained by rules and definitions that later apply to the consensually valid approach for investigation into a particular phenomenon. Prolonged periods of loose thinking, however, are apt to generate fuzzing concepts and contradictory explanations. Resolving contradictions requires sustained periods of strict thinking that provide salutary definitions of terms and apportion findings to their respective domains. The chapter by Valsiner and Salvatore is a step in the direction of strict thinking, in an effort to overcome an apparent chaos of loosely defined and loosely applied terms in the social sciences, as well as questionable epistemological assumptions. Bauer and Gaskell (1999) have argued, with reference to one such underdefined term—social representations—that such loose application seems more like a state of confusion than intentional virtue. The search for a common language is thus apt. It calls for strict thinking to define and elaborate an object of study, an epistemological orientation, with the objective of establishing a disciplinary paradigm for social psychology. In this commentary, we aim to further Valsiner and Salvatore’s efforts for strict thinking by articulating what we believe could be a primary object

Explaining Social Behavior In Situ    47

of inquiry for idiographic science. We contend that such a science, which explicitly incorporates a situational level of explanation for human social behavior, should concern itself with the phenomenon of the point of view (Asch, 1952/1987; Billig, 1987, 1991; Clémence, 2001; Harré & Secord, 1972; Sammut & Gaskell, 2010). We argue that at this level, idiographic science can focus on the individual as a social entity, rather than with cognitive processing that takes place at the intraindividual level, or societal processes at the supraindividual level. Through the study of points of view, we can provide an explanation of human social behavior as it takes place in situ, given the conditions and contingencies in which it occurs. Gestalten of Human Social Behavior The idea that sharing a “project” brings people together as a group and allows for intergroup segmentation (see Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume) is inherent in two social-psychological theories. In social representations theory (Bauer & Gaskell, 1999, 2008), a project binds the members of a social group together and provides them with joint purpose in their interobjective social relations (Sammut, Daanen, & Sartawi, 2010). In social identity theory, categorization of individuals establishes the boundaries for identifying who belongs and who does not belong to the subject’s own ingroup. Such identity categorization is presumed to lie at the heart of intercultural and intergroup discrimination. These social-psychological theories have sought to counterbalance the overly positivistic concern of intraindividual cognitive processing that has come to characterize the various subdisciplines of psychology, even in their social forms. Both theories stand as pillars in the discipline of resisting materialistic reductivism and of achieving societal level explanations (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1990) that are not reducible to their substrate elements. This focus requires a systemic conception of the social in which the individual is embedded, and from which the interacting human subject cannot be extrapolated or reified (Chryssides et al., 2009). This goal is shared with the objective of a terminology for idiographic science that requires “the preservation of the systemic nature of the phenomena” (Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume, p. 5) and leads to a second implication for the social sciences, that of recognition of gestalten. Explanations for human social behavior in the social sciences have been prone to the Cartesian dichotomy of the individual and the social. Gaskell (2001) argues that this dichotomy has resulted in the foregrounding of cognitive processing on the one hand or collective phenomena on the other. Foregrounding the individual relegates the social to the background, and vice versa. In this dichotomy, the individual emerges as a boundary object—the seat of affect, behavior, and cognitions in the former, and a

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contributory unit in the latter. In either case, the social being is obfuscated. The contemporary formulations of the attitude (as an evaluation of an attitude object) and social representations provide conceptual tools for the study of social behavior on either side of the dichotomy, respectively. These have served intrapersonal-level explanations of social behavior as well as societal ones. Nevertheless, neither has served a situational-level explanation of social behavior as it takes place in situ, at the level of the interacting individual. This gap remains a defining challenge for the social sciences (Gaskell, 2001) in providing a transitive explanation of social behavior that retains taxonomic priority (Wagner & Hayes, 2005) across levels. Idiographic science concerns itself with this gap by means of the individext, that is, the individual-in-the-context (see Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume). Our proposal in this commentary is to further this effort by articulating the social-psychological phenomenon that stands as an object of inquiry at this level of explanation of human interaction. This articulation requires an obligatory imperative to determine the undividable features of the phenomenon (see Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume). We argue that an explanation of human behavior at the situational level necessitates the consideration of two features that characterize the “point of view”: (a) the point of view is a relational construct, that is, in having a point of view, human subjects do not merely act toward a social object or some other subject, they interact with other points of view simultaneously in the process of adopting a particular standpoint toward a social object. The point of view is a point among others. In a social situation, individuals, by virtue of their adopted point of view, take a particular standpoint in social interaction toward a social object or event that positions them in relation to others in meaningful ways (Harré & Moghaddam, 2003; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999; Moghaddam, Harré, & Lee, 2007); and (b) the point of view is relative, that is, human interaction is particular to subjects given the conditions and contingencies in which it manifests (Bauer & Gaskell, 2008; Harré & Secord, 1972). In adopting a point of view, individuals adopt a view of the object that constitutes social reality for them. This version, or aspect, of reality that is available to them by virtue of their own point of view, is relative to the multitude of standpoints that could be adopted in relation to the same object. Adopting a point of view reveals a particular aspect of the object to the individual on the basis of which social interaction ensues. Having a point of view means that one recognizes that others can have different points of view from one’s own and by virtue of this, the object may appear differently to others. This realization, according to Asch (1952/1987), enables individuals to engage in the social check to verify the nature of elements in their surroundings on the basis of how these may appear to them and to others. In the social check, human beings exercise the capacity to incorporate others’ points of view into their own thinking. We

Explaining Social Behavior In Situ    49

argue that these two characteristic features of the point of view being necessarily relational and relative—in its being simultaneously a “point” as well as a “view”—are what make this construct indivisible and what enables its utility at the situational level of explanation of human behavior. The point of view allows a point-field generalization that is epistemologically coherent at this level. The Point of View as Explanandum The first step of any scientific enquiry is the identification and description of the phenomenon that is being studied (Asch, 1952; Harré & Secord, 1972; Sherif & Sherif, 1968). Given the multiple conceptions that have been postulated to account for social behavior and that proffer explanations at different levels, the identification and articulation of the phenomenon at the appropriate level of inquiry remains a necessary theoretical and empirical requirement. In this volume, Valisner and Salvatore identify the phenomenon of concern for idiographic science as the “individext.” We propose that the empirical datum for such inquiry is the point of view. Insofar as idiographic science aims for context-specific explanations, then explanations by way of universal and immutable intrapersonal features of human cognition do not suffice, as Valsiner and Salvatore here explain. Such explanations do not incorporate the relational features of having a point of view, which means that one’s positioning and orientation to a social object is undertaken in consideration of situational circumstances that include a reference to others’ positions. Neither do societal explanations that describe collective context-rational meanings and understandings, such as ideologies (Billig et al., 1988) and social representations (Jovchelovitch, 2007), as Valsiner and Salvatore note, violate the principle of equifinality. These explanations also fail to incorporate the relative features of points of view, which means that within a prevalent ideology or social representation, different positions are nevertheless available with regard to the object (Clémence, 2001). The study of points of view, on the other hand, provides an explanation of social behavior that is situational and that enables the consideration of conditional elements that frame human social behavior. This is a critical requirement if the three assumptions of Valsiner and Salvatore’s weak model of idiographic science are to be extended to their logical conclusion. A point of view can be defined as an outlook toward a social event, expressed as a claim, which can be supported by an argument of opinion based on a system of knowledge from which it derives its logic. More simply, a point of view is an individual’s location within a social representation. It represents the individual’s idiosyncratic outlook toward some social event

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or object that is meaningful within a commonsense background of intelligibility (Daanen, 2009). The social representation in which a point of view is embedded constitutes a holomorphic heterogeneity of points of view, each of which articulates an aspect of the phenomenon (Sartre, 1943) with which the individext is concerned. As a concept, the point of view can be traced back to Kant’s (1798/2006) anthropology and his distinction between different standpoints that an actor can assume when viewing social behavior. Kant’s anthropology provides a pragmatic explanation of conduct given the standpoint of agents and their own nature (Mischel, 1969). This very same understanding has been famously captured in Lewin’s (1936) formula for human behavior: B = f(P, E), in which behavior is a function of the person and the environment. The point of view has been elaborated by Sartre (1943/2003) in his resolution of the Kantian dualism between reality and the real. Sartre argues that whatever appears of a phenomenon is only ever an aspect of it, and that objects are inexhaustible by virtue of the infinite possibility of points of view that may be taken on them. In philosophical terms, the point of view is thus a relational as well as a relative construct. It is relational in that it implies a phenomenal perception of an object by a subject, and it is relative in that the appearance of the object is relative to whoever is the acting subject. This conception of the point of view has enabled its utility in other theories that have used the term as explanans for corollary social-psychological phenomena, such as in Mead’s (1934) social psychology and the emergence of self; Piaget’s (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1957) developmental psychology and the maturational capacity to assume a different standpoint; and Arendt’s (1958) political sociology, wherein the public sphere comes together as a multitude of agents who judge what is enacted from their own perspective. Additionally, it has featured in one of the cornerstones of modern science: Einstein’s (1916/2001) theory of relativity. In his special theory of relativity, Einstein argues that the nature of physical reality depends on whose point of view is adopted. Einstein’s example is of the observer watching a stone falling in a straight line relative to a moving carriage from which it drops; but, from the perspective of another observer on the embankment, it traverses a parabolic curve. While in all of these theories the point of view has been employed as an explanatory device, both Billig’s (1987, 1991) rhetorical analysis and Harré’s (Harré & Moghaddam, 2003; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999; Moghaddam, Harré, & Lee, 2007) positioning theory adopt a more explicit focus on the point of view and its manifestation in discursive practices. In these social-psychological theories, the investigation of human behavior is sensitive to the situational characteristics in which behavior occurs. Harré and Secord’s (1972) reformulation of the Lewinian formula in terms of conditions1 fulfills the “in the context” criterion for a satisfactory explanation

Explaining Social Behavior In Situ    51

of individual conduct that pertains to idiographic science. We propose a further modification of this equation in terms of the point of view that an individual holds in behaving in a context-rational manner. This reformulation represents the point of view as a function of the person embedded in context, that is, the individext: If C1, C2, C3 . . . Cn, then B by virtue of PoV; where PoV = f (P × E). A point of view describes a phenomenon as it appears from the standpoint of an actor in a certain situation. Unlike the attitude, which has been prone to absurd point-field generalizations, one can see how points of view are by definition contingent upon the social field in which they are embedded; a point of view that is liberal in one context may be conservative in another. Sensitivity to culturally contingent systems, as well as equifinality, is requisite for single-case depictions of points of view. The point of view thus provides a point-field transition that represents a legitimate perspective on some issue, at a particular point in time, within a particular context. One could argue that it represents, as Valsiner and Salvatore note, what Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos (this volume, p. xx) consider as “the patient’s global attitude toward critical life events.” In the figure representing the field language model of TEM, it is represented by the angle between the A–B trajectories (see Figure 1.5, Valsiner & Salvatore, this volume). The field represented by this angle describes the various context-rational alternative behaviors that are legitimate from the individual’s own standpoint, that is, the view that a point of view affords. The chosen trajectory is plausible given the adopted point of view, as a function of the situational constraints that the individual faces at the time. Anything lying outside the point of view angle, however, presents itself as a nonpossibility in the circumstances. Anything lying within, describes how the person “sees” the phenomenon at the time. On the basis of this apperception, the individual acts in a context-rational manner, given situational circumstances. While the reference to vision in a social-psychological conceptualization of the point of view is figurative, Segall, Campbell, and Herskovits (1966) have demonstrated that people originating from different environments and having different life histories see differently. It is clear that, as Mischel notes, the behavior of higher organisms is not a response to stimuli but to the meaning that situations have for perceivers. Human beings “act, for the most part, not under the compulsion of forces or even threats, but because they see compelling reasons for doing something in a certain social or political situation” (Mischel, 1969, p. 264, emphasis added). The proposed empirical focus on the study of points of view for idiographic science comes with the potential to address some critical concerns that at present remain either unquestioned or, as Valsiner and Salvatore have argued, are erroneously inferred. The study of points of view, while de-

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scribing the particular orientations of particular agents that find themselves in particular circumstances and who are embedded in particular settings, nevertheless serves to explain the “what” and the “why” of human behavior more generally. This lies in contrast to questions of “how many,” with which much of the social sciences in general has been concerned. An example of the point of view’s explanatory potential is found in Moghaddam’s (2006) work on terrorism. His volume, From the Terrorists’ Point of View: What They Experience and Why They Come to Destroy, is a clear example of how idiographic science can, as Valsiner and Salvatore commend, achieve generality from particularity by adopting an explicit focus on the point of view of individexts. This is achievable due to the fact that, as Sartre (1943/2003) noted, a point of view provides a revelation of some aspect of the phenomenon that is apparent to the perceiving subject. Moreover, this revelation is always relative to an individext. Social reality, like physical reality (Einstein, 1916/2001), is contingent upon the perceiver’s point of view. Conclusion Valsiner and Salvatore’s chapter on the terminology for idiographic science does more than problematize the use and suitability of language for scientific inquiry. It invites a different exploration of human conduct that has so far eluded the social sciences. Their proposal of inquiring into the individext and their adoption of the field language of TEM open up a theoretical space for explanations of social behavior as it occurs in situ. Neither higher-order explanations that focus on societal phenomena, such as social representations, nor lower-order explanations that focus on intrapersonal features, such as attitudes and beliefs, are well-suited for providing situational explanations. We argue that an understanding of the individualin-the-context, as proposed by Valsiner and Salvatore, is a worthy concern and one that can be achieved through an empirical focus on points of view. Note 1. If C1, C2, C3 . . . Cn, then B by virtue of P × E.

References Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Asch, S. E. (1952/1987). Social psychology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Bateson, G. (1972/2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Explaining Social Behavior In Situ    53 Bauer, M. W., & Gaskell, G. (1999). Toward a paradigm of research on social representations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 29, 163–186. Bauer, M. W., & Gaskell, G. (Eds.). (2000). Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: A practical handbook. London, England: Sage. Bauer, M. W., & Gaskell, G. (2008). Social representations theory: A progressive research programme for social psychology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 38, 335–353. Baum, W. M. (2004). Molar and molecular views of choice. Behavioral Processes, 66, 349–359. Billig, M. (1987). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. London, England: Sage. Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D., & Radley, A. R. (1988). Ideological Dilemmas. London, England: Sage. Chryssides, A., Dashtipour, P., Keshet, S., Righi, C., Sammut, G., & Sartawi, M. (2009). We don’t share! The social representation approach, enactivism and the fundamental incompatibilities between the two. Culture & Psychology, 19, 83–95. Clémence, A. (2001). Social positioning and social representations. In K. Deaux & G. Philogène (Eds.), Representations of the social: Bridging theoretical traditions (pp. 83–95).Oxford, England: Blackwell. Daanen, P. (2009). Conscious and non-conscious representation in social representations theory: Social representations from the phenomenological point of view. Culture & Psychology, 15, 372–385. Einstein, A. (1916/2001). Relativity: The special and general theory. London, England: Routledge. Farr, R. M. (1996). The roots of modern social psychology: 1872–1954. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Gaskell, G. (2001). Attitudes, social representations and beyond. In K. Deaux & G. Philogène (Eds.), Representations of the social: Bridging theoretical traditions (pp. 228–241). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Harré, R., & Moghaddam, F. M. (2003). The self and others: Positioning individuals and groups in personal, political, and cultural contexts. Westport, CT: Praeger. Harré, R., & Secord, P. F. (1972). The explanation of social behavior. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Harré, R., & van Langenhöve, L. (Eds.). (1999). Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Himmelweit, H., & Gaskell, G. (Eds.), (1990). Societal psychology: Implications and scope. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Jovchelovitch, S. (2007). Knowledge in context: Representations, community and culture. London, England: Routledge. Kant, I. (1798/2006). Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (R. B. Louden, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Marková, I. (1982). Paradigms, thought and language. London, England: Wiley.

54    G. SAMMUT and G. GASKELL Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society (C. W. Morris, Ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mischel, T. (1969). Scientific and philosophical psychology: A historical introduction. In T. Mischel (Ed.), Human action (pp. 1–40). New York, NY: Academic. Moghaddam, F. M. (2006). From the terrorists’ point of view: What they experience and why they come to destroy. New Delhi, India: Pentagon. Moghaddam, F. M., Harré, R., & Lee, N. (2007). Global conflict resolution through positioning analysis. New York, NY: Springer. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1948/1957). The child’s conception of space. New York, NY: Norton. Sammut, G., Daanen, P., & Sartawi, M. (2010). Interobjectivity: Representations and artefacts in cultural psychology. Culture & Psychology, 16, 451–463. Sammut, G., & Gaskell, G. (2010). Points of view, social positioning and intercultural relations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 40, 47–64. Sartre, J. P. (1943/2003). Being and nothingness. London, England: Routledge. Segall, H. H., Campbell, D. T., & Herskovits, M. J. (1966). The influence of culture on visual perception. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Sherif, C. W., & Sherif, M. (1968). Attitude, ego-involvement, and change. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Wagner, W., & Hayes, N. (2005). Everyday discourse and common sense: The theory of social representations. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gordon Sammut is lecturer in social psychology at the University of Malta. His work investigates the psychological study of points of view. His main interests include psychosocial models in the social sciences, attitude measurement and public opinion, the epistemology of representations and phenomena, gestalt social psychology, and issues relating to opinion formation and argumentation. E-mail: [email protected] George Gaskell is professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Deputy Director for Planning and Resources and a member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors. He is also a member of the ESRC Evaluation Committee and a participant in an EC research program on biobanks. His research interests fall under the rubric of societal psychology, an approach he developed with the late Hilde Himmelweit, which suggests that focuses on the study of social phenomena and cultural forces that both shape, and in turn are shaped by, people’s outlooks and actions. His past research projects have included the study of energy use and conservation, the crowd in contemporary Britain, youth and unemployment, social and cognitive aspects of survey methodology, and community care. His current research involves the coordination of an international comparative study of biotechnology in the public sphere. His publications include Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook (2000, Sage).

Section II Communication: Theoretical Obstacle or Innovative Resource?

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The Language as Object A Tool of Intersubjective Exchange in Clinical Practice Claudia Venuleo University of Salento, Italy

Abstract In mainstream clinical practice, language is regarded as a medium by means of which to keep (and/or to change) specific “essences”—“characteristics” that are conceived as “inner” properties of the individual mind. I outline the unity of mind and discourse: we construct the world we inhabit by speaking. Hence, language use (as sense-making processes) is intrinsically an intersubjective process. I highlight the implications of this perspective by way of defining the object that has to be processed by the therapist, the role of the social and discursive context in the understanding of the reality constructed by the patient, and the aim of the clinical exchange, shaping it as an intrinsically intersubjective process of sense making.

Introduction The use of words in clinical psychology should be grounded in a theory on the nature of language: looking at the way of defining what words are,

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 57–75 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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why they are relevant in our work, and how one can understand them or produce change through them. The importance of treating language, and the use we make of it, as an object of methodological discourse has rarely been made central in clinical psychology (Stampa & Grasso, 2008). This is even more surprising if we consider that the clinical exchange is by definition a work that uses words. We use words to understand the problem of our patients and with the aim of changing their condition, whatever our model defines as the problem and the change. One cannot but note that the same “data”—words of the client in the clinical intervention, and of the interviewer in the clinical research—can be used in very different ways, concerning the features of the data that are regarded as important, the procedures used to understand/analyze the data, the system of categories according to which the findings are interpreted, and so on. We look at reality as it is produced just through ongoing communication, within situated discursive exchange. Modeling language as an intersubjective dynamics of co-construction of meaning (Salvatore & Venuleo, 2008) allows us to sustain the idea that we construct the world we inhabit rather than reflect on how the world is (Zittoun, 2004). In the psychological field, main authors (i.e., Bruner, 1986; Gergen & Gergen, 2004; Harré, 1993; Wetherell & Maybin, 1996), have supported a symbolic-cultural perspective that acknowledges the language as the basis of the sense of oneself and of the world. Nevertheless, few works have focused on the centrality of such an assumption with regard to the way of defining the object and the aim of clinical practice (cf. Blackman, 2005; Carli, 2006; Leiman, 2002; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2006). This chapter deals with this issue. The Language: A Tool to Depict or to Construct the Reality? A man of sixty-five years talks of his problem, at the first encounter with his therapist, in these terms: “I stopped working the last year and I am spending more time with my sons. I cannot bear them: they are very self-referential and egotistical. They are not able to understand and help me. I am feeling very sad. Could you help me? Is it serious, my condition?”

Let us imagine three different statements produced by three different therapists after this kind of self-portrayal offered by the patient. Therapist 1: How long have you felt down? Do you suffer from insomnia? How is your appetite? Therapist 2: How was it before in the relationship with your sons? How much time did you spend with them?

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Therapist 3: Could you say something else about your past job? Was it important for you? Did you feel appreciated? In the first case, the therapist’s answer seems a way to explore possible signs of depression. The therapist perceives in the words produced by the patient (“I am feeling very sad in this period”) elements that help him/ her to recognize a psychopathologic state. In the second case, starting with the kind of relationship within which the patient refers to his sons, the therapist engages in deepening the reality of the previous state of that relationship. In the third case, the reference to the recent retirement is made relevant in order to explore problems connected to one’s own self-esteem. In all the three kinds of intervention produced by the therapist, there is a specific referential content suggested by the patient’s discourse that orients the therapist’s answer, and thus also, the definition of the possible object and the aim of therapeutic process, in whatever way it would be defined. It can entail a reduction of symptoms, improvement of the relationship, change of behaviors, elaboration of emotional state, or adaptation to personal and social expectations that have motivated the request for consultation. Mainstream clinical psychology leads therapists to take as an object of observation and analysis of the reality referred to by the words produced by the patient, considered as signs referring to specific “essences” of “features” that are “inner” in the individual mind (Gergen, 1985, 1992). According to the so-called individualistic perspective (Mecacci, 1999), the aim of the clinical interview is to capture such essences—conceived as emotions, cognitive models, patterns of behavior—and to work to change them. We can find this perspective in the psychoanalytic theory, as well as in the cognitivist and behavioral approach, aimed at describing invariant cognitive or affective or behavioral structures of the personality. According to such epistemology, the focus on signs (thoughts, statements, behaviors) that are understood as the output of psychic realities of an isolated mind, justifies the lack of comment in the speaker’s discursive context where signs are produced. These ones do not raise such questions as, Why does the speaker say what he/she says? In regard to whom? After he has said what? Or after what kind of questions suggested by the therapist? In other words, it is legitimate to set out to investigate the psychological components of the mind through what the patient says, but without dealing with the problem of giving a meaning to the fact that he/she says what he/ she says in that discoursive exchange. The interview and the setting where it unfolds is not part of the construction of data. The latter is preexistent to the discursive exchange, though conveyed by it. In such a perspective, the language is a tool among others to keep the specific (psychic or external) reality of the investigated subject.

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Going in a Different Direction Our work starts with a different perspective, grounded in the idea that they are meanings people ascribe to the experience to construct their reality (Gergen, 1985; McNamee & Gergen, 1992; Zittoun, 2004). It is what happens in the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha (de Cervantes, 16051615). Don Quixote is fascinated by the novelty of chivalry and comes to confuse the fiction of the novelty with historical reality to the extent of making himself “a knight-errant, roaming the world he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant.” According to this mental scenario, he thus gives himself a new name and dons the armor that invests him as knight-errant, takes on his beloved as befits him (“a knight without a lady is like a tree without leaves”), and duly sets out as would an authentic knight. Moreover, he transforms everything and everybody he encounters along his way as part of chivalric world. So a tavern, according to his meaning’s world, becomes a castle, the owner of the tavern becomes someome who participates in chivalry, the windmills are monstrous giants, and even when other people tell him they are not who he thinks they are or do things different from what he attends, Don Quixote sets what happens according to his basic interpretative frame. For the other characters of the story (the people who encounter Don Quixote), he is mad. Nevertheless, thinking of one’s own representations as reality is a very basic phenomenon, co-extensive with the sense of the reality we feel and, accordingly, we think (Salvatore & Venuleo, 2009).1 It is the same that also happens when people speak about their experience, define what is wrong/bad/not canonic/pathological and what is right/good/ canonic/normal, describe their problems as well as the aims they intend to reach in their intersubjective exchanges, within the different context of their living together. The Discursive Construction of Reality With the aim to make clear the last statement, the following is the transcript (translated from the original Italian text) of a brief discursive exchange between a mathematics teacher and her pupils, which took place in the context of a southern Italian high school (for a detailed analysis of this excerpt, see Venuleo, Salvatore, Mossi, Grassi, & Ruggeri, 2008). Teacher: Today I’m going to test somebody. . . . Claudio, would you come here, please? Teacher: Isn’t Sirigatti here? Student: No, she’s not. Maria was, but she’s gone.

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Here, I stop to comment on the first few words uttered by the teacher in order to highlight what kind of reality she is going to construct through them. Today I’m going to . . . would you come here, please: The teacher attributes her decision to her own personal intention, rather than, for instance, according to a principle of utility (i.e., “let’s test your learning and introduce new concepts as well”), or to a normative one (i.e., “I have to test you”). With the subsequent use of an exhortative expression (“would you come here, please”), a kind of symmetry is created: on the one hand, the teacher’s intention, on the other the pupil’s willingness to consent to the teacher’s request. In other words, in so doing, the teacher connotes de facto the hereand-now of the didactic setting as a matter of interpersonal positioning, mediated by the individual intentionality/will, rather than, for example, by the value of a shared aim. To test: The oral test is a component of the traditional teaching setting; nevertheless, the choice of the word (“test”) points up the asymmetric aspect of the routine at stake; the lack of further specifications on the contingency of testing (i.e., connection with other phases of teaching work: criteria, aims) helps to underline the taken-for-granted and institutional character of the procedure as if it was a routine with a ready-made sense. Somebody: Referring to a generic subject, the teacher seems to act out the point of view that the focus is on the activity (the teacher needs somebody to examine) rather than on the function that activity takes for its user. As the excerpt highlights, the content and the quality of the referred reality is not usually a matter of declared knowledge and negotiation (usually teachers do not ask their students, “Do you agree to connote our shared activity in terms of routine with an already-made sense?”). On the contrary, they are acted out through subtle discursive devices: see the use of words like “guys,” “want,” and “somebody,” in a sentence like, “Well, guys, now I want to examine somebody,” as compared with a sentence like, “Well, students, we must have a test now.” Insofar as it is a reality for the mind, representation is not suggested to be an object of analysis within the discursive exchange. Its reality is taken for granted. The Intersubjective and Contextual Nature of Sense Making The second aspect I intend to underline is that the taken-for-granted reality is an intersubjectively constructed reality. By a complementary point of view, it is in the context of discourse and interaction that the reality suggested by an actor becomes alive (Linell, 2009).

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Let’s turn to our example: The teacher, who at the beginning of the lesson says to her pupil, “I’m going to test somebody.” After such a statement, the exchange continues: Teacher: Isn’t Sirigatti here? Student: No, she’s not. Maria was, but she’s gone. “Is Sirigatti here?” “No, she is not. Maria was, but she’s gone.” First, we may suppose that through his answer, the student tries to lessen the potential break of the proximity being generated by the teacher’s use of the expression “to test” and of the surname. Anyway, we can add that the student’s answer is consistent with the semiotic frame proposed by the teacher: calling up Maria after (or instead of) Sirigatti means presuming a superindividual category as a subject of the testing routine. It would have been different if the student would have said, “No, she’s not. Could we take advantage and spend this time to ask for some clarification on the past lesson?” In spite of its brevity, the exchange analyzed is sufficient to show how the sense of testing is an autoreferential routine, which needs to have somebody present to be performed (Maria, Sirigatti, somebody, no matter who) and is co-constructed by teacher and students. Microrules convey a contingent semiotic construction of the sense of the subjects and objects of activity within it: who reciprocally are the people engaging the shared activity, and what and why are they doing what they are doing are the by-products of the ways the discursive speeches associate each other in an enduring meaning-making chain (Salvatore, Ligorio, & De Franchis, 2005). Each sign (a) works as the immediate environment of the following sign, which in its turn (b) works as the immediate environment for the following sign (c), “incorporating” the previous history of the system (Salvatore, in press; Salvatore, Laura-Grotto, Gennaro, & Gelo, 2009). The ongoing communication reproduces and, at the same time, is regulated by the context of the signs, which directs the hermeneutic practices of the speakers and their interpretation. In this sense, they do not exist as speech acts or utterances by autonomous speakers or exchange of such independent acts. “Also the single utterance by one utterer is interactive in nature” (Linell, 2009, p. 15). Like in the Moebius strip (see Figure 2.1), where it is impossible to distinguish the external surface from the internal one, what belongs to the speaker and what belongs to the listener are strongly intertwined, because the words of the former would not exist without the words of the latter (Montesarchio & Venuleo, 2009). It is worth emphasizing that sense making unfolds according to, in order of, and with the mediation of the context of the signs (i.e., the repertoire

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Figure 2.1  Moebius strip.

of semiotic devices and cultural artifacts; cf. Cole, 1996) produced, activated, and available in the extended specific relational, social, historical, and cultural environment speakers and listeners belong to. It entails that in a certain context, some patterns of connections among the signs emerge as more probable, other patterns as less probable, and some others do not occur. The historic-cultural patrimony offers the conditions and the instruments on and by means of which a certain frame of sense develops. In the example of the brief exchange between the teacher and her pupils, one can trace these basic culturally bound assumptions in the general image of school activity as an institutional activity with an intrinsic aim and rules and values that are taken for granted. Such a model involves an image of the teacher as the authority who interprets the goals and embodies the source of their validation, as well as having the role of bringing together the opposing aspects of pursuing the task and of fostering the teacherpupil relationship (for a summary of this cultural model, see Salvatore & Pagano, 2005). In the final analysis, such a model allows teachers and pupils to make their act of discourse convergent and therefore to reveal their intersubjective microregulation. At the same time, the fact itself that the intersubjective microregulation happens to be carried out over time constitutes the socially shared performative statement and reproduction of the assumptions that are culturally taken for granted. From such perspective, it is worth seeing the frame of sense produced by the microregulations as the local, contingent interpretation of more general cultural assumptions stating what a specific relationship is/must be (an educative relationship, as well as the relationship within working and family contexts and any other intersubjective exchange, the clinical exchange too). This taken-for-granted shared frame of meaning provides the symbolic resources for (Zittoun, 2004, 2007)—and at the same time place constraints upon—the virtually infinite ways in which the participants can interpret the shared experience. In this case as well, the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha can make clear my statement. From an external point of view, the people who encounter Don Quixote conclude that “he is mad.” Nevertheless (or because they think of him as mad) they come to follow his game. Some people, without believing that the game is real, recognize it as unrealistic. It is the case of the tavern owner, who accepts the “unreality” and deems him chivalrous with the aim of entertainment. Others, as is the case with Sancho Panza,

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the farm laborer Don Quixote chooses as his squire, are caught up in the world suggested by Don Quixote, reacting to it as if it were real. From such a perspective, the “madness” of Don Quixote is fed by a relational context that takes for granted that he is mad and, since he is mad, one has to grant his wishes.2 In short, Don Quixote can live his fantasy because his relational context produces signs that contribute to reproduce the same fantasy. Implication for the Clinical Practice The considerations proposed above share the perspective according to a psychology that deals with nonexistent objects (Smith, 1988; Valsiner & Salvatore, 2011). All realities, thus also the object that psychology deals with and that customers ask to face (psychopathology, violence, bullying, gambling), do not exist independently of the discursive exchange through which the actors share that object. What the actors regard as reality is a negotiated way to ascribe meanings to their experiences: a discursive construction, always open to redefinitions, depending on the discursive exchanges within which, and according to which, the sense-making process unfolds. The idea that by speaking, one (co)constructs reality carries important implications in the field of the clinical intervention. I intend to focus on two aspects: one concerns the object that has to be processed by the therapist; a second aspect concerns the role of the (social and discursive) context in the understanding of the reality constructed by the patient. Redefining the Object of the Clinical Practice In clinical practice, we can see how our patients feel that what happens is not something like a representation that one can have toward an object of experience (and that they describe in terms of conflict, or inequity, or infidelity, and so on) but a truth about the nature and character of what happens in their life (White, 2007), a fact that everyone else in the same situation would describe in the same way; something that inevitably, immediately, produces pain, sadness, or other conditions that they ask to overcome. For instance, in a lot of circumstances, their statements take the shape of “my wife is bad” and not “my wife is different from the ideal wife I desire and wish for, so I feel toward my wife as if she is a bad wife.” However, thinking of language use as a sense-making process entails that the therapist work on the significant subjects the patients selected to talk about rather than on the reference. Let’s turn to the statement produced by the man of 65 years at the first encounter with his therapist:

The Language as Object    65 I stopped working last year and I am spending more time with my sons. I cannot bear them: they are very self-referential and egotistical. They are not able to understand and help me. I am feeling very sad. Could you help me? Is it serious, my condition?

In this example, the request for a consultation carries the assumption that it is the task of the therapist to define the seriousness of a problem; that it is important for this aim to speak about the features of his own sons, that these features might be defined and evaluated in an objective way, and that they are not dependent on who is speaking, where one is speaking, and why. Furthermore, the man is taking for granted that the signs “to be selfreferential, egotistical . . . not able to understand and help me” have only a meaning, as well as that it is a main task of a son to understand and to help, independently of the elements of which one is asking for being understood and helped. The discourse by means of which the patient motivates the request for a consultation carries not only a theory of the problem to be resolved (i.e., his own unhappiness) and of the cause that has led to it (his sons’ behavior), but also a theory of the role the therapist might take on (i.e., to help the man to change his sons, or also to be near to him, to comfort him, and to understand his point of view), and a connected theory of the features of the professional action, its rules, its roles, and procedures (i.e.,“a good therapist does what the patient wishes; I wish he would make himself totally available: I wish I could call him and see him as often as I wish”).3 The critical aspect of this construction has to be underlined. Indeed, the theory of the professional action enacted by the patient shares the same interpretative frame that has constructed the problem that he/she asks to face. For instance, in the example, the idea that “the good sons do what their parents wish” might make understandable what is taken for granted in the discourse of this man in his request to be helped to change his sons if they do not act in the way he wishes, as well as construct the object itself from experience: that his sons, according to the his interpretative frame, are egotistical, bad, and so on. Let us imagine being the sons of this man, daily reprimanded for being ungrateful and being the source of the unhappiness of one’s own father, who cannot enjoy a well-deserved retirement after a life of sacrifices. It is likely that, in the brief or long run, they refuse to spend their time with their father, who considers them as the source of his unhappiness, and exhibit behaviors (spending more time outside the home) that the father will interpret as further signs of their egotism, self-referentiality, and such. It is certainly possible also that the sons of this man share the assumption that “good sons do what their parents wish” and try to live up to the expectations of their father (i.e., to spend more time with him rather than with their

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friends, to enroll at the university rather than to cultivate their own passion for music, to stop smoking, and so on), but it is just as likely that in this case, the man does not require the help of a therapist. What I am suggesting is that the request of a psychological consultation emerges in the presence of critical events, which indicates a failure of the frame of sense that organizes the hermeneutic practices of the individuals within their relationship and social practice (cf. Carli, 1987). Taking for granted the reality of one’s own mental objects is what does not allow one to see and to face change when the reality taken for granted is no longer shared within one’s own system of activity. In other terms, the taken-for-granted assumptions in the patient’s discourse (and the interpretative frame they suggest to share) are what obstruct the change. This means that without taking into account the patient’s models for constructing the objects of the experience, clinical settings may have the paradoxical effect of operating to be assimilated by users’ symbolic universes, but not to change, in a proper sense, anything at all. In this sense, the request for a consultation is not a text that the psychologist has to answer by constructing hypotheses on how to face the problem (assuming that there is agreement on the object to be discussed), but a semiotic construction on the object to be analyzed.4 The Role of the Context and the Questionable Assumption of the Independence of the Observer The second order of considerations is connected to the acknowledgment of the intersubjective and situated nature of sense making. Explaining how sense making works leads us to acknowledge the centrality of the context in order to understand the meanings/reality produced by the patients. The context is that of the sociocultural environment the patient belongs to, but also the context of the clinical discoursive exchange. At a first level, I am recalling the idea that speaking about his own experience, the patient tells about his/her membership in a specific cultural and social world; a system of values, interests, ideologies. This perspective suggests thinking of the critical events of the living together (i.e., the pathology of gambling, vandalism in school, and other degenerative phenomena) on which psychologists are called to intervene as socially and culturally fed constructions, rather than the unchangeable state of affairs produced by an encapsulated individual mind. Schizophrenia (Sarbin & Mancuso, 1980), psychological disorders (Garfinkel, 1967), childhood (Kessen, 1979), and menopause (McCrea, 1983) acquire their meanings not from real-world references but from their context of usage (see Gergen, 1985). By this point of view, one can ask what premises, socially and culturally shared, construct the pathology of gambling, vandalism in the school, and other degenera-

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tive phenomena. Anthropological studies on gambling help to make clear what I have just stated, in that they highlight that the “identity” of the gambler changes with the different cultural contexts in which gambling unfolds (cf. Binde, 2005). For instance, among the Hadza of Tanzania (Woodburn, 1982) and the Wape of Papua New Guinea (Mitchell, 1988), who wins is very much stressed as he gives the losers the chance to recover their losses. Indeed, the gambler is depicted as a “generous” man rather than an “egotist,” like in other cultures. These different connotations reflect the world vision organizing the meaning ascribed to the mission/identity/act of the game/player according to a prevalent symbolic frame. In some cases of generativity (your life, my life) in other contexts of domain/antagonism (your death, my life), they contribute to shape the meaning of gambling, its values of use, the reading and the reactions it suggests, the same decision to turn or not to turn to health care services. By this standpoint, the “good” or “bad” character of a behavior is not an intrinsic quality of the behavior itself, but a semiotic construction that the discursive context makes possible. The behavior of people and their subjective and pragmatic implications speaks of this discursive context too, and of its role in the construction of the problems psychologist are called to face. On a second level, the acknowledgment of the intersubjective nature of sense making leads to highlight that the “what” and the “how” of the speech of the patient is circumstantial in the situated context of signs produced within the clinical exchange; it shapes through and within this discursive exchange. On this point, I want to highlight how many clinicians and researchers use procedures of reporting the therapeutic process object of analysis entailing the questionable assumption of the independence of the observer.5 Portraits produced by patients are referred to in order to depict their psychic reality, but we do not know anything of what the therapist said before or after the signs produced by the patient. Yet, in the case of a dialogic process, by definition any subsequent observation is the product of the previous history of the system: “every observation has, as its own object, an event that is produced according to conditions—the previous chains of events” (Salvatore et al., 2009, p. 173). The questions, the answers, and any other behavioral and discursive act of the “observer” co-construct the frame of sense within which the other is called to position him/herself. From such a standpoint, analyzing the role of the audience is central in order to understand the discourse produced by the patient (Salgado & Cunha, this volume). Let’s imagine a therapist saying to his/her patient, “I think it is necessary we meet for five encounters to define if your state of mood can be defined as depression.” Such a structure of discourse implies

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• a representation of what are the objects of the exchange (i.e., a state of mood); • a representation of what is the point of view one has to assume in order to talk about it (i.e., the reference to psychopathological criteria); • a connected representation of what is important for the patient (i.e., to know the name of his/her state of mood). In so doing, the therapist solicits (or at least, provides the ground that allows) the patient to organize his/her answer and evaluation in terms of state of being rather than, for instance, in terms of projects and aims of self-development. Beyond the example, what I intend to remark on is that if we recognize the sense-making shapes through the way the discoursive speeches associate each other in the ongoing communication, the therapists’ silence about the signs they have produced in the clinical exchange is a critical matter. Therapists do not confine themselves to receive and/ or comment on an already-written text. They take part as co-tellers in its construction. Thus, one has to ask, what is the situated context of signs in which the patient is offering that construction of him/herself? By a complementary point of view, what context of signs make possible the signs the patient produces? Strangeness as Intersubjective World of Clinical Practice At this point, one would wonder how to deal with language brought into the clinical encounter by the patient. In other words, if we individuate on the taken-for-granted assumptions carried on by his/her discourse and on the interpretative frame of what constructs of his/her problematic reality they suggest to share, what perspective might therapists assume within the clinical dialogue? It is beyond the scope of this chapter to systematically discuss this issue. However I want focus the attention on one aspect that, in my view, has a central role in the chance to allow the patient to overcome the limits his/her discourse imposes on the possibility of generating new meanings/realities. Taking for granted one’s own reality as a shared reality is a way of interpreting and acting it out. An actor treats the sense of the interaction in which he/she is involved as taken for granted insofar as he/she assumes the interlocutor shares the assumptions orienting their semiotic activity in the process (Venuleo et al., 2008). Thus, the teacher in our example is taking for granted the value of the testing, and the commitment of the students to her will, essentially as if there were a unique world of experience for all the

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participants in the activity. Also, a father who says to his son “you will do it in this way because I said so” (without any other specification on the aim and reason of this order), is betting that there is a mutual commitment to the rules of father and son, and that it is enough to guarantee the convergence of meaning according to which the signs are understood and acted out. In the same way, a patient who starts to talk about the signs of his pathology in introducing himself to the therapist takes for granted that his pathology is the object the therapist expects he speaks about. Nevertheless, in some circumstances, people constrain the homogenizing tendency of categorization that identifies one’s own symbolic world with the reality. Yet placing constraints on homogenizing categorization, that is, introducing differences between one’s own “reality” and the “reality” of the others, is a mental function nourished (or, on the contrary, hampered) by the intersubjective context. These are contexts grounded in the aim to reproduce one’s own system of sense and identity, a system of values, an idea of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. These contexts are the ground of the so-called psychopathology, which can be regarded as “being afflicted” with membership, with a symbolic world that is asserted despite any evidence of diversity and which does not allow generating a new sense and to face the novelty. These are contexts regulated and characterized by recognizing that their own interpretative frame is not a normative criterion of truth/reality. In a therapeutic group setting, Lucy accounts her recent sentimental relationship in which, on one side, her new boyfriend seems to show a strong commitment but, as she notices, on the other side, he frequently disappears (he does not call, he does not text). She wonders what kind of meanings should be attributed to his repeated absences. At this point, John associates something like, “Sometimes, in the loving relationship, I feel like I have to go away for a few days, because of the powerful involvement I feel in the relationship . . . I wonder if my lover will ask for me.” John is thus suggesting the idea that an “absence” might be regarded in several ways, hence, also as a “way to be seen”; accordingly, it might be interpreted as a sign of the presence of a strong involvement in the relationship rather than of its actual irrelevance. Mary suggests that they are talking somewhat about the therapeutic group too. She asks if the others “are realizing that since the beginning of the new year a new member has entered the therapeutic group: ‘How does it happen that nobody is talking about this “presence,”’ so far considering the new member as if he was absent?” In this way, she suggests a brand new frame of meanings: the participants might either refer the “presence” and “absence” way, to the sense-making process deploying among the participants in the here-and-now of the thera-

70   C. VENULEO peutic setting: there is a new member who never speaks about him: “can it be interpreted as a way to be seen by the other participants of the group?” And also, “why are the other participants ignoring his presence?” The shift from the sentimental relationship to the therapeutic setting opens the way for the question Rose poses at this moment: “Has the group also realized the transformations in the way Paul is speaking about himself and his problems? He appears much more attentive to subjectivity and to the feelings of the others in respect to the past.” With her therapist’s intervention, Rose proposes a further new meaning in the discursive exchange: the difficulty to recognize new “elements” in the “old” structure of knowledge, which do not concern only the new participant to the therapeutic setting, but also the ways the “old” participants take part in this process.

In the above discoursive exchange, the participants appear to share that their task is to make explicit what is useful, interesting, and meaningful with regard to the sign of the “absence” according to his/her standpoint and the standpoint of the other, rather than, for instance, to define “what happened” between Lucy and her boyfriend, or “what is the meaning of the absence for everybody.” In this sense, here, the psychic reality of the other is not taken for granted. Actors recognize their point of view on the world as one among others. It is not the one, and is not the truth, it is not seen a normative criterion. The strangeness, understood as the limit of the identification/objectification of a person’s world of meanings (Paniccia, 2003), is the intersubjective world of clinical practice (Montesarchio & Venuleo, 2009). In the strangeness, any interpretative frame (normative criterion, values, feeling) is never seen as an absolute, whatever it is. It is worth emphasizing that I do not regard strangeness as a fixed property of specific social context, but as property of a process, the exercise of a reflexive function on one’s own way of thinking, which suspends the certainness there is in a shared frame of sense, stating what and how a specific relationship is/must be and allowing people’s act of discourse to be convergent. One cannot say what the relationship with the stranger will be; how he represents the object of the exchange. Any sign produced by the stranger is a precious informative chance on how the stranger represents the who, the how, and the why of the encounter. The therapist may be a resource for the patient if and insofar as they are able to co-construct a “mental space of a so-called unknown strangeness” with regard to the taken-for-granted assumptions carried on by/through the discourse. It entails the therapists to consider themselves as self-active interlocutors to whom the patient suggests a specific construction of the object to be discussed, as well as of the questions that it is important to ask oneself in order to understand it. What is the object that is

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asked to be discussed? And what kind of problem-case and solutions does this version lead us to construct? What are the implications? In this perspective, the therapists act within the constraints of the patient’s premises, and at the same time promotes their development through the methodological choice of not treating such premises as taken for granted, but of making them the subject of sense making. Conclusion Clinical psychology can be described as a methodology of the sense making (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2006). Of course, this is neither the unique, nor the mainstream way of defining clinical psychology. It is a construction itself, grounded in two general premises/assumptions: • we construct the world we inhabit by producing signs (discourses, behaviors); thus we construct also the problematic reality we ask to the therapist to face; • we have to regard such a process as an intersubjective one. The semiotic approach to clinical practice entails overcoming a reading of the human behaviors through the categories of the “normal” and of the “pathological,” as well as the reference to the so-called psychopathology as a primary field of intervention and research of clinical psychology. Instead, it looks for the forms and the symbolic products—the diagnostic labels too—through which and in terms of which people organize the meaning of their experience, define what is wrong/bad/not canonic/pathological and what is right/good/canonic/normal within the different contexts of the living together, describe their problems as well as the aims they intend to reach in their relational and social context, decide to turn or not to turn to health services, represent the functions and the tools of psychological consulting, and any other object of their world. Clinical psychology aims to allow semiotic devices to develop when people perceive a semiotic failure of their process of sense making (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2009). Language is the tool of the clinical exchange: the intersubjective nature of the language leads to regarding the construction of meaning enacted by the patient’s discourse as open to a possible and ongoing process of redefinition. Therapists work to support—by means of and for the use of signs (the contents of the discourse produced, the way of presenting them, the space-time organization of the therapeutic work, etc.)—the emergence of an intersubjective frame grounded in the “unknown” as a limit for the identification/reification of the mental objects carried in the patient’s discourse, that is, what allows the novelty to be seen. So, “Why do

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you think that your attack of panic/the betrayal of your husband/the addiction of your son/your phobia of the horses, and so on, requires the help of a psychologist?” is the same as “What assumptions make reasonable this picture portrayed of you, and this description of your problem?” Perhaps this is a question that we might keep in mind when we work with this aim. Notes 1. By this point of view, the connotation of madness does not depend on the unfolding of this phenomena but by the degree of intersubjective consent of the existence of the reality suggested by the actor. It is enough to think that, before the Copernican revolution, nobody was considered mad because of the idea that the sun revolves around the Earth. This representation of the reality was shared and taken for granted. 2. It is interesting that most papers aimed at analyzing the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha from a psychological point of view, point out the features and the traits of personality only of the knight-errant (and in turn his moral narcissism, proneness to paranoia and melancholia, his courage, and nobility), without regard for the other characters and contextual elements of the history. 3. Here, the lesson of Austin (1962) can be recollected: producing a sign is not merely an operation of making a text, but an act of speech: an action of communication that is an integral part of and is carried out through a given system of activity. According to this point of view, language is an argumentative and rhetorical activity aimed at empowering one’s own vision of the world (Billig, 1996). It contains instructions that strongly orient specific interpretations of the reality (Eco, 1979). 4. In Italy, in the field of clinical psychology, there exists 20-year literature that developed the perspective I am referring to here, grounded in a relational and contextual psychodynamic perspective and focused on the concept of analysis on demand (Carli, 1987, 2006; Montesarchio & Venuleo, 2009). 5. For instance, in the field of psychotherapy research, researchers focus on specific aspects of patient’s narratives: e.g., illocutionary strategies (Stiles, 1986), changes in clients’ stories—I-moments—tracked from the dominant narrative that the client brings to therapeutic conversation (Matos, Santos, Gonçalves, & Martins, 2009), patient’s metacognitive functioning (Semerari, Dimaggio, Nicolò, Procacci, & Carcione, 2007), while the interviewer, or the therapist, and the signs he produces, is not part of the analysis.

