INVISIBLE GUESTS

The Development of Imaginal Dialogues

MARY WATKINS
INVISIBLE GUESTS
The Development of Imaginal Dialogues

MARY WATKINS

WITH A PREFACE BY
ROBERT ROMANYSHYN

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT BOOKS

FAIRFAX, CALIFORNIA
2015
Copyright © 2000-2015 by Mary Watkins.
All rights reserved.

Published by Human Development Books

P.O. Box 901, Fairfax, CA 94978
www.hudevbooks.com

Originally published by:

Analytic Press, Hillsdale, NJ, 1986,
Sigo Press, Boston, 1990, and
Spring Publications, Inc., 2000.

This Human Development Books REPRINT EDITION is identical in

all respects to the 2000 Third edition, except for this copyrights page and
a new ISBN.

Cover design by white.room productions, New York

Cover image:
Wooden god from the Austral Islands, representing A'a, the principal
deity of Rurutu. Inside the detachable back is a cavity where smaller
images may be kept. Photograph by David Finn, from Henry Moore at the
British Museum. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982 (reproduced with
permission of the photographer).
 To

Bernard Kaplan
mentor, friend
 CONTENTS
Preface............................................................................. i
Introduction..................................................................... 1

PARTI
Themes in Contemporary Psychological
Approaches to the Functions and Development
of Imaginai Dialogues
1 Imaginai Dialogues and R eason....................................... 11
2 Reality and the Im agination...............................................21
3 Seeing Im aginai Dialogues as Prim itive........................ 37

PART II
A Critique of Contemporary Psychological
Approaches to Imaginai Dialogues
4 Imaginai D ialogues and Reason....................................... 49
5 Im agination as Reality.......................................................... 59
6 The Im pact o f Conceptions o f D evelopm ent on
A pproaching Imaginai D ialogues....................................81
 PART III
Re-Conceiving a Developmental Theory of
Imaginai Dialogues
“T he Characters Speak Because They Want to Speak:”
T he A utonom y o f the Im aginai O th er......................... 93
8 T he Dialogues Between M ultiple Characters;
The M onologues o f M ultiple Personality.................... 107
9 Character D evelopm ent: The A rticulation
o f the Imaginai O ther..........................................................113
10 Relativizing the Ego and the Birth o f D ialogue.........121

PART IV
Therapeutic Implications: Entertaining IVoices
11 T he Voices o f H allucination............................................. 135
12 The Fish-Lady and the Little Girl: Case H istory
Told From the Points o f View o f the C haracters......155

Epilogue.......................................................................... 177
Afterword........................................................................ 179
References........................................................................ 191
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My w arm est thanks to friends and colleagues who took the time
to read some or all of this text, to share with me their thoughts,
criticism s, and encouragem ent: B ernard K aplan, Leonard Cirillo,
Seymour Wapner; Patricia Berry, Stuart Cane, Edw ard Casey, Joseph
de Rivera, Lawrence Erlbaum , Mary Helen Sullivan, James Hillman,
Gail H ornstein, Joan Klagsbrun, Eleanor Starke Kobrin, Lyndy Pye,
Charles Scott, Randolph Severson, Angelyn Spignesi, Paul Stepansky,
and Stanley Sultan. I am grateful to Robert Romanyshyn for writing
the preface to this new editon.
My debts to fellow w riters— so num erous— are noted in my text,
though such references do not begin to display adequate gratitude
for the com panionship and conversation the reading o f such works
provide as one is trying to understand. Particularly helpful in orienting
the argum ents here were works by Bernard Kaplan, H enry Corbin,
James Hillman, Edward Casey, Theodore Sarbin, M. H. Abrams, M artin
Buber, E rving G offm an, and Erwin Straus.
And when the books and pen were put aside each day, Robert
Rosenthal was always ready to add his wisdom to help me think
through a point, to listen tirelessly to po rtion s o f the text that
w orried me, and to entertain invisible guests at our table. W ith such
a hom e, writing can be a happiness.
 PREFACE

R
eaders o f the first edition o f Mary W atkins’ book, which ap­
peared fourteen years ago, will undoubtedly recall the evoca­
tive and persuasive ways she dem onstrated the autonom y o f
the imaginai other and the singular importance o f dialogue in relation to
invisible guests. Reading her book for a second time deepens those
original im pressions. But I w ould add here th at this third edition
offers m ore than another reading. It is a new book when one reads
the text from the perspective of W atkins’ Afterword. In my Preface,
therefore, I want to encourage her readers to begin with the Afterword,
to read it carefully, and then enter the text from its perspective.
W hat I find m ost provocative in this new edition is the expansion
of imaginai dialogues to em brace not only our relations with others,
but also our relations with the “beings o f nature and the earth, and
that which we take to be divine.” Mary Watkins is quite correct to
situate our dialogical relations with imaginai others as a “subtext of
‘holy converse.’” This bold move opens the imaginai field to broader
horizons and emphasizes how our encounters with the autonom ous
psyche always have som ething o f a num inous or sacred quality to
them . As the po et Rainer M aria Rilke rem inds us, language is a
vocation. We are called into speech by the other, a calling which
presum es that one has first heard the other because one is listening.
Holy converse as a subtext o f imaginai dialogue is grounded in the
receptive ear, in a posture which in lending an ear to the other is
capable o f being addressed, witnessed, embraced, and also challenged
by the other.
Dialogue as openness to the other is a radically ethical way of
being and living in the world. It is no surprise, therefore, that in the
a PREFACE
Afterword Watkins sites the work o f Paulo Freire. This Brazilian-
born pedagogist has consistently shown us how true education m ust
be a liberation o f consciousness from its oppression by systems of
speaking and thinking, operating as monologues that enforce obedient
silence. In Freire’s work we learn that the ethics o f dialogue requires
m ore than the m ultiplication o f voices in the conversation. Such
m ultiplication results only in an overload o f inform ation. Beyond it,
w hat is required is that the one who speaks recognizes and acknowl­
edges the contexts, with their unarticulated assum ptions and values,
o f his or her w ords and thoughts. The presence o f the other is always
an occasion for this act of critical self-regard. In Freire’s term s, the
other, w hether it be a dream figure or the homeless person on the
street, or the caged animal is always the possibility o f rupture, that
m om ent o f breakdow n when critical self-regard can becom e a break­
through for the appeal o f the other to be heard.
In the Coda to the Afterword, Watkins writes that, “In the end,
the direction o f this book is not inw ard... only.” This is the expan­
sion I m entioned earlier, and it is this move out of psychological
inwardness into an eco-cosm ological relatedness which prom pts me
to call this third edition a new work. D epth psychology, particularly
in its Jungian orientation, has always honored the autonom y o f the
psyche, but it too often im prisoned itself within the narrow confines
o f a psyche cut o ff from the o th er and the w orld. W atkins’
phenom enological orientation moves depth psychology into that place
where the other as difference is the depth o f Self. The unconscious is
between us and the notion of depth is radically relational and dialogical.
We need this type o f depth psychology today if we are to be ethically
responsible hum an beings and ecologically responsive to those other
and different voices of creation. The third edition o f W atkins’ book
takes a bold step in that direction. Moreover, it traces between the
first and third edition that beautiful arc which bears testim ony to a
mind, a heart, and a spirit which has faithfully followed its call. This
is a book we need to read. But it is also one o f those books where the
need is also a pleasure.
— Robert D. Romanyshyn
 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of poetry is to remind ns
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys to the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
— Czeslaw Milosz from “Ars Poetica”
n the Hebraic tradition human beings were distinguished from all
I other living creatures not by virtue o f their capacity for reason
but by virtue of their engagem ent in three kinds o f dialogues:
dialogues with neighbors, with themselves, and with G od (Niebuhr,
1955). At first glance in our own time and culture, dialogues with
ourselves and with the gods seem dim and alm ost silent next to our
dialogues with our neighbors. These dialogues seem to flee from listen­
ing ears, hiding out in the m ost private parts o f our solitude and
fantasy. They abandon speaking aloud, or otherwise manifesting them ­
selves, as though shrinking from the pejorative labels “pathological,”
“immature,” or “superstitious.” But if we approach w ithout such criti­
cal predilections, we can begin again to hear the voices o f these other
dialogues— these, let us say, “imaginai dialogues.”
Side by side and woven through our dialogues with our neighbors,
these imaginai dialogues persist. We may find ourselves speaking with
our reflection in the mirror, with the photograph of someone we
miss, with a figure from a dream or a movie, with our dog. And even
when we are outwardly silent, within the ebb and flux of our thought,
we talk with critics, with our mothers, our god(s), our consciences;
indeed we do so just as steadily as we once spoke to our dolls, our
 2 M A R Y W ATKINS

imaginary com panions, the people o f our painted pictures. We may

find ourselves as audience or as narrator to conversations am ong
imaginai others— others not physically present but actually experi­
enced nonetheless. At times we may even notice ourselves playing
m ore than one role in these imaginai dialogues— now child, now old
one, abandoned one. These imaginai dialogues, their functions and
lines o f developm ent, are the them e o f this book.
Experientially imaginai dialogues can take several forms: conver­
sation between a self and an imaginai other(s), between aspects of
the Self such as “m e” and “I,” or between imaginai others with a self
as audience to the imaginai scene. O ne m ight argue that these are not
distinct classes o f dialogue, that the category “conversation between
aspects o f the Self” logically subsumes the other two categories of
“conversation between a self and an imaginai other” and “conversa­
tion between imaginai others.” However, here they are treated sepa­
rately so that we can begin to consider how the dram atic dialogues o f
thought are experienced, not just how they are conceived.
At times we argue with a critical part o f ourselves; that is to say
the critical voice sounds like us and is indistinguishable from that
point o f view we take to be our own. At other times we argue with a
critic whose voice is that of a specific teacher— one known to us
from daily life or perhaps from dream life, whose point o f view is
experienced as different from our usual one. To preserve these expe­
riential distinctions, we shall define “S elf” as the collection o f differ­
ent characters (or “self- and object-representations”) who can be said
to populate an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. In other
words, the Self is that world o f characters whom one entertains and/
or identifies with. The “self” shall be used to designate that part o f
the Self one is identified with at a given m om ent. Hence, when it is
said that a dialogue is being carried out between self and imaginai
other, the self here is the experiential locus of consciousness associ­
ated w ith the feeling o f “ I.” Its identity may shift, e.g., from
counterdependent adult to whiny, wanting child. Insofar as some o f
these identifications are relatively stable over time, the term “habitual
ego” shall be used. For instance a wom an may have a habitual ego
identification with a character (or self representation) who is strong,
energetic, and willful.
INTRODUCTION 3
In psychoanalytic parlance these imaginai others who are felt as
presences and as ego/alien are called “introjects,” while those who
are closer to our self-representations are labeled “identifications.”
However, M eissner (1981) points out that these clear distinctions do
not always parallel experience. Introjects often lose their independent
quality and becom e merged with one’s sense of self, only to return
later to their previous distance from the experienced self.
Imaginai dialogues may be spoken aloud (as in children’s private
or “egocentric” speech or in adults’ solitude), w ritten, or simply
thought. W hen imaginai dialogues occur in speech, as is often the
case with young children, one will observe the behaviors com m on to
private speech: averted gaze, failure to make eye contact with any
person present, distance maintained from the other, reduced loud­
ness o f speech (as contrasted to public speech) (Gallagher and Craig,
1978, 106). There is no protest from the child when a response is not
forthcom ing from a physically present other, since the speaker does
not consider him or her to be the audience but rather the imaginai
other to whom the speech was directed. There is often— though not
always— m anipulation o f props (a doll, stone, finger) to represent
the imaginai other. The imaginai dialogues of private speech— both
speech used w hen alone and non-com m unicative speech when with
others— can be differentiated from m onologal private speech by the
speakers implying an intended (imaginai) audience. Such an imagined
audience can be indicated in a num ber o f ways: by nonverbal actions
or gestures (i.e., between two dolls), by change o f voice or intona­
tion, by direct reference to another, by specification of characters, or
by utterance pairs which m eet usual conversational constraints (i.e.,
question-answer, comm ent-acknowledgm ent pairs). If there is a se­
quence o f utterances by a speaker, the conversational constraints of
the first utterance are either m et by the second utterance (double role
dialogue),1or the second utterance presupposes that a response to the
1 Example of double role dialogue: Here the child acts out first the role of the
speaker and then the role of the listener-respondent. Rebecca (4;2) says the follow­
ing as she plays on the floor with two boxes and wooden shapes of people and
animals: (Child picks up a toy pig and has it bang on the box) ‘“Knock, Knock...’
‘You’re not coming in’ [says the father doll]... ‘All right I’ll go back in my room...’”
[says the pig] (Shields, 1979, 257). Example of single role dialogue: “(Child holding
toy telephone to his ear) ‘Hi.’ {pause) ‘No, I can’t.’ {pause) ‘My mommy Holly.’
{pause) ‘Yes. Okay.’ {pause) ‘No.’ (pause) ‘Oh.’ (pause)” (Gallagher and Craig, 1978, 108).
 4 MARY WATKINS
first has been imagined and not vocalized but has nevertheless served
as a stimulus to the next spoken words (single role dialogue).
The choice o f the term “imaginai dialogue” anticipates the point
of view on the developm ent of imaginai dialogues that will emerge
in the course o f this book. In using the word “imaginai” (“imaginai
other,” “imaginai dialogue”) we follow H enry C orbin’s (1972) dis­
tinction between the “imaginary” and the “imaginai.” Corbin rejects
the word “imaginary” when referring to these phenom ena because in
m odern non-prem editated usage the “imaginary” is contrasted with
the “real.” “Imaginary” is equated with the unreal, the nonexistent.
O ur high valuation o f the sensible world, the material and the con­
crete (what we take to be “real”), shines a pejorative light on the
“imaginary.” By using the term “imaginai,” Corbin hopes to undercut
the real-unreal distinction, and to propose instead that the imaginai
not be assessed in term s o f a narrowed conception o f “reality,” but a
broader one which gives credence to the reality o f the imaginai.
The word “dialogue” will be used here in two senses. First, it will
be used to describe the literal process of exchange between two or
more parties, whether it be verbal, gestural, or some combination
thereof. Second, it will be used in Martin Buber’s more limited sense
as the goal of relatedness. For Buber not all verbal exchanges be­
tween two parties are dialogues; indeed true dialogue need not be
verbal at all. According to Buber in true dialogue the integrity and
autonomy of both self and other are preserved; one neither identifies
with nor incorporates the other. Each can address and be addressed.
One finds imaginai dialogues across the life-span and in differ­
ent life contexts: in children’s play, in their conversation w ith their
dolls and imaginary playmates, in adults’ dreams and waking dreams
and fantasy, in prayer, in authors’ relations to their characters, in dia­
logues in private speech and thought, in literature and drama. Yet for
the m ost part in psychology, these instances are treated separately.
Here we will steal over the fences that have traditionally segregated
private speech, play, imaginary companions, dreams, fantasy, prayer,
the writing o f novels and plays, the reading o f literature, the viewing
o f dram a...and thought itself. We do so not to pretend that there are
no differences amidst these terrains, but rather to allow a different
organization and differentiation o f these experiences to challenge the
theoretical explanations proposed for each singly. For, as we shall
INTRODUCTION 5

see, when each is treated singly, some curious theorizing emerges

that for the most part sees imaginai dialogues as either disappearing
or radically changing with age.
It is not enough for imaginai dialogues to suffuse the intimacy of
our talk and thought. They need a conceptual space as well, where they
can exist with integrity; a place in theory where their “development” is
not reduced to a change from their presence in childhood to their ab­
sence in adulthood. They need a space in theory so we can ask, “Given
their presence, their diversity, enduringness, and multiformity, what
might their development entail?” Only when we have accepted their
continued presence can we move closer both to describing the varia­
tions in their structures and to wondering at the multiplicity of their
possible functions.
But to create this conceptual space we must first gradually free
some area from the tangles of other claims. As we shall see some
major developmental theorists would have us believe that, with age,
imaginai dialogues should become transmuted almost entirely either
to communication with “actual” others or to abstract thought. If we
fully yield to these claims— focusing then on so called “real” dia­
logue or abstract thought— we lose the ground on which to argue for
a different developmental course— one closer to the dramatic and
imaginative thread that runs through them. There needs to be a space
reserved in theory for imaginai activities; a space where they can be
respected in their own right and not treated as merely ancillary or
subordinate to other activities.
Any discussion of psychological function seems bound to operate
within certain limitations. The researcher’s vision of the world, of
the course and endpoints of human development, determines the range
.of possible functions allotted to a phenomenon. Another researcher
can dispute these proposed functions only by introducing new
visions which are intended either to supplant or supplement the
former. The difficulty of ascertaining the function of any single
example of human speech or thought without a thorough knowledge
of both the speaker and the context further complicates the effort to
judge among proposed theories of function. And yet we cannot lay
aside the question of function in despair if we wish to argue that
human speech, action, and thought are not merely effects of previ­
ous causes. If we are to move beyond simply listing or describing
 6 MARY WATKINS
w hat is, to penetrate the question o f why it is so, then we are bound
to the question o f function. So we shall assume that imaginai dia­
logues are a means or a m edium which serves certain ends.
W hen one speaks of the developmental course o f a phenomenon,
the question of function is always implicidy guiding the discussion. For
instance if we view the function o f im aginai dialogues as com ­
m unication with literal others, then we will m ost likely construe such
dialogues as “egocentric” speech, and hence as failed attem pts at com ­
m unication destined to be replaced by socially communicative speech
as egocentricity diminishes. If, however, we assume the function o f
such imaginai dialogues in private speech to be self-communication,
then we shall see these dialogues developing into internal speech,
gradually changing form as the demands o f self-communicative speech
becom e differentiated from those o f socially communicative speech.
O ne com plication in exam ining im aginai dialogues and their
developm ent is that one has no grounds for assuming any single or
unitary function that such dialogues m ight subserve. The possible
functions are multiple, and the lines o f developm ent they suggest
may not be convergent. Furtherm ore we will not have access to the
simpler task often available in discussion o f function— that o f argu­
ing against one proposed function while asserting another. The task
we have set is m ore form idable: to w ork against the tendency to
reduce im aginai dialogues to the set o f functions proposed by
the tradition o f developm ental psychology. While acknowledging
much o f the validity o f the present claims in this area, we seek to
reawaken another set o f claims regarding function and thereby devel­
opm ent. By looking at the implicit structures o f the prevalent theo­
ries we shall gain a sense o f the larger theoretical com m itm ents which
destine psychology’s accounts o f imaginai dialogues to be at best
partial, at w orst distorting.
For those clinicians w ho w ork with active im agination, play
therapy, psychodrama, hypnosis, focusing, gestalt therapy, transactional
analysis, the intensive journal m ethod, psycho-imagination therapy,
psychosynthesis, sandplay therapy, or guided imagery, this progression
from theory to practice in this book may seem unduly slow, ready as
you may be to em brace an interpretation o f mind as dramatic. To
quicken your patience, think o f your colleagues who have seen your
work as quackery, as encouraging split personality and hysterical dis­
INTRODUCTION 7

sociation, rem em ber patients who were reluctant to converse aloud

with figures from their dreams, fearful o f “hearing voices.” These
popular therapeutic techniques do reflect the accessibility of imaginai
dialogues for many people, but they lack an adequate grounding in
developm ental theory. Developm ental theory, as we shall see, bears
commitments which do not allow it to accept these (often hybridized)
approaches. Although this text is rife with therapeutic im plications—
some consistent with one or another of the above mentioned approaches,
some at odds2— it leaves the explicit consideration o f psychotherapy
to the end. Its major task is in clearing the ground for such work to
becom e firmly rooted within a developm ental psychology rather than
remaining exiled.
As a reader you will be asked to ferret out the dramatis personae
who inhabit your thoughts and actions— not only those o f your child­
hood past, but those presently involved in conversation with you.
W hatever your professional allegiance, I am purposely addressing the
“developm ental psychologist” within you first, and the “clinician”
within you last. Too consistently psychology has given imagination
over to the psychopathologists, fearful of the multiplicity of voices
th at do no t sim ply appear in thought from tim e to tim e but that
actually characterize thought.
D evelopm ental psychology is not only practiced in departm ents
o f psychology, schools, and learning centers; it is practiced by each
o f us as we choose the form s of thought that we value m ost or least.
W hether a developm entalist or not, we set about encouraging or re­
jecting certain kinds o f speech and thought in ourselves and others,
according to our theories (form al or inform al) about their value.
W hether or not we are students o f developm ental psychology, its
theories have helped shape our developmental understandings as they
have been practiced on us throughout our upbringing: by parents,
schools, clinics, and by the culture at large.

2 It is beyond the task of this volume to discriminate between the various

therapeutic appraoches which acknowledge the multiplicity of the Self. Although
some of their techniques appear similar, the underlying metapsychologies are of­
ten different, leading to conflicting views on the origin of imaginai others, their
status in mind, and the therapeutic goal with respect to these figures. See Watkins’
Waking Dreams (1974; 1984, Chapters 3 and 4) for a critical differentiation of Jung’s
active imagination from various schools of guided imagery therapy.
 8 MARY WATKINS
If we are successful in our attem pt to clear a conceptual space in
psychology for imaginai dialogues (and perhaps through this example
for other imaginai phenom ena) and to underline a change in the di­
rection o f our talk about imaginai dialogues, then perhaps we will
pause the next time we hear a child speaking with a doll, when we
catch ourselves in dialogue with our critics, when we see someone
praying. And in this pause, hopefully, will be a different sense o f the
possible futures o f these moments.
 PART I
Themes in Contemporary Psychological Approaches to
F unctions and Development of Im aginai Dialogues
%
 CHAPTER ONE
Imaginai Dialogues and Reason
ictionaries remind us that reason, that “power of com pre­
D hending and inferring” associated with a “sane or sound
m ind,” is “right thinking” (Webster’s, 1960, 705), and some
suggest that to think right is “to think logically” (American Heritage
Dictionary, 1969, 1086). N onetheless reason, or “right thinking,” is not
necessarily the kind o f thought we each happily acquire over time,
but a prescriptive and valuative notion of what thought should be
like, ideally speaking. Developm ental theorists are engaged as much
as philosophers and poets in this prescriptive exercise. We have chosen
three major developm ental theorists— Piaget, Vygotsky, and Mead—
to exemplify the effect o f this prescribing exercise on theoretical
notions concerning the developm ent of imaginai dialogues. For in
each case their observations and arguments about the functions and
developm ental course o f imaginai dialogues, as different as they are,
have been shaped by notions of reason, o f w hat constitutes “right
thinking.” O ther theorists could have been chosen. O ur motive here,
though, is not to comprehensively summarize theorists’ propositions,
but to explore how certain theoretical com m itm ents have im pacted
our conceptions o f imaginai dialogues.
That reason and imagination should be considered side by side is, of
course, no novelty. Through the history of ideas they have struggled
against each other, the winner fixing the light in which the other was
seen. The particular question afoot, however, is how developmental theo­
rists presently conceive o f their relationship, and how this conception
affects the discourse about imaginai dialogues.
12 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLGICAE APPROACHES
Piaget
In Piaget’s developmental psychology imagination and reason are
most often seen as incompatible bedfellows, the latter pushing the
former under the bed as ontogenesis proceeds. If imagination is seen
as retained by reason it is taken only as subordinate to reason, not as
intrinsic to it. This conception leaves imaginai dialogues in a vulnerable
position— when present, destined to be superseded by, or transformed
into, abstract thought; when absent, little cause for concern.
Piaget discusses imaginai dialogues in three contexts: in children’s
egocentric3 speech, children’s symbolic play, and adults’ rehearsals of
future conversations. Both egocentric speech and symbolic play are
viewed pejoratively by Piaget for their failure in accommodation, or
the child’s adjustment to “reality.”4 Both are seen as symptomatic of
the young child’s profound egocentricity. Piaget approaches the imaginai
dialogues of egocentric speech from the viewpoint of socialized
speech, and those of symbolic play from the viewpoint of abstract
thought.
One would expect Piaget to discuss imaginai dialogues in his
volume, The Eanguage and Thought of the Child. Here he differentiates
all speech of the young child into two categories, egocentric speech
and socialized speech:
W hen a child first utters phrases belonging to the first
group, he does not bother to know to whom he is speak­
ing nor w hether he is being listened to. He talks either for
him self or for the pleasure o f associating anyone who
happens to be there with the activity o f the moment. This
talk is egocentric, partly because the child speaks only
about himself, but chiefly because he does not attem pt to
place himself at the point of view of his hearer. (1955, 32)
’ Piaget does not use the term “egocentric” in the colloquial sense of “self-
centered,” but in the cognitive sense of not differentiating one’s own point of
view from those of others, of not decentering.
4 In Piaget’s system, adaptation consists of a balancing between two processes:
assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation the organism changes objects in
its milieu in such a way that they can become incorporated into the structure of
the organism. In accommodation, the organism adjusts itself to the demands of
the object (Flavell, 1963), With respect to the child, a preponderance of assimila­
tion over accommodation can be exemplified by play behavior, a preponderance of
accommodation over assimilation by imitative behavior.
IM AGIN A L DIALOGUES AND REASON 13

