Commentary

Human Development 1999;42:2630

I Create You to Control Me: A Glimpse Into Basic Processes of Semiotic Mediation
Jaan Valsiner
Clark University, Worcester, Mass., USA

Key Words Dialogical approaches W Semiotic mediation

Abstract Miltenburg and Singer outline a direction of analysis of therapy processes that go beyond the realm of therapy and touch upon basic processes of human cultural development. Human beings regulate their conduct by creating hierarchically organized and often personified semiotic means to regulate their ongoing relationships with the environment. These means allow for changing, maintaining, and aggravating current psychological states. The structure of these control mechanisms entails multiple levels that regulate one another, aside from organizing thinking, feeling, and action. I will argue that personal contruction of goal orientations becomes a necessary super-organizer of such complex system of personal-cultural means, such that examination of phenomena of volition returns to the stage of the theater of psychological research as a centrally relevant topic.

Miltenburg and Singer provide a good starting point for a careful consideration of the processes of semiotic regulation of intrapsychological functions. This process entails a slow, inherently controversial, and quasi-coordinated mediational activity. It is episodically open to the input from social others (therapists, or anybody else), yet the actual autoregulation is decidedly intrapersonal and intensely private. At times that privacy becomes exposed (through externalization to the therapists), yet the locus of actual regulation of the persons psychological world remains in the realm of private subjectivity. Researchers assume perspectives regarding the phenomena they study, which then guide their way of knowledge construction. There are two themes that Miltenburg and Singer as therapists use from their standpoint. First, they write about psychological tools that are (or need to be) provided to persons by the society, in order to deal with different tensions. Although they also emphasize the importance of the persons active

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role in making use of these tools, the constructive nature of the latter is not theoretically unveiled. In contrast, their empirical examples provide evidence of just such a personal construction process. A client tells the therapist that now he or she understands the problem, but cant change it, even as he or she wants to change it. Here is evidence for the construction process blocked by the conditions of the process itself. The therapists task is to unblock the process and in that the invention of new tools (jointly constructed by therapists and the clients) can help. This invention process is co-constructive [Valsiner, 1996, 1998]. It works by the systemic unity of the provision of the materials (and suggestions on how to use them for making psychological tools) and of the active person. The assembly of these tools takes place within the intrapsychological sphere of the person who attempts to create them. Secondly, Miltenburg and Singer refer to the therapist as a more experienced social other. Their empirical evidence proves the contrary the therapists are actually the less experienced social others1, since their access to the psychological world of the clients can never be as complete as that of the clients themselves. Therapists work under always limited access to the phenomena (determined by the clients goals, trust in the social other, and strategies of externalization). In this sense there is no way in which therapists experience can surpass that of their clients. Just the contrary what makes the therapist potentially helpful (for the client) is precisely his or her marked distancing from the client, united with the interpersonal construction of a field of intersubjective feeling between the therapist and the client. The latter makes it possible to utilize the former in suggesting new directions for psychological tool construction. Intersubjectivity creates the unifying background field for the negotiation of different positions of the therapist (who know little of the client) and of the client (who knows more, yet may not reveal it), in their interaction. These limitations aside, Miltenburg and Singer address the central issue of all development that transcends the confines of practice and evaluation of any kind of therapy the unity of the flexible structure of human psychological autoregulatory mechanisms. They bring to our focus the contrast between different models: one built on the notion of generalization and integration, the other on the emphasis of fragmentation. The latter theme is popular in our intellectually lazy social sciences where much of postmodern philosophizing has legitimized refusal to search for general knowledge. An alternative is to unite the two foci. The notion that unites the two is the issue of coordination of the vertical (i.e., generalization-oriented) and horizontal (fragmentation or context-specificity oriented) parts of the whole. The focus on the higher (volitional) psychological processes is a starting point for making sense of this coordination problem. Solutions to it have been offered in the past by the general principle of development as that of differentiation, dedifferentiation, and hierarchical integration [Werner and Kaplan, 1956]. That principle has been put to practice in the context of cases with childhood disorders [Miller and Eller-Miller, 1989]. How does the process of differentiation work in the case of persons construction of suggested psychological tools? The phenomena of persons cultural (semiotic) construction of self-reorganization are of remarkable fluidity. Human beings can construct and use signs both to free them to act in new ways, and to block any possibility for action
1 Here the question of criteria for deciding what is less and what is more is crucial. I use the criterion of accessibility to the phenomena. This criterion comes from putting the person into the center of focus. If, however, the therapist is set up as the focal center, the claim by Miltenburg and Singer stands firmly as they state it.