References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

The Language as Object    73 Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical view of social psychology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press Binde, P. (2005, Winter). Gambling, exchange, and moralities. Journal of Gambling Studies, 21(4), 445–479. Blackman, L. (2005). The dialogical self, flexibility and the cultural production of psychopathology. Theory & Psychology, 15(2), 183–206. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Carli, R. (1987). Analisi della domanda [Analysis of the demand]. Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, 1(1), 38–53. Carli, R. (2006). Psychology training in Italy. European Journal of School Psychology, 4(2), 179–209. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel (1605-1612). El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. [The history of the valorous and witty-knight-errant, Don-Quixote of Mancha] (T. Shelton, Trans.). London, England and New York, NY: Colliers and Son. (Original work published Part I: 1605; Part II: 1615). Eco, U. (1979). Lector in fabula, Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gergen, K. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modern psychology. American Psychologist, 40, 266–275. Gergen, K. J. (1992). Toward a postmodern psychology. In S. Kvale (Ed.), Psychology and postmodernism (pp. 17–30). London, England: Sage Gergen, M. M., & Gergen, K. (2004). Social construction: Entering the dialogue. Chagrin Falls, OH: Taos Institute. Harrè, R. (1993). Social being (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Wiley Blackwell. Kessen, W. (1979). The American child and other cultural inventions. American Psychologist, 34, 815–820. Leiman, M. (2002). Toward semiotic dialogism. The role of sign mediation in the dialogical self. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 221–235. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind and world dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of sense making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Matos, M., Santos, A., Gonçalves, M. M., & Martins, C. (2009). Innovative moments and change in narrative therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 19, 68–80. McCrea, F. B. (1983). The politics of menopause: The “discovery” of a deficiency disease. Social Problems, 31(19), 111–123. McNamee, S., & Gergen, K. J. (Eds.). (1992). Therapy as social construction. London, England: Sage. Mecacci, L. (1999). Psicologia moderna e post-moderna [Modern and postmodern psychology]. Bari, Italy: Laterza.   Mitchell, W. E. (1988). The defeat of hierarchy: Gambling as exchange in a Sepik society. American Ethnologist, 15, 638–657. Montesarchio, G., & Venuleo, C. (Eds.). (2009). Colloquio magistrale. La narrazione generativa. [Magistral conversation. The generative narration]. Milan, Italy: Franco Angeli.

74   C. VENULEO Paniccia, R. M. (2003). The school client as an unknown friend: A stranger. European Journal of School Psychology, 1(2), 247–285. Salvatore, S. (in press). Social life of the sign: Sensemaking in society. Salvatore, S., Laura-Grotto, R., Gennaro, A., & Gelo, M. (2009). Grasping the dynamicity of intersubjectivity. In J. Valsiner, P. C. M. Molenaar, M. C. D. P. Lyra, N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 171–190). New York, NY: Springer Salvatore, S., Ligorio, M. B., & De Franchis, C. (2005). Does psychoanalytic theory have anything to say on learning? European Journal of School Psychology, 3(1), 101–126. Salvatore, S., & Pagano, P. (2005). Issues of cultural analysis. Culture & Psychology, 11(2), 159–180. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2006). “Am I really a psychologist?” Making sense of a super-human social role. European Journal of School Psychology. Special Issue: The Making of a Psychologist: A School for Life in the Profession, 4(2), 127–149. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2009). Idiographic science on its way: Toward making sense of psychology. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout , J. Clegg (Eds.), Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1, pp. 9–19). Rome, Italy: Firera & Liuzzo. Salvatore, S., & Venuleo, C. (2008). Understanding the role of emotion in sensemaking: A semiotic psychoanalytic-oriented perspective. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. Special Issue: Consciousness within Communication: The Stream of Thought Re-Considered, 42(1), 32–46. Salvatore, S., & Venuleo, C. (2009). The unconscious as source of sense: A psychodynamic approach to meaning making. In Brady Wagoner (Ed.), Symbolic transformations: The mind in movement through culture and society (pp. 59–74). London, England: Routledge. Sarbin, T. R., & Mancuso, J. C. (1980). Schizophrenia: Medical diagnosis or moral verdict? New York, NY: Praeger. Semerari, A., Dimaggio, G., Nicolò, G., Procacci, M., & Carcione, A. (2007). Understanding minds, different functions and different disorders? The contribution of psychotherapeutic research. Psychotherapy Research, 17, 106–119. Smith, B. (1988). Gestalt theory: An essay in philosophy. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations of gestalt theory (pp. 11–81). Munich, Germany: Philosophia Verlag. Stampa, P., & Grasso, M. (2008). Are we really so sure “We’re not in Kansas any more?” Quantitative methods and research epistemology in psychotherapy: A critical perspective. Rivista di psicologia clinica, 1, 123–145. Retrieved from http://www.rivistadipsicologiaclinica.it/english/number1_08/Grasso_ Stampa.htm Stiles, W. B. (1986). Development of a taxonomy of verbal response modes. In L. S. Greenberg & W. M. Pinsof (Eds.), The psychotherapeutic process: A research handbook (pp.161–199). New York, NY: Guilford. Valsiner, J., & Salvatore, S. (2011). Idiographic science as a non-existing object: The importance of the reality of the dynamic system. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, J. T. Simon, & A. Gennaro (Eds.), Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 3, pp. 7–26). Rome, Italy: Firera.

The Language as Object    75 Venuleo, C., Salvatore, S., Mossi, P., Grassi, R., & Ruggeri, R. (2008). The didactic relationship in the changing world. Outlines for a theory of the reframing setting. European Journal of School Psychology, 5(2), 151–180. Wetherell, M., & Maybin, J. (1996). The distributed self. In R. Stevens (Ed.), Understanding the self (pp. 219–275). London, Engalnd: Sage/Open University. White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York, NY: Norton. Woodburn, J. (1982). Egalitarian societies. Man, 17, 431–451. Zittoun, T. (2004). Symbolic competencies for developmental transitions: The case of the choice of first names culture. Culture & Psychology, 10(2), 131–161. Zittoun, T. (2007). Review symposium: Symbolic resources in dialogue, dialogical symbolic resources. Culture & Psychology, 13(3), 365–376.

Claudia Venuleo is researcher of clinical psychology at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy). At the present she teaches clinical psychology at Psychological Sciences and Techniques three-year degree course and Methods and Techniques of Clinical Interview at the “Methodology of the Psychological Intervention” two year degree course at the same university. She is professor at the school of Specialization in Psychodynamic and Socio-constructivist Psychotherapy “PPSISCO” (Lecce, Italy). Her clinical and research interests regard the role of the sense making in clinical psychology intervention, addressed to individuals, social and cultural groups, and community within a socioconstructivist and psychodynamic perspective. In particular, her study concerns aspects related to training in psychology and the construction of professional identity. On these issues she has published about 50 scientific papers in national and international journals. Address: Department of History, Society and Human Studies, Via Stampacchia, 45, 73100 Lecce. E-mail: [email protected]

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The Singular Patterns of Discourse for a Psycho-Idiographic Analysis of Language Giuseppe Mininni, Beatrice Ligorio, and Rosa Traversa Università degli Studi di Bari–Italia

Abstract The present contribution aims at stating the central role language can perform for an idiographic perspective in science by emphasizing its agency potentialities for human experience. This point leads us to question a certain way of approaching language, that is, by stressing systematic regularities in linguistic phenomena rather than dynamic processes activated by “real speakers-listeners.” We therefore try to foster an idiographic science of language as an inquiry into talking, considering the rich variety and complexity of real contexts within which human activities may occur and underlining the unrepeatable intentions and dialogical situations of linguistic phenomena. For this purpose, we propose the neologism of diatesto to highlight the nature of the context, which is at the same time constructive, dynamic, dialogical, and negotiable. Then we examine the problem of expression and experience by analyzing the structuring power of metaphor, which commits people to defining a context that allows them to achieve trajectories of sense.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 77–107 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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78    G. MININNI, B. LIGORIO, and R. TRAVERSA Non dirai mai parole uguali se parlerà la voce tua per me [You will never say identical words if your voice will talk for me] —Franco Battiato, “E più ti amo,” Fleurs 2, (2008)

The relevance of language for self-understanding is one of the most important and consolidated acquisitions in both common usage and philosophic and scientific research. Here we only report the luminous awareness of one of the highest thinkers in Western culture about the role language plays every time anything becomes internal (Hegel, 1968). Communication events between human beings are shaped by principles regulating language, which can be considered as the most complex sign system. Interest in the role language plays within the idiographic approach to science comes from the wide awareness of the strong relationship between “sense making” and the “sense maker” (Salvatore, Valsiner, Clegg, & Strout-Yadodzinski, 2009). Human language is a species-specific system of signs. It is from the process of co-construction that there emerges the possibility to act as active agents and sense makers. Idiographic psychology’s interest in language consists of emphasizing constant interpretative processes involved in human sense making and is related to language properties, according to the current hermeneutics of anthropological research (Geertz, 1973). The general research framework is given by the interweaving of the following questions: Why, what, and how do we treat the linguistic aspects of idiographic science? What is the theoretical and methodological status of language within idiographic science? The first step in our argument concerns a conceptual clarification of a methodological term. Idiographic science in general (and idiographic psychology in particular) looks at linguistic phenomena seen not as a biological disposition of the “mental module” known as “language.” Nor is language considered a system of conventions valuable for a community talking a certain “langue.”1 Rather, it is interested in the “words,” in language in action and language in use, verbalized events (Slobin, 2000), or units of utterance. Idiographic science looks at the linguistic phenomena just in their occurring, as sense making “here” and “now,” as it is decided by the unique participants involved in that specific interlocutor scenario. For a Dialogical and Idiographic Psychology The essential features of linguistic phenomena investigated by idiographic science are unrepeatable intentions and the dialogical situation. The overall picture of this matter is clearly anticipated by Bakhtin (1979):

The Singular Patterns of Discourse for a Psycho-Idiographic Analysis of Language    79 The question arises as to whether science can deal with such absolutely unrepeatable individualities as utterances, or whether they extend beyond the bounds of generalizing scientific cognition. And the answer is, of course, it can. In the first place, every science begins with unrepeatable single phenomena, and science continues to be linked with them throughout. In the second place, science, and above all philosophy, can and should study the specific form and function of this individuality (emphasis added).

Here we contend that idiographic psychology can help to clarify the mysterious link between language-mind-reality by proposing concrete analytical tools adequate to the complexity of a fluid situation within which sense-making practices occur. Among these practices of a particular interest are “psycho-discursive” practices (Wetherell, 2008): these are interpretative procedures allowing each individual a situated subjectivity revealing the specific model of agency adopted, involving discursive practices concerned in managing meaning through which subjects co-reformulate their social memberships and perform identity positionings in a personal and active way. Languages of Science and Science of Language Human knowledge becomes scientific through three constitutive acts able to display an intense plot made by interweaving several intentions: 1. Specification of an object, 2. Individuation of a series of methodological procedures, 3. Elaboration of a language able to match the expected truth about objects with the guarantee of the validity of the pathway followed to perform the inquiry. The first two aspects we just outlined as able to certify the scientific episteme are reified into the third one: science is able to let emerge its “object” and to justify the inquiry models adopted along the way; meanwhile it is finding a specific way of talking about it. Sciences are discursive practices aimed at making explicit the sensemaking process concerning many sign systems; from historical-natural languages, pertaining to so-called scientific language in a certain historical moment—such as ancient Greek, mediaeval Latin, modern and contemporary English—to mathematical language. Nowadays, to be accepted as “scientific,” the language of knowledge is expected to be English, and its validity is usually closely related to the degree to which it can be translated into a numerical code. The modern sense of scientific corresponds to its “measurability.” Social representations tend to consider science as overlapping the

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nomothetic approach, traditionally used by disciplines studying the natural world. The idiographic and dialogical approach to science is confined to “the humanities,” to disciplines interested in the human world and therefore concerning practices used to interpret cultural phenomena—such as art, popular traditions, ethics, and so on—but it may represent a possibility for scientific inquiry to be engaged with human “dynamic concreteness” rather than with an abstract modeling way to knowledge. Any science has its own specific lexicon and its peculiar asset of argumentative procedures, through which a specific and peculiar vision of the world is proposed. Therefore, the expectation is that even idiographic science will propose its own ways of describing its universe. Within its world, key words are “person,” “semiosis,” “singularity,” “text,” “context,” “positioning,” “agency,” “report,” “narrative program,” “affective density,” and so on. The discursive nature of science is completely transparent in disciplines that have language as an object. These are sciences dealing with systems as communication resources available within the biosphere; these systems are able to self-organize and to form the semiosphere (Lotman, 1985). In cases like this, the linguistic form of scientific knowledge reaches a “meta” level. This happens because this is a language that self-organizes in order to understand another language. This duplicity of the interpretative action concerning sciences of languages implies a paradoxical state that can be overcome only on one condition: acknowledging its unavoidable dialogical nature. Within sciences of language, the idiographic approach represents the dominant tradition. This happens because the linguistic phenomenon is so “protean” that it discourages any nomologic standard. When an idiographic science studies language, disciplines with certain research procedures and passionate devotion to certain types of text, such as philology and literary criticism, may function as reference points. Semiotics in Sciences of Language The accurate study of semiotic processes can be conducted at various levels with different degrees of specificity and different descriptive intentions, ranging from a general exploration of signs (Eco, 1975) to linguistics as analysis of the operative grammar within the verbal language of Homo Sapiens (Chomsky, 1965; de Saussure, 1922). These two macrodisciplines are articulated in an intense plot of specifications, from zoosemiotics to semioethics, to theater semiotics to marketing or music semiotics, from textual linguistics to pragmatic linguistics. Both linguistics and semiotics reasonably frame their theoretical objects into inquiry perspectives depending on how they interface with other human sciences. Therefore, specific

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research practices have been established in psycholinguistics (Hormann, 1976), sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972) and ethnolinguistics (Duranti, 2001), as well as in psychosemiotics (Mininni, 1982, 1995, 2003), sociosemiotics (Calefato, 2003) and anthroposemiotics (La Cecla, 2001). All these sciences of language, regardless of the variety of their research paradigms—from structuralism to functionalism—share the tendency to privilege an interest in systematic regularities in linguistic phenomena rather than being interested in dynamic processes activated by the experience of being “real speakers-listeners.” An idiographic science of language is an inquiry about talking, considering the rich variety and complexity of real contexts within which human activities may occur. This type of science should be in charge of the program previous scholars launched with rhetorical analysis. In its development, some constraints reducing this science to “a theory about persuasive communication” and/or “praxis of empty communication” need to be overcome. The idiographic science of language should be considered a “new rhetoric,” aiming to go beyond the need to legitimate argumentative processes (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958), so it can be valued as a “theory of situated utterance.” The idiographic perspective gives salience to the features of real speaker-listeners within the peculiar singularity of their actual enunciative contexts, “here and now.” The interpretative apparatus (most) able to track down the thin plot drawn by the individual modulation of talk/communication/meaning can be provided by psychosemiotics. “Other” Sciences, but Without Using Quotation Marks Like any discursive practice, science too has to respect special pragmatic and rhetoric constraints. At a pragmatic level, scientific language is recognizable for its descriptive intentions. What can be done with scientific language is simply to try to connect the observed world to the intention of (re)representing it as it is. The logic of scientific research is inspired by the constative function of language, which implies leaving out—or at least lowering its power as much as possible—the values of the deictic field (ichhier-jetzt) and emphasizing the “symbolic field” (Buhler, 1934). The ideal is for scientific language to be based on a set of utterances composed in the third person. At a theoretical level, scientific language is recognizable by its aspiration to measure its world according to the criteria of being precise and correct. Starting from the Pythagorean school, and after 2,000 years, restarting from Galileo, scientific knowledge owes its fascination to the univocal nature of its language, for instance when it uses mathematical formulae or self-evi-

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dent graphs. The more univocal the language of science appears, the more convincing it is. To achieve this result, it should use “clear and distinct” expressions, taking advantage of the elegance of simplicity. Western culture, which is to some extent considered to be the global culture, displays many binaries connected to the social stratification of power through dominant and dominated social classes (Rossi-Landi, 1985). One of these polarities is between the science of nature and the “science of culture (or of spirit).” This mirrors the comparison between two subcultures: one including practices of doing (acting, intervening) and the other concerning “reckoning” (looking, speculating). Of course, these two orientations of values are not in balance at all; so for many generations, life horizon has been classified as the “era of technology.” In fact, one of the criteria of validity of scientific knowledge is the possibility of translating “knowing” into “knowing how to do.” Obtaining shared models for an efficient participation of people in managing the human condition, both for private and public life, is quite hard. This makes the results from the inquiry into the human world less convincing than results coming from studies about the natural world. To mark this difference in terms of value, sometimes the expression “human sciences” is put into quotation marks, highlighting the awareness that this expression should be understood as “in a certain sense.” The distinction between natural sciences and “human (or “cultural”) sciences” is often based on the tactile metaphor of consistency. Based on this metaphor, natural science is “hard” because of the rigor of its procedure, and human science is “soft” because of the malleability of its principles. The idiographic approach will be able to produce human science, without the quotation marks, if it is able to profoundly renew Homo Loquens’ interpretative apparatus (Montaleone, 1998). To get rid of the quotation marks, idiographic sciences should give articulate reasons to delegitimize a set of preconceptions codified by scientific language. For instance, it is expected that scientific knowledge reveals the world as it is, talking in a transparent way and gaining a general consensus. When accepted as not in quotation marks, human sciences should be able to talk even when using hesitant and ambiguous, opaque and even confused language, because this is the way real people talk within real contexts. By giving up the obsession with turning scientific knowledge into mathematics, idiographic science accepts the challenge of ambiguity typical of everyday language. Idiographic science studies language-in-use mainly to legitimate its own agenda aimed at building a human science even if it uses a low degree of generalization and giving up the power to anticipate and control its “objects.” Nevertheless, such a position allows an important research journey through psychodiscursive practices concerning utterances of “private” meaning and valuing the material signs of body and emotion. This is the

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pathway traced by carnal knowing, used to inquire into emergent human subjectivity by and through the “sentient body.” For instance, a critical perspective of cyberculture shows how sense making occurs through the embodiment of the mind, through many resources available for the body to express itself with practices, energy, and intensity to go beyond the self. The interest for the “affective” work and for the not cognitive “somatic feeling,” free from representational constrains, addresses the ability of the body to express itself as a sense-making machine. The symbiotic relationship between “machine” and “human body” triggers a few needs. In particular, the need to express that kind of intelligence and sensibility that allows people to cross intercategory borders, to blur the contours, and to “wear out” the fuzzy procedures of sense making. Situated Utterances Analyzing language is central in idiographic science because it answers many of the reasons underlying its foundation. The theoretical framework is marked by the “epistemology of complexity” (Morin, 1999), because discursive events amplify the potentialities of meanings, so many-sided that they cannot be reduced to a single resource or only one chain of determination. No hypothesis is “definitive” for the understanding of discursive events, because the sense-making process is never definitively closed and, in principle, it is open to in(de)finite dia-logic interpretations. This is a central issue for all sciences because it concerns innovation, which should be one of the main objects for scientific inquiry. Typical scientific research standards share inductive and deductive principles to guarantee validity and to allow their claims to be generalized to the population; but neither of them are compatible with the possibility of the “other,” not predetermined and dominated by the certainty of basic assumptions, that is, the possibility of innovation included in the rare abductive conditions in the discourse of science. An idiographic psychology of discourse (or of language-in-action) is an enterprise that cannot belong only to one paradigm. A contemporary activation of multiple “lens” is needed to be able to look at various dynamics underlying the sense-making process. The reference to semiotics is a fundamental frame because of the circulation of sense that discourse enables. The pragmatic orientation is indispensable because through discourse people show their agency. The rhetorical perspective cannot be left out because this perspective has always been based on faith in the “power of discourse” (Venier, 2008). The idiographic science of language does not simply value (through a modern sensibility) the beliefs formulated by many cultures about the divine nature that language gives to the human being. This science is committed to recognizing the conflict of interest by explor-

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ing what is at stake during interactions and within institutional discourses and ideological agendas. Further arguments from a science that is by nature idiographic (i.e., astronomy) bring home this issue; for example, we could consider the new set of rules astronomers created in 2006 to decide what can be called a “planet,” changing the standards of size and orbital inclination. This reformulation led to Pluto being removed from the category of planet (where it had been since 1930) and, in some ways, shows that even “hard” sciences rely on language to organize and reorganize the system of values, parameters, and so on, using discursive procedures to arrange scientific plans. The theory inspiring (amidst consensus and criticisms) many of the pathways explored by linguistics during the second half of the 1900s is known as “Transformational Generative Grammar” proposed by Noam Chomsky (1965). One of the conceptual anchors is the notion of “ideal speaker-listener,” compatible with the aim of describing the “language” system through the regularities of its general function, corresponding to the mental module triggered by the “linguistic instinct” (Parker, 1997). The productivity of this system appears mainly in the syntactic competence of an ideal speaker-listener, able to recognize (and to generate) sentences possible in the language a person is exposed to. The notion of ideal speaker-listener is an abstraction useful to gather the profile of an enunciator of sense, able to combine the divergent functions of “speaker” and “listener.” Following this modeling way to conceptualize interactions, during real communicative events the roles of speaker and listener would be fixed and well-separated and regulated by mechanisms of conversational turn-taking (Fele, 2007; Galatolo & Pallotti, 1999). But being speaker or listener is irrelevant for the ideal represented by linguistic competence; actually the two roles emerge one into the other. This assimilation of figures in one unique enunciative entreaty of sense is activated also when we leave the descriptive level of the “linguistic competence” to move forward to the level of explaining the “linguistic performance.” Intercepting and reorganizing many research traditions—from sociolinguistics to pragmalinguistics, from ethnography of communication to discursive and cultural psychology—idiographic psychology is interested in how real people talk in real everyday contexts. This is so even though idiographic science in general is tending to a kind of generalization without external comparison, as in the “sample” logic, but relating with systemic views on local, specific, interaction contexts. In the concrete use of a language, we find the figure of a “real speakerlistener” because every verbal act implies both an allocutory dynamic (gathering the attention of the Other) and a tension referring to the self (making the self perceptible, as it is the first listener of its speaking). Being able to listen to yourself when you are a speaker does not only entail keeping the

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self-monitoring channel open, which is very important because it allows the speaker to constantly reformulate what he/she has been just saying. It has also the effect of indicating that the “sense giving” comes from the shared role of active listening. The interest in discourse dynamics pushes idiographic sciences to go beyond the borders of linguistics. The unit of analysis of “translinguistics” is the “uttered text,” in other words the “verbal product.” But using it as “real unit of verbal communication” (Galatolo e Pallotti 1979, p. 253), what is an utterance? Bakhtin already underlined many times the difficulty of capturing the “nature of utterance/enunciation,” especially within the conceptual apparatus available within the perspectives he knew about sciences of language. Nevertheless, some specific features can be singled out. Among these there is certainly personal specificity, the nonrepeatability of singularity: “Any utterance—oral or written, primary or secondary, and in any sphere of communication—is individual and therefore can reflect the individuality of the speaker (or writer); that is, it possesses individual style” (Bakhtin, 1979, p. 248). It is understood that the individual nature of the utterance is recognized each time with ad hoc instruments. There are no formal algorithms to establish how a certain “verbal product” is the utterance of a particular subjectivity. Similarly, there are no definitive roles designed for the performance of a certain interpersonal relationship. This lack of objective references represents the challenge of an idiographic science that, when analyzing language, becomes inquiry into the peculiar ways of sense making. Actually, “the very problem of the national and the individual in language is basically the problem of the utterance (after all, only here, in the utterance, is the national language embodied in individual form)” (Bakhtin, 1979, p. 249). The notion of “genre of discourse” represents an important point of conjunction between personal characterization of the utterance (as expression of free choice) and generalization, which appears as part of a collective repertoire of possibilities. In fact, utterances and their typologies, in other words, discourse genres, are like transmission straps for the history of language and society (Bakhtin, 1979, p. 251). The collective experience of a community is composed of personal “styles,” socially recognized during the flow of utterances within situations and when circumstances become concrete and shape sense making. The “Diatext” as a Psycho-Idiographic Category The idiographic approach to text as subjective utterance is anchored to some interpretative tools already available, such as the linguistic notion of “idiolect” or “styleme.” The idiolect is that particular “slide” of language used by a specific speaker. Besides having a special voice tone, each person

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specifies his/her way of appropriating language. Each of us has his/her own way of inhabiting language; by intersecting some specific lexical areas, by preferring certain grammatical constructions, each of us makes his/her personal way of talking perfectly recognizable. The styleme is the expressive unit through which it is possible to recognize the identity of the speaker. Lexical, morphological, or syntactical data assume a stylistic function when they characterize the discursive practice of a speaker. Much of the research conducted within the wide horizon labeled as human sciences is inspired by the “dialogical principle” (Todorov, 1981). In the version formulated by Michail Bakhtin (1990), dialogism permeates the human condition based on utterances, from the simplest everyday interaction to the most complex production or use of artistic texts. In Bakhtin’s artistic production, the dialogical principle has a twofold function, pertaining to any interpersonal (and social) encounter: it provides the opportunity to listen to each other, and it sustains the polyphonic plot that allows one to talk in a responsible way. To highlight the nature of the context—at the same time constructive, dynamic, dialogical, and negotiable—the neologism diatesto (Mininni, 1992) can be useful. This concept refers to the context interiorized by speakers in a text at the very moment they are constructing the sense together. The notion of diatext alludes to the unitary principle that determines the real correspondence between texts and the situation within which texts are produced. It is the dialogical dimension that makes it possible to track down the “live” context directly and dynamically from the discourse. Meant as a co-construction of sense and not as transmission of information, the verbal event can be defined as a diatext, first of all because text engages a dialogue with its context, wherein speakers can recognize themselves as subjects, as active builders of reality. The Dialogicity of the Text Michail Bakhtin is a genial precursor of the analysis of language in the perspective of idiographic sciences (Mininni, 2009). He stated repeatedly that he intended to refound “the expressive and talking existence” (Bakhtin, 1979, note 1, p. 416). The dynamic of the text is constitutive of human sciences. In fact, The human sciences are sciences about man and his specific nature, and not about a voiceless thing or natural phenomenon. Man in his specific human nature always expresses himself (speaks), that is, he creates a text (if only potential). When man is studied outside a text and independent of it, the science is no longer one of the human sciences. (Bakhtin, 1979, pp. 295–296)

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Bakhtin did not elaborate a systematic and organized methodological and theoretical proposal. Nevertheless, his ideas, with many levels of notes and annotations, allow us to trace a new and peculiar humanistic discipline provided by connections between certain border areas, such as between philosophy and philology, linguistics and psychology, anthropology and theory of literature. The appreciation of breaking the bounds responds to the need to achieve a “philology of alterity” (Ponzio & Petrilli, 2008). This philology finds in semiotics and in the philosophy of language the most suitable interpretative apparatus to pose the most relevant questions about sense-making processes. This “interior incompleteness,” which Bakhtin (1979, p. 374) recognized in his ideas, should be regarded as a testimonial in favor of a commitment to take care of the human sense of life, not as a closed system of codified possibilities but rather as an open and unforeseeable totality. In fact, the prime data for any (authentically) human science is the “text as utterance” (Bakhtin, 1979, p. 413). The analysis of text makes the inquiry into human phenomena (hetero) scientific not when it is adherent to criteria such as reproducibility and exactitude, as natural and monologic sciences are, but rather when it is able to go deep into its production and comprehension. For the idiographic approach, the relevance of the text comes not so much from the characteristics of cohesion and coherence recognizable in any textual product, but rather from the dynamics for creating sense operating in any textual process (Migliorino, 2002). In fact, Only an utterance has a direct relationship to reality and to the living, speaking person (subject). . . . But an utterance is defined not only by its relation to the object and to the speaking subject-author (and its relation to the language as a system of potential possibilities, givens), but—for us most important of all— by its direct relation to other utterances within the limits of a given sphere of communication. It does not actually exist outside this relationship (only as a text). Only an utterance can be faithful (or unfaithful), sincere, true (false), beautiful, just, and so forth. (Bakhtin 1979, p. 312, emphasis added)

The translinguistics theorized by Bakhtin is a science that does not know it is dialogical. The text is not a thing, notes Bakhtin (1979, p. 295), because its raison d’être is to give a (coherent and cohesive) shape to the nonenunciability of some objects. The text as enunciation of sense and positioning of subjectivity allows us to articulate the “reasons of the heart,” because it also provides the conditions for the thinkability/talkability of emotions. This is a sort of defensive contract between commitment of the awareness (Mininni, 2009) and resistances of the unconscious (Barbieri, 2007).

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The Dialogicity of the Context The dialogical principle is a product of human sciences also thanks to the categorical imperative to consider the context when determining the sense of any type of context. The utterance does not rely on itself and cannot be conceived in a codified and “essentialist” way. In fact, the utterance is necessarily tied to a situation because it cannot be projected in a deictic field that makes explicit the references to the unavoidable coordinates of human experience; that is to say, space and time interwoven to form a “chronotope.” At the same time, the utterance cannot completely deactivate the axiologic system composed of ideological valences, moral values, aesthetical orientations, religious belonging, and so on. Actually, the “situation” is not the only way to bridge the “text” and the “context.” Still, this is the most relevant configuration and, following the suggestion coming from the Rumanian psycholinguistic Tatiana Slama-Cazacu (1959/1961), it can be called “explicit context.” The notion of explicit context evokes that of “implicit context,” consisting of systems of knowledge, competences, and values assumed as belonging to the participants in a communicative event. The explicit context (the situation) and the implicit context (the intentional foreground) represent the “context external” to the text, which consequently also gives relevance to an operative level that can be labeled as “context internal” to the text (the “co-text”). In fact, the text can be segmented in various types of units of analysis (syntagms, propositions, paragraphs, etc.). Any of these partially gains its meaning from the others preceding or following it, functioning as a “surround.” Co-text introduces into the text the need to refer to the other rather than itself, which is peculiar to every procedure of sense making. All these articulations of context—explicit and implicit, external and internal—constitute the “global context,” which supports the sense project inherent in a given text. If text betrays the enunciative tension of Self subjectivity, the global context carries the Other’s voice. This is why the frame of sense definition is intersubjectivity, which establishes the primacy of “we” to ”I.” The world “knowledge” (and, already before the “experience”) passes “in first person,” but “plural.” The value (and/or the force) of “we” alludes to the fundamental social nature of the human condition, which, as we have learned through the enlightening elucidation of Heidegger’s lesson given by Gadamer (2005), is instituted into the ambivalence between “being together” (mitsamt-sein) and “being-the-Self-with-the-Other” (miteinander-sein). The intersubjective sense construction also shows the traces of the duplicity of “we.” On the one hand, meanings are produced for “us” as a region of common belonging, as a background of shared assumptions, as

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a horizon of agreements already checked by history, as a series of norms opening the possibilities of “living together in the world”; on the other hand, meanings are comanaged by “us” as agents of current utterances, “heroes” involved in the plots of stories intersecting the “here and now”; stakeholders bound by the principle of mutual acknowledgment. Procedures of Diatextual Interpretation Idiographic psychology should also specify its own “box of instruments” in exploring human language. Its theoretical framework is inscribed in the principal perspectives of qualitative research, which put emphasis on the heuristic power of methodologies inspired by “participant observation,” by “ethnography of the single case” (Abu-Lughod, 1991), by conversation and discourse analysis (Mantovani, 2008), by critical inquiry into ideologies, and by the semiotics of social rhetorics. The procedures of data collection may be multifarious too: from narrative interview to focus group discussion. The diatextual approach cannot be seen as belonging to a definite series of inquiry techniques, but it leaves the analyst free to choose his/her way, since it only suggests practicing a few interpretative procedures, which, in relation to the concrete texts considered each time, allows for the respect of some guiding principles, namely dialogism, situationism, and enunciative rhetoricism. In their way of working, texts are diatexts for two basic reasons, evoked in a reflexive way by the word diatext (thanks to the Greek etymology dia, through). Actually, sense does not lie fixed in texts, but it passes through them due to the effect of the joint action of the utterers, which mainly consists of negotiating the situation frame (or enjeu) in which they are involved. As a consequence, a diatextual approach to the study of communicative phenomena aims at identifying the gestaltic quality of the interactional process of sense making. Diatexts, namely, texts considered as bound to their utterance contexts, shape communicative events in which the subjectivities involved—usually persons and sometimes “communities of practice” (organizations and institutions)—are devoted to a few forms of narrative activity. The physical and social world gains sense basically thanks to the narrative format of human thinking, which is shaped “through the text.” Interest in the narrative dimension of the mind is a crosstown bus taken by several scholars within human sciences, from semiotics (Greimas & Courtès, 1979) to psychology (Bruner, 1986). Among the several complex instruments developed for narrative text analysis—from the “grammar of stories” to indexes of pentadic construction of narratives—idiographic psychology focuses on the resources that allow the narrative text to capture the peculiarities of each experience of the world.

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The narrative text specifies a voice that is interested in presenting a certain version of the world as it is and/or as it might have been. Briefly, diatextual analysis moves from the assumption that the meaning of a discourse could be captured by answering three basic questions: Who says it? Why does he/she say it? How does he/she say it? These questions have an ethnomethodological value since they lead the practices of understanding of those taking part in the communicative event. To take part in a conversation and/or to get into a dialogical relationship implies giving an enunciative contribution of meaning, which allows us to reveal who we are, what might justify what we say, and what claim of validity is offered. More specifically, the proposal for a diatextual analysis enhances some interpretative tools, which are in tune with the psychosemiotic perspective framing the analytic work. These tools are related to the following theoretical constructs: 1. The narrative side of sense making: This means that discourses analyzed through the diatextual perspective often reveal narrative traces (from Bruner’s (1990) “pentadic construction” to time markers); 2. The argumentative side of sense making: This means that whenever analyzed through diatextual sensitivity, discourses are investigated in each possible trace of “topic” construction (from the network of “logoi/antilogoi” to identity positionings, from the investigation of meanings implied in the organization to the persuasive procedures realized through the text); 3. The stylistic side of sense making: This means that diatextual analysis allows us to capture the care taken by the utterers while producing discourses (from morphosyntactical structure to choice of “dense words,” from rhetorical figures to metadiscursive indexes). Diatextual analysis responds to the need to consider the sense-making process within the dynamics, which “make discourse” in a specific thematic “field,” according to a specific relational “tenor” and with a specific rhetorical “mode” (Halliday & Hasan, 1985). Lastly, diatextual analysis aims at producing a sort of “discursive identikit” by highlighting the very thick texture of the bonds that hold subjectivities and their utterance context together. The Diatextual Practice of Intersubjectivity But why is it necessary to study utterance? Basically because it provides us with an adequate model for the intersubjective construction of meanings. From the psychosemiotic point of view, discourse means every situated practice of sense making, so it is the mother of all kinds of intersubjectivities, from the “primary” one related to early childhood (Trevarthen, 1998) to

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that which emphasizes all the capabilities included in media environments (Spadaro & Ligorio, 2005) . The inescapable “subjective” anchorage of intersubjectivity implies that such a construct is included in so-called qualia, that is, it belongs to the world of life that is experienced by every single “I” in its unrepeatable uniqueness. Actually, the sense of intersubjectivity building our sociocultural nature is something “feelable” by humans; it is an immediate sensation similar to what one feels when tasting some fine Chianti. And nevertheless, me and my friend don’t share qualia, according to their definition, because qualia are private, but this doesn’t prevent a mutual comprehension at all. Actually, we share something more important than qualia, the language we speak and understand. Language lets us to compare our inner, private, feelings, and to make them equivalent (Praetorius, 2004). In some ways it is like what happens in a market, where the price of a kilo of zucchini is equivalent, more or less, to the price of ten eggs or a hectogram of ham; what is relevant is that all sellers share the same unit of measurement—public exchange money— so that, differences between various goods (such as qualia), just don’t prevent “communication” between various participants in the relation” (Cimatti 2008, p. 417, emphasis in original)

The Dialogical Experience of Speaking Verbal communication is a joint coordinated interaction, aiming at a (partial and temporary) sharing of a universe of meanings. The intersubjective nature of communication emerges from the intertwining of its executive planes, so that it is realized as “utterance” and as “comprehension.” However, the comprehension activity is the root that feeds the utterance too, because every sense-making practice requires an interpreting frame in order to be sustained. The discursive-conversational model of intersubjectivity can be introduced through a text grounding Western culture, such as the Gospel of St. John. The last of four canonical texts reporting Jesus’s words and acts is the only one that reports the first miracle of turning water into wine, bringing joy to the luckiest married couple in Cana. For our purposes, what is relevant is the initial framing of the scene: Once the wine was used up, Jesus’s mother told him: They don’t have any more wine. Jesus told her: What is there between me and you, oh woman? It’s not my time yet. His mother told the servants: Do everything he tells you to do. (John 2:3–5)

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This verbal exchange started by Jesus’s mother appears to be a dialogue between deaf people or a hymn of praise to human misunderstanding, as can be seen through the conversational sequence structure (see Excerpt 1): Excerpt 1 Mary: They don’t have any more wine. Jesus: What is there between me and you, oh woman? It’s not my time yet. Mary: Do everything he tells you to do. The evangelical text allows us to imagine the crackling mirror neurons (Gallese, 2006) in Mary’s mind, feeling the same pain and the same embarrassment that other families related to the marital couple are feeling when they realize they cannot satisfy the guests’ expectations of celebration. Jesus’s mirror neurons seem to reflect different rhythms, so that his refusal of an intersubjective relation appears to be even proper, also if undeniably abrupt. But calling on empathy, his mother knows how to overcome all opposition, even if it concerns divine reasons, because she can rely on the fragile power of words (“Do what he tells you to do”). If the main question deriving from the great intersubjectivity mirror can be expressed through divinely simple words (“What is there between me and you, oh woman?”), Mary is implicitly answering Jesus’s reluctant rhetoric, showing that “between me and you there is the fact that each of us speak (about something/ to each other).” Since (and as long as) people can speak to each other, they have always something they can deal with/take care of, together. The dialogical experience of speaking represents a “leap” in the evolution of intersubjectivity structures, at least if we refer to the “recap” provided, also in this case, by human individual development. In fact, “the most relevant difference between the adult’s intersubjectivity structures and those of the child can be described as the opposition between verbal and nonverbal communication” (Beebe, Knoblauch, Rustin, & Sorter, 2003). Adult intersubjectivity is primarily constructed through verbal interactions, which make visible the dialogical format related to the semiotic construction of mind (Ponzio, 2006). Anyway, also in verbal interactions there is a difference between the explicit and implicit, which characterizes the architecture of intersubjectivity. So, it is not only what is explicitly said that decides the sense of what happens “between” two or more “subjects” during a dialogue, but especially what is not said, what is implicitly assumed as valid. The subject is linked to the text he/she is uttering through a constant interpretation of the situation he/she is involved in. As the contextual relevance model (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) clearly describes, the answer

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“Eh, coffee would keep me awake!” to the question “Fancy a coffee?” can mean both a refusal (“No, I’m going to bed”) and an acceptance (“Yes, I’m about to set out on a night journey”). Background knowledge, shared by the speakers, allows them to decide if coffee will be prepared or not. Sometimes inaccuracy, open-endedness, and expressive vagueness suggest an intricate intentional complexity. In certain utterance events of double conflict avoidance—“I can’t tell the truth nor do I enjoy telling a lie”—the speaker knows he/she can find an escape by choosing a wording receptive to the listener’s collaboration. Following “Did you like my present?” when I can’t say “It was horrible” (true), or “Wonderful!” (false), it is possible to overcome these difficulties by using an expression like “You were original,” which offers an idea of truth without telling the truth. Modes/kinds of indirect and intricate discoursive structures show that speakers and listeners’ roles are part of the conversational fabric. Also, in verbal communication, the intersubjective relation tends to conceal itself, to be in the “background,” to be given as “implicitly known information,” to be conceived as a “precondition,” believing that it could be perceived, if need be. When there is a strong intersubjective relation, words tend to disappear in their meaning material too, as appropriately proposed by Vygotsky (1934), recalling the “care of inter-human understanding” attributable to Tolstoy. The Pragmatic Architecture “Shared knowledge” and/or “distributed cognition” (Engestrom & Middleton, 1996) can be understood in three ways, that is, as cultural knowledge, as reciprocal knowledge, and as pragmatic intersubjectivity. The reference framework for intersubjectivity (see Carli & Rodini, 2008; Coelho & Figueiredo, 2003) does not take enough into account the conversational structure that ethnomethodologists emphasize, through accurate descriptions of communicative interactions, in which intersubjectivity is built as a “sequential architecture” (Taylor, 1992, p. 241). The question “How does communicative understanding happen?” can be examined by evoking many theoretical constructs such as “internalized codes, langues, objective meanings, inference reasoning, behavior and bodily embedded predispositions” (Taylor, 1992, p. 244). Such issues refer to “ ‘inner’ (mental or neurological) processes or conditions or to knowledge and abstract-but-‘rationally necessary’ objects” (Taylor, 1992, p. 244). But, if through conversations, people’s reciprocal understanding is possible, it is because of the concrete structures related to procedures that make practicable such an activity between two or more matters of utterance. The intersubjectivity displayed by conversation consists of the fact that (until it is told

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otherwise) speakers follow certain rules in accordance with turn-taking and supporting reciprocal expectations, so that, for example, if someone ends his/her conversational contribution with a question, the next statement introduced by another speaker represents an answer. Conversational flow performs an interactive practice model from which it becomes clear that “intertwined acts . . . are intersubjectivity’s cornerstones” (Heritage, 1984, p. 256). Conversation’s sequential architecture, shaped by turns and adjacent communicative areas, is “a ‘local’ and practical matter involving particular speakers who act in particular international circumstances” (Taylor, 1992, p. 241). The discursive concept of intersubjectivity reformulates the claim that proposes this construct as a mental attitude, just oriented to the coordination of intentions. Intersubjective space isn’t included in a mere utterance-understanding interaction sphere, but it is permanently “under construction,” “as a practical matter” (Edwards, 1997, p. 101, emphasis added). Discourse in action allows us to see that intention is intertwined with intersubjectivity. So, intention is considered as something involving “participants’ descriptions and versions” in a pervasive way, but also as an evident/ transparent matter revealed in certain contexts, such as accomodation processes, elaborating disjunctures in various versions of events, “managing accountability” (Edwards, 1997, p. 108). Children use to learn at a very early age the most elaborate strategies of intersubjectivity construction, as it is demonstrated by the next example of an interactional episode between a child and his father (recorded in a lift, November 17, 2008): Excerpt 2 B: Those beads, hm Rosa bought them at Ikea P: Ah, Rosa bought beads at Ikea! B: Yes, it’s true. You don’t believe me, do you? P: Yes, I do. Why? Were there many? B: Lots! P: Ah! B: Seven hundred. There were lots and lots. This child perceives his father’s repetition of his previous utterance as an expression of disbelief and protests about such a potential intention because it would not be right. His father goes on to ask for explanation, quickly shifting the interlocutor’s focus from the analysis of his inner condition to an external exploration (the number of beads). In conclusion, detailed analysis conducted by many other researchers points out that the interactional process of conversation makes visible what the Norwegian psycholinguistic scientist Ragnar Rommetveit (1974, 1992)

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calls “intersubjectivity’s architecture,” that is, a multidimensional phenomenon, which consists of • • • • •

coordinated attention, shared reference, (potentially and temporary) sharing of sense, negotiation of purposes (and of overpurposes), emotional resonance.

Among the “rhetorical strategies of identity construction” (Barbieri, 2007), it is necessary to recognize all various possibilities to get both the power of discourse and the innocence of silence. Identity is built in texts through a very intricate network of semantic-pragmatic references, articulating intentions resulting from what is said with the sense’s potential belonging to what is not said. About Understanding as Reciprocal Feeling To be a convincing model, the discoursive-conversational frame of intersubjectivity needs to take into account both “listener-spectator” and “actor” roles in communicative interactions. Speaking is not the only “dialogical” experience; understanding is another one. To introduce this facet, it is possible to draw on an far less valuable text, coming from the social communication “slums,” that is, commercial propaganda. On “Furby’s” box—a highly technological and fashionable puppet—we read these statements: I know hundreds of words! I truly “understand” what you tell me. I “understand” tens of sentences and signals!—Packaging displays examples of words “used” by “emo-tronic Furby”: happy, sleepy, surprised, sad, frightened. It is positive that toys “emotionally interact” with children, but what is relevant here is the implicit metalinguistic awareness shown by the advertising writers. Furby, speaking “Furbish” and even “telling jokes,” is considered linguistically skilled through the use of two verbs of state of mind: “to know” and “to understand.” Obviously, a mindset feature assigned to a mechanical thing is a purely metaphorical device, serving advertising purposes. Because of its verbal shaping, this kind of text suggests something about beliefs people share about states of mind. In fact, two verbs are employed for different reasons, that is, “I understand” is always reported in quotation marks, whereas “I know” is not. Through the advertising approach, the community expresses its own awareness that “knowing” words is something different from “understanding” them. The first is an intraindividual competence, the second an intersubjective skill.

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Texts reflecting utterers work as mirrors both transparent and opaque. When transparent, texts show the sense-making intention by stressing the relation between representamen and object; when opaque, instead, texts construct the sense-making intention by underlying interpretation. A discursive model of intersubjectivity is embedded in the possibility of “reciprocal feeling,” arising when two or more people understand each other. Common experience related to misunderstanding and conflicts reminds us of the question of linguistic comprehension. With regard to this, it is necessary to answer three levels of questions: 1. IF we can be reasonably sure that, when speaking, people understand each other, 2. WHAT understanding means in people’s opinion 3. HOW understanding takes place (Taylor, 1992, p. 23). If communicative events are reduced to a mere transmission of information (meanings, concepts, or ideas), defined or set up in an intraindividual and “private” way, there is no certainty about reciprocal understanding among people (as common sense would predict), because intersubjective accordance of mental models would be not explainable. At the same time, we unavoidably tend to communicate, as we also do if we are not sure about our reciprocal understanding. The dialogical experience concerning real speaking-listening is performed on a precomprehension background (i.e., basic acknowledgement, derived from a common reference to a system of beliefs and values regarded as shared) and through process dynamics, even conflicting ones. Understanding is not a sure and defined event, but it develops through (and despite) vagueness. Inaccuracy and open-endedness are not threats but resources for reciprocal understanding. Intersubjective Rhetoric The “discursive turn” in psychology allows the overcoming of the monological model of communication, especially through the focus on the pragmatic format of intersubjectivity. In fact, the intersubjective construction of reality is produced during conversational practice (Edwards, 1997, pp.137– 138). If we rely on the built-in processes of conversation as interaction, that is, as action “between” real speakers and listeners, emphasis shifts from the assumed states of mind to the effectively performed rhetorical options. By the way, according to cultural and discursive psychology, “rhetorical structure is a pervasive discourse characteristic in general terms” (Edwards, 1997, p. 123; see also p. 111); this is due not only to the basic argumentative attitude of the dialogical mind, but also to the nature of the daily descrip-

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tions that appear interested in the alternative versions of events (“it could be seen/it could be otherwise said”). Utterance patterns arise from the search for variation, conceived as the other’(s) attention to interlocution and listening. The main rhetorical intersubjectivity operator is the thematic structure of the statement, as it makes a distinction “time by time” between “given” and “new” information. It derives from many grammatical indications (subject vs verb, theme vs rheme, topic vs comment). Using tone and pauses, the statements “(It is) Mark (who) loves Lisa,” “Mark loves Lisa,” and “Mark loves Lisa” modulate different patterns in the distribution of what a real speaker can or cannot attribute to the listener in terms of “what he/she already knows” and “what he/she still doesn’t know.” By the way, the intersubjective relation that allows sense making moves on an intricate network of further rhetorical devices. For example, if a patient, to whom a sure diagnosis has just been given, addresses the doctor saying, “Doctor, please tell me if I need to be nursed in Barcelona or Texas,” the doctor would understand that “Barcelona” and “Texas” are not toponyms, that is, names of specific places, but indeterminate expressions that suggest the patient’s wish to go in any place he/she thinks more effective for the cure of his/her pathology. The context of interaction is such that the speaker can create an opaque reference world, just by respecting the principle that “The Other will understand!” A clear strategy of the construction of the intersubjective relation is activated by the valorization of listening. The following short sequence of phone interaction between two friends can be given as an example: Excerpt 3 A: You sound sad today, what’s up? B: Not sad, but tired. A: Ah. B: Anyway, congratulations on the antennas! A lets B understand that he has effectively hit on his state of mind, by showing he appreciates his willingness to recognize it, at least as it appears to him, or even as it really is. The conversational sequence creates mutual gratification due to acknowledgment operations. Sometimes the rhetorical order of intersubjectivity is multistratified, since it takes into account the relationship among different types of interlocutors (“ratified” and “bystanders”), which can be placed on several levels of membership of their “own” community (community of “us”). I know it is a quite common experience. Some days ago, I met a woman dragging a dog that seemed to show its reluctance, barking at another dog not far from

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them. Once I was within hearing distance of them, she said, “Come on, it doesn’t care about you!” This is an iper-complex format of intersubjectivity, as this statement fulfills three different rhetorical strategies: • Humanization: relations between dogs can be represented as thoughts too, in their howling language (“the other dog is not barking, can’t you hear?!”); • Self-assertion: “Listen to your, mistress, and stop pulling the leash!” • Self-disclosure: “Dear gentleman, you can see, I speak to my dog because I’m sure it understands me, as I take care of it.”