In drawing these distinctions, Piaget, as he later acknowledged (1962a),

did not separate (a) speech incapable o f rational reciprocity from (b)
speech that is not intended for others. In his view the child always
thinks he is talking to others and making him self understood.
So where would spoken imaginai dialogues fall in this division of
child language? In his 1955 volume, Piaget offers only one example. A
child addresses a tortoise and a salamander, as follows:
“Now then, it’s coming [a tortoise]. It’s coming, it’s com ­
ing, it’s coming. G et out o f the way, Da, it’s coming, it’s
coming, it’s com ing... Come along, tortoise!”
A little later, after having watched the aquarium, solilo­
quizing all the time: “Oh, isn’t it [a salamander] surprised
at the great big giant [a fish]!” he exclaims, “Salamander,
you must eat up the fishes!” (39)
He uses this example to illustrate the child’s primitive thinking, i.e.,
his attempt to command both animate and inanimate beings.
W hat are the positive functions allotted to the three kinds of
egocentric speech Piaget addresses? Repetition or echolalia is seen as
producing pleasure in talking in and of itself, without communicative
intent. M onologues— in which the child talks to him self as though
he were thinking out loud— are seen as marking the rhythm of, accel­
erating, supplementing, and sometimes supplanting actions. Finally,
collective m onologues “where an outsider is always associated with
the action or thought o f the m om ent, but is expected neither to at­
tend nor to understand” are seen as creating the feeling that one is
interesting to others (Piaget, 1955, 33). Piaget m entions in passing the
way in which the child can “use words to bring about what the action
o f itself is powerless to do.” An analysis of the role o f egocentric
speech in this “rom ancing and inventing,” this “creating reality by
words and magical language” (36-37) is not developed in this volume.
These few positive remarks, however, pale by contrast with Piaget’s
steady derogation of egocentric speech. The very name given to speech
that does not have communicative impact on actual others—egocentric
speech— is of course our first hint of what is to come. Piaget stresses
how such speech reveals that “the child is constantly the victim of a
confusion between his own point of view and that of other people”
(1955, 39). The monologue is described as a “primitive and infantile
14 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLGICAL APPROA CH ES
function o f language,” o f which “we shall naturally see the gradual
disappearance...as we pass from early childhood to the adult stage”
(40). W hen Piaget treats collective monologues, he com pares them to
the thinking aloud present in hysterical subjects. He sees the child’s
talking as failed com m unication— as “socially ineffectual”— because
the child does not succeed in making his audience listen and because
he is n o t really addressing him self to th at audience. He is no t
speaking to anyone in particular. And though “ he talks alm ost
incessantly to his neighbors,” the child “rarely places him self at their
point o f view” (60).
For Piaget this inadequate speech is reflective o f the child’s
unsocialized thought. He parallels thought’s change from egocentricity
to “com m unicated intelligence” with speech’s change from egocen­
tricity to com m unicability. T his com parison brings us to the one
example Piaget gives o f an imaginai dialogue in adulthood. Piaget
m entions how an adult, when pursuing thought in an inquiry, imag­
ines him self speaking with his “collaborators or opponents, actual or
eventual, at any rate m em bers o f his own profession to w hom sooner
or later he will announce the result o f his labours” (1955, 59). Piaget
does not see this imaginai dialogue as a later developm ent o f the
dialogues o f egocentric speech, but contrasts the adult, who even in
thinking is socialized, with the young child, who even in speaking is
not; the adult, who even while alone thinks socially, with the child under
seven who, even in the society o f others, speaks egocentrically (60).
This theme of the inadequacy o f the child’s thought and its im­
plicit im pact on a consideration o f imaginai dialogues can be further
developed through an examination o f Piaget’s discussion of symbolic
play in Play, Dreams, and Imitation (1962b). In this volume Piaget records
many examples o f imaginai dialogues in the context o f symbolic play.
As in his treatm ent o f egocentric speech, he does attribute positive
functions to these dialogues— once again, in an overall atm osphere
o f negative evaluation. He proposes that the child introduces an
audience because she takes pleasure in imagining becoming the object
of the other’s attention. He further suggests that the child at times
chooses to converse with an imaginary other rather than a real other
because the im aginary other provides no resistance to the child’s
intentions or needs; there is no real other to accomm odate to. Inten­
tions and wishes are fulfilled with this release from the demands of
IMAGIN A L DIALOGUES AND REASON 15
accom m odation. For Piaget such liberation is synonymous with plea­
sure. The dialogues are seen as part o f the child’s overriding desire to
be the center of attention and to have reality conform to individual
wishes. Traumatic interactions are also played out in these dialogues,
with the implicit purpose o f controlling or surpassing the particular
life experience being represented. It is striking that although Piaget’s
chief claim for symbolic play is its role in cognition, the functions he
ascribes are affective in nature and are presented w ith out clear
cognitive corollaries.
Piaget, while granting these positive functions to what we have
called imaginai dialogues, has one eye on his conception of the intel­
lectually developed adult as he scrutinizes the actions and speech of
the young child. Symbolic play and its imaginai dialogues are considered
a form o f thinking, but an inadequate one where the “ sole aim” is
believed to be “ satisfaction o f the ego, i.e., individual tru th as
opposed to collective and impersonal truth” (Piaget, 1962b, 167). Piaget
(1962a, 4) directly com pares the child’s thinking which is involved in
the genesis of games to the “nondirected and autistic thought” Bleuler
spoke of with regard to schizophrenia. This kind of thought, according
to Piaget, wanes as the child becom es the socialized adult w ho is able
to think abstractly— except in states o f psychopathologjt Imagining
is seen as a “transitional m om ent in the developm ent o f the child’s
full cognitive capacities” (Casey, 1976b, 13). While the image is seen
by Piaget as persisting in adulthood, its role in relation to conceptual
thought changes radically: the image becom es merely a “symbol of
the operational schem a, and no longer as an integral p art o f it”
(Piaget, 1962b, 244).
From Piaget’s perspective the imaginai dialogues o f egocentric
speech develop into adequate communication with actual others. W hen
imaginai dialogues are still present in adult speech, the adults who
engage in them are described by Piaget as “certain men and women
o f a puerile disposition (certain hysterical subjects, if hysteria be de­
scribed as the survival o f infantile characteristics)” (1955, 40).
Vygotsky
Unlike Piaget, who sees egocentric speech as developing into
communicative speech, Vygotsky sees it as developing from social
speech. It is a stage in the development of inner speech, that is, in the
16 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLGICAL APPROACHES
inner verbalization o f thought. For Vygotsky (1962, 43), thought and
language arise independently, and only around age two do the curves
o f their development intersect with speech beginning to serve intellect
and thoughts beginning to be spoken. Egocentric speech is seen by
Vygotsky as “speech on its way inward.” For Vygotsky (as for Mead)
private speech is thus not an extension o f the child’s egocentrism , as
it is for Piaget. Indeed, for Vygotsky the beginning o f com m unica­
tion with oneself already presum ed communicative ability and intent
with others. He focuses on how the child begins to use speech to
guide his own actions, to communicate with himself. Vygotsky comes
to view such speech as not only accompanying activity, but as aiding
in the direction, planning, and execution o f action, and as serving
mental orientation.
A lthough his is a m ore positive construal o f private speech than
Piaget’s, Vygotsky also regards private speech as reflecting the young
child’s inabilities, i.e., to differentiate self-guiding speech from social
speech, to differentiate self as auditor from other as auditor. As
Kohlberg, Yaeger, and H jertholm (1968, 969) point out, Piaget’s and
Vygotsky’s viewpoints, while different, inevitably lead to a construal
of private speech as “uneconom ical and inefficient,” having neither
the econom y of speech intended for self-guidance during perform ance
o f an acdon, nor the communicative value o f speech intended for a
differentiated other.
Vygotsky’s interest is not in how thought preserves the dialogues
of social discourse as a form with which to think, but rather how the
form of speech used in communication to the other undergoes radical
changes in structure as the function shifts to self-communication. He
states: “While in external speech thought is em bodied in words, in
inner speech words die as they bring forth thought,” “om itting the
subject o f a sentence and all words connecting with it,” “leaving an
elliptical, highly predicative syntax” (Vygotsky, 1962, 149, 139).
Vygotsky describes not only the decrease in quantity of egocen­
tric speech with age (that Piaget also notes for different reasons), but
a gradual change in its structure, such that by age seven egocentric
speech looks radically different from social speech. According to
Vygotsky, as egocentric speech is internalized, its structure shifts from
dialogue to monologue. This is because the demands of self-commu­
nicative speech differ from those of both egocentric and social speech.
IMAGIN A L DIALOGUES AND REASON 17
The one exception Vygotsky gives when inner speech approximates
social speech in form is when inner speech prepares one for external
speech, as when thinking over a lecture to be given. Vygotsky argues
that predication is the natural form of inner speech because we “know
what we are thinking about—i.e., we always know the subject and the
situation” (1962, 145). Whereas in some social speech partners may
be so intimate with each other’s thoughts that predication alone is
necessary for communication, Vygotsky claims that this is always so
in inner speech. It is always so because in thought, for Vygotsky,
speaker and auditor are always the same— namely, the self—and thus
share the same knowledge of referents.
In inner speech, the “mutual” perception is always there,
in absolute form; therefore a practically wordless “com ­
m unication” o f even the m ost complicated thoughts is
the rule. (145)
Thus for Vygotsky inner speech is necessarily monologal, and he claims
that “psychological investigation leaves no doubt that m onologue is
indeed the higher, m ore com plicated form , and o f later historical
developm ent” than dialogue (1962, 144). The imaginai dialogues in
children’s private speech are seen as disappearing as speech becomes
internalized and the m ore advanced m onologal form is m astered. For
Vygotsky,
Dialogue implies immediate unprem editated utterance. It
consists o f replies, repartees; it is a chain o f reactions.
M onologue, by comparison, is a complex formation; the
linguistic elaboration can be attended to leisurely and
consciously. (144)
Vygotsky compares the monologues of thought to the dialogues of
social speech. He fails to compare the former monologues of thought
to the dialogues of thought, an issue we shall explore in Chapter Four.
There appear to be three primary influences leading Vygotsky to
hold monologic inner speech at the apex of verbal thought: the func­
tions he ascribed to both egocentric speech and verbal thought; his
implicit conception of the self as unitary; and his consequent lack of
focus on the presence of imaginai others in thought. These topics
will be taken up in Part II. For now, let us rest with seeing that the
valued form of verbal thought, the monologue, which is elliptical
18 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
and highly predicative, leads to an implicit view of imaginai dialogues
in thought as inefficient and inferior.
Mead
For Mead, monologal thought does not hold a position develop-
mentally superior to dialogal thought, as it does for Vygotsky. Nor
does Mead, like Piaget, place imagination in opposition to reason.
The imaginai dialogues present in children’s play and speech are
internalized w ithout threat to reason. Indeed, from Mead’s point
of view, they are constitutive of reason, as thought for Mead is
essentially dialogical.
While Piaget tends to see play and its imaginai dialogues as re­
flective of the autism of childhood, Mead sees such dialogues in play
as reflective of the essentially social character of all psychical processes,
those of children included. Thus, although Mead and Piaget would
probably agree on some of the functions of such dialogues, Mead’s
commitment to the social nature of the self from infancy does not
lead him to propose the disappearance of imaginai dialogues. These
dialogues, rather than being construed as evidence of the child’s
inability to communicate with actual others or to deal with the
demands of a social reality were for Mead— as they are for Vygotsky—
evidence of exactly the opposite: the internalization of the social
nature of reality.
Mead sees the child’s early dialogues in play as gradually becoming
the inner conversations of thinking. The dialogue as a form is central
to Mead’s thought, as he believed that it is through the reflexivity of
the dialogue that the self arises. For Mead, all speech and thought are
implicitly dialogical. The dialogue form establishes for the child the
meaning of the self and her actions. Awareness of the self, according
to Mead, arises through adopting the perspective of others toward
oneself. This is achieved first through describing one’s activities to
another, or as though to another, and thereby evoking the response
of the other to oneself. At first the self is the reflection of others’
attitudes toward it. Thus, where Piaget’s example of a child describ­
ing what she sees to her doll is taken by him to be expressive of the
child’s pleasure in being a focus of attention, for Mead this perpetual
describing—which can strain the patience of those around children
(“Now I’m putting on my hat. See me putting it on!”)— marks the
IMAGINAL DIALOGUES AND REASON 19
beginning of the child’s transition to the role o f the other, from which
indeed one sees and becom es aware o f oneself and others. As the
child begins to take on all the roles o f others tow ard oneself—
policem an, parent, sibling, etc.— the child’s ow n self is created.
Indeed, for Mead, the self is an organization o f perspectives. “W hen
playing at being som eone else, the self comes to realize its own na­
ture at the same time it realizes the nature o f the person whose role is
being played” (Pfuetze, 1973, 83).
From this perspective, Mead argues that the im portance o f the
novel and the newspaper is that they create the self by allowing the
reader to adopt other perspectives. W hen one reads an “admirable
novel...he feels in some sense enriched... His life has had content
added to it. He has been given a new point o f view, a new approach,
a new way o f looking at things; and the novelty involved in it leads to
a richer experience...” (Mead, 1936, 410).
While Vygotsky argues that social speech and speech to oneself
are essentially different in structure due to their divergence in function,
Mead stresses the similarity between thinking and talking to som e­
body else. Thinking for Mead involves the ability to both assume
one’s own perspective, and to take the attitude o f the group on it,
being able to shift between these with ease.
There is a field, a sort o f inner forum, in which we are
the only spectators and the only actors. In that field each
one o f us confers with himself. We carry on something
o f a drama. If a person retires to a secluded spot and sits
down to think, he talks to himself. He asks and answers
questions. He develops his ideas and arranges and orga­
nizes those ideas as he might in a conversation with some­
body else. He may prefer talking to himself to talking to
somebody else. (Mead, 1936, 401)
While Mead understands the dialogal form as persisting in thought
once it is developed, he proposes that the nature o f the interlocutor
changes.
Thus the child can think about his conduct as good or
bad only as he reacts to his own acts in the remembered
words of his parents. Until this process has been devel­
oped into the abstract process of thought, self-conscious­
ness remains dramatic, and the self which is a fusion of
20 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLGICAL APPROA CHES
the remembered actor and this accompanying chorus is
somewhat loosely organized and very clearly social. Later
the inner stage changes into the forum and workshop of
thought. The features and intonations of the dramatic personae
fade out and the emphasis falls upon the meaning o f the
inner speech, the imagery becomes merely the barely nec­
essary cues. But the mechanism remains social, and at any
moment the process may become personal. (Mead, 1978,180)
W hereas in childhood thought one speaks to specific others, in
adulthood, Mead maintains, one usually converses in thought with a
“generalized other.” For Mead (1924-25) this transition from specific
to generalized other, while never complete, is part o f developm ent
“to the levels o f abstract thinking and that impersonality, that so-called
objectivity that we cherish” (272). The generalized other arises from
the m ultiplicity o f roles one has assum ed in the past and appears
to be a hom ogenization o f these. It represents the attitude o f the
whole community, posing the hypothetical view point o f a “greater
objectivity” against the “personal wants and attitudes” o f the individual.
T hus the function o f this generalized other is the universalizing
of thought (Mead, 1924-25, 90).
Finally, for Mead the transition from the multiple roles the child
takes on in play to the unitary presence of the generalized other in
adulthood reflects a more stable and mature development of self
and, m ost importantly, is also seen as a development in thought.
Although Mead does not characterize the dialogical form itself as at
odds with “right thinking,” his notion of good thought does lead
him to propose a change in the nature and number of interlocutors in
imaginai dialogues. The child’s pantheon of particular presences who
grace her play and fantasy, who join her in conversation, are seem­
ingly reduced to one. The many names and faces, the particular
intonations and voices merge, leaving a single voice, a homogenized unity.
 CHAPTER TWO
Reality and the Imagination

I
n psychological theories im aginai phenom ena— their origin,
nature and function s— are m ost often approached through
the measure of the “real.” Imagination is seen variously as a rather
dangerous and tricky opponent of the real, as little m ore than a mimic
o f the real, or as a help-mate to the real— always ready to rehearse
for or react to m om ents o f the real. In all three o f these relations the
real is understood as that which exists factually, actually, objectively
(Morris, 1969, 1085-1086). It is the objectively verifiable reality of
science that is given priority— i.e., that which yields to its methods.
Perception, veridical memory, logical reasoning— acts which are defined
as yielding “the real”— are set in opposition to imagining. Imaginai
others and scenes are contrasted to “real” others and the material
world, to that which is susceptible to the checks of consensual obser­
vation. As we shall see, these actual or “real” others are given clear
ontological priority, with imaginai others usually derivative from and
subordinate to them — suffused as they are with the untrustw orthy
stuff of “subjectivity.”
In this chapter we will explore the three aforem entioned relations
between the real and the imaginary and their impact on conceptions
about imaginai dialogues: the opposition o f the imaginary and the
real; the dependent, alm ost mimicking, relation o f the imaginary to
the real; and the imaginary as instrum ental to one’s relation to the
real. To exemplify the first o f these relations, we will explore psycho­
analytic and Piagetian theories. To exemplify the latter relations, we
22 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
will pursue Mead’s social theory, as well as psycholinguistic and
Russian psychological approaches.
The Opposition of the Teal and the Imaginary
...a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The
motive forces ofi phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single
phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying
reality. — Freud, 1907/1959, 146
What is usually called fantasy disregards one or more aspects of
reality, replacing them by arbitrary presuppositions; it is autistic.
The greater the number of presuppositions and connections which
do not correspond to reality, the more autistic the train of thought.
— Bleuler, 1912/1951, 416-411

Intionmanyto thepsychological theories the imaginary is placed in opposi­

real, as imagination is contrasted with perception. The
real in such theories is decidedly more valued. Indeed, the imaginai
acquires value only as it approaches a replication of the real. The
products o f imagination are m ost often seen as deform ations or
distortions of the real— distortions conceived in the service of wish,
and created through such sleights of mind as condensation, substitu­
tion, and negation. The psychoanalytic and Piagetian psychologies
both construe imaginai dialogues as forms of wish-fulfillment which
are compensatory to the harshness of “reality.”
Psychoanalytic Approaches
Just what is this real, this harsh reality that draws from us such intensity
of wish that all manner of imaginai scenes and worlds are fashioned?
Freud’s answer is simply, but unequivocally, the external world:
...w e are...confronted with the task o f investigating the
developm ent o f the relation o f neurotics and o f m an­
kind in general to reality, and in this way o f bringing the
psychological significance o f the real external world into
the structure o f our theories. (Freud, 1911/1957, 218)
For Freud the real is that “realm o f obdurate fact as ruled implacably
and w ithout exception by the laws of natural science” (see Casey,
1971-1972, 663). In his theory reality has a harsh and hostile cast to it.
The individual confronts it, but remains estranged from it (Casey,
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 23

1971-1972, 664). Indeed, the individual must confront reality from a

defensive posture, viewing it as a source of deprivation and frustration.
O ut o f this defense against reality arises the imaginai. In psychoana­
lytic theory, it is this tense opposition between the imaginai and the
real that form s the very basis for discussion o f both the functions
and the developm ental course of imaginai dialogues.
O f course, we m ust first account for the presence o f imaginai
others. These imaginai others have been discussed in the psychoanalytic
literature as object representations, introjects, incorporated others,
prim ary process presences, internalized others. In one carefully
elaborated system, Schafer (1968) employs the term “prim ary process
presences” to identify the broadly inclusive category o f which
“introjects” forms a subset. He proposes that these presences can be
differentiated on the basis o f how the subject experiences them spa­
tially— as internal (introjects), external, or o f indeterm inate locality.
Imaginai others or primary process presences are treated in psycho­
analysis’ technical discussions o f hallucinations, children’s play,
im aginary com panions, dreams and daydreams, and the vicissitudes
o f object relations.
These imaginai others are seen as the products o f internaliza­
tion, the assimilation o f intersubjective relations into intrasubjective
ones. Freud’s (1940/1964) original example o f this process was his
description o f the developm ent of the superego:
A portion of the external world has, at least partially, been
abandoned as an object and has instead, by identification,
been taken into the ego and thus become an integral part
o f the internal world. This new psychical agency contin­
ues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been
perform ed by the people...in the external world: it ob­
serves the ego, gives it orders, judges it and threatens it
with punishments, exactly like the parents whose place it
has taken.(205)
Thus, originally the imaginai other is seen to be fashioned after ac­
tual others, in order to facilitate interactions with the external world.
As attention to internalization grew in subsequent theorists’ work,
the figure of the superego was joined by others, and the self-regulatory
function of the imaginai other was expanded upon.
These internal objects are contrasted with external objects as fol­
lows: whereas we are “vulnerable to the independent activity of the
24 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
external object— to its abandoning, rejecting, punishing, demanding,
traumatizing influences, and to its stimulating and gratifying influences
to o ”— with the internal object one can minimize one’s vulnerability
to and maximize one’s control over it (Schafer, 1968, 235). Thus some
o f the functions o f internalization and its resulting imaginai figures
are seen as enabling one to defend against reality and to seek security
in an internal world where one has m ore control. Let us look at how
psychoanalysis envisions the functions o f relating to imaginai others.
A fter this we can summarize the developm ental courses prescribed
for imaginai dialogues within this theoretical system.
T hrough relating to an imaginai other one can com pensate for
the absence or inadequacy o f an actual other. Psychoanalysis pro­
poses that the first object representation occurs as a hallucination o f
the absent breast, and later of the m other herself. W hen the child is
confronted with an experience o f a hostile or neglectful m other, a
good m other may be imagined to com pensate for the harshness o f
reality. Indeed this internal good m other may actually come to be
preferred as the child experiences m ore o f a sense o f control over
her; she does not present the same distressing fluctuations o f m ood
and action as the real m other. Through imaginai dialogues one can
not only supplem ent a deficient or discontinuous reality but, by reliv­
ing past traum atic situations and anticipating future ones, one can
gain a sense o f m astery and control over what in reality makes one
feel weak, im potent, and inadequate.
In an imaginai dialogue the child can also interact with the voice
of an adult to guide the child’s actions, thus gradually liberating herself
from reliance on external censors and punishments. In such superego-
type imaginai dialogues, the child is able to play out her fantasy o f
om nipotent aggression while also personifying the restraining influence
o f a budding conscience— thus protecting herself from “the terror
o f her own om nipotent success” (Isaacs, 1933, 229). Through introjec-
tion and identification the child shares in the strengths and qualities
o f the other, thereby redressing the lack o f equality in m ost child-
adult relations. Thus in imaginai dialogues the child often identifies
with the parent or adult, projecting onto her imagined partner her
own usual stance as a vulnerable, needy, and often naughty child.
Through such dialogues one gains distance and liberation from those
qualities o f self that are experienced as less desirable, while sustaining
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 25

