MARY WATKINS

INVISIBLE GUESTSThe Development of Imaginal Dialogues

SPRING PUBLICATIONS

WOODSTOCK, CONNECTICUT

2000

(COPYRIGHT 2016 MARY WATKINS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Seeing Imaginal Dialogues as Primitive

Chapter 3 of :

CHAPTER THREE

Seeing Imaginai Dialogues as Primitive

I n the previous chapters we discussed exem plars o f a variety o f psychological approaches to imaginai dialogues. O u r p resen ­tation was organized to highlight the fact that those approaches tend to describe and evaluate imaginai dialogues in term s o f certain ontological com m itm ents (i.e., the real is the tangible, the publicly

shared , the socially agreed u p o n , and the secular) and axiological com m itm ents (i.e., logical-scientific reasoning and socialized com ­m unication are the apices o f developm ental progress). In the context o f such com m itm ents and presuppositions, imaginai dialogues are envisaged in children as either (a) an early and surpassable stage in the developm ent o f abstract thinking; (b) as an early and surpassable stage in the developm ent o f com m unicative speech or socially shared reference to reality; or (c) as an early and surpassable stage in the adequate conceptualization o f o ther “real” people.

These assumptions yield a set o f specific (yet often contradictory) developm ental expectations for imaginai dialogues. Viewed as an early stage in the developm ent o f abstract thought, the imaginai dialogues o f private speech are seen as being progressively internalized. In the p ro cess e ith e r th e ir s tru c tu re becom es m on o lo g ica l ra th e r th an dialogical, or the in terlocu tor becom es a generalized o ther rather than a specific o ther. V iew ed as an early stage in the d ev e lo p m en t o f com m unicative speech, the imaginai dialogues o f private speech sup­posedly becom e increasingly elaborated according to the dem ands o f a “ real” listener, such that the presum ed “egocentric” qualities fade,

38 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRAOCHESallowing such speech to be understood by a “real” other. Finally, w hen imaginai dialogues are viewed as an early stage in the developm ent o f adequate concep tions o f “real” people, the im aginai o thers o f such dialogues are presented to undergo a radical change o f character, from superficial and one-sided to m ultidim ensional; from fantastical creations to copies o f people in the subject’s ideal interactional world.

G iven these predictions, the persistence o f imaginai dialogues in adults is taken either to reflect im m aturity and pathology o r to subserve the function o f rehearsal for future social interactions. T hese ways o f regarding imaginai dialogues may easily incline educators w ho are in fluenced by psychological theories to inhibit the public m anifesta­tion o f such dialogues in public— seeking to curtail o r elim inate “p rim itive and im m atu re” beh av io r p a tte rn s . T h is is the case in Polish nursery schools w here children are forb idden to talk to imagi­nary com panions o r to them selves w hen they could be speaking with “ ac tu a l” peo p le (S lam a-C azacu, 1976). I t is com m only ho p ed by professionals and lay people alike that children’s imaginai others will be qu ick ly rep laced by “ ac tu a l” peers . Im ag ina i d ia logues, like daydream s, are th ou gh t to be asocial, a tu rn ing away from reality. As such, they are seen primarily as an escape from the demands o f consen­sual validation o f reality, w hich com m unication w ith “real” others ostensibly prom otes. From these perspectives daydreams and imaginai dialogues are held to be expressive o f the “autoeroticism , egoism, and passivity” o f the subject, o f “uncluttered and unham pered egocen- tricity” (Schafer, 1968, 87-88). The popularity' o f psychiatric literature on so-called “ split personalities” has reinforced the assum ed correlation be tw een th e experience o f m ultip le vo ices in th o u g h t and severe pathology. All this has caused the studying o f imaginai dialogues in adulthood to be dismissed, except as a m eans o f exam ining prim itive form s o f cognition.