Mirror Texts? The new neuronal rise of the metaphor of mirror (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2006) can also be extended to the cultural side of mind already surveyed by idiographic psychology. It could be shown in “mirror texts.” Culture consists of a net of mirror texts in which a certain group can find habits and values suitable to activate its consistency. Mirror texts are small and big narrations that draw the identity of a community, participating in a decisive way in fostering the mutual acknowledgment of people who are part of it. In mirror texts, groups experience shifting from plural to singular, because identity becomes perceivable as joined to possibilities of differences. The figure of mirror texts presents a wider field of application, as its value can spread in wider and more concise shapes of meaning typical of texts. It entails all those cultural artifacts that remind humans of their discoursive nature, composed of vanishing and structurally polyformic raw material, intrinsically plural and dynamic, full of inaccuracies and vagueness, not respecting the principle of contradiction, dispersed in uncertainty and random ways; but, however, flexible, versatile, adaptable, ready to trace a meaning even when rules are being broken, open to comparisons and clashes of meanings, able to establish and modify relations, a source of possible worlds. Incidentally, the metaphor of mirror also operates at the level of microstatements, as there are some ways of discursive acting in which the speaker pays attention to what the other has previously said and corroborates his/ her wish to be understood. Interhuman understanding is generally a jump, or better, a series of jumps and therefore, a walk in the dark; so that the probability of success also depends on the possibility of intercepting (when possible) these “reflecting” figures that, by emphasizing acceptance, traces a path of shared interpretation about what is happening.

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The “mirror statement” stresses the importance of the phatic function, not only for “everyday talking” but also for organizational communication. Think about the preunderstanding value that assures some recurrent statement figures in company newsletters: they emphasize the ways to successful integration among the units and/or where success is achieved by the acceptance of a proposal and/or achieved by promoting an intuition coming “from below.” This kind of metaphor is concerned with a plural and not singular way of conceiving mirrors, so that it suggests multiple and simultaneous “reflecting” interactions that strengthen intersubjectivity. What are Diatexts? Metaphors of mirror text and mirror utterance are interpretative tools, which allow intertextual sensitivity to be highlighted, in a diatextual approach. Since we tend to identify with our speaking-listening practice as “we have not a language, but we are language” (Volli, 2005, p. 68, emphasis in original)—underlying an idea of language as the possibility for interlocutors to exist, not by means of language but just because people are the texture of meaning—there are certain interactional processes in which we express a special sensitivity about what we are doing by speaking. Just as we have to be bats to know what is like to be bats (Nagel, 1974), so, the fact that people sometimes realize they are “diatexts” means they can express a specific intertextual sensitivity. Excerpt 4 refers to a conversational sequence recorded during a Christmas dinner, which often offers great communicative contexts in which to notice particular, at times abrupt, dynamics among relatives and/or friends, sometimes uninterested (or too busy) to engage with each other. The uncle and the aunt introduce the topic about how to keep track of, by webcam, their little niece’s growth, born 5 months before in another town abroad. The uncle, the aunt, and the grandparents display the joking ritual of recognizing themselves in any of Valentina’s facial expressions or behavior: Excerpt 4 Uncle: Let’s ask Rossella [his daughter and Valentina’s mother] if Valentina uses this expression [extending upper lip] in stressful moments. Mother: Just like a stressful child? Aunt: Well, when she tries to take something. Uncle: Or if she pokes out her tongue.

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Aunt: I need to know if she has been influenced by my genes or his genes [referring to uncle]. Mother: But all children express themselves like that. Uncle: Oh I know. Aunt: OK, but . . . Daughter: Mum, why did you talk to aunt like that? She’s hurt. Mother: I don’t think so and, anyway, it’s true that children . . . Daughter: Yes, I know, but she likes to believe. Mother: I don’t think I was wrong. Daughter: It was a sweet illusion. Mother: OK, I won’t say anything. It’s clear I was joking. Daughter: It seems to me aunt doesn’t think so. Mother: Oh, come on. The second part of this sequence recalls the first one in a metacommunicative way. The daughter blames her mother’s behavior, considered not sensitive enough to the relatives’ expectations, as they live so far away from their little niece/granddaughter (from her mother, who is their daughter too). The daughter is aware that, by underlining her mother’s previous tough stance, in turn she could be blamed for her tough stance toward her mother too (“oh, come on”); nonetheless, she decides to run this risk concerning paradoxical turning back, probably empathizing with a distant daughter-mother figure, as she fights for her belief about relationships, which would be more sustainable by “sweet illusions” than by “raw truth.” By the daughter’s mirror statement (“Mum, why did you talk to aunt this way? She is hurt.”), this diatext displays intersubjectivity as the need to emphasize relationships’ implicit expectations. Excerpt 5 refers to another case of intertextual sensitivity, disclosed in a conversational sequence starting at the end of an interactional frame in a goldsmith’s shop. Excerpt 5 Seller [to customer]: I’ll give you my telephone number so that you can call me on the 4th of this month to remind me of that. Customer: OK. Seller: So, I can make out the order [taking a pen and a notebook] in the name of . . . ? Customer: Chiara Chiaretti. Customer’s father: You can do it yourself on the 5th of this month. Seller: Yes, I’ve taken a note. Daughter [customer]: You could avoid speaking that way.

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Father: I’ve known craftspeople longer than you, and she seemed a bit disorganized to me. Daughter: But what are you talking about? Father: Well, she asks you to remind her of her work. Daughter: No, you were too sharp. Father: I only suggested she take a note of the delivery day. Daughter: But she had already done it. Father: I didn’t realize that then. Mother/Wife: But you spoke with such a tone and you taught me about the importance of tone, you were uneasy because there were dogs, and so you didn’t feel she was likeable. Father/Husband: Even if she is an artistic genius she will never be any good at selling. This recent episode of a common daily experience also shows, first, two different ways of embodying sensitivity toward others. In this interactional frame, people show different caring strategies toward everyone else. The customer’s father can’t identify with the seller, both because he generally stresses the opposite stances related to the seller side and customer side, and because, in this specific circumstance, he is annoyed by the dogs. The customer and her mother perceive the father’s hostility toward the seller, but they choose not to confront this question in a public place, being aware that this could hurt him. Their special sensitivity tends to protect their relationship in a “public discursive sphere,” but not in a “private” one, where intersubjectivity follows different rules. Mirror utterances induce people to “observe themselves” as “actors” in other interactional frames in order to reconsider sense, which is co-constructed at different levels of involvement and engagement with “enjeu.” The Structuring Power of Metaphor A creative format of sense making, with high psychoidiographic salience, arises from the “language’s base itself” (Jaynes, 1976, p. 70), that is, from metaphor. In fact, metaphorical expression is “surely the greatest gift language could offer to thought,” as it builds “a bridge on the abyss existing between inner invisible mental assets and the external world” (Arendt, 1978, p. 192). Metaphor’s appeal is constantly renewed in the mystery involving mind, able to draw from utterance adequate models to understand reality. By using metaphors, speaker and listener can “feel first hand” that “it is not the experience that organizes expression, but, instead, it is the expression that organizes experience, shapes and traces its direction ” (Bakhtin, 1928, p. 88,

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emphasis in original). Even if it might appear upsetting, metaphor commits people to defining a context that allows them to get trajectories of sense. Through metaphor, people can push the mind “beyond hurdles,” facing the unknown related to what is not expressible, and metaphor makes available to them some more suitable and familiar language forms. Metaphor brings the human obsession with relations and involvements into the interface between what seems to be and what is. Supported by analogical rationality, metaphorical expressions—for example, “life is a journey”—operate as a “connecting structure” according to “context,” “tenor,” and “mode.” In fact, metaphor interlinks two fields of experience (living and traveling), adapting certain interpretative possibilities in the first field with intelligibility demands in the second one. At the same time, it establishes a special accord among speakers, who can perceive their intentional linkage and complicity. So text is able to increase its force of its argument and improve its formal efficacy as it enhances to the utmost the rhetorical order of the utterance. An accord achieved “in” metaphor comes from the possibility that a communicative event is structured through a highly cognitive and emotional involvement displayed by those who understand its meaning. Metaphor stimulates interest and participation because it activates “open mental logic” (Licata, 2008) in line with the accordance between opposite aspects, which defines the complex plot of human intention. So metaphorical thinkingspeaking practices require the “imaginative rationality” typically related to human discoursive capability, which consists of finding regularities in the chaos of sensations and discovering coherencies in what is unpredictable. In a metaphorical way, namely, by “going beyond” what emerges “across text,” it can be noticed that language operates in a “speaking between/ talking with” area, that is, co-organizing efforts made by people and communities of practice to co-construct meaning. Metaphor is a mirror text in which it is possible to notice thinking-speaking practice operating. The ability to create possible worlds attributed to metaphorical utterance comes from the human desire to go beyond identity and the logic of exchange, to adopt “otherness and surplus logic” (Petrilli, 2006, p. 81). Metaphorical meaning, sustaining the emerging similarity, is not “said,” but it is kept in a “no-man’s-land” where interactions between speakers happen, that is, in that interlocution space in which they try to “make hearable the dissonant vibrations” (Mizzau, 1995, p. 3) of their forms of life. Representing a “meaning-constructing human” way of acting, metaphor works not only in language’s systematic horizon but especially in the process view of discourse, pragmatically-contextually embedded. A diatextual approach to metaphor frames it as a discursive mind resource, so this approach aims at emphasizing its capability to make visible sense-making processes that real people in real contexts are experiencing during a specific

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communicative interaction. A diatextual analysis shows that the device of metaphor is, at the same time, a subjectivity marker, an argument marker, and a discourse modes marker. If focus is on the inner dynamics of the self activated by experiencing metaphor (both in producing and understanding roles), it involves applying a special logic to legitimate “figures” related to certain terms (Fisher, 2006, p. 162). Conclusion The idiographic approach supports the opportunity of a “discoursive turnaround” in human sciences because it emphasizes the commitment to conceiving language as a basic phenomenon for human experience not only in its general systematic structure (i.e., in the sense of langue, as an organized set of codes and subcodes), but also in its specific utterance potential (i.e., in the sense of parole, as a concrete co-construction of meaning). “Language is our second nature, it is the air we have been breathing as cultural beings since we were born” (Ronchi, 2007, p. 46). Air is the basic resource to keep us alive, but it is not free of threats, both because it is a medium through which pathogenic viruses can circulate, and because it spreads polluting agents and harmful gas. Similarly, air-language can become toxic too. This happens when it conveys not only conflictual intentions among people, but also socially distorting ideologies. For example, Nazism was embedded “into people’s flesh and blood through every single word, expression and structure of sentences repeated a million times” (Klemperer, 1988, p. 32). Studying the utterance fosters critical thinking, as language’s pragmatic unity implies a strong ethical-political value. The idiographic psychology of common speaking aims at going deep into social discourse networks, attempting to explore the inexpressible and what can’t be easily conceived as “meaningful.” An idiographic psychologist is interested in “text-in-interaction” practices because of opacity of intentions, density of meaning in utterances: that is, what is marginal, undefined, vague, vanishing, multistratified, not codified, threatened in its desire to tell about itself. Note 1. According to de Saussure’s linguistics (1922), langage represents a natural and universal capability to develop a system of signs, langue represents a system of signs conceived as system of codes in a specific speaking community, and parole means a speaker’s unique and unrepeatable linguistic act.

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Giuseppe Mininni is full professor in psychology of communication and cultural psychology at the University of Bari, Italy. From 2008 to 2010 he was president of the International Society of Applied Psycholinguistics. His research practice may be characterized as a psychosemiotic approach to discourse analysis. His most recent research interests are the diatextual dimen-

The Singular Patterns of Discourse for a Psycho-Idiographic Analysis of Language    107 sion of identity and the discursive construction of ethical dilemmas. E-mail: [email protected] Maria Beatrice Ligorio is associate professor in psychology of education at the University of Bari. She is the vice-president of the Association of Collaborative Knowledge Building Group (C.K.B.G.). Her research interests are oriented toward psychosocial aspects of learning in mediated communication environments. Her most recent research practice is concerned with dialogical identities’ development, Web communities, and construction of intersubjectivity. E-mail: [email protected] Rosa Traversa is a PhD student in psychology at the University of Bari. Her doctoral project is focused on the discoursive construction of ideological dynamics and female subjectivities in a psychosemiotic perspective. E-mail: [email protected]

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Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences The Study of Meaning-Construction Processes Angela Uchoa Branco University of Brasília, Brazil

Abstract The study of meaning construction is directly linked to the analysis of communication and metacommunication processes occurring among interpersonal interactions and intrapersonal dialogues. Taking into account the complexity of such processes in real time communication among people, as well as in self-dialogues, a microgenetic methodological approach is necessary to make sense of the subtleties of such co-constructive processes. By emphasizing the role of metacommunication, we argue that all sorts of social interactions, composed by verbal and nonverbal socially interpreted language or actions subject to social interpretation, are necessarily semiotically co-constructed by participants, and the full significance of such processes demand an idiographic approach. Therefore, in this chapter I argue for the unit of affect-cognition as semiotic processes are co-constructed

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 109–131 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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along communication and metacommunication among people. And I also stress that microgenetic methodologies within the contexts of idiographic studies should be considered as a very productive way to unveil the creation and development of the semiotic networks found within cultural contexts. When I was invited to reflect upon and write down some ideas about the theoretical and methodological status of language in idiographic science, it occurred to me there are aspects of meaning-making processes that, although acknowledging the fundamental relevance of language as the major tool of meaning-construction processes, do need to be better studied and analyzed by psychological sciences. I am referring to the issue of metacommunication, which is necessarily linked to the use of language within the context of communication phenomena, in which most of human psychological functions and characteristics are sociogenetically construed. On the one hand, idiographic science cannot exist without an extensive in-depth cultural analysis; and on the other, it entails a detailed, microanalytic approach to the study of communication processes, in which language plays a central role. In short, all linguistic (together with paralinguistic as well as nonverbal) communication processes need to be carefully examined when we set out to construct scientific knowledge about meaning-making processes, which are co-constructed by people at different levels of social interactions in varied ways. Even though addressing the issue of metacommunication is no easy endeavor, it is absolutely central for psychology to make sense of meaning construction processes. The major advantages and disadvantages of taking a qualitative perspective to carry out significant research within the domains of psychological sciences has been extensively reported by many authors (e.g., Camic, Rhodes, & Yardley, 2007; Gaskins, Miller, & Corsaro, 1992; Kindermann & Valsiner, 1989; McGrath & Johnson, 2007; Smith, 2008), the same holding true for idiographic science. Most importantly, however, the very cornerstone of qualitative methodologies consists of systematic and rigorous ways to interpret and analyze—linguistically—the discourses and other sorts of narratives produced by research participants (e.g., Brockmeier & Harré, 1997; Bruner, 1990; Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992). Although narratives have been intensively studied by qualitative methodologies, a very important dimension of human communication, namely, emotion and motivation, has not received much attention in meaning-making processes. Affective dimensions operate in intermingled ways with language and are particularly important when we study metacommunication (e.g., Bateson, 1972; Bonica, 1993; Branco & Valsiner, 2004; Fogel, 1993; Fogel & Branco, 1997; Watzlavick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967; and many others). The other aspect I want to highlight in this chapter refers to the productivity of microgenetic methodologies. To make sense of the subtle weaving of actions involved in sociogenesis at a microgenetic level, our team at the

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Laboratory of Microgenesis in Social Interactions (University of Brasilia, Brazil) has developed different versions of a microgenetic approach to study communication and metacommunication issues (e.g., Branco, 1998; Branco, Pessina, Flores, & Salomao, 2004; Branco & Valsiner, 1997; Palmieri & Branco, 2007; Tacca & Branco, 2008, among others). In sum, in this chapter I want to make three points: First, to discuss the major role played by metacommunication in meaning-construction processes; second, to show how language and affect interact in creating metacommunication frames that lead individuals to subjective interpretations; and third, to highlight the methodological value of microgenetic approaches to unravel metacommunication strategies—most possibly nonintentional—that contribute to canalize idiographic processes such as internalization (Valsiner, 1989, 2007; Vygotsky, 1984). Metacommunication and Meaning-Construction Processes From a sociocultural constructive perspective (e.g., Branco, 2003; Branco & Valsiner, 1997, 2004; Valsiner, 1987, 2005, 2007), human development occurs within historically and culturally organized contexts through people’s interactions, mostly taking place in social practices. Even though cultural canalization processes consist of a fundamental factor to relatively direct (or guide) the development of psychological functions, characteristics, values, and beliefs, individuals are seen as active agents of their own development in different degrees, which explains why the approach is designated as sociocultural and constructivist. The perspective draws on a systemic view of human phenomena in which a dialogical approach bringing together determinism and indeterminism is a central key to understanding the complexities of our object of study. Multicausality and constant processes of meaning (re)constructions along irreversible time are major characteristics of this theoretical and methodological systemic approach (Ford & Lerner, 1992). It unites semiotic and affective processes at the heart of communication and human development. Since communication plays such a central role, the differentiation of its several dimensions will certainly be very productive to better understand the whole process by analyzing its various aspects. However, we should never lose sight of the systemic and intermingled nature of all aspects, or dimensions, that are simultaneously active within the broader communication process. A powerful dimension is affectivity and motivation. Branco and colleagues (2004) affirm that “an important assumption [concerning communication] is that meaning constructions take place under the domi-

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nant influence of affective semiotic processes and social suggestions existing within culturally organized contexts” (p. 7). Metacommunication was defined as communication about communication (hence the meta) in the seminal works of Watzlavick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) and Bateson (1972). It has received attention for its role in meaning-construction processes (e.g., Andrensen, 2005; Branco, 2006; Branco & Valsiner, 2004; Fatigante, Fasulo, & Pontecorvo, 2004), but most of the literature does not examine some of the important criteria to differentiate it from other forms of communication. To start with, we can distinguish two different types of metacommunication (Branco, 2005): first, when we communicate about communication while studying the subject itself (communication studies, linguistic); and second, when we refer to, discuss, or negotiate our own interactions and/or social relations with other people. The latter is particularly relevant to psychology, and we designate it as relational metacommunication. It plays a fundamental part in the coconstruction of meanings, for it creates a frame (Fogel & Branco, 1997; Goffman, 1974) based on what each individual interprets as the messages being constructed along the process. In other words, despite the fact that communication and metacommunication are jointly (socially) created by the participants, what stands out is that each person creates meanings according to her/his own interpretation of the each other’s verbal and nonverbal actions, hence the need for an idiographic approach. As we will see below, as each person has subjective goal orientations as they communicate with each other, the coordination of such orientations gives rise to the concepts of convergence and divergence regarding metacommunication frames. However, the dynamic quality of the communicative flux implies the permanent possibility of change, particularly through negotiation. Metacommunication: Definition Issues Relational metacommunication is directly linked to the notion of frames, and consequently, it is our investigation target, for it concerns the issue of meaning constructions. It refers to both verbal and nonverbal intermingled communication and directly refers (but not necessarily intentionally) to the quality of people’s interactions or relationships. To further investigate relational metacommunication processes, though, it is worth mentioning that some authors (among them myself, Branco, 2005) employed the term metacommunication referring to situations in which people use words to mean something different from their conventional meanings. Presently, I do not think the prefix meta-communication should apply to this sort of communication. This happens when people want or need to convey a meaning that diverges from the conventional use of the words. People use sociocul-

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tural, or previous social frames together with contextual clues, to indicate what they actually mean by the “message.” That is, the message’s meaning cannot be found in what is explicitly said, but consists of something else, implicit in the words used (verbal flux), and in the nonverbal clues intently imprinted in the enunciation/action performed by communication participants. Sometimes, many people grasp such covert contents—irony is an excellent example. In other situations, though, only those who particularly know the speaker, or who are aware of significant aspects of the broader context, will be able to correctly interpret the implicit message embodied in the speaker’s discourse. Here the intended, covert meanings do not directly refer to social or affective relations between people, but address informative contents other than those explicit in the message. For instance, a man goes with his wife to a jewelry store. She falls in love with an overexpensive necklace, and he immediately says to her, “Oh, darling, this is very similar to the one you already have!” Both husband and wife know exactly that it is not true, and maybe the seller also understands the wife does not have anything like that. But the message is effective enough to make the wife show an immediate interest in something else (cheaper) in the store. The notion that human beings often use aspects of the symbolic context within which communication takes place to create implicit meanings in their speech or actions is easily found and broadly recognized (Rommetveit, 1992; Shweder & Much, 1987; Valsiner, 2005, 2007). Examples abound. Two girls are gossiping about their new college experience; a popular guy approaches the one he’s flirting with, and she says to her girlfriend, “Anna, have you finished your assignment for math class?” and Anna immediately excuses herself and leaves them alone, because she needs to “finish her assignment.” Frequently we invent excuses in social contexts like “Bob, we need to leave right now to feed the dog!” Bob understands that, even though the dog has already been fed by their son, his wife wants to go at once. The flirting girl and the wife did not evaluate their relationships with friend or husband, but indirectly asked them to do what was implicit in their speech, in the hope they would interpret it correctly and would not create any sort of embarrassing situation. In short, such cases refer to the existence of different layers of meanings, but they cannot be characterized as communication about communication, that is, meta-communication. They just consist of a special modality of communication, but the complex dimensions of communication processes still cannot easily be pulled apart from each other. The differentiation between the modality of communication mentioned above (implicit, nonconventional meanings) and relational metacommunication—our object of investigation here—is definitely not crystal clear. From a theoretical perspective, there are too many examples of overlapping in our daily experience. We know that relational metacommunication

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is necessarily linked with the quality of the relationships and/or interactions between participants. It may be easy to understand when someone says, “I hate you!” with a certain expression on her face: she may be joking, declaring love, or she does mean hate itself. The other person needs to be sensitive and good at interpreting the metacommunicative message, using previous expertise and knowledge about the partner, and the context in which they are embedded at the moment. More often, clues about affiliation, care, hostility, or indifference are nonverbal, and frequently they may be ambiguous, which makes it hard for participants to “understand,” or correctly interpret, each other’s intentions (meanings). In “double bind” metacommunication (Bateson, 1972), the person constantly offers the other person conflicting clues about the quality of their relationship, not rarely driving the communication partner literally crazy (“Does she love me or does she completely despise me?”). Another example of overlapping can shed some light on the complexity of the topic. Let us imagine what happens after a student asks a question the teacher considers silly. The teacher verbally praises the student for being smart, but she nonverbally suggests to the class (through subtle facial signs or tone of voice) the small-mindedness of the student’s question. Along with the implicit information (message) to all students about the silliness of the question, she also implicitly suggests to the student how stupid or dumb he actually is (relational metacommunication). Such overlapping occurs too often and cannot be disregarded when we analyze relational metacommunication. Relational Metacommunication Within Communication Processes Relational metacommunication has a very peculiar characteristic: it is always active as people interact with each other. As Watzlavick and colleagues (1967) pointed out, even when you seemingly do not communicate with someone—as in a residential elevator, the authors suggest—you are both “telling” (communicating with) each other that you do not want to communicate. Relational metacommunication presents itself in two simultaneous but specific formats: during the fluent flow of mutual acknowledgment referred to above, it occurs at a continuous nonverbal level, including paralinguistic; and it also may occur as verbal episodes that address the other(s), highlighting the quality of their interaction and/or relationship. Figure 4.1 depicts the characteristics of general communication processes and the different metacommunication levels, and how they may occur along the irreversible time dimension:

Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences    115 Verbal Level

0000000

Non-Verbal & Paralinguistic Level

0000

MMMMMMMMMM verbal metacommunication

0000

0000

0000000

0000

Time

0000000

episodic communication of non-relational contents

MMMMM verbal metacommunication

continuous metacommunication

Figure 4.1  Levels of communication.

The fact is that people communicate with one another about nonrelational and relational issues. As we observe in Figure 4.1, relational meanings are constantly created throughout the interaction at a nonverbal level, whereas nonrelational contents tend mostly to emerge as verbal, discrete episodes. Verbal relational metacommunication, however, also occurs in more easily identified episodes, since they are easily detectable. The relational metacommunicative dimension thus engenders a permanent and dynamic process of co-creation of frames (Fatigante et al., 2004; Fogel & Branco, 1997; Goffman, 1974). The dynamic nature of metacommunication frames entails constant meaning negotiations at both verbal and nonverbal levels. Therefore, meanings are incessantly emerging through social interactions and are deeply related to affection, cognition, and motivation. As a matter of fact, these three aspects of the human condition are intrinsically intermingled with each other as meanings are jointly (and subjectively) created in communicative contexts. More importantly, such meanings and subsequent frames play a central role in interpretive processes within such contexts. Cultural, relational, and subjective lenses are necessarily used to create and interpret meanings, which dynamically change as communication proceeds. As those lenses always operate at both intentional and unintentional levels, awareness is not universally present as communication and metacommunication take place. In other words, meaning negotiation processes do not entail a permanent awareness on the part of the individuals in interaction. This means that interpretations are often influenced by unacknowledged emotional and motivational states actually experienced by the participants, but which are not within the in-

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dividuals’ field of awareness. Consequently, the major role of psychological reflexivity consists precisely of analyzing and deeply elaborating interpretations that, quite often, may mismatch each participant’s communicative intentions toward each other. Gestures, postures, facial expressions, paralinguistic cues and so on, are continuously giving rise to specific frames, or interpretive contexts. All sorts of signs are used to bring about new meanings, and the complexity of this process certainly constitutes a sophisticated artwork. Difficulties in interpretation derive from ambivalences and ambiguities that may contaminate the frame with suspicion or anxiety. That is why people pursue reassurance and feelings of comfort while trying to make sense of each other’s intentions: even when facing hostility, easiness cannot compare to the distress of experiencing doubt. In short, we all need some relatively stable indications to know if we got the message right, and what the other person actually means with his apparent praise or criticism in certain specific situations. Meaning-Making Processes: Social and Idiosyncratic Levels Even though frames are socially created, interpretation is always a subjective, idiosyncratic, and distinctive process, for internalization is a personal process. Individual past experiences, particular motivations, subjective and affective states, goal orientations, and expectations also play a very significant part in meaning-construction processes and therefore in human development. The interpretation of each other’s actions, too, depends on the cultural contexts in which such actions are presented. Gestures, facial expressions, or words, which at a first glance may seem to be the same, can convey different meanings in distinct cultures, and a sign that is welcome in one context may even be obscene in another. Interpretations depend on relationship contexts as well, which explains why a mother, used to her son’s rejection of physical contact in front of his peers, may not understand why he is now rejecting her hugs even in private. The same happens with a husband who does not understand why his wife does not accept his gentle help. To take into account cultural and relationship contextualization, while interpreting human communication, is particularly important when we get immersed in microgenetic time. Only through such immersion can we look for and identify specific indicators, or clues, for interpretation of the communication flux. A broader perspective on cultural and historical contexts always needs to be taken into account, and simply recognizing or identifying the presence of certain behaviors can evoke misleading routes for interpretation. To acknowledge this means pointing to the relevance of a con-

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tinuous awareness concerning the complexities of meaning-construction processes, and such awareness is very important for successful communication and for scientific analysis. The scientific analysis of relational metacommunication processes, therefore, poses a challenge to researchers due to its complexity. Our task requires creativity and innovation, compared to traditional quantitative analysis of psychological phenomena. From an idiographic and qualitative perspective, we need to develop alternative, compatible, and sometimes multiple methodologies to study language, meanings, communication, and metacommunication processes. The next section will highlight the major characteristics of microgenetic approaches, followed by an illustration of its productivity, with data drawn from a study selected for this purpose. A Microgenetic Approach to Meaning-Construction Processes The adoption of a systemic sociocultural constructivist approach to the development of human communication requires the study of the phenomena’s multiple dimensions at the different levels of irreversible time: phylogenesis, ontogenesis, microgenesis, sociohistorical, and prospective times (Rossetti-Ferreira, Amorim, & Silva, 2003; Valsiner, 2005, 2007). Here I will particularly focus upon the study of the microgenesis of psychological processes that occur through ontogeny, concentrating efforts in the detailed analysis of how cultural sociogenetic mechanisms come into play in communication and metacommunication processes, and consequently, in possible ways for specific internalization processes. Meaning-construction and internalization processes result from subtle and sophisticated negotiations taking place at the intersection of different times, and encompass the active participation of individuals. Persons, though, are also very complex due to ongoing inter- and intrapsychological dialogues occurring simultaneously, intrapsychological taking place within the personal system designated as “dialogical self” (Hermans, 2001). Culture, participants, and their “self-positions” in dialogue entail constant negotiations at both inter- and intra- levels, which must be considered as we try to make sense of meaning constructions in culturally structured contexts, as well as the individual’s constructions that may result in internalizations. The issue of time levels is central to discussion and cannot be overestimated. Prospective time, though, has not received the attention it deserves. We assert its importance precisely because human action is intentional, and goal orientations (Valsiner, Branco, & Dantas, 1997), motives, values, and beliefs all have a significant influence on the course of human action. Prospective time has to do with future goals that individuals take into account

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while striving to achieve in the present time. Communication and metacommunication are also directed (or oriented) to allow for the accomplishment of such “future” purposes or aspirations by participants. The study of the subtle, interdependent intricacies ultimately demands a microanalytical approach (e.g., Lavelli, Pantoja, Hsu, Messinger, & Fogel, 2005). “Microanalysis,” for instance, is used to refer to the study of micro categories stemming, for instance, from a behavioristic, or “response-oriented” approach. Aware of the fact that the word microanalysis consists of a terminology that can be applied within the context of quantitative, traditional methods, we adopted the concept of microgenetic approach (Siegler, 2002). We use the concept to encompass not just experiments à la Vygotsky, for we extended its meaning to include the detailed interpretive analysis of meaningful interactions occurring in natural situations (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). Our studies comprise observations of filmed material obtained in both naturalistic and semistructured situations, and our aim is at investigating the genesis of human action and meanings, which are ultimately goal oriented. As we developed different approaches to the study of metacommunication processes at our laboratory, we came to the conclusion that variations of microgenetic methods were the most productive way to identify the dynamics of social interaction processes. In most cases, we structured special sessions in natural school contexts, or in early education centers, designing the situation so as to maximize the occurrence of the processes we wanted to investigate (e.g., Branco & Valsiner, 1997; Neves-Pereira, 2004; Palmieri & Branco, 2007; Tacca & Branco, 2008). Other projects, though, were constrained to a microgenetic interpretation of ongoing communication in naturalistic situations (e.g., Branco et al., 2004), due to our goal to identify and make sense of everyday life strategies and how these were utilized by participants within the context of their routine activities. The complexities of communication processes, with frames constantly changing, being restored, or innovated, led us to the development of specific criteria to make sense of the structural organization of the interactive flux in terms of the coordination of actions (see Table 4.1), and the quality of communication itself, which is imbued with the affective atmosphere of the frame, and is related to convergences, divergences, and ambivalences concerning participant’s goal orientations. The Structural Organization of the Interaction Flow Table 4.1 shows whether or not, and in what way, persons’ actions are coordinated with those of others (from individual to social actions to clear-cut social interactions) and whether each person’s actions are directed at others.

Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences    119 Table 4.1  Structural Organization of the Social Interaction Flux Organization Level I: Pre-Frame Examples: • a child observes the other • a child tries to contact the other with no response by the other II: Pre-Interactive Frame Example: • children put away some objects in a box III: Interactive Frame Examples • pretend play • reciprocal imitation

Social Coordination

Direction

No

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

This categorization is an initial step that may eventually help in the microanalysis of actions, when we need a detailed analysis of the strategies that lead to, or inhibit, the establishment of social interactions. Table 4.1 resulted from our studies to attempt to identify different structural levels of human actions leading to social interactions (characterized by frames). Table 4.1 helps to answer the question: When can we refer to the existence of a frame? Even acknowledging that communication is pervasive— whenever social interaction or mutual awareness is identified—it offers some criteria to adopt to distinguish the presence or absence of frames, despite the difficulty in establishing a threshold between individual activity and some sort of communication. This threshold is a controversial topic, from Hinde (1976) to more recent research like Carvalho, Branco, Pedrosa, and Gil (2002). Therefore, our criteria can be questioned due to the problems in ascertaining whether or not there is the suggested indicator (for example, social directedness). Nevertheless, we think that such criteria can at least provide some guidance concerning the structural analysis of communication processes (Branco et al., 2004). Table 4.1 presents the indicators, or criteria, we conceptualized to describe the communication flow more clearly. They can be used to detect the movements between different types of frames, or pre-frames, namely, they can be helpful to describe the dynamic structure or organization of the communication flow. This analysis takes into account both the direction of each individual’s action, as well as the occurrence of coordination of individuals’ conduct. This allows for the identification of three different structures to describe interactive sequences: (a) a pre-frame, characterized by an unsuccessful movement toward interaction; (b) a pre-interactive frame, where it is possible to detect just a coordination of the participants’

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conduct, without any indication of social directedness; and (c) a category we designated as interactive frame, where an actual exchange, or social interaction, occurs, meaning that both social direction and coordination are observed, albeit to a limited extent (A to B followed by B to A). Even though communication mostly occurs during interactions or frames, we observe that it also appears in the other categories such as preframes or pre-interactive frames, simply because it is very difficult for the observer to be sure about the existence versus absence of awareness between participants. However, the differentiation between categories can be useful while analyzing the nuances of communication flow. Quality of the Frames The heuristic value of the concept—frame—lies in our ability to identify observable indicators regarding its quality—its affective climate. This quality, as we have confirmed throughout our studies, consists of the major aspect channelling partners’, as well as each individual’s, interpretation of communication messages, that is, each person’s construction of meaning. In terms of the quality of frames (filled with united affect-cognition), it is noteworthy in our projects the way children, as well as adults, alternated moments of intense exchange with moments of distancing, or individual activities, making use of specific, and frequently subtle metacommunicative strategies, which indicated the quality of the frames. Frames, aside from the possibility of being classified, for example, as affiliative or hostile, can be categorized as convergent, divergent, and ambivalent in terms of the individuals’ goal orientations. As explained by Branco and Valsiner (1997), convergence is observed when participants’ goal orientations (aims to be achieved) are compatible with each other. Cooperation, help, or plain conversation, for example, can be included in this definition. Divergence is identified whenever the incompatibility of goal orientations can be inferred from social interaction, for instance, when competition or verbal or nonverbal hostile aggression takes place. Ambivalence has to do with ambiguities concerning the quality of the frame, namely, when mixed indications of convergence and divergence alternate or are simultaneously observed. Clear-cut classification, or distinctions between convergence and divergence, though, is sometimes impossible due to the ever-changing nature of dynamic processes. Examples include the transformation and oscillation between frames, the difficulties in identifying specific categories during change processes (moments of fuzziness, as Valsiner, 2005, 2007, points out; see also Branco & Valsiner, 1997), and situations in which actions suggest compatibilities, but nonverbal clues (or previous knowledge) points to a

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different direction (incompatibility). There are many examples of social interaction complexities. I can also mention here some cases of obedience in which it is impossible to tell whether or not the person who obeys is in agreement with the orders received. An important dynamic quality of communication emerges with negotiation. Negotiation is often used as a source of change between frames (divergent to convergent, ambivalent to convergent), and consists of a major strategy of conflict resolution. However, it may also fail and lead previous convergence or ambivalence into strong divergence. In our research, we found all those plural and intermingled aspects of the processes extremely relevant in making sense of metacommunicative frame quality. Worth noting is the amount of data we have on the pathways through which divergent frames turned into convergent frames (Branco & Valsiner, 1997) due to complex intra- and interindividual coordination of goal orientations. The change often occurred through the use of subtle, difficult-to-grasp nonverbal strategies. Negotiation very often assumes the form of nonverbal strategies that may remain unnoticed by participants. Such transitions caught our attention, particularly when we observed that conflicts could play a fundamental role in generating relevant information on promoting the achievement of new convergent, even cooperative frames (Branco, 1998; Branco & Valsiner, 1997) In sum, through the development of many projects specifically oriented toward studying the dynamics of child-child interactions (Branco, 2003), we found metacommunication strategies and indicators playing a fundamental role in the co-construction of patterns that could be characterized as convergent, divergent, or ambivalent frames. Microgenetic Analysis of Meaning Co-construction in Young Children The relevance of the analysis of subtle metacommunication strategies can be illustrated by two projects carried out in our laboratory (Branco, 1994; Monteiro & Branco, 1999). In the first one (Branco, 1994), the aim was to investigate very young (2-year-old) children’s adaptation during their very first days attending an early education center. After many hours of video recording the four kids selected as target subjects in various contexts and activities at the center, we were able to identify how the teacher cleverly oriented the co-construction of a friendly, trustful, and relaxing frame with one of our subjects, the most distressed boy. He was definitely grumbling and whining, mad at everybody, and screaming for his mother. After a while in his first school day, we observed a very interesting episode: a female teacher put him on her lap, touched his face, looked at him, and talked to

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him with extreme patience, using lots of metacommunication strategies to promote convergence, among which voice tone, physical gentle touch to wipe away his tears, affectively looking into his eyes until he communicated with her, giving him time to respond, and such. She then finally succeeded in helping him to make sense of his mother’s departure for work, which he demonstrated by asking her “Otherwise I’ll get in her way?” using an elaborated-for–his-age Portuguese word (atrapalha), which perfectly grasped the teacher’s messages. After this, he allowed her to put him in a standing position, she crouched to stay at his level while looking at him, and he finally followed her suggestion to find interesting things to do in the playground, looking and wandering around with interest. The teacher used numerous verbal and nonverbal strategies, and the boy, who had not even looked at her before, started to actively participate in the co-construction of a good explanation for why his mother had left him there. Before looking at the teacher’s face, he mumbled a couple of words, timidly asking her, “Otherwise I’d disturb her?” and she said, “Yes, you’d disturb her.” She confirmed his hypothesis using the very same word that he himself introduced into the conversation. Making use of a word that is somewhat elaborated in Portuguese (atrapalhar, which means disturb, or interfere with), the boy surprisingly introduced into the negotiation a clear indication that he was beginning to make sense of his mother’s actions. He seemed to now understand, to some extent, that if the mother had taken him to work, he would “interfere” with her duties! After actively utilizing the word, which was followed by a reassurance by the teacher, he looked at her for the first time. The negotiation was practically over, and she suggested things he could do at the playground. Thereafter he seemed to be at ease, stopped whining, and began to move around, exploring the new environment with interest and curiosity (Branco, 1994; Branco et al., 2004). The other project I will discuss is presented in greater detail in an effort to reveal more clearly the fundamental role of metacommunication strategies in all communication, or meaning-constructive processes. The study was also developed by our research team in Brasilia (Monteiro, 1998; Monteiro & Branco, 1999), and has been referred to elsewhere (Madureira & Branco, 2004) as part of a theoretical account of gender identity construction. Here the focus is not upon gender issues, but on the effectiveness of metacommunication strategies in the selected girl’s meaning-construction processes. The project aimed at unveiling, at a microgenetic level, the characteristics and scope of subtle metacommunicative verbal and nonverbal actions (strategies) used in processes that could possibly be related to the emergence of gender orientations and stereotypes. Eight dyads (composed of one boy and one girl between 3 and 4 years old) were invited to play in a structured situation, designed to actively promote child-child interactions.

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The children attended a middle-class private early education center. The sessions were videotaped and lasted for approximately 25 minutes. After establishing an introductory rapport with the children, the experimenter (a 25-year-old female graduate student) gave each child a big box containing a lot of toys and miniatures. The box given to the boy was full of feminine toys, such as dolls, kitchen miniatures, and so on; the box given to the girl had plenty of boy’s play objects, such as trucks, cars, a gasoline station, miniatures of tools, and the like. The only “neutral” object was a Coke bottle miniature, randomly placed with the feminine toys. This last point is important, for it played a very interesting role within the context of the children’s interactions, in the dyad selected for analysis here. Once the “wrong box” was given to each child, we expected they would complain or negotiate the boxes or toys. In a previous project with older children, Branco and Madureira (1998) found that the 6-year-old dyads did not hesitate in exchanging boxes as soon as the session began. In the project with younger children, though, they seemed very much confused with the nonexpected box, and showed uncertainty concerning what to do. Children in the eight dyads displayed different patterns of interaction, some accepting the given box, some trying to approach the other to play together, some exchanging the boxes immediately or after a while, some actually playing interactively with each other, and some engaging in individual activities most of the time. Also, boys and girls dealt differently with the “wrong box” dilemma. This result allowed us to capture the meaningmaking phenomena about gender-related activities at a transition point, before strong tendencies toward masculine versus feminine were firmly constructed. Each dyad provided, in different ways, information on how negotiations took place, bringing about changes and new forms of actions within the interaction context (Branco & Valsiner, 1997). The sessions were fully transcribed, and a qualitative analysis of interaction patterns pointed at communication and metacommunication strategies utilized by each child to negotiate with the play partner the achievement of their goal orientations. After the analysis, we selected special, relevant episodes to be analyzed from a microgenetic approach. Here I draw on data from a specific dyad with fictitious names: David, 4 years and 2 months old; and Mary, 4 years and 1 month old. The episode selected demonstrates a very significant sequence of interactions in which the role of metacommunication turned out to be extremely revealing. When David and Mary received the boxes, David immediately noticed the gender “inadequacy” of the boxes’ contents, and proposed to Mary to exchange boxes. She happily agreed, and the exchange took place. During the first 8 minutes of the session, they both smiled and were playing with the materials of their exchanged boxes. David spoke loudly throughout the session, either addressing the adult or using a kind of egocentric speech

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referring to his actions and to the objects he was actively exploring or playing with. Mary was much quieter and, most of the time, while playing with the girl’s materials, she was looking at David, monitoring all of his activities and consistently trying to capture his attention, seemingly in an attempt to play with him. After about 8 minutes, the following episode took place: Transcription 1 David asks the adult, “Can I put them on the floor?” (he refers to box contents). The adult moves her head affirmatively, and he throws the toys on the floor by turning the box upside down. Mary looks at him and does the same with her box. David approaches Mary, holding an airplane in his hand. He looks at her while she is arranging girl materials on the floor. He says, smiling and using a scornful tone in his voice, “Uh-uh! You are arranging housing stuff, huh?” Then he moves a bit away, laughing and pointing at her, while saying “Uhuh, she is arranging housing stuff!” Mary remains quiet, serious, her head bent down, looking at her toys on the floor. David, as he moves further away, sees a little fancy cup on the floor. He picks it up, puts it back on the floor close to Mary and says, “Uh-uh! Women’s cup!” His facial expression, smile and voice convey despising, deep disdain. The girl looks at the cup, puts on a pallid smile, hums something incomprehensible, picks up another toy, and goes back to her arrangement activity. David goes back to his box, sits down facing the opposite way to Mary, and goes on with his scornful laughing: “Uh-uh . . . !” He plays with his toys. Mary then says, using a low, disappointed voice tone: “Women’s things . . . ,” apparently addressing no one in particular other than herself.

Analysis 1 Here we find an interesting interaction sequence where children seem to be co-constructing important aspects of gender identity. David disdains feminine materials and clearly considers his materials (boy’s stuff) superior, better than hers (girlish stuff). To play with dolls and housing stuff is “women’s business,” and this seems to him to be something lesser and ridiculous, which would explain the quality of his sneering laughing. David restates his masculine condition to himself and to the girl (maybe to the female adult as well!) by depreciating the feminine world. Mary seems to be sensitive to his attitude, because she withdraws toward her materials, keeping her eyes looking down at them. When she repeats David’s statement about the cup, she uses a sorrowful tone in her voice as she says, “women’s things . . .” in a classical egocentric speech to herself, indicating a possible internalization process related to gender, and devaluation of female toys, or more.

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Transcription 2 Little by little, hesitantly, Mary walks toward David’s box. She slowly approaches the box, looks at the camera, looks at the box, she crawls toward it, and finally she lays a hand on a small object that is lying on the floor. It seems that after the recent events, she became especially interested in the “more valuable” materials, namely, boys’ play materials. When she touches the object, David immediately screams at her, putting a mad intonation in his voice: “Nooooo!” David jumps to his feet and approaches his box, blocking Mary’s access to it. She moves away to allow him to get closer to his box. David picks up a saw and shakes it over her head, furiously saying, “Watch out! I will stab you!” Then he continues, “Go there to arrange your fancy little things, you cute little baby girl!” with a clear mix of irony and hostility in his words. He sits on the floor again. Mary withdraws and walks away; she goes back to her box, and keeps her head down, looking at the floor. Back at her box, she looks inside it, and finds the Coke bottle miniature. She says to David, “What about this one?” She picks it up and taps it on the floor. She seems to want David to acknowledge, at least, the value of this special “gender neutral” toy, the Coke bottle miniature. David, however, says with irony, not answering her question, “This kind of little bed stuff . . . I will cut it out!” He is referring to his use of the saw while pretending to cut a little box into pieces. Mary picks up a toy cup and pretends to pour the Coke into it. David leaves behind the saw and the little box, and approaches Mary’s territory, picking up a baby bottle that is close to her lying on the floor. He says, “May I give this milk to your little daughter?” But immediately he throws the bottle away on the floor close to the doll, speaking loud with disgust, “Gross!” He walks away laughing and ironically saying, “Hee hee! Barbie! Hee hee hee!” Mary stays quiet, handling the objects of her box, but now she looks completely noninterested in what she is doing. She looks pretty much disappointed, frustrated. David goes on laughing and defying the girl. He says to her, “Now you go, I wanna see if you know how to do it!” He is referring to the baby bottle that Mary is now holding in her hands.

Analysis 2 From the moment this episode started until the end of the session, David seemed to be much more interested (or goal oriented) in putting Mary— and her girlish things—down than anything else. He expressed that intent in many different ways: gestures, postures, verbalizations, facial expressions, voice intonation, and so on. He spoke very loudly for almost all the session time. Mary, however, could hardly be heard. Later on in the session, after the episode described above, she stopped doing anything at all and spent her time just looking around, with no other apparent purpose or interest.

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But later she picked up a piece of the little bed that David had played with before, which strongly suggests that he still was a kind of model, or reference, to be followed or seriously taken into account. Many other interesting interactions—or quasi-interactions such as preinteractive frames—occurred during the whole session. But the episodes mentioned above already provide enough evidence to what kind of meaning-(co)-construction processes may have taken place when we look from a microgenetic perspective. Mary’s attention and willingness to positively interact with David were quite evident. She complied with his requests, monitored all of his activities, tried to engage him in some sort of shared activity several times, and invited him in different ways to play with her. Alas, she did her best to call his attention and to please him. But it did not work. His hostile behavior, first of putting her and all feminine toys down with contempt and irony, and then threatening to “stab” her when she approached his “valuable” box, was quite intense and astonishing. Surprisingly, however, his aggressive actions, instead of provoking negative reactions by Mary—such as counterattacks or open forms of displeasure or frustration—recurrently led Mary to new interactive attempts, ultimately giving rise to clear disappointment with the feminine play materials she had in her box. That became particularly true when she sadly repeated after him, “Women’s things . . . ” Her disappointment was also obvious when she completely lost any interest or motivation concerning her box contents. After her last attempt to directly get the boy involved in interaction by using the miniature Coke failed, she gave up not only the idea of playing with him, but also lost motivation to play with anything else. She simply asked the experimenter whether she could leave the session: she wanted to go away. It seems her experience provided possibilities for internalizing negative meanings in relation to both feminine toys and activities, and feminine gender. On the other hand, in microanalyzing David’s participation, we notice that his excessive insistence on putting Mary and her feminine things down also deserves a careful further evaluation. His insistence on putting feminine things down, together with his curiosity toward some of those same feminine toys, was indeed very intriguing. A sort of ambivalence could be observed at a nonverbal level. His curiosity toward such toys was particularly detected in other episodes of the session, and it probably indicates that David, by exaggerating his disdain, was in a way trying to convince himself that exploring or playing with girlish stuff was “something bad” or “dangerous” for his male identity. The best way to stay away from such “wrong” or “forbidden” activities, therefore, would be to depreciate them. Can we say there was a psychological functional role underlying his overstatements and aggressive behavior? Could it be that he was trying to convince himself that a real boy should not mess with girlish things?