vicarious satisfaction through one’s interactions with those in play

and dialogue (Isaacs, 1933). This dramatic form allows different points
of view to be tem pered as well as expressed.
O bject relations theorists (e.g., Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip) m ain­
tain that just as one preserves the good self by isolating the bad self
into a projection, one preserves the good aspect of the other by splitting
those qualities o f the real other experienced as good and as bad into
separate personae. At an early stage of object representations, these
two varieties of experienced qualities are m ost often isolated into
different fantasy figures. This allows the child to preserve the good
object and maintain a sense o f security. An interesting thing about
imaginai dialogues in play or daydreams is that the troublesom e or
“bad” aspects are not ignored or repressed, but are actively inter­
acted with in the form o f a dialogue while care is taken to protect the
presence o f good in self and other. Through the projection, introjection,
and identification exhibited in such dialogues, the child has the power
to change his psychological experience despite his powerlessness to
influence his actual interactions with others. For example when the
bad m other or father appears in play, the child often radically shifts
the balance o f power by introducing the figure o f a policeman or a
superhero who puts to rest the threatening behaviors o f the bad m other
or father.
Similarly through displacem ent from one object to another, less
dangerous one, the child can vent his em otions w ithout fear o f ret­
ribution from the actual o th er for w hom such feelings are felt.
Aggressive fantasies, for instance, rather than being addressed to the
father— who is bigger and m ore powerful, and on whom the child
depends for support, love and approval— may be addressed in the
form of an angry speech to a pretend robber. For further safety from
feelings o f powerlessness and fears of punishm ent for the expres­
sion o f anger, he may imagine him self as a judge or Superman.
Through these mechanisms, as exhibited in the imaginai dialogue,
the child is able to involve him self in the problem atic feelings and
aspects o f his experience— but with the possibility of feeling a wholly
different relation to them. The imaginai dialogue allows for a field of
interaction between aspects o f experience while leaving their presenta­
tion and resolution relatively unconstrained by the vicissitudes of reality.
26 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
Such functions implicitly describe an inner psychic world designed
at first by wish where what one wants can be made to occur, as though
one were godlike within the bounds of this province. This inner world
is pitted against an outer world which is often felt as inadequate,
discontinuous, hostile, overbearing, accusatory and punishing. With
such descriptions the developmental directions proposed for imaginai
dialogues are not surprising. The plurality of directions is intention­
ally emphasized here as psychoanalysis in its history and its present
diversity of metapsychologies is far from unified regarding the fate
of primary process presences. Nonetheless, some trends are widely—
though not universally— shared.
It is ironic that Freud, a pioneer in presenting the reality o f the
psychological, should assert so forcefully the priority of the external
and the m aterial. E ven after his proposal o f psychical reality to
account for how the strength o f a fantasy o f seduction m ight equal
that o f the actual experience o f seduction, he retreated to suggest
that perhaps such an actual seduction, though not present in the life­
time o f an individual, had occurred to an ancestor (see Casey, 1971-
1972, 677).
It seems to me quite possible that all the things that are
told to us today in analysis as phantasy— the seduction of
children, the inflaming o f sexual excitement by observ­
ing parental intercourse, the threat o f castration (or rather
castration itself)— were once real occurrences in the pri­
meval times o f the human family, and that children in
their phantasies are simply filling in the gaps in individual
truth with prehistoric truth. (Freud, 1917/1963, 371)
Freud’s dichotom y between internal psychical reality and external,
material reality was replicated even within the domain o f the psychi­
cal as he ferreted out those representations that consensually con­
verged with other people’s and those that departed. Namely, due to
his partial adherence to a copy theory of perception, he postulated
that internal representations are o f two kinds: those which reproduce
external reality and those which are “drive cathected,” which represent
the psychical reality o f the dream er (Schim ek, 1975, 174). T he
representations in dreams and psychosis, the “primary process rep­
resentations,” and those which appear to duplicate the objects o f
external reality were thus differentiated. The primacy afforded reality is
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 27
shared with secondary process representations. Thus, developm ent
o f object representations is m ost often seen not just as increasing the
degree o f com plexity o f characterization (i.e., from polarized
representation— all good, all bad, etc.— to multidim ensional repre­
sentations), but as an increasing degree o f correspondence between
object representations and individuals in the external world.
At “primitive” levels o f self and object-representation, characters
are polarized— all good and idealized, or all bad and persecutory.
Meissner (1981) describes the early polarized figures as organized along
either aggressive or narcissistic lines. The form er yield “aggressive”
and “victim ” introjects which are either powerful and destructive or
vulnerable and helpless, while the latter yield “ superior” and “infe­
rior” introjects which are either replete with a sense o f specialness,
grandiosity, and om nipotence or with inferiority and worthlessness.
Presumably as developm ent progresses, “the alternation and inter­
locking o f introjection and projection produce com posite introjects”
(Meissner, 1981, 22). The resulting images o f self and other are m ore
differentiated, “richer, more varied, more consistent and more congru­
ent with what objects are really like” (Krohn and Mayman, 1974, 448).
The change from polarized to m ultidim ensional characters is pre­
sumably made possible by a change in the structure o f defenses. Klein
(1975b) characterizes this transition as the one between the paranoid
position and the depressive position. For instance as one moves from
the primitive m echanism o f splitting to ambivalence, representations
change from all-good or all-bad to ones which are both accepting and
rejecting, loving and hating. So as one can tolerate more o f reality,
there is a shift from wish-laden to realistic representations.
Rather than trace the full history o f these genetic ideas within
the work o f various psychoanalytic theorists, we will turn our atten­
tion instead to a single psychoanalytic work, Schafer’s Aspects of Inter­
nalipation (1968), which attem pted to summarize and critique these
treatm ents. While proposing certain new ways o f approaching the
subject, Schafer conserves in his theory the basic psychoanalytic
argum ents regarding imaginai others and our dialogues and interac­
tions with them. Schafer proposes a developm ental continuum from
primary process presences to secondary process object representa­
tions primarily along an axis o f degree o f congruence between actual
person and representation o f that person, between the psychoanalytic
28 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
real and the imaginai. W hereas prim ary process presences, due to the
suspension of a self reflective representation (i.e., an awareness that
one is thinking), are felt in the m om ent of daydream as presences, in
secondary process representation there is no longer the imaginai pres­
ence but merely the thought o f another. Primary process presences
are described as object representations which are “inaccurate, unstable
and tim eless due to the influence o f unconscious m otives and
ideation,” whereas secondary process object representations are “char­
acterized by relative accuracy, stability, and a preserved tem poral and
spatial (external) index, and reflective processing” (126-127). “A
reasonably faithful rendering of the object’s pertinent essentials” (126),
its essentials in reality, is contrasted with a distorted rendering, biased by
wish and by unm itigated subjectivity. Thus developm ent coincides
with the imaginal’s more accurate m irroring of reality and with a de­
personification o f presences.
O n this last point Schafer is quite strict:
Too often, introjects are written about (and discussed in
the clinic) as if they are actual persons carrying on lives
o f their own, with energies o f their own, and with inde­
pendent intentions directed toward the subject. This is
how patients often experience them and describe them,
but is it good metapsychology? [...T he introject’s] seem­
ingly independent ability to influence the subject is its
outstanding experiential quality. (Schafer, 1968, 83)
Thus Schafer concedes that a language designed to reflect our phe­
nom enological experience o f these presences would speak o f them
as having thoughts, feelings, motives, and agency. Such a language,
descriptive o f experience, is not Schafer’s concern. His is a language
o f efficient causal explanation. Given psychoanalytic theory, all
thoughts, feelings and motives of an imaginai figure are referred back
to the motives of the subject. They are “representations of the subject’s
wishes and conflicts” (Schafer, 1968, 138-139). Thus from Schafer’s
point o f view, the primary process presence, even the “pejoratively
colored persecuting introject is always doing what the subject tells it
to do; its independent activity is only apparent” (139). For Schafer
and other clinical theorists, developm ent has to do with making ex­
perience conform to explanatory notions. Imaginai presences should
in the end be experienced and “treated merely as the thoughts, ideas
or inform ation” (138) which theory says they are.
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 29
For Schafer the developm ental question is “How does the in-
troject lose its influence?... Put m ost broadly, the question is not,
How is the irrational possible? but, How is the rational possible?”
(136). W ith these considerations we reach a nexus in our discussions
of reason and the imaginai, and reality and the imaginai. The irrational
here is imaginai reality which diverges from external reality and the
rational.
Schafer notes that “introjects” often recur w ithout change. But
rather than dealing positively with this stability of occurrence, Schafer
understands it as the result o f “strong, infantile, id-ego fixations.. .being
represented by these dramatic personae” (139). From this point of view,
...introjects may be said to be instrum ents o f the forces
that oppose change; they must be assigned a mainly con­
servative role in the development o f object relations...
The specifically conservative or fixation aspect o f the in-
troject or any other presence is seen in its representing
primitive or infantile basic assumptions and wishes con­
cerning the relation of the subject to objects. (Schafer,
1968, 131-132)
T hus people who are predisposed to create introjects and other
presences and to experience them repetitively are seen by Schafer as
“dom inated by infantile fixations,” with “unrem itting pressure o f in­
fantile wishes” and a “predilection for magical control over objects,” all
of w hich result in a “ turning away from external object relations
to fantasy” (132).
Schafer does not take up the issue o f primary process presences
that have no definite external referents— for exam ple m onsters,
witches, and space people. Clinicians, beginning with Melanie Klein,
have often seen the attaching of a worldly referent onto such figures
as an indication of development. Thus Klein as a play therapist might,
through interpretation, hope to have the child begin to treat the witch
as m other, or the hungry naughty little pig as the child herself; again
a redirection o f the imaginai to the real.5 Apropos our earlier discus­
sion of the rational, Ekstein, a child analyst, attem pts to befriend the
patient’s m onster, talking directly to the “introject” in the session.
His developm ental goal is to introduce the m onster to reason and
5 In this regard see also Rambert (1949).
30 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
reflection via a relationship with the therapist. He wants the m onster
“to becom e som eone with whom the patient and the therapist can
negotiate,” who can explain and create rationales for the patient: “the
m onster is changed in that he becom es m ore rational and subject to
secondary process reasoning” (Ekstein, 1965b, 194).
As play is in psychoanalysis, imaginai dialogues are seen as a form
of thinking which eventually changes into “secondary process reality-
oriented thinking” (Ekstein, 1965a, 441). W hat results from this de-
personification o f thought is expressed variously by theorists. Some
(such as Fairbairn) speak o f an integration o f imaginai egos, thus
reducing their num ber and extending the bounds o f the ego in this
assimilatory project, while others, such as Kernberg, speak of how
the imaginai others are integrated into the tripartite structure o f id,
ego, and superego. For E kstein and others o f the psychoanalytic
persuasion, it is to be hoped that where “introjects ruled, capacity for
object relations should be developed” (Ekstein, 1965b, 196-197).
O ne is rem inded o f the psychoanalytic literature on imaginary
com panions suggesting that the child who is in com m erce with such
com panions is m orbidly turning away from “real” others. Harrim an
(1937), for instance, w rote that imaginary com panions result from a
“tem porary dichotom y” in one’s personality and that “real playmates
cause these fantasies to disappear” (368).
From the psychoanalytic point of view it would seem that were
reality m ore adequate, imagination might cease to dream. But given
the vicissitudes o f reality, the very contrast and opposition between
the imaginai and the real allows the ego a realm of rest from the
world. In theories o f play and daydreams this realm— when not taken
to an extreme— is credited with making it more possible for one to “con­
trol his real behavior, and to accept the limitations of the real world”—
to adapt. Dramatic representation “furthers the developm ent...of the
sense o f reality. It helps to...enhance the child’s readiness to under­
stand the objective physical world for its own sake” (Isaacs, 1945,
210). Despite the fact that internalization is a necessary process both
for the existence of an internal world and for interaction with the
external world, psychoanalytic discussion o f it is couched largely in
terms of pathology. From the psychoanalytic perspective, the characters
which result from internalization are representative of various infantile
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 31
conflicts, corresponding to different stages of developm ent and their
characteristic defenses. Their origin is located in primitive, oral, sadistic,
instinctual drives (Greens, 1954). The resulting introjects are seen in
term s o f narcissism and aggression. The young child is described as
passing from a paranoid position to a depressive one. W hat a choice!
In adulthood, the characters (or representations) are often inferred
from reported interactions and the quality of the transference neurosis.
These inferred representations o f self and other are rarely invited by
traditional therapies to be experienced as felt presences. W hen they
are so experienced spontaneously, they are seen as rivaling object rela­
tions or signaling a return to more primitive, infantile preoccupations.
We find the emphasis on adaptation to external reality central to
Piaget’s treatm ent o f imaginai dialogues as well. Piaget’s theoretical
system rests on his notion o f adaptation as an equilibrium between
accom m odation and assimilation. The imaginai dialogues in symbolic
play reflect the child’s unbalanced assimilation of reality to his own
ego. Such imaginai experience does not reflect reality but distorts it.
For Piaget (1971) the essential property of play is its “deform ation
and subordination of reality to the desires o f the self” (339). Therefore
for Piaget, developm ent coincides with a change from such wish-
fulfilling distortions of reality to play that becom es m ore and m ore
adequately adapted to reality (as in the construction o f games).
W ith regard to the ludic symbol, “progress in socialization,” for
Piaget (1962b), “instead o f leading to an increase in symbolism, trans­
form s play m ore or less rapidly into objective im itation o f reality”
(139). As egocentric assimilation becomes de-centered, “play becomes
as much an expression o f reality as an affective m odification o f it”
(285). W hen games replace early symbolic play Piaget argues that their
function is not to transport the child elsewhere, but to reproduce or
continue the real world. The rise o f games with rules is coincident
with a decline in symbolism, the form er being “progressively less
distorting and m ore nearly related to adapted w ork” (140).
This direction is taken with respect not only to symbolic play but
to im agination in general. Piaget places im agination under the rubric
o f “undirected” thought, in contrast to “directed or intelligent
thought.” This presumably undirected form of thought is not adapted
to reality, says Piaget (1955), and creates for itself “a dream world of
imagination; it tends not to establish truths, but so to satisfy desires,
52 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROA CHES
and it remains strictly individual and incom m unicable” (63). For Piaget
(1955) im agination’s laws are not the laws o f experience and logic but
those o f “symbolism and of im m ediate satisfaction” (63). Once again
inadequate thought and unreality (or imaginai thought and the realm
it gives birth to) are paired as an inferior syzygy, com pared to
“ reason” and “reality.”
Imagination as Derivative of and Help-mate to the Real

A
s we have seen, at certain m om ents theories em phasize the
imaginal’s distortion o f the real. If any developm ent is deemed
possible, an increasing realism within the imaginai is advocated. At
other times, the same theories (and others) stress the imaginai as an
internalization o f social reality. A t first, internal representations o f
others may appear piecemeal and subject to distortion and inaccuracy.
Gradually, however, the imaginai dim ension o f thought provides an
internal stage on which past or future “real” events— events o f the
external world— may be replayed or rehearsed in service o f one’s
adaptation to reality.
For Mead imaginai dialogues, like thinking itself, result from an
internalization of a social reality. The imaginai is derived from the
real and remains in the service o f the real, for the purpose o f adjust­
m ent to the real. Like Piaget’s example o f an adult preparing his ideas
in thought before an imaginary audience o f colleagues or critics, Mead
too sees inner conversations as a means o f testing and rehearsing
alternative solutions before one acts in reality. For Mead the imaginai
dialogue is never just a mental process which exists wholly apart from
action in the social world.
He takes different roles. He asks questions and meets
them; presents arguments and refutes them. He does it
himself, and it lies inside o f the man himself. It has not
yet become public. But it is a part o f the act which does
become public. We will say he is thinking out what he is
going to say in an im portant situation, an argument he is
going to present in court, a speech in the legislature. That
process which goes on inside o f him is only the begin­
ning o f the process which is finally carried on in an as­
sembly. It is just a part o f the whole thing, and the fact
that he talks to him self rather than to the assembly is
REALITY AND IMAGINATION 33
simply an indication o f the beginning o f a process which
is carried on outside. (Mead, 1936, 402)
Theologically m inded colleagues and students o f M ead’s brought to
his attention the similarities between his conceptions of the generalized
other and conceptions of God. But Mead is adam ant in his rejection
of such a notion, adhering to social reality, the individual voices and
one’s generalization o f these, as the only reality which the imaginai
can reflect.
One of the richest compendia of imaginai dialogues in early child­
hood can be found in the psycholinguistic literature. For the m ost
part psycholinguists have seen these dialogues as “im itations o f
com m unication” (Slama-Cazacu, 1976), through which the child gains
practice for actual com m unication with real others. Slama-Cazacu, in
her book Dialogue in Children (1976), describes these dialogues as
“ surrogates o f com m unication, com pensatory form s o f dialogue”
(35) which occur primarily when there is no real other for the child to
interact with. Again the priority is the real other; the imaginai is only
second best. Weir, in Language in the Crib (1962), sees imaginai dia­
logues as similar to doing grammatical exercises or instructing oneself
in a foreign language. George Miller corroborates this view, propos­
ing that “only the pleasure o f increased com petence could have served
as a reward” for this “self im posed drill— a playful drill, admittedly—
that m ust serve to bring what he already knows up to a level o f com ­
plete autom aticity” (quoted in Weir, 1962, 15). Gallagher and Craig
(1978), in their research on structural characteristics o f imaginai dia­
logues, end up seeing the function o f such dialogues in private speech
(what they call “m onologic conversations”) similarly to Weir, i.e., as
“highly structured means by which the child explores semantic and
conversational language categories” (116). Thus imaginai conversations
are m ere im itations o f “ real” conversations for the purpose o f
increasing one’s com petence in “real” dialogue.
Just as Vygotsky conceived o f egocentric speech and its dialogues
as instrumental in planning and executing actions in the external world,
later Russian psychologists conceived o f im agination as “the ability
to form new representations on the basis o f previous experience, which
allows for the planning o f future actions”; it is a “creative reflection
o f reality” (Repina, 1971, 255). In their treatm ent o f the developm ent
o f imagination, Russian psychologists give clear and consistent priority
34 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
to external, social, m aterial reality. N ovel im ages are seen as
restructurings o f previous experiences. The “observed richness of
im agination” and images which depart from a focus on realism are
seen as signs o f weakly developed critical thinking, o f “an inability
to differentiate the possible from the impossible,” and o f a lack of
knowledge about “what and how things exist in reality” (Repina, 1971,
255-256, 260). O n the one hand then, the child is seen as innately
concerned with realism, rejecting elements in fantasy that do not cor­
respond to material and social reality. But on the other hand, this
realism is taught to the preschooler:
The realism o f a child’s imagination requires an active
upbringing. It is imperative that the child’s imagination
be developed in connection with enriching his experience
by knowledge o f reality, and that it not turn into an un­
fruitful fantasy that serves as an escape from reality.
(Repine, 1971, 261)
Im agination is to remain linked to action in the material world. At the
end o f the preschool period, the child can imagine w ithout acting,
but this imagining is to function as a plan for action, i.e., to guide or
regulate future actions in the material world.
Although Russian psychologists have criticized Western approaches
to the imaginai as idealistic and bourgeois (Repina, 1971), and as lack­
ing an appropriate em phasis on reality, this is hardly the case— even
in the primary object o f their critical attack, psychoanalysis.
Freud painstakingly plotted out ways in which the imaginai was
derived from the real, tracing dreams back to day residue, representa­
tions to perceptions, and fantasized scenes to actual events (ancestral
or otherwise). Side by side with psychoanalytic concern about the
imaginai as a flight from reality, we also find acknowledgment o f the
ways in which the imaginai prepares one for reality. For H artm ann
(1939) fantasy can be seen as a regressive detour on the way to adap­
tive action, in that it allows one to plan. Schafer (1968) describes many
daydreams as representational in a “down-to-earth, realistic, fashion.”
[They] may faithfully represent adaptive means-ends re­
lations: com m unication may use organized speech and
conventional gestures; action may observe the modes and
REA LIT 1’ AND IMA GINA TION 35
limits o f space, time, and bodily organization; and so forth.
These details o f the daydream may be no different from
those involved in realistic planning. They may represent
what is conceivable according to the reality principle. (89)
Schafer also describes how experience with hostile introjects helps
a person acquire “aggressive skills” which may have a “wide range
of utility” (1968, 132). For Peller (1954) the imaginai dialogues of
play, in addition to all their wish-fulfilling functions, also prepare the
child for adult roles. And Erikson proposes that in play the child
creates m odel situations in which he can begin to “m aster reality by
experim ent and planning” (1950, 195).
Thus in psychoanalytic theory imaginai dialogues, like daydreams
in general, are placed along a continuum according to function. The
proposed functions range from escaping reality and fulfilling wishes
(images as distortions o f the real), to replicating the real and helping
one adapt to reality in a straightforward m anner (images as approxi­
m ations o f the real). From this perspective the phantasies of art are
merely “precious reflections of reality” (Freud, 1911, 224), their only
value to return us to external reality (Casey, 1971-1972, 678-679). As
Casey has aptly summarized Freud’s theory:
Either we confuse psychical reality with [external] reality,
as in dreams and psychosis; or the two types of reality are
essentially similar as in neurosis and art. In neither case is
psychical reality allowed to constitute a truly autonomous
realm...its constituents are derivative from and thus depen­
dent upon the material realm: psychical reality is in the
end more the shadow of external reality than its equal. (674)
 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 ur presen­
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 upon, and the secular) and axiological
com m itm ents (i.e., logical-scientific reasoning and socialized com ­
m unication are the apices of developm ental progress). In the context
of 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 communicative speech or socially shared
reference to reality; or (c) as an early and surpassable stage in the
adequate conceptualization o f other “real” people.
These assumptions yield a set o f specific (yet often contradictory)
developmental expectations for imaginai dialogues. Viewed as an early
stage in the developm ent of abstract thought, the imaginai dialogues
o f private speech are seen as being progressively internalized. In the
process either their structure becom es m onological rather than
dialogical, or the interlocutor becomes a generalized other rather than
a specific other. Viewed as an early stage in the developm ent o f
com m unicative speech, the imaginai dialogues o f private speech sup­
posedly becom e increasingly elaborated according to the dem ands of
a “real” listener, such that the presum ed “egocentric” qualities fade,
38 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRAOCHES
allowing such speech to be understood by a “real” other. Finally, when
imaginai dialogues are viewed as an early stage in the development
o f adequate conceptions o f “real” people, the imaginai others of
such dialogues are presented to undergo a radical change of character,
from superficial and one-sided to multidimensional; from fantastical
creations to copies o f people in the subject’s ideal interactional world.
Given these predictions, the persistence o f imaginai dialogues in
adults is taken either to reflect immaturity and pathology or to subserve
the function o f rehearsal for future social interactions. These ways
o f regarding imaginai dialogues may easily incline educators who are
influenced by psychological theories to inhibit the public manifesta­
tion o f such dialogues in public— seeking to curtail or eliminate
“prim itive and im m ature” behavior patterns. T his is the case in
Polish nursery schools where children are forbidden to talk to imagi­
nary com panions or to themselves when they could be speaking with
“actual” people (Slama-Cazacu, 1976). It is com m only hoped by
professionals and lay people alike that children’s imaginai others will
be quickly replaced by “ actual” peers. Im aginai dialogues, like
daydreams, are thought to be asocial, a turning away from reality. As
such, they are seen primarily as an escape from the demands o f consen­
sual validation o f reality, which com m unication with “real” others
ostensibly promotes. From these perspectives daydreams and imaginai
dialogues are held to be expressive o f the “autoeroticism , egoism,
and passivity” of the subject, o f “uncluttered and unham pered egocen-
tricity” (Schafer, 1968, 87-88). The popularity' of psychiatric literature on
so-called “split personalities” has reinforced the assumed correlation
betw een the experience o f m ultiple voices in thought and severe
pathology. All this has caused the studying o f imaginai dialogues in
adulthood to be dismissed, except as a means o f examining primitive
form s o f cognition.
A lthough hallucinations will be discussed at greater length in
Chapter Eleven, the reduction o f all imaginai dialogues to the status
of hallucinations and archaic states must be briefly m entioned here.
Perhaps no work has so eloquently consigned imaginai dialogues to
the realm of primitivity as Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in
the breakdown of the Ricameral Mind (1976). T his fascinating and
com pelling book compares the voices heard by the Iliadic heroes and
Joan o f Arc, to those o f present day schizophrenics. It explores the
IMAG1NAL DIALOGUES AS PRIMITIVE 39
similarities am ong the imaginai dialogues o f religious and mythic ex­
perience, o f poetic experience, and of psychopathology. The pro­
pensity to hear voices is explained by w hat Jaynes calls a bicameral
structure o f mind,6 which was pervasive am ong the “primitives” o f
3000 years ago and can be found in “primitive” states in the present
(such as schizophrenia).
Jaynes argues that in the past men would speak to their “gods”
whenever a novel decision had to be made. N o sooner had they heard
the voice of the god than they followed its advice or com m and through
action. This was so, he maintains, until the second millennium B.C.E.—
a time o f war, natural catastrophe and mass m igrations. Survival
under these conditions required a shift away from bicameral con­
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 god’s advice was often no longer suited to the rapidly
changing circumstances. People had to develop a subjective sense of
themselves which could be different from how they displayed them ­
selves to an enemy. In other words they needed the ability to appear
to others differently from how they thought and felt.
Essentially w hat I shall call “the dialogical structure o f m ind”
is understood by Jaynes as being based in the physiological and
biochem ical properties o f the brain. Presum ably the left hem i­
sphere produces the voice which is heard by the right hem isphere,
as the m essage is transm itted over the anterior com m issure. In
tim es o f stress there is a buildup in the blood o f the breakdown
products of adrenaline, which lowers the threshold for such occurrences
of voice.
Jaynes maintains that in ancient times, owing to a lack o f con­
sciousness (as we know it), stress was felt each time a decision had to
be made that could not 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 func­
tion, attempting to explain the imaginai in terms of organic substrata. An interest­
ing precursor to Jaynes’ theory of bicameral consciousness was Leuret’s work.
Leuret (1834) attempted to explain the physiological basis for psychotics’ conversa­
tions with their hallucinated figures. He argued that each part of the patient’s two­
fold 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 APPRAOCHES
tim es a reversion to a bicam eral m ind is experienced by those
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 of these internal voices much
like the other theorists we have discussed: as voices which initiate
and guide behavior, as “ authority figures created by the nervous
system out o f the patient’s adm onitory experience and his cultural
expectations” (411). N arrow ing the function of imaginai dialogues to
the initiation 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 than certain “organizations o f the central nervous
system ” (74). Jaynes sees the schizophrenic as one “waiting on gods
in a godless world” (432).
It may be that the dialogical structure o f mind has some basis in
anatomy and biochemistry. W hat is o f particular interest here, how­
ever, is the developm ental argum ent advanced by Jaynes; namely, that
im aginai dialogues are early and surpassable stages o f thought,
except in cases o f psychopathology.
Are schizophrenics prone to a biochemical problem that the rest
o f us have evolved out of, leaving them with the figments of gods,
and us with the relative silence o f monologal, abstract thinking? O r
is Jaynes’ theory an expression o f our cultural Zeitgeist confining the
figures o f im agination to primitive times and states of pathology,
reducing their origin to the physiological and the biochemical? Jaynes
him self speaks eloquently about the progressive secularization o f
our culture that has culminated with the present stage o f m odern
science.7 However, instead of reading his own theory as part of this
sociocultural m ovem ent toward the “scientific”— that is, toward the
Those familiar with Jaynes’ work will no doubt notice as this book progresses
the similarity of sources and phenomenological observations, particularly vis à ris
the problem atic aspects of some hallucinations: the authoritarian structure of
relation between self and imaginai other, the reflexive obedience to the voice, the
absence o f an observing, narrating self who can distance from the voice’s
commands. 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 of 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 of theories dealing with imaginai dialogues.
IMAGINAL DIALOGUES AS PRIMITIl 'E 41
secular and the physical— he assimilates the movement into his theory.
There is a progressive secularization as the culture moves away from
the bicameral 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 of
imaginai dialogues. As the prevailing scientisms erode our previous
understanding of these voices— as issuing from divine entities— they
attem pt either to eliminate the experience o f voices altogether; to
confine the experience to childhood, or else to relegate it to the realm
of the pathological, that which the culture would 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
who take changes in age as the best index o f developm ental advance,
the apparent cessation of public self-talk would seem to indicate that
such imaginai dialogues are “primitive phenom ena” that are replaced
or superseded either by purely monologal thought or by socially directed,
socially adequate com m unication with real others. In sum, imaginai
dialogues are taken to be transform ed into (or replaced by) wordless
thought or articulated and responsive interchange with “real” others.
T hat the ostensible decline in imaginai dialogues with age (in
adolescence and adulthood) m ight be due to social factors— more
specifically, social taboos— is rarely if ever considered by development
theorists, especially those who are inclined to see earlier form s of
action and interaction “replaced” by chronologically later ones. That
there may be no real decline in imaginai dialogues, either historically
across cultures or ontogenetically— that they may continue through­
out history and throughout the life of an individual (even in “nor­
mal” and “superior” adults)— would undercut the “transform ation”
argument. But what if this were indeed the case ? W hat if imaginai
dialogues continued to flourish side by side with abstract thought
and socially directed communication?
Forms of Talk (1981), by the sociologist Erving G offm an, may
serve to expose the conspiracy o f scientific and conventional silence
surrounding “ self-talk.” By describing precisely the occasions when
one engages in self-talk and when one does not, G offm an challenges
the developm ental theories which see the appearance o f such talk in
42 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRAOCHES
adult life as pathognom ic or as a sign o f immaturity. He insists in­
stead that these theories, while pretending to scientific impersonality,
actually reflect and sustain social conventions.
W hen we are left alone, G offm an (1981) reminds us to admit, do
we not
have occasion to make passing comments aloud? We ki­
bitz our own undertakings, rehearse or relive a run-in with
someone, speak to ourselves judgmentally about our own
doings (offering words o f encouragement or blame in an
editorial voice that seems to be that o f an overseer more
than ourselves), and verbally mark junctures in our physi­
cal doings. Speaking audibly, we address ourselves, con­
stituting ourselves the sole intended recipient o f our own
remarks. Or, speaking in our own name, we address a re­
mark to someone who isn’t present to receive it. (79)
People implicitly agree either to attend to each other’s speech or to
pretend to attend. To speak aloud to an imagined other in the com ­
pany o f “real” others is a breach o f this agreem ent, for in addition to
displaying that our attention is elsewhere, it demands by the term s o f
this reciprocal arrangem ent and by the very nature o f talk, that our
inner concerns be attended to by people to whom we are not attend­
ing. We know that as long as we appear to be attending we may speak
with w hom ever we prefer in the privacy o f our thought. But let these
private conversations becom e audible and eyes begin to turn our way
with disdain as well as fearful curiosity.
G offm an adds weight to his “interactional approach” by looking
at instances when self-talk is considered appropriate, even required,
in social situations. He argues for the sophistication o f such talk, for
w ithout w ritten rules and w ithout having been told which social con­
texts require or perm it it, we have learned well w hen self-talk is called
for. D o we not all recognize the following situations?
1. You are walking down the street and you trip. You are
aware that others are watching you. Do they wonder if
you are drunk, clumsy, or daydreaming? You re-establish
your reputation by showing that you have noticed your­
self tripping. You examine what might have caused it (im­
plying that anyone walking this way would have tripped),
and then you “utter a cry o f wonderment, such as, What
in the worldf’ (Goffman, 1981, 90).
IMAGINAL DIALOGUES AS PRIMITIVE 43
2. You are giving a talk and your notes are disarranged.
You begin self talk: Oh, my, they were herejust a minute ago...
Now, why can't you find them... Just a minute... Be calm— some­
thing to let the audience know that some part o f you is
“shocked by the hitch and in some way not responsible
for it” (92).
3. In the absence o f praise or criticism from another, you
verbalize it yourself, aloud, as though it were coming from
someone other than yourself: Now, George, that was a very
goodjob, 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 ampicking up these things, taking them upstairs, then...
5. You are free to sing to yourself in the shower; or
6. Talk to yourself aloud in the car when alone.
In short in the privacy o f our studies, our bathroom s, and our
cars, or on our walks in nature, do not our very utterances betray that
although there is but one actor literally present, there are often at
least two roles? Why, argues G offm an, if we are all aware of this
fact, do our theories continue to attribute such behavior only to adults
o f “puerile disposition” or “hysterical” nature (Piaget, 1955, 40)— to
egocentric people or social isolates? G offm an attributes the familiar
developm ental interpretation o f self-talk to the societal taboo against
such talk. If we could set aside this taboo, G offm an argues, we would
find that the m ore illuminating approach to such discourse is not the
ordinary developm ental one but rather an interactional one. Why the
taboo? To speak to an imaginai other or to oneself in the presence o f
actual others is a situational im propriety because it is experienced by
those actual others as a threat to intersubjectivity. In other words
“ reality” is that which we share; it does not include private conversa­
tions between self and imaginai others. We need only think o f Jimmy
Stewart’s difficulty being loyal to Harvey in the presence of others!
If children exhibit self-talk more regularly than adults, it is not
simply because they fail to make crucial distinctions (such as between
speech for oneself and speech for others), or because they are prone
to autism and egocentricity. It is rather because they have learned
their lessons from adults well. As G offm an (1981) explains,
44 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPRA OCHES
George 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 em­
bed the statements and mannerisms of 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
of 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 with their dolls, fire engines, toes and fingers. We reward
these behaviors with our am usem ent and obvious enjoyment. Per­
haps we enjoy vicariously a freedom o f expression denied to adults
by social convention.
These kinds o f self-talk, far from being evidence o f primitivity,
can be seen as the achievem ent o f rather sophisticated abilities. For
G offm an, early self-talk anticipates the essentially “theatrical” nature
o f adult speech, where one takes on accents, adopts the intonations
o f others, imbeds quotations both 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 that are not our own,” using adages to corroborate our own
words with an anonym ous authority other than ourselves (Goffm an,
1981, 150). For G offm an, unlike Vygotsky and Mead, the internaliza­
tion o f self-talk is not necessarily a developm ental advance. It may
be seen, rather, as a reflection o f the child’s growing awareness of
societal taboos. Thus self-talk does not disappear entirely with the
arrival o f abstract thought or the demands o f socially shared dis­
course, but only limits the occasions of its appearance as rules of
interaction shift with age. It does not pass away, but confines itself to
those contexts where it is not censured. Thus, G offm an proposes,
Instead, then, of thinking o f self-talk as something blurted
out under pressure, it might better be thought o f as a
mode o f response constantly readied for those circum­
stances in which it is excusable. (1981, 96)
IMAGINAL DIALOGUES AS PRIMITIl 'E 45
We would argue that the taboo against imaginai dialogues in private
speech results not only from people dem anding our display o f in­
terpersonal attention, but from conventions regarding the nature
of reality, rationality and the idea o f development. These conventions
have encouraged either a global dismissal o f imaginai dialogues (es­
pecially adult ones), or their subsum ption into other discussions (of
private speech, play, developm ent o f abstract th ou ght or social
discourse).
Imaginai dialogues represent not only a breach o f our agreem ent
to pretend to be listening to actual others, but also frequently a breach
with a secular view o f reality which holds that one’s conversations
are not to be peopled by gods, angels, muses, gnomes or other strange
characters. They also constitute a breach with a unitary concept o f
the self that relies on a stable identity and does not look closely at
shifts o f m ood, tone, or attitude that might suggest a multiplicity of
the self. W hen we are granted partners in thought, they have been
secularized not only in function but in identity— the imaginai voices
have been returned to known 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 with chronology and
ontogenesis (Kaplan, 1959), where the structures o f imaginai dia­
logues are understood with respect to their own functions rather than
set against the goals o f either abstract thought or actual social
discourse, and where “developm ent” is not equated with a transition
from the presence o f such dialogues to their absence. To propose
other ways of conceiving o f the developm ent o f imaginai dialogues,
we m ust first free ourselves from our usual notions o f reason, reality
and developm ent— for as we have seen, these notions have been
fundamental in shaping theory and research around imaginai dialogues.
To this end, let us proceed with Part II o f our study.
 PART II
Critique of Contemporary Psychological
Approaches to Imaginai Dialogues
 CHAPTER FOUR
Imaginai Dialogues and Reason
Come...let us reason together. — Isaiah 1:18
[Thinking is] the dialogue of the soul with itself. — Plato
[Imagination is] reason in her most exalted mood. — Wordsworth