A lthough hallucinations will be discussed at g reater length in C hapter Eleven, the reduction o f all imaginai dialogues to the status o f hallucinations and archaic states m ust be briefly m entioned here. Perhaps no w ork has so eloquently consigned imaginai dialogues to the realm o f prim itivity as Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Ricameral Mind (1976). T h is fasc ina ting and com pelling book com pares the voices heard by the Iliadic heroes and Joan o f Arc, to those o f p resen t day schizophrenics. I t explores the

IMAG1NAL DIALOGUES A S PRIMITIVE 39similarities am ong the imaginai dialogues o f religious and m ythic ex­perience, o f poetic experience, and o f psychopathology. T he p ro ­pensity to hear voices is explained by w hat Jaynes calls a bicam eral structure o f m ind,6 which was pervasive am ong the “prim itives” o f 3000 years ago and can be found in “prim itive” states in the present (such as schizophrenia).

Jaynes argues that in the past m en would speak to their “gods” w henever a novel decision had to be made. N o sooner had they heard the voice o f the god than they followed its advice or com m and through action. This was so, he maintains, until the second m illennium B.C.E.— a tim e o f war, na tu ra l ca tas tro p h e and m ass m igrations. Survival un der these conditions required a shift away from bicam eral co n ­sciousness. O ne now needed to be able to postpone or even bypass obedience to the god’s voice in order to survive an immediate external threat, as the g o d ’s advice was often no longer suited to the rapidly changing circum stances. People had to develop a subjective sense o f them selves which could be different from how they displayed them ­selves to an enemy. In o ther words they needed the ability to appear to others differently from how they thought and felt.

E ssen tia lly w h at I shall call “ the dialogical s tru c tu re o f m in d ” is u n d e rs to o d by Jaynes as being based in th e physio log ica l and b iochem ical p ro p e rtie s o f the b ra in . P resum ab ly the le ft h em i­sphere p ro d u ces the voice w hich is heard by the righ t hem isphere , as th e m essage is tran sm itted over the a n te rio r com m issu re . In tim es o f stress there is a buildup in the b lood o f the breakdow n products o f adrenaline, which lowers the threshold for such occurrences o f voice.

Jaynes m aintains th a t in ancient times, owing to a lack o f con­sciousness (as we know it), stress was felt each time a decision had to be made that could no t be dealt with by force o f habit. In m odern

6 It is not surprising that the more the study of the brain has advanced, the more the realm of hearing voices is subsumed under discussions of brain func­tion, attempting to explain the imaginai in terms of organic substrata. An interest­ing precursor to Jaynes’ theory of bicameral consciousness was Leuret’s work. Leuret (1834) attempted to explain the physiological basis for psychotics’ conversa­tions with their hallucinated figures. He argued that each part of the patient’s two­fold nature—self and imaginai other—resided in one of the two hemispheres of the brain. Leuret abandoned his explanation when confronted with psychotics who conversed with several voices!

40 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRAOCHEStim es a rev e rsio n to a b icam era l m ind is exp erienced by th ose unfortunate individuals who cannot excrete the adrenaline by-products o f stress as quickly as the rest o f us.

Jaynes (1976) treats the functions o f these in ternal voices much like the o ther theorists we have discussed: as voices which initiate and gu ide beh av io r, as “ au th o rity figures crea ted by the nervo us system o u t o f the pa tien t’s adm onitory experience and his cultural expecta tions” (411). N arrow ing the function o f imaginai dialogues to the in itia tion and guidance o f behavior restricts the kinds o f voices and figures Jaynes can deal with (adm onitory and authority figures) and the kinds o f response made to them (obedience.) W hat were once experienced as gods, Jaynes argues, are now called hallucinations. They are no m ore th an ce rta in “ o rg an iza tio n s o f th e cen tra l n e rvo us system ” (74). Jaynes sees the schizophrenic as one “waiting on gods in a godless w orld” (432).

I t may be th a t the dialogical structure o f m ind has som e basis in anatom y and biochem istry. W hat is o f particular in terest here, how ­ever, is the developm ental argum ent advanced by Jaynes; namely, that im aginai d ia logues are early and su rpassab le stages o f th o u g h t, except in cases o f psychopathology.