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To answer those questions is not an easy task, for it would require a lot more investigation and observations of David’s activities and verbal accounts. However, it is plausible to affirm that in the episodes described above, as well as in the whole session, we probably witnessed a unique experience of both internalization and externalization (by both Mary and David), which may have a fundamental impact on their gender identity construction. Those events consist of very interesting moments (or experiences) in which possible internalization-externalization mechanisms were actively taking place in co-constructive processes related to gender values, roles, and/or orientations. I argue that such interesting moments are privileged sequences of interaction that allow us to discuss specific instances of microgenetic mechanisms typical of metacommunication processes, which are involved in the co-construction of psychological orientations. Episodes like those here analyzed, which revealed subtle metacommunication exchanges (voice tone, looks, action, and interactive qualities) may very likely occur in everyday life experiences as we (adults and children) interact with each other in multiple and diverse contexts (Branco, 2003). In sum, I am not claiming that what specifically happened in that specific session in terms of metacommunication will necessarily be a crucial experience of profound psychological significance for those kids, but chances exist that experiences like those, taken together with so many other sequences of similar kind, may likely have a substantial impact on the children’s psychological orientations along ontogeny. Conclusions Differently from most socioconstructionist studies (e.g., Barnett-Pearce, 1995; Gergen, 1997), the work we have developed in our laboratory at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, tried to take into account and analyze the crucial role played by metacommunication processes while emphasizing emotions and affect in the continuous creation, construction, and reconstruction of meanings (Branco & Valsiner, 2004; Valsiner & Branco, 2010). While we argue against a radical position in which life equals narratives, the major claim is for the central role of subjective experiences, subjective meaning constructions, and internalization processes that definitely transcend language, even though language does play a fundamental part in the mutual constitution of culture and subjectivity. It is in the context of conflicts, alliances, power relations, joy, expectations, fears, faith, and suffering that meanings related to oneself and to others are constructed. The way people engage in metacommunication processes, their daily practice of telling stories about themselves, and how

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lived-through experiences have specific or general impact on each person’s self-development are the foundation for the structuring of self-awareness and individual multiple positionings in relation to the world (e.g., Hermans, 2001). Such positionings are based on internalization processes and are necessarily emotionally laden, lacing together affect, cognition, and motivation. Above all, such positionings are dynamic, but they can be investigated by an ideographic science that can benefit from using microgenetic methodologies. Therefore, the development of adequate methodologies, such as microgenetic approaches, to investigate complex phenomena from a dynamic and systemic scientific paradigm, even though representing a challenge for developmental psychology, needs to be taken as a serious endeavor. We can say that the assumption of a new epistemological standpoint, together with the elaboration of theories and methodologies to analyze idiographic complexities, necessarily demands the investigation of the relevant meaning(co)-construction processes found in communication and metacommunication phenomena, which lie at the core of human development. References Andresen, H. (2005). Role play and language development in the preschool years. Culture & Psychology, 11, 395–414. Barnett-Pearce, W. (1995). A sailing guide for social constructionists. In W. LeedsHurwizt (Ed.), Social approach to communication (pp. 89–113). New York, NY: Guilford. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York, NY: Chandler. Bonica, L. (1993). Negotiations among children and pretend play. In M. Stambak & H. Sinclair (Eds.), Pretend play among 3-year-olds (pp. 55–77). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Branco, A. U. (1994). Co-constructive analysis of interactive processes: A study of adultchild negotiations. Paper presented at the XXIV Annual Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society, Chicago, IL. Branco, A. U. (1998). Cooperation, competition and related issues: A co-constructive approach. In M. C. Lyra & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Construction of psychological processes in interpersonal communication (pp. 181–205). Stamford, CT: Ablex. Branco, A. U. (2003). Social development in social contexts: Cooperative and competitive interaction patterns in peer interactions. In J. Valsiner & K. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 238–256). London, England: Sage. Branco, A. U. (2005). Peer interactions, language development and metacommunication. Culture & Psychology, 11, 415–429. Branco, A. U. (2006). Crenças e práticas culturais: co-construção e ontogênese de valores sociais. Revista Pro-Posicoes (UNICAMP), 17, 139–155

Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences    129 Branco, A. U., & Madureira, A. F. (1998). Desenvolvimento e gênero: Um estudo microgenético com crianças pré-escolares. [Gender and development: A microgenetic study with preschool children]. Paper presented at the 50th meeting of the SBPC (Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science), Natal, RN, Brazil. Branco, A. U., Pessina, L., Flores, A., & Salomão, S. (2004). A sociocultural constructivist approach to metacommunication in child development. In A. U. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 3–32). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. 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. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (2004). Communication and metacommunication in human development. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Branco, A. U., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Towards cultural psychology of affective processes: semiotic regulation of dynamic fields. Estudios de Psicología, 31, 243–251. Brockmeier, J., & Harré, R. (1997). Narrative: Problems and promises of an alternative paradigm. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 263–283. Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press. Camic, P. M., Rhodes, J. E., & Yardley, L. (2007). Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Carvalho, A., Branco, A. U., Pedrosa, M. I. P. C., & Gil, M. S. (2002). Dinâmica interacional de crianças em grupo: Um ensaio de categorização. [Interactional dynamics of children in group situation: A categorization approach]. Psicologia em Estudo, 7, 91–99. Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London, England: Sage. Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. London, England: Sage. Fatigante, M., Fasulo, A., & Pontecorvo, C. (2004). This is not a dinner: Metacommunication in family dinnertime conversations. In A. U. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 33– 81). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through relationships. Origins of communication, self and culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fogel, A., & Branco, A. U. (1997). Metacommunication as a source of indeterminism in relationship development. In A. Fogel, M. Lyra, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes (pp. 65–92). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Ford, D. H., & Lerner, R. M. (1992). Developmental systems theory: An integrative approach. London, England: Sage. Gaskins, S., Miller, P. J., & Corsaro, W. A. (1992). Theoretical and methodological perspectives in the interpretive study of children. In W. A. Corsaro & P. J. Miller (Eds.), Interpretive approaches to children’s socialization (New directions for child development, no.58) (pp. 5–24). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gergen, K. (1997). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

130    A. U. BRANCO Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hermans, H. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 243–282. Hinde, R. A. (1976). Interactions, relationships, and social structures. Man (NS), 2, 1–17. Kindermann, T., & Valsiner, J. (1989). Research strategies in culture-inclusive developmental psychology. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Child development in cultural context (pp. 13–50). Toronto, Canada: Hogrefe Huber Lavelli, M., Pantoja, A. P. F., Hsu, H., Messinger, D., & Fogel, A. (2005). Using microgenetic designs to study change processes. In D. M. Teti (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in developmental science (pp. 40–65). Baltimore, MD: Blackwell. Madureira, A. F., & Branco, A. U. (2004). Metacommunication processes in the coconstruction of gender identity In A. U. Branco & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Communication and metacommunication in human development (pp. 151–190). Greenwich, CT: Information Age. McGrath, J., & Johnson, B. (2007). Methodology makes meaning: How both qualitative and quantitative paradigms shape evidence and its interpretation. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes, & L. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Monteiro, C. (1998). Estudos de processos co-construtivos no desenvolvimento da identidade de gênero. [Study of co-constructive processes related to gender identity development]. Master’s dissertation, University of Brasilia, Brazil. Monteiro, C., & Branco, A. U. (1999). Análise microgenética de processos de co-construção da identidade de gênero.[Microgenetic analysis of gender identity co-constructive processes]. Paper presented at the I Congresso Norte-Nordeste de Psicologia, Salvador, BA, Brazil. Neves-Pereira, M. (2004). Criatividade na pré-escola: Um estudo sociocultural construtivista de concepções e práticas de educadores. [Creativity in preschool: A sociocultural constructivist approach to educators’ practices and ideas]. Doctoral dissertation, University of Brasília, Brazil. Palmieri, M. W., & Branco, A. U. (2007). Educação infantil, cooperação e competição: Análise microgenética sob uma perspectiva sociocultural. [Childhood education, cooperation and competition: A microgenetic analysis from a socioc-cultural perspective]. Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, 11, 365–378. Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. H. Vold (Ed.), The dialogical alternative: Toward a theory of language and mind (pp. 19–44). Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press. Rossetti-Ferreira, M. C., Amorim, K., & Silva, A. P. (2003). Rede de Significações: Uma nova perspectiva teórico-metodológica. Porto Alegre, Brazil: Artes Médicas. Shweder, R. A., & Much, N. C. (1987). Determinations of meaning: Discourse and moral socialization. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Moral development through social interaction (pp. 197–244). New York, NY: Wiley.

Metacommunication, Microgenesis, and Idiographic Sciences    131 Siegler, R. S. (2002). Microgenetic studies of self-explanation. In N. Granott & J. Parziale (Eds.), Microdevelopment transition processes in development and learning (pp. 31–57). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Smith, J. (2008). Qualitative psychology. London, England: Sage. Tacca, M. C., & Branco, A. U. (2008). Processos de significação na relação professor -alunos: Uma perspectiva sociocultural construtivista. [Meaning construction processes in teacher-students relations: A sociocultural constructivist perspective]. Estudos de Psicologia (Natal), 13, 39–48. Valsiner, J. (1987). Culture and the development of children’s action. Chichester, England: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1989). Human development and culture: The social nature of personality and its study. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Valsiner, J. (2005). Soziale und emotianale entwicklungsaufgaben im kulturellen kontext. In J. Asendorpf & H. Rauh (Eds.), Enzyklpadiem der psychologie, Vol. 3, Soziale, emotionale und personlichkeitsentwicklung. Gotting, Germany: Hogrefe. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: Sage. Valsiner, J., Branco, A. U., & Dantas, C. (1997). Socialization as co-construction: Parental belief orientations and heterogeneity of reflection. In J. E. Grusec & L. Kuczynski (Eds.), Parenting and children’s internalization of values (pp. 283– 306). New York, NY: Wiley. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1984). A formação social da mente. SP: Martins Fontes. Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication: A study of interactional patterns, pathologies, and paradoxes. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Angela Uchoa Branco works at the Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia, and has been coordinating the Laboratory of Microgenesis in Social Interactions since 1995. She has been a visiting scholar at Duke University and at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Branco has developed research projects concerning communication and metacommunication processes and their fundamental role in different aspects of human development, from a systemic sociocultural constructivist viewpoint. Moral development and the development of cooperation, competition, and individualism; the co-construction of values and beliefs related to social motivation and patterns of interdependence have been a special topic of investigation. Other projects include the elaboration and analysis of a developmental perspective of the dialogical self. Together with Dr. Jaan Valsiner she published the books Communication and Metacommunication in Human Development (2004), and the book Cultural Psychology of Human Values (2012), both by Information Age Publishing. She has also contributed chapters to many volumes, including the Handbook of Developmental Psychology (Sage) and the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Psychology, in press. Address: Institute of Psychology, University of Brasilia, 70910-900, Brasilia, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected].

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Commentary

Idiographic Science Its Polyphonic Arena and Need for Reflexivity Giuseppina Marsico University of Salerno, Italy

Abstract I want to chart out the way in which the role played by language in the idiographic perspective is closely connected to the broader theoretical and methodological dimensions concerning the very definition of what idiographic science is, and what we consider to be knowledge, and which language is appropriate for psychology in general. The idiographic perspective originates in a highly polyphonic scientific arena, constituted of many theoretical and methodological voices that are frequently silenced by a chorus of gloomy complaints about the recurrent crises facing psychology. Can psychology overcome this condition of “distress?” The way it is suggested in this Yearbook is one that involves reconceptualization of the methodological approach, a challenge to the basic “myths” of psychological science, and the adoption of a reflexive attitude. Reflexivity—viewed as the problematization of research methods and the very conditions in which scientific analysis is produced—can be compared to the researcher’s “internal dialogue,” albeit within the polyphony of the scientific arena. In the light of these considerations, the chapters Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 133–146 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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134    G. MARSICO of Venuleo; Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa; and Branco in this volume share a common metatheoretical element linked specifically to the dimension of reflexivity and its connections with the issue of language in idiographic science.

Introduction As I read the Introduction to this Yearbook by Valsiner and Salvatore, and, to a greater extent, relying upon the analyses made in the chapters by Venuleo; Mininni, Ligorio and Traversa; and Branco, I had the clear impression that the topic of the use of language in idiographic science is extremely pertinent, since it raises crucial questions, such as, for example, the type of language that the idiographic approach should have and whether the language commonly used in scientific contexts facilitates or inhibits the production of generalized knowledge starting from the uniqueness of the phenomenon and the specific case. Indeed, it appeared equally clear how the issue of the role played by language in the idiographic perspective gets to the heart of certain broader theoretical and methodological aspects concerning the very definition of what idiographic science is, what we consider knowledge, and which language is appropriate for psychology in general. I have to confess, however, that what struck me most from the outset, was the title of the volume, Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness. The Emerging System of Idiographic Science. My special interest for the study of the context in which psychosocial phenomena take place (Marsico, 2011) immediately aroused the question: In what sociocultural conditions, in what weltanschauung does idiographic science emerge, or rather reemerge (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Windelband, 1998)? In this sense, I found the legend of the Tower of Babel, evoked by the editors at the start of the Introduction, highly suggestive. Indeed, the idiographic perspective originates inside a highly polyphonic scientific arena constituted of a multitude of theoretical-methodological voices. These are very often present in the form of vocal oppositions like a sort of song and countersong (qualitative vs. quantitative, comprehension vs. explanation, idiographic vs. nomothetic, etc.) that entwine in a deaf, gloomy refrain of complaints about the recurrent crises facing psychology or with high-sounding proclamations about its imminent death (Valsiner, 2009). Idiographic science, however, cannot avoid being situated and defined by its voice in this polyphonic arena. Psychology: Its Mythology and Polyphony What we can say for certain is that contemporary psychology is undergoing a theoretical crisis due to its incapacity to grasp the complexity of the phe-

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nomena of human existence that, in the research performed, ends up being “reduced” and “returned” either in the form of quantitative measurements or in the form of highly detailed yet fragmented “snapshots” (Rieber, 1998; Smedslund, 1995; Zittoun, Gillespie, & Cornish, 2009). Can psychology overcome this state of “distress” and “crisis?” How can it handle the complexity and wealth of its objects of study? One potential pathway could be that which contemplates a rethinking of the methodological approach, a challenging of the basic “myths” of psychological science, a realignment between data and theory in research, a critical analysis of the language used in psychology, and its capacity to produce generalized knowledge. Dispelling the Myths and Giving Reflexivity a New Lease on Life One of the myths to be reconsidered is, therefore, precisely the idea that science is exclusively quantitative, that is, that scientific evidence is automatically quantitative and that, given the idiographic nature of human science, no form of generalization can be reached in it. It would appear that each quantification technique or instrument for the quantitative analysis of data aims to grasp the quality of a certain event, as in the case of the measurement of the correlation that attempts to comprehend the relationship between the qualities of a phenomenon (Valsiner, 2005). The central importance of “quality” was also highlighted by Baldwin (1930), who held it necessary to avoid, particularly in the developmental sciences, the use of quantitative methods that, by reducing the “whole” to “parts” and the “complex” to “simple,” prevent us from grasping the genetic and evolutional aspects of the phenomena being studied (Valsiner, 2010). In agreement with an extensive debate that is currently developing in contemporary psychology (Molenaar, 2007; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Toomela & Valsiner, 2010) and which puts the complexity of human experience and the heuristic power of the “single case” back in the limelight, it can be said that psychology will be able to survive its own mistakes, avoiding the perpetuation of forms of pseudoempiricism and reductionism (Smedslund, 1995, 1997, 2009), only if it learns to respect its intrinsic, processual, and qualitative idiographic nature. However, another element must be taken into serious account to avoid the ever-present risk of failure that psychology itself does not know: the neglected dimension of reflexivity in psychological research. Inside the Tower of Babel that houses idiographic science, reflexivity, intended as the problematization of research methods and the very conditions in which scientific analysis is produced, can be compared to the researcher’s “interior dialogue,” albeit within the polyphony of the scientific

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arena. It goes without saying that in this multivocality (that often resembles a confused buzz of voices), the issue of the language of idiographic science becomes crucial. After all, it involves the preliminary and more general need to proceed with the dissolution of the mythology deposited in the language of science, as well as the everyday language of common sense (Sormano, 2008; Wittgenstein, 1989). This mythology would, for example, lead to considering what is the fruit of our assessment process as a typical characteristic of an object, or the idea that the understanding of an event would consist in simply grasping something whose consequences will be deduced only at a later time. These consequences, therefore, “would ideally be preexistent” to the act of deducing them In general, human sciences involve phenomena, processes, and objects of daily life and also seem to use the same socially constructed knowledge crystalized in common language. At this point, the question that it is legitimate to pose is, In what ways are the descriptions of researchers different from those of other members of society? From my point of view, if a researcher does not take into account the set of conditions, resources, and limitations within which he conducts his investigations, he runs the risk of providing descriptions that do not go far beyond common sense and that do not provide generalized scientific knowledge. Reflexivity in Psychological Research: Epistemological and Practical Issues We know that research starts from problems. Whether these problems are “found” or “constructed” is a subject for debate among social scientists. Some scholars, who we will call “naïve realists” (Mantovani & Spagnolli, 2003, p. 26), believe that problems stand all alone in a hypothetical wordoutside-us, waiting for someone to discover them and be interested in them, just like strawberries waiting to be picked and transformed in to a delicious jam. According to the naïve realists, the research “objects” are preexistent to their activity and remain basically independent from it. Other scholars, who we will term “mediated realists” or “reflective realists” (Mantovani & Spagnolli, 2003, p. 30), on the other hand, believe that problems are constructed by the researcher. Of course, this does not mean that the researcher creates from nothing the objects existing in his own mind alone. Rather, it means that the researcher acts like a photographer taking photographs. The more skillful the photographer, the more he is aware that he constructs, rather than finds, his pictures. His contribution will consist of both the choice of the cropping (cutting off a random part of the scene) and in the choice of the shutter speed, zoom, and such, so that the outcome of his actions will be a certain type of picture.

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To the naïve realists, “data” are like strawberries and methodologies are the procedures used to gather the strawberries without getting them dirty or bruised. Methodologies must therefore be able to gather “objective” data, “as they are in reality,” without any interference from the researcher, whose expectations, preferences, and tools could bias the “objectivity” of the study. In this case, scientific language would be nothing more than a tool (such as a pair of tweezers) that allows us to pick the ripe, ready strawberries. Nowadays, this rigid concept of objectivity, which was primarily celebrated by 19th-century positivism, is undeniably out of date. In the early 20th century, physicists realized that objective observation is impossible, because we observe reality through the filter of our mediation tools (the methodologies, languages, theories, and ontologies that contribute to constructing the research objects). The problem is constructed by means of theories, previous study, the interests of the researcher, and the needs of society. Methodologies are the tool used to study the object according to the habits and customs of the different scientific communities and to the best, most recent knowledge on the topic. Two important corollaries are derived from this: first, methodologies are attached to theories; second, methodologies are not merely sets of abstract rules to be “applied.” In actual fact, the adoption of a specific method does not just imply different procedures of data collection and analysis. Each methodological option is attached to a more or less implicit theory in the nature of knowledge and to a given view of the world that researchers are not always aware of. This awareness could be enhanced by the researcher taking a reflexive attitude with respect to his/her own theoretical choices and research practices. Reflexivity leads the researcher to stick around the beam of light by which he/she tries to catch his/her own object. This is why the procedural aspects of methodologies should not take an upper hand over theoretical questions and a critical attitude, the most valuable characteristics of any scholar. Since the object of the study has been constructed rather than found, the researcher must be aware of the features of his work tools, the viewpoints he adopts, the aims of his study. This is not an easy task, since he can understand only the meaning of his study when he realizes his place within the study: the choice of the term reflexivity arises from this. Why is a given theoretical perspective adopted? What are its limits? What type of object is produced by the adoption of that perspective? These are questions that can be answered only by research practice, which is always partially and above all “situated” within the context of the study.

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Beyond the Social Vacuum of the Laboratory Let us suppose that I want to study what happens when parents and teachers meet to discuss their children’s academic performance (Marsico & Iannaccone, 2012). How do they interact? What are their discourses? Asking oneself these questions demonstrates an interest in the social interactions that take place in the context of everyday life rather than the individual psychological processes studied in the social vacuum of a laboratory. Asking oneself specific questions, focusing on a given object of study, gathering certain pieces of information rather than others, all depend on theoretical choices. These choices therefore lead to the identification of certain topics of research rather than others and a set of methodological options concerning the type of psychological data and analysis characterizing the studies in their empirical achievement. The choice of using everyday life contexts also implies a number of decisions: in the case of my research, how to access the school and the school-family meetings, how to introduce the study to the actors in the context (principals, teachers, parents), which data to collect, and using which instruments. One of the most important aspects to be taken into account is the “nonneutrality” of the methodological toolset used. The research methodology is never a neutral tool with respect to the production of research outcomes: the methodological features of every empirical study depend not merely on the theoretical choices of the researcher but also on the constraints and the peculiarity of the social actors to be studied (for instance, I never make a research setting that could be dangerous for children) and of the context we go into (levels of bureaucracy for accessing the school, authorization for the use of intrusive data collection tool such as the video recordings, etc.). The researcher is constantly faced with choices and methodological options; these decisions must be taken and accounted for. Besides, a theoretical rather than methodological problem is what we consider data. Data do not exist “out there” regardless of the researcher who produces and selects them from the continuum of our psychological life, making them emerge as empirical events. Thus, what information should I own to select and analyze them in a meaningful way, and what background knowledge allows me to situate and contextualize them? It is a theoretical and methodological perspective that requires us to take into account the “uniqueness of the context” and to manage and combine different techniques with great flexibility and skill. How can we grasp the context of the discourses and the actions we want to understand, as well as the interconnection between actors and context?

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The Reemerging Researcher as a Research Participant In order to describe the complex system of actions, discourses, and interactions within the context, the researcher must “jump into the picture”; he/she must be inside the context. The context is produced by the social actors acting within the context, so the key issues are which actors act (in a relational, discursive, strategic, and institutional sense) within the context? What is the researcher’s place in the context? What “part” does he/ she play? How does the researcher enter the context, and how is his/her presence justified? What needs to be taken into account is precisely the researcher’s participation, since it raises important issues related to access (such as applications/permits) and to how to stay inside the context. Initially, the researcher has to negotiate access to the situation that he/ she wants to analyze. He/she must therefore give the participants all the information they need to understand the aim of the research, the procedures, and the tools used. This phase is extremely important because the feasibility of carrying out this type of qualitative research depends on the participant’s cooperation. To give an example of the researcher’s place in the context and the “part” he/she plays, I would like to present here just one representative excerpt related to a school-family meeting,1 which involved a teacher, a 13-year-old student, and his 46-year-old father, an employee in a private company. The meeting was also attended, as is usually expected, by the researcher in her “nonparticipating” role: audiotaping the encounter. The described interaction below comes from the final part of a very long and sometimes difficult meeting between the teacher and father, in which we can identify an opposition between family and school. From the father’s point of view, in order to grow up well, a person needs to have the time “to do everything” (e.g., schoolwork, leisure activities, sports, etc.). This is a multidimensional vision of education, whereas the teacher proposes a monodimensional vision of education (turn 39). The teacher’s words betray his personal view of the aims of education and growth. In his opinion, parents’ demands in relation to sports and music activities represent a real problem (“and where is the school in all this, I wonder”). Excerpt 1, Meeting n. 1 (Participants: Teacher, Father, Pupil (boy) 37. Teacher:  It may not be your case but some parents . . . come to tell us that afterwards they have to go to the gym [because they have scoliosis] 38. Father: No, no, absolutely no way. 39. Teacher: They must study music because they like music and where is the school in all this, I wonder, and they leave it to the school to deal with the problem.

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40. Father: No. No, I can assure you of one thing only, he has been raised in this way. When he wants to do activities, I tell him you choose. You can do one after-school . . . activity then . . . all the other activities you want to do to prepare for school . . . either they really are the result of your selection because you are selective because you, for example, are very good. 41. Teacher: [You have to solved] 42. Father: [You have solved] some problems, so I want to let you do one more . . . thing or otherwise you go to school and one after-school activity is enough and fun is limited to Saturdays and Sundays because I think it’s right . . . because even God . . . said it’s right and good to rest on Saturdays and Sundays . . . so what I notice and clearly tell you in a very . . . relaxed way is that they can judge themselves . . . they can judge their teachers . . . they have their own evaluation scale [inside]. 43. Teacher: [But] they could have a higher self-esteem than [that which] 44. Father: [Nooo] not this about this is a mistake I don’t make because I tell him be critical about himself . . . so he will be able to be critical about himself everyday so I’m telling you once again so please I’m finished . . . I’ve got nothing to say. 45. Teacher: [to researcher] Very long? 46. Researcher: We don’t intervene in this phase. 47. Father: I also want to say that from the beginning of the course . . . to the end of the course some bias . . . develops . . . and once bias develops, teachers find it difficult to overcome it.

On turn 45, the teacher suddenly addresses an unexpected question to the researcher about the length of the encounter. This shows that, despite the silent and external position of the researcher and the argumentative conversation between father and teacher, they were probably constantly aware of the presence of the researcher or alternatively, they did not remember he/she was present until the end of the discourse; however, in both cases, the researcher plays a relevant part even when he remains silent. The relevance depends simply on his presence on the scene. Obviously the researcher must also be fully aware of this dimension, constantly assuming a reflective attitude when he analyzes his data. Otherwise, he runs the risk of not taking the entire set of “field forces,” in Kurt Lewin’s words (1951) that are at work in that particular moment into due consideration. A selfreflexive attitude should be assumed by the researcher both during the entire research procedure and at the end of it, by asking oneself, for instance, what other data could have the same characteristics as that of the schoolfamily meetings? What other methodological choices could have produced these data and results?

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Reflexivity could help us to make explicit what is very often implicit and taken for granted in the researcher’s practices, such as, for instance, that the researcher, by working “with” (not “on”) people, does not “find” “objective data,” rather, he/she takes part in the discovery of processes and environments that are not “pre-cognised.” Reflecting Upon Communication: Theoretical Resource In the light of these considerations, I have attempted to reflect on the contributions by Venuleo as well as Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa and by Branco to this Yearbook that make up the section titled “Communication: Theoretical Obstacle or Innovative Resource?” Beyond the specific aspects that each chapter deals with, here I would like to highlight a common metatheoretical element that, to my mind, can be attributed precisely to the dimension of reflexivity in psychological research and its links with the question of language in idiographic science. Venuleo, for instance, highlights how, in clinical psychology, language is traditionally considered a tool for grasping the characteristics inside the individual mind. She quite rightly postulates that the same language and the way it is used in clinical practice must be subject to methodological analysis that I believe can be defined as reflexive analysis. Based on the idea that the reality we know is constructed through the flow of communication and situated discursive exchanges, the use of language is closely interconnected with the process of the co-making of meaning based on the intersubjective dynamics. In this sense, by helping to create the reality we live in, language has important implications also on how “the object” and the objective of clinical practice and the role of the discursive context in understanding the world described by the patient is defined. Usually, according to the classical perspective in psychology, the words reported by patients are the exact expression of essences that the therapist has to capture in order to modify them. Are these essences the product of an isolated mind, and would this justify the absence or low importance attributed to the way in which the meaning is constructed precisely in discursive exchanges between therapist and patient (for example, by not asking questions such as “Why did the patient say that?”) after some idea suggested by the therapist? I can agree with Venuelo that all too often we take it for granted that reality is the outcome of a process of intersubjective construction that is only actualized in the context of the discourse, including those of a clinical nature. From a complementary standpoint, it should be pointed out that, as very often in the analyses and reports of clinical psychologists and researchers, there is no trace of one’s role in the determination of the context and the sense-

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making process. This lack of attention and limited awareness about the position of the researcher/observer/therapist and the discourses that he/ she helps to construct, would come from the “classical” idea of a supposed neutrality or independence in relation to the study object. In this sense, Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa discuss at length the fact that the interest in language inside the idiographic approach would be due to an awareness of the close link between individuals, context, and the sense-making process. As is known, idiographic science aims to achieve generalized knowledge, based on the analysis of individual cases within specific contexts of interaction. In them, we find what Mininni Ligorio, and Traversa define a “real speaker-listener,” involved both in communication with the other and in listening to his/her own discourse. To my mind, this idea of a self-monitoring channel (which stays open even when one is talking), by analogy, can be applied also to the activity of the researcher, who, in a certain sense, while performing the different phases of his/her research, should take on a reflexive attitude, which more than any other, would allow him/her to consider him/herself part of the analysis being performed and to also deal with the opaqueness and ambivalence of discursive interactions within which sense-making processes are built. In more general terms, idiographic science needs to develop a terminology (and therefore its own language) able to restore the complexity of the real contexts in which human activity takes place, simultaneously ousting a number of background preconceptions or assumptions of classic science, according to which, through the use of strict measuring procedures, it would be possible to describe the world “as it is.” The awareness of the ambiguity of everyday discourses should make possible in human sciences the use of a language able to deal with the ambiguity and vagueness of the language used in real-life contexts. In a certain sense, this language would be better able to grasp the fluidity and open-ended nature (Marsico, 2011) of the context that thus remains open to the change produced by the individual’s constant interpretative process. This conceptualization calls for a necessary awareness and reflexive attitude concerning the processes in progress as in the various contexts. The same “diatext” construct put forward by Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa in this volume gives a good idea of this connection between the dynamic nature of the context and the “text” (meant as the set of discourses) produced by the speakers. This would be a co–sense making, as the discursive events produced by the subjects would dialogue with the context within which they would have the chance to act and recognize one another (in a reflexive way) as active constructors of reality. Angela Branco’s chapter here focuses on a dimension that we could define as reflexive in itself. This is the metacommunication in its dual guise of communication on communication, when we reflexively investigate communication and language, and relational metacommunication, which the author

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uses to define the analysis of the quality of interactions between people. This second aspect implies a special attention to the symbolic context in which the communication takes place, which is often steeped in implicit meanings constructed by those speaking, beyond what is said explicitly. Therefore, from a reflexive point of view, the more aware one is of the physical and cultural context, the better one is able to grasp and interpret the “implicit aspect of the discourses.” In my opinion, the same thing applies for the researcher in relation to the context in which he/she conducts the research and to the changes that he/she can make in it with his/her presence and his/her discourses. Branco also makes explicit reference to reflexivity in psychology by stressing that in the construction/reconstruction/negotiation of meaning, there is not always a full and constant awareness by participants in the interaction since these processes are driven also by emotional states that lie outside the domain of the individual’s awareness. In this sense, a reflexive attitude could lead to interpretations able to clarify the ambiguity and ambivalence of the discursive interactions between people within specific social and cultural contexts. Extending the ideas of Branco herein, it is essential to take on a perspective that takes into account the broader historical and cultural context in which the meaning-making process emerges. This implies the recognition of the importance of the assumption of a reflexive attitude in scientific analysis. This is certainly no new epistemological standpoint in the field of human sciences (Bourdieu, 2004; Latour, 1987; Rosa, 1994; Woolgar, 1988), however, on account of its complexity, it has not been adequately investigated by researchers who, all too frequently, have kept silent about their investigation methods and the conditions in which analyses are produced. In the three chapters discussed here, we can identify traces of an attempt to overcome this silence, however the “discourses” of Venuleo; Mininni, Ligorio, and Traversa; and Branco on the issue of reflexivity in psychology could be further reinforced and “made audible” not to just those who strain their ears to catch the “low frequencies” of the interior dialogue that the researcher has when reflecting on his/her research practices. Thematizing reflexivity, dealing with the myths and methodologies of science, and more clearly problematizing the theoretical assumptions, research practices and scientific language used should become priority commitments of any researcher and, in the case of the contents of the chapters discussed here, could constitute the “additive” that makes the “petrol” already in the tank more potent.2 From a more general point of view, the challenge that reflexivity poses for researchers, in my opinion, must be accepted by idiographic science, incorporating it into its own paradigm as an essential theoretical and practical issue. In this way, the idiographic perspective can express a different, more structured and “harmonic” voice in the polyphonic arena of contemporary psychology, to the benefit of a less

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fragmented and partial vision of the way in which we need to study the complexity of social phenomena. After all, the excerpt from the teacher-family meeting discussed above is a concrete example of how, in the social sciences, objects of study are the outcome of the constant interaction between researcher and phenomenon being studied. However, we only notice this kind of “work” in abnormal or embarrassing situations, all too often forgetting it is always present, even in normal, problem-free or routine research conditions. The risk of considering the social world a “given phenomenon” just waiting to be discovered can be overcome by adopting a reflexive attitude that makes the researcher aware of the nature of the relationship that ties him to the object of study. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Jaan Valsiner and Sergio Salvatore for their helpful feedback on the latest version of the manuscript. Notes 1. Taken from one of the meetings recorded in the research by Iannaccone and Marsico (2007), which can be consulted for a full account of the encounter. 2. My thanks to Prof. Sergio Salvatore for having suggested, during the final review of the paper, terms such as highly combustible and heuristically efficacious metaphor.

References 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: Russel & Russell. Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of science and reflexivity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Iannaccone, A., & Marsico, G. (2007). La famiglia va a scuola. Discorsi e rituali di un incontro. Rome, Italy: Carocci. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Mantovani, G., & Spagnolli, A. (2003). Metodi qualitativi un psicologia. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. Marsico, G. (2011). The “non-cuttable” space in between: Context, boundaries and their natural fluidity. IPBS: Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Scienc, 45(2), 185–193. doi: 10.1007/s12124-011-9164-9.

Idiographic Science    145 Marsico, G., & Iannacone, A. (2012). The work of schooling. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 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. Rieber, R. W. (1998). Americanization of psychology before William James. In R. W. Rieber & K. D. Salzinger (Eds.), Psychology: Theoretical-historical perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 191–215). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rosa, A. (1994). History of psychology as a ground for reflexivity. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Explorations in socio-cultural studies. Vol. 1. Historical and theoretical discourse (pp.149–168). Madrid, Spain: Fundacion Infancia y Aprendizaje. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Between the general and the unique. Overcoming the nomothetic versus idiographic opposition. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), 817–833. 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. Smedslund, J. (1997). The structure of psychological common sense. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Smedslund, J. (2009). The mismatch between current research methods and the nature of psychological phenomena. What researchers must learn from practitioners. Theory & Psychology, 19, 778–794. Sormano, A. (2008). Linguaggio e comunicazione. Turin, Italy: Utet. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Valsiner, J. (2005). Transformations and flexible forms. Where qualitative psychology begins. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4, 39–57. Valsiner, J. (2009). Integrating psychology within the globalizing world: A requiem to the post-modernist experiment with wissenschaft. IPBS: Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 43, 1–21. doi:10.1007/s12124-009-9087-x. Valsiner, J. (2010). A persistent innovator: James Mark Baldwin reconsidered. Introduction to J. M. Baldwin, Genetic theory of reality (pp. xv–lix). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Windelband, W. (1998). History and natural science. Theory & Psychology, 8, 5–22. (Original work published 1904). Wittgeinstein L.(1989). Filosofia. Rome, Italy: Donzelli. Woolgar, S. (Ed.). (1988). Knowledge and reflexivity: New frontiers in the sociology of knowledge. London, England: Sage. Zittoun, T., Gillespie, A., & Cornish, F. (2009). Fragmentation or differentiation: Questioning the crisis in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43, 2. doi:10.1007/s12124-008-9083-6.

Giuseppina Marsico is assistant professor of development and education psychology at the Department of Human, Philosophic and Education Sciences, University of Salerno, Italy. She is PhD in Methodology of Educational Re-

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search. She is a member of the Research Group on Social Interaction (GRIS) and collaborates with researchers from many countries. Her main research fields are school-family interaction and assessment processes, cultural psychology and development, psycho-social risk and promotion of well-being, social representations, socioprofessional contexts and emotions, social networks in educational contexts, and teachers’ professional identity. She has edited an international volume and has published several books and papers on these theoretical and empirical frameworks. Address: Department of Human, Philosophic and Education Sciences, University of Salerno, via Ponte don Melillo, 84084, Fisciano (SA), Italy. E-mail: [email protected]

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Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy From Narrative Outputs to the Semiotic-Dialogical Processes António P. Ribeiro, Miguel M. Gonçalves and Anita Santos University of Minho, Braga–Portugal

Abstract In this chapter, we shed light on the microprocesses underlying narrative change in psychotherapy, by adopting a semiotic-dialogical perspective over meaning making. We first describe the innovative moment’s model for analyzing the psychotherapeutic process. According to this model, change occurs through the emergence and expansion of innovative moments (IMs), which are all the occurrences in therapy that are exceptions in relation to the rules of behaving, thinking, and feeling that organize the problematic self-narrative of the client (i.e., usual framework of understanding and experiencing). We then present a microgenetic method of analysis, which allows understanding and depicting how IMs are amplified and differentiated from the problematic self-narrative; or on the contrary, how they are absorbed by it, attenuating the innovative potential that they have for change.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 149–175 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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In this chapter, we describe the innovative moment’s model (e.g., Gonçalves, Matos, & Santos, 2009) for analyzing the psychotherapeutic process. Innovative moments (IMs) are all the occurrences in therapy that are exceptions in relation to the rules of behaving, thinking, and feeling that organize the problematic self-narrative of the client (i.e., usual framework of understanding and experiencing). We have developed a method to track these exceptions in the therapeutic conversation—the innovative moments coding system (IMCS; Gonçalves, Ribeiro, Matos, Mendes, & Santos, 2010; Gonçalves, Ribeiro, Mendes, Matos, & Santos, 2010). Congruently with the narrative therapy tradition of White and Epston (1990), our model predicts that change in therapy takes place by the elaboration and the expansion of these IMs. The analysis of IMs is still a molar level of understanding change, providing for information similar to a series of a few snapshots taken across a wide span of time (Siegler, 1995). From this level, we have constructed a more molecular level of analysis that enables capturing the movie-like continuous flow of information (Siegler, 1995) underlying IMs’ development. This method allows understanding how IMs are amplified and differentiated from the problematic self-narrative; or on the contrary, how they are absorbed by it, attenuating the innovative potential that they have for change. In our research program, we have been studying these microprocesses using the microgenetic1 method from a semiotic-dialogical perspective (Valsiner 2001, 2004; see also Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999). This approach allows for an investigation of the psychotherapy process from an idiographic perspective, by focusing on the linguistic exchanges between therapists and clients, providing an understanding of how clients change their self-narratives. Self-Narratives and Dialogical Self The narrative metaphor suggests that “persons live their lives by stories— that these stories are a shaping of life, and that have real, not imagined, effects—and that these stories provide the structure of life” (White, 1991, p. 28, as cited in Freedman & Combs, 1996). Persons’ lived experience is rich, and only a part of our multitude of experiences gets incorporated into the stories we enact with each other (Freedman & Combs, 1996; White & Epston, 1990). In fact, organizing experience through narratives entails a process of selection and synthesis of life experience (McAdams, 1997, as cited in Michel & Wortham, 2002). By this process, based upon one’s personal past, people construct a macronarrative (Angus, Levitt, & Hardtke, 1999) or a metanarrative (Osatuke et al., 2004), that is, a selftold life story by which the singular events narrated (micronarratives)

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“come to be articulated, experienced, and linked together” (Angus et al., 1999, p. 1255). Self-narrative (re)construction occurs in the context of a multivocal self in which the coexistence of various I-positions enables the elaboration of different narrative accounts of the very same experience (Hermans & Kempen, 1993). These I-positions are continuously activated and brought to the foreground as relevant “voices” concerning the current experience. Along these lines, self-narrative (re)construction depends on the dynamic configurations of I-positions. Problematic Self-Narratives and Innovative Moments Self-narrative comprises a meaningful framework for understanding, triggering repetition (Michel & Wortham, 2002). This repetition becomes a problem if a self-told life story’s content is “unhelpful, unsatisfying, and dead-ended” and if “these stories do not sufficiently encapsulate the person’s lived experience” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 14). This is akin to what Neimeyer, Herrero, and Botella (2006) have called dominant narratives (for other narrative dysfunction, see Dimaggio, 2006). From a dialogical perspective, these problematic self-narratives are characterized by an asymmetrical relationship between the different I-positions. There is an I-position or a coalition of I-positions that insist on telling the same story over and over again. It is this redundancy that constitutes the problematic nature of the self-narrative, given that other possible I-positions are silenced or rejected. When self-narratives become a strict rule of acting, feeling, and thinking (e.g., depressive self-narrative), White and Epston (1990) encourage people to search their lived experience for neglected but potentially significant situations that contradict the undesirable dominant story—unique outcomes. Those aspects of lived experience that fall outside of the dominant story, which tend to be trivialized or ignored when problematic stories are dominant, constitute a potential “entryway for inviting people to tell and live new stories” (Combs & Freedman, 2004, p. 144), which enable them to perform new meanings that they will “experience as more helpful, satisfying, and open-ended” (White & Epston, 1990, p. 15). From a dialogical standpoint, IMs are opportunities for new I-positions to emerge and tell their own stories, different from the problematic self-narrative (Gonçsalves, Matos & Santos, 2009), or for nondominant I-positions to move from the background to the foreground.

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Innovative Moments Coding System: Concepts and Main Findings From the notion that narrative change is achieved by the elaboration of exceptions or “unique outcomes,” a qualitative method of data analysis for tracking these moments was developed—IMCS (Gonçalves, Ribeiro, Matos et al., 2010; Gonçalves, Ribeiro, Mendes et al., in press). This coding system builds on the narrative approach by providing a systematic method for tracking changes in clients’ stories (IMs) and a set of concepts for understanding the observed changes. IMs are tracked from the dominant narrative that the client brings to therapeutic conversation. This is often composed of a set of meanings about the clients’ problems or problematic relationships and also the relevant symptoms (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). Once the dominant narrative for a specific client is identified, IMs are depicted, since they involve every moment in which the participant engages in novel or different actions, thoughts, or emotions, from the identified problem(s). We have inductively identified five possible categories of IMs, by analyzing psychotherapy sessions of women who were victims of intimate violence who were followed in narrative therapy (Matos, Santos, Gonçalves, & Martins, 2009): • Action IMs are specific behaviors that challenge the dominant selfnarrative. • Reflection IMs are thoughts, feelings, intentions, projects, or other cognitive products that challenge the dominant self-narrative. • Protest IMs entail new behaviors (like action IMs) and/or thoughts (like reflection IMs) that challenge the dominant self-narrative, representing a refusal of its assumptions. This active refusal is the key feature that allows for the distinction of protest from action and reflection. • Reconceptualization IMs are the most complex type of innovation. The client not only describes some form of contrast between present and past (e.g., “now I’ve changed X or Y”), but he/she also understands the processes that allowed for this transformation. • Performing change IMs are new aims, experiences, activities, or projects, anticipated or in action, as a consequence of change. We have hypothesized that IMs are variables that allow depicting developmental patterns in self-change processes. Hence, we have studied IMs’ emergence in the context of narrative (Matos, Santos, Gonçalves, & Martins, 2009), emotion-focused (Gonçalves, Mendes, Ribeiro, Angus, & Greenberg, 2010; Mendes, Ribeiro, Angus, Greenberg, Sousa, & Gonçalves,

Protest

Reflection

Action

• New coping behaviors facing anticipated or existent obstacles • Effective resolution of unsolved problem(s) • Active exploration of solutions • Restoring autonomy and self-control • Searching for information about the problem(s) Creating distance from the problem(s) • Comprehension: Reconsidering problem(s)’ causes, and/or awareness of its effects • New problem(s) formulations • Adaptive self-instructions and thoughts • Intention to fight problem(s)’ demands, references of selfworth and/or feelings of well-being Centered on the change • Therapeutic Process: Reflecting about the therapeutic process • Change Process: Considering the process and strategies; implemented to overcome the problem(s); references of selfworth and/or feelings of well-being (as consequences of change) • New Positions: References to new/emergent identity versions in face of the problem(s) Criticizing the problem(s) • Repositioning oneself toward the problem(s) Emergence of new positions • Positions of assertiveness and empowerment

Contents

C: I am an adult and I am responsible for my life, and, and, I want to acknowledge these feelings, and I’m going to let them out! I want to experience life, I want to grow, and it feels good to be in charge of my own life. (continued)

C: What am I becoming after all? Is this where I’ll be getting to? Am I going to stagnate here!?

C: I believe that our talks, our sessions, have proven fruitful. I felt like going back a bit to old times, it was good, I felt good, I felt it was worth it.

C: I realize that what I was doing was just not humanly possible because I was pushing myself, and I never allowed myself any free time, uh, to myself . . . and it’s more natural and more healthy to let some of these extra activities go.

C: Yesterday, I went to the cinema for the first time in months!

Examples

Table 5.1  Examples of IMs vis-à-vis a Depressive Dominant Self-Narrative

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Performing Change

• Investment in new projects as a result of the process of change • Investment in new relationships as a result of the process of change • Performance of change: new skills • Reemergence of neglected or forgotten self-versions

• Generalization into the future and other life dimensions of good outcomes • Problematic experience as a resource to new situations

• Description of the shift between two positions (past and present) • The process underlying this transformation

Reconceptualization Reconceptualization always involve two dimensions:

Contents

C: Yes, you’re right. I want to do all the things that were impossible for me to do while I was dominated by depression. I want to work again and to have the time to enjoy my life with my children. I want to have friends again. The loss of all the friendships of the past is something that still hurts me really deeply. I want to have friends again, to have people to talk to, to share experiences and to feel the complicity in my life again.

C: I called my dad and told him, “We’re going out today!” T: This is new, isn’t it? C: Yes, it’s like I tell you . . . I sense that I’m different. T: You seem to have so many projects for the future now!

C: You know . . . when I was there at the museum, I thought to myself: you really are different . . . A year ago you wouldn’t be able to go to the supermarket! Ever since I started going out, I started feeling less depressed . . . it is also related to our conversations and changing jobs. T: How did you have this idea of going to the museum?

Examples

Table 5.1  Examples of IMs vis-à-vis a Depressive Dominant Self-Narrative

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2010), client-centred (Gonçalves, Mendes, Cruz, Ribeiro, Sousa, Angus, & Greenberg, in press) and constructivist psychotherapy (Ribeiro, Gonçalves, & Ribeiro, 2009) and also in daily life changes (Cruz & Gonçalves, 2008; Meira, Gonçalves, Salgado, & Cunha, 2008). The global picture of IMs research findings indicate that poor-outcome cases (that is, unsuccessful psychotherapy cases) are mainly characterized by the emergence of action, reflection, and protest IMs since the beginning of therapy and their maintenance throughout the process. Reconceptualization and performing change are rather absent. On the contrary, in good-outcome cases, all types of IMs are usually present (from action to performing change). Reconceptualization emerges in the middle phase of therapy and increases until the end, clearly discriminating good- from poor-outcome cases (Gonçalves, Santos et al., 2010). Simultaneously, the IMs salience, which is a measure of the percentage of time the client spent narrating IMs in each session, was found to be significantly higher in good-outcome cases, with an increasing profile along therapy. In poor-outcome cases, salience was found to be rather stable throughout therapy (Gonçalves, Santos et al., 2010). Mutual In-Feeding We have suggested that one important way of preventing the path of increasing salience and emergence of reconceptualization and performing change in poor-outcome therapeutic cases is the process of mutual in-feeding (Valsiner, 2002). This means that the dominant and nondominant voices tend to “feed into each other” throughout time (Valsiner, 2002, p. 258): “I’m pessimistic.” (voice A), “I want to be optimistic.” (voice B).

In the aforesaid example, according to IMCS, voice A would be the dominant voice and voice B would be an IM. We have hypothesized that in poor-outcome cases, as well as in the initial phase of good-outcome cases, the dominant narrative (expressed by voice A) and IMs (expressed by voice B) are two opposite voices, with a feedback loop relation, as they end up feeding into each other in a cyclical movement. Given that circular dynamic loop, stability was maintained along the time. The recurrent emergence of action, reflection, and protest IMs, in the absence of reconceptualization, seems to create some narrative diversity within the self, although no further development is achieved (Santos, Gonçalves, & Matos, 2011; Santos & Gonçalves, 2009).

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We addressed this hypothesis empirically by studying discursive markers of return to the problematic self-narrative after the emergence of an IM. The way we operationally defined the theoretical concept of mutual in-feeding was by identifying all the times an IM emerged and was immediately followed by a return-to-the problem-marker (RPM), as in the following example: “I want to be optimistic,” (reflection IM) “but I can’t.” (RPM)

The results obtained in a sample of narrative therapy with women who were victims of intimate violence showed that IMs were much more likely to be followed by an RPM in the poor-outcome cases than in the goodoutcome cases. Besides, we found a lower incidence of RPMs in reconceptualization and performing change IMs than in reflection and protest IMs. This finding is congruent with theoretical assumptions, corroborating reconceptualization and performing change as markers of sustained therapeutic change (Gonçalves, Ribeiro, Conde et al., 2011). In this chapter, we adopt a dialogical standpoint, specifically Josephs and colleagues’ dialectical method (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998; Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999) to understand how the IMs emerge from the problematic self-narrative, how they remain captive in the process of stability (mutual in-feeding) and also how they develop into a successful outcome (resolving mutual in-feeding). Adopting this semiotic-dialogical lens is one pathway to understanding the construction of novelty, since it enables the study of the meanings’ development while they are emerging (Valsiner, 2001). Throughout this chapter, we elaborate on how the semiotic-dialogical approach to meaning making can shed light on how IMs emerge and develop. Once we strongly agree that “verbatim passages preserve the richness of the phenomenon being studied and honor clients’ words” (Brinegar, Salvi, Stiles, & Greenberg, 2006), we grounded our theoretical proposals and interpretations with passages from the transcripts of a good-outcome case. Hence, we briefly present a psychotherapy case and then provide an overview of the theoretical background in which our methodology is rooted, illustrating its main assumptions through the analysis of sessions’ excerpts. The Case of Caroline Caroline was a 20-year-old woman, coming from a working class background, who lived with her mother and two younger brothers at the time of her psychotherapy process. Besides being a university student, she had part-time employment.