T
he Greater Hippias, purportedly by Plato, sets the stage for imagi­
nai dialogues to be seen as fundam ental to reason. It is about
w hat happens w hen we com e hom e to ourselves. W hen
Hippias, a rather thickheaded man, goes hom e at night he remains by
himself. This is not only because he lives alone, but because “he does
not seek to keep him self company. He certainly does not lose con­
sciousness; he is simply not in the habit o f actualizing it” (Arendt,
1971, 188).
In contrast, w hen Socrates goes hom e, he is m et by a voice:
“a very obnoxious fellow who always cross-examines him ” (Arendt,
1971, 188). Socrates describes this fellow as follows:
He is a very dose relative o f mine and lives in the same
house, and when I go home and he hears me give utter­
ance to those opinions he asks me w hether I am not
ashamed o f my audacity in talking about a beautiful way
o f life, when questioning makes it evident that I do not
even know the meaning o f the word “beauty” [...]
And yet, he goes on, how can you know whose speech
50 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
is beautiful or the reverse— and the same applies to any
action w hatsoever— w hen you have no knowledge o f
beauty? And so long as you are what you are, don’t you
think that you might as well be dead? (Plato, 1961, 1559)
Socrates w ants to com e to som e agreem ent w ith his relative, to
becom e friends with this voice; after all, they must live under the
same roof. Hippias avoids this voice by ceasing to think, by refusing
to open a dialogue.
Here dialogue is synonymous with internal dialogue; in Plato’s
words, thought is that “voiceless colloquy o f the soul with itself.”
W hen we come hom e to ourselves, we can either invite the inner
voices or disregard them — although sometimes, o f course, they come
uninvited, taking us deeper into the perplexities and complexities of
an issue. D espite our familiarity with these voices o f thought, many
o f our theories derogate this imaginai multiplicity, pitting reason
against im agination, separating reason from its roots in argum ent and
discussion with another, such as in dialogue.
Before we return to our colleagues Piaget, Vygotsky, and Mead,
let us pause for a few m oments outside o f this century and the contem ­
porary discipline of psychology to look at the ways in which relations
between im agination and reason have been conceived o f in other
times and places. From this distance we shall be able to see that neither
the m odern divorce o f im agination from reason nor the subordina­
tion o f im agination to reason are intrinsic and inescapable facts o f
developm ent, impartially described.
In a recent study on imagination, the philosopher Edw ard Casey
(1976b) observes that, throughout the history o f philosophy, imagi­
nation has been cast by thinkers into three main roles: imagination as
subordinate to other faculties, where images are only imitations of
im itations (Plato); im agination as m ediator betw een perception,
sensation and intellect (Aristotle, H obbes, Kant); and im agination as
superordinate to all hum an faculties including reason itself (Germ an
R om antics). Each o f these views, dissim ilar as they are, reveal in
com m on a failure to acknowledge what Casey (1976b) calls the “mul­
tiplicity of the m ental,” a multiplicity which would preclude any rigid
hierarchical structure am ong faculties (19). A bandonm ent o f the
effort to form a hierarchy, in which one favored faculty reigns in one
century, only to be deposed in the next, would result, Casey holds, in
IMACINAL DIALOGUES AND REASON 51
a conception of im agination as “nonderivative, as a phenom enon to
be evaluated on its own term s” (19). W hen applied to imaginai dialogues,
this conception would lead us to approach actual instances of imaginai
dialogues with the expectation o f finding a multiplicity o f relations
am ong imagining, remem bering, feeling, knowing, and sensing. Were
all instances of imagining to be forced because of a préjugé du monde
into a single continuum of value, the multiplicity would be falsely
narrowed and hom ogenized.
Such hom ogenization is indeed what we find in the writings of
Piaget, where form al operations are undoubtedly given a privileged
position in the totality o f functions. Kaplan (1983b) wonders,
Is it possible that what Dewey calls an “occupational psy­
chosis” has led many “cognitive-developmental” psycholo­
gists to presuppose formal operations or intelligence as
the telos o f development, and to represent ontogenetic
changes solely in terms of those actions-instrumentalities
pertinent to logical thought? (66)
Piaget, in his concern with the developm ent o f communicative
language and form al-operational thought, lets imaginai dialogues fall
between the rigid fingers of his arguments and preoccupations. He
uses w hat he calls “egocentric speech” as one kind o f evidence to
su p p o rt his claims about the child’s intellectual im m aturity, or
egocentricity. It was his intention to dem onstrate a gradual develop­
m ent from the child’s egocentric stance to the adult’s ability to de­
center. Therefore he characterizes the young child’s imaginai dialogues
negatively. They are taken principally as evidence o f incapacity. The
young child is described as being unable to fully differentiate self as
speaker from the other as auditor; unable to take into account the
listener’s viewpoint; and unable to construct speech adequate to the
goal o f communicating. The child, in speaking, does not collaborate
with an audience or evoke a dialogue from the other. Interestingly,
when Piaget in Play, Dreams, and Imitation (1962b) turns his attention
to play, bountiful examples o f imaginai dialogues are given. This is in
contrast to his single example in the earlier work on language and
thought (1955).
If, as is apparent, Piaget from the outset observed and recorded
num erous examples of imaginai dialogues, why did he not use these
to extend his notions o f the functions and forms of egocentric speech?
52 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
It would seem most plausible to assume that Piaget’s interest in the
development of the socially adapted individual led him to construe
egocentric speech primarily as failed communicative language. Had
Piaget looked at imaginai dialogues in his work on children’s speech
with a less monolithic focus, his insistence on the child’s profound
egocentricity would doubtless have been called into question. One
can see what might have taken place if one considers Shields’ (1919)
study of nursery-school children. In her observations of the children’s
private speech during doll-play, she found many instances of dialogues
in which the child alternated between two or more viewpoints. These
conversational sequences were as long as actual dialogues. They shared
the features of actual dialogues (address, turn-taking, speech-act
cohesion), and actually carried more referential material than one
would have expected, given the claim that the speech of the young
child is highly elliptical and abbreviated in form (Shields, 1979, 259).8
The same kinds of imaginai dialogues in children’s play that Piaget
takes as evidence for the child’s egocentrism can be seen— and were
indeed seen by the Romantics— as the initial steps in freeing oneself
from a self-centered world. In pretending to be another and in engag­
ing in imaginai dialogue with imaginai others, the child, like a young
Proteus, breaks free of the bonds of a narrowly construed identity.
Piaget, of course, has elsewhere stressed the value of the child’s ability
to change perspectives, but he fails to do so when he reports on his
daughter playing the part of mother toward her doll.
It seems that since imaginai dialogues could not be presented as
unequivocal manifestations o f children’s egocentrism, Piaget ignored
them in his discussion o f children’s speech. This being the case, one
must question the relevance for imaginai dialogues o f Piaget’s (1955)
predictions for the fate of egocentric speech:
But as we pass from early childhood to the adult stage,
we shall naturally see the gradual disappearance of the
monologue, for it is a primitive and infantile function of
language. (40)
In commenting briefly about how an adult, when pursuing thought
8 Rubin, in his stud}1, “The impact of the natural setting on private speech,”
(1979) concurs with Shields’ finding that such private speech dialogues actually
present the more advanced communication skills of young children, demonstrat­
ing non-egocentric role-taking and turn-taking skills (291).
1MAGINAL DIALOGUES AND REASON S3

on an inquiry, imagines him self speaking with his collaborators, Piaget

does not explain this as a later developm ent o f imaginai dialogues in
egocentric speech or sym bolic play. Piaget does assign a positive
function to this imaginai dialogue with the m em bers o f one’s profes­
sion. He considers it a kind o f rehearsal which assures that when one
does actually speak to others about one’s ideas they will already be
“socially elaborated” and therefore roughly adapted to the audience.
Thus imaginai dialogues in adulthood aid in the socializing o f thought
and in making one’s com m unication o f ideas better adapted to the
reality o f the listener. In his example, Piaget radically restricts both
the imaginai audience (fellow professionals) and the circumstances
which evoke such dialogue (pursuing an inquiry). But even w ithout
these restrictions, the functional significance Piaget attributes— the
socialization o f thought and the rehearsal o f actual encounters—
strengthens his com m itm ent to an adaptationist point o f view.
Piaget’s vision o f intelligence and conceptual thought narrows
these to a set o f formal logical operations not dependent on images.
The model thinker for Piaget is the scientist or the logician, and not
the artist, the dramatist, novelist, poet, or holy person. To the degree
that the child’s thought m irrors Piaget’s image o f the scientist’s, the
child is seen as possessing cognitive maturity.
Sutton-Sm ith (1911), a critic of Piaget’s point o f view, argues
that while Piaget defines play as a function of cognition, he does not
define the necessity or even the significance o f play for cognition.
From Piaget’s perspective, Sutton-Sm ith asks, would adaptive thought
be possible w ithout symbolic play?
Vygotsky places m onologal inner speech at the apex of verbal
thought for three reasons: the functions he attributed to private speech
and to verbal thought, his implicit conception of the self as unitary,
and his consequent lack o f focus on the presence o f imaginai others
in thought. Vygotsky’s attribution of self-guidance and self-regulatory
functions to private speech have shaped much o f the contem porary
research on such speech, as exemplified in a book edited by Zivin
(1979). The research m ethod employed by those sustaining the self­
regulation paradigm has been for the m ost part to elicit speech by
presenting the child with a cognitive task. It does indeed appear that
speech during such occasions often has the function o f planning and
guiding behavior.
54 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
But this may be due to a circularity whereby the presupposed
function of self-regulation dictates the research design and setting,
which predictably produces examples of the kind of private speech
favored by the theory. The reduction of all private speech to the func­
tion of self-regulation may therefore be an artifact of inquiries
conducted within a restricted range of research contexts.
Shields’ work on private speech opens a door out of this particular
circularity by studying the private speech that occurs in imaginative
play with objects. In the terrain of symbolic play such dialogues flourish.
In Shields’ observations the imaginai dialogues in the private speech
of doll-play do not appear to show the increase in ellipsis that Vygotsky
predicts with an increase in age. Rather the private speech in doll-
play looks surprisingly like social speech. Shields does not observe in
the imaginai dialogues of play the cognitive problem solving proposed
by Vygotsky, or the inadequate attempts at communication proposed
by Piaget. Her vignettes are dramatic in form. She sees their function
as the creation of a world— much as Vygotsky sees the function of play.
Why wasn’t Vygotsky interested in dialogues in egocentric speech
and in inner speech? Let us propose that Vygotsky’s focus on the
function of self-regulation led him to data in which there was no
clear articulation of characters and roles. When the child is focused
on the execution of a task, the articulation of the imaginai process
through which that is accomplished is absent. On the other hand,
when the child has no goal in action to pursue (i.e, in play) the articu­
lation of characters and scenes becomes more explicit.
To clarify this, let us consider an example from Kohlberg, Yaeger,
and H jertholm (1968). They present the following as an example of
the self-guiding function o f egocentric speech, calling it a “m ono­
logue description o f one’s own activity:”
David (engaged in solitary play with a tinker toy, observer
at desk at other side o f room): The wheels go here, the
wheels go here. O h, we need to start it all over again. We
need to close it up. See, it closes up. We’re starting it all
over again. Do you know why we wanted to do that? Be­
cause I needed it to go a different way. Isn’t it going to be
pretty clever, don’t you think? But we have to cover up
the m otor just like a real car. (695)
In this “m onologue” however, we find that the language is
IMAG1NAL DIALOGUES AND REASON 55
dialogically structured with com m ent-acknowledgm ent, question-an­
swer sequences. Further, the two “voices” have different functions
or roles: one to put the tinker toy together, the other to facilitate this
process, as a teacher might. In play, this dialogical structure might be
made explicit through the use of puppets, one a child and one an
older person. The child might be working on the tinker toy while the
other tries to help, taking the role o f a teacher.
David-. The wheels go here, the wheels go here. Oh, we
need to start it all over again.
'Teacher. We need to close it up. See it closes up.
David-. We’re starting it all over again.
Teacher. Do you know why we wanted to do that?
David'. Because I needed it to go a different way. Isn’t it
going to be pretty clever, don’t you think?
Teacher. But we have to cover up the motor just like a
real car.
If the primary agenda were com pletion o f a task, however, such an
explication o f the dialogue would be unnecessary. It might even shift
the focus from self-guidance o f behavior and execution o f the task
to an imaginai conversation between two characters.
Vygotsky, like Piaget, did not allow his observations o f imaginai
dialogues in solitary play to influence his theory o f the functions of
private speech. Had Vygotsky allowed him self to be guided m ore by
the phenom ena o f private speech in their multiplicity o f appearances
and less by his presum ption o f the centrality o f the self-regulation
function, perhaps the functions he attributed to play would have trans­
form ed his overall conception o f private speech.
According to Vygotsky, play is used by the child to satisfy needs
that reality cannot. In the imaginary situations which a child creates,
unrealizable desires can be fulfilled (1978, 93). The ability to play is
the power the child has to create another reality. This power is made
possible by the ability o f the child to subordinate action to meaning.
Play releases the child from the dictatorship o f the visual realm and
the “incentive supplied by external things” and allows the child to act
with meanings, to rely on internal tendencies and motives (96). Rather
than stressing play’s egocentrism, as Piaget does, Vygotsky is impressed
with the fruits o f such a liberation for a child’s continued action in
the social domain. In claiming that play is the highest level o f pre­
school developm ent, he attributes to play the propensity for creating
56 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
voluntary intentions, to form real plans and volitional motives (103).
By defining inner speech as speech for oneself and external speech
as for others, Vygotsky leaves no room for imaginai others— be they
aspects o f self, representations of known others, or wholly imaginary
others. He assumes that the internal speaker knows what he or she is
talking about and perceiving. There is no separate interlocutor or
listener. But if we were to introduce a notion of the self as non-
unitary, as having m ultiple points o f view am ong which it alternates,
dialogue would no longer be an inferior form o f thought. Perhaps
m onologue would be appropriate in many instances. The degree of
ellipsis (when present) m ight be un derstoo d as it is in speech (see
E. Kaplan, 1952)— as reflecting the degree of intimacy among conver­
sational partners. Vygotsky compares the degree o f ellipsis in inter­
nal speech to that found in conversation between lovers, which he
illustrates with a dialogue between Tolstoy’s characters Kitty and Levin.
But Vygotsky assumes that inner speech is elliptical not because the
self is speaking with a character or figure it knows well, but because
the only speaker is also the listener. Ellipsis in internal speech might
also be due to the degree o f intimacy am ong conversational partners.
Vygotsky argues that the m onologue is superior to the dialogue
(1962, 144), but to reach this conclusion he com pares the m onologue
o f thought to the dialogue of social speech. Can we assume that the
latter is the same as the dialogue o f internal speech? I think not. In
the imaginai dialogues o f thought, self and other do not necessarily
share mutual perceptions. Thus when self and other are differenti­
ated, one would expect internal speech to becom e less elliptical and
m ore akin to spoken and w ritten speech (the latter being, from
Vygotsky’s point of view, the m ost elaborate form o f speech). In
internal speech when self and a voice, or two voices, hold different
perspectives, their views must be m ore fully elaborated than if one is
entertaining and explicating a single view in a monologue. Through
inner dialogue, a thought can be expressed by an imaginai other or by
the self, questioned or furthered by another. Dialogue intensifies the
way in which language carries us toward what we are going to under­
stand, but as yet have not. “T hought germ inates in speech” between
others, says Merleau-Ponty, (1973, 131), and this is also true for the
dialogues o f thought. Before reasoning became synonymous with
logical thought, its archaic meaning was “to engage in conversation
IMAGIN A L DIALOGUES AND REASON 57

or discussion” (Morris, 1969, 1036), as in Isaiah (1:18): “C om e... Let

us reason together.” This conversation could have both actual and
imaginai partners.
Turning next to Mead, we find that this understanding o f reason
is foundational to his psychology o f thought. It is his notion of a
developm ent from the particularized imaginai others o f children’s
play to the generalized other of adult thought that we wish to examine.
In the nineteenth century— which Mead him self wrote about in fine
detail— generalization was widely considered to be “necessary to the
advancem ent o f knowledge,” but “particularity” was seen as “indis­
pensable to the creatures o f im agination” (Thom as B abington
Macaulay 1825, quoted in Abrams, 1953, 316).
One anonym ous nineteenth century writer, joining many o f his
contem poraries, equated science with:
...any collection o f general propositions, expressing im­
portant facts concerning extensive classes o f phenom ­
ena; and the more abstract the form o f expression— the
more purely it represents the general fact, to the total
exclusion o f such individual peculiarities as are not com­
prised in it— the m ore perfect the scientific language
becom es.
Science is the effort o f reason to overcome the multiplic­
ity o f impressions, with which nature overwhelms it, by
distributing them into classes, and by devising forms of
expression which com prehend in one view an infinite va­
riety of objects and events, (quoted in Abrams, 1953, 317)
M ead’s emphasis on the generalized other clearly echoes these state­
ments, affirm ing what m ight be described as a “scientific” form o f
thought rather than a poetic one. The generalized other is “the m ost
inclusive or w idest com m unity included in o n e’s organization o f
attitudes” (Miller, 1973, 49). In its highest developm ent, says Mead,
this would be analogous to a com m unity o f logicians.
The developm ent of the generalized other is the developm ent o f
socialized thought, wherein particular thoughts have the capacity to
be conveyed to the widest possible audience. Such a generalization
o f imaginai others— a hom ogenization, it often sounds like— seems
to be an im portant line of developm ent. Its corollary, the fading out
o f the dramatic personae o f thought, contradicts and obscures the
58 CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROA CHES
developm ent of particularized others, which “taken together, form a
heterogeneous, accidental collection, a teething ring for utterances
and not a ball team ” (Goffm an, 1981, 151).
W ould it no t m ake sense th at these two developm ents— o f
particularized and generalized others— are not mutually contradic­
tory but rather mutually dependent; that the generalized other does
not always supplant particularized others, but that the form of the
other (particularized or generalized) is dependent on the functions
o f the thought in a particular instance? If so, then for Mead to con­
struct a developm ental sequence from particularized to generalized
other, his preferred telos m ust have again been scientific thought based
on the model of nineteenth-century science. For Mead, imaginai others
symbolize absent actual others where the imaginai is an internaliza­
tion o f social reality, whose purpose is adaptation to and preparation
for social reality. W hen the imaginai is seen in this way, as merely a
station between two moments of time in social reality, other functions
o f imaginai others are surely neglected.
 CHAPTER FIVE
Imagination as Reality
What is meant by “reality?” It would seem to be something very
erratic, very undependable— now to befound in a dusty road, now
in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun.
It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It
overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the
silent world more real than the world of speech— and then there it
is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too,
it seems to swell in shapes toofar awayfor us to discern what their
nature is.
—Virginia Woolf, 1929, 113-114