A re schizophrenics p rone to a biochem ical prob lem that the rest o f us have evolved ou t of, leaving them with the figm ents o f gods, and us w ith the relative silence o f m onologal, abstract thinking? O r is Jaynes’ theory an expression o f our cultural Zeitgeist confining the figures o f im agination to prim itive times and states o f pathology, reducing their origin to the physiological and the biochem ical? Jaynes h im self speaks eloquently abou t the progressive secularization o f our culture that has culm inated with the presen t stage o f m odern science.7 H owever, instead o f reading his ow n theory as part o f this sociocultural m ovem ent tow ard the “ scientific”— that is, toward the

Those familiar with Jaynes’ work will no doubt notice as this book progresses the similarity o f sources and phenomenological observations, particularly vis à ris the problem atic aspects o f some hallucinations: the au thoritarian s tru c tu re o f relation between self and imaginai other, the reflexive obedience to the voice, the absence o f an observ ing , narrating self who can d istance from the vo ice’s com m ands. Though Jaynes agrees that not all hallucinations are problematic, those that do not fullfil the above- mentioned structure while posing a challenge to his theory as to the functions and causes o f voices are not dealt with convincingly. Despite this, there is hardly better reading than Jaynes’ volume for those on the path toward understanding the nature o f theories dealing with imaginai dialogues.

IMAGINAL DIALOGUES AS PRIMITIl 'E 41secular and the physical— he assimilates the m ovem ent in to his theory. T here is a progressive secularization as the culture m oves away from the bicam eral mind.

Let us at least entertain the reverse notion: that with increasing secularization, cultural conventions and “ scientific” theories (Jaynes’ am ong them) arise which discourage and disparage the experience o f imaginai dialogues. As the prevailing scientism s erode our previous understanding o f these voices— as issuing from divine entities— they a ttem pt either to elim inate the experience o f voices altogether; to confine the experience to childhood, o r else to relegate it to the realm o f the pathological, that w hich the culture w ould like to discard.

In large measure the prevailing developmental approaches addressed here have gained credence because imaginai dialogues o f a public kind do seem to disappear with age. For those developmental theorists w ho take changes in age as the best index o f developm ental advance, the apparen t cessation o f public self-talk w ould seem to indicate that such im aginai dialogues are “prim itive ph enom ena” that are replaced or superseded either by purely monologal thought or by socially directed, socially adequate com m unication w ith real others. In sum, imaginai dialogues are taken to be transform ed in to (or replaced by) wordless though t or articulated and responsive in terchange with “real” others.

T h a t the ostensib le decline in im aginai dialogues w ith age (in adolescence and adulthood) m ight be due to social factors— m ore specifically, social taboos— is rarely if ever considered by developm ent theorists, especially those w ho are inclined to see earlier form s o f action and in teraction “replaced” by chronologically later ones. T hat there may be no real decline in im aginai dialogues, either historically across cultures or ontogenetically— that they may continue th ro ug h­out history and th roughou t the life o f an individual (even in “no r­m al” and “ superior” adults)— w ould undercu t the “transfo rm atio n” argum ent. But w hat if this were indeed the case ? W hat if imaginai dialogues continued to flourish side by side w ith abstract though t and socially directed com m unication?

Forms of Talk (1981), by the sociologist E rv ing G offm an, may serve to expose the conspiracy o f scientific and conventional silence surrounding “ self-talk.” By describing precisely the occasions w hen one engages in self-talk and w hen one does not, G offm an challenges the developm ental theories which see the appearance o f such talk in

42 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRAOCHESadult life as pathognom ic o r as a sign o f im m aturity. H e insists in ­stead th a t these theories, while pre tending to scientific im personality, actually reflect and sustain social conventions.