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She reported as her main problems feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness, which impaired her interpersonal relationships and her academic functioning. In addition, she described difficulties about being assertive (especially with her boyfriend), satisfying the needs of others to the detriment of her own. Caroline also related that she usually took responsibility for her parents’ problems, trying to protect her mother from her father, who used to stalk her after the divorce. Since the beginning of therapy, Caroline was able to make connections between these different problems and realize how they were all part of a larger functioning pattern: pessimism. Caroline attended brief and individual constructivist therapy focused on implicative dilemmas (Fernandes, Senra, & Feixas, 2009) for twelve sessions and one follow-up session at her university’s clinic. This case was considered a good-outcome case, as Caroline evolved throughout the therapeutic process toward a nonsymptomatic condition both in Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1993; Portuguese version adapted by Canavarro, 1999) and Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2; Lambert et al., 1996; Portuguese version adapted by Machado & Klein, 2006) scores. A Semiotic-Dialogical Look at the Concepts of Problematic Self-Narrative and Innovative Moments Semiotic Mediation The human self is a semiotic construct, given that its development, as in psychotherapeutic change, is regulated by processes of construction and reconstruction of meanings (Josephs et al., 1999). A person creates meaning using signs, organized in a narrative structure, which allow for the regulation of the ongoing flow of everyday experiences (Bruner, 1986; McAdams, 1993; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986; Valsiner, 2005). Valsiner (2001) stresses that “human beings are constantly creating their immediate future through the construction and use of signs in the present” (p. 89). In fact, the meaning-making processes can be viewed, from a “present-to-future” developmental model (Valsiner, 2001), as a pre-adaptation mechanism, since it orients the person toward the immediately potential future, reducing its uncertainty and unpredictability and mediating the relation with the surrounding world (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998; Valsiner, 2002). As Abbey and Valsiner (2005) state, “meanings are constructed through the emergence of signs to help the individual in the awkward dance of adapting to the present—while dealing with various possibilities (uncertainty) of the future” (para. 5). Indeed, the future can be construed as a

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field or a range of possibilities, yet out of those, only one will be actualized. The “transformation from uncertainty of many possibilities to the actualized certainty” is regulated by semiotic mediation (Abbey & Valsiner, 2005, para. 4). Therefore, the dialogical self is a self-organizing and semiotic selfregulated system (Valsiner, 2004; Salgado & Gonçalves, 2007). Along these lines, once emerged, the semiotic devices or signs continue to differentiate and become integrated into a hierarchical structure of meaning, in which “signs operate upon signs, and become regulators in respect to one another” (Valsiner, 2001, p. 92). Signs are interdependent since each higher level of signs regulates the functioning of lower level (Valsiner, 2002). According to Valsiner (2001), the dynamic regulatory hierarchies entail two different processes: abstracting generalization and contextualizing specification. Through abstracting generalization, the sign becomes separated from the context in which it formerly emerged, and becomes transferable to other new contexts, assuming an “autonomous existence” (Valsiner, 2001, p. 90). These signs are maintained over time and act as a semiotic reserve for future needs of semiotic regulation, that is, new life situations, since “they give overwhelming meaning framing to a person’s understanding of the ongoing experience” (Valsiner, 2001, p. 95). In their abstract form, such signs are impossible to specify. However, they can be called upon to regulate specific contexts by a process of contextualizing specification. The example, “I would like to be optimistic,” may be situated at a lower level before the client entered therapy, but may also constitute a high-level organizer that rules the person’s actions and thoughts in the future. Signs at the lower levels can thus be developed into the higher ones through an abstraction process (abstractive generalization). On the other hand, higher levels are able to regulate particular contexts (contextualizing specification) (cf. Valsiner 2001). Refocusing the concepts of dominant narrative (White & Epston, 1990) and IMs from a semiotic-dialogical perspective can shed light on how meaning-construction processes constrain one’s day-to-day living and psychotherapeutic change. White (2007) argued that people who seek therapy “believe that the problems of their lives are a reflection of certain truths about their nature and their character, about the nature and character of others, or about the nature and character of their relationships” (p. 9). In the light of White’s reasoning, these truth discourses constitute a dominant narrative or narratives that subjugate the client, insofar as these rules or laws compose the main framework for his/her understanding of life experiences. Along these lines, they seem to work as macro-organizers of self’s meanings (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998), creating strong restraints to meaningmaking processes. Macro-organizers of meanings are higher order meanings, which work at an abstractive level, providing the person with specific rules of action and

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worldviews. In this sense, they seem to also be an evaluator of the person’s experiences and providers of morality judgment over them by statements like “I should” or “I should not.” These macro-organizers emerge in the client’s narratives, usually by the emphasis on a main theme, which can be a specific problem or a problematic situation, or even a set of recurrent themes, due to their “rigid generative processes” (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998, p. 73). So they originate applications of general rules (such as pessimism in Caroline’s case) to the daily life context, becoming dominating and restrictive of clients’ experiences in the extent that micro or daily narratives that clients narrate are contaminated by it (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). The established macro-organizer of meaning is at the foreground, and whenever new potential meanings emerge, they tend to decay, and no innovation develops. The use of this generalized meaning organizer has the consequence of stabilizing or even restraining the person’s meaning-making efforts, as “the application of only a few basic rules would generate homogeneity within a closed system” (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998, p. 73). Consider the following, Caroline’s self-narrative: I see myself as a rather negativistic sort of person these days, always thinking the worst, and I don’t trust myself that much . . . I feel gloomy and not wishing to socialize with anyone . . . I don’t see myself as willing or ready to face conquest, I feel myself impotent to fight against or for whichever, unable to go and search what I need . . . I feel kind of defeated, with no muscle to fight . . . I feel rather low . . . For instance, I haven’t got the slightest wish ever to undertake some sort of physical activity that I like . . . I know that I’ll be worrying about something else or I’ll be feeling that deep anguish, that uneasiness I see myself in, with my mind sort of frozen, blocked, and I won’t be able to do other things . . . There’s something inside me that prevents me from moving forward, have guts, feel the power . . . Last Saturday, for instance, I did nothing, absolutely no-thing, I was either on the Internet talking with Rachel [a friend], or who-whatever came by, I wanted to put the computer aside and study and I just couldn’t!

This self-narrative is highly contaminated by intense sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. The words “negativistic,” “gloomy,” “impotent,” “defeated,” among others, are clearly associated with a macro-organizer of meanings that demands and establishes rules for her life. The macro-organizer condenses the client’s usual ways of acting and reasoning. A macroorganizer can be challenged by the occurrence of exceptions to its rule, by the self or others’ suggestion (as the therapist). An exception to this meaning organization, that is, an IM, would be, for instance, experiencing feelings of well-being (e.g., “I’ve been feeling more cheerful these last few days, more at ease”).

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Direction of Meaning Construction The development of IMs into a new self-narrative, that is, a high-level organizer, depends on the direction of meaning construction across the therapy. Indeed, Valsiner (2008) advocates that “it is the direction of meaning construction—rather than the actual meanings constructed—that can tell us something about development” (p. 3), insofar as it mediates the construction of the range of possible future life-course trajectories. According to Valsiner, the direction can entail either semiotic attenuation or semiotic amplification. In semiotic attenuation (see Figure 5.1), the signs somehow related to the problematic macro-organizer inhibit either a given IMs’ meaning directly or the other signs (IMs) that maintain it. This process results in the disappearance or forgetting of a particular way of feeling or thinking. Ultimately, semiotic attenuation can foster semiotic elimination in which a particular experience becomes completely eliminated from one’s sphere of meaning making. Inversely, semiotic amplification refers to the expansion of a given innovative way of acting, feeling, or thinking. The expansion of an innovative way of acting, feeling, or thinking (e.g., “I would like to be optimistic”) can be fostered by a given IM (e.g., “I want to change”), which developed into a higher-order organizer (through abstractive generalization), orienting the possible range of variability of meaning construction in the future (through contextualizing specification). An IM can also be expanded by means of therapist interventions, which catalyze further elaboration of a particular IM (e.g., “Why don’t you want to be pessimistic?”) or enhance its meaning (“So, you want to be optimistic”; see Figure 5.2). Along these lines, each IM can be construed as a microgenetic bifurcation point (Sato et al., 2007; Valsiner, in press; Valsiner & Sato, 2006), in which the client has to choose between two directions: IMs’ attenuation or ampli-

I would like to be optimistic (IM)

I just can’t! I’m not able to control!

BUT I CAN’T (problematic macro organizer)

Figure 5.1  Semiotic attenuation (adapted from Valsiner, 2008).

Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy    161 “Why don’t you want to be pessimistic?” (amplification catalyser)

“I do not wish to be pessimistic (…) for pessimism is indeed unfruitful after all!” (IM)

“I would like to be optimistic…” (IM)

Figure 5.2  Direct amplification (adapted from Valsiner, 2008).

fication (see Figure 5.3). Of course, we are referring here to a choice that often occurs implicitly without conscious awareness. Looking at the therapeutic change as a developmental process, we argue that this microgenetic process (i.e., choosing a direction at each bifurcation point) may influence ontogeny by promoting change or protecting stability. When viewed from this angle, the importance of IMs’ elaboration Amplification

IM Bifurcation point between the opposites The PAST course

Attenuation

The PRESENT moment

Irreversible time flow

Figure 5.3  Bifurcational nature of IMs’ development (adapted from Valsiner, in press).

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acquires a new sense. What happens at each bifurcation point (IM) to determine which way the client takes? If the client becomes able to notice exceptions and they are amplified in therapeutic conversation, a new selfnarrative may be constructed. A network of exceptions could be elaborated from the construction of meaningful connections between them and turn into a new self–macro-organizer. Progressively, as successful therapy evolves, that which was the exception becomes the new rule for the client’s life (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). On the contrary, if the meaning of IMs is recurrently attenuated (as in mutual in-feeding situations), the problematic macro-organizers tend to promote semiotic maintenance and thus prevent novelty from occuring (Santos, Gonçalves, & Matos, 2011). In what follows, we will focus on the microgenetic processes underlying choosing a direction at each bifurcation point. The Dialogical-Dialectical Nature of Meaning Making Josephs et al. (1999) proposed a method to study the meaning-making processes at a microgenetic level, with the aim to explain them further. In the light of Josephs and colleagues’ (also Josephs & Valsiner, 1998) dialogical-dialectical model, the construction of meaning entails the regulation of dialogical relations between meaning complexes. The authors define meaning complexes as “signs (meanings per se) which present some aspects of the world, their implied opposites, and their qualifiers that are linked with either signs or their opposites” (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998, p. 70). By these signs, people act upon meanings in a given present context but also oriented to the future, by means of “meanacting (acting toward creating meaning)” (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998, p. 258). The person transforms the present meaning complexes into future ones in a process of negotiation of the tension or disequilibrium created between them. The starting point of this reasoning goes back to Alexius Meinong, who established the foundations of Gestalt thought in Austria in the 1880s, advocating the basic asymmetry between the two components of representation: the non-A operates as negativum in relation to A (see Josephs et al., 1999). By the light of this perspective, it is assumed that meaning complexes are composed by dual fields: the field {A} and {non-A}. These dual fields emerge together (explicitly or implicitly), being {A} the sign and {non-A} the countersign of {A}, as in {A} the foreground and {non-A} the background. The field {A}, being pessimism, is also associated with a whole range of its opposites—optimism, hopefulness, confidence, and such—defined by the field {non-A}, composing both the meaning complex {pessimism and nonpessimism}. We can understand the meaning of pessimism only by taking all possible opposites meanings into account.

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The field {A} is composed of a sign or signs with a specific meaning, to which we can relate synonyms and various versions by using semantic qualifiers (cf. Josephs & Valsiner, 1998). Qualifiers usually modify the meaning of the field, either opening it to transformation or closing it. So the meaning of the field {A} could be open for transformation by the use of qualifiers, which are signs that limit or modify the meaning of the field, such as “sometimes” or “all the time.” For instance, “I feel a bit worthless sometimes” is different from “I see myself as a rather negativistic sort of person these days, always thinking the worst.” The latter could be conceived as a macroorganizer of the meaning system, since it entails a sense of totality of the person’s life and actually closes the meaning complex to transformation. The {non-A} field emerges together with the previous {A} and includes its opposites, although in an unstructured or fuzzy way. It is contrasted with field {A}, which is clearly defined. This {non-A} field has also the potential of involving a “yet-to-be differentiated field of meanings-to-be” (Josephs et al., 1999, p. 265), as it links the present meaning with a future one. So, {A} and {non-A}, which can be thought of as as-is and as-if-could-be, are related to each other by an opposition that “is the basis for its change” (Josephs et al., 1999, p. 261), which can be either harmonious or tensional. When both opposites co-occur with no tension at all, they tend to close the meaning complex. On the contrary, if tension occurs, it enables the complex to transform, as it allows the establishment of dialogical relations with other meaning complexes. On the one hand, meaning transformation can occur through a process of growth of the {A–pessimistic} field. It can become progressively differentiated into {A′–defeated}, {A′′–impotent} or {A′′′–negativistic}. In these transformations, the similarity with the {A} field is maintained. Semantic qualifiers such as sometimes, only, every time, and always modify the meaning of the field {A}, opening it to possible transformations. For instance, only and sometimes open the complex to the {non-A} field, a still unstructured one that can assume a various range of meaning. Inversely, every time and always protect the meaning to evolve, stabilizing it and assuring its determinacy. On the other hand, the constructive elaboration of the field {non-A} can develop toward a separation of {A} by changing its nature, constituting an innovation from it. For instance, in the previous example, “I feel a bit worthless sometimes” ({A}), the word sometimes highlights that there are times in which she does not feel worthless. Hence, we can assume that the word sometimes corresponds to an elaboration of the field {non-A}. This elaboration on {non-A} increases the tension between the field {A: feeling worthless} and the implicit opposite field {non-A: not feeling worthless}, fostering the emergence of a new meaning complex ({B}), which establishes a dialogical relation with the first one. For instance, this new field ({B}) could be

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“I’ve been feeling more cheerful these last few days, more at ease, I don’t know, a little bit more predisposed.” To sum up, we can consider, for the purpose of this work, the field {A} the meaning complex that expresses the macro-organizer and {non-A} as the whole range of oppositions related to the problem as {nonproblem}. In therapeutic conversation, if the client chooses to elaborate on the field {non-A}, either by his/her intention or by therapist suggestion, it is most likely to convert to the development of a novelty, or to an IM, as some version of {non-A}. The elaboration of the field {non-A} can lead to another meaning field {B}, originating the meaning complex {Bnon-B}. We also assume that the field {B}, once formed, has a dialogical relation with a field {non-B}, which could entail features of the field {A}. Through the insertion of {Bnon-B}, a relation is established between the new meaning complex (IM) and the previous complex (macro-organizer), which leads to a contrast of the two meaning complexes. This contrast can take different forms depending on how the person regulates the [{Anon A} ⇔ {Bnon B}] relationship. Meaning making entails the regulation of dialogical relations between meaning complexes {A} and {B}. They can have dialogical relations of two different natures: harmonious or tensional. In harmonious coexistence, {A} and {B} can coexist without rivalry: That’s how I feel—weak, invariably sad, not thinking much of myself . . . “[{A}] and “It’s not what I do because what I do at work or at school, I believe I show some kind of value” [{B}].

The coexistence is clear when {A} is a determined statement and {B} does not imply any sort of tension. When tension is present, some kind of resolution is needed: Sometimes, with my boyfriend . . . I still let some things go by, because, well, I am still afraid of being that pain-in-the-neck sort of person, always insisting on this and that. Sometimes I still find it difficult to realize whether what I am thinking should be discussed with him or not, I remain in the twilight of the doubt, obscurity, is it really? Is it really not? [{A}] . . . but the truth is that I try to lead our relationship in a softer, easier way [{B}].

In this example, the use of the qualifier “sometimes” underscores that the statement “I still let some things go by” ({A}) is valid only for a specific moment. Then, a new meaning is elaborated by the reflection {B: “I try to lead our relationship in a softer, easier way”}. We can assume that Caroline resolved the tension between {A: “I still let some things go by”} and {B: “I try to lead our relationship in a softer, easier way”} by using the expression “the truth is” to en-

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sure that pessimism did not interfere. Therefore, the tension was resolved by the takeover of {A–pessimism}. As in the previous excerpt, people regulate the relations between meaning complexes by means of circumvention strategies (Josephs & Valsiner, 1998; Josephs et al., 1999). They are semiotic tools used by people instantly in the task of organizing the flow of everyday experience. They can strengthen a given meaning (semiotic amplification) or overcome it (semiotic attenuation). Their role is to give meanings a marginal or central importance, originating their maintenance or change. Circumvention strategies can act in a number of ways (for further elaboration, see Joseph & Valsiner, 1998). In what follows, we describe three circumvention strategies that we found useful to understand Caroline’s dialogical processes involved in IMs attenuation and amplification along therapy: 1. Circumvention of meaning by focusing on a competing goal and/or highlighting personal preferences can mean that the client bypasses a given meaning as he/she highlights a motivational goal that rivals the previous meaning (e.g., “[I see myself as a rather negativistic sort of person these days], [but] I want to improve! I want to go back to my old good self!”) 2. Circumventing of meaning by focusing on semantic qualifiers. These qualifiers can transform absolutist meaning into more relative ones (“I feel worthless, sometimes”), or on the contrary, can close meanings, turning them into more absolute ones (“I truly believe I’m worthless”). Needless to say, these processes can operate on the side of amplification of new meanings (IMs), promoting change, or on the opposite side, promoting stability. 3. Circumvention of meaning by challenging one macro-organizer with a competing macro-organizer. Client uses absolutist and determinist expressions, for instance “I must conquer it further,” which are followed by sentences that neutralize the former organizer as “But I just can’t!” From Meaning Maintenance to Meaning Transformation Meaning Maintenance The dialogical-dialectical approach was previously used to intensively analyze several poor-outcome cases (e.g., Santos & Gonçalves, 2009), in which stability and therapeutic failure were analyzed by means of the relations between the macro-organizer meaning—{Anon-A}—and the IMs—

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{Bnon-B}. These relations were regulated by the circumvention strategies that acted upon IMs, bypassing their meaning and making the innovation movement decay. We found that these two meaning complexes {A–the problem} and {B–the IMs} established a relation of mutual in-feeding over the therapeutic process. As clients narrated an IM, they immediately elaborated semiotic strategies that circumvented and, thus, attenuated its meaning (by minimizing, depreciating, or trivializing it), making a quick return to the problematic narrative. Let us take the example of George (Greenberg & Watson, 1998), whose depression was related to his feelings of inadequacy and inability to provide for his family. This view of himself as a failure permeated his relationships with significant others, namely, his mother, with whom he had a distant relationship. Throughout his therapeutic process, George experienced several IMs ({B}), but they were often followed by an RPM ({A}), as in the following excerpt: Session 7 G: I would like my mother to understand that perhaps one of the reasons why I have not been more forthcoming in visiting her in [country], is that the whole problem is, I just can’t afford it. I mean, you know, I can barely make it from one payday to the next. T: So then partly you would like to explain what might be perceived by her as a lack of interest? G: Yes, I think so. T: Yeah, yeah, so somehow conveying to her that it’s not a reflection of a lack of caring on your part . . . G: That’s right [IM {B}] . . . and yet it is this tremendous admission of failure. T: So part of you does not want to admit it? G: That’s right [RPM {A}—IMs attenuation by highlighting personal preferences].

In this sense, IMs did not evolve to the construction of other possible voices, but they seemed to work as shadow voices of the dominant one, allowing its perpetuation and closing down the meanings system. This style of interaction restricted a further elaboration (amplification), and new meaning complexes did not emerge, because they were absorbed into a vicious cycle. This process ended up strengthening the problem’s voice and maintaining its dominance not only because it was still present, but because it prevented other possible voices from developing.2

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Meaning Transformation RPMs may not always represent therapeutic stagnation. In fact, although some good-outcome cases presented a low percentage of IMs followed by RPMs (Gonçalves et al., 2011), other cases presented a percentage equivalent to good-outcome cases in the initial phase of therapy decreasing afterwards (Ribeiro, Gonçalves, Stiles et al., 2010). So, we became curious about which processes catalyze a semiotic-dialogical jump fostering innovation (J. Valsiner, personal communication, May 16, 2008) in good-outcome cases. Therefore, we analyzed several good-outcome cases as to what percentage of IMs, followed by RPMs, decreased throughout therapy. In these cases, until the middle of the therapeutic process, the problem’s position was frequently defended by the use of circumvention strategies that attenuated IMs’ meaning. The relation between the former narrative and the emergent one reverberates in an ambivalent relation within the self in a stable dynamic feedback loop, creating multiplicity of the self without any further development. The dialogical self is caught in the middle of this cyclical relation, the ambivalence of which cannot be overcome within the form itself. However, the asymmetric rigidified stability, which characterizes the dialogical relationships between the problematic macro-organizer and IMs in the initial phase, is progressively surpassed. In this section, we illustrate two forms of how IMs develop across the therapeutic process, surpassing mutual in-feeding (Gonçalves & Ribeiro, in press; Ribeiro & Gonçalves, 2010): 1. Surpassing Mutual In-feeding through escalation of the nondominant voice(s), thereby inhibiting the dominant voice 2. Surpassing Mutual In-feeding negotiating and engaging in joint action. For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that these two forms of surpassing mutual in-feeding may co-occur within the same case (being prominent in different phases of the therapeutic process) and share two common features: growth and/or constructive elaboration of meaning fields related to IMs (Josephs et al., 1999), and through it, they represent a form of IMs’ amplification (Valsiner, 2008). Surpassing Mutual In-Feeding Through Escalation of the Nondominant Voice(s) and Inhibiting the Dominant Voice In this case, the nondominant voice, present in the IM, takes over the formerly dominant voice, present in the problematic self-narrative, and becomes a dominant position in the self. Let us look at the following example

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of Sarah’s case (Greenberg & Watson, 1998), a client who was excessively reliant on the approval of others, dismissing her own desires and needs to the benefit of others—{Anon-A}. At the beginning of therapy, whenever she followed her own feelings and intuitions—{B  non-B}—that is, as IMs (nondominant voice) emerge, she frequently found herself consumed afterwards with doubts and guilt, and also afraid of not being appreciated by other people (dominant voice), returning to the problematic self-narrative—{Anon-A}. Mutual in-feeding decreased along therapy, as the nondominant voice became stronger through the growth of {B}, taking over the formerly dominant one, as it occurs in the following example. Session 10 S: I’m making sure, like for myself, that what I do, like if it suits me, that’s okay and that I don’t have to live up to anybody’s expectations . . . like to, I don’t know, do whatever about it if I decide to go for a change or that I need a change or whatever, and just like none of that trying to please people, I’m sick of it [nondominant voice]. T: So, yeah, like “I don’t have to be something that I’m not, just to please other people and I guess that’s where I feel the sense of who I am is okay . . . it’s okay to not please other people. There’s also the sense of it’s enough to be me.” S: It’s definitely, yeah, being less dependent on other people, even so, I guess it’s kind of always nice when you get some kind of acknowledgement or acceptance, but I also really consciously make an effort, like, to try, like looking at myself and what I do and get, like, satisfaction out of that and say, yeah, like I did this well and yes, I know I can do this and nobody else has to tell me that I’m an all right person [amplification of an IM, i.e., growth of {B}, by focusing on a competing goal; the nondominant voice takes over the formerly dominant one].

Surpassing Mutual In-Feeding Through Negotiating and Engaging in Joint Action In the second form of resolution, the two opposed positions present in mutual in-feeding are transformed in the dialogue between both. The positions are not just reacting to each other, one asserting its primacy when the other emerges; they are now involved in a negotiation process, listening to each other and transforming themselves in this dialogue, as it occurred in Jan’s case (Greenberg & Watson, 1998). At the beginning of therapy, whenever she expressed feelings of dependency and weakness (nondominant voice), that is, experienced IMs—{Bnon-B}, she frequently restated the need to be strong and independent (dominant voice), returning to

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the problematic self-narrative—{Anon-A}. Mutual in-feeding decreased throughout therapy, as the nondominant and formerly dominant voices engaged in dialogue and joint action, through the constructive elaboration of {non-B} and emergence of {Cnon-C}. Let us look at the following example from Jan’s case: Session 7 J: It was almost like I could sort of step back and look at myself [during a two-chair dialogue3] as two different people [referring to the nondominant voice and the dominant one] and I think these two people are in conflict all the time . . . the strong part of me—if anybody offers help, no, no, it’s okay, I can handle things on my own, I can do things on my own; and then there’s the other part of me that feels that always has to give in whether it’s because . . . to be liked or . . . you know, not to make confrontation or whatever . . . must have a split personality. T: So they’re always kind of going in opposite directions? J: A nice medium ground would be acceptable [constructive elaboration of {non-B}, instead of growth of {B}, as in Sarah’s case, and thereby emergence of {C- “medium ground”}, creating an opportunity of dialogue between the nondominant voice and the dominant one] . . . well, there’s got to be a happy medium where you can be strong at times and you can also be, you know, weak and be, you know . . . looked after and be feminine or the stereotype of what feminine is supposed to be like. T: So you can be a big girl and a little girl at the same time? J: By me giving in and being a little girl does not mean that I’m giving up something . . . why can’t it be the two of them working hand-in-hand [growth of {C}; nondominant voice and the dominant one engaged in joint action].

Final Remarks The semiotic-dialogical approach sheds light on the role of tension or disequilibrium, as a central feature of change (Josephs et al., 1999). We argue that it is essential for novelty to unfold within autoregulatory self systems, since it introduces a discontinuity or even a state of disorder that the person needs to resolve (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). Thus, each IM can be understood as a bifurcation point with two possible directions: attenuation—the maintenance of the old patterns, as we saw in mutual in-feeding situation— or amplification, the rupture of those patterns, allowing for an opportunity to transform and change them. Avoiding the ambivalence and the asymmetry of meanings that occur with novelties’ emergence can foster the domi-

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nance of monological and rigid I-positions as a strategy to promote a sense of continuity or coherence. The dialogical processes and mechanisms that allow evolving from one tensional state to another can have many possible forms. Thus far, we have identified two patterns of surpassing mutual in-feeding: in the first one, there is an escalation of previously silenced voices, thereby inhibiting the dominant voice; whereas in the second one, there is space to negotiate between opposing voices, transforming the dichotomy through mutual regulation. Other scholars have proposed similar dialogical processes. The first one is akin to what Hermans (1996a, 1996b) has called dominance reversal; whereas the second one is similar to what Stiles (2002; Stiles, Osatuke, Glick, & Mackay, 2004) has studied as a process of voices’ assimilation. A new dialogical encounter with an other (the therapist) and the confrontation of the several tasks of the therapy seem to facilitate self-innovation (Cunha, 2007). Indeed, the development of IMs has a lot to do with therapist intervention (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). On the one hand, given that contrast creates tension between meaning complexes and can promote the move toward IMs’ elaboration, therapist intervention played a pivotal role by separating IMs from the former macro-organizer, thus emphasizing the existing gap between them (Santos & Gonçalves, 2009). By doing so, the therapist invites the client to a “scenario of uncertainty and transitoriness,” which challenges the feeling of quasistability that people seek to maintain (Molina & del Río, 2008, p. 135). It was not our aim here to address the role of the therapist in surpassing mutual in-feeding, hence, future analysis of this process will be helpful for clinical practice. Acknowledgments This chapter was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), by the Grant PTDC/PSI/72846/2006 (Narrative Processes in Psychotherapy) and by the PhD Grant SFRH/BD/46189/2008. We are very grateful to Jaan Valsiner for his comments on the first draft of this chapter, and to Eugénia Ribeiro and Joana Senra for allowing us to analyze the videos of Caroline’s case, and to Leslie S. Greenberg and Lynne Angus for allowing us to analyze the transcripts of the George, Sarah, and Jan cases. Notes 1. Microgenetic analysis is a method to study how change develops in a certain period of time by a given individual. It involves intensive analysis of the trans-

Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy    171 formation mechanisms, and it has been widely applied in child development studies (Flynn, Pine, & Lewis, 2007; Siegler & Crowley, 1991). 2. The two voices involved in mutual in-feeding, as time goes by, may become more extreme, a process that Valsiner (2002) terms mutual escalating. Through this dialogical process, more than feeding each other, both {A} and {B} grow into over generalizing each meanings, entering a cross fire situation but maintaining the relation stable. In this sense, the {B} field seemed to be able to grow (through semiotic amplification) into {B′}, {B′′}, {B′′′} as different IMs. The evolution of the {B} meaning complex to {B′} {B′′}, and so on, cannot be considered as a form of development either, since the escalating seemed to keep the meaning complexes apart, with no dialogical relations between them, ending up in a monological outcome. This process of growing of the meaning complexes does not allow development, because it also maintains the meaning stability (Valsiner, 2002). 3. Two-chair work as its roots in Gestalt Therapy (Perls, 1951) and was further developed by Greenberg, Rice, & Elliot (1993). They use two-chair work to create a dialogue between two discrepant parts of the self or voices.

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174    A. P. RIBEIRO, M. M. GONÇALVES and A. SANTOS Ribeiro, A. P., Gonçalves, M. M., & Ribeiro, E. (2009). Processos narrativos de mudança em psicoterapia: Estudo de um caso de sucesso de terapia construtivista [Narrative change in psychotherapy: A good-outcome case of constructivist therapy]. Psychologica, 50, 181–203. Ribeiro, A. P., Gonçalves, M. M., Stiles, W. B., Mendes, I., Sousa, I., Angus, L., & Greenberg, L. S. (2010). Mutual in-feeding in emotion-focused therapy. Manuscript in preparation. Salgado, J., & Gonçalves, M. M. (2007). The dialogical self: Social, personal, and (un)conscious. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of social-cultural psychology (pp. 608–621). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press Santos, A., & Gonçalves, M. M. (2009). Innovative moments and change processes in psychotherapy: An exercise in new methodology. In J. Valsiner, P. C. M., Molenaar, M. C. D. P. Lyra, & N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 493–526). New York, NY: Springer. Santos, A., Gonçalves, M. M., & Matos, M. (2011). Innovative moments and poor outcome in narrative therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 11(2), 129–139. Sarbin, T. R. (1986). The narrative and the root metaphor for psychology. In T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp. 3–21). New York, NY: Praeger. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Sampling reconsidered: Ideographic science and the analyses of personal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of social-cultural psychology (pp. 82–106). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Siegler, R. S. (1995). How does change occur: A microgenetic study of number conservation. Cognitive Psychology, 25, 225–273. Siegler, R., & Crowley, K. (1991). The microgenetic method: A direct for studying cognitive development. American Psychologist, 46, 606–620. Stiles, W. B. (2002). Assimilation of problematic experiences. In J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Therapist contributions and responsiveness to patients (pp. 357–365). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Stiles, W. B., Osatuke, K., Glick, M. J., & Mackay, H. C. (2004). Encounters between internal voices generate emotion: An elaboration of the assimilation model. In H. H. Hermans & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The dialogical self in psychotherapy (pp. 91–107). New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge. Valsiner, J. (2001). Process structure of semiotic mediation in human development. Human Development, 44, 84–97. Valsiner, J. (2002). Forms of dialogical relations and semiotic auto-regulation within the self. Theory and Psychology, 12, 251–265. Valsiner, J. (2004). Temporal integration of structures within dialogical self. Keynote lecture at the 3rd International Conference on the Dialogical Self, Warsaw, Poland. Valsiner, J. (2005). Scaffolding within the structure of dialogical self: Hierarchical dynamics of semiotic mediation. New Ideas in Psychology, 23, 197–206. Valsiner, J. (2008). Constraining one’s self within the fluid social worlds. Paper presented at the 20th Biennial ISSBD meeting, Würzburg, Germany.

Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy    175 Valsiner, J. (in press). Facing the future—making the past: The permanent uncertainty of living. Valsiner, J., & Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS): How can psychology’s methodology become tuned into the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, C. Kölbl, D. Weidemann, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning: Theoretical and methodological advances in cultural and cross-cultural psychology (pp. 215–251). Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag. White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York, NY: Norton. White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York, NY: Norton.

Miguel M. Gonçalves, PhD, is associate professor at the School of Psychology in the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal). He has been interested in dialogical and narrative studies of the self and in narrative psychotherapy. He is presently developing a research program on the role that narrative innovations plays in the promotion of psychotherapeutic change. Address: University of Minho, Portugal, School of Psychology, Campus de Gualtar, Braga, P-4700, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected] António P. Ribeiro, MA, is a student in the PhD program in clinical psychology at the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) with a PhD scholarship from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology: reference SFRH/BD/46189/2008). His current research interests are theoretically focused in narrative and dialogical perspectives and their application to change processes in psychotherapy. Address: University of Minho, Portugal, School of Psychology, Campus de Gualtar, Braga, P-4700. E-mail: [email protected] Anita Santos, PhD, currently teaches research methods in psychology at ISMAI – Instituto Superior da Maia (Maia, Portugal). Her research interests are related to psychotherapeutic process research within the theoretical framework of narrative therapy and self-dialogical theory. She has been co-author of several papers in this scientific area, namely, with case studies and microanalysis of psychotherapeutic processes. Address: Av. Carlos Oliveira Campos–Castelo da Maia 4475-690 Avioso S. Pedro, Portugal. E-mail: anitasantos@ docentes.ismai.pt

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Narration and Discourse in the Clinical Dialogue Maria Francesca Freda and Fabio Milito Pagliara University of Naples Federico II–Italy

Abstract The authors analyze the nature of the clinical dialogue as a product of the signification processes working in the clinical relationship. This subject is discussed from a psychodynamic perspective enriched by encounter/confrontation with recent progress in semiotics. The authors, considering some contribution from semiotics, discuss the process of sense generation, and highlight the function of the different axis of sense production, with particular attention on the role of emotion in sense generation as hinted by the recent contribution on the pathemic axis. Among the various forms of discourse, the contribution focuses on narration. The narrative text produced within the clinical dialogue is not considered symptomatic of the inner world of the client, but rather it emerges as a product of the process of interpretative collaboration. From this consideration, the authors investigate which criteria are useful to orient the interpretative collaboration toward the production of knowledge in the clinical dialogue. This is a question that the hermeneutic perspective does not resolve and that has often earned it the accusation of relativism or of an aesthetic drift. The authors find in the concept of intentio operis, proposed by Umberto Eco, a fundamental restraint and direction to the infinite unfolding possibilities of the interpretative and transformative process in the clinical relation. In a psychological perspective, the intentio operis constitutes a relational proposal: the context, the matrix of meanings,

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 177–203 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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178   M. F. FREDA and F. M. PAGLIARA within which it is possible to explore the interpretative collaboration, the client problem, and its story. In this sense, the narration functions as a relational proposal, as organizer of the specific and contingent ties of reciprocity and at the same time reactualizes, in the hic et nunc of the narrative exchange, models of symbolization relative to the relationship between the narrator and the context of the narrated experience.

Introduction The status of language in idiographic science is paramount since it is the principal device of sense construction. Furthermore, research on language, as was noted by Karl Bühler, “is a classical example of a science that works neither idiographically nor in the manner of the nomothetic natural sciences, but has still proved its right to exist and its productivity” (1934, p. 23). This is an important hint on how to study something by understanding the general processes from the single act. In this perspective, the attention to the single case must not only be intended as recognition and transformation of the single patient subjectivity but also as a methodological tension oriented to creation of models and establishing criteria that are capable of interpreting and directing the specificity and singularity of an encounter between clinician and client. To identify these models and criteria, we try to connect the singularity of an individual actual case, in which a client-system (a group, a family, a community, a person) by asking for the intervention of the psychologist, constitutes itself as a unit and activates a relationship with the psychologist, to some general criteria that sustains, interprets, and transforms this relationship. By trying to make this connection, we meet the challenge of today’s idiographic science. The specific subject of our interest is clinical dialogue, understood as the product of specification processes working in the clinical relationship, which we will discuss from a psychodynamic perspective enriched by an encounter/confrontation with the recent progress in semiotics (Freda, 2008b). Among the various forms of language, we focus on narration, exploring the theoretical and methodological status of narration as a device of sense construction in the contingency of the clinical dialogue, well knowing that the relation between “sense making” and the “sense maker” cannot be ignored, and that it is a relation always mediated by a contextual condition (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2009). Narration and Discourse in the Clinical Dialogue The encounter between a psychologist and his client constitutes a communicative situation mainly based on verbal language. This language in the relation of intervention becomes the bearer and the builder of places far

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away in time, hidden and unimaginable for the mind (Arrigoni & Barbieri, 1998), but more importantly, it is a language that takes on a knowing and transforming function. The word, and its discursive forms, constitutes the device of sense building inside the relationship of intervention and also the instrument of its transformation. From the client to the psychologist and from the psychologist to the client, the process unfolds through the language used: in the clinical encounter, empirical events become real only through the meaning they assume in the discourse, and the relationship between client and psychologist is founded on the dialogue (Benveniste, 1966). The consequence of this point of view is that new knowledge in the clinical encounter can be created only through dialogue. When an individual or a group of individuals, or even an organization, turn to a psychologist, it is because they face a problematic situation; the first sharing of the problematic situation in most cases assumes a narrative structure in the psychological colloquy. From this initial narrative organization of the dialogue, we can have a mutual story, a story identified as problematic. All the protagonists of the relationship collaborate in the clinical dialogue for the production of narrative texts and, at the same time, such texts become a product of the clinical dialogue’s own evolution: • Client’s narrations, represented by the text constituted of his emotional and cognitive experiences, which find expression in discourses, in fantasies, in dreams and so on; • Psychologist’s narrations, constituted by the text, which allows the psychologist to think of the client’s narrations and to create connections through its models and its professional praxes; • Mutual narration, represented by the plot that the clinical dialogue takes on, is connected to the objectives of the intervention and which always presents itself as an open narration whose outcome is completely unforeseeable (Montesarchio & Margherita, 1998). Listening to and understanding a narration has always had to do with the psychological intervention. On the other hand, narration, and the narrative thought that substantiates it, is in its essence a mode of thought bound to the clinical situation because, by definition, it deals with discrepancy (Bruner, 1986, 1990; Smorti, 1994). Narration deals with violations of the norm, with what cannot be interpreted using a canon. Every narration is characterized by the fact that something happened, an event that led to an unexpected and unforeseen condition. Any critical event, and among these any traumatic event in the life of an individual, but also any change in role and duties, can be considered as a condition of a biographical breaking, a violation of a canonical course that causes a crisis in the consolidated meaning systems and in the self-image of the individual. Furthermore, clinical

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knowledge is strictly interconnected to forms of narrative thought: first, because each clinician collects a story that must be understood and interpreted; and second, because the encounter between a psychologist and a patient can always be regarded as the unfolding of a narrative discourse, as the construction of a choral text that must be read and interpreted to guide the subsequent actions. Treating Delegation When an individual or a group of individuals decide to ask for the help of a psychologist, they are motivated by a crisis in decision making (Grasso, 1998; Grasso & Salvatore, 1997), and they realize, maybe confusedly, that there is a hiatus between their own capacity to act and the target of their actions. From a narrative point of view, there is a violation of the canon of one’s own life, or one’s productivity, and the incapacity to identify a narration able to construct a new meaning of the contradiction. In general, the work of the clinical psychologist can be considered to consist of giving back to the client the capacity to organize one’s actions coherently with one’s objectives (Grasso & Salvatore, 1997; Grasso, Cordella, & Pannella, 2003). When a subject is in a condition of uneasiness for a crisis in decision making—a crisis that makes him feel unable to choose the best strategies to get out of this situation of impasse—the subject can decide to ask for the help of a clinical psychologist, starting a process of the delegation of his decision making to the psychologist so as to be able to recover it and to overcome his state of uneasiness: “Obviously an expert like you will be able to tell me what to do!” (Grasso, 1998). In the initial phases of the clinical dialogue, the narration is always a narration of a story, used to share the narrated problem and to delegate its solution to the psychologist. The dialogue may take different directions and focus based on how the setting of the interview influences the process used by the client to delegate the understanding of the problem to the psychologist. If the psychologist puts himself in the perspective of assuming such an act of delegation, then the dialogue will focus on the investigation of the presented problem’s characteristics. It is perspective-oriented to find an answer in which the knowledge value of the interview principally is in the expert acquiring information and taking notes in order to conclude a judgment. In such a case, the client’s request is received in its referential function of a problem to which the competence of the psychologist will have to provide a solution: from this perspective the narration is treated in its dimensions of fact—of story that refers to a violation of a canon that must be restored—or still, in a logic of judgment the narration could be treated as a structure of signs that refers to an elsewhere from which they are generated. It is an elsewhere that the

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psychologist must deduce by reading the signs/clues of the narrative text, in a model of work very similar to the semiotics of medicine; a work that will enable the psychologist to understand the client and to let the psychologist explain the client’s condition of illness to him/her in a much better way than the client can. The problematic event is treated within an individualistic perspective, which sees the violation of the canon as the responsibility of the individual in isolation from any context and is treated as a deviation from a norm that must be corrected (Montesarchio & Venuleo, 2005). Instead, when the psychologist puts himself in the perspective in which he will elaborate and give back the act of delegation to the client, then the dialogue will focus on the problem as signified by the client, in a semiotic perspective in which knowledge arises from the dialogue, and it is shared by the participant in the dialogue and is used to support conscious decision-making processes. In this latter case, we adapt a semiotic and dialogic perspective of the clinical encounter in which mental processes must not be explained but understood, meaning that mental processes must not be reduced to their internal or external causes but seen as expressions and a building of meanings to which sense must be given in the clinical dialogue in order to construct new connections. Narration is treated as a symbolic process, open to many meanings and unsaturated, in which the narrated story is a reference point—a starting point but also a point of return. In this perspective, the psychologist is not looking for a solution to the problem, but is searching for the reason that hinders the client from looking for a solution. In other words, the psychologist is searching for the reason that motivated the client in delegating to him (Grasso et al., 2003; Grasso, Cordella, & Pannella, 2004). Thus, the psychologist sees the need to explore the point of view of the client in order to understand how the client categorizes the problematic events that made the client ask for intervention. And there also appears the necessity of assuming the mental attitude that allows the client to narrate and the psychologist to formulate hypotheses on what she has heard and observed to promote the extension of the dialogue and to open up meaning and to give back what was understood. From this perspective, the narrations produced in the clinical dialogue, being symbolic processes, are treated, on the one hand as expressions of meanings, on the other hand as an opening of meaning that can be completed in the relation with the interlocutor. From the very first words, the clinical dialogue must be shaped as a dialogic process able to establish a relation and give back to the individual/ group/institution making the demand its categorization of the problem and its capacity to evaluate and really decide what to do. The clinical interview presupposes the constitution of a space-time put at the disposal of the encounter and of its happenstance, so as to give life to a device through which it will be possible first and foremost to listen-read the other, the text

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of its story, and the bipersonal field generated by the encounter, in a relation able to keep the a priori suspended. Then the narration of the clinical dialogue takes the configuration of a reorganization of meanings in which there is a rupture, allowing the opportunity to construct processes of semiotic connection oriented toward the exploration of the experience, to its construction, and to finding unthought-of nexuses. From this stance, the clinical dialogue becomes the setting in which to think about the nexuses between the narration and the critical dimensions of the experience that gave rise to the narration, and also an opportunity to think how, through the narrative process, the clinical dialogue itself is constructed. The Contribution of Semiotics For terms like narrations, stories, and tales, there are many possible meanings that must be written and shared to elude the risk of treating them as equivalent concepts, thereby losing the richness of the discussion and giving up the possibility of finding different and complementary ways to treat the narrative text. The interest of clinical psychology in this type of contribution is not, in my opinion, in the identification of principles of text deconstruction and in an abstract generalization of the rules of its construction, but in the possibility of developing useful dimensions to support a listening and understanding stance of the narration and discourses produced during the intervention with individuals, groups, or organizations. We will treat some contributions of semiotics and narratology with the aim of finding criteria to support the understanding of text produced during the clinical dialogue. Eco (1975) identified a specific vocabulary for the discipline: semiotics, which is a discipline that studies the processes of signification, that is, the way, by using different kind of languages, we give meaning to the world. Because of its object of study, semiotics is open to a strong interdisciplinarity that enables semiotics to converse not only with linguistics but also with psychology, sociology, and anthropology; in other words, with all the disciplines interested in understanding the processes of sign production. Eco proposed to define signs as “everything that, on the grounds of a previously established social convention, can be taken as something standing for something else” (p. 27). If the sign is the substitute of something else, then it’s a clue/signal for something (think, for example, of the flag as referent of the homeland), and signification can be conceived as a process; it’s the act that connects the significant to the meaning, an act of connection whose product is the sign. Semiotics is a theory of meaning, and in this, it is different from semiology, which can be defined as a theory of the sign. Semiotics therefore takes the attention from the sign as a clue of a referent to the signification as a system of procedures that produces signs, in which

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the sign appears as the result of a process that semiotics aims to study. As was highlighted by Barthes (1966), signification is an ambiguous and nonlinear process, since the connection between significance and meaning is based on a dialectic organized by levels and connections of adjacency. For Barthes, this complexity is limiting for an identification of the connection between referent and meaning based on spatial metaphors in which the referent is placed ahead of or above a meaning placed behind or below. As Eco (1979) highlighted very clearly, the narrative text is an open object, a message in a bottle destined to be interpreted. The signification of a narrative text must always be thought of in relation to its interpretation, since the text is a lazy machine, made of white spaces; of implicit meanings of presuppositions interpretable in different ways, depending on the competence of the reader; on the context where the exchange happens (Eco, 1975); and which we wish to highlight for the purposes of communication. Without the active intervention of the reader/listener, a narrative text will never be understood and interpreted; narrative texts tell stories that their readers/ listeners must interpret.1 The relation with a receiver is an essential condition, not only because of the text’s concrete communicative capacity, but also because of its signifying potential; until the encounter with the receiver they are only potential meanings. Furthermore, it’s not enough for a tale to reach its audience, it’s necessary that the receiver decides to be interested in it and that he wants to collaborate in understanding it, on the basis of what he has been told and how. The meaning, as we will see in the following pages, is generated on the basis of the emotional and cognitive interpretative keys suggested by the text and the ones activated in the reader/listener and which he concretely uses. On the basis of the perspective of the relation between text and reader, introduced by Eco, not only can we say that a text assumes the cooperation of a reader to actualize its meanings, but also that a text is the product of an interpretative process—part of its own generative mechanism. From the point of view of a semiotic analysis, there is no generation of causal explanations: to explain that a subject said something because he was nervous, or immature on the emotional development plane is a very different procedure from trying to understand how what was said constructs his world at that moment and in that relation (Sbisà & Massaglia, 2001). Axis and Levels of the Narrative Text Once created, the narrative text, be it written or oral, reveals its boundaries and its structure; in other words the coherence of its internal organization, an organization that is made of levels, contiguities, shapes, and structures of signification (Greimas & Courtés, 1979) hierarchically and

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strategically organized. We will see that in Greimas’s structural perspective, the generative process of the meaning goes through various levels. So, starting from the level of the emotional structures, we get to the semio-narrative structures and then to the discursive structures (Greimas, 1987; Greimas & Fontanille, 1991). In brief, we can say that the meaning changes its nature according to the levels at which it’s analyzed, the function for which it is used, and the position taken by the interpreter. Working on narrative texts and/or using narrative texts implies the necessity to find a matrix that helps to read the different dimensions of the narrative process and the texts that it generates, and to monitor one’s own process of listening, finding different levels to organize the meaning and choosing the levels useful for the purposes of the relation. To begin to search for the meaning of narrations within the clinical dialogue, we think it’s very useful to adopt two fundamental distinctions identified by de Saussure (1916). The first one is about the difference between langue and parole; the second one is about the difference between the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis. Langue is the code of the language, conventionally shared at the social level, while parole represents the actualization of the code within a discourse. This distinction is interesting for our discourse not so much due to the difference introduced between social code and individual discourse, but to the connection between potentiality and actualization, between the infinite potentiality of every code and the concrete and partial matter of each discourse. This is a perspective for which each single discourse represents the actualization of the infinite possibilities of the code and generates one of its transformations. The syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes in the first place differentiate between a vertical and horizontal direction going through the text (see Figure 6.1). The paradigmatic axis moves looking for the meaning along a vertical direction that associates single words or components of the text with missing words or components in the specific text but, for example, similar in terms of a semantic criterion. Along this axis, the word enchant can be associated with words, like enchantment and enchanted, but also to words like charm, magic, seduction, and so on. Along the vertical axis, the components of the text are associated in absentia, because one is associated with another that is not present in the text on the basis that they have some common aspects. On the paradigmatic axis the relation between the parts is governed by a principle of substitutability: we can use the word king, but we can substitute it with the word monarch. On this axis, there is also a process of symbol interpretation, treated as signs/clues of a buried meaning: elongated shapes represent a phallus, tales about authorities refer to the father, in which the elongated shape stands for the phallus, while the authority tales stand for tales about the relationship with the father. The paradigmatic axis moves

Paradigmatic axis

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A

girl

shouts

That

woman

whispers

The

lady

speaks

Syntagmatic axis

Figure 6.1  Paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes example.

like an arrow that pierces the center of the text component to connect it in a straight line with the other components. The syntagmatic axis, instead, searches for the meaning on a horizontal plane, in which the components of the text take on meanings because of the relations with the other components within the phrase or the sentence. The combinations of words within the phrase can be called syntagms, in which an element takes its value only because it completes or opposes the ones before or after it. Contrarily to the paradigmatic connections, the syntagmatic ones are connections in praesentia; in other words, the elements involved in the connection must be present in the text or in the phrase. The second characteristic is that the elements are connected by relations of completion/opposition. In this regard, the perspective of structural text analysis proposed by Greimas (1966) is really interesting. From this perspective, the search for meaning must not be oriented toward the sign or to one of the two axes, but must emerge as a process of abstraction, starting from the analysis of the structural relation between the signs (see Figure 6.2). Within this perspective, the level of narrative meaning of a text can be investigated beginning with the study of the relations of opposition and of conjunction between signs. Structural analysis allows the identification of thematic axis—elementary structures of semantic and syntactic order of text signification, which arise from the integration of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis. Let’s think of the word girl: this word, read from a paradigmatic perspective, can be associated with a virtually infinite number of

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Not Girl

Girl

Complementarity

Complementarity

Woman

Contradiction

Opposition

Not Woman

Figure 6.2  A Greimas Square applied to the concept of woman–girl.

other words. Now let’s think of the same word in two different discourses: Maria is still a girl, she cannot act as a woman, she must listen to her mother; or Maria is a beautiful girl, I noticed a boy ogling her. In the first discourse, the term girl is opposed to woman and draws attention to a thematic axis of the discourse regarding intergenerational relationships; while in the second discourse, the term girl is opposed to boy and lets a gender relationships thematic axis emerge. The two discourses are about different things that in no way could have been deduced only by referring to the term girl. It’s for this reason that the meaning of a discourse can be organized by starting with the recognition of the oppositions and conjunctions within it. The thematic axis works by searching for a common denominator between poles, like models of paradigmatic reconjunction between oppositions, and represents the process of categorization of the issues/objects being investigated within the specific cultural universe (Demaziere & Dubar, 1997). The Pragmatic Axis Still, while a semiotic of enunciation2 beginning with the works of Benveniste (1966) was developed in France in the 1960s, we can observe how in the Anglo-Saxon area, a pragmatic3 view of the linguistic interaction emerged. The works of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) elaborated the contribution on the theory of speech actions of Bühler (1934). Accord-