H
ow different W oolf’s vision of reality is from that o f m echa­
nistic philosophy’s. W hitehead characterizes the latter as “a
dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hur­
rying o f material endlessly, meaninglessly” (1925, 56). In W oolf’s vi­
sion, the real darts between the social world, the world o f nature, and
the world o f things; it darts not alone but hand-in-hand with the
imaginai.9 How different from conceptions o f the real as only the
external and the material, of the imaginai as a confusion o f wish-laden
' Hillman (1982) reminds us that in ancient Greek physiology, as in Biblical
psychology, the heart was the organ for both sensation and imagination. Thus,
sensing/perceiving the world and imagining the world were not conceived o f sepa­
rately, as they were later by the Scholastics, Cartesians, and British Empiricists. In
these later psychologies sensing facts (inevitably about the external, material world)
and intuiting fantasies are radically distinguished, sundering the connections
between reality and imagination.
60 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
distortions! Certainly these views illumine some o f our experience
o f the imaginai as a needed preserve against the harshness o f reality.
The word “real” functions not to tell what som ething is, but rather to
delineate what it is not. It excludes possible ways o f being “not real.”
The problem is that w hat “real” is cannot be pinned down in general,
as it differs in various contexts. In dealings with imagining, the words
“real” and “reality” are abused. Sarbin states:
The traditional diagnostician uses these words in two ways:
he says, for example, “the patient claims the hallucinated
object has reality or is real;” that “the patient is out of
contact with reality or the real world.” The non-identity
o f the meaning o f “real” for the diagnoser and the pa­
tient reflects some o f the problems in the employment
o f the words real and reality. (1967, 376)
D ifferen t notions o f the real yield vastly different valuations of
im agining.
Let us therefore turn a corner and search out other perspectives
on the real and see where they would lead imaginai dialogues and
how they would understand the functions o f these imaginai conver­
sations. In doing so we shall turn to religion, aesthetics, and philoso­
phy to put into question the presuppositions o f those contem porary
developm ental theories which regard the imaginai as a distortion of
reality, or as derivative from and subservient to external, material,
and social reality.
We follow this course not because we tacitly subscribe to a reli­
gious ontology. Rather, we seek points o f view which are different
enough from developm ental psychology’s that the very contrast shall
enable us to reflect m ore precisely on the nature o f our usual
theoretical com m itm ents.
Imaginai Dialogues as Mirrors of Reality or Its Creator?
he contem porary Western psychological world view claims that
images are internalizations o f material and social reality which
serve the function o f representing this reality. In aesthetics this cor­
responds to the view that the mind and the imagination are reflectors
of external objects— their m irrors— and that the function o f art and
o f im agination is to reproduce external reality. From this perspective,
IMAGINATION A S REALITY 61
the process o f invention consists in “a reassembly o f ‘ideas’ which
are literally images, or replicas of sensations; and the resulting art
work [is] itself com parable to a m irror presenting a selected and or­
dered image o f life” (Abrams, 1953, 69). Divergences between the
image and w hat it was m odeled after— always a problem in such theo­
ries— are dealt with by m irror theorists in one o f two ways. First,
“any aesthetic apprehension which culminates in another view of
objects and relations is viewed as a distortion or as a m anifestation
o f pathology: at worst, a disease o f the mind; a disease of the heart,
at best” (Kaplan, 1981 d, 7). Alternatively, art is seen as imitating not
what we observe but what is “in” or “behind” w hat we observe, such
as the Ideas or Forms which gave rise to nature as well as art (Abrams,
1953).
M. H. Abram s’ book The Mirror and the Lamp (1953) contrasts this
m im etic view w ith the expressive theory o f art proposed by the
Romantics. These theories are not presented as incom patible view­
points to be chosen between, but as perspectives which allow us to
see m ore o f the complexity o f the phenom enon of art. This is our
own aim with respect to imaginai dialogues— not to pit one theory
against another with the hope of one taking a last fall, but to see if
we can begin to move m ore freely am ong viewpoints which have
been banished from our developm ental theorizing, as well as those
sustained by our present conceptions.
In the Romantic view the imagination is not merely a replica of
preexisting external reality. It has its own “internal source of m otion;” it
does not merely represent scenes but creates them (Abrams, 1953, 22,
25 ). W hen images o f the natural or social world are evoked they do
not function as copies o f the “real,” but rather serve to symbolize
som ething else, often em otions10 and experiences.
This is a radical shift. It demands a change in our developmental
notions. Because a copy theory o f perception views im ages as
replicating the external world, then divergences between image and
external referent are taken as pathognom ic, as developmentally infe­
rior to those images which faithfully copy natural or social reality.
Thus we have arrived at theories stressing that developm ent coin­
cides with an increasing realism. But if the mind and the imagination
“Not these plants, not these mountains, do I wish to copy, but my spirit, my
mood, which governs me just at the m om ent...” said Tieck, a German Romantic
(quoted in Abrams, 1953, 50).
62 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES'
are seen as contributing creatively to perception, then divergence
between image and some external reality need not be negative. As
soon as we allow that the image represents something other than the
external, realism is no longer the measure, but rather the fit between
the symbol and the symbolized. To achieve this fit, all manner of
“distortions” of natural or social reality may be called for, and their
achievement must be seen as a sign of development.
Etienne Gilson, discussing the painter Eugene Delacroix, wrote:
But a true painter does not borrow his subject from real­
ity; he does not even content him self with arranging the
material provided by reality so as to make it acceptable to
the eye. His starting point is fantasy, imagination, fiction,
and all the elements of reality that do not agree with the
creature imagined by the painter have to be ruthlessly
eliminated. (1957, 130)
James Hillman discusses this conflict o f possible interpretations
in Re-Visioning Psychology, in which he describes the “naturalistic fallacy”—
the tendency to judge “images to be right or wrong (positive or negative)
largely by standards o f naturalism. The m ore like nature an image
appears, the m ore positive; the m ore distorted the image, the more
negative” (1975b, 84). Taking issue with this approach, Hillman (1975b)
argues:
A multicolored child, a woman with an erected penis, an
oak tree bearing cherries, a snake becoming a cat who
talks, are neither wrong, false, nor abnormal because they
are unnatural. Figures o f the imagination are not restricted
to jungles and zoos; they can crouch upon my bookshelf
or stalk the corridors o f last night’s motel. (85-86)
A. C. Bradley, in his Oxford Lectures on Poetry, argues that poetry’s
nature is not to be
a part, nor yet a copy, o f the real w orld...but to be a
world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and
to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to
its laws, and ignore for a time the beliefs, aims and par­
ticular conditions which belong to you in the other world
o f reality...
[Life and poetry] are parallel developments which nowhere
m eet, or, if I may use loosely a w ord which will be
IMAGINATION A S REALITY 63
serviceable later, they are analogous... They have differ­
ent kinds of existence. (1920, 4, 6, 23-24)
Similarly, Elder O lson insists that poetic statem ents are not proposi­
tions, and “since they are not statem ents about things which exist
outside the poem , it would be meaningless to evaluate them as true
or false” (1942, 210-211).11
In the extreme the naturalistic fallacy operates not only to dictate
the kinds o f characters, the images o f self and others which form
imaginai dialogues, but to negate and discontinue the existence o f
such dialogues in thought and private speech. F or instance for
Vygotsky, when there is no actual interlocutor for whom our speech
or thought is intended, our speech should not suggest that there is. If
it does so anyway it is not yet efficient; it is insufficiently developed.
T hought should reflect material reality. Dialogue that occurs in soli­
tude is superfluous, at best. B ut w hat if th ou ght is inherently
dram atic and thus dialogical? T hen, as K aplan has said, it is the
existence o f monologues that we must account for!
W erner (1948) emphasizes the multiplicity of possible worlds and
realities to a greater extent than the other developm ental psycholo­
gists we have so far considered. He m aintains that different kinds o f
creatures experience different “psychological worlds,” and that within
each o f these psychological w orlds there are various “ spheres o f
reality.” Pretend play and its imaginai dialogues are seen in this fram e­
work as symbolizing activity. “This paradigm,” says Franklin, “takes
as basic the idea that symbolizing does not— in its basic form — merely
reflect or com m unicate what is already known but is formulative,
meaning creating” (1981, 14).12Play creates a reality. From this point
of view, development is not seen “as a linear (or spiralling) progression
directed tow ards adaptation to a preexisting ‘external reality’ or
(alternatively) towards the construction o f a psychological reality
dom inated by a given m ode o f thought (such as the ‘scientific’),” but
is a “differentiation, progressive construction and integration o f
spheres within psychological reality” (Franklin, 1981, 2-3). Observations
11 Maritain (1953) sees this liberation from “realism” as at the same time a
process o f liberation from “conceptual, logical, discursive reason” (80). This is
apparent in the work of the surrealists, for example, which follows neither the
rules of realism nor of reason, but through improbable juxtapositions creates a
new reality with its own set o f meanings (Gilson, 1957).
12 See Werner and Kaplan, 1963/1984; Kaplan 1981 d.
64 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
o f young children— Piaget’s included— can be used to support the
developm ental notion that children are increasingly able to diverge in
their imagery from a replication o f material and social reality and not
just that their images becom e m ore realistic.
Lowe (1975), in her study o f the developm ent of representational
play in infants, maintains that at first the child applies his own activities
(being fed, being com bed, and being put to bed) to himself, and that
with increasing age these are applied to the doll. So at first the doll is
known through w hat the child does to it. The child makes the doll the
object o f activities that the child has previously been the object of. In
so doing, the form er object (the child) becom es the subject or agent
(the one who perform s the activities on another). This kind o f play
liberates children from the object role which so often characterizes
the early dependence o f the infant. It allows children to reflect from
a distance upon the roles which are necessarily theirs.
At first the imaginai other is a passive recipient o f the child’s
attention. Lowe suggests that it is not coincidental that the age at
which the child begins to animate the doll is the same age at which
the child begins to put words together (approximately 21 m onths).
Indeed, she claim s th at som e de-centering is necessary for bo th
activities. She suggests that as a verbal com ponent is added to these
early action sequences, there is a “progressive animation o f the doll,
culm inating at a point where the doll becomes an agent in its own
right rather than a recipient o f the child’s care” (1975, 45).
Lowe notes that around 30 m onths of age, the children in her
study would som etim es both express an awareness of their identifi­
cation with the doll (“like the girl who placed the doll prone on its
bed with the com m ent ‘I sleep like that’”) and would attribute their
own dislikes to the doll (“She doesn’t want to go to bed;” “She says
she doesn’t want dinner”). It would seem that with the acquisition of
language the imaginai other can begin to be m ore than just a passive
recipient o f the im aginer’s actions and it can begin to be articulated
with respect to feelings and desires. However, this does not mean
that the onset o f language necessarily entails more anim ation and
articulation o f the other with respect to psychological properties. One
finds even in the imaginai dialogues o f adults that the other may be
presented as a mere shadow or stick figure.
IMAGINATION AS REALITY 65

As the imaginai other is granted its own animation and agency, it

can surprise the imaginer with its words. The imaginai other can act
upon the self as well as be acted upon. Thus the range of situations
which can be represented is enlarged, since one can now become the
object of the other’s actions just as the other was earlier the object of
one’s own actions.
If one analyzes the imaginai dialogues presented by Piaget in
Play, Dreams and Imitation (1962b), the identity of the imaginai other
appears to go from a vague younger child (i.e., the child’s own role
with respect to actual others), to the child’s m other, to som eone out­
side the child’s family but known to the child, to som eone heard about
but not known, to a character which is entirely a creation o f the child’s
mind. Both Piaget (1962b, 130) and Vygotsky (1978, 103) note how in
the beginning the im aginary situations betw een self and im aginai
other are repetitions or transm utations o f the child’s actual expe­
riences. O nly gradually does there ensue a shift from the simple
“transposition of real life to the creation o f imaginary beings for
which no model can be found” (Piaget, 1962b, 130). Piaget observed
play in which imaginary lands were created. The action in these worlds
extended over time and involved increasingly complex scenarios and
relations between characters. For instance Sachs’ 10-year-old daugh­
ter complained to her m other that it was very “hard to use her model
horses in play with new friends because they did not know the char­
acteristics of each horse and the history of the herd” (Sachs, 1980).
The liberation o f characters’ identities from a narrow repertoire
o f known others is not only experienced in imaginai dialogues with
respect to the role of the other, but even with respect to the role the
child herself takes in these dialogues. Turning again to the protocols in
Play, Dreams and Imitation (Piaget, 1962b), “J.” is first herself, then
either herself or a m othering-caretaking figure, and only five m onths
later a person outside the m other-child dyad (i.e., the farm er’s wife,
and then the postman). Still later she plays the role o f a real person
whom she has never m et before, only heard of. And finally, she is an
imaginary being altogether. Piaget points out that only when his subjects
reached two years o f age was there a transition from attem pting to
imitate actions of the other while continuing to be oneself to actually
becoming the other. Research carried out by Garvey (1979) and Garvey
and Berndt (1977) has identified three stages the child passes through in
66 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES'
becoming the other: 1) the child acts the role o f the self in relation to the
imaginai other; 2) during a transitional phase, the child neither is herself
nor has she assumed a role; 3) the child takes on imaginai identities.
In psychoanalytic theory as well as in Piagetian theory, the move­
m ent from direct im itation to portrayal o f imaginai others for whom
no direct m odel can be ascertained is neutralized by a theory o f dis­
tortion concerning imagery and the imagination. Just as the child’s
im ages begin to flow er, the distortion theory explains, they m ust
disguise themselves in order to elude the censorship o f repression.
So they are tidied up. Characters change role and costume. The char­
acters o f social reality— m other, father, brother— don the costumes
o f fancy. Through interpretation the make up is taken off, revealing
once again the reals and knowns o f Freud’s reality. But a lion image
which is interpreted to be a little boy’s father may not simply be an
instance o f distortion, attem pting to spare the boy the anxiety o f
dealing directly with the father image. If we turn to Jung, we find a
different theory o f symbolism that helps us escape from such total
reduction to external reality. Here the character o f the lion serves
quite a different function, that o f symbolizing an idea which is not
yet known and whose best expression at the m om ent is this lion. In
other words, the symbol does not reiterate w hat is already known but
attem pts to give form to w hat is not yet realized in its particularity.
Kaplan calls this a “radical aesthetic,” where “aesthetic creation is
the imaginative realization o f some lived-through, had experience,
which would— save for the aesthetic activity— resist objectivity and
realization” (1981 d, 7). It is the “bringing o f experiences and enjoy­
m ents out o f the darkness o f mere existence into the bright sunshine
of contem plation and knowledge”; it is the “giving o f significant
form to what is otherwise ‘unbodied,’ formless” (Kaplan, 198Id, 7, 10).
To return to the image of the lion we need to study carefully the
rest of the image’s context. It is not evident simply from “lion” which
attributes of lion are salient, which are hidden but meaningful, and
which are inappropriate. A lion may scare its accompanying partner,
but this frightening aspect may actually be less meaningful than the
respect the lion commands in his terrain. Although these characteristics
are indeed inextricable, they can be arranged in different hierarchies
of meaning. The lion may very well have reference to the father. But
as we pay closer attention to the image of the lion, its meaning goes
IMAGINATION AS REALITY 67
beyond simple synonymy with the father. As we all know, the child
encounters many lion-like aspects in the world.
Such symbolization o f course pertains to the role o f the self as
well. Role taking is often seen as the child’s attem pt to assimilate
societal roles other than his own, and their perspectives on himself.
However, with symbolization in mind the child never just practices a
role but uses the role as well to express him self and to create an
alternative world. Thus one is not a policem an for the mere practice
function o f exploring “policem an” as a role, but because issues of
power, protection, and vulnerability are afoot. To look at it in this
way is similar to dream interpretation where one m ust ask, “Why out
o f all the possible day residues, is it this particular detail around which
a dream has grown?” The child does not ask him self how to express
a sense o f some naughtiness. He becom es and acts the part o f a dirty,
slippery, hungry little pig. Instead of saying one is needy, one acts the
part o f a crying, hungry, whining infant. This enacting is not only
relevant to understanding children and adults’ dreams and imaginai
dialogues, but also to changes o f tone and voice in conversation.
This line o f developm ent, away from images as im itations of
reality to images as creators of new worlds has been overshadowed
by Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s assumption that this form of play gradually
fades as games with rules replace it. Rather than join the debate over
w hether play is exclusively replication, reconstruction, or transfor­
m ation, Franklin (1981) offers the alternative o f delineating two
tendencies in pretend play (and, I would add, in imaginai dialogues):
one tow ard realism , the other tow ard the fantastical. W hile the
fantastical by definition breaks the rules o f everyday reality, there is
within such play a developm ent toward greater inner coherence, just
as in reality-oriented play. Such m ovem ent toward inner coherence,
Franklin remarks, characterizes all forms of world-making. In imaginai
dialogues this might mean that characterizations o f self and others
becom e m ore stable, that dialogues follow the rules of conversation,
or that individual situations begin to coalesce into m ore structured
and well-defined worlds o f particularized relations.
This differentiation between realistic and fantastical development
of images and imaginai dialogues is an old one. The notion that imagi­
nai dialogues are copies or imitations of actually occurring dialogues
is of course suggested in the very root of the term imagination—
68 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
imago, an im itation or copy. If we turn to Vico, we find him differen­
tiating between imaginatio and phantasia. In the latter one does not
simply represent the given (as in the form er), but creates or brings
som ething new into being. Thus, the image is liberated from a posi­
tion o f inferiority with respect to external reality, as “image does not
represent a given. It is a given... [it] is not an extension o f reality. It is
the novelty in the sense o f creating som ething new from a present
reality... It is the making of reality itself” (Verene, 1979, 47-48).
Recent research has also helped to dispel the prejudiced concep­
tion that involvem ent with imaginai com panions necessarily conflicts
with involvem ent in reality and with interpersonal relations— and is
thus suggestive o f pathology. Singer in 1973 studied 141 three- and
four-year olds, and found that 65 percent reported having imaginary
playmates. The children who reported having such com panions were
less aggressive, m ore cooperative, smiled m ore, were better able to
concentrate, were less frequently bored, and were more linguistically
advanced than their companionless cohorts. They were clearly cognizant
o f the difference between external reality and the worlds o f their
imagination. There was no indication that these children as a group
were supplanting object relations with fantasy.13Similarly a study done
in 1968 by Lewinsohn o f patients with hallucinations found that other
psychiatric patients judged the hallucinating ones to be m ore friendly
and less defensive and to have m ore positive expectations regarding
others than non-hallucinating patients.
Personifying
The intelligible forms of ancient poets
the fair humanities of old religion...
...all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back old names...
—Coleridge’s expanded translation of part of
Schiller’s “Die Piccolomini”
' ’Hillman (1977) and Watkins (1981a) also note that in psychotherapeutic work
with adults, imaginai figures often desire not to separate their fleshly conversant
from daily life, but to be taken by the imaginer into the world. See the case pre­
sented in Chapter Twelve in this regard.
IMAGINATION A S REALITY 69

F
or the Romantics the poet’s creation o f imaginary beings, the per­
sonification of virtues, vices, passions and nature, likened the
poet to G od, joining Him in the peopling o f w orlds, in bringing
“ possibility over into the realm of being” (Abrams, 1953, 288).*l4The
poet and the painter may use the natural world, but their intention is
to create with it a new world, another world— which has been called
a “heterocosm ” (Abrams, 1953, 27).15At the center of this other world,
this alternate world, are imaginai others. We hear this in the words of
Romantics such as Addison, Young, Aiken, W arton.
[Poetry] has not only the whole circle of nature for its
province, but makes new worlds o f its own, [and] shews
us persons who are not to be found in being... (Addison,
quoted in Abrams, 1953, 275)
For Y oung the hum an m ind “in the vast void beyond real
existence... can call forth shadowy beings, and unknown worlds.” And
in John Aiken’s mind, the imagination could not be content with “the
bounds o f natural vision,” and quickly “peoples the world with new
beings...em bodies abstract ideas” (both quoted in Abrams, 1953, 382).
For Joseph Warton, writing in 1753, personification is the peculiar
privilege of poetry and ingredient to a lively imagination:
It is the peculiar privilege o f poetry...to give Life and
m otion to immaterial beings; and form, and colour, and
action, even to abstract ideas; to embody the Virtues, and
Vices, and the Passions... Prosopopoeia, therefore, or per­
sonification, conducted with dignity and propriety, may
be justly esteemed one of the greatest efforts o f the cre­
ative power o f a warm and lively imagination (quoted in
Abrams, 1953, 289)
Whereas developmental and psychoanalytic psychologies focus on how
the imaginai other is an internalization o f actual others, or o f aspects
14W. B. Yeats, in speaking of elves, spirits, fairies, and goblins said, “all nature
is full o f invisible people...som e of these are ugly or grotesque, some wicked or
foolish, many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and...the beautiful are
not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places” (Arrowsmith and
Moorse, 1977).
14 In a discussion o f the painter Delacroix, Gilson (1957) said that “the final
casue of all operations performed by a pianter is to casue the existence of a self-
subsisting and autonomous being— namely the particular painting freely concieved
by his imagination” (131).
 70 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
o f them — albeit often disguised and distorted representations— the
Romantics and others see imaginai beings as donning the costumes
o f figures in the upper world. Personifying is not an anachronistic
relic o f social life which serves merely to com pensate for absent or
inadequate “real” people. The personifications in dreams and imaginai
dialogues are not always or only by-products of “schizoid operations”—
“a splitting o f the ego in the service of defense, with a consonant
splitting o f a fundam ental, core object that was libidinally invested
and yet frustrating at the same tim e” (Kemberg, 1980, 61). From the
Rom antic p o in t o f view personifying, which occurs naturally in
dreams, myth, poetry, and play, is a process which underlies thinking
and is reflective o f the poetic nature o f the mind. It is not merely
that the m ind can conjure up figures to represent abstract ideas, but
that Virtue, Evil and their respective hordes appear as persons.
Thus Hillman defines personifying as “the spontaneous experi­
encing, envisioning and speaking of the configurations o f existence
as psychic presences” (1975b, 12), and differentiates it from personi­
fication, animism, and anthropom orphism . Animism and anthropo­
m orphism imply that the imaginer has made certain category errors
by either attributing living soul to inanimate objects or by projecting
hum an attributes to inhum an forms. W ith the term personification,
the em phasis is on the self’s attribution o f its own characteristics to
a thing or abstraction.
W ordsworth criticized earlier poets such as Dryden, Gray, and
Cowper for using personifying as a rhetorical device, and thereby
denying its religious dim ension. For C oleridge and W ordsw orth,
personification, as animism and symbolism, were “to move and please
the reader” and were “natural expressions of the ‘creative imagination’”
(Abram s, 1953, 292). T hese im aginai others were no t m oved as
puppets, but were experienced as autonom ously affecting their lis­
tener. Recently W ordsworth’s criticism has been resumed in the writings
of Jung and Hillman. Both stress that imaginai others appear not just
through conscious attem pts to personify, but are experienced at times
as being outside o f and independent of one’s conscious agency. In
their treatm ent o f imaginai others there is no pressure for experience
to conform to a theory o f projection (i. e., for such others to be
eventually experienced as self or as created by self.) Instead it is
em phasized that the experience o f self changes through dialogue
IMAGINATION AS REALITY 71
w ith an im aginai other. It seem s as though the im aginai other is
creating the self, as much as the self is creating the imaginai other.
These imaginai persons bring us up as surely as our parents, not simply
as substitutes for our parents, but as com panions in imaginai worlds.
And it is not only children who invite imaginai others to the dinner
table. Machiavelli had imaginary dinner conversations with historical
personages (Hillman, 1975b, 199). Petrarch wrote letters to the emi­
nences o f classical antiquity. Landor (1915) wrote volumes of imaginai
dialogues between sages and stars o f different centuries. Pablo Casals
(1967) told his listeners, “Bach is my best friend.” It seems art, drama,
poetry, music, as well as the spontaneous appearance o f personifica­
tions, keep us in conversation with imaginai others. From this point
o f view these imaginai others affect our interactions with “actual”
others just as surely as the other way around.
W hereas psychoanalysis has tried to cope with the differences
between actual and imaginai others by saying the imaginai is a repre­
sentative o f an external reality, other psychological theorists such as
Jung and Melanie Klein have taken other routes. Each noticed that
imaginai others and their scenarios cannot be accounted for even by
a detailed exam ination of the person’s experience in the social and
external world. For each it was necessary to posit some other factor
apart from internalization to explain the deviations between the real
and the imaginai. For Jung, this was accomplished by his notion o f
archetypes: one inherits form s through which one experiences. The
form is distinct from and prior to experience, although dependent on
experience for its expression as a particular image. Due to Klein’s
emphasis on biology, her puzzlem ent at the discrepancy between
children’s imaginai family figures and their actual parents was put to
rest by a theory o f instinct. In her m odel the powerful life and death
instincts reshape experience to form ulate the character o f particular
imaginai others and their scenes.
Both o f these theorists introduce a factor, logically prior to expe­
rience in the external world, which attem pts to account for the fact
that imaginai others are not always representations of “actual” others. In
each theory, as in Romantic notions of mind, the mind does not just
passively receive external images but has a role in actively construct­
ing “what is done with w hat is seen” (Abrams, 1953, 57). For Klein
this constructive capacity o f mind pointed to biological substrata.
72 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
For Jung, it pointed toward the universals o f myth, religion and art.
The basic similarity o f these moves, despite their apparent difference, is
suggested by one o f Klein’s students, W. R. Bion. While Klein advanced
the postulate that children have an innate knowledge of the genitals
o f both sexes and o f sexual intercourse, Bion (1962, 1963) elaborated
this by “postulating an innate preconception o f the Oedipus m yth”
(Kemberg, 1980, 41).
In all three cases— Klein, Jung, Bion— one is struck by a similarity
o f intuition: fantasies cannot be understood solely with reference to
a process of internalization, that the contents o f fantasy go beyond
the child’s experience, and that they do so in ways that can be classi­
fied by the observer into certain com m on patterns or structures. The
problem o f how fantasy and its persons can go beyond experiences
in the social realm is usually approached by way o f some innate con­
tribution, and this usually leads to some mythical conception: a death
instinct, archetypes, innate myths. The final conceptualization often
obscures the validity o f the initial observation, namely, that there is a
limit to w hat the processes o f internalization and the mechanisms of
defense can account for in the life o f the imaginai.
This does not m ean to underestim ate the contributions o f our
psychoanalytic understandings of defense and internalization. These
have provided the theory and technique that guide the daily practice
of psychotherapy. Nor, in suggesting that development does not always
coincide with an increasing realism, do we deny the fact that this is
often the case. Let us agree for now with the object relations theorists in
their insistence that there is a developm ent from polarized (“black or
white”) figures to m ore complexly drawn, multidim ensional figures.
But, whereas their argum ent rests on imaginai figures replicating the
complexity o f actual hum an beings, our agreem ent will rest on how
added complexity increases the power, autonomy, and differentiation
of the imaginai as symbolic in Jung’s sense. This increasing com plex­
ity in characterization need not necessarily balance out good and bad
qualities. In the imaginai, evil and good figures can exist in great
complexity o f delineation. There is still room for the Queen o f the
Night, for M ephistopheles, and the Virgin Mary.
If personification is seen as an aspect o f mind which arises naturally
rather than only as a result of schizoid operations, then multiplicity
of figures is viewed differently. For Fairbairn the ego is at first unitary
IMAGINATION A S REALITY 73
and pristine, then under environm ental stress it splits into various
voices. This becomes exacerbated in schizoid conditions. Thus posi­
tive developm ent is equated with a reduction o f this splitting o f the
endopsychic structures. Adding m ore characters would seem to be
negative. In this m odel multiplicity is the result of a pathognom ic
process resulting in representations that are one-sided and superficial.
But what if the birth o f a new character (or set o f new characters!)
was seen not as serving a defensive function, but one o f symbolic
representation? W hat if multiplicity o f characters was not conceived
o f as synonymous with shallowness o f character? Even if personi­
fication does first occur as a process o f defense, as a reaction to
external reality and its frustrations, need it continue to serve only as
this? W hen personifying is construed positively as a symbolic event,
then developm ent does not coincide with a shift from multiplicity to
integration into one, but with awareness o f multiplicity.
Given psychoanalysis’ original concern with pathology and its
com m itm ent to the priority o f the external and the material, focus on
the imaginai has m ost often involved a set o f concerns about differ­
entiating “pathological” from non-pathological phenom ena: halluci­
nation from perception, a concrete understanding o f images from a
m etaphorical one, “unrealistic” representations from realistic ones.
From the psychoanalytic perspective, imaginai life results from inter­
nalization o f the external world and this process is itself seen in a
pathological light, as we have described. This eye for pathology which
derogates the products o f internalization contrasts sharply with M ead’s
positive construal o f the creation of the self and its internal world
through internalization. To use psychoanalytic concepts to study
imaginai dialogues thus implicidy reduces the phenomenon to concern
with pathology. Reality testing becom es the pivotal activity.
For Freud psychical reality, the reality o f the im agination, was
both derivative from and subordinate to external reality. It had no
truly independent status as a reality. If we see some imaginai dialogues
as creative— which does not rule out their having borrow ed elem ents
from actual conversations and people— then we are confronted
with various modes of the real which may be hierarchically organized in
different ways depending on the preferred goal in a specific situation.
Casey argues that Freud’s conception of reality was too narrow
to include the richness of his own observations about psychical reality.
74 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
He proposes that a m ore adequate m odel would acknowledge the
validity o f two different types or modes of reality: objective and ex­
periential. “Objective reality” would denote that:
...realm o f definite entities— material, social, or even
psychological— regarded as potential objects o f scientific
knowledge. The objectively real would be that towards
which a consensus o f impartial inquirers tends. In Peirce’s
model, these inquiries “converge” on the objectively real
without always, or perhaps ever, attaining it as such. This
kind o f reality is not always or necessarily experienced) it
may possess only posited or constructed status without
losing its objectivity. In any case, the idea o f objective
reality allows both for Freud’s concern for scientific ob­
jectivity and for his skepticism with regard to the ultimate
knowability o f the real. (Casey, 1971-72, 684)
While realism may be the developm ental m easure for objective
reality, it is not always for experiential reality. The m other figure who
rapes the dream er in a dream or waking dream could be entirely at
odds with objective reality, and yet capture an experiential reality in a
m ost apt and poignant way. As Casey points out, the shift from
objective to experiential reality entails a shift in the nature of repre­
sentations from being indicative to being expressive (1971-72, 687).
The Real as Inclusive of the Imaginai
hen im agination is seen purely as a substitute for a deficient
external reality, then it is derogated for its wishing. W ishing is
seen as a childish affair that intervenes in the attem pt to adapt to
reality. It is a sign of inability or unwillingness to make peace with
“what is,” with w hat is real. W hen im agination is seen as creative of
realities, wish is construed positively as a longing that gives rise to
this creation. From this point of view imaginai dialogues do not merely
am eliorate a harsh reality but are active in the construction o f
im aginai realities.
An illustration o f this creation of other realities through wish
and longing and the imaginai dialogues that result is given in Corbin’s
(1969, 1980) treatm ent o f Ibn ‘Arabi and Avicenna, mystics o f the
tenth and eleventh centuries. The relevance o f Corbin’s studies, as
docum ents o f psychology and not just of history of religions, is that
he sought not to present Avicenna per se, but the Avicennean experi­
IMAGINATION AS REALITY 75