W hen we are left alone, G offm an (1981) rem inds us to adm it, do we n o t

have occasion to make passing com m ents aloud? We ki­bitz our own undertakings, rehearse or relive a run-in with som eone, speak to ourselves judgm entally about our own doings (offering w ords o f encouragem ent or blame in an editorial voice that seems to be that o f an overseer more than ourselves), and verbally mark junctures in our physi­cal doings. Speaking audibly, we address ourselves, con­stituting ourselves the sole intended recipient o f our own remarks. Or, speaking in our own name, we address a re­mark to som eone w ho isn’t present to receive it. (79)

People im plicitly agree either to attend to each o th e r’s speech or to p re tend to attend. To speak aloud to an im agined o ther in the com ­pany o f “real” o thers is a breach o f this agreem ent, for in addition to displaying th a t our a tten tion is elsew here, it dem ands by the term s o f this reciprocal arrangem ent and by the very nature o f talk, th a t our inner concerns be attended to by people to w hom we are n o t a ttend ­ing. We know th a t as long as we appear to be a ttend ing we may speak w ith w hom ever we p refer in the privacy o f our thought. But let these private conversations becom e audible and eyes begin to tu rn our way w ith disdain as well as fearful curiosity.

G offm an adds w eight to his “ in teractional app roach” by looking at instances w hen self-talk is considered appropriate , even required, in social situations. H e argues for the sophistication o f such talk, for w ith ou t w ritten rules and w ithou t having been to ld which social co n ­texts require or p erm it it, we have learned well w hen self-talk is called for. D o we n o t all recognize the follow ing situations?

1. You are walking down the street and you trip. You are aware that others are watching you. D o they w onder if you are drunk, clumsy, or daydreaming? You re-establish your reputation by showing that you have noticed your­self tripping. You examine w hat might have caused it (im­plying tha t anyone walking this way would have tripped), and then you “u tter a cry o f w onderm ent, such as, What in the worldf’ (G offm an, 1981, 90).

IM AGINAL DIALOGUES A S PRIMITIVE 432. You are giving a talk and your notes are disarranged.You begin self talk: Oh, my, they were here just a minute ago...Now, why can't you find them... Just a minute... Be calm— som e­thing to let the audience know that som e part o f you is “ shocked by the hitch and in some way no t responsible for it” (92).3. In the absence o f praise or criticism from another, you verbalize it yourself, aloud, as though it were com ing from som eone o ther than yourself: Now, George, that was a very good job, man. Very good, indeed!4. W hen you are fearful that another may think you are malingering or fooling about, you begin to annotate your behavior: I am picking up these things, taking them upstairs, then...5. You are free to sing to yourself in the shower; or6. Talk to yourself aloud in the car when alone.

In sho rt in the privacy o f our studies, our bathroom s, and our cars, o r on our walks in nature, do n o t our very utterances betray that although there is bu t one actor literally presen t, there are often at least two roles? Why, argues G offm an, if we are all aware o f this fact, do our theories continue to attribute such behavior only to adults o f “puerile d isposition” or “ hysterical” nature (Piaget, 1955, 40)— to egocentric people or social isolates? G offm an attributes the familiar developm ental in terp reta tion o f self-talk to the societal taboo against such talk. I f we could set aside this taboo, G offm an argues, we would find th a t the m ore illum inating approach to such discourse is n o t the ordinary developm ental one b u t rather an in teractional one. W hy the taboo? To speak to an imaginai o ther or to oneself in the presence o f actual o thers is a situational im propriety because it is experienced by those actual o thers as a th reat to intersubjectivity. In o ther w ords “ reality” is th a t which we share; it does n o t include private conversa­tions betw een self and im aginai others. We need only th ink o f Jim m y Stew art’s difficulty being loyal to H arvey in the presence o f others!

