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| The Relevance
of Secondness to the Psychological Study of the Dialogical Self Mariela Michel Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Fernando Andacht University of Ottawa, Canada William B. Gomes Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil |
pp. 301-334 |
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ABSTRACT.
The
semiotic self has been defined as a continuous process of
meaning generation whereby multiple particular identities are
integrated
through an internal dialogue which evolves along time. Thought is
construed as
an internal conversation of the self of the present which stands for
the self
of the past to address the self of a future moment, in a similar way as
it
addresses others. We present an exploratory qualitative research aimed
at
observing an enactment of the internal conversation of ten participants
at a
workshop of psychodrama. The procedure is based on the empty chair
technique
created by J. L. Moreno. Participants were placed in a situation of
strong
personal doubt in order to stimulate reflective thought. The analysis
focuses
on the interaction of different inner voices, and it applies Peirce’s
phenomenological categories. The consciousness of a resistance (the
category of
Secondness) constitutes the self and is logically related to the
emergence of
distinct multiple identities. As a conclusion, we argue that the
capacity to
tolerate self-contradiction fosters the semiotic development of the
self as an
interpretive agency. |
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| Keywords: meaning, internal-dialogue, self-contradiction, self semiotic, self dialogical | ||