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ing to Austin, the adoption of a sign (or of a combination of signs) isn’t merely a predicative linguistic operation, but a communication act—a way of doing something by saying something. Because of this, the psychological value of a sign comes not from its semantic contents but from the function it assumes in the regulation of discursive exchange. In this pragmatic perspective, the language, the tales, and the concepts are the result of discursive processes and their unfolding in the various situation of everyday life—a constructive process of meanings done not only through material and cognitive practices but especially through discursive practices. Insofar as one message is proffered, it properly consists of a doing. If a phrase like the “Earth is round” predicates something about the world, phrases like “switch on the light,” or “I declare the meeting open” don’t say something about reality, but directly do something, they act on reality, entering it with the aim of changing it. It is an illocutionary function of language (different from a referential function) for which speaking coincides with doing something—asking a question, giving a warning, threatening, teaching, or suggesting something. Beyond the illocutionary function, the analysis of Austin highlights a perlocutionary function, which means that saying something coincides with producing certain effects on the interlocutor— persuade her, make him feel certain emotions, orient her thoughts and actions. This perlocutionary function seems to highlight a real manipulation process of the other through the discursive production that would also be clarified and studied in depth by other scholars. The scholar who more than others developed, in the semiotic field, this line of thought was Benveniste (1966), who introduced a semiotic of utterance. Uttering is the putting in discourse of the language; a language that loses the fixedness of its rules and, from its encounter with the speaker, begins to function, becoming discourse. The utterance considers subjects that, by speaking to each other, construct their subjectivity and their relationship. So, for example, if one says “I order you to get a glass of water for me,” not only is one performing a linguistic act with an illocutionary function of command, but one is positioning oneself in the relationship as someone with the power to give an order and putting the receiver in the role of one who can take it. In this way, one creates a hierarchy—a reciprocity in roles—in other words, one gives a shape to the relationship. In this sense, the utterance is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a semiotic one, that is, a phenomenon of signification of the self and of the relationship through the discourse. To speak doesn’t only mean to produce information, but first of all, it means to perform an action in which an enunciator connects an enunciatee with an object represented in the message. In the case of narration, the message is not valued for its informative value, but for the value that it carries in its inside, that is, always a value of truth. In this way, the enunciator is always a subject of manipulation who inscribes

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his value of truth in the message. At the same time, the enunciatee is not only a passive listener who sustains the message passively, but also assumes a judging function that evaluates the value of truth, accepts it, refuses it or, as in the case of the psychological work, makes it the object of thought. The Pathemic Axis and the Semiotics of Passions Another axis of signification of the text that has always been of interest for psychoanalysis and psychology and which semiotics has also autonomously begun to study in recent years, regards the aspect of passion. The perspective introduced by the semiotics of passions moves in a different direction from previous approaches connected as they were to a psychoanalytical reading of the texts. But, as we will see, it also presents various points of continuity with the semiotic and intersubjective hypothesis of the unconscious functioning of the mind. To understand the manipulative and constructive dimensions of the relationship, the discursive developments of semiotics need both theoretical definition and exploration in the field of passion (Hogan, 2006). Passion is a level in which the discoursive production places itself before the causingto-do in an area of the causing-to-be. And this is a causing-to-be that corresponds to a causing to take a passionate role. This passionate role assumes an important regulative function of the modalities used by the interlocutor to understand the language acts of the speaker. In fact passion, in the form of emotional tension, logically precedes every form of understanding and contributes to the generation of such understanding (Spaziante, 2007). While causing-to-do, through the language act, moves on a cognitive plane in which the truth value is presented and, for this reason, can be more foreseeable and easier to codify, causing-to-be presents many more unknowns and connects the linguistic action with the world of emotions at a different level. The reception of the meaning and the strength of a language act are interwoven with passions. Fabbri and Marrone (2001) assert that only at the level of passion analysis can we codify trust or mistrust, playfulness or mischievousness, hindrance and embarrassment about not being accepted, fear of danger, or quick reaction to warning signals. Another important aspect introduced in text analysis by the passion perspective regards the role ascribed to emotions and their relation with rationality. In accordance with the models of analysis of passion, the presence of emotions doesn’t always appear as a perturbation/disturbance of the cognitive and rational levels of discourse production; on the contrary passion is noticeably the fundamental presupposition, the ineliminable ingredient of every language act, as strategic as it can be represented. Passion seems to be an ingredient that both the strategic calculus and the passionate explosion of

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a love letter have in common. The current challenge of semiotics is, precisely, in distinguishing between the discourse of the passions and the forms of the passionate discourse, perturbed by passions, finding instruments and criteria to connect emotions and thought in the processes of construction and interpretation of both kinds of discourse (Fabbri, 1996). The way of signifying typical of passionate expressions can be retraced to what Greimas (1987) called semisymbolism, a kind of language in which the associations don’t happen between isolated elements, but between categories. In this sense, it seems to be placed at an interesting point of a continuum between pathos and logos, a point in which the emotionality becomes text, but not yet word (Freda, 2008b). This is an emotionality that expresses itself in a rhythm, in a thymic tension, in the reference to modal categories of will or of power, which underlie the text but can take many forms of discursive expressions. If from a choleric and aggressive discourse one shifts to shouting and then also to violent actions, what has changed is not the presence of a passionate structure of signification but the expressive modality within which this structure is manifested (Fabbri & Marrone, 2001), as well as the relation between thought and emotions, and therefore the possibility of putting them into discourse, not the passionate structure that underlies it. The passionate structure of signification can make itself word, but it can also make itself body. In this sense, the process of text construction can be interpreted as a semiotic process that generates itself, beginning with the body and the emotions that are transformed and organized by the putting into words. It appears evident that, with a semiotics of the passions, the logic of emotions and the logic of language/thought cannot be summarized merely as a contradiction in terms. The question cannot be solved by attributing to thought/language the role of gratification of a wish or a need of the logic of emotions, and the function of adapting to reality, and constructing the communicative efficacy of the dialogue. The emotions constitute a primum movens of the process of signification, more primitive precisely because they are more tied to the body, to the biological, to the first phases of the ontogenetic development, but actual and operating in each phase of existence. Lastly, starting from the passion in the consideration of texts ensures that the subjects are not treated in isolation. Passion suggests not considering the relation between speaker and listener as a one-way relation, because the tale is always the synthesis of two perspectives and can see an intersubjective sense in every discursive process. The Generative and Interpretative Process of Sense In light of what we have said, for an understanding of the connection between generation and interpretation of a narrative text, it may be useful to

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think of the cooperative narration as a process, organized in phases, which goes through hierarchically organized levels. During the generative process of the narrative text, it’s the signification process that mediates between levels and translates the pathemic requests into organized significant forms. The signification process is intended as a process of gradual differentiation and denotation. During the interpretative process, the reverse takes place—from more superficial levels of discursive utterances it goes to deeper propositional semio-narrative levels that Greimas and Courtés (1979) call the depository of fundamental significant forms, down to the emotional and pathemic levels on which the process of signification4 is founded. This structuring of the narrative text with levels is the process that enables the advance of an interpretative collaboration of the text, which from more immediate, explicit, and discursive levels, goes toward more generalizing, abstract, implicit levels up to homogenizing and emotional levels. It is a hierarchical perspective of decoding the narrative processes that places itself in a logic coherent with the reversed hierarchical perspective of the process of mental sense generation. In interpretative collaboration, the relation between the text and the discursive, semio-narrative, and passionate signification structures is not mediated by simplification but by abstraction; in other words, the search for text organization levels don’t advance through the composition of a summary but through a generalization process. Going backward through the process of sense generation means lingering over the semio-narrative levels, which are structures of deep signification and of an implicit nature, on which the more superficial levels of linguistic expression are founded, and then paying attention to the passionate structure level so as to notice where the emotions become thought and feed the narrative facts. Semiosis then recognizes a continuum that from corporeality reaches verbal language. Semiotic analysis of understanding a linguistic text, beyond the representations, images, and contents also concerns the emotions that give these sign constructions strength and reason to exist. Also for semiotics, the language of emotions is a fluid language, which in a mobile way takes form in various representations and become words in various discourses. The emotions give the processes of symbolization and linguistic transformation traces of their significant activity. Semiotic analysis therefore covers the ways the text and the discursive interaction seek to understand and try to propose a more explicit categorization of the processes in progress, making the effort to make their dynamics visible. The models and methods of semiotic analysis described above can be very useful in improving the methods and instruments used in the process of listening during the clinical dialogue, a process oriented to catching the semiotic clues of the process of narrative transformation of emotions. An attention to the semiotic clues of narrative text generation is designed to make this process explicit and to make its transformation possible in thought in the hic et nunc

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of the clinical relationship, and not to improve the linguistic and literary interpretation. The clinical dialogue, first of all, opens to that monitoring function defined by the semiotic scholars as the reflective function in which the narrator-self becomes aware of its narration. The hermeneutic interrogative on the meaning of symbols as signs is substituted by a transformative perspective in which the generative process of sense is based on a transformative function of thought that constantly works at joining and modulating meanings by connecting them to their emotional and passionate roots. The fundamental question that is posed is not what is the sense but how its generative process works. Semiotics Connections Narrating is always the sharing of a story. Every narrative structure is composed of a story, which is a concatenation of events through which one or more characters move, and a discourse, which is a particular series of enunciation acts designed to communicate the content of the story to someone. If the story is about a series of events and their relations of concatenation, the discourse is about the narration as a concrete way that orients the construction of meaning in the relation between a text and its readers/listeners. Stories, tales, and narrative discourses are then terms whose meanings are strongly interconnected, but that refer to different dimensions and different levels of organization of the meaning that we believe is important to differentiate in order to continue to construct the complexity of the listening register. In making this distinction between narrative figures, we will refer to the classification made by Genette (1972),5 which proposes a distinction between story, tale, and narration. The story is the dimension of the text that refers to narrated facts as a set of happenings in their logical and temporal succession. The story is the content of the tale; the tale is a structured set of actions and situations, in which a succession of real or fictitious happenings is concatenated. The tale is the narration; the narration (or discourse) is the action itself of telling a story to someone, generating, precisely, a tale. The narrative act is placed along the discursive axis of text production. Each narration constructs meaning through the communication of a content, in other words, of a story, organized in a tale by means of a narration. In this sense, we can also say that the narration, through the frame of the story, takes on a referential function that lets it speak of the world—of what happens outside the text. Through the frame of the tale, it takes on a function in which the narration speaks of itself, of the processes of message coding, of its coherence, of its author, and lastly, through the institution of

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a discursive frame. It takes on a function in which the narration speaks of the processes of interpretative collaboration and constructs the progress in the relationship (Mishler, 1986, 1995). To understand narrations means to go through their various components and their various levels by the use of semiotic connection functions, in the sense of processes of building links that can support signification and resignification processes; and contextualization processes, in the sense of the connection of the text to the dimensions of the intersubjective field and of the context that generated it. The action of the person listening to narrations in a dialogue with the intention of receiving, understanding, and transforming, cannot be understood as process of unveiling meaning, but as the participation in a process of sense building through the use of processes of semiotic connection between levels and fields of the discourse and through a process of contextualization of the text in the emotional, intersubjective, and cultural processes that founded it. In going from one connection function to another, we can hypothesize going from a process of construction and analysis of the narration meanings toward a process of analysis and construction of the narrating sense.6 If the meaning of a narration is, indeed, traceable in its semantic content and in the specific structure that the narrative plot confers to such content, the sense (in our case, the sense of the narration) is instead concerned with the value that the narrative meaning takes in the specific contingency of the discursive exchange powered by the narration (Salvatore & Freda, 2011; Salvatore, Tebaldi, & Poti 2008). What is, in other words, the meaning of the action of narrating that story in the hic et nunc of that relationship? How does narration construct the meaning of the relationship? We have developed understanding the meaning of a narration that happens in the clinical dialogue because of extensional operations founded on referential semiotic connections referring to the story and to a mastery of encyclopedic knowledge about the narrative objects, or because of the mastery of models of intrigue, namely, genres or plots, referring to the tale and to the construction of models that can connect the parts of the text with everything else (Freda, 2004, 2008a, 2008b). In this work, we will focus our attention on the processes of contextualization of the narration within the clinical dialogue; in other words, on the processes that govern the understanding of the sense of narrative action, which is the sense that emerges from telling the story in the hic et nunc of that relation. The sense is about the relationship and can be understood in terms of interpretative collaboration processes and of discursive processes; in other words, only by assuming the narration as a criterion that orients a relationship and that constructs a discursive context.

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The Interpretative Collaboration in the Clinical Dialogue In the process of narrative construction, the other (the listener) takes on the fundamental role of collaborator. While he spins his tale, the client/ narrator takes parts of an interpersonal relationship and continuously modulates its interlacing in the reason of the real or imagined reactions of its interlocutor; in so doing, some passages will be emphasized, while others will be reduced and made residual. The participation, however, does not explicate itself only as a process of implicit modeling of the narrative action, but also in the dialogic sense as a process of co-construction of sense (Sarbin, 1997). The listener is the one who contributes to the meaning of the text through the interpretation of what is written between the lines. In this sense, every text is a construction of an intersubjective field that takes its form due to a plot that orients toward collaboration with an interlocutor. As we already said, Eco (1979) calls the text a lazy machine that asks the reader/receiver for great cooperation to fill the space left blank representing the unsaid or the already said. In this sense, the text is just an anticipatory machine: The text is then interwoven with blank spaces, interstices to fill, and the person who uttered it anticipated that they would be filled and left them blank for two reasons. First of all because a text is a lazy (or economical) mechanism that lives on the surplus value of sense introduced by the receiver, and only in cases of extreme didactic preoccupation or extreme repressiveness is the text complicated by redundancies and further specifications up to the limit wherein the usual rules of conversation are violated. . . . A text wants someone who helps it to function. (Eco, 1979, p. 52)

The interpretative cooperation then is the relational field generated by the intervention request itself. Comprehension and transformation of this collaborative process open the relational and dialogical nature of the clinical encounter, which is different from an individual perspective focused on the understanding of the patient and of the text produced by the patient itself. The progression of the clinical dialogue is oriented toward the construction of resources of sense through processes of elaboration and signification of the “ the blank spaces” of what is not said (or that is thought to have already been said and so is taken for granted). Through this process, the psychologist can introduce elaborations of sense into the dialogue, hoping to “fill the gap.” He can propose a missing link that completes the interpretation and opens the door to resignification. The psychologist in the clinical dialogue promotes a transformation of the unsaid (starting from the already said) in the direction of what is yet to be said. He assumes an explorative attitude oriented toward opening a space of words for what usu-

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ally stays in the background, thus creating a hermeneutic circle that could lead to a symbolic transformation of what has been in a presymbolic state and therefore could not have been thought. This is a process that is made possible by an alternation of phases of sense opening—of uncertainty and confusion—with phases of its organization in which the parts and the whole organize themselves in a new configuration of sense, which cannot be called definitive by any means. In this sense, the interpretative collaboration creates a transitional space in an intermediate place between the world of fantasy (which belongs to the inner space of the subject) and the space of reality (where the narrated fact and the interlocutor actually reside). It’s an intermediate in which what is real is mixed up and confused with what is created by the subject. According to Winnicott (1953), this is the space in which creative play and all the cultural manifestations are located. Interpretative collaboration is found in this transitional area in which the other (the listener) takes on a subjective character as constructed by the narrator and its point of view, and at the same time, an objective character as part of the external reality: it presents the quality of a frontier, of a transit zone between what is inside the narrator and what is outside—the object narrated and the interlocutor. The concept of transitional space enables us to understand in a very intuitive way the process that lets us detect traces of the emotional life that moves our psyche, and traces of the vicissitudes that led to its sharing within the relationship. It’s in this intermediate area that the relationship between a narrator and a listener can promote a new construction of sense. An interpretative collaboration that, if its transitional nature can be recognized, can accompany and support the development of knowledge of the external world—the capacity to speak about it—while keeping the creative vitality typical of our mind’s emotional way of being. The discourse that is developed between a psychologist and the client can gradually lead the relationship to the recognition of the reality, of a plurality of points of view, of the not-me, of the autonomy of the narrator and the listener, to support a gradual use of the other recognized in its alterity, and lastly, can support the development of symbolic thought. The result of the knowing process within the clinical dialogue is not simply in the reality of the problem or in the historical past of the client. The result of the knowing process is a perspective on the reality or, more precisely, the reality proposed by means of a perspective (Shafer, 1992). But what perspective can be assumed within the clinical dialogue, and what is its heuristic value? What criteria are useful to orient the interpretative collaboration toward the production of knowledge about the problems submitted by the client and utilizable in the construction of his life project? This is a question that the hermeneutic perspective does not solve and that has often gained it the accusation of relativism7 or of an aesthetic drift. It is

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a question that, in my opinion, can find in the discursive perspective proposed by semiotics an interesting point of anchorage and expansion. The Narrative Discourse The notion to narrate etymologically comes from gnarus, which means to make known, to know precisely. The term discourse, instead, comes from the Latin discurrere, which means to run around, to travel; it refers to a narrative act, a way for individuals to take position in relation of themselves and others. The subject, according to Benveniste (1966), in every communicative situation, uses words and discourse to represent itself as it wants to see itself, calling the other person to verify this. Its discourse is invocation, appeal, at times vehement solicitation of the other person, so as to become an individual for the other person. We can then share the opinion of Genette (1972), whose hypothesis is that discourse is the way of putting narration into action, and that this action must develop between partners, instituting a relationship. In a discursive perspective, the self and the other are treated as subjects with a definite role due to their positioning within the discursive praxis (Markova, 2006). Talking about oneself to a psychologist is very different than doing it with a doctor, and this is even more different, at least one hopes, than speaking to a friend. In this sense, narration is a generative process of sense that organizes itself starting from the specific positioning assumed by the narrating subject and from the relational reciprocity instituted, from that point of view, with its interlocutor (Hermans, 2001). In this logic, the narration is conceptualized as the organizer of a discursive exchange anchored to the specific dimensions of the context that generated it, band which it helps to define with its unfolding; every narration indeed institutes a matrix of meanings around its target8 and invites a certain use to be made of the narrative text (Freda, 2004, 2008a). The level of the discourse introduces, principally in its oral form, a fundamental pragmatic aspect into the narration, that is, a conative function designed to provoke a specific reaction in the interlocutor or the audience (Smorti, 1994). We refer to the set of text strategies through which the narrator tells his story so as to be believed and to provoke in the listener the desired effect. Each speaker, at the moment when s/he turns into a listener, makes a meaningful turn toward the world of the latter, which involves substantial adaptation of the discourse. The listener enters the words of the speaker from the very first moment because the text moves strategically to create a model reader9 (Eco, 1979), who is able to cooperate in the actualization of the meaning as the author thinks, and then to move toward the understanding of the text in the same way the author moved in its generation. Anticipation

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on the interpretative strategy of the reader is already done during text production. The text is part of the real world, but it is also a machine to create new possible worlds (those of narrated experiences) of which we have already spoken, but also those of the anticipation of the reader/listener. We refer to a factivity of the text toward the reader; indeed the text not only anticipates its model reader but, in a certain sense, it institutes it. Anticipating one’s reader doesn’t mean hoping that he/she exists somewhere, but it means constructing a discursive strategy so as to construct him/her. The text, furthermore, doesn’t model its reader only in cognitive terms, but provokes in him/her a series of emotions and states of feeling; in other words, actualizes a system of categories that guide the processes of text comprehension. The narrative text positions itself as the matrix of a possible world, but also as the matrix of a relationship interested in this world. The Relational Proposal Stirs Narrative Discourses If we continue our argument along the lines of Eco (1990), interpretation is a process that is not only designed to decipher the contents and the blank spaces of the text, but also to establish the emotional and cognitive strategies of the discourse and how they construct the relationship. An interpretation of narration is founded on the dialectics between understanding the meaning of the text and understanding the sense of its unfolding in the communication. The text evokes its significant potentiality through the recipient. According to Eco (1979) an intentio auctoris, which refers to the reconstruction of the effective intentions that oriented the author in the construction of the text, and an intentio lectoris, as the infinite possibility of interpretative unfolding of the text in the process of interpretation, must be distinguished. This starts from the intention and the point of view of its reader, and finally, in an intermediate space between these two positions, which can be identified in the intentio operis due to which the text becomes an object and parameter of its interpretations (Eco, 1979). We could say that a good treatment of the narrative text must help to understand the intentio operis, in the sense of an invitation, which the narrator makes to the reader, to assume the version of the mind instituted by the narrative process and to share, in a specific discursive dynamic, a specific version of the problem narrated. In a psychological perspective, the intentio operis constitutes the context—the matrix of meanings—within which it is possible to explore the interpretative collaboration—the client problem and its story. The narrative text produced within the clinical dialogue acts as a symbolic emotional construction of a relationship (Carli & Paniccia, 2003), and so it constructs

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the field and the coordinates of its interpretation. This context is interesting because it works as a limit (Eco, 1990) and a criterion for the unfolding of the interpretative process. This limit is placed on the infinite listing of interpretative procedures that can be generated both in those models that use the text looking for hints that speak of the author and his/her intentions, and in those models that consider the text as pre-text to the infinite possibilities of the unfolding of interpretative cooperation. In a discursive perspective, the narration time is a synchronic time in which the past is joined through the relationship with the listener and with the present, and through this relationship is reactualized, founding the processes of the symbolization of the discursive field. In this sense, the narration functions as a relational proposal, as organizer of the specific and contingent ties of reciprocity and at the same time reactualizes, in the hic et nunc of the narrative exchange, models of symbolization related to the relationship between the narrator and the context of the narrated experience (Freda, 2004; Freda & Esposito, 2007). In this sense, understanding doesn’t mean reconstructing the historical world where the events happened, but asking oneself to put the event into words (Corrao, 1987), recognizing the emotional matrix of sense in which the word is generated. It’s about treating the discursive field as a semiotic matrix through which to give sense to the words, making the past present in the light of the perspective in which the actual relationship is trying to construct a future. This constructive function of connection between narrator and context can be left in the background of the clinical dialogue and then acted out in the relationship, concentrating the analysis and the use of the narrative production on the referential functions of the problem analysis and/or of expansions founded on the processes of sense co-construction, or can be assumed as a perspective guiding the interpretation processes and the use of narrating in the clinical dialogue. We share the thesis of Eco (1990), according to which the consideration of the intentio operis, psychologically read as semiotic context, constitutes a fundamental restraint and direction to the infinite possibilities for the unfolding of a text’s interpretative and transformative process. In this sense, the clinical dialogue moves on the tracks of meanings discursively generated in the relationship between self, other, and the object of the narration. It is a hermeneutic circle that not only connects the part with the whole, but that also anchors the part and the whole to the discursive field that underlies it. The interpretation of a text must be done not only in terms of what the text says but also in terms of what the text attests and of the way in which attesting it steers the present relationship and proposes a reading of the object narrated. The work done on the traces of the intentio operis favors a restructuring of the discursive field with the consequential generation of new opportunities of sense, which can also strengthen the use of the context and the guiding

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toward the purpose. When we are in a discursive perspective, there is a widening of the borders of interpretative collaboration, until they go beyond the bounds of the text. In a contextual perspective, the narration takes back all its complexity, and the transference assumes the characteristic of a relational proposal anchored to the context and to the object of the narration. On a discursive plane, for the understanding of the narration to evolve, there must be the activation of a metaregister, in which the discourse can think of itself, in which beyond the understanding of the meaning of what is narrated, one takes the sense of the unfolding of that narration exactly then and exactly there as the object of reflection. This evolution is seen as the evolution of the discursive field itself, a transformation in the way of understanding the triadic relation between self, other, and the object of the narration. Contextualizing the Clinical Dialogue We have underlined that each narration institutes a matrix of meanings around its interlocutor and conveys the invitation to make a certain use of the narrative text. The narration of a client received in a psychologist’s rooms does not escape this rule. We have hypothesized that with his/her own way of semantically and emotionally organizing the recounting of the events, the client tries to solicit the psychologist to assume the position of narratee prepared for him/her by the text. The difference between the narration that is a request for intervention and the narration done in another communicative context does not actually lie in its contents and not even in its expressive modality, but in our opinion, which resides in the use suggested by the psychological setting. The psychologist, unlike other listeners, will be called to read the matrix of meanings instituted by the narration and to set up a discursive context in which it can be gradually thought, instead of acted. As we said at the outset, a person turns to a psychologist on the basis of their interpretation of the problems and because of a hypothesis on the role that the consulting psychologist will take in supporting a solution of the crisis. The identification and the definition of a problematic condition is never, indeed, the photograph of a given reality; people construct theories that can explain and interpret their own crisis conditions. Each problematic condition is defined by a system of meanings, organized by a symbolic model that substantiates the problem and expresses a point of view. More than taking a set of contents into the relationship with the consultant, the narration of the events is substantiated as a trace of the signification processes of the crisis and what generated it, and is actualized as a proposal of a modality of relationship. We hypothesized that a request for intervention emerges in the presence of critical events, which, in narrative terms, can be understood as the condition of violation of the operative and

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emotional canon that guides a relationship and/or a social practice. The request of intervention emerges, then, in a condition of checkmate of the narrative transformation within the relation between the person making the request and the organizational context. In the relation with the psychologist, through his own tale, the client tries to reestablish the matrix of meanings that led to the request for intervention when he entered the crisis. In this sense, the narration of the client solicits the consultant, on the plane of desire, to assume the sharing of his own point of view (Salvatore, 2004). It is a narration that defensively orients itself toward reestablishing the lost daily nature and which only gradually will assume its creative and transformative function through the proceeding of the work of recognition and expansion. This is possible only if, on the plane of praxis, the work proceeds on the basis of symbolic connections between the various planes of experience and of the discursive field. Indeed, each narration creates an emotionally saturated relational proposal that can be acted upon or assumed to be the object of thought and transformation. The discourse set up by a request for intervention can therefore be seen as the integration of two moments represented by the there-and-then of the narrated events and by the here-and-now constituted by the relationship between whoever makes the request and the psychologist (Carli & Paniccia, 2003). The there-and-then of what is narrated can be understood and categorized through an encyclopedic logic that makes use of generalizing categories, while the here-and-now can be understood through an idiographic logic that refers to that specific relationship in its spatial-temporal collocation. To identify the intentio operis means searching for that place in the discursive field where the past becomes present, where case history become the case, and where the historical matrix of the processes of signification is actualized in an orienting strategy of interpretative collaboration. The analysis of the discursive process as organizer of the hic et nunc of the relation of intervention, taken in its pragmatic dimension but also, and especially, in its pathemic dimension, lets the psychologist come into contact with the mental and intersubjective situations mobilized in the narrative field by the meeting between a narrator, an interlocutor, and an object of the narration. In fact, the purpose is not to discover the truth of a story but to put a discursive process that is alive and present into a historical perspective. The extension of the knowledge of the client on his self and on his problems, on the functioning of his relations, on the connection between past and present, is an indispensable aspect of the clinical dialogue. However, in order for the dialogue to promote the change that is necessary, it is still not sufficient for the relationship to become a place of narrative transformations in which new versions of the experience can be narrated and in which a signification of the experience can take a form that the client feels able to encounter in the future. It is necessary for a category of problems to be-

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come a discourse, and that a relationship is willing to assume this discourse as the field for working toward a transformation. Notes 1. We have spoken of text and reader, but we can use the same logic for teller and listener, which are also closely connected. Each written text needs a reader actualizing its meaning, making it appear, just as each oral narrative text needs a listener to listen to and receive it. 2. The utterance makes possible the functioning of language through an individual act of use (Benveniste, 1966). 3. In the linguistic ambit, pragmatic is about the analysis of language in action through the study of the effective realization of discourses and of the effects exercised on the interlocutor. 4. So it’s fundamental in a structural perspective of analysis to think of the tale and the text that it produces as a hierarchical structure organized in levels, which structural semiologists see as two levels: the narrative level and the discursive one. If the discursive level is the one in which stories assume a spatial-temporal and specific actorial determination, the narrative level, or better yet, the semio-narrative level, is that of the structure that generates the sense; a level that is below the one that we actually read and listen: “the depository of fundamental significant forms” (Greimas &Courtés, 1979). The semio-narrative structures are abstract logical-semantic structures, destined to actualize in specific semantic and syntactical forms that are manifested at the most superficial and concrete level of the discourse. The reflection on the structural organization of narrations finds its origin in the analysis done by V. Propp (1928) on a corpus of Russian fables. 5. Genette is considered the founder and most authoritative representative of a discipline that is situated in the semiotic ambit and goes under the name of “narratology.” 6. A similar distinction is made in the ambit of hermeneutic philosophy between sense and significance by Betti (1962) and in the ambit of literary criticism between meaning and significance by Hirsch (1967). 7. I don’t think that this question can be helped by a restriction of the possible narrative versions through, for example, the reference to a limited number of foreseeable story lines as was proposed by Shafer (1992), because this would be a new straining of the sense potentiality within the clinical dialogue. 8. As target of the discursive strategy, the listener is called narratee. The narratee is the listener inside the text. 9. According to Eco (1979), the text is the result of a strategy by the author designed to let his reader do a series of operations to let him understand the meaning of the text in the way intended. These anticipatory strategies on the actualization of the text in the interpretative cooperation are called by Eco, respectively model author and model reader. “The model reader is a set of happiness conditions, textually established, which must be satisfied so that a text can be fully actualized in its potential content.” (p. 62, emphasis in original)

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References Arrigoni, M. P., & Barbieri, G. L. (1998). Narrazione e psicoanalisi. Un approccio semiologico. [Narration and psychoanalysis. A semiological approach]. Milan, Italy: Raffaello Cortina. Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Barthes, R. (1966). Introduzione all’analisi strutturale dei racconti. [Introduction to the structural analysis of tales]. In L. Del Grosso & P. Fabbri (Eds.), L’analisi del racconto [Analysis of the narrative] (pp. 13–34). Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Benveniste, E. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale [Problems in general linguistic] Paris, France: Gallimard. Betti, E. (1962). L’ermeneutica come metodica generale delle scienze dello spirito. [Hermeneutics as a general methodology of spiritual sciences.] Rome, Italy: Città Nuova. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possibile worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bühler K., (1934) Sprachtheorie. Die darstellungsfunktion der sprache. [Theory of language: The representational function of language ] Jena, Germany: Verlag von Gustav Fischer. Carli, R., & Paniccia, R. M. (2003). L’analisi della domanda [Request analysis]. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. Corrao, F. (1987). Il narrativo come categoria psicoanalitica. [The narrative as psychoanalytical category] In F. Corrao (Ed.), Orme. Contributi alla psicoanalisi Vol. I. [Traces. Contribution to Psychoanalysis] (pp.180–189) Milan, Italy: Raffaello Cortina. Demaziere, D., & Dubar, C. (1997). Analyser les entretiens biographiques. [To analyze biographical interview] Paris, France: Armand Colin. de Saussure, F. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale. [Course in general linguistics] Lausanne, Switzerland and Paris, France: Payot. Eco, U. (1975). Trattato di semiotica generale [A theory of semiotics]. Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Eco, U. (1979). Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi [The role of the reader: Explorations in the semiotics texts]. Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Eco, U. (1990). I limiti dell’interpretazione [The limits of interpretation]. Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Fabbri, P. (1996). La svolta semiotica [The semiotic turn]. Rome-Bari, Italy: Laterza. Fabbri, P., & Marrone, G. (2001). Semiotica in nuce. Volume II Teoria del discorso. [Semiotic in brief. Volume II Discourse theory] Rome, Italy: Meltemi. Freda, M. F. (2004). Metodi narrativi e formazione professionale: Connettere e contestualizzare. [Narrative methods and vocational training: To connect and contestualize]. In B. Ligorio (Ed.), Psicologie e culture. Contesti, identità ed interventi [Psychologies and cultures. Context, identity and intervents] (pp, 263–287). Rome, Italy: Carlo Amore. Freda, M. F. (2008a). Understanding narrative role in depicting meaning and clinical intervention. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout-Yagodzynski, & J. Clegg

202   M. F. FREDA and F. M. PAGLIARA (Eds.), YIS Yearbook of idiographic Science (Vol. 1, pp. 81–94) Rome, Italy: Carlo Amore. Freda, M. F. (2008b). Narrazione e intervento in psicologia clinica [Narration and intervention in clinical psychology]. Naples, Italy: Liguori. Freda, M. F., & Esposito, G. (2007). Setting narrativi dell’intervento in psicologia della salute. [Narrative setting of intervention in health psychology]. Psicologia di Comunità, 2, 53–70. Genette, G. (1972). Figures III. [Figures III. Discourse of the narrative] Paris, France: Seuil. Grasso, M. (1998). Il colloquio in psicologia clinica [The colloquy in clinical psychology]. In G. Montesarchio (Ed.), Colloquio da Manuale [Colloquy by the Rulebook] (pp. 55–72) Milan, Italy: Giuffrè. Grasso, M., Cordella, B., & Pennella, A. (2003). L’intervento in psicologia clinica [The intervention in clinical psychology]. Rome, Italy: Carocci. Grasso, M., Cordella, B., & Pennella, A. (2004). Metodologia dell’intervento in psicologia clinica. [Methodology of the intervention in clinical psychology]. Rome, Italy: Carocci. Grasso, M., & Salvatore, S. (1997). Pensiero e decisionalità. [Thought and decision] Milan, Italy: Franco Angeli. Greimas, A. J. (1966). Semantica strutturale [Structural semantics]. Milan, Italy: Rizzoli. Greimas, A. J. (1987). De l’imperfection [About impefection]. Paris, France: Fanlac. Greimas, A. J., & Courtés, J. (1979). Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage. [Semiotics and language: An analytical dictionary]. Paris, France: Hachette. Greimas, A. J., & Fontanille, J. (1991). Sémiotique des passions: Des états de choses aux états d’âme. [The semiotics of passions: From states of affairs to states of feelings] Paris, France: Seuil. Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Truth and method in interpretation. Washington, DC: Philosophy Education Society, Catholic University of America. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7, 243–281. Hogan, P. C. (2006). Continuity and change in narrative study. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 66–74. Markova, I. (2006). On “the inner alter” dialogue. International Journal for Dialogical Science, 1(1), 65–81. Mishler, E. G. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mishler, E. G. (1995). Models of narrative analysis: A typology. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 5(2), 87–123. Montesarchio, G., & Margherita, G. (1998). Il colloquio: Le strutture narrative [The colloquy: Narrative structures]. In G. Montesarchio (Ed.), Colloquio da Manuale [Colloquy by the rulebook] (pp. 115–130) Milan, Italy: Giuffrè. Montesarchio, G., & Venuleo, C. (2005). Narrazioni di gruppo: Uno strumento per negoziare comunità possibili [Group narrations: An instrument to negotiate possible communities]. Psicologia di Comunità, 1(1), 85–90. Propp, V. (1928). Morfologija skazk [Morphology of the folk tale]. Leningrad, Russia: Academia.

Narration and Discourse in the Clinical Dialogue    203 Salvatore, S. (2004). Inconscio e discorso. Inconscio come discorso.[Unconscious and discourse. Unconscious as discourse.] In B. Ligorio (Ed.), Psicologie e culture. Contesti, identità e interventi [Psychologies and cultures. Contexts, identities and interventions] (pp. 125–155). Rome, Italy: Carlo Amore. Salvatore, S., & Freda M. F. (2011). Affects, unconscious and sensemaking. A psychodynamic, semiotic and dialogic model. New Ideas in Psychology, 29(2), 119–135. Salvatore, S., Tebaldi, C., & Poti, S. (2008). The discursive dynamic of sensemaking. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science 2008 (Vol. 1, pp. 39–72). Rome, Italy: Firera. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2009). Idiographic science on its way: Toward making sense of psychology. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.), YIS: Yearbook of idiographic science 2008 (Vol.1). Rome, Italy: Firera. Sarbin, T. R. (1997). The poetics of identity. Theory & Psychology, 7, 67–82. Sbisà, M., & Massaglia, P. (2001). Ragioni e caratteristiche di un’indagine semiotica e psicologica. [Reasons and characteristics of a psychological and semiotic inquiry] In R. Saccomani (Ed.), Favole, favole. 360 favole create da bambini portatori di tumore alla luce della semiotica e della psicologia [Fables, fables. 360 fables created by children with tumors from the point of view of semiotic psychology] (pp. 50– 75). Milan, Italy: Raffaello Cortina. Searle J. R. (1969). Speech acts. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Shafer, R. (1992). Retelling a life: Narration and dialogue in psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Basic Books. Spaziante, L. (2007). Sociosemiotica del pop: Identità, testi e pratiche musicali [The sociosemiotics of pop: Identity, texts and musical practices]. Rome, Italy: Carocci. Smorti, A. (1994). Il pensiero narrativo [Narrative thought]. Florence, Italy: Giunti. Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 89–97.

Maria Francesca Freda is associate professor in clinical psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Naples University “Federico II.” She is president of the master’s degree course in dynamic, clinical and community psychology. She works on psychosocial intervention in institutions, with particular attention to educational and health institutions. Many of her studies are on narrations as a methodology for the elaboration of experience’s meaning. Her current interests are the study of narration as a device in psychological clinical intervention, an area of study in which she published Narrazione e Intervento in Psicologia Clinica [Narration and Intervention in Clinical Psychology] (Liguori, Naples, 2009). E-mail: [email protected] Fabio Milito Pagliara is PhD in psychological and pedagogical sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Naples University “Federico II.” He teaches in high school with a postdegree master’s in teaching. His current interests are in the study of the signification processes emerging from the narratives used by teachers in describing their work. E-mail: fabio.militopagliara @gmail.com

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Commentary

Blind Spots and Laziness Two Ways of Becoming “Stuck” Philip J. Rosenbaum Abstract Within the chapters by Ribeiro and Gonçalves as well as Freda and Pagliara, two related theories of how patients become “stuck,” necessitating a therapeutic intervention, are implicitly described. This commentary explores these theories, highlighting two related but different processes: the development of blind spots and lazy meaning making. Within the former, patients cannot see horizontally in order to identify other possible self-states that are supported in specific contexts, causing them to become stuck within a dominant negative self-narrative; while within the latter, patients are unable to examine their self-narrative horizontally, as a text open to interpretation and reinterpretation. In keeping with methods of idiographic science, these conceptualizations are then compared with current thinking in relational psychoanalysis.

Introduction: From the Particular to the General Since Freud and Breuer first analyzed Anna O (Freud, 1909/1990), intervention (usually in the form of interpretation) has been at the heart

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 205–217 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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of psychotherapeutic theory and technique. Numerous ideas about how interventions work, which interventions are most efficacious, and when one should intervene have been developed over the past 100 plus years (Mitchell, 1997). Clearly, at its core, psychotherapy is a discipline of interventions (Neuman, 2010). However, also since Freud, interventions have been implicitly and explicitly informed by theories about how the mind1 works, what goes wrong within the mind, and then of course how to help “fix,” it. In this respect, intervention always speaks to (or at least whispers to) a theory of mind and how it gets stuck. Intervention also speaks to the problems facing psychotherapists and psychologists as a whole. Our theories reflect our best inferences about the way the mind works (Lewin, 1949/1999; Toomela, 2009), and despite increasing technology aimed at looking into the “black box,” and over a hundred years of research, its processes remain largely mysterious (Danziger, 1997; Toomela, 2007). As a result, intervention also implies a degree of uncertainty—we are never really sure what caused the problem in the first place and thus, if it was the prescribed intervention that made a difference or if it was some other factor that may or may not have been accounted for One popular response to this uncertainty has been to try and standardize and measure the efficacy of interventions across psychotherapeutic schools (APA, 2006). The logic goes that finding significance in large clinical studies offers ample evidence that not only are specific interventions effective, but that also these problems were caused by the hypothesized cause (Gigerenzer, 1989). Problematically, these studies not only use sheer numbers to wash out individual variation, but also make assumptive generalizations about the way the mind works that are not tenable, especially within psychotherapeutic practice (for a detailed overview of these assumptions, see Toomela, 2007, 2009; for assumptions within research tools central to this process, see Rosenbaum & Valsiner, 2011). The two chapters presented in this section by Freda and Pagliara and by Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos offer alternative and important voices. As part of a growing trend of research that focuses on the idiographic (or the study of the singular) in order to abstract general principles (Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2008, 2010; Toomela, 2009), both chapters comprehensively theorize with great detail and subtlety how psychological interventions in clinical settings may work. Equally important, though less explicit, both chapters also theorize about what happens when patients become stuck, necessitating an intervention in the first place. Perhaps less glamorous than interventions, understanding how patients become stuck is the first step toward understanding how change occurs (Levenson, 1989). The chapters identify and describe two general processes causing patients to become stuck: blind spots within the self and lazy meaning making. In the following discussion, these processes are first described in depth ac-

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cording to the chapters and then, in accordance with idiographic science (Venuleo, 2008), are compared to ideas from other similar fields, in this case relational psychoanalysis.1 While two articles hardly make a distinct field, they are representative of an approach to therapy emphasizing semiotics, dialogicality, and process in psychotherapy practice and research (Dimaggio, Catania, Salvatore, Carcione, & Nicolo, 2006; Gennaro et al., 2009; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004; Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2001, 2007; Salvatore, 2006). Bringing these ideas into dialogue mirrors enriches our understanding of the therapeutic process and how patients become stuck. Two Theories on Becoming “Stuck” In large part, patients enter into a therapeutic relationship as a result of experiencing problems in living. Characterized in both chapters as a crisis in self-narrative, patients are often unaware of what is causing them to feel a certain way and why they are unable to solve their own problem (Mitchell, 1988). Generally speaking, both sets of authors consider problems arising when maladaptive, asymmetrical, and limited self-narratives arise causing patients to experience negative feelings about themselves. Patients are stuck in that they not only cannot make themselves feel better, but they also are not aware of the reasons for their negative experiences. Building off a narrative and dialogical view of self, each chapter shares the view that the self is semiotic (sign based), composed of multiple selfstates, hierarchical, and contextually organized. Borrowing from Freda and Pagliara’s chapter, viewing the self as composed of both horizontal and vertical axes is one way of conceptualizing self-organization. This is a useful conceptualization, as while they both are similar in describing what happens when a patient is stuck, they offer differing accounts of how a patient becomes stuck. As we will see, in their chapter, Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos offer a horizontal account in which patients cannot access different dialogical perspectives, or self-states, to counter a dominant self-narrative. Alternatively, Freda and Pagliara focus on the vertical perspective and the patients’ difficulties in generating a richer self-story as a way of navigating a problematic experience of themselves. Blind Spots Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos note that patients become stuck in problematic self-narratives when they are unable to contradict a negative dominant self-narrative (p. 151). In other words, they are blind to other sit-

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uations and/or narratives, which would oppose their current view of themselves and the world. They suggest that this results from a pattern of mutual in-feeding within the dialogical self. Here, signs about the self, supported in specific contextual situations become generalized and transferred to new contexts, taking on automatic existence and maintaining the dominant narrative by preventing alternatives to be considered (p. 155). Presumably happening at a pre- or unconscious level, the patient unreflexively becomes caught in this pattern. The dominant self remains stable as the negative sign has become abstracted from its original context and applied to a wide variety of differing contexts. From the dialectical perspective of meaning making described in this chapter, this occurs as a result of the A-field of meaning (such as “I feel helpless”) becoming over generalized, limiting the development of its corresponding non-A fields (all fields of meaning not related to feeling helpless). By limiting the developmental potential of the non-A field, the A field can become further differentiated (“I am a pessimistic person,” “Nothing good happens to me,” etc.,) and preventing development of competing narratives. Here, a blind spot exists within the self, generated by the strong direction of the A field, limiting the patient’s ability to verbalize or move to other self-states. Ribeiro, Gonçalves, and Santos present this very clearly in their case of Caroline (p. 156), a 20-year-old female university student whom they are treating due to being the victim of violence within her family. Her selfnarrative is dominated by negative affects and feeling (“I see myself as a rather negativistic sort of person . . . I don’t trust myself that much . . . I feel gloomy . . . I feel myself impotent to fight . . . I feel my self kind of defeated”) that have become condensed and hypergeneralized to all her experiences. Thus, while she interacts within different contexts (therapy, school, work), she remains unable to access other meanings and self-states (being a student, an employee, etc.) supported by these fields, stating, “There’s something inside me that prevents me from moving forward.” In this respect, she acknowledges the wish to move forward, but alternative narratives remain in her blind spot, and she is unable to overcome the affective and structural valence pulling her toward one set of meanings. From a dialogical perspective, other self-states, although potentially available, are not accessible, as the self does not experience the field as supporting these meanings. Lazy Meaning Making The process of becoming stuck described by Freda and Pagliara highlight the difficulties patients have experiencing their self-narrative as a text open to continual signification and resignification. In other words, patients are

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unable to make newer, more complex meanings (interpretations) of their experience, becoming stuck within their problematic narrative. Whereas Ribeiro, Gonçalves and Santos consider being stuck a problem of horizontal access to other self-states, Freda and Pagliara view this as a vertical problem: patients cannot generate a more complex self-state. Complexity refers not just to the richness and detailed self-narrative but also to the ability to attend to possible contradictions and ambiguities within a self-state. Remaining at the surface level of the text makes resolving problems difficult. Freda and Pagliara note a number of features of texts that they consider apply to patients who are stuck. Most importantly, following the lead of the semiotician Umberto Eco (1977, 1984), they describe the text as “lazy,” requiring an active participant to make implicit meanings explicit. Narrative texts are constructed along semantic and associative axes and, depending on the skill of the reader, can be interpreted across multiple directions along these axes. In this way, the text offers a number of possible readings and reinterpretations by combining different meanings across the axes. Both pragmatic meanings, the desired set of effects of the text, and passionate meaning, the emotional associations to the text, guide the interpretative efforts. In this respect, interpretation necessitates engagement with the texts along different axes. When stuck, patients (and sometimes therapists) cannot see beyond the pragmatic meanings offered and are unable to make new semantic and passionate meanings. Freda and Pagliara offer by way of example, the common issue of patients beginning a therapy with the expectation that the therapist, the presumed expert, will solve their problems for them. They, like others before them, note that the patients are often surprised and at times resistant when the therapist attempts to get them to be curious about their problems. Freda and Pagliara note that this expectation highlights the laziness that the patients may experience about analyzing their own narrative (Valsiner, 2002). In this regard, laziness operates defensively, guarding against taking too close a look at one’s narrative. Although protective, not opening up a text and accepting it at face value generates gaps within the self-narrative, which effectively limit the patient’s ability to analyze their problems in a deeper fashion. Comparison to Relational Psychoanalysis From the perspective of the chapters, becoming stuck occurs either as a result of blind spots that have developed, limiting the ability to make new meanings; or laziness, the lack of active interpretation of the text. Assumptive to each chapter is a view of the self as dialogical, social, and fluid. Reflective of a developing body of psychotherapy research, which consid-

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ers the self in this manner (Hermans, 1996; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2004; Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2001; Salgado & Hermans, 2005), the dialogical model shares considerably with recent developments within relational psychoanalysis. Here, the self is also characterized as being intrinsically social and object-seeking, (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; D. N. Stern, 1985), composed of multiple states (Benjamin, 2010; Bromberg, 1994, 1996; Davies, 1998, 1999, 2004; Mitchell, 1988; 1993; Stern, 2003) that engage in different types of interactions with each other (Davies, 2004; Harris, 2005; Stern, 2003). Focusing on levels or aspects of self-organization has the benefit of explaining process in a nonlinear, descriptive fashion, emphasizing relations between parts and emergent wholes (Harris, 2005). Moreover, this perspective offers access to inter- and intrapsychic processes by tracking the movement and articulation of selves both within the individual and the therapeutic dyad, and being able to observe defenses, such as dissociation, preventing fluid movement (Davies, 1998; 1999). One effect of the relational movement within psychoanalysis has been to emphasize processes of becoming and relating to the self and other (D. B. Stern, 1997). Within patients, these are seen as being severely restricted due to the presence of anxiety (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Sullivan, 1950). Relational thinkers such as Stern (1997, 2003), Bromberg (1996), Davies (1998, 1999), and Slavin (1996) hypothesize that the self avoids experiencing anxiety by splitting off and dissociating parts of itself and of its experiences that if brought into consciousness may generate tensions. Dissociation prevents patients from thinking about parts of their lives. Two prominent types of dissociation are described, the first, in which patients are kept unaware of other self-states that they can inhabit within specific contexts and the second, in which experiences within a self-state are guarded against. Unformulated Experiences Within the first type of dissociation, patients (and therapists) are unable to fully access the meanings that exist within a given context (Stern, 1997, 2003). Limited in this way, patients cannot access other self-states that are contextually available and appropriate, nor are they fully able to use the available cultural resources to make novel meanings. Thus, dissociation reflects not just the separation of self-states but also the loss of conscious awareness that the specific context will support different self-states. Stern (2003) notes that, “We define defensively motivated dissociation, then, as the unconsciously enforced distinction between experience and its most fitting context(s), a

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disconnection that prevents some of the understandings and the new meanings that would otherwise be possible” (p. 850). Dissociation of this sort has the effect of keeping experiences unformulated (Stern, 1997), in which the patient remains unaware that new meanings are possible within specific contexts. The patient literally remains stuck within a rigid self-state, unable to adapt or move to others. In their lives, this can cause a host of problems, and within therapy, it can lead to moments of impasse and confusion for both parties (Davies, 1999). Unformulated experience thus invokes dissociative processes to keep an anxiety-provoking part of life out of one’s self-narrative. Dissociation prevents the movement to other self-states that might introduce conflict within the self (Slavin & Kriegman, 1998). The self remains blind to other horizontal perspectives that contradict the dominant narrative in which the patient dwells within his or her familiar though formless chaos (Stern, 1997), wanting a new experience but unable to move to a new self-state. In the language of the dialect of meaning making, mutual in-feeding of the A< >non-A fields prevents more threatening dialogical relations within the self, such as the proliferation of voices, the disregulation of the self, or a takeover of self (Valsiner, 2002). When Caroline remarks, “There’s something inside me that prevents me from moving forward, have guts, feel the power,” we can infer the profound anxiety that formulating new contextual self-states has for her. Her other self-states remain as part of her blind spots; she knows they are there but is not able to access them. Considering the dialectic of meaning within the lens of dissociation expands our understanding of not only what happens but also possibilities of why it is happening. Standing in the Spaces Not only does the self dissociate other self-states, but the self may also dissociate from opening up and expanding its experiences within a selfstate. In these cases, the issue is not so much movement between selves, but rather an inability to tolerate complications within a particular self-state. While similar to unformulated experiences, here, the self becomes stuck within a particular self-state, unable to allow it to further develop. This idea offers a slightly different look at Bromberg’s (1996) now-famous phrase regarding a patient’s inability to “stand in the spaces” (p. 516). Within its original context, Bromberg referred to patients who could not integrate or stand between two different self-states. In other words, these patients could not hold two disparate ideas or selves in mind at the same time. The potential for conflict and ambivalence, of two distinct self-states, forces one self to move into the foreground and the other into the background.