ence. He is interested in the “m ode o f perception” and o f being

implicit in Avicenna’s work (Corbin, 1980, 8). In the Persian mysticism
of Ibn ‘A rabi and Avicenna, imaginai dialogues between men and
their angels form the central experience around which a cosmology
o f levels and worlds revolves. O ne comes to know oneself through
coming to know one’s Lord, one’s Angel. Each person and Angel
comes into being through the other, not all at once, but gradually
through being with each other. In Ibn ‘A rabi’s words,
We have given Him to m anifest H im self through us,
whereas He has given us (to exist through Him). Thus
the role is shared between Him and us... If He has given
us life and existence by His being, I also give Him life by
knowing Him in my heart.
The voice o f his Angel said to him,
If then you perceive me, you perceive yourself. But you
cannot perceive me through yourself. It is through my
eyes that you see me and see yourself, Through your eyes
you cannot see me. (From Ibn ‘Arabi’s Book of Theophanies,
quoted in Corbin, 1969, 127, 114)
For Ibn ‘Arabi, to return to one’s Lord is to “return to his self”
“to yourself as you are known by your Lord” (Corbin 1969, 253). In
“prayer there is between G od and his faithful not so much a sharing
o f roles as a situation in which each by turns takes the role of the
other” (264). Prayer is “a dialogue in which the two parties continually
exchange roles” (269).
Were it not that Ibn ‘A rabi’s and Avicenna’s interlocutors were
Angels or Lords— were their interlocutors reduced to representations
o f “actual” others— we might hear echoes o f G.H. Mead in these
thoughts. For did not Mead believe that the Self is created through
the child’s transit into others’ perspectives on him? O f course many
in M ead’s time argued that his system was implicitly religious, that
the “generalized other” was not simply an am algam ation o f the
society’s points o f view, but represented God. O f this Mead could
not be convinced. The opposing interpretations o f course issued from
conflicting ontological commitments: the secular and the non-secular.
In the systems of belief which Corbin presents, imaginai dia­
logue is prayer. Prayer is not a request for something, it is “a means
76 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
o f existing and o f causing to exist, that is, a means o f causing the
G od who reveals H im self to appear, o f ‘seeing’ Him .” He is seen not
as He is, “in His essence,” but in “the form ” which this person’s
being or consciousness calls out. Thus the G od does not exist in and
o f H im self with fixed qualities, but exists through dialogue with a
particular man. “N o theophany is possible except in the form corre­
sponding to the predisposition o f the subject” who receives the
theophany (Corbin, 1969, 270).
In the psychological models we have been treating, the others of
the everyday material world are given primacy. Imaginai others are
derived. In many religious systems, God is primary and creates people.
In Ibn ‘A rabi’s system man and God co-create each other. It is longing
that begins prayer— both God’s prayer to see Himself in a mirror
which sees Him and man’s prayer to become such a mirror (Corbin,
1969, 261). When one does not yet see one’s Lord in his heart, he is
urged to pray as though he saw Him, and in so doing to create the
situation of longing in which the Angel appears.16
In the Avicennean and Suhrawardian recitals translated by Corbin,
the developm ent o f the relation to the Angels is recounted, begin­
ning with exodus from the material world, to an encounter with the
Angel and the Angel’s world (1980, 32). These recitals record the dia­
logues between person and imaginai interlocutor. The world o f the
Angels and the events that transpire there are symbolic in the sense
earlier discussed: “the symbol is not an artificially constructed ‘sign’”;
it announces “som ething that cannot be expressed otherwise; it is the
unique expression o f the thing sym bolized” (Corbin, 1980, 30). W hen
the attention returns to events in the everyday world, this symbolic
awareness raises everyday events to the level o f the dream. This is, of
course, the same direction o f thought taken in the Italian Renais­
sance by people such as Ficino. Instead o f seeing an opposition
between the imaginai and the real, an analogical m ode was suggested
in which the real is viewed as imaginai and the imaginai as real, reality as
a dream and dream as reality. For Ficino the world is thus a theater
(Cope, 1973, 77). For Novalis, “the World becomes the Dream , the
16A Contemporary author, Marilynne Robinson, puts it this way in her novel
Housekeeping (1980, 152-153): “For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel
it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we
dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel fosters us, smooths our hair, and
brings us wild strawberries.”
IMAGINATION A S REALITY 77
D ream the W orld” (quoted in Cope, 1973).
Instead o f the real and the imaginai being opposed as the imagi­
nai distorts, condenses, rearranges and negates the real, it is thought
that through the imaginai the truer nature o f the real is manifested. It
is the interm ediate universe— the universe between pure spirit and
the physical, sensible world— which is the world of the symbol and
o f imagining. In it spirits becom e corporealized and bodies spiritual­
ized. This interm ediate world, ‘alam al mithal, the “mundus imaginalis,”
“corresponds to a precise mode of perception” which is imaginative
power or perception (Corbin, 1972, 1). Corbin reflects his authors’
intentions by arguing that this mode o f perception, though not sense
perception or intellectual intuition, is nonetheless every bit as real, or
even m ore real. In this mode o f perception developm ent is not atten­
dant to de-personification, to pure logic or abstract thought, to
assimilating the imaginai other into the self, or forsaking him in loyalty
to objective reality. D evelopm ent has to do rather with attaining a
state o f mind, through longing, in which personifying occurs sponta­
neously. The resulting figures are not considered “imaginary” but
“imaginai,” in order to indicate that they are not unreal. For Corbin
these imaginai others are part o f the real, where the real is defined
more largely than our m odern W estern conception o f it. Dialogues
with the “Angels” o f imaginai reality, far from being symptomatic of
pathology, are understood as teaching one to hear the events o f the
everyday symbolically and metaphorically.
T he relevance o f these ideas to our ow n psychology is best
expressed by Corbin himself:
Let us not make any mistake and simply state that our
precursors in the West conceived imagination too ratio-
nalistically and too intellectualistically. Unless we have
access to a cosmology structured similarly to that of the
traditional Oriental philosophers, with a plurality of uni­
verses arranged in ascending order, our imagination will
remain out of focus, and its recurrent conjunctions with
our will to power will be a never-ending source of horrors.
In that event, we would be confining ourselves to looking
for a new discipline of the Imagination. It would, how­
ever, be difficult to find such a new discipline, as long as
we continue to see in it no more than a way of getting a
certain distance to what is called reality and a way of act­
78 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
ing upon reality. Now, this reality we feel is arbitrarily
limited as soon as we compare it to the reality described
by our traditional theosophers, and this limitation degrades
reality itself. (1972, 16)
It is beyond the scope of this book to describe how the historical
pressures o f Christianity and the rise of science narrowed the prevailing
conception o f reality to exclude imaginai figures. Let it suffice to say
that as long as reality is defined this narrowly, imaginai dialogues will
be seen as either a means to adapt to that delimited reality or as a
nuisance thwarting the desired adaptation— and our view o f other
possible functions o f the imaginai will be distorted. From this con­
stricted view o f reality such dialogues becom e merely one am ong
other ways to rehearse future social discourse, practice language skills,
guide behavior. In psychotherapy this view results in such practices
as teaching schizophrenics and hyperactive children to talk to them ­
selves to guide th eir feelings and behavior and to adapt to the
dem ands o f external social reality. (See M eichenbaum , 1977 and
M eichenbaum and G oodm an, 1979.)
O nce we open up reality to include the poetic, the dramatic, and
the spiritual, the developm ent o f our relations with imaginai figures
can no longer be confined to our custom ary notions. Developm ent
itself needs to be reconceived. A daptation to reality changes its
meaning, as reality becomes not just the sensible, material, and external
reality, but created and imaginai realities as well. A daptation with
regard to a redefined notion of reality would no longer reflect a pri­
marily “utilitarian, ‘survival’— or ‘achievem ent’ oriented context”
(H erron and Sutton-Sm ith, 1971, 2), but would include form ing a
relation to symbolic and expressive modes o f thought. Sutton-Sm ith
argues this point o f view with respect to symbolic play, which is among
the first sites o f imaginai dialogues. Play, he argues, is not solely a
cognitive (nor affective or conative) function but “an expressive form
sui generis with its own unique purpose” (Sutton-Smith, 1971, 341).
“Reverie and creative im agination have to do,” he says, “with more
novel form s o f adaptation” (331). They are creative o f realities and
not just deficient ones expressive of the child’s inability to accommodate
him self to external reality or failure to relinquish a position o f ego-
centricity. They are creative of alternate realities, o f symbolic and
m etaphorical realities.
IMAGINATION AS REALITY 79
Corbin is not presented here to advocate a religious point o f
view with regard to imaginai dialogues. The virtue o f the system he
describes is that it begins with the experience o f the imaginai other
and illustrates how, w hen this experience is engaged, there can
develop a metaphorical way of thinking, a reflection between mundane
and imaginai realities that enriches them both. The developm ental
theories dealt with earlier approach imaginai dialogues from a theory
o f projection which too quickly moves from the experience o f the
figures to explanatory principles. If one lingers with the experience
o f the figures’ autonomy, as Corbin’s poets did, developm ent is seen
in term s of the m anner o f relating to the figures, rather than the
gradual reabsorption and disappearance of the figures suggested by
the psychological theories we have discussed.
 CHAPTER SIX
The Impact of Conceptions of Development on
Approaching Imaginai Dialogues
It is not a question here of how we must turn, twist, limit
or curtail the phenomenon so that it can still be explained, if need
be, by principles which we once agreed not to exceed, but it is a
question rather of the direction in which we must expand our ideas
to come to terms with the phenomenon.
— Schelling, 1857 (quoted in O tto, 1981, 46)

T
hus far we have been speaking of developm ental approaches
to imaginai dialogues w ithout directly focusing on how the
conceptions of developm ent implicit in the theories presented
have im pacted the phenom enon under discussion. The critique of
these developm ental conceptions comes mainly from the organismic-
developm ental model.
Disentangling Developmentfrom
Ontogenesis and Chronology

A
ll of the developm ental theories presented in Part I discuss the
developm ent of imaginai dialogues from an ontogenetic point
o f view. In other words, they discuss the emergence of and changes
in such dialogues in private speech and thought from early childhood
onwards. As Kaplan (1974) points out, many o f our contem porary
developm ental theories, like evolutionary theories forfore them, fuse
the idea o f developm ent w ith history and biography, such that
 82 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
temporally earlier forms are interpreted as relatively imperfect— destined
to be extinguished, displaced by, or transformed into later, presumably
higher, m ore perfect forms. Thus we see imaginai dialogues in play
replaced by abstract thought, or those in private speech transmuted
into the monologues of thought. For instance, the early display o f imagi­
nai dialogues in the symbolic play o f childhood is ignored as possible
evidence for the centrality and persistence o f imaginai dialogues
throughout life, or for the sophisticated ability o f the preschooler to
de-center, to speak for the imaginai other, to symbolize, to m eet the
rules o f dialogal speech. Rather it is alm ost radically interpreted as
som ething which is and ought to be lodged in childhood. Insofar as it
appears in later life it is taken as persistence o f primitivity. Much of
developm ental theory is constructed such that, except in cases o f
pathology, w hat is conceived o f as “good” is evidenced in adult­
hood, and w hat is thought to be inferior is found in childhood and
hopefully abandoned there. So too w ith our evaluations o f ways
o f thinking in the earlier “childhood” of cultures before ours.
If this form o f theorizing were not so prevalent, the child might
indeed be “ father o f the m an” with regard to imagination, as Blake
suggested. W hat the analyst m ust infer about “self- and object-
represen tation s,” from the adult p atien t’s thoughts, feelings and
interpersonal relations, the child spontaneously enacts in play—
revealing the dram atic structure o f psyche. W hat a curious state of
affairs we have created when child analysts consistently refer the
plethora of characters arising from play back to the self and the actual
others o f the child’s daily life, while the adult analyst listens for the
characters, the self- and object-representations, in the patient’s talk
o f self and others! Were the adult not to relinquish the child’s ability
to “hear voices,” then he and the analyst would be spared the task o f
m aking such inferences about the underlying imaginai structures of
personality and perception.
Development Concerns N ot Simply What Is
But What Should Be

T
he conflation o f developm ent with time encourages the m iscon­
ception that developmental theorists simply observe what children
do over time and report these “facts,” adding to their inventory o f
skills the child’s achievem ents through time. These “facts” are of
IMPACT OF CONCEPTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT 83
course usually organized into some set of stages which are supposed
to unfold over time, delivering a more perfect, more highly developed
person (namely, the adult). O f course, this misconception serves to
make developmental psychology akin to natural science. But develop­
ment cannot simply be read from the “facts” of growing up. It is a
perspective through which observations can be ordered.
Developm ent is a norm or standard for interpreting and
assessing actualities, and cannot itself be derived from
empirical observations or experimental analyses. (Kaplan,
1981b, 8)
The “ facts” which theories claim are to be found in reality are,
from this perspective, produced by the given theory. Different theories
produce different sets o f facts, depending on the views o f the nature
o f mind and reality that inform them. The degree to which it appears
that children do go through the stages outlined in a particular theory
may be seen not as a sign o f the unfolding of some natural process
o f developm ent, but rather as a reflection o f the extent to which
children have been enculturated to share the goals of that theory and
the culture that created it (see Toulmin, 1981, 261). There are limits to
this viewpoint, including obvious exceptions such as the develop­
m ent o f rudim entary m otor skills or physiological developm ent in
general. Beyond this rudim entary level o f developm ent, however, we
find that values organize the preferred telos.
Kaplan proposes that development be seen as a movement toward
perfection. A developm entalist’s task then is to describe not simply
what is, but what should be (1981b, 5). W hen one looks in this way at
theories o f developm ent, one sees what the given theorist specifies
implicitly or explicitly as the primary goal, and how phenom ena are
then selectively gathered or discarded based on their ability to explain
the primary problem . For instance for Piaget this “selection pressure
led to a narrowing o f the range o f phenom ena to those that seem
m ost capable o f relating to the developm ent o f logically necessary
judgm ents...as the problem o f logical form was taken as prim ary”
(Click, 1981, 11-12).
 84 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
Formal Similarities
he ontogenetic approach toward imaginai dialogues has intro­
duced confusion into what might otherwise have seemed straight­
forward. For instance, Piaget argues that symbolic play (and we should
add its imaginai dialogues) is replaced by rule-governed games. Such
games do indeed follow the early proliferation of imaginai scenes
enacted by the child, and were symbolic play to be transmuted into
such games, Piaget’s thesis of a movement toward increasingly abstract
and logic-oriented thought would be bolstered.
However, if we leave time as a measure of relation between two
phenomena, we can focus on the degree of formal similarity instead.
This focus allows us to see a clear relation between such things as the
child’s imaginai dialogues in play, adult fantasy, playwriting, and praying.
In all of these there are two or more roles or characters, a scene and
dialogue which function to create a world— fantastical, representative,
or some mixture of the two. Instead of linking imaginai dialogues in
the early play of children to logical thought, would not common sense
have us see them as related to dialogues in dramas and novels, to
authors’ and poets’ (and eventually readers’) experiences of speaking
with characters, to the imaginai dialogues of fantasy which suffuse
adult thought, to adults’ experience of dialogue with God or with
aspects of nature? If we can agree on this, then it should be clear that
development in these realms can not be defined by the achievement
of a process of de-personification of the characters or by an integration
of the multiplicity of characters into a single one. These two moves
would dissolve the dramatic nature of these; dialogues and make it
impossible for there to be dialogue at all! How would we go about
saying what development would be?
The Preferred Telos of a Phenomenon Specifies
W hat Constitutes Development

T
he level of development of a phenomenon cannot be assessed
without taking into account the particular context of the phe­
nomenon at a given time and the given telos or goal:
...there is no single “developmental course” or “sequence”
in an individual’s life. With different teloi, the relevant devel­
opmental “sequence” will be different. (Kaplan, 1981b, 17)
IMPACT OF CONCEPTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT 85
A phenom enon, such as speaking with an imaginai figure or primary
process thought, therefore, w ould never be prim itive per se. M ost
psychoanalytic discussions assume that “the primary processes and
secondary processes are mutually antagonistic and that the form er
have, in health, to be relegated by repression to a curious underworld”
(Rycroft, 1979, 158). But the kinds of thinking Freud claimed were
characteristic of dream speech— distortion, condensation, displacement,
over-determ ination— are not just “inferior kinds o f thinking (looked
at from the naturalistic viewpoint) but ways o f speaking poetically,
rhetorically, and symbolically” (Hillman, 1975b, 85). To judge whether
an imaginai figure accurately represents som eone “in reality” may
miss the crucial distinction between the goal of representation of
and the goal of representation as (Kaplan, 1981a, 23). This confusion
has led many object relations therapists to use the kind of figures in
dreams and fantasies to indicate level o f object representation, rather
than reading them as expressive o f the psychological reality o f the
patient (see W atkins, 1978). For instance, a w om an’s dream o f an
imaginai figure, a haggard husband whose body is a wooden barrel,
with glass chips pressed into the wood might be taken as evidence of
the patient’s inability to differentiate the inanimate and the animate—
despite her proven ability to do so in her capacity to relate the dream
in words to a hum an therapist, and regardless o f (perhaps) the high
degree of fit between the symbol and the symbolized.
Let us illustrate further how altering the telos changes the assessment
of the phenom enon. For Piaget the high degree o f assimilation in
symbolic play contributed to his pejorative assessment o f it. This of
course would be required if the primary developm ental goal were
accom m odation and adaptation to the demands o f external reality.
But for poet William Blake assimilation was not just tolerated but
given the highest value. A high degree o f assimilation was not ego­
centric, because by first assimilating the world into oneself, one could
create other worlds (Engell, 1981,248). The creation of imaginai worlds
was the prim ary goal. W hereas Piaget saw play as egocentric, the
Romantics (and Mead as well) would have seen its imaginai dialogues
as instrum ental to the developm ent o f “sympathy.” T hat is, through
such dialogues the child, like the poet,
may be said, for the time, to identify him self with the
character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to
 86 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
another, like the same soul successively animating differ­
ent bodies. (William Hazlitt, quoted in Abrams, 1953, 245)
The imagination, far from being a domain of self-centered wishes,
was for Shelley and others the organ by which the individual could
exercise sympathy, understanding, and moral goodness by identifying
himself with others.
The multiplicity of developmental courses suggested in the
literature concerning imaginai dialogues results from theorists’ advo­
cating different teloi as primary: the development of abstract thought,
of social discourse, or of adaptation to reality. These different teloi,
of course, would lead one to select different series of changes during
childhood to focus on. For instance, the child first knows the imaginai
other (the doll, the imaginary companion) through her own activities.
The imaginai other is at first a passive recipient of the child’s attention
and action. Only gradually does the doll become animated and act as
an agent in its own right. Also at first, the doll is used to represent
either the child herself or people the child knows intimately— brother,
sister, mother, father. Then there is a shift to people the child knows
less well (mailman, teacher), then to people the child has heard of but
never met, and finally to totally imaginary beings. Thus characters are
gradually released from being props to the ego’s actions and pale
reflections of the already known. As characters become animated
and autonomous it is possible to find out about the details of their
relationships and their world, not just how they impinge on the self.
If we follow these lines of development we find ourselves
rehearsing not for Piaget’s scientific audience, not for actual social
discourse, and not for action or a harsh reality, but rather, as Hillman
has said, we find ourselves rehearsing for imaginai life itself—that
other life where we are also housed, clothed, and cared for. That
other life of dialogue also creeps into our gestures, our turns of phrase,
the very structure of our thought, just as surely as it presents itself in
our dreams and waking dreams, in art and poetry, novels and prayer.
Robert Kiely points out in his discussion of Virginia Woolf that:
...through the imagination, the individual can escape ex­
ile and confinem ent and dwell momentarily with shep­
herds and queens. But the exercise o f imagination involves
m ore than inventing situations and characters, it is...a
movem ent o f mind and heart from one vantage point to
IMPACT OF CONCEPTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT 87
another. It is not merely a multiplication o f flat scenes,
but an entrance into the dim ensionality o f experience
beyond the self, a leap from the balcony to the stage, from
silence to speech. (1980, 223)
Imaginai dialogues can be a means o f creating worlds, o f devel­
oping imaginative sympathy through which we go beyond the limits
of our own corporeality and range o f life experiences by embodying
in imagination the perspectives o f others, actual and imaginai. Through
this relating to imaginai others (whether they be created by a novelist,
by the self, or w hether they arise spontaneously) our own habitual
point o f view (often called the ego’s) may be relativized and placed in
relation to those o f others. Virginia W oolf speaks o f this function
with regard to literature:
For we are apt to forget, reading, as we tend to do, only
the masterpieces o f a bygone age how great a power the
body o f literature possesses to impose itself: how it will
not suffer itself to be read passively, but takes us and
reads us; flouts our preconceptions; questions principles
which we had got into the habit o f taking for granted,
and, in fact, splits us into two parts as we read, making us,
even as we enjoy, yield our ground or stick to our guns.
(1925/1953, 49)
W hen one is moved by the existence and autonom y of imaginai
others and their worlds, one often experiences a luminous or religious
quality to these dialogues; one comes upon prayer. The symbolic pos­
sibilities of imaginai dialogues are m ost highly developed in poetry,
novels and plays, but are present in our fantasy as well.
A Phenomenon is not Pathological in and of Itself hut
with Kespect to a Given T elos and Context