I f children exhibit self-talk m ore regularly than adults, it is no t simply because they fail to make crucial d istinctions (such as between speech for oneself and speech for others), or because they are prone to autism and egocentricity. I t is ra ther because they have learned their lessons from adults well. As G offm an (1981) explains,

44 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRA OCHESGeorge Herbert Mead notwithstanding, the child does not merely learn to refer to itself through a name for itself that others had first chosen; it learns just as early to em­bed the statem ents and mannerisms o f a zoo-full of beings in its own verbal behavior...[By using] a lisping sort o f baby talk, the parent makes it apparent that it is the child that is being talked for, not to.In addition, there are sure to be play-beings easy to hand— dolls, teddy bears, and now toy robots— and these the parent will speak for, too. So even as the child learns to speak, it learns to speak for, learns to speak in the name o f figures that will never be, or at least aren’t yet, the self.(150-151)

We teach children to engage in such fanciful and self-dissociated discourse w ith their dolls, fire engines, toes and fingers. We reward these behaviors w ith our am usem ent and obvious enjoym ent. Per­haps we enjoy vicariously a freedom o f expression denied to adults by social convention.

T hese kinds o f self-talk, far from being evidence o f primitivity, can be seen as the achievem ent o f ra ther sophisticated abilities. For G offm an, early self-talk anticipates the essentially “ theatrical” nature o f adu lt speech, where one takes on accents, adopts the in tonations o f others, im beds quotations bo th in discourse and in writing, and where, as we have seen, one is privileged to speak for dogs, babies, and objects. As adults we can “refer to earlier selves,” and “convey words th a t are n o t our own,” using adages to co rrobo rate our own words w ith an anonym ous authority o ther than ourselves (G offm an, 1981, 150). For G offm an, unlike Vygotsky and Mead, the internaliza­tion o f self-talk is n o t necessarily a developm ental advance. I t may be seen, rather, as a reflection o f the child’s grow ing awareness o f societal taboos. T hus self-talk does no t disappear entirely with the arrival o f abstract th ou gh t or the dem ands o f socially shared dis­course, b u t only limits the occasions o f its appearance as rules o f in teraction shift w ith age. I t does no t pass away, bu t confines itse lf to those contexts w here it is no t censured. T hus, G offm an proposes,

Instead, then, o f thinking o f self-talk as som ething blurted ou t under pressure, it might bette r be thought o f as a m ode o f response constantly readied for those circum ­stances in which it is excusable. (1981, 96)

IM AGINAL DIALOGUES A S PRIMITIl 'E 45We would argue that the taboo against imaginai dialogues in private

speech results n o t only from people dem anding our display o f in ­te rp erso n a l a tte n tio n , b u t from co n v en tio n s reg ard in g th e n a tu re o f reality, rationality and the idea o f development. These conventions have encouraged either a global dismissal o f imaginai dialogues (es­pecially adult ones), or their subsum ption in to o ther discussions (of p rivate speech , play, d ev e lo p m en t o f ab s tra c t th o u g h t o r social discourse).

Im aginai dialogues represen t no t only a breach o f ou r agreem ent to p retend to be listening to actual others, bu t also frequently a breach with a secular view o f reality which holds that o n e ’s conversations are no t to be peopled by gods, angels, muses, gnom es or o ther strange characters. They also constitu te a breach w ith a unitary concep t o f the self that relies on a stable identity and does no t look closely at shifts o f m ood, tone, or attitude that m ight suggest a m ultiplicity o f the self. W hen we are granted partners in thought, they have been secularized no t only in function bu t in identity— the imaginai voices have been returned to know n others or aspects o f self.

We are reaching for a perspective from which the developm ent o f imaginai dialogues is no longer entangled w ith chronology and ontogenesis (K aplan, 1959), w here the structures o f im aginai dia­logues are understood w ith respect to their own functions ra ther than set against the goals o f e ith e r ab s trac t th o u g h t o r actual social discourse, and w here “developm ent” is no t equated w ith a transition from the presence o f such dialogues to their absence. To propose o ther ways o f conceiving o f the developm ent o f im aginai dialogues, we m ust first free ourselves from our usual no tions o f reason, reality and d ev e lo p m en t— for as we have seen, th ese n o tio n s have been fundam ental in shaping theory and research around imaginai dialogues. To this end, let us proceed w ith Part II o f our study.