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[e.g., Janet, 1921]. They can construct complex structures of semiotic mediators of their ongoing conduct [Valsiner, 1998]. These operate by the principle of hierarchical and conditional control over both the actions and the semiotic mediation system itself. The constituent units of that system are numerous circumvention strategies [Josephs and Valsiner, 1998]. Miltenburg and Singer provide good examples of such strategies by referring to characteristic comments by therapy clients (e.g., I understand it now, but the problem is still there). The latter part of this comment blocks the indications of the beginning of the statement, creating tensions within the clients psychological systems which still are maintained in their previous forms. The client may now be aware of the nature of the problem, and of the inability to solve it. Semiotic mediation thus is not only a road to persons self-liberation, but equally a way to maintain the previous problems, even if opening a new perspective on them. The specific forms of new structures of mediation that were created in the therapy process through intrapsychological ritualization (Alices construction of the thumper as a protecting angel) indicate the complexity of the ways in which previously fixed (problem maintaining) semiotic mediation could be successfully altered. Human psychological phenomena abound in the construction of rituals and images of social others. Personal construction of imaginary friends and ritualization of interaction with them is at the foundation of human internalized sociality. Forms of such construction may entail unity of action in real environments guided by personal meanings [e.g., see re-analysis of George Sands construction of a personal god and its temple, Oliveira and Valsiner, 1997]. Introduction of conditions for creating rituals for the experience spheres of disordered children has proven a powerful basis for their development [Miller and EllerMiller, 1989]. Hence Miltenburgs and Singers success with Alice is a particular example that reflects the basic process of human development. Alices intrapsychological ritual (at Step 2) is interesting as a demonstration of a process that entails constant interplay of integration and differentiation of the two participants in the dialogue (Alice and the thumper). This is visible through Alices constant moving back and forth between the integrational reference (we = I and you) and differentiating reference (you versus I):
Alices reported text 1 Angel, if you really think it is about me, then just allow me to give attention to Jeroen, or otherwise we shall lose him too, and neither of us want that since Jeroen gives what we both want Youd better believe it! Jeroen loves us. we/you ! 1 me Interpretation YOU ME Indeterminate set-up of the condition (really has infinite meaning), on which subordination by Alice is constructed. Construction of undesired scenario, with move to the unity (we) of Alice and the thumper. Clarified negative value of the scenario; from we-basis. Continued unification (we both) linked with positively valued indefinite indication (want). Direct domineering suggestion (contrast this with line 1). Declaration with infinite meaning (love), with we-unity emphasized.

WE

3 4

YOU and ME WE

5 6

YOU WE

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What I see happening in this construction process is the joint opening of new ways of looking at the given microsituation (through Alices use of infinitely open meanings in interaction with the thumper). At first, a dominant role is forced upon the interlocutor (thumper, who obviously does not act back!); the interaction is then turned into a collective unity. Alice aligns herself with the thumper [an example of secondary control strategy see Rothbaum et al., 1982] in order to create the collective coalition (we = Alice and the thumper). The coalition is between unequal partners the thumper is constructed to control Alice, to allow her new ways of acting, and to block old ones. Alice pleads with the thumper, rather than orders it to act for her, while being in the we-system. Thus, the we here consists of unequal partners Alice assumes a subdominant role. Yet such assuming of role is embedded in the context that is just the opposite of that role. As the thumper is Alices intrapsychological construction, she is the one who controls all of the command and process that supposedly the thumper is carrying out for Alice. Alice can abandon the thumper, or reconstruct it in a new way, at any moment. The thumper is a slave who is presented (by Alice to herself) as if it were the master. This seemingly paradoxical construction I construct YOU who should govern ME but of course I govern YOU because YOU are my construction gives us a glimpse into the structure of human psychological inventiveness. This construction operates at two levels:
HIGHER LEVEL: I govern YOU (as my construction) LOWER LEVEL: YOU should govern ME (as I have constructed you to do so)

There is obviously a possibilty of creating semiotic regulatory systems of N levels, as human psychological complexity can be high. The semiotic regulatory system includes control mechanisms that would limit its own excessive growth. While the lower level is controlled by the higher, at the same time the lower level controls the higher. The result is an equilibrated, multi-level system of relative stability. In the process of development, such stability is overcome by conditional opening of possibilities for altering the system, or for creating a new (still higher) level that would subordinate the others. Circumvention strategies (described above) operate at this junction. Complex constructions of psychological tools abound in human lives. The relatively simple example of Alice and the thumper indicates that to think of dialogic relations merely in terms of one of the partners dominating the other is a gross simplification. Hierarchical organization of semiotic control mechanisms is not necessarily linear (i.e., based on transitivity relations) but cyclical (i.e., based on intransitivity relations; Valsiner, 1997, p. 217). Miltenburg and Singer provide contemporary developmental psychology with the challenge to return to the study of different forms of hierarchical organization of cultural regulatory processes. They lead us to taking the ill-reputed notion of volition seriously again a hundred years since it was ruled out. Once our research encounters the dynamic complexity of developmental phenomena, the question of how such complexity can be handled by persons who actually use it for rather mundane everyday needs (such as Alices efforts not to attack Jeroen) arises. Psychological sophistication may be precisely hidden in the ordinary. Yet its general organization may require new formal models that unite multi-level structural notions with dynamicity of operation of the regulatory system. The psychological code is as difficult to understand as the genetic code is. Or even more.

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References
Janet, P. (1921). The fear of action. Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, 16, 150160. Josephs, I.E., & Valsiner, J. (1998). How does autodialogue work? Miracles of meaning maintenance and circumvention strategies. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61, 6883. Miller, A., & Eller-Miller, E. (1989). From ritual to repertoire: A cognitive-developmental systems approach with behavior-disordered children. New York: Wiley. Oliveira, Z.M.R., & Valsiner, J. (1997). Play and imagination: The psychological construction of novelty. In A. Fogel, M.C.D.P. Lyra, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Dynamics and indeterminism in developmental and social processes (pp. 119133). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Rothbaum, F., Weisz, J.R., & Snyder, S. (1982). Changing the world and changing the self: A two-process model of perceived control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 537. Valsiner, J. (1996). Co-constructionism and development: A socio-historic tradition. Anuario de Psicologia (Barcelona), 69, 6382. Valsiner, J. (1997). The development of the concept of development: Historical and epistemological perspectives. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp 189232). New York: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1998). The Guided mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Werner, H., & Kaplan, B. (1956). The developmental approach to cognition: Its relevance to the psychological interpretation of anthropological and ethnolinguistic data. American Anthropologist, 58, 866880.

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