B
ut of course not all imaginai dialogues would be means to these
dramatic, symbolic, or spiritual ends. Clinicians know that some
such dialogues can have an obsessive and repetitious quality that m o­
nopolizes thought w ithout taking it further. O ther such dialogues are
confused with perception. Some are hallucinatory in character. Others
are examples o f extreme egocentricity, where all the characters are
known shallowly or only from the point o f view o f the ego. O ur task
 88 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
will be to specify the kinds o f imaginai dialogues that would be means
to the teloi specified, and in so doing to take up the issue o f pathological
dialogues— those that would not further these ends. O nce again the
teloi and the context— just as they pick out som e changes in child­
hood to be developm ental and not others— also pick out w hat is to
be considered pathological and w hat is not. A particular kind o f
im aginai dialogue is not pathological in and o f itself, but only with
respect to the given telos and context.
The Universalizing of a Given T elos

T
heorists and their readers tend to universalize the telos under dis­
cussion. We have seen this in Piaget’s case where logic dominates
the discussion o f rather diverse phenom ena, and in psychoanalysis
where adaptation to “reality” holds full sway. In the form er case the
child is seen as a budding scientist, coming to fully recognize the
necessity o f “ conform ing to the intellectual structures o f logic,
Euclidean geometry, and the other basic K antian form s” (Toulmin,
1981, 256). If we were to substitute for Piaget’s goal for thought, the
telos o f the child becom ing a budding dram atist, the “facts” we would
read would differ from Piaget, Vygotsky, and M ead’s. For instance,
from a dramatic perspective how would we re-see their developmental
theories? Vygotsky’s elliptical internal m onologues m ight be seen not
as m onologues, but as dialogues having the form al features o f speech
with an intim ate other. M ead’s “generalized other” m ight be seen not
as an absence o f a specific imaginai other to whom thoughts are
directed, bu t as denoting th at the th o u g h t/sp ee ch , while being
directed to a specific imaginai other, is form ed in a way that is un­
derstandable to a large audience. O r finally, P iaget’s thesis that
the dialogues in play develop into abstract thought might be under­
stood not as evidence o f the absence o f imaginai dialogues in adult
life, but as a consequence o f the growing child’s identification with
the role o f being a scientist. Early imaginai dialogues would then be
seen not only as stepping stones to abstract thought or social dis­
course, but as expressive o f the dramatic quality o f mind (a thesis
w ith m any roots in philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and the early
IMPACT OF CONCEPTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT 89
history o f psychiatry).17 This point o f view presupposes a re-valua­
tion o f the role of im agination in mental life.
Conclusion

I
nstead o f proposing a single line o f developm ent for imaginai dia­
logues, we are suggesting that there are several; which one is ob­
served will depend on the chosen telos. We are not satisfied with the
conclusion that all such dialogues becom e communicative speech or
abstract thought. This leads to the implicit evaluation o f imaginai
dialogues as inferior processes which are gradually overcome in favor
o f m ore adequate com m unication or m ore logical and abstract
thought. N or shall we rest w ith a single line o f developm ent from the
specific characters o f childhood play to the generalized other,
denuded o f particular character or costume, homogenized and neatened
for the purposes of adult thought. We shall focus on the development
of imaginai dialogues, not their disappearance or their inadequacy.
O ur attention will therefore not be directed to the dissolution o f
imaginai others as they are assimilated into a broader “ego” or “ self”
through acts o f interpretation. Rather, we will be concerned with the
developm ent of the imaginai other from an extension o f the ego, a
passive recipient o f the im aginer’s intention, to an autonom ous and
animate agency in its own right. We will be less concerned with the
developm ent o f a “generalized” nature o f a sole imaginai other, and
m ore concerned w ith the deepening o f characterization o f m any
im aginai others. We will not dwell on how the imaginai other is really
ourself, bu t pursue further how the im aginai other is gradually
17 We are contrasting a scientifically oriented, logical, abstract thought to a
poetic and dramatic one, the form er tending toward monologues, the latter toward
dialogue. This might also be described not as a contrast between males and
females, but between masculine and feminine forms of thought. In the feminine
form, others are always taken into account. The agent does not imagine him or
herself as at the center (Hermann, 1981, 88). Thought in this instance is either
dialogical or at the boarder o f dialogue— occurring as it does in the interstices of
the personal. This organization of self in relation to others can be contrasted with
thought that has a single, dominant voice, around which all else centers at any-
given moment. This is akin to Gilligan’s (1982) contrast between a masculine form
of morality where abstract principles are applied across situations, and a feminine
form where the agent becomes immersed imaginatively in the particular points of
view within a given situation in order to come to a determination (again more
implicitly dialogical).
 90 CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
released from our egocentrism to an autonom y from which he or she
creates us as m uch as we create him or her. We will acknowledge the
experience o f our identity shifting back and forth between various
personae. However this acknowledgm ent will not lead us only to the
familiar claim that all imaginai others should be not only understood
as but also experienced as aspects o f self. Rather we shall look at
how the self develops through both the experience o f being in dia­
logue with imaginai others who are felt as autonom ous, and the expe­
rience o f even the “I” as being in flux between various characterizations.
From this perspective, personifying is seen as a hum an propen­
sity not limited to children, m embers o f “prim itive” cultures, or cases
o f psychopathology. It is fundam ental not only to mythology, poetry,
drama, literature, and religion, but to thought itself. Imaginai dialogues
are one o f a num ber o f possible transactions with those imaginai
“personified” others who arise either spontaneously— as in early play,
conversations in thought or dream s— or through a form o f practice
such as Jung’s active imagination, or the writing o f fiction or poetry.
 PART III
Re-Conceiving a Developmental Theory
of Imaginai Dialogues
 CHAPTER SEVEN
“The Characters Speak Recause They W ant to Speak:’’
The Autonom y of the Imaginai Other
One cannot “make" characters, only marionettes.
— Elizabeth Bowen, 1975
...the characters speak because they want
To speak, the fat, the roseate characters,
Free, for a moment, from malice and sudden cry,
Complete in a completed scene, speaking
Their parts as in a youthful happiness.
— Wallace Stevens, from “Credences o f Summer”

I
n a secular world, whose boundaries and dim ensions are drawn
by those who accept the structures o f science as God-given rules,
the concept of projection has been used to locate in a shadowy
interior o f “m ind” all those experiences which can find no place in
the so-called “objective” order o f things. And so, inevitably, for those
w ho w ould make cu rren t science sacred, the im aginai o th er is
believed to be an aspect o f self or of the self’s experience which is
projected outward and given a personified form . This may be so.
But just when we begin to treat all characters o f the imagination
as mere projections of self, a central paradox emerges. Although the
other may bear som e resemblance to myself or my experience, this is
not always the case. I often do not plan his appearance. In the m idst
o f my thinking, my activities, my speaking, I find he has appeared
and spoken to me. In som e cases, I cannot predict what he will say or
 94 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
know when he will end. It is true that it is my awareness which occasions
my noting o f him but, apart from that, the imaginai other may have
as much autonom y as the so-called real others I m eet in consensual
space. If one insists that, in theory, I created him, it can with equal
force be m aintained that, in experience, it seems as though he created
me. “The songs m ade me, not I them ,” said Goethe. Even if one
accepts that I have created him, one m ust also acknowledge that this
creation, like the procreation of a child, leads to my offspring’s existing
independently of my conscious intention.
I say “often” and not “always” because one can consciously conjure
up a character and deny her autonomy,, carefully lending her only
one’s own words and desired qualities. However when setting about
this attem pt to cabin, crib, and confine, one can often catch oneself
suppressing actions, phrases, and characteristics that threaten to assert
themselves outside one’s conscious intention. Elizabeth Bowen, speak­
ing of the creation o f a novel, said, “The term ‘creation o f character’
(or characters) is misleading. Characters preexist, they are found” (1975,
172). A similar ambiguity concerning “invention” and “discovery” is
found am ong mathematicians and philosophers o f mathematics. D o
mathematicians invent their remarkable structures or do they discover
them? T he paradox is com pounded when one realizes that to invent
originally m eant “to find out,” “to discover.” T he interpenetrating o f
fact and fiction suggested by their com m on linguistic root is surely at
the heart o f the philosophical ambiguity.
Among those who have m ost profoundly challenged the scientistic
and reductionistic attem pt to denature and de-realize those objects
of experience that do not fit neatly into the scientific construction of
reality is the philosopher E rnst Cassirer. In his critical examination
of those reductionistic conceptions o f the structure and function of
the mythic world, Cassirer argues against all attem pts to “twist the
world o f objective change back into the subjective world and interpret it
according to the categories o f the subjective world.”
For man does not simply transfer his own finished per­
sonality to the god or simply lend him his own feeling
and consciousness of himself: it is rather through the fig­
ure o f his gods that man first finds this self-conscious­
ness. (Cassirer, 1955, 155, 211)
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAT OTHER 95
The articulation of the imaginai other is at the same time an articulation
o f the being and activity o f the self. These articulations are not only
aimed at establishing a rudim entary sense o f self but are an ongoing
and changing way o f participating in the com plex m eanings and
correlative definitions o f self and world.
Cassirer emphasizes how in mythical consciousness, even if a
tutelary spirit is closely associated with a person— perhaps even believed
to inhabit his body or govern his being— this spirit is conceived o f not
...as the man’s I, as the “subject” of his inner life, but as
something objective, which dwells in man, which is spa­
tially connected with him and hence can also be spatially
separated from him ... And even where the closest pos­
sible relation exists between the tutelary spirit and the
man in whom it dw ells...it nevertheless appears as some­
thing existing for itself, something separate and strange.
(1955, 168)
For example, the Bataks o f Sumatra hold the belief that it is a spirit
which determ ines the character and fortune o f a person. The spirit is
like a man within a man, but it “does not coincide with his personality
and is often in conflict with his I; it is a special being within the man,
having its own will and its own desires, which it is able to gratify
against the man’s will and to the man’s discomfiture” (Warneck, 1909, 8).
Experiences of this sort are not confined to times past and cultures
far away. We need only tu rn to novelists’ experiences w ith their
characters.18According to the novelist, painter, and aesthetician Joyce
Cary, when Proust was writing Remembrance of Things Past, a woman,
Mme. Schiff, w rote Proust to com plain that his character Swann had
becom e ridiculous. Proust, Cary says, responded that he (Proust) “had
no wish to make Swann ridiculous, far from it. But when he had
come to this part o f the work, he had found it unavoidable.” In his
18 Although painters often work from form and color as much as from imag­
ined beings, these too are often experienced as presences which suggest them ­
selves to the artist from outside. For instance, Miro said that “forms take reality
for me as I work. In other words, rather than setting out to paint something, I
begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest some­
thing under my brush.” For Nolde, forms were vehicles for color, “Color in their
own lives,” “weeping and laughing, dream and bliss, hot and sacred, like love songs
and the erotic like songs and glorious chorale! Colors in vibration, pealing like
silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion, and love,
soul, blood and death” (quoted in The Smithsonian, January, 1981).
 96 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
jealousy, Swann acted in the “ridiculous way he did in spite o f Proust’s
intention as author.” Cary explains,
It is a form of intuition; it is the immediate recognition
o f a real truth, a penetration into the realities of character.
And it has broken through Proust’s first conception of
Swann, and im m ediately deepened his aw areness o f
Swann’s possibilities. Swann, as a character created by
Proust, here assumes an individual personality to be intuited
by his own author. (1958, 87-88)
Cary presents another example o f a character so autonom ous that
the intensity o f his words and beliefs radically alters the author’s inten­
tions for him: Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. D ostoevsky’s famous
“Pro and C ontra” chapter, rather than asserting the inadequacies of
atheism com pared w ith orthodoxy, as D ostoevsky had originally
intended, did just the reverse.
[When Dostoevsky] asked him self how would Ivan see
reality, how would he argue about it, he realised with the
force o f intuition a truth that had been before only the
statem ent o f a hypothetical case, and then expressed it
with the utm ost power. So that his scheme for that chap­
ter, his concept a priori o f what that chapter would mean,
was completely ruined. (Cary, 1958, 85)
Ivan’s argum ents arise independently o f D ostoevsky’s desire.
Indeed, as Cary points out, Dostoevsky was “terrified:”
He feared the G overnm ent censors. He wrote to all his
religious and orthodox friends to tell them that in the
very next installm ent he would bring in his priest, the
saintly Father Zossima, to answer Ivan. He spent weeks
on those fifty pages which were to give the refutation.
And, after all his work, he failed most dismally. (41)
T his experience o f autonom y appears to be true as well for
characters based on real life people. Eugene O ’Neill (1981) claimed
he had never w ritten about a character who was not an actual person.
“B ut, “ he was quick to add, “even these things have a way of
developing!”
M arina Tsvetaeva, an early tw entieth-century Russian poet,
described how she was moved to write by the imaginai being “which
wanted to exist through” her. The hand o f an artist, she said, belongs
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAL OTHER 97
not to oneself but to that being. In a letter to Pasternak, Tsvetaeva
said, “We dream and write not when we please but when it pleases”
(quoted in M uchnic, 1980, 7). She would often experience herself
writing against her own will, m otivated instead by the beings that
chose her to give them life.19 The poet Joseph Brodsky com pared
Tsvetaeva’s poetry to folklore, saying that she spoke not in a “heroine’s
m onologue” but in a “shepherd’s song,” in “speech intended for one’s
self, for one’s own being,” when “the speaker is also his own hearer”
and “the ear listens to the m outh” (quoted in Muchnic, 1980).
Certainly not all authors experience their characters forcing them
to write against their will (what psychiatry calls a delusion of influence).
N ot even Tsvetaeva experienced that all the time. N or do we experience
imaginai others as always having this high degree o f autonomy. W hat
I am pointing to is a continuum ranging from the imaginai other’s
having no thoughts, feelings, or actions which the conscious self does
not lend it to the imaginai other’s acting, feeling and speaking in ways
that surprise the self. Take for example the following experience of
the novelist Francine du Plessis Gray (quoted in Christy, 1981).
I know the characters personally. They are sleeping in my
bed with me. They wake me. They demand and insist on
knowing what I am going to do with them next. I can let
loose in my writing, make an alternate world that stands
next to the real one. I can create the characters I would
have liked to have been.
T his exam ple is interm ediate in the sense th at the characters are
capable o f initiating actions— they wake one, dem and and insist—
and yet the author is in charge o f what happens to them next, who
they are to become.
O n either side of this example we can find Sartre and Mauriac
engaged in a debate about the role o f the author in m odern literature.
The debate concerns w hether the author takes an om niscient role
with respect to the characters, knowing all their actions, thoughts and
feelings and delivering these to the reader. Sartre argues that Mauriac
him self sat in the center o f his heroine’s consciousness, helping her
“lie to herself and, at the same time, judging and condem ning her”
(quoted in Harvey, 1965, 163). Mauriac, says Sartre,
19 Guy de Maupassant saw his double sitting at the other side of his writing
desk and would hear his double dictating what he should write (Rogers, 1970).
 98 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
wrote that the novelist is to his own creatures what God
is to His. And that explains all the oddities o f his technique.
He takes G od’s standpoint on his characters. God sees
the inside and outside, the depths of body and soul, the
whole universe at once. In like manner, M. Mauriac is
om niscient about everything relating to his little world.
W hat he says about his characters is G ospel... The time
has come to say that the novelist is not God. (quoted in
Harvey, 1965, 163)
Sartre asks Mauriac, “D o you want your characters to live?... See to
it that they are free” (162).
He m ight also have asked this o f G eorge Sand, whose m ethod of
putting her words into the m ouths o f her characters contradicts her
stated intention that they not be like dolls.
He obeys my every whim, my m ood, my w ill...all his
movements are the consequences o f my own thoughts
and my own words which I have put into his m outh...he
is “me,” in short, a hum an being and not just a doll.
(quoted in Rambert, 1949, 1)
Had she known Jean Paul Richter or Sartre, they probably would have
fought. It was Richter who said,
A poet who must reflect whether he shall make a character
say yes or no— to the devil with him; he is only a stupid
corpse, (quoted in Darwin, 1871)
Sartre was intent on wanting “to drive providence from our works
as we have driven it from our world.” In place o f the god-like author,
Sartre wished to
find an orchestration o f consciousnesses which may per­
m it us to render the multidimensionality o f the event.
Moreover, in giving up the fiction o f the omniscient nar­
rator, we have assumed the obligation o f suppressing the
intermediaries between the reader and the subjectivities.
It is a matter o f having him enter into their minds as into
a windmill, (quoted in Harvey 1965, 162, 164)
Enid Blyton describes how, in the process o f writing, her charac­
ters let her know what is going on, rather than the other way around.
I shut my eyes for a few moments, with my portable type­
writer on my knee— I make my mind blank and wait—
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAT OTHER 99
and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my char­
acters stand before me in my m ind’s eye. I see them in
detail— hair, eyes, feet, clothes, expression— and I always
know their Christian names, but never their surnam es...
I don’t know what anyone is going to say or do. I don’t
know what is going to happen. I am in the happy position
o f being able to write a story and read it for the first
time, at one and the same m om ent... Sometimes a char­
acter makes a joke, a really funny one, that makes me
laugh as I type it on my paper— and I think, “Well, I
couldn’t have thought o f that myself in a hundred years!”
And then I think, “Well, who did think o f it, then?”
(quoted in Stoney, 1974)
We see developm ent from one end tow ard the other o f this
continuum o f dependence-autonom y in children’s early relations to
their dolls. At first the imaginai other is an egocentric extension of
one’s habitual stance. The other is not allowed an autonomy, often
not even an attributed or projected interiority. The child puts the doll
to bed and pretends to read it a story. The doll is not lent or allowed
animation of its own but is rather the prop of the imaginer’s intention to
be a caretaker. And this phenom enon is not restricted to children.
The puppet-like status o f the imaginai other may easily be found in
imaginai transactions in adulthood as well. The imaginer may speak
to an imaginai child but allow it no response. The feelings o f the
child may be assumed by the imaginer, but never is the child asked,
nor are her spontaneous expressions noted (if even allowed for at
all). The absence o f autonom y can result in repetitive fantasies; only
one point o f view is being played out.
How different this is from experiences in which one does not
know how the characters and their scenarios will unfold, in which the
novel and the ego-alien appear and develop. Henry James, in his preface
to The Ambassadors, described how the book arose from an anecdote
told him at a garden party in Paris. The anecdote concerned an older
man telling a younger one about his philosophy o f life. This was to
becom e the central scene o f a book. “But w hat else?” James asked
himself.
Where has he come from this older man and why has he
come, what is he doing... To answer these questions plau­
sibly, to answer them as under cross-examination in the
witness box by counsel for the prosecution, in other words
100 RE-CONCEIVING A DE \ rELOPMENTAL THEORY
to satisfactorily account for the character Strether and for
his “peculiar tone” was to possess myself of the entire
fabric. (1934, 313)
N ow listen to Jam es describing him self in relation to the devel­
opm ent o f this novel.
These things continued to fall together, as by the neat
action o f their own weight and form even while their com ­
m entator James him self scratched his head about them;
he easily sees now that they were always well in advance
o f him. As the case completed itself he had in fact, from
a good way behind, to catch up with them; breathless and
a little flurried, as he best could. (1934, 315)
Similarly, Flannery O ’Connor20 in her essay, “Writing Short Stories,”
speaks o f how she often did not know where she was going w hen she
sat down to write a short story. She cites the experience o f writing
“G ood Country People” as an example of how her writing was like
discovery.
W hen I started writing that story, I didn’t know there was
going to be a Ph.D. with a w ooden leg in it. I merely
found myself one morning writing a description o f two
women I knew something about, and before I realized it,
I had equipped one of them with a daughter with a wooden
leg. As the story progressed, I brought in the Bible sales­
man, but I had no idea what I was going to do with him.
I didn’t know he was going to steal that wooden leg until
ten or twelve lines before he did it, but when I found out
that this was what was going to happen, I realized that it
was inevitable. (1961, 100)21
O ’C onnor says that nothing can be predicted about these mysterious
m om ents in a story, for “they represent the working of grace for the
characters” (116).
For Alice Walker the writing o f the novel The Color Purple entailed a
year o f speaking with Celie and Shug and the other characters. She
2"For other such examples, see Cary (1958, 127-134) and Carver (1981, 18).
21 O ’Connor continues: “As soon as the writer ‘learns to write,’ as soon as he
knows what he is going to find, and discovers a way to say what he knew all along,
or worse still, a way to say nothing, he is finished. If a writer is any good, what he
makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious
mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever
be to his reader” (1961, 83).
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAT OTHER 101

experienced them as “trying to contact” her, “to speak through her”

(1983, 357). These presences did not ignore Walker’s day to day life.
Indeed, they pressured her to m ove from the city to the country,
expressed opinions about her work-life, and enjoyed a relation to her
daughter. They offered other perspectives on situations than the ones
Walker identified with.
Just as summer was ending, one or more of my charac­
ters— Celie, Shug, Albert, Sofia, or Harpo— would come
for a visit. We would sit wherever I was, and talk. They
were very obliging, engaging, and jolly. They were, o f
course, at the end o f their story but were telling it to me
from the beginning. Things that made me sad, often made
them laugh. Oh, we got through that; don’t pull such a
long face, they’d say. Or, you think Reagan’s bad, you
ought’ve seen some of the rednecks us come up under.
The days passed in a blaze o f happiness. (359)
W ithin academic and clinical psychology, the autonom y o f such
characters has been relegated primarily to discussions of hallucinations,
hysterical dissociations, split personalities. T he non-pathological
experience o f the autonom y o f imaginai others— as in the examples
apove— is neither dealt with in itself or allowed to influence clinical
theory. There are some notable exceptions to this generalization, how­
ever (see Watkins, 1984). Let us approach Jung as one of these. Jung
began his psychiatric career working in the asylum, surrounding him self
w ith the voices and visions o f p atien ts’ psychoses. R ather than
relegating the experience of imaginai figures to the limbo of pathology,
he actively sought his own voices. This led him to his researches in
the history o f mythology, religion and alchemy. In these domains,
Jung found sup po rt for his theory th at im aginai figures are not
necessarily evidence o f pathology, but are indicative of the process
of personification that occurs spontaneously in the “unconscious.”
Jung argues that it is not we who personify these figures but they
who “have a personal nature from the beginning” (1968a, § 62). He
tries to account for their autonom y with his notion o f archetypes.
The figures are not considered mere projections but issue from non­
personal archetypes, from form ative dispositions. T he individual
characters one experiences are both expressions of one’s ego and life
and also variations on forms which exist independently of the person. In
this way Jung accounts for the experience of the figures’ autonomy and
 102 RE-CONCEIVING A D E I 'ELOPMENTAL THEORY
his observation o f parallels in imagery across time and place.
W hen Jung engaged the imaginai figures that appeared to him in
dialogue— such as Philem on— he directly experienced their autonomy.
Philemon and other figures o f my fantasies brought home
to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche
which I do not produce, but which produce themselves
and have their own life. Philemon represented a force
which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations
with him, and he said things which I had not consciously
thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke,
not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them
myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the
forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added,
“If you should see people in a room, you would not think
that you made these people, or that you were responsible
for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity,
the reality o f the psyche. Through him the distinction
was clarified betw een m yself and the object o f my
thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I
understood that there is something in me which can say
things that I do not know and do not intend, things which
may even be directed against me.
Psychologically, Philemon represented superior in­
sight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he
seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality.
I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to
me he was what the Indians call a guru. (Jung, 1961, § 183)
W hether we accept the theory o f archetypes and Jung’s idea that
“there are things in the psyche” that one does not produce, these are
attem pts to have theory conform to experience, rather than the other
way around (as often, but not always, happens in psychoanalytic
theory). This conform ity of theory with experience involves Jung, on
the one hand, in creating explanatory principles which have yet to be
widely accepted. O n the other hand, it leads to a set of therapeutic
procedures which encourage one to pursue experiences with imaginai
figures in the m anner that they present themselves— to relate to them
as autonom ous.
Jung calls the process o f engaging figures and images, coming to
form a conscious relation to them, “active imagination.” He understands
this process as an ancient one with many parallels in history.
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAT OTHER 103
In antiquity when a man had to direct a prayer to the
statue o f the god, he stepped upon a stone that was erected
at its side to enable people to shout their prayer into the
ear, so that the god would hear them, and then he stared
at the image until the god nodded his head or opened or
shut his eyes or answered in some way. You see this was
an abbreviated method of active imagination, concentrating
upon the image until it moved; and in that m om ent the
god gave a hint, his assent or his denial or any other indi­
cation, and that is the numinosum. (Jung, 1937, 2)
H enry M iller describes just this sort o f experience, albeit secu­
larized:
Occasionally this same sort o f bitchery would start up
with statues, particularly chipped and dismantled ones. I
might be loitering in some backyard gazing absentmind-
edly at a marble head with one ear missing and presto! it
would be talking to m e...talking in the language o f a
proconsul. Some crazy urge would seize me to caress the
battered features, whereupon, as if the touch o f my hand
had restored it to life, it would smile at me. Then an even
stranger thing might happen. An hour later, say, passing
the plate glass window o f an empty shop, who would greet
me from the murky depths but the same proconsul! Ter­
ror stricken, I would press my nose against the shop-win­
dow and stare. There he was— an ear missing, the nose
bitten off. And his lips moving! “A retinal hemorrhage,” I
would murmur, and move on. “God help me if he visits
me in my sleep!” (1939, 10)
In a letter to a Mr. O, Jung described the process o f active
im agination this way:
The point is that you start with any image, for instance,
with just that yellow mass in your dream. Contemplate it
and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or
to change. D on’t try to make it into something, just do
nothing but observe what its spontaneous changes are.
Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner
or later change through a spontaneous association that
causes a slight alteration o f the picture. You must care­
fully avoid im patient jumping from one subject to an­
other. Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and
wait until it changes by itself, and if it is a speaking figure
104 RE-CONCEIl'ING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
at all then say what you have to say to that figure and
listen to what he or she has to say. (1973, 459-460)
If we approach the imaginai other as a projection resulting from
a defensive refusal to recognize certain qualities, feelings or wishes
in oneself—i.e., if we approach it from the point o f view of our
usual psychoanalytic causal explanations— then the therapeutic move
involves a process of reclamation, whereby the ego attempts to recog­
nize, claim, and assimilate the psychic fragments which have appeared
in personified form. There is a widening o f the ego as a multiplicity
o f figures are absorbed and de-personified. From this point o f view
the persistent autonomy of imaginai others is a negative or pathological
phenom enon. Recall Schafer’s adm onition:
Too often, introjects are written about (and discussed in
the clinic) as if they were actual persons carrying on lives
o f their own, with energies of their own, and with inde­
pendent intentions directed toward the subject.
...[Tjhey should be treated merely as thoughts, ideas, or
inform ation... For theory to portray representations in
any other way is to verge on an implicit demonology and
not to build an internally consistent and parsim onious
psychology. (1968, 83, 138-139)
Schafer certainly advocates an om n iscien t ego role and a de­
personification o f psychic life, and his moves in therapy through
action language are meant to encourage this (see Schafer, 1976, 155-178).
W hile som e im aginai figures are clearly personifications o f
rejected possibilities for the self, can we account for all o f them in
this way? M oreover, even if the self gains distance by dislocation and
personification o f psychic possibilities, would not an intense recipro­
cal dialogue with the resulting imaginai figures ultimately mitigate
their supposed defensive function by requiring the self to come to
term s with them as partners in dialogue?
If we approach the experience of imaginai dialogues by valuing
the dram atic quality o f mind which gives rise to imaginai worlds,
then the interpretive and explanatory m oves which result from
projection theory and which aim at de-personifying and de-potentiat-
ing these figures becom e problematic. W hen the dramatic quality of
mind is valued, a different set of moves aimed at developing this
quality m ust be proposed. Such moves need not invite a demonology.
THE AUTONOMY OF THE IMAGINAT OTHER 105

If we begin, as Jung did, with a respect for the imaginai other

that sees the presence o f a figure as a non-pathological occurrence
(i.e., that views personifying as a spontaneous process not always
serving a defensive function), then the activities o f the imagining
ego need no t be de-personification, de-potentiation, reclam ation,
assimilation— but instead the building o f relationships in dialogue.
The self does not attem pt to abolish the autonom ous presence of the
other. D evelopm ent does not coincide with a move from presence to
absence, from projection to assimilation, integrating the voices and
figures. Rather developm ent occurs in the dialogue between self and
other, in the process o f mutual articulation.
And it is dialogue that we find wherever autonom y is granted.
W hether we note how Egyptians spoke to their Ba, Hom eric men to
their thumos,22 Henry Miller to his characters, or Jung to Philem on,
dialogue is the consistent activity. “Dialogue is the ideal means of
showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationship,”
says Elizabeth Bowen (1975, 180).
We have focused on the experienced autonomy23 o f the characters:
the experiences of their initiating interactions, of their seeming to
have lives apart from the ego, of their affecting the ego, creating the
ego, as much as the ego them. In using the term “autonom y” I make
no claim that such characters exist in objectified nature, in and of
themselves, independently o f their being experienced. N or do I mean
that their apprehended qualities are independent of their relationship
with a particular ego.
I am, however, stressing that whereas psychological theory which
values “ab stract” th o u g h t w ould m ost often see changes from
autonom y to dependence, de-personification, and assim ilation as
positive developments, theory which values “dramatic” thought would
encourage a developm ent toward autonom y of characters. Similarly,
we find that theorists who reduce the developm ent o f thought to the
developm ent o f abstract thought propose that the early multiplicity
22 “A man’s thumos tells him that he must now eat or drink or slay an enemy, it
advises him on the course of his action, it puts words into his m outh... He can
converse with it, or with his ‘heart’ or his ‘belly,’ almost as man to man. Sometimes
he scolds these detached entities, ususally he takes their advice, but he may also
reject it” (Dodds, 1951, 16).
23 See Casey (1976b, 175-234) for a discussion on how imagining itself can be
seen as an autonomous act.
106 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
o f specific characters in childhood play becom e, by adulthood,
hom ogenized into a single voice, the “generalized other” as described
by G eorge H erbert Mead. The idea that characters becom e not only
m ore autonom ous but also m ore highly specified and discrete in their
identities goes against the grain o f much o f developm ental theory.
But is it n o t precisely the particularity o f characters that helps
differentiate the multiplicity of perspectives which is so critical to
the developm ent o f thought as well as literature and myth?
 CHAPTER EIGHT
The Dialogues Between M ultiple Characters:
The Monologues of M ultiple Personality
l cannot understand the mystery hut
I am always conscious of myself as two.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself
I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt W hitman
There never was.. .a good biography of a good novelist.
There couldn’t be. H e’s too many people if he’s any good.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (quoted in Rogers, 1970)

W
hereas psychoanalytic and developmental theories advocate
a developm ental unification of the various imaginai perso­
nae over time, a perspective which valued dramatic thought
would struggle to maintain multiplicity. Contrary to fearful expectation,
this multiplicity o f characters in an individual’s experience would not
resemble a pathological state o f “m ultiple personality.” In the latter
there is no imaginai dialogue, only sequential monologue. The person
identifies with or is taken over by various characters in a sequential
fashion. The ego is m ost often unaware o f the other voices. It is
paradoxical th at the illness o f m ultiple personality is problem atic
precisely because of its singleness o f voice at any one m om ent, not
because o f its multiplicity. Im provem ent starts when dialogue and
reflection between the selves begins to happen, when there is multi-
plicity in a single m om ent o f time, rather than multiplicity over time
(see Schreiber, 1973).
108 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
T he multiplicity we are advocating from a dramatic point o f view
is one where the characters are in dialogue. Why? W hat virtue do we
see in multiplicity? This is like asking what were the virtues o f polythe­
ism, or o f the experience of multiple souls prevalent in many earlier
cultures. The questions are analogous because in all three cases an
individual relates to a multiplicity o f figures, and experiences him or
herself and the world through this multiplicity o f selves, gods, or
souls. The rejection o f polytheism can be likened, as it has been by
Hillman (1971), to the rejection o f a polycentric psyche.
In the history o f religions and in ethnology there have been moves
to see m onotheism as a developm ental advance over polytheism .
Scholars such as Paul Radin (1954) have argued that such supposed
developmental facts need to be called into question. In his m onograph
on “M onotheism am ong primitive people” (1954; quoted in Hillman,
1971, 794) Radin rejects an evolutionary view and argues that “as
m ost ethnologists and unbiased students would now admit, the pos­
sibility o f interpreting m onotheism as part o f a general intellectual
and ethical progress m ust be abandoned.” Cassirer also argues that a
multiplicity o f souls and gods is not only found in elementary forms
of myth, but even in m ore “advanced configurations.. .the m otif o f
the soul’s division far overbalances that o f its unity” (1955, 163).
In discussing the function and virtue o f this multiplicity in other,
earlier cultures, Cassirer illuminates the virtues o f a multiplicity of
imaginai figures in our own experience:
In the multiplicity of his gods man not only merely be­
holds the outward diversity o f natural objects and forces
but also perceives him self in the concrete diversity and
distinction o f his functions. The countless gods he makes
for him self guide him not only through the sphere o f
objective reality and change but above all through the
sphere o f his own will and accomplishment, which they
illumine from within. He becomes aware o f the trend
peculiar to each concrete activity only by viewing it ob­
jectively in the image of the special god belonging to it.
Action is differentiated into distinct independent func­
tions not through abstract discursive concept formation
but by the contrary process, wherein each of these func­
tions is apprehended as an intuitive whole and embodied
in an independent mythical figure. (1955, 203-204)
DIALOGUES BETWEEN MULTIPLE CHARACTERS 109
In other words the multiplicity o f souls could be successive in
time or simultaneous, a person m ight receive a new soul at different
life transitions or have more than one soul throughout life. Cassirer
goes on to say:
for mythical thinking the same splitting process can be
successive as well as coexistent: just as very different
“souls” can live peacefully side by side in one and the
same man, so the empirical sequence o f the events of
life can be distributed among wholly different “subjects,”
each o f which is not only thought in the form o f a sepa­
rate being, but also felt and intuited as a living demonic
power which takes possession o f the man. (1955, 165)
Here multiplicity is viewed not as a fragm entation or splitting o f a
unity— as in psychoanalysis— but as a process o f differentiation. Each
imaginai figure provides a different perspective through which events
and the self itself can be viewed. We readily acknowledge the virtue
o f this multiplicity in literature and drama, but distance ourselves
from it when it is suggested as a personal experience. We would not
judge a play or novel w ith one character as necessarily better or worse
than another with several characters. So why should we im pose this
kind of ideal on the richness of our own thought?24
In the tradition o f psychology, the notion o f multiplicity reared
its head in discussions of spiritism and hysteria in the second half of
the nineteenth century. A t that time Flournoy, Janet, Myers, Jung, and
others noted how the personhood o f the hysteric or medium would
be as though given over to another whose ways o f speaking, moving,
thinking and valuing m ight be wholly inconsistent with the person
with whom the observer had been familiar. These observations led to
two distinct notions about multiplicity which have since been consis­
tently confused: 1) multiplicity as sym ptom atic of disease; and 2)
multiplicity as an inherent result of the m ythopoetic nature o f mind
(see Watkins, 1974). From the latter point of view, it was argued that
it was not multiplicity o f imaginai others that was pathognom ic, but
rather the co-presence o f other factors such as the de-differentiation
o f the perceptual and the imaginai, the disowning o f relation to the
24 In therpy we can sometimes follow the course of how one character becomes
two. Often this proliferation does not result from a lack of integration, but issues
from a high degree of differentiation, of characterization. For example, see the
case presented in Chapter Twelve.
110 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
imaginai others, over-identification with one figure, or a lack o f aware­
ness o f figures. Personifying was a universal tendency o f mind that
did not in itself bode illness. From this point o f view multiplicity of
imaginai figures was viewed positively, as yielding imaginai back­
grounds that specifically symbolized the multiplicity o f life experiences
and activities. Just as dreams bring before us multiple characters, so it
was felt that such figures are close at hand when we feel or think, or
even perceive; when we love, fight, or desire.
T he acceptance o f multiplicity as a fact o f psychic life has far
exceeded the valuing o f multiplicity. Within orthodox psychoanalysis,
multiplicity is synonymous with “ fragm entation.” In m ore popular
forms o f psychotherapy (psychodrama, gestalt therapy, psychosyn­
thesis, transactional analysis, guided imagery) as well as in some form s
o f behavior m odification (see M eichenbaum and G oodm an, 1979),
multiplicity is accepted and this acknowledgment opens the door to a
variety o f treatm ent techniques. Yet the prescribed developm ental
course is often from the many to the one, from imaginai to solely
historical reality.
O ur intellectual tradition sees an ego-centered psyche just as it
sees m onotheism ; not only as a later achievem ent but a better one
than a polycentered psyche and polytheism. As Jung said,
If tendencies towards dissociation were not inherent in
the hum an psyche, fragmentary psychic systems would
never have been split off; in other words, neither spirits
nor gods would have ever come into existence. That is
also the reason why our time has become so utterly godless
and profane: we lack all knowledge of the unconscious
psyche and pursue the cult o f consciousness to the ex­
clusion o f all else. O ur true religion is a m onotheism of
consciousness, a possession by it, coupled with a fanatical
denial o f the existence o f fragm entary autonom ous
systems. (1969a, § 51)
But even Jung, whose psychology was m ost firmly based on a
polycentric notion o f psyche, emphasized that the culm ination of
d e v elo p m en t was th e em erg ence o f th e Self, an ad m itted ly
m onotheistic-like idea (Hillman, 1971). Jung described psyche as a
multiplicity o f partial consciousnesses (see Jung, 1969, 338$). Drawing
on the imagery o f the alchemists, he likened psyche to a star-strewn
night sky with multiple planets and constellations (Paracelsus) or of
DIALOGUES BETWEEN MULTIPLE CHARACTERS 111
fish eyes glimmering in a dark sea like gold (Morienus Romanus). In
his system these stars or planets were called complexes, and each
complex acted autonom ously from the ego and presented itself in
the imaginai persons o f dreams and fantasies. A prime concern of
Jung’s opus was to sort out the multiplicity o f imaginai figures which
occur not only in m odern dreams and waking dreams, but also in
mythology, religion and literature. For him the parallels between figures
arising from these different sources were evidence for the existence
of archetypes. As we have seen, object relations theorists have also
sorted such figures into different categories arising from radically
different conceptions about the etiology and status of imaginai figures:
good and bad objects (Klein); exciting, rejecting, and ideal objects;
libidinal, antilibidinal and central egos (Fairbaim); sadomasochistic
oral and passive aggressive egos (Guntrip).
In H illm an’s w ork25 the “m on oth eistic” treatm ent o f these
dram atic personae (i.e., the kind o f treatm ent that sponsors unity
over multiplicity) is brought fully into question. He argues that the
usual emphasis on integrating the multiplicity o f figures into a w hole­
ness ought to be balanced by a careful differentiation of this wholeness
into specific figures. This move to multiplicity is not the same as
encouraging dissociation and confusion. Like m onotheistic concep­
tions, it too has its order. T his lies in the differentiation o f the
figures and the m anner o f relations form ed with them.
Kaplan and Crockett (1968) warn that to have unity in diversity
one needs a hierarchization which while preserving the differences,
modulates and coordinates them as well. One may fail to achieve
unity in diversity through merely juxtaposing or sequentializing the
diversity (separation w ithout integration) or through collapsing the
plurality (syncretism). W ith respect to imaginai figures the focus would
be on the relations between the voices. As in a play one figure does
not simply speak after another or while another is speaking, but acts
and speaks in relation to the others and to the emerging patterns of
significance that make the various scenes cohere.
Biologist Lewis Thomas makes a similar observation in a humorous
piece on the multiplicity o f imaginai figures:_______________________
25 For Hillman’s treatm ent of polytheism and monotheism with respect to
psyche, see the following: 1971, 1972 (265), 1975b (26, 127, 167, 193, 226). Also see
Kaplan and Crockett’s (1968) treatment of the theme of unity and diversity and
Miller (1974).
112 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
O dd to say, it is not just a jumble o f talk; they tend to
space what they’re saying so that words and phrases from
one will fit into short spaces left in silence by the others.
A t good times it has the feel o f an intensely complicated
conversation, but at others the sounds are more like some­
thing overheard in a crowded station. At worse times the
silences get out o f synchrony, interrupting each other; it
is as though all the papers had suddenly blown off the
table. (1974, 43-44)
Thom as questions w hether the num ber o f different selves is in itself
pathological. He hopes not and argues the following:
It is the simultaneity o f their appearance that is the real
problem, and I think psychiatry would do better by simply
persuading them to queue up and wait their turn, as hap­
pens in the normal rest of us...
Actually, it would embarrass me to be told that m ore than
a single self is a kind o f disease. I’ve had, in my time,
m ore than I could possibly count or keep track of. The
great difference, which keeps me feeling normal, is that
mine (ours) have turned up one after the oth er... The
only thing close to what you might call illness, in my ex­
perience, was in the gaps in the queue when one had fin­
ished and left the place before the next one was ready to
start, and there was nobody around at all. (42)
 CHAPTER NINE
Character Development:
The Articulation of the Imaginai Other
A character is interesting as it comes out and by the process and
duration of that emergence; just as a procession is effective by the
way it unfolds, turning into a mere mob if it all passes at once.
— Henry James
Tolstoy criticised Gorky: “Most of what you say comes out of
yourself and therefore you have no characters, and allyour people
have the sameface. ” — Tolstoy (quoted in Gorky, 1946, 21)

T
olstoy shares with Gorky his knowledge that when one does
not allow characters their autonomy, one merely projects from
oneself, lending them one’s own face. W hen one allows char­
acters to speak, to be known apart from the self, then a depth and
specificity of characterization can develop.
Similarly, in The Common Reader (1925) Virginia W oolf discusses
the difference between Elizabethan drama and the m odern novel. In
the form er, she claims, there were no real characters. For instance, in
Ford’s Tis Pity She ’s A Whore, we gropingly come to know that the
character Annabella
.. .is a spirited girl, with her defiance of her husband when
he abuses her, her snatches o f Italian song, her ready wit,
her simple glad love-making. But o f character as we un­
derstand the word there is no trace. We do not know how
she reaches her conclusions, only that she has reached
114 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
them. N obody describes her. She is always at the height
o f her passion, never at its approach. Compare her with
Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood,
nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind
where the English girl is flat and nude as a face painted
on a playing card; she is without depth, without range,
without intricacy. (53-54)
These two characters, Ford’s Annabella and Tolstoy’s Anna, are not
just models o f two different literary forms or of two different literary
periods, but o f two different kinds o f relations to imaginai others.
W hen we reviewed M ead’s theory o f imaginai dialogues we fol­
lowed the developm ent of thought’s interlocutors from the specific
persona o f childhood play to the generalized other of abstract thought.
However if we focus on the developm ent of dramatic thought then
our em phasis will be on coming to know the imaginai others in all
their specificity.
In this instance, a high degree o f articulation o f the imaginai
other as well as a multiplicity o f figures will characterize development.
T he m ore detailed the characterization o f the other, the m ore differ­
entiated is the characterization o f the self. Novelists and playwrights
are excellent guides in this domain. Many, such as Elizabeth Bowen,
speak o f patiently placing themselves in the presence of the imaginai
other, and observing the details o f the other’s being. “They reveal
them selves slowly to the novelist’s perceptio n— as m ight fellow-
travellers seated opposite in a dimly-lit railway carriage” (1975, 172).
Trollope, writing in 1833, described how, in order to make his
readers intim ately acquainted with his characters, he him self had to
get to know each figure in great detail.
...and [the author] can never know them well unless he
can live with them in the full reality o f established inti­
macy. They must be with him as he lies down to sleep,
and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate
them and to love them. He must argue with them, quarrel
with them, forgive them, and even submit to them. He
must know o f them whether they be cold-blooded or pas­
sionate, whether true or false, and how far true, and how
far false. The depth and the breadth, and the narrowness
and the shallowness o f each should be clear to him. And
as, here in our outer world, we know that men and women
CHARACTER DEI 'ELOPMENT 115
change— become worse or better as tem ptation or con­
science may guide them — so should these creations of
his change, and every change should be noted by him. On
the last day o f each m onth recorded, every person in his
novel should be a m onth older than on the first. If the
would-be novelist has aptitudes that way, all this will come
to him without much struggling;— but if it do not come,
I think he can only make novels o f wood.
It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence
has come whatever success I have obtained. There is a
gallery of them, and o f all in that gallery I may say that I
know the tone o f the voice, and the colour of the hair,
every flame o f the eye, and the very clothes they wear.
O f each man I could assert whether he would have said
these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would
then have smiled or so have frowned. (1833/1930, 49-50)
The developm ent o f depth of characterization corresponds to
the developm ent o f the character’s autonom y. As the character
becom es m ore autonom ous, we know about its world not just from
external observation or supposition but from the character directly.
The author or narrator becomes less om niscient and can be surprised
by the other. O bservation of the character’s actions can be supple­
mented by the character’s own account o f thoughts, feelings and wishes
through which the imaginai other gains interiority and depth.
In a study o f schizophrenics’ representations of imaginai figures
in dreams, I found that the imaginai other (not the “I” o f the dream)
was often known only in terms o f h is/h er behavior or action, and
not in term s o f thoughts, feelings, or wishes (Watkins, 1978). The
descriptions o f others were neither vivid nor realistic, but shallow
and superficial. The dream ego did not respond to the character’s
feelings and thoughts, thus de-centering the dream ego position, but
assimilated the other’s actions with respect to the dream ego’s feelings
and thoughts. R ather than pathology having to do w ith an over­
articulation o f an imaginary being and a weak ego or “I,” pathology
coincided with shallowness in the characterization o f the imaginai
other and a marked egocentricity in which the imaginai other is known
only insofar as it effects the “I.” Jung observed in schizophrenia and
other form s o f dissociation that characters such as homunculi, dwarfs,
and boys often appeared having no individual characteristics at all
(Jung and Kerenyi, 1949, 84).
 116 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
Both in acting and in ficdon-writing, the actor or writer becomes
absorbed in the details of the imaginai other’s character, life, and
point of view. For Henry James, “the artist is one on whom nothing
is lost,” and he accused bad authors of “weak specification.” But as
Flannery O ’Connor points out,
...to say that ficdon proceeds by the use o f detail does
not mean the simple, mechanical piling up of detail. D e­
tail has to be controlled by some overall purpose, and
every detail has to be put to work for you. Art is selective.
W hat is there is essential and creates movement. (1961, 93)
The detailing work of the imaginai realm is not the same as that of
the naturalistic realm. In the imaginai work, says O ’Connor, details
do not seek merely to replicate nature but “while having their essential
place in the literal level of the story, operate in depth as well as on the
surface” (1961, 71). That is, the selectivity of details contributes to their
resonance on a symbolic level. Not all is said about a character but
just enough detail. Virginia Woolf says of George Eliot’s characters,
“even in the least important, there is a roominess and margin where
those qualities lurk which she has no call to bring from their obscu­
rity” (1925, 172). All that is presented, however, should be essential:
“Every sentence in dialogue should be descriptive of the character
who is speaking” (Bower, 1975, 181). The mind that comes to know
the character, James said, should be “the most polished of possible
m irrors.” That is, it should reflect the other rather than using the
o th er as a prop in telling his own story.
Stanislavski, the famous Russian trainer of actors, taught that an
actor should “not.. .present merely the external life of his characters,”
bu t create the “inner life of human spirit” (1936, 14).
A playwright rarely describes the past or the future of his
characters, and often omits details o f their present life.
An actor must complete his character’s biography in his
mind from beginning to end because knowing how the
character grew up, what influenced his behavior, and what
he expects his future to be will give more substance to
the present life of the character. (Moore, 1974, 30)
L e t us look more formally at dimensions that would specify depth
o f characterization in imaginai dialogues: degree of animation of the
im a g in a i other, degree of articulation of psychological properties,
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT 117
degree of complexity o f perspective on the character, and degree of
specification o f the identity o f the character. T hese dim ensions
(outlined below) represent movement from a character in an imaginai
dialogue who is a passive recipient o f the other’s actions— w ithout
thoughts, feelings, actions, or identity o f her own— to a character
whose identity is known, whose psychological properties (thoughts,
feelings, and wishes) are articulated from both an internal and an
external point o f view, who is an active agent in her own right, and
who is not just a one dimensional, stereotypic figure of only negative
or only positive attributes.
1. Degree of animation
a. Character is passive recipient of other’s actions; character
does no t act or speak. C haracter is a prop for the o th e r’s
actions and perceptions.
b. Character is again the recipient o f the other’s actions, but
acts or speaks in response to these actions. However character
does not initiate actions.
c. Character initiates actions an d /o r dialogue. He or she is
no longer a passive recipient and reactive responder. Character
can act upon the other(s) present (see Lowe, 1975).
2. Degree of articulation of psychological properties
a. Character is known by actions alone.
b. Psychological properties (thoughts, feelings, and wishes)
are attributed to the character by another character or by the
self (acting as a kind o f narrator). Psychological properties
are known from an external point o f view only.
c. Psychological properties are expressed by the character.
They are known from an internal point of view and imply a
self-conscious- ness on the part o f the character.
As the imaginai other’s psychological properties becom e known
from an internal point o f view, the imaginai other is further liberated
from being but an extension o f the ego. N ow the imaginai other’s
m otivations, for instance, can be shown to contrast with the ones
attributed to him or her by the imaginer.
W hen a character is known only from its behavior or from an
external point o f view, the understanding o f it is often superficial,
fragmented, or distorted. The imaginer often assimilates and reduces
118 RE-CONCEIVING A DE VELOPMENTAL THEORY
the character’s actions to the set o f meanings which are im portant to
the ego, thus failing to allow the character’s presence and point of
view to de-center the habitual stance o f the ego. The imaginer too
quickly assumes she understands what a character wants or feels, with­
out so much as attem pting to ask. It is such assum ptions that change
a basic telos o f the experience o f imagining itself from counteracting
egocentricity to sustaining it. In the latter instance the imaginai scene
and its people becom e servants to the usual, m ost powerful point of
view. In the former, as a character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations
becom e known from its own point o f view, it is freed from being but
a prop to the habitually central voice.
W hen one has no empathy for the other’s point o f view his or her
actions often becom e incom prehensible. The m em bers o f the self-
other dyad are represented as acting either in mutual isolation or else
in such a way that the other’s action is assimilated to the point of
view o f the ego. T he motive or purpose which organizes various
actions into a meaningful pattern is missing. In Burke’s term inology
(1945), the other, the agent, becomes less differentiated from the scