Private Speech and Imagination: The Liminal Experience Between Myself and Others
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Private Speech and Imagination: The Liminal Experience Between Myself and Others Matías Barros 1 & Pablo Fossa 1 & Raffaele de Luca Picione 2 & María Elisa Molina 1 Received: 6 January 2020 / Revised: 6 January 2020 / Accepted: 18 March 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract
This article presents the results of a theoretical investigation that aimed to develop a comprehensive model regarding the phenomenon of imagination and private speech as liminal experiences of consciousness. A theoretical articulation between the phenomena was developed to explain how imagination and private speech allow to make sense in the liminal space between inner and outer worlds. It is concluded that the double role of iconic and verbal signs allows to configure future experiences and to construct meanings in the transitional space between oneself and others. The iconic and verbal signs used in imaginative and private speech processes, respectively, allow to experience situations ‘as if they were real’, and at the same time, to distance from them as a mental play separated from reality. This is all based on an affective matrix which determines the emergence of mental meanings and mental content. This article constitutes a contribution to the study of micro-genetic intrapsychic liminal processes. Keywords Liminality . Imagination . Private speech
Introduction Liminal experiences have been understood in the anthropological and psychological literature not only as a transitional phase characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty of identity but also as having the potential to transform the person (Stenner et al. 2017). Other authors have proposed that the liminal experience is a unique period of time of deconstruction of ordinary constructions, such as identity and social rules (Turner 1977 in Atkinson and Robson 2012).
* Pablo Fossa [email protected]
1
Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Av. La Plaza 680, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
2
Faculty of Psychology, University Giustino Fortunato, Benevento, Benevento, Italy
Barros et al.
In the last decade, there has been an increase in the investigation of this phenomenon, given its relationship with human development and vital trajectories in general. Although liminality is a transverse phenomenon to all human experience, its study has been focused on the great transitions of a person’s life. For example, pilgrimage journeys to meet sacred places (Beckstead 2010), traumatic experiences that affect the identity of the person (Lollar 2010), oncological illness experiences as intensive periods of liminality (Martino et al. 2016), the transitional phase between being pregnant and becoming a mother or specific transitions (for example, the acquisition of new knowledge in a conversation); however, the study of the liminal zones of consciousness and their role in the inner psychological functioning has been scarcely covered by the literature. We consider that the notion of liminality can provide relevant support to develop theoretically some trajectories of research an
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