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Difficulties standing in the spaces can also be considered within a selfstate, in which the patient cannot stand between possible ambiguities and complexities within a text. In these cases, it may be said that patients dissociate aspects of the self rather than dissociate from contextually appropriate meanings. Consider here cases in which patients actively seek to give control over the therapy to their therapists (Mitchell, 1997) or unconsciously respond to their therapist’s wishes. Moreover, in these cases, patients become caught within rigid black and white meanings, unable to tolerate ambiguity within a self-state. Here, they are blocked from downward expansion through opening up conflict and ambivalence (Abbey, 2007; Abbey & Valsiner, 2005; Stern, 2003). As a result, patients remain passively in one self-state, unable to even entertain the possibility of being more active in their daily lives. This slight reformulation of Bromberg’s (1996) idea, offers an interesting confluence with Freda and Pagliara, who describe how patients are unable to spot the “gaps” in their narrative texts. Focusing only on the raised ink and not the spaces and meanings between the letters, words, sentences, and pages, patients are engaged in almost literally a black and white meaning-making process, keeping other colors dissociated. Limiting interpretation to the black ink prevents movement to other possible meanings (white spaces) and self-states and keeps the self lazy to novel meanings. Interpreting the text in this manner prevents a genuine relationship with the text, in which surprise, creativity, and strong affective feelings are severely restricted. The narrative becomes patterned and predictable as both the desire and possibility of deeper meanings are defended against. Viewing this defense as a form of dissociation contributes to Eco’s (1978, 1984) formulation of the text as lazy, elaborating the complex reasons that parts of the self and text need to remain unconscious. Implications of Comparisons Utilizing the idiographic method to generate dialogical readings enables an examination of how patients become stuck within different schools of clinical theory and practice. Several similarities between dialogical and relational schools of thinking and practice are notable. First, considering the self as dialogical and composed of different levels of experience opens up our understanding of horizontal and vertical processes of meaning making. Within this view of the self, meanings generated within the latter occur by adapting different self-states, while within the former, meaning generates from expanding upon possibilities of our experience (narrative text). Accordingly, meaning making can also become stunted along these axes through similar though different processes.

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When this occurs, it may be broadly stated for both schools that being stuck results in a form of narrative rigidity (Spence, 1982). This comes about through processes by which the self limits its knowledge of context and possible ways to engage with others and itself. Moreover, the self restricts its curiosity about itself, not being able to tolerate ambiguity and possible confusion within itself. Blunted in these fashions, the self becomes stuck, operating with only part of its full capacity. Not surprisingly, these moments cause considerable distress, often motivating patients to enter into therapy. Additionally, both the dialogical and relational theories offered here differ in their unique contributions to how the self becomes stuck. These differences, rather than being irreconcilable, appear to be complementary, focusing on a different aspect of the process. Two important differences are noted. First, the dialogical school provides a nuanced account of the underlying processes that generate blind spots and also perhaps dissociative states. Emphasizing non-linear, contextual, and interpersonal processes, these accounts offer the relational perspective a detailed account of the ongoing cognitive and emotional changes within individuals. This detailed account allows for a close analysis of what occurs within individuals during therapy, providing rigor to psychotherapy research and practice. Second, the focus of the relational school appears broader, highlighting the motivational aspects of individual behavior that leads to becoming stuck. Here, the relational school stresses the avoidance and minimization of anxiety and distress, particularly with regard to conflicting meanings within the self and self-other relations. Defensive functions of the self serve to avoid potentially greater anxieties and discomforts, which generate a set of feelings and actions that ironically maintain an individual’s security at the cost of their flexibility. This perspective locates the semiotic and dialectical mechanisms used by the individual within the context of interpersonal negotiations, grounding them and making them more applicable. Conclusion The theories and examples of intervention and associated processes of becoming stuck offered in this section provide a needed counter-voice to the trends dominating psychotherapy research and practice. These include the proliferation of evidence-based interventions and structured time limited treatments. The original and sophisticated work in both chapters reflects a way of conducting research and psychotherapy that is highly sensitive to individual and interpersonal subjectivities and experiences. Similar to other such trends within relational psychoanalysis, comparison allows for dia-

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logue, differentiation, and integration, necessary for both psychic change and the development of ideas within academia. In this respect, understanding how individuals become stuck is isomorphic with how theories and schools of thinking may also become stuck. The development of blind spots and laziness (or dissociative patterns) reflects processes of minimizing anxiety by keeping aspects of experience out of awareness. Maintaining a rigid narrative protects fields from the apparent threat of losing their already shrinking territory. Defending small bits of land can, however, come at considerable cost, preventing alliances needed for expansion and growth. The dialogue between similar schools, generated through projects such as this Yearbook and the application of idiographic methods, functions as a likewise isomorphic intervention, which is crucial for the continued vitality and development of psychotherapy. Acknowledgments I would like to thank David Schweichler, Michelle Lent, and Mayer Bellehsen for their help with this discussion. Notes 1. Mind throughout this discussion is conceived of as being an emergent property that is neither bottom-up nor top-down reductionism, but rather interactive (Bateson, 2000; Neuman & Nave, 2010; Wiley, 1994). 2. Relational psychoanalysis here refers to the conglomeration of therapeutic styles emphasizing the importance of (object) relationship, mutuality, multiple self-states, and the importance of affect. Accordingly, I consider relational psychoanalysis as coming in flavors, such as more interpersonal, more objectrelational, and so on.

References Abbey, E. (2007). Perpetual uncertainty of cultural life. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 362–372). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Abbey, E., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Emergence of meanings through ambivalence. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research. Retrieved 2009, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/515/1114 APA Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice. (2006). Evidence based practice in psychology. American Psychologist, 61(4), 271–285. Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Blind Spots and Laziness    215 Benjamin, J. (2010). Where’s the gap and what’s the difference? The relational view of intersubjectivity, multiple selves, and enactments. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 46, 112–119. Bromberg, P. M. (1994). “Speak! So that I may see you!” Some reflections on dissociations, reality, and psychoanalytic listening. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4, 517–547. Bromberg, P. M. (1996). Standing in the spaces: The multiplicity of self and the psychoanalytic relationship. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 32, 509–535. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language. London, England: Sage. Davies, J. M. (1998). The multiple aspects of multiplicity: Symposium on clinical choices in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 8, 195–206. Davies, J. M. (1999). Getting cold feet defining “safe-enough” borders: Dissociation, multiplicity, and integration in the analyst’s expereince. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 78, 184–208. Davies, J. M. (2004). Whose bad objects are we anyway?: Repetition and our elusive love affair with evil. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 14, 711–732. Dimaggio, G., Catania, D., Salvatore, G., Carcione, A., & Nicolo, G. (2006). Psychotherapy of paranoid personality disorder from the perspective of dialogical self theory. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 19(1), 69–87. Eco, U. (1978). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. (1984). Semiotics and the philosophy of language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Freud, S. (1909/1990). Five lectures on psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Norton. Gennaro, A., Al-Radaideh, A., Gelo, O., Manzo, S., Nitti, M., Auletta, A., Salvatore, S. (2009). Modeling psychotherapy research as a sense making dynamic: The two stage model (TTSM) and the discourse flow analyzer (DFA). Yearbook of Idiographic Science, 2, 131–170. Gigerenzer, G. (1989). Probabilistic thinking and the fight against subjectivity. In L. Kruger, G. Gigerenzer, & M. S. Morgan, The probabilistic revolution (pp. 11–35). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Greenberg, J., & Mitchell, S. A. (1983). Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, A. (2005). Gender as soft assembly. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic. Hermans, H. J. (1996). Voicing the self: From information processing to dialogical interchange. Psycholgical Bulletin, 119(5), 31–50. Hermans, H. J., & Dimaggio, G. (2004). The dialogical self in psychotherapy: An introduction. In H. J. Hermans, & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The dialogical self in psychotherapy (pp. 1–11). East Sussex, England: Brunner-Rutledge. Hermans, H., & Kempen, H. (1993). The dialogical self: Meaning as movement. London, England: Academic. Levenson, E. A. (1989). Whatever happened to the cat: Interpersonal perspectives on the self. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 25, 537–553. Lewin, K. (1949/1999). Cassirer’s philosophy of science and social sciences. In M. Gold (Ed.), The complete social scientist: A Kurt Lewin reader. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

216    P. J. ROSENBAUM Lysaker, P. H., & Lysaker, J. T. (2001). Schizophrenia and the collapse of the dialogical self: Recovery narrative and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, 38(3), 252–261. Lysaker, P. H., & Lysaker, J. T. (2007). The dialogical self in psychotherapy for persons with schizophrenia: A case study. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 63(2), 129–139. Mitchell, S. A. (1988). Relational concepts in psychoanalysis: An integration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mitchell, S. A. (1993). Hope and dread in psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Basic Books. Mitchell, S. A. (1997). Influence & autonomy in psychoanalysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic. Molenaar, P. C., & Valsiner, J. (2008). How generalization works through the single case: A simple idiographic process of individual psychotherapy case. Yearbook Idiographic Science, 1, 23–38. Neuman, Y. (2010). Penultimate interpertation. The International Journal of Psychoanlaysis, 91(5), 1043–1054. Neuman, Y., & Nave, O. (2010). Why the brain needs language in order to be selfconscious. New Ideas in Psychology, 28, 37–48. Rosenbaum, P. J., & Valsiner, J. (2011). The un-making of a method: From rating scales to the study of psychological processes. Theory & Psychology, 21, 47–65. Salgado, J., & Hermans, H. J. (2005). The return of subjectivity: From a multiplicity of selves to the dialogical self. E-Journal of Applied Psychology: Clinical Section, 1(1), 3–13. Salvatore, S. (2006). Steps toward a dialogical and semiotic theory of the unconscious. Culture & Psychology, 12(1), 124–136. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2008). Idiographic science on its way: Toward making sense of psychology. Yearbook of Idiographic Science, 1, 9–23. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Idiographic science as a non-existing object: The importance of the reality of the dynamic system. Yearbook of Idiographic Science, 3, 7–29. Slavin, M. O. (1996). Is one self enough? Multiplicity in self organization and the capacity to negotiate relational conflict. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 32, 615–626. Slavin, M. O., & Kriegman, D. (1998). Why the analyst needs to change toward a theory of conflict, negotiation, and mutual influence in the therapeutic process. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 8(2), 247–284. Spence, D. P. (1982). Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpertation in psychoanalysis. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Stern, D. B. (1997). Unformulated experience. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic. Stern, D. B. (2003). The fusion of horizons: Dissociation, enactment, and understanding. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 13, 843–873. Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. New York, NY: Basic Books. Sullivan, H. S. S. (1950). The illusion of individual personality. Psychiatry, 13(3), 317–332 Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, 42(3), 245–265. Toomela, A. (2009). The methodology of idiographic science: The limits of single case studies and the role of typology. Yearbook of Idiographic Science, 2, 13–35.

Blind Spots and Laziness    217 Valsiner, J. (2002). Forms of dialogical relations and semiotic autoregulation within the self. Theory & Psychology, 12(2), 251–265. Venuelo, C. (2008). What is the nature of idiographic data. Yearbook of Idiographic Science, 1, 273–283. Wiley, N. (1994). The semiotic self. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Philip J. Rosenbaum is a psychological counselor at the Counseling and Psychological Services Center of Haverford College. Additionally, he is a second year psychoanalytic candidate in the William Alanson White Institute’s Certificate Program in Psychoanalysis (adult track). His interests are in cultural psychology and relational psychoanalysis, specifically exploring the areas of overlap between the two fields with the aim of generating increasing dialogue between them. He is also interested in how adolescents make meaning of their sexualities, particularly with how they understand and use sex education in their daily lives. E-mail: [email protected]

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Section IV Methodologies: Growing the Dynamic Analysis

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Positioning Microanalysis The Development of a Dialogically Based Method for Idiographic Psychology João Salgado ISMAI, Portugal Carla Cunha ISMAI, Portugal

Abstract A dialogical perspective entails a relational stance on human beings and their meaning-making activities, which demands the development of specific and adequate methods. To attain this coherence between theory and method, we have been developing a specific method, called Positioning Microanalysis, whose goals are to depict personal positions and the global dynamics of the self throughout time. The procedures of Positioning Microanalysis are based on consensual discussions between a pair of judges, whose analysis is later reviewed by an external auditor. This process involves several sequential turns of analysis-auditing until a final agreement is achieved. The analysis itself is based on the division of transcribed discourse activities into small meaning units, called “response units.” For each of these units, the judges have to label the position assumed by the person according to the basic dialogical triad:

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 221–244 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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222    J. SALGADO and C. CUNHA Ego (Who is speaking?), Alter (To whom?) and Object (About what?). These positions are systematically compared and organized in a hierarchy. The final step of the procedure is based on an interpretative work about the dynamics between positions, enabling the researchers to describe selfhood-dynamics, that is, movements and relations between different self-positions in their relation with the surrounding world. As an illustration, we analyze a literary text (“El Guerrillero,” written by Albalucía Angel), which develops as a selfdialogue or stream of consciousness in which several positions emerge and interact, leading to a very quick and dramatic change of perspective.

Although with a delayed impact, Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas have influenced social sciences (and psychology in particular) in numerous ways. His emphasis on the human mind and activity as constituted through relationships and by communicational practices converges not only with the theoretical position he shared with his colleagues within the Bakhtinian circle (e.g., Volosinov), but also with the perspectives of other sociogenetic authors (such as Mead or Vygotsky) in a broader epistemological and theoretical framework designated as dialogism. In several previous works, we have outlined what we consider to be some of the most important features of a dialogically informed psychology (see Cunha, 2007a, 2007b; Ferreira, Salgado, & Cunha, 2006; Salgado & Gonçalves, 2007; Salgado & Hermans, 2005; for a full review, see Linell, 2009). Generally, we have been arguing that psychology would benefit from a change in its traditional focus on “substances,” as opposed to an emphasis on processes. Thus, as an alternative, we have been advocating a processoriented point of view; instead of pursuing the idea of an isolated and rational mind, we defend the notion of a relational, dialogical, and cultural psyche. Following this perspective, the person is seen as a communicational agent who learns to coordinate with others and is constituted through this intersubjective process of coordination. Therefore, it is assumed that, from the very beginning, meaning making is a matter of social coordination—a matter of dialogue with others. Within this process, social practices and discourses (semiotic devices) are acquired in order to develop meaningful actions in the world. So, an ever-changing “I” emerges from this constant dialogue with Others about the world. These theoretical developments have pushed forward the need to develop more suitable methods to portray human phenomena in their dialogicality and dynamism. We have been pursuing that goal for some time now, and we consider this chapter an opportunity to arrive at a more complete account of our efforts in the development of a dialogical research method, explaining how and why it seems to fit our goals. Hence, in this chapter, we aim not only to present the current state of development of our approach, but also to elaborate on some of the most recent innovations we have introduced in our work. We will also outline some suggestions of how to perform

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this kind of analysis in order to make all the processes clearer and therefore easier for others to understand, discuss, and even replicate. Finally, we will elaborate upon a short illustration of some possibilities of this method and discuss its potential applications. Developing a Method Along with those theoretical efforts, we have also been developing a research strategy regarded, from our perspective, as globally coherent with these general dialogical principles. The purpose, however, is not to proclaim that this is the way of making a dialogical analysis; there will always be different possibilities for analyzing human psychological phenomena (or any complex phenomena, after all) since any method will always be too narrow to embrace the whole and should always fit the present purposes of a particular study or research program. As Branco and Valsiner (1997) have argued, methodology is not a pregiven “thing,” but a dynamic and recursive process in which researchers, guided by some original intuitions, confront phenomena creatively. Moreover, in their situated relation with some specific parts of the surrounding world, they follow some theoretical and axiomatic backgrounds. Thus, the question of the “fitness” of specific methods (such as the one proposed here) should be seen in the framework of this methodological cycle. In other words, what seems important is the coherence between phenomena, axiomatic and theoretical grounds, and specific research goals and methods of collecting data. Given our dialogical background and the main principles of dialogism that we advocate (Salgado & Gonçalves, 2007; Salgado & Valsiner, 2010), each of us has contributed to the development of a method that is faithful to the Bakhtinian tradition and can also be used as a way of depicting dynamic phenomena (i.e., phenomena evolving through time). A first effort was made in order to distinguish several ways of dealing with the notion of voice (Salgado, 2004). In that work, a contrast was made between nondialogical and dialogical accounts of the “voice” metaphor. Dialogical approaches started to use this notion to refer to the lived expression of utterances. Therefore, a voice always involves a process in which someone positions himself or herself against a background (audience). On nondialogical approaches, these two features of relationality and addressivity are lost, and voice becomes something living within a self-encapsulated mind. In order to avoid this deviance from “egological” models of the mind, Salgado (2004) proposed some criteria to differentiate voices, namely, (a) the distinction of different referential objects (themes) involved in discourse; (b) the detection of different social discourses implied; and (c)

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the distinction of the positioning of the person toward the explicit or implicit audiences. Let us look at an example to illustrate these criteria. During a session, a psychotherapy client says to her therapist, “I know it has been a long time, but I miss my mother terribly since she passed away.” This client is referring to the loss of a significant other, and this loss appears as the conversational theme or object of discourse. Then, it is also possible to distinguish social discourses implied in this situation. On the one hand, she endorses the social discourse around losing a significant other—the discourse about “missing the other.” On the other hand, if we specifically focus on the onset of her utterance (“I know it has been a long time”), the client seems also to admit alternative social discourses about loss, somehow acknowledging her voice as one of many possible ways of grieving and relating to that specific experience. Therefore, we have two different social perspectives about the same object: “missing the other” and “moving on with your life.” By adopting the “missing” or “mourning” position toward the loss, the person is also confronting the audiences who hold that contrary perspective. In other words, her personal reaction may also be subjectively construed as a potential target for external criticism from the perspective of these available social discourses, as the client expresses her position in immediate contrast with the initial perspective (notice the use of the adversative conjunction “but” in the introduction to her experience). In terms of audiences to her discourse, the client is obviously addressing her therapist as her real audience in the session. Nevertheless, while acknowledging other perspectives, she is also addressing them implicitly (e.g., a potentially critical audience that stresses that her grieving process is being too prolonged). If instead, the client said, “My daughter says that I have to get over this because it has been a long time, but I miss my mother terribly since she passed away,” the act of addressing a potential audience would be more explicit and the addressed and absent other (the daughter) would be well-defined. These examples highlight, therefore, that each voice is specific in time and context: first, because the agent refers to a given object of discourse that may change from moment to moment (in our example, from loss, the conversation might evolve to conflicts with others around her grieving process); second, because assuming a position in the world contrasts (sometimes quite explicitly) with other possible views and social discourses about it; and third, the act of positioning oneself addresses always real, absent, or potential audiences, which by being subjectively construed by the agent, create a particular relational and meaning context. After that initial effort, Cunha’s work (2007a, 2007b) on the dynamics of stability and change of the self introduced two very important features: the notion of positioning as the central focal point of a dialogically informed methodology of the study of the person; and the development of a struc-

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tured mode of analyzing the dynamics of positioning and repositioning. In those works, Cunha adopted the notion of positioning as the central object of analysis. The idea is that at each lived moment, we face a new life situation that demands some sort of meaningful action from us, and that meaningful action involves some sort of expression or voice. The result is a certain positioning toward the material and social world. Thus, in her work, it is already clear that the core object of analysis is the notion of positioning taken at a microgenetic level. In sum, she proposed a specific method of analysis in which the object of study is positioning dynamics and proposed the utterance’s dialogical features (who is speaking, to whom, how, why, about what) as the elements of analysis. This methodology was initially called Dialogical-Discursive Microgenetic Analysis, and attempted to portray the microgenetic positionings (arrived at through utterances) along with their development in time. More recently, building on these previous efforts, Salgado (2008) proposed some reformulations/clarifications on this method, namely, • The adoption of the “response unit” usually used in qualitative clinical studies as the unit of segmentation of texts/transcripts (with clearer segmentation criteria); and, • The systematic comparison of each utterance with the previous ones, allowing the description of personal positions in hierarchical diagram, because different but closely related microgenetic positions can be integrated in a new higher-order category. Meanwhile, as a result of our empirical experience with this method, we have added two new features to the analysis, specifically, the identification of the relational domain and the identification of the theme involved in each utterance, as well as detailing the procedures involved in the interpretive analysis of the dynamics. These procedures were developed into a manual for a more pragmatic and didactic presentation (Cunha, Salgado, Santos, & Marques, 2009). As a result of these changes, and as a result of our theoretical reflections, we have renamed this method Positioning Microanalysis. The Notion of Position Within a dialogical approach rooted in the Bakhtinian tradition, the relational dynamics of meaning making is the focal point of psychological experience. Each human being faces a current situation that transcends personal existence—we face a world that is beyond our flesh and blood. Within that world, we engage in practices, such as having a conversation or

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taking breakfast. Through those practices, we assume a certain “position” toward the situation, materially and semiotically. This means that, as we position ourselves, we face the world and choose between the cultural tools available: we engage in established social practices or contrast our actions in discordance with them; we appropriate certain social discourses in our voices, making them our own or react in opposition to them. Thus, each person at every moment is positioned toward the semiotic world, and the reaction from the world will demand a repositioning through the passing of time, space, and experience. This position is not only material, it also has a semantic, ideological dimension—it has meaning and it involves signs. Following Leiman’s (2002) terminology, it is a semiotic position (as we shall explain later). This notion is inspired, first of all, by Bakhtin and the works usually taken as belonging to Bakhtin’s circle (Volosinov, Medvedev). From a Bakhtinian point of view, meaning involves the communicative articulation between two different agents, and it is only through this dialogical activity that a sense of personhood arises. In other words, each communicative gesture, to have meaning, needs the coordination between two “voices” or two different perspectives. In this sense, meaning making is always a social activity, since it involves an “I” and an addressed Other (or Others). Thus, this is the origin of the notion that, at each moment, human meaning is brought to being through this positioning of an agent dealing with a part of the world faced with (present or absent) others. Coherent with this general principle, Bakhtin (1984) considered great novels as portraits of the living character of human language, in which the voice of the author confronts others’ voices, expressed by the characters: “For the author, the hero is not ‘he,’ and not ‘I’ but a full valid ‘thou,’ that is, another and other autonomous ‘I’” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 63). He captured this strong and radical dialogue with another personality under the notion of polyphony—such novels are polyphonic since they involve a dynamic interplay between different speaking personalities. This general scenario inspired Hermans’s theory about the dialogical self. In that theory, the self is considered a dramatic and social interplay between different personal voices (e.g., Hermans, 2001). More precisely, the self is conceived of “in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I positions in an imaginal landscape” (Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992, p. 28). In this conception, at each moment, the “I” will be able to occupy a different position, each one with a specific voice that addresses certain audiences. Therefore, the dialogical-self theory clearly addresses, in its very basis, the notion of position. This theory has been probably the most popular application to psychology of Bakhtin’s ideas. Nevertheless, it is also a theory that seems to live between a strong ambivalence between dialogical models of the mind and

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monological ones. It is far beyond the scope of this chapter to fully discuss this idea, but the insistence on the polyphonization of the mind has, in our view, sometimes obscured otherness as a fundamental guiding line of a dialogical approach (Bento, Cunha, & Salgado, 2012). Indeed, as Linell (2009) has recently defended: If too much emphasis on a split self may lead to the elimination of individual agency from the explanatory model, there is possibly a danger in some recent developments within “dialogical self theory” too (e.g., Hermans, 2002), namely, that the interaction with others gets too far backgrounded, so that the theory in fact may reconstitute the individual as a self-contained system which has incorporated different voices (“I-positions”). Instead of giving due attention to the interaction with real others (sociodialogue), dialogue runs the risk of being recast as interaction between internal I-positions and “inner audiences” in the mind. (p. 113)

To us, one of the most striking features about the notion of position, as a spatial metaphor, is its ability to place human psychological existence “in the world.” A position implies a background, a surrounding context—a world with which we interact. Thus, with the notion of position, the human person is seen as involved and surrounded by something bigger than an isolated mind. The person is put in its place—in the world. And this world is a socially constructed world (Berger & Luckman, 1996). We acquire from others the basic forms of coordination and language. As Vygotsky (1997) claimed in his law of cultural development, everything that happens in the private domain happened previously in the interpersonal sphere. Thus, we deal with the world through cultural guidance. Each human psyche is a personal cultural system (Valsiner, 2007). In this sense, a dialogical approach to the human mind must be placed in a way that no longer becomes entrapped in the old notion of a self-encapsulated, isolated mind. To us, this implies conceiving positions as a process involving • an actual or potential addressee; • a segment of the world, with its objects; • a sign-mediated interaction with social and material world. In this proposal, the human agent is always dialogically interrelated with these three elements: it is by meaningful acts that the person is able to adapt to the material and social circumstances, and these acts are, in themselves, positions toward the material world (objects) and toward others (actual or potential addressees); moreover, since these acts are meaningful, they are dialogically based on the possibility of sign-exchange. As such, the notion of position is a dialogical and semiotic one. As Leiman (2002) has argued (inspired by Shotter’s work) that signs such as words

228    J. SALGADO and C. CUNHA have the power of positioning the speaker with regard to his or her addressees. Finding themselves in this new position, the addressees will create their response in order to express their “feeling” about the position and, perhaps, to move themselves into a new position, more appropriate in their view. (p. 224)

This notion of semiotic position is clearly a dynamic portrait that greatly inspires our current work. What to Observe? Discriminating Personal Positions in Utterances One of the first problems we must come to terms with whenever starting some form of analysis of a given phenomena is, What should we observe? In categorization, even if performed in a loose way, we need to establish boundaries and contrasts. To state, “This is . . . ,” we also need to contrast this “it” with something else. Thus, we may start to ask, What are we looking for? To perform such task, first we need, on the one hand, a theoretical and axiomatic background and, on the other hand, some contact and impression of the phenomena we are trying to grasp. Our general background postulates that human meaning making implies a relationship and communication coordination with the surrounding world. In other words, through sign-mediated action, we assume a certain positioning toward that world. In our case, this notion of position is central in the general framework of the analysis we adopted. This concept will guide our observations, since it will work as the basic element of what we are trying to address—the development in time of personal experience—since this is understood as a matter of constant repositioning toward segments and objects of the surrounding world. From this theoretical point of view, each person is constantly occupying a different position, since life involves a constant flux of time and reorganization. In order to study this constant movement, we decided to follow a microanalytic method, based on the depiction of each position from moment to moment. This creates a general description of the positions emerging across time. After this general description, we can then start to ask questions about the dynamics between positions, for example, What movements between positions occur? And how and why? Thus, this method is based on the categorization of positions, from moment to moment. While doing this categorization, the researcher is adopting an observer point of view and is able to introduce distinctions that are happening through time. We shall clarify that we are not necessarily endorsing a particular perspective about continuity versus discontinuity of subjective experience (for a discussion, see Stern, 2004), we are just claiming that

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regardless of the continuity or discontinuity of our stream of consciousness, it is possible to assess possible differences in the content of that experience from moment to moment. What is an Utterance? The Process of Unitizing Taking a dialogical perspective, Shotter (1993) has argued that the utterance is the basic linguistic unit: “Because he [Bakhtin] is concerned with how different embodied beings interact and not just with the relations between words and concepts, Bakhtin takes actual spoken utterances rather than grammatically well-formed sentences as his basic linguistic unit” (p. 381). Thus, by utterances, we mean lived moments of sociolinguistic expression or, even better, lived sign-mediated actions. Bakthin usually called this “the spoken word,” to contrast his dialogical and psychosocial semiotics with the one established by de Saussure (1916/1977). We are dealing here with signs in their process of coming to life. Taking the utterance as the unit implies a description of how we define its contour. From a pure theoretical point of view, any kind of detectable change of the self in its ongoing relation with the world may represent the beginning of a new utterance (for example, if someone starts to address a different theme, or if the person changes the emotional tonality invoked by a situation).1 However, empirically, this is hard to apply. With this empirical intent in mind, we are following an adaptation to the Portuguese language of Clara Hill’s (2009) procedures of unitizing transcripts of interviews, inspired by the original work of Auld and White (1956). That procedure does not use the notion of utterance, but the one of “response units.” However, we consider that they are generally equivalent to our goals. Generally, a response unit is an independent clause. It can be composed of a simple main clause; in more complex grammatical cases, it is compounded by a main clause and the dependent (subordinate) clause. This procedure establishes that several trained judges (usually two) segment the text independently, and that a reliability index of the unitizing process is calculated (for further details, see Hill, 2009). We follow the recommendation of a minimum of 90% agreement in the unitizing process carried out independently by the judges (Hill, 2009). We consider this criterion useful for producing reliable empirical findings through consensual standards. This may as well represent an asset to the dialogue between this field of research and other fields particularly concerned with the credibility of qualitative research (see Strauss & Corbin, 1994).

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We are aware that this represents a deviation from the theoretical notion of “utterance.” Nevertheless, the reasons to adopt Hill’s unitizing procedures are the following: • It is easier to perform and easier to reach a consensus between different judges during the unitizing stage of the materials; • In most cases, this sort of “unitizing” procedure will make smaller distinctions (therefore, creating more units to analyze) than the ones we would have if trying to depict changes in the self. If they are part of the same utterance, they involve the same attitude and, therefore, they will (probably) be coded as similar units (see next section). Nevertheless, we also do not want to get too distant from the notion of utterance. Therefore, in order to prevent the opposite problem (not taking two different utterances as only one), judges are allowed to make this distinction. In other words, if they find two different utterances in a single response unit, they are free to decide to divide them. One example is the change from indirect to direct speech. Imagine the following transcript of an interview: “And I honestly said: ‘I’m so sorry.’” Strictly following Hill’s rules, this would be taken as one response unit, as the expression in direct speech (I’m so sorry) appears as a dependent clause subordinated to the beginning main clause (And I honestly said ). This happens because the criterion is strictly grammatical. However, we are actually detecting two uttering positions, indicated by the transition to direct speech, and therefore, we assume it as compounded by two different units. In these ambiguous situations, each judge will start by deciding by herself or himself how many units are present, and possible divergences between judges are solved with consensual discussion. Analyzing Units So far we have put the following ideas in the foreground: • From a dialogically informed psychology, our object of study is the process of constant repositioning; • In order to track this process within discourse, we can divide it into small segments or units of analysis; • Our analysis adopts the procedure of detection of “response units” to operate the division of data (interviews, transcripts or videos of therapy sessions), which we treat as empirically equivalent to utterances.

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At this point, we are left with the task of analyzing each unit from a dialogical point of view. In order to accomplish this, ee need to identify agents and addressees and their respective relational movement about a specific matter or object. Thus, the resultant task is the following: to find a way of observing agents, addressees, and their mutual patterns of relation and goals while dealing with some segment of the world (an object, some task). Thus, the following elements will be analyzed in each unit: • • • • • •

Who is speaking/acting? To whom is the person(s) speaking/acting? What is being said/done? How is this said/done? Why is it said/done? Where does this take place?

In order to illustrate this process, take this utterance from a psychotherapy session: “I must tell you how anxious I am” Taking those elements into account, the definition of what is going on takes the following shape: I as a patient (who) telling my therapist (to whom) in a very anxious way (how) about this same anxiety (what), in a therapy session (why) in which I am seeking some help for this problem (why). Thus, after dividing the text, judges analyze and discuss each unit in order to consensually create a sentence describing these elements. Whenever possible, the same terminology will remain from unit to unit. Not all of the elements will be present in every occasion (e.g., it may be impossible to discriminate “why”), and it is admissible to include some small impressions (e.g., “seeming almost flirting”). After reaching this sentence, judges will be able to discriminate and nominate the following elements: • The personal position: What kind of position is the person assuming toward his/her object of concern of the moment? • The relational domain(s): Who are the Others involved in that utterance? • The object(s) involved: What is (are) the object(s) of reference involved? In the previous example, we would have

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• Personal position: I as a patient • Relational domain: Relationship with the therapist; • Object: My anxiety As a result, we will have a triad of interdependent elements of analysis that empirically reproduce Marková’s (2003) notion that meaning involves the interplay between Ego/Alter/Object. In a way, Ego and Alter operate their relationship through the object of reference. In other words, the agent (Ego) assumes a position toward the Alter through the referenced object. In the example, the patient is addressing and relating with the therapist through the object of his or her concern—the anxiety problems. Hierarchy of Positions Inspired by the procedures of establishing a codification of data generally applied in grounded theory analysis (GTA; e.g., Fassinger, 2005), each label (position) is systematically compared with all others, looking for similarities and differences. Following this procedure, we are able to identify categories of personal positions, relational contexts, and objects. Then, these initial categories are grouped into more abstract or higher-order categories, based on their commonalities, producing a hierarchy of positions. Discussion Between Pairs Labeling and organizing positions, procedures follow the criteria for consensual qualitative research established by Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997). Succinctly, these authors argue that when we want to capture and qualitatively analyze complex, rich phenomena, we should gather a team of judges to discuss the material. These judges initially approach qualitative data with a set of analytic questions, trying to elicit and foster multiple perspectives and interpretations, while discussing the meaning of the material. Later on, this discussion usually leads to a consensus within the team on the meaning of the data. The results of this discussed data-analysis process is subsequently presented to an auditor, who has the role of checking the interpretations in order to minimize the effects of groupthinking in the primary team or help to resolve ambiguous situations (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). It is far beyond the scope of this contribution to fully discuss the kinds of constraints (or “biases,” in the objectivist tradition) that are implicit in this procedure, but we assume this procedure as a way of getting around some of the traditional difficulties of qualitative methods. Furthermore, it

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is our belief that an open process of discussion between pairs is something potentially creative in its tensional dynamics. Analysis of Positioning Dynamics: The Interpretive Work It should be noticed that when this discrimination, comparison, and hierarchy of positions are achieved, only part of the work is done. What we obtain is a structural portrait of the agent, of the audiences, and of the themes in focus. At the very best, we also have some general understanding of the dynamics of positioning. In order to further develop and understand this output, an analysis of the development of the positions in time is required. This empirical work is interpretive and it is useful to maintain the discussion between different researchers in order to enrich the process. The task at this moment is to answer the following questions: Is position “x” associated with position “y”? And if so, how? Most of the time, at this moment, the researcher uses higher-level positions in order to facilitate the analysis. To answer those questions, the following guidelines have proven very useful: 1. Themes. Positions can be organized around a particular theme, and the theme can be defined as a set of different positions around a particular “object.” For example, if the person is referring to the death of her mother, all the positions assumed around this “object” (missing her, blaming herself, etc.) would be part of the theme “losing my mother.” This step is essential in order to group together the relevant positions on specific issues, usually with some independence regarding other different topics. 2. Number of occurrences. The frequency of occurrence of one position with a specific theme gives us potential information about the importance of this one position. This is particularly useful in detecting what positions seem to be dominating that theme; usually they are the ones occurring with higher frequency. 3. Adjacent occurrences. Whenever one position occurs after another, there is an “adjacent” occurrence. This relation of “adjacency” is particularly relevant if it is recurrent, something interpreted as a signal of a potential “feeding relation.” 4. Transitions between themes. It is usually important to inquire how the topic of conversation or action is changed. Some positions may feed this transition, and if that happens, they are probably having a pivotal role in this process. Whenever such a transition occurs, the researcher may formulate a hypothesis about what enabled this transition. 5. First appearances of positions. Whenever one position emerges for the first time, the researcher must ask what was happening immediately

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before that enabled this novelty. By doing that, and by revising that hypothesis, the researcher will be able to track down specific possibilities of how novelty is achieved. 6. Disappearance of positions. It can be important to interpret the process by which a position disappeared. Novelty and change not only happen by the creation of new positions, but by the disappearance of previous ones too. Thus, the researcher can follow the track of a position that fades away and disappears. This also can be an indication of personal changes, for example, comparing the personal positions of someone at a 6-month interval around a particular object. 7. Analysis of the semantic relations between positions. If positions are referring to the same generic object or theme, they must have some sort of semantic relation. For example, they can be opposed (“I like it, but I don’t want it now”), or they can be aligned (“I like it, and I want it right now!”); they can be explicitly justifying the other (e.g., “I am afraid now because I am such a weak person”); they can be intensifications, such as the minimization or maximization of positions (“I like him,” “I love him,” “I would die for him”). The analysis of the position involved and their semantic properties gives us a general description of the semantic field in which the person is moving. 8. Cycles of positions: Dominant patterns and their alternatives. The previous steps lead the researchers to the possibility of elaborating a description of the recurrent patterns of positioning. This description can take the form of a narrative description of the relation between different positions or the form of a diagram, in which the kind of relation between the most relevant positions is pictured. It is also possible to distinguish dominant patterns—the ones that tend to happen more frequently and recurrently; and alternative patterns— variations around the dominant ones. 9. Classification of the types of patterns of positions. These patterns can be classified with the help of several theoretical contributions, which propose different kinds of dialogical processes between positions or voices. For example, Valsiner (2002) introduced a valid description of these different processes. In the same vein, in previous work, Cunha (2007a, 2007b) was able to detect different patterns of positioning and repositioning, which maintain personal stability around a personal problem. Later on, we will present an example of how this method can be used and complemented in order to show not only stability but also sudden transitions to new forms of meaning.

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Comparing Positioning Microanalysis (PM) With Other Dialogically Based Methods We assume that this method has clear parallel and overlapping features with the Dialogical Sequence of Analysis (DSA; Leiman, 2002, 2004; Leiman & Stiles, 2001). First, both methods are extremely rooted in the Bakhtinian and Vygotskian tradition, and both have taken the notion of position as a central point in a dialogical theory of human psychology. Second, we also agree with Leiman’s notion of “semiotic position,” which puts signexchange activity at the core of the process of meaning making. Third, they are also methods based in microanalysis of utterances. And finally, they both endorse the idea of dynamism as central to our purposes: the study of positions is not important as an exercise of mere identification of positions (a categorical analysis) but as the first step in analysis of the dynamics of positioning and repositioning, something that Leiman and Stiles (2001) call “sequences.” Nevertheless, there are some distinctions between these methods that we would like to highlight. One apparent difference is more terminological than conceptual, involving DSA’s definition of “object of study” and “unit of analysis.” DSA’s object of study is the utterance, and the unit of analysis of the utterance is the sign, while PM’s object is the position, and the unit is the utterance/response unit. In order to understand this terminological divergence, we need to remember that both methods assume that the subjective experience, or “psyche,” is a matter of assuming a position toward the world, and that this world is not only material, it is also socially and semiotically organized. However, for DSA, the focus is not the position, but the utterance; the utterance is the expression of the position, and the position emerges with the utterance. Therefore, DSA argues that the object of analysis is the utterance. In PM, we prefer to retain the term “position” as the main object of analysis, even considering the mutual interdependence between “position” and “utterance.” Nevertheless, we think that this terminological difference does not amount to a true analytical discrepancy. Actually, the main elements in which to analyze an utterance with DSA are, after all, quite similar to the ones we are using to describe positions (Who? What? To whom? Expressive features?; see Leiman, 2004). Other and more important distinctions have to do with some concepts used in the DSA that are absent here. Mainly, these concepts are related with the influence of Cognitive Analytic Therapy on DSA, from which the notions of reciprocal positions (or dialogical pattern) is imported, as well as the notion of the self-state. A dialogical pattern is compounded by a position expressed by the speaker toward an “object” and the assigned counterposition by the speaker to that same “object.” A self-state is considered an experiential state that contains a dominant dialogical pattern. The ways

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these concepts are used in DSA create some important differences. First of all, DSA does not start with the identification of positions, but with the identification of dialogical patterns and self-states (see Leiman & Stiles, 2001). By reading and rereading, the researcher elaborates a hypothesis about a specific pattern of position and counterposition around a particular object. Therefore, while PM starts with naming positions and then by looking at their dynamics, the DSA starts with a more generic description of specific patterns, usually stable and recurrent. In other words, DSA starts with an analysis focused on extracting patterns, while PM is oriented toward analyzing positions in order to arrive later at the patterns. From here, some other differences arise in terms of how systematic these methods are. In the DSA, the procedures do not involve a systematic division of units of response in order to depict positions. Since DSA is particularly focused on detecting patterns (usually, dominant patterns and novelties introduced on those patterns), it is more suited to being used with specific blocks of transcripts, selected by researchers; while PM is more commonly applied to complete interviews or sessions, not only fragments. Moreover, DSA does not follow consensual discussion parameters, as we are endorsing here. So we will probably have some overlapping between these two methods, but they will most likely also end up having differences in the goals and outcomes produced. It is still too soon to say what these differences amount to and what the particular advantages of each may be. However, it must also be said that we see these methods as highly compatible, and their crossing in the future is seen by us as a desirable goal. Another method of analysis of positions is the Personal Positions Repertoire (PPR) created by Hermans (2001; see also Cunha, Salgado, & Gonçalves, 2012; Gonçalves & Salgado, 2001). There are striking differences between those two methods. First, PPR implies a semistructured interview, imposing a specific grid of responses. Thus, in that method, positions will be the result of the intersection between pregiven possibilities and not the result of an observer analysis of the development of a given phenomena in time. Second, PPR implies a self-reflective effort of analysis from the person, who needs to assess the presence of internal and external positions. In Positioning Microanalysis, the focus is not restricted to positions explicitly elicited by guided self-reflection, since it also encompasses positions enacted in the ongoing discursive activity of the person. Finally, PPR does not depict phenomena in time; it favors a structural approach or a macrodescription of the person, while this method clearly addresses the question of development through time, adopting a microgenetic focus. Thus, in Positioning Microanalysis, there is strong focus on microprocesses as a way of explaining broader (mesogenetic and macrogenetic level) patterns.

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An Exercise of Positioning Microanalysis2 This analysis is only meant to illustrate some potentialities of the PM method, and it has been presented in a preliminary way elsewhere (Salgado, 2008). Resulting from the initiative of a group of colleagues, one of us was invited to perform an analysis of a rich literary text titled “El Guerrillero,” written by Albalucía Angel.3 Since this is a literary text and not a transcript of some “real-life” situation, some caution notes need to be made. First, we must recognize that we are not doing a “literary analysis.” Second, we are dealing with this text as if it were a “real-life” situation, probably a monologue spoken out loud or a written letter. More precisely, since it uses the “stream-of-consciousness writing” technique, it will be appreciated precisely as if it was a “real” stream of consciousness. Third, our goal is to demonstrate how we can analyze discursive inner dialogicality and its dynamic features. This text develops as a sort of dialogue in which the narrator starts to warn and blame Felicidad Mosquera for having fallen for a “guerrillero.” Felicidad Mosquera is now in great danger, and the narrator reproaches her. However, suddenly the narrator, recalling how Felicidad Mosquera met the guerilla and how she fell in love with him, jumps to a new perspective of the situation: understanding and ceasing to blame her for that and supporting her possible sacrifice. We worked with the Spanish version of the text, which was divided into 79 units of analysis, each of which was described with the parameters described before: who, to whom, what, how, and why. Generally, the narrator stands as the author of all these units (who). To whom, generally, is Felicidad Mosquera. In a later stage of the text, it becomes obvious that the author and the addressee are the same. This is a dialogical monologue, in which the narrator moves from position to position addressing, judging, and even changing her own fears of the future and her own memories of the past. Thus, generally, the “who” was coded as the “narrator” and to whom was coded as “Felicidad Mosquera.” These 79 units of response were then classified in terms of the positions involved, creating the hierarchical description of positioning presented in Table 7.1. Each personal position is composed of a specific triad I/Other/ Object. The development throughout time of the main positions can also be described in Figure 7.1. Thus, the overall movement can be described as follows: 1. A voice initially emerges, warning Felicidad Mosquera of the several dangers she will need to face, so overwhelming that she will be powerless to face them (position 1).

238    J. SALGADO and C. CUNHA Table 7.1  Hierarchy of Positions 1. The narrator warning Felicidad Mosquera (FM) of the danger (I as warning) 1.1. The narrator (N) describing “them” as as unavoidable and terrible threat to FM 1.2. N describing what they’ll do to her (FM) 1.3. N describing FM’s fate as a fatality 2. N reproaching FM, contrasting what she did in the past and what she might have done (I as reproaching) 2.1. N telling FM what she might have done 2.2. N describing what would not be happening if she had acted differently 2.3. N showing FM what would be happening if she had acted differently 2.4. N regretting and reproaching FM about what she did in the past 2.5. N Manifesting to FM the inability to understand her 3. N recalling to FM the story with him (I as the narrator of the love story) 3.1. N recalling to her how she helped him when he was injured 3.2. N affirming FM as enamored of him 3.3. N recalling his courtship 3.4. N recalling their meeting on the river bank 4. N blaming her inability to read the situation properly (I blaming her “blindness”) 4.1. N describing FM as blind 4.2. N affirming FM “possessed” by a different identity (“you were not you”) 4.3. FM possessed by something external and threatening 5. N accepting FM’s love story (stating to FM that only God and herself can judge and understand what happened between them—I as accepting the passion) 6. N encouraging FM to surpass her fear and to accept her fate (I as encouraging)

2. This position feeds a critical voice that starts to regret past choices and imagine different futures (position 2). 3. This critical voice starts a cycle in which, recursively, the position of storyteller emerges (with some important variations in itself—position 3, with several subpositions), and the narrator starts to assume that Felicid Mosquera “was not herself” (position 4, with several subpositions). We see a recursive cycle between 2, 3, and 4. Different parts of the story also feed different responses, but the exploration of how Felicidad Mosquera was moved and transformed by his touch—still appreciated as a kind of “possession,” something external, or a madness which dissociated that woman from her regular detached firm way of being—seems to suddenly precipitate a rupture or brusque change. Indeed, the strengthening of the position describing Felicidad Mosquera as “upside-down,” almost mad, possessed, or dissociated, brought to the foreground the position of the narrator of Felicidad Mosquera as deeply in love. Thus, here, it seems that a change takes place. She returns to the first position: she warns her that they will come, they will kill you. But immediately she moves to a completely

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Figure 7.1  Narrator’s sequence of positioning.   Position 1: Warning Felicidad Mosquera (FM).   Position 2: Reproaching FM.   Position 3: Narrating the love story.   Position 4: Blaming her “blindness.”   Position 5: Accepting passion.   Position 6: Encouraging FM.

different position in which she declares the complete acceptance of the passion and, for a moment, it seems to address God as the only possible judge of what happened. Here, we have the emergence of a new and completely different position (position 5) in which she finally accepts passionate love, while describing a meeting on the river banks. Here, the storyteller is no longer a simple storyteller, since she starts to describe what only God and Felicidad Mosquera were able to know: how she felt while making love to him. Here, she is also disclosing her identity: she is, after all, Felicidad Mosquera and, finally, the inner division stops. She accepts and surrenders to the experience of being in love. Thus, returning to the problem at hand (position 1), she becomes capable of finding a new future, and an encouraging voice (position 6) is heard, setting the ground to a fearless position and acceptance of her own fate and death. Thus, this rich literary text is a fertile ground for the analysis of the emergence of different positions. Moreover, it also describes three points that we should take into serious consideration: • First, this text can also be used as an illustration of how the inner space or inner monologues are spaces of alterity. All the positions

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are coming from and addressing the same person (the narrator). Taking this text as a kind of “flow of consciousness,” the narrator is facing herself, and it is through this self-relation (including an element of self-estrangement) that some tension is created, enabling the possibility of something new. • Second, some positions may act as ways of rejecting experiences of the self, which become criticized or even unarticulated, creating a feeling of inner division within the self (the point in which the text starts). Self-criticism is usually such a case; in those situations, we face the person turning to herself or himself, creating two positions: the critic and the criticized. Also, in the beginning of the text, the critical part of the narrator excludes the experience of love, something that only comes later on in the text. • Third, the full articulation of the dialogical dynamics may act as a catalyst of change, creating some kind of rupture with which one may try to deal in a different way than the simple avoidance or defensive maneuvers. This means that enacting and putting in contact different positions seems vital in order to create the space of dialogical negotiation that may bring some novelty to the situation. In this case, the full articulation of the critic opened up a space to memories, which in turn, opened the path for a different perspective. Some Conclusions Positioning Microanalysis is a method that intends to create a clearer look at what kind of analysis the researcher is performing. Somehow we are trying to answer questions such as “How do we do it?” and “How do you see it?” Fostering this understanding is a first step toward replication of the method, meaning that people can learn how to use it more or less in the same way, while adjusting it to their specific purposes. Notice that we do not endorse the idea that replicable methods are better designed or that they are better suited to give us “objective knowledge.” Replication only means building a set of procedures or rules that lead to some kind of consensus. A consensus, in turn, tends to be a movement of maintaining a given state, tending toward conservation and not toward innovation. Moreover, in the way we conceive it, “objectivity” is something achieved through the coordination of at least two human agents who create some joint action around an object of knowledge. The intention, of course, is not to proclaim that this is the only way of making a dialogical analysis of a text; there will always be different possibilities of analysis of a text (or any psychological phenomena), and its “fitness”

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will always depend on the articulation and mutual definition of components. As such, each method carries its own possibilities and constraints. At this point, we hope some potentialities of Positioning Microanalysis will be clearer. It is our conviction that this sort of method is coherent with our aim of getting closer to human phenomena taking place in daily life. At the same time, we hope it will contribute to the development of a dialogically based research of psychological functioning. Moreover, Positioning Micronalysis is being applied to transcripts of psychotherapy sessions as a way of enabling analysis of idiographic studies of change processes. Acknowledgement This work has been supported by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology, by the Grant PTDC/PSI-PCL/103432/2008 (“Decentering and Change in Psychotherapy,” 2010–2013). Note 1. In a previous exercise (Salgado, 2004), we started with this kind of distinction in order to detect different positions involved in a small excerpt of therapy. To be more rigorous, in that work, the analysis differentiated “voices” from “positions.” These notions, even if overlapping and sometimes referring partially to the same phenomena, also have different kinds of implications and meanings. The notion of “voice” has sometimes been so extended that it is quite easy to forget its dialogical origins. The notion of position, instead, introduces a higher conceptual clarity. 2. This analysis was initially presented as a part of the Interactive Symposium “How Voices Make I-Positions—An Exercise in Collective Investigation,” organized by Livia Simão, which took place in the 5th International Conference on the Dialogical Self, Cambridge, England, August 28, 2008. 3. “El Guerrillero” is a short story written by Colombian writer Albalucía Angel in 1939, published in 1979 in a collection under the title “¡Oh Gloria Inmarcesible!”

References Auld, F., Jr., & White, A. M. (1956). Rules for dividing interviews into sentences. Journal of Psychology, 42, 273–281. Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevky’s poetics (C. Emerson, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1929, revised 1963)

242    J. SALGADO and C. CUNHA Bento, T., Cunha, C., & Salgado, J. (in press). Dialogical theory of selfhood. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1996). A construção social da realidade: Um livro sobre sociologia do conhecimento (2nd ed.). Lisbon, Portugal: Dinalivro. (Original work published 1966) Branco, A., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Changing methodologies: A co-constructivist study of goal orientations in social interactions. Psychology and Developing Societies, 9, 35–64. Cunha, C. (2007a). Constructing organization through multiplicity: A microgenetic analysis of self-organization in the dialogical self. International Journal of Dialogical Science, 2, 287–316. Cunha, C. (2007b). Processos dialógicos de auto-organização e mudança: Um estudo microgenético [Dialogical processes of self-organization and change: A microgenetic study]. Unpublished master’s dissertation, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal. Cunha, C., Salgado, J., & Gonçalves, M. M. (2012). The dialogical self in movement: Reflecting on methodological tools for the study the dynamics of change and stability in the self. In E. Abbey & S. Surgan (Eds.), Developing methods in psychology (pp. 65–100). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Cunha, C., Salgado, J., Santos, A., & Marques, H. (2009). Positioning microanalysis: Manual (unpublished). Porto, Portugal: Instituto Superior da Maia. Fassinger, R. E. (2005). Paradigms, praxis, problems, and promise: Grounded theory in counseling research. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52(2), 156–166. Ferreira, T., Salgado, J., & Cunha, C. (2006). Ambiguity and the dialogical self: In search for a dialogical psychology. Estudios de Psicología, 27, 19–32. Gonçalves, M. M., & Salgado, J. (2001). Mapping the multiplicity of the self. Culture & Psychology, 7, 367–377. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The constructing of a personal position repertoire: Method and practice. Culture &Psychology, 7, 323–365. Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H., & van Loon, R. (1992). The dialogical self: Beyond individualism and rationalism. American Psychologist, 47, 23–33. Hill, C. E. (2009). Helping skills: Facilitating exploration, insight, and action (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Hill, C. E., Thompson, B. J., & Williams, E. N. (1997). A guide to conducting consensual qualitative research. The Counseling Psychologist, 25, 517–572. Leiman, M. (2002). Toward semiotic dialogism: The role of sign mediation in the dialogical self. Theory & Psychology, 12, 221–235. Leiman, M. (2004). Dialogical sequence analysis. In H. J. M. Hermans & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The dialogical self in psychotherapy (pp. 255–269). Hove, East Sussex, England: Brunner-Routledge. Leiman, M., & Stiles, W. B. (2001). Dialogical sequence analysis and the zone of proximal development as conceptual enhancements to the assimilation model: The case of Jan revisited. Psychotherapy Research, 11, 311–330. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Marková, I. (2003). Dialogicality and social representations: The dynamics of mind. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Positioning Microanalysis    243 Salgado, J. (2004, August 26–29). Methodology and the dialogical self: Different ways of killing a metaphor. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on the Dialogical Self, Warsaw, Poland. Salgado, J. (2008, August 26–29). Analysis of the text “El Guerrillero.” Paper presented at the interactive symposium of the Fifth International Conference on the Dialogical Self, Cambridge, England. Salgado, J., & Gonçalves, M. (2007). The dialogical self: Social, personal, and (un) conscious. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of social cultural psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Salgado, J., & Hermans, H. J. M. (2005). The return of subjectivity: From a multiplicity of selves to a dialogical self. E-Journal of Applied Psychology: Clinical section, 1, 1–13. Available at: http://www.swin.edu.au/lib/ir/onlinejournals/ejap/ Salgado, J., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Dialogism and the eternal movement within communication. In. C. Grant (Ed.), Beyond universal pragmatics (pp. 101–122). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Saussure, F. de (1977) Course in general linguistics (trans. W. Baskin). Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. (originally published in 1916). Shotter, J. (1993). Conversational realities: The construction of life through language. London, England: Sage. Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 273– 285). London, England: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2002). Forms of dialogical relations and semiotic autoregulation within the self. Theory & Psychology, 12, 251–265. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi, India: Sage. Vygotsky, L. (1997). The history of the development of higher mental functions (Vol. 4, M. J. Hall, Trans.). New York, NY: Plenum.

João Salgado, PhD, is professor and the Head of the Department of Social and Behavioral Science at ISMAI, Portugal. He is also a psychotherapist and the Director of the Counseling Service of his university. His main research interests are associated with the theoretical and methodological developments of a dialogical perspective within psychology, and with the applications of this framework to the field of psychotherapy and clinical psychology. He is presently developing a research project on the role of the decentering processes in psychotherapeutic change (Decentering and Change in Psychotherapy– PTDC/PSI-PCL/103432/2008). Address: João Salgado, Instituto Superior da Maia, Avenida Carlos Oliveira Campos, Castelo da Maia, 4475-690 S. Pedro Avioso, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected] Carla Cunha, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at ISMAI Her current research interests are focused on identity and change processes following a narrative and dialogical approach, applied to the fields of psychotherapy and human development. Institutional affiliation: ISMAI–Instituto Superior da Maia and

244    J. SALGADO and C. CUNHA School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. Address: Instituto Superior da Maia, Avenida Carlos Oliveira Campos, 4475-695, Avioso S. Pedro, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected]

The Role of Language in Researcher–Participant Interaction Andrea Smorti and Elia Cardini University of Florence, Italy

Abstract In this chapter, we will focus on one aspect (among the many possible) of the reciprocal relationships between language and idiographic science: the meaning of words. By discussing this topic, we will try to clarify our perspective on idiographic science and on the role of language in it. We will attempt to underline how the existence of different meanings attributed to words represents a variable that researchers cannot disregard. However, during research, this variable is too often overlooked in favor of a meticulous inquiry into the most appropriate statistical tests. In doing so, researchers do not reflect on the possible relationship between the meaning they attribute to words when they talk with the “subjects” and the meaning the latter attribute both to researcher’s and their own words. This topic, as can be easily seen, contains not only methodological but also theoretical issues because it entails the problem of meaning in popular as well as in scientific languages. Furthermore, reflecting on the theoretical issue also enables us to identify some methodological consequences and to provide some research suggestions.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 245–258 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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How Experimental “Subjects” Interpret Experimental Situations? In the history of psychology, especially in North America, the choice of one among many ways of calling those people who are studied in a research was found to be debated a long time until now (Carey, 2004; Danziger, 1990; Roediger, 2004). Naming, like all rhetorical usages, is never simply a matter of choosing symbols and referents; it is an act of social constitution (Bibace, Clegg, & Valsiner, 2008) and this can easily be seen by scanning the names in each methodological approach in psychology that has “marked” the people involved in a research: sample, population, participants, customers, clients, patients, subjects. What we see here is just a first important attribution of meaning because it illustrates how a researcher looks and talks to those people. But other important meaning games exist, which are connected to the differences existing among scientific societies and people. While the construction of the scientific significance of words is based on conventional rules shared by a specific scientific community (through its conferences, journals, and meetings), meaning in popular culture is more defined through an everyday (culturally sensitive context) usage in which nobody can tell what is the true meaning to attribute to a given word. A crucial step in every psychological investigation is the moment in which an experimenter gets in touch with the experimental subject. In that moment, an informant (to put it in anthropologic terms) is requested to provide important information on himself/herself and about others. It is therefore surprising to discover how little we read on this relationship in scientific papers. Psychological investigations, by definition, primarily study human beings’ thoughts or feelings and do not mind (at least apparently) how people who are observed, questioned, interviewed, tested, and “experimented” on perceive and evaluate their research setting. For example, if adolescents are submitted to diverse tests with hundreds of questions exploring and searching into the private folds of their experience, it should be important to know how those adolescents live that sort of interrogatory, how they perceive the test situation, and what they believe experimenters actually expect from them. While we learn much about statistical analyses, coefficients, and other numeric indices (including the third or fourth decimal of Wilks’ lambda), at the most, only the objective conditions of the test setting are described: the type of test administration (individual or collective), the place, the presence of other people (teachers or parents), and whether participants have been informed about the aims and the nature of the study and have accepted these willingly. Generally, nothing is added about how the “subject who is researched” understood

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the task: different participants are assumed to attribute the same meaning to the test. But is this a valid assumption? Before answering this question, it is necessary to say something more about the relationship that links “the subject who researches” and the “subject who is researched.” This is the most typical psychological moment in all the inquiry because it entails a relationship between human beings. On one hand, there is a researcher with all his/her store of methods, and theories, and that is preoccupied that something may be wrong (including that data do not confirm the hypothesis). on the other hand, there is the object of investigation who, in psychology, is a person with all his/her preoccupations, including that of being studied. Though this relationship sometimes is a very mediated form of interaction, as in cases when a test is collectively administrated, or participants are located in separate rooms, this does not exclude that this relational situation be in any way psychologically significant, because administering a test entails looking into personal or even intimate participant’s experience or challenging his/her self-esteem. It is as if a researcher says to a participant, “Since you accepted to participate, give me all the information I will ask you about your life, and please, be sincere (or, in level tests, do the best you can). In exchange for this, I promise you that I’ll treat with discretion the secrets you confide to me.” However, the participants, besides understandable reservations about “opening” themselves to a stranger and letting the researcher enter inside themselves, have at least two other problems. The first is to understand what there is “under” the words the experimenters use (i.e., “Why do they pose those questions and put me in that situation?”). This is a relational and pragmatic question, and it relies on the issue of the so-called social desirability (“What does this person want from me? What is he/she expecting me to do or to say?”). The second problem (sometimes unconscious) is a semantic one, and it deals with the meaning of the words the researcher used on interviews, questionnaires, tests, and such. It is clear that these two questions are linked because participants attribute a meaning to words also on the basis of what they believe researchers want to know. What are the goals a child, an adolescent, or even an adult attribute to the experimenter when he/she poses a question? What meaning do they attribute to his/her words? Are we sure that, say, a child and an experimenter give the same meaning to the same words? Many decades ago, Piaget (1926) stressed this problem, investigating how difficult was understanding children’s words and, in turn, how difficult for a child was understanding just what an experimenter wanted to know from him/her. Nowadays, however, researchers seem to be not so much preoccupied with these two problems. This is due, possibly, to the overwhelming role scientists assign to the method. In scientific investigations, the method has the

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task of mediating the relationship between “the subject who researches” and the “subject who is researched.” Usually the first problem is quickly solved through specific technological and methodological devices apt to control social desirability—the Hawthorne effect—and also clarify what the aims of the researcher are before or more often, after, in the case of investigations in which knowing the aims in advance can invalidate the participants’ responses. Anyway, it is assumed that the respect of a methodological or deontological code leads to respect also of an epistemological one. The second problem, that of meaning, is very often not addressed because it is supposed to be already overcome. In fact, if the instrument is standardized, it is assumed to have passed all canonical measures of the internal consistency, interraters agreement, test/retest, and concurrent validity (which makes it a consistent and valid instrument), and it is assumed that everyone interprets words this instrument employs in the same ways and that, therefore, participants’ answers allow the measuring of just that dimension of mind or behavior that a researcher aims to study. If, on the contrary, the instrument was not standardized because it was created just for the present research, it should be preceded by pilot studies aimed at refining the questions (if it is a questionnaire or an interview).� This is not always done, but when it happens, the pilot study is often focused more on statistical and quantitative assessments of the instrument (e.g., through a factor analysis, alpha coefficients, and so on, to select those questions that correlate each other). To sum up, researchers’ assumptions seem to be that all the participants attribute the same meaning to the same questions, and it is this belief that permits them to compare different subjects with the same instrument. Is this assumption sustainable? I think that the answer should be “No.” The Issue of the Language If we assume that the same words and sentences have the same meaning for everyone who share the same language, we fall into a short circuit between langue and parole (de Saussure, 1962). This is especially evident whenever a psychologist uses instruments created in another country and consequently in another language. In these cases, a good methodological procedure is that researchers, first, agree with their foreign colleagues to be entitled to use that instrument; second, they translate it into their own language; third, they translate it again into the original language (back translation), and they send the new text back to their foreign colleagues. If these latter say that the translation is somehow similar to the original text, the test can be

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employed, providing it is validated by representative samples of populations sharing the psychologist’s language. But here again the same problem arises: does the fact that researchers from different countries agree on the translation of words and sentences guarantee that participants of inquiries conducted in the two countries give the same meanings to the “same” (actually different) words? The issue assumes a theoretical and methodological importance that cannot be underestimated. Example of Meaning Contrasts: The Studies on “Bullying” Bullying as an act has a scientific definition (bullying as scientific concept) that is commonly accepted in the scientific community. Bullying as a scientific concept is characterized by at least three criteria: 1. There is a social interaction between a child or a group of children (called bullies) who intentionally cause hurt to another child (called the victim); 2. This relationship is based on an imbalance of power (of a physical, psychological, social type) so that the bully is stronger than the victim or is perceived to be stronger; 3. This aggressive and imbalanced relationship must occur repeatedly and over time (Farrington, 1995; Smith & Brain, 2000) Epidemiological studies have shown greatly varying percentages of bullying acts across different countries. The proportion of children involved in bullying in primary school has been reported to be 41% in Italy, about 27% in England, around 20% in Portugal, 18% in Spain, 11% in Japan, and 9% in Norway (Smith, 1999). All of these studies used a similar instrument (Olweus’ questionnaire; Olweus, 1993) or close variants of it, that is, all these instruments are constructed according to the same operational definition of bullying that makes use of words referring to the bullying act. Therefore the scientific concept of bullying refers to bullying acts and uses, in the study of it, an operational definition that makes use of bullying words that in turn should measure bullying as a concept. Now the problem is, are these different percentages due to actual differences in the rates of bullying acts present in different countries or do they depend on the fact that Italian, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian, and Japanese children mean different bullying acts when they read bullying questionnaires translated into their language (bullying as a word)?

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A cultural approach to bullying would claim that people, and children in particular, classify reality in terms of salient acts or events, making use of prototypical representations (bullying as a popular concept) drawn from the popular psychology of their country, even when they may be requested to think and to name complex relational situations. To what extent do scientists, when speaking about bullying (that is, they use their scientific concept of bullying), take into account these popular meanings? We can argue that each society has its popular definition of bullying that is something close to the standard definition a particular culture’s common language uses to classify different aggressive acts. This means that a popular definition depends also on the structure of its language that cuts out, in some fuzzy way, a section of reality. Therefore, if the popular Anglo-Saxon definition of the term bullying (bullying as a popular concept) refers basically to physical and verbal aggression, people who speak English in the United Kingdom will think of physical and verbal aggressive acts (bullying as acts) when they are asked whether they have been bullied. They may not use a term such as bullying (bullying as a word) when they suffer from other forms of aggression, for instance, when they are victims of exclusion and psychological bullying (Arora, 1996). If researchers in a given country use the scientific concept of bullying (and its operational definition conveyed by the words of a bullying questionnaire), but respondents to this questionnaire (such as school children) use a more popular meaning of the term and accordingly specific bullying words, then researchers carrying out cross-national comparisons may be lulled into a false sense of security. They may think that they are all measuring (by means of the concept of bullying and its operational definition) the same (defined) phenomenon (bullying as a act), when in fact they are measuring different concepts embedded (bullying as a popular concept) in different linguistic structures (bullying as a word). It is possible that the mistake researchers make in their assumptions is to look at communication in terms of unilateral models (Shannon, 1948; Shannon & Weaver 1949). Moreover, a researcher’s expectations and her/his personal meanings ascribed to single words twist a participant’s behaviour (actions, language, molecular responses to inputs), and if researchers present “their” meaning as “the truth,” participants may simply accept this truth without reflecting on what they themselves really think or feel. In a study carried out with 30- to 55-year-old parents of children aged 6 to 13 years in five different countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, and Japan), Smorti, Menesini, and Smith (2003) aimed at analyzing similarities and differences among words in five languages used to describe different types of bullying and social exclusion, and identifying which terms (previously selected through focus groups) were the most appropriate to use in comparisons across cultures and languages. The participants were pre-

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sented with 25 stick-figure cartoons showing different types and contexts of bullying and related behaviors. They were asked to evaluate whether the cartoons could be described or not by one of the target terms. Cluster analysis identified six clusters of cartoons characterized by specific behaviors: nonaggression, fighting, severe physical aggression, verbal aggression, exclusion, and severe exclusion. On the basis of these clusters, there were clear differences across terms and countries regarding both the breadth of the semantic area of a term and its closeness to the usual scientific definition of bullying. In some countries, bullying was mainly a matter of physical and verbal aggression; in others, social exclusion was the main characteristic; in others, again a mix of fighting, severe physical aggression, verbal aggression, and severe exclusion. This study showed how differences across languages in the semantic fields of a term have affected the way in which the problem has been investigated in a cross-cultural perspective and are likely to partly explain differences in the rates of bullying reported in each country, even when the same questionnaire was used. For instance, in the United Kingdom, where bullying has a more exclusive sense, being bullied in the last 2–3 months ranged from 27% to 10% in primary and secondary schools, respectively (Smith, 1999). In Italy, where the more inclusive term prepotenze was used, the percentages were about twice as high, with figures of 41% for primary and 27% for secondary-middle school (Fonzi et al., 1999). This confirms the assumptions of linguistic anthropologists (Bock, 1994) that language usually selects specific aspects of reality that may have a different meaning depending on the words used to connote them. A specific methodological implication is that, in cross-cultural research on bullying (as in other areas), there should be a clear understanding of the varying meaning profiles of words used to translate bullying (or aggression, violence, etc.). This is especially so when rates of the phenomenon are being compared. Notwithstanding, the term prepotenza had brilliantly overcome “back-translation” tests because Italian researchers translated it into the word bullying and this term was was obviously accepted by English researchers. This does not mean that English and Italian people, when questioned on “bullying,” mean the same type of acts. Overcoming linguistic label tests (through back-translation) does not mean to also pass the test of meaning. In other words, researchers agree on a shared common scientific concept of bullying acts. Afterward, they use one word that in their language expresses that concept and use that word to build their instrument. On the other hand, people interpret that word in terms of the popular meaning connected to that word. So they respond in terms of that popular definition and not in terms of the scientific definition. Researchers collected data to interpret these in terms of their concept of bullying and not in terms of

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the popular definition of bullying. Therefore a misunderstanding seems to occur: what researchers discuss, publish, and disseminate through their articles are popular definitions and not a confirmation of the scientific definition—researchers and participants actually refers to different acts. Psychology as a Science is Linguistically Still Behaviorist Now, all this springs from what we may call “lack of interest” from researchers toward a participant’s interpretation of scientific settings, tools, or tests. The language psychologists use was and continues to be a behaviorist language, notwithstanding cognitive revolution, psychoanalysis, and hermeneutic turns—stimuli are given in order to obtain responses. Scientific papers are made of behaviorist words, even if authors may be not behaviorists. There are plenty of questions, stimuli, questionnaires, and tests “given,” and there are plenty of responses “obtained.” From the type of stimulusresponse correlation, statistically analyzed through very sophisticated procedures, inferences on participants’ mind are made But the so-called experimental subject is not only capable of giving responses but also of having his own intentionality and of interpreting the situation an experiment provides. As Michael Cole (1996) (among other cultural psychologists) demonstrated, we cannot work without these interpretations. In their research, Gay and Cole (1967) demonstrated that cultural differences in cognitive capacities can be connected to those particular situations used to study cognitive processes. In the first phase of their experiment, a measurement task was proposed to Liberian and American children using geometrical blocks. Comparing Liberian children to American children, the former proved to be less likely to perform the task correctly. However, taking into account the fact that Liberian children live in a culture where rice is planted and traded, the authors repeated the experiments, modifying the situation in order to make it more familiar. The children were asked to measure the quantity using cups of rice instead of blocks, in this way, creating a playful and more familiar context. With the use of this different material, no differences among groups were found. Etic vs Emic Research Researchers’ preference for behaviorist language may depend on an analogous preference for etic rather emic type of research (Pike, 1967). The etic approach studies general aspects of behavior. In this approach, psychologists study behavior from a position outside the system. Moreover, they aim

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at observing, and they treat constructs as culture and mind as they manage independent and dependent variables in a laboratory. If they are crosscultural psychologists, they may wonder to what extent a cognitive style is influenced by a culture (see Berry, 1990). The emic approach considers behavior as not separated from the system in which it occurs and then as understandable only by referring to it. The observer is placed within the system he/she observes and is connected to it. If he/she is a cultural psychologist, he/she may wonder to what extent they are modified by the observed system and in turn to what extent they are influencing the system itself. The etic and the emic approaches depend on the observer’s position, and it is important to be aware that when observers assume an external perspective, they examine causal influences among mind and culture. On the other hand, when observers assume an internal perspective, they examine, through an interpretative method, the circularity and reciprocal interactions among mind and culture, being conscious of being involved themselves in this process. Summing up, we can imagine two types of research. On one hand, assuming the etic approach, we can consider subjects’ responses as belonging to the same class of meaning: subjects from different samples and culture are supposed to interpret the task in the same way. On the other hand, assuming the emic approach, we can take into account the subjective meanings each participant gives to the task. However, it is possible to bring these perspectives nearer. In the context of cultural studies, Berry (1969, 1989) and Triandis (1978) proposed that methodologically, every construct may be elaborated at an emic level, because it is in the context of a given culture that that construct can be defined theoretically and methodologically. However, this construct can be verified and generalized only at an etic level. For instance, this might mean to pass from a clinical type of research to a correlational or experimental one and to eventually end up evaluating the extent to which the outcomes of an etic research can contribute to a better comprehension of a specific individual. Other ways exist, however, which consider a study of the meaning of words as a necessary step for every type of research both of clinical and correctional-experimental types. Every research, be it on memory, perceptive, emotional, or cognitive processes, has to deal with the issue of what subjects understand of what we request from them and what subjects mean when they give us an answer. All this poses a wider problem, which entails the nature of science. In The Crisis of European Sciences, Edmund Husserl (1936) reproached modern science for having reduced the problem of knowledge of reality to the problem of its mathematization.

254    A. SMORTI and E. CARDINI Mathematics and mathematical science, as a garb of ideas, or the garb of symbols of the symbolic mathematical theories, encompasses everything which, for scientists and the educated generally, represents the life-world, dresses it up as “objectively actual and true” nature. It is through the garb of ideas that we take for true being what is actually a method. (p. 51, emphasis added)

This “garb” makes us take as the “true being” what is actually just a method, which should improve, through “scientific expectations,” in a progressum in infinitum those raw expectations that are the one possible within the context of what is really perceived and perceptible in the world of life. It has been easy to fall into the temptation of seeing in mathematics formulae the true essence of the nature in itself and to forget that the quantities represented through numeric functions, so docile and quickly interchangeable, had a more modest origin, actually richer and more mindful for a human being placed in his world of life. In summing up, first, scientists put the real object of their scientific interest between brackets and decide to observe it through a particular instrument. Then they end up mistaking the outcome of their measurements for that object, forgetting that they had only temporarily put that object between the brackets. The poor interest in describing their relationship with the object of their investigations (be these children, adolescents, adults) and their main attitude in describing the instrument and the operations of measurement used seem to be an index of this forgetfulness. Mistaking the method for the object is, of course, always an error. However, this error is more serious when the object is a human being who grows up and who changes according to the time and the space. What, therefore, do you ask of psychology as an idiographic science? Basically, that the need of respecting commonly accepted scientific canon nowadays does not lead a psychologist to definitively lock the object of his/ her investigation between those two brackets. Psychologists must not give up, of course, either operationalizing forms of life through the necessary techniques (with the help of the exact sciences, e.g., mathematics, or less exact, e.g., statistics) or the basic requirement of approaching those forms of life with a more interpretative stance, taking into account themselves and the relationship they have with the object. This should suggest an attitude to listen. What experimental subjects have to tell about what we ask them is as important to know as measures we obtain from our instruments. Conclusions In this contribution, we stressed how in psychology the discovering process (or at least, the way in which this process is accounted) rarely considers

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the problem of meaning that subjects attribute to the questions and to the situation prepared by the researcher. This issue is particularly relevant in the idiographic science as well as in whole psychology since only if we assess how participants interpret the experimental situation (including the instruments used) can a scientist be sure of the validity of their responses. In a famous experiment, Salomon Ash (1952), using the line judgment task, showed how in the presence of a group of confederates, united and determined in their own judgments, one in three people changed his/her own opinion of the length of rods and conformed to the group’s ideas, even if the group was clearly wrong. However, only by interviewing the participants after the experiment, he was able to understand partecipants’ different behaviours: in certain cases they had modified their own opinions only apparently, matching their perception with others but maintaining their own internal evaluation; in other cases they had modified their own opinion totally, through a real procession of “conversion,” whether this process was conscious or unconscious; in other case eventually he could understand whether participants had realized that the pressure group (confederates) had agreed before and so that all the situation was created in advance from the researcher. About two decades later, Moscovici (1976) demonstrated the existence of similar processes through a similar procedure (though the results were elaborated differently from a conceptual point of view). Now what is done in social psychology experiments can be done in every other experiment because every experiment is somehow a social experiment, always entailing a researcher-participant relationship. The issue of the meaning brings up the issue of the language in two senses. First, how participants interpret researchers’ words, which poses the old question, which words should we use to talk to participants? Second, how do researchers interpret participants’ words? Both questions pose hermeneutic problems regardless of what research must tackle. Solving these problems leads researchers to understand which special and particular form of relationship has been established among them and the participants. Also, the reverse is true, however, understanding that special form of relationship between researchers and participants helps the former to solve the hermeneutic problem. All this means to also understand the particular perspective participants used to give their responses in the experimental setting. Assessing their personal perspectives may not only increase or decrease the validity of the outcomes (the researcher now “knows” whether participants gave the meaning they were expected to give), but also to compare a particular participant’s response to that of the others. It could be useful for a psychologist (especially for an idiographic psychologist) to also take advantage of the anthropologist’s stance. An anthropologist approaches an informant in order to obtain information on the culture where he/she lives. The nature of the relationship between the two

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strangers (the anthropologist and his/her informant) and its influence on anthropologist’s work constitutes a central issue in anthropology (see Amsterdam & Bruner, 2000; Geertz, 1988). The native reacts to anthropologist’s otherness on the basis of his/her cultural presuppositions and that what he/she says and does will be in turn interpreted by the anthropologist on the basis of his/her cultural presuppositions. For example, let’s imagine the scenario in which both are “within” their own cultural setting; the question then is, how could we assess whether, in this relationship, a minimal level of understanding occurs in order to obtain the information the anthropologist needs? We believe that this question should be kept open for all social sciences, and in this sense, psychologists should be more like anthropologists and wonder about the extent to which they share the same language and culture of their informants. Perhaps psychologists, approaching their experiment subjects, should become aware that, besides an attitude of respect, a sense of prudence and human sensitivity are also necessary in order to catch possible misunderstandings. Though these cannot always be avoided, it would be useful at least to be aware of the possibility of a misunderstanding. Are our doctorate students educated to learn these capacities? For these reasons, we are proposing a methodological suggestion: reserving in every psychological research a specific “space” for clarifying misunderstandings that may have occurred between researchers and participants. To do this, it could be sufficient (before the research, through a pilot study on a few cases or during the inquiry itself in a small subsample) to conduct an interview on the experience of being researched. It could be an interview focused on the meaning participants attribute to the experimental setting or the questions used during the study. This sort of assessment would permit a researcher to have useful information on the nature of the researcherparticipant relationship. From a certain point of view, this proposal is not new because it is what methodological handbooks recommend: to have a study preceded from another study—a pilot study—through which the answers, the setting, the procedure, and so on can be refined and elaborated. The pilot analysis should focus the interpretation that participants and researchers give to the experimental situation or questions in order to clarify the meaning-problem and the meaning of words, which in turn, can cast light on the nature of the researcher-participant interaction. References Amsterdam, T., & Bruner, J. (2000). Minding the law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Arora, C. M. J. (1996). Defining bullying. School Psychology International, 17, 317–329.

The Role of Language in Researcher–Participant Interaction    257 Ash, S. E. (1952). Social psychology. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. Berry, J. W. (1969). On cross-cultural comparability. International Journal of Psychology, 4, 119–128. Berry, J. W. (1989). Imposed etics-emics-derived etics: The operationalization of a compelling idea. International Journal of Psychology, 24, 721–735. Berry, J. W. (1990). Cultural variations in cognitive style. In S. Wapner (Ed.), Biopsycho-social factors in cognitive style (pp. 289–308). Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum. Bibace, R., Clegg, J. W., & Valsiner, J. (2008). What is in a name? Understanding the implications of participant terminology. Integrative psychological & behavioral science, 43(1), 67–77. Bock, P. K. (Ed.). (1994). Psychological anthropology. Westport, CT: Praeger. Carey, B. (2004, June 15). The subject is subjects. The New York Times, p. A10. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. de Sausure, F. (1962). Corso di linguistica general. Bari, Italy: Laterza. Farrington D. P. (1995). Childhood aggression and adult violence: Early precursors and later life outcomes. In D. J. Pepler & K. H. Rubin (Eds.), The development and treatment of childhood aggression (pp. 5–29). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Fonzi, A., Genta, M. L., Menesini, E., Bacchini, D., Bonino, S., & Costabile, A. (1999). Italy. In P. K. Smith, Y. Morita, J. Junger-Tas, D. Olweus, R. Catalano, & P. Slee (Eds.), The nature of school bullying. A crossnational perspective (pp. 140– 156). London, England: Routledge. Gay, J., & Cole, M. (1967). The new mathematics in an old culture. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives. The anthropologist as author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Husserl, E. (1936). Die krisis der Europäischen wissenschaften und die transzendentale phänomenologie [The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology]. (1970) Evanston : Northwestern University Press. Moscovici, S. (1976). Social influence and social change. London, England: Academic. Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school. What we know and what we can do. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Piaget, J. (1926). La représentation du monde chez l’enfant. Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de Frances. Pike, K. L. (1967). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton. Roediger, H., III (2004). What should they be called? Observer, 17(4), 46–48. Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379–423. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Smith, P. K. (1999). England Andwales. In P. K. Smith, Y. Morita, J. Junger-Tas, D. Olweus, R. Catalano, & P. Slee (EDS.), The nature of school bullying. A cross-national perspective (pp. 68–90). London: Routledge. Smith, P. K., & Brain, P. (2000). Bullying in schools: Lessons from two decades of research. Aggressive Behavior, 26, 1–9.

258    A. SMORTI and E. CARDINI Smorti, A., Menesini, E., & Smith, P. K. (2003). Parents’ definition of children’s bullying in a five-country comparison. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 34(4), 417–432. Triandis, H. C.(1978). Some universals of social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 1–16.

Andrea Smorti is full professor of developmental psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology of Florence. His investigations explore the field of narrative thought and cultural Psychology. He is co-editor (with Antonio Iannacone) of the journal Psicologia Culturale. Address: Dipartimento di Psicologia -via di San Salvi, 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Firenze. E-mail: [email protected] Elia Cardini is a doctorate student at the Department of Psychology of Florence (University of Florence). He recieved a degree in psychology at Florence University. His current scientific interests are related to collective memories, semiotics, and autobiographical narrative of collective events. E-mail: eliacardini @yahoo.it

Commentary

Some Reflections on the Emergence of Multimodal Assemblages of Meaning Mariann Märtsin Cardiff University, UK

Abstract In this commentary, I reflect upon the conceptualization of human meaning making, utilized in the two target articles, which relies heavily on speech as the main mode of semiosis and considers time only in its chronological form. However, I argue that human existence is embodied and lived through multiple modalities and involves not only sequential experience of time but also the experience of emergence. In order to move toward a conception of meaning making that takes this into account, I introduce the social-semiotic theory of multimodality (Kress, 2010) and discuss notions of “real duration” (Bergson, 1907/1998) and “lived time” (Martin-Vallas, 2009). I argue that dialogical (idiographic) researchers need to develop analytic and methodological tools that allow the emergence of multimodal assemblages of meaning to be explored, in addition to trying to avoid the monologization of complex dynamic dialogical phenomena.

Making Sense of Infinite Uniqueness, pages 259–266 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Introduction My concern in this commentary is the conceptualization of human meaning making utilized in the two target chapters in this volume by Salgado and Cunha, as well as Smorti and Cardini, and the methodological moves afforded by this conceptualization. In my reading, both chapters (implicitly or explicitly) take dialogism to be their underlying theoretical position that guides their calls and proposals for methodological innovation. This theoretical position that considers other-orientation, situated interaction, context orientation, and semiotic mediation to be the cornerstones of human meaning making (Linell, 2009), has in the last decades emerged as a self-asserted paradigm in contrast to discursive, cognitive, and behavioral paradigms that have gone before (Gillespie, 2010). Calls for methodological innovations that would match the conceptual developments in the field have been made from the very onset of this paradigm shift (see, for example, Valsiner, 1998). A return to the idiographic approach—systematic analysis of unique cases in order to arrive at generalized knowledge about human psychological functioning—that is showcased in this volume is one of the methodological approaches that have sprung from these early calls (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). However, the methodological turn to dialogism seems to have been slower and proven to be more difficult than the respective turn in conceptualization. Despite several decades of productive work that draws on this theoretical advancement, it is still the case that there is a “difficulty of developing methodological tools that are fully consistent with dialogical assumptions and . . . there is unavoidable tension between accounting for the complexity of an interaction and using methodological tools which necessarily tend to ‘monologize’ this complexity” (Grossen, 2010, p. 2). This continuing effort in developing dialogical (idiographic) methodologies is, in my reading, the main concern of the two target articles by Smorti and Cardini and by Salgado and Cunha. However, differently from them, my main issue in this commentary is not the retention of the complex, dynamic, and dialogical nature of human meaning making. Instead, my concern here is the particular conceptualization of modality and temporality of human meaning making utilized by them and, in my view, by the majority of dialogical researchers. I argue that the methodological moves advocated in these chapters are constrained by their heavy conceptual reliance on speech as the main mode of semiosis and the use of a chronological conception of time. In this short commentary, I want to challenge that limitation. First, by drawing upon the social-semiotic theory of multimodality (Kress, 2010), I want to explore how other modalities in addition to speech could be taken into account in the conceptualization of meaning making. Second, by building on Bergson’s (1998) notion of “real duration”

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and Martin-Vallas’s (2009) concept of “lived time,” I want to move on from sequential (chronological) consideration of time and toward a notion of emergence that allows exploring how the flow of meaning making becomes punctured and novelty suddenly emerges from the dynamic blurring of past and future in the present. I am thus seeking to complement the analyses and discussions presented in the target chapters by opening up a debate about aspects of meaning making that have so far received relatively little attention in dialogical paradigm. Beyond Speech: Multimodality of Meaning Making In their contribution, Smorti and Cardini unpack one of the underlying assumptions of dialogical thinking, namely, the idea that word meanings are not fixed and pregiven but always co-constructed by interlocutors in their specific discursive situation (Grossen, 2010; Linell, 2009). By highlighting the polysemic nature of language, they argue that the possible (or rather inevitable) divergence of meanings between researcher and research participant needs to be taken into account in research. While I wholeheartedly agree with this methodological imperative, I also believe that our methodological tools need not only allow us to deal with the polysemic nature of language but equally should let us investigate the multiple meaning potentials afforded by other modalities, such as still and moving image, layout, sound, gesture, color, and action, to name only a few (Kress, 2010). Furthermore, I argue that we need tools that allow exploring how all these various affordances come together as a whole in certain moments of human interaction and allow people to understand each other. In my reflections here, I draw mainly upon the social-semiotic theory of multimodality (Kress, 2010; Jewitt, Kress, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001) according to which (and in line with the theoretical position of dialogism) meanings arise in social interactions and are shaped by the interests of meaning makers as agents, as well as being dependent on the semiotic resources available in the culture. The notion of mode—“socially shaped and culturally given semiotic resource for making meaning” (Kress, 2010, p. 79)—is central to this conceptualization. Importantly however, it is argued that several distinct modes are utilized in meaning making, speech being only one mode among many. Each mode lends itself to different kinds of semiotic work; that is, each mode affords its distinct potential for meaning while being limited by other potentials. Thus, certain modes are better suited for making certain meanings. For example, a traffic diversion sign probably needs to use the modes of image, color, and layout, for otherwise the message might be inaccessible to the motorists driving by it via only

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the mode of writing. However, the social-semiotic theory of multimodality also suggests that a meaning does not arise from a single mode, but rather meaning is made by an ensemble of multimodal signifiers, selected and assembled together as a whole by meaning makers according to their interests. Thus, image, color, shape, and layout in the example of traffic diversion sign (i.e., black lines spatially positioned in relation to each other on yellow background, with dead-ends marked by red boxes) working together as a whole allow those drivers who need to go in the diverted direction to decide what to do. According to the social-semiotic theory of multimodality, then, meaning making is not merely a mental, reflective, or conceptual activity based on language, but a ceaseless process of relating to the world in an embodied and multimodal manner. This conceptualization is not new or unfamiliar to the dialogical paradigm. Valsiner (2006), for instance, suggests that in meaning making, two parallel processes are at work: schematization (the reduction of the overwhelming heterogeneity of human experiencing) and pleromatization (the making of “hyper-rich depictions of reality that stand for some other realities”; p. 2). In his view, schematization or homogenization through the use of language works in opposite directions to pleromatization or heterogenization by pictorial images. Both modes offer their particular meaning potentials for meaning makers. In the assemblage, these potentials, which are irrelevant for and incongruent with the interests of the meaning maker, become backgrounded, while those meaning potentials that carry the most communicational load for the individuals’ current purposes become foregrounded. The emergence of a specific meaning for the meaning maker is unpredictable, for individuals bring their previous livedthrough and imagined future experiences into the assemblage of meaning in the present (see below). However, until the meanings are made in the direction that is socially suggested by semiotic resources available in the culture, the particularities of the assemblages do not matter (Valsiner, 2006). Taking into consideration that the dialogical paradigm offers analytic tools for exploring the embodied and multimodal nature of human meaning making, it is surprising that dialogical methodologies (including the ones discussed and advocated in the target chapters) are still categorically embedded in the tradition of analyzing language. If we take seriously the theoretical positions discussed above, and I suggest we do, then it is clear that in order to recognize and track the emergence of new meanings, we need to have analytic and methodological tools that allow exploring the novelty that emerges and manifests itself via modes different from speech. Furthermore, we need tools that allow capturing how meaning potentials afforded by different modes become arranged and orchestrated by others in ways that make change and learning possible. Put differently, we need tools that allow exploring how the usage of various modes (e.g., speech

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vs. image) guides and scaffolds others’ meaning making. Valsiner (2008), for example, argues that human lives unfold in ornamented worlds, where abundant patterns of decoration go normally unnoticed but nevertheless function as “holistic devices of cultural guidance of human conduct” (p. 67). Likewise, Kress (2010) suggests that images on classroom walls, which function as “constant, silent, unavoidable and insistent visual messages” (p. 168), are beyond challenge and thus become unnoticeably internalized by meaning makers (for a similar argument about visual images as tacit relays of pedagogies, see Daniels, 1989). It seems to me that the current emphasis of dialogical methodologies on sharpening and finessing our tools for recognizing and analyzing change in speech does not allow us to explore these kinds of suggestions. I thus propose to move beyond the current entrapment in the analysis of language and toward a multimodal exploration of human meaning making. Beyond Sequence and Toward Emergence The emphasis that the two target chapters and, I would argue, dialogical (idiographic) research in general, place on language leads also to a particular conception of time in meaning making. As Kress (2010) notes, “Speech happens in time. In speech one sound, one word, one clause follows another, so that sequence in time is one fundamental organizing principle and means of making meaning in this mode” (p. 81). However, he also argues that not all modes rely on a chronological notion of time, but instead some of them, such as still images, are dependent upon instantaneous time of emergence. Furthermore, the emergence of a new multimodal assemblage of meaning is, in my view, a momentary and unpredictable phenomenon, which is not easily unpacked by a linear and sequential conception of time but rather requires analytic tools that allow capturing the blurring and simultaneous presence of past, present, and future. One possible starting point for thinking about the moment of becoming as a blurring of past, present, and future, is Bergson’s (1998) conception of real duration (la durée réelle). According to Muldoon (2006), real duration can be conceived as “the indivisible continuity of change” (p. 81). In Muldoon’s reading of Bergson, this seamless endurance is most immediate to our consciousness and becomes the cornerstone of our individuality. However, central to Bergson’s conception of duration is the idea that psychic elements have a life of their own and are in the constant state of becoming. In the indivisible and irreversible flow of consciousness, there can never be two psychic states that are the same—a moment can never reoccur, but is always becoming something else. Importantly though for Bergson, the present is infused with the individual’s personal past. In Muldoon’s (2006) read-

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ing, “In duration the personal past influences the personal present, not as a static state of affairs, but as a dynamic process . . . such that the person can prefigure (préformation) the future to a degree that allows a choice unpredicted by preceding circumstances” (p. 82). To rephrase, in Bergson’s view, the past survives in the present, but also becomes reworked in a manner that does not simply create a fit with the present state but rather forms the basis for moving forward into the unpredictable, yet anticipated, future. In this manner, the dynamic blurring of past, present, and future creates duration and not merely instantaneity. The notion of “lived time” offered by analytical therapist Martin-Vallas (2009) allows further unpacking of the moment in which new meanings emerge from the infusion of past, present, and future. Taking inspiration from Greek mythology, he distinguishes between two kinds of time: Chronos, chronological time that has past → present → future directionality, and Kairos, “lived time” when an opportunity for a difference suddenly emerges. If Chronos is about quantity of time, then Kairos is about its quality. At the heart of Kairos is a moment of rupture, a moment of transformative “catastrophe,” which breaks into the flow of chronological time, opens it up by creating a “bubble” in the present, in which past becomes accessible, can be experienced and worked through, and a possibility for different futures emerges. In this way, Kairos—the moment of opportunity—underpins the possibility of Chronos. Similarly to Bergson, then, Martin-Vallas guides us toward a conception of time that is not linear, cyclic, and sequential, but which flows through a constant reworking of the past in the present for the future, and thus continuously yet unpredictably allows the emergence of new meanings that are simultaneously behind, but also ahead of chronological time. The ideas of irreversibility of time and the necessary dynamic infusion of known past and unpredictable yet anticipated future in the present are well-recognized within the dialogical paradigm. The work on the (hyper) generalization of signs (Valsiner, 2007; Salvatore & Venuleo, 2010) builds on these ideas and introduces them powerfully into the dialogical thinking. Yet despite the availability of these analytic tools, the dialogical researchers continue to be preoccupied with the analysis of stages and sequences. By pointing to the need for moving beyond the chronological time, I am not trying to undermine the importance of the study of sequences. Nevertheless, I suggest, as do Salgado and Cunha in this volume, that “dynamic phenomena, (i.e., phenomena evolving through time)” (p. 223), are dynamic not merely because they move from past through present into the future, but also because they emerge from a dynamic assemblage of meaning potentials from the past and future in the present. Furthermore, I argue that the chronological conception of time does not allow unpacking how human meaning making works through generalization and through the creation of

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hierarchies of meanings. I thus believe that Salgado and Cunha’s claim that the “systematic comparison of each utterance with the previous ones allows description of personal positions in an hierarchical diagram” (p. 225) is only partly valid, for it allows creating hierarchies based on similarity and frequency but not based on the level of generalization. The former might allow exploring the variety in the landscape of positions and meanings an individual uses to make sense of the world, but does not allow seeing which meanings are more “powerful” in guiding human functioning in the world. It seems to me that the latter problematic requires some attention from dialogical thinkers too. In Conclusion My brief reflections in this commentary have been inspired by the two target chapters that, like the majority of dialogical research, utilize a conceptualization of human meaning making that deals mainly with language and is based on a chronological conception of time. Taking into consideration that human existence in the world is embodied and lived through multiple modalities, and involves not only a sequential experience of time, but also an experience of emergence, this conceptualization and the methodological moves afforded by it, seems limited. In my attempt to move beyond these restrictions, I have very briefly introduced some analytic tools from other disciplines and tried to show how these have already been taken up and theorized within the dialogical paradigm. I have not aimed at providing a well-defined and thought-through alternative, but simply sought to inspire and trigger further debates. By working on the premise that innovation in methodology stems from and feeds back to the innovation in theory, I have sought to point out that multimodality and emergence require renewed attention from dialogical (idiographic) researchers in addition to their efforts to avoid monologization and to retain the dialogicality of human meaning making in their analyses. References Bergson, H. (1998). Creative evolution (A. Mitchell, Trans.). New York, NY: Dover. (Original work published in French 1907) Daniels, H. (1989). Visual displays as tacit relays of the structure of pedagogic practice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 10(2), 123–140. Gillespie, A. (2010). The dialogical turn: Turning the corner? Theory & Psychology, 20(3), 461–463. Grossen, M. (2010). Interaction analysis and psychology: A dialogical perspective. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 44(1), 1–22.

266   M. MÄRTSIN Jewitt, C., Kress, G., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Exploring learning through visual, actional and linguistic communication: The multimodal environment of a science classroom. Educational Review, 53(1), 5–18. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London, England and New York, NY: Routledge. Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind and world dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Martin-Vallas, F. (2009). From end time to the time of the end: Some reflections about the emergence of subjectivity. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 54, 441–460. Muldoon, M. S. (2006). Tricks of time. Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur in search of time, self and meaning. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Idiographic science on its way: Toward making sense of psychology. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout-Yagodzynski, & J. Clegg (Eds.), Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1, pp. 9–19). Rome, Italy: Firera & Liuzzo. Salvatore, S., & Venuelo, C. (2010). The unconscious as symbolic generator: A psychodynamic-semiotic approach to meaning-making. In B. Wagoner (Ed.), Symbolic transformation. The mind in movement through culture and society (pp. 59– 74). New York, NY: Routledge. Valsiner, J. (1998). The guided mind: A sociogenetic approach to personality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Valsiner, J. (2006). The overwhelming world: Functions of pleromatization in creating diversity in cultural and natural constructions. Paper presented at the International Summer School of Semiotic and Structural Studies, Imatra, Finland. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology. New Dehli, India: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2008). Ornamented worlds and textures of feeling: The power of abundance. Critical Social Studies, 1, 67–78.

Mariann Märtsin is currently working at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences. She is a research associate at the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD). Her work examines how young people make sense of their life-course transitions. She is interested in exploring how social, political, and historical discourses shape and are shaped by young people’s future aspirations and how these constrain and enable young people as they imagine themselves forward into the future. Her research interests also include the issue of otherness within the self-system, and she is especially interested in using microgenetic and multimodal methods in the investigation of meaning making. Address: Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences, Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods, 46 Park Place, CF10 3BB Cardiff, UK. E-mail: [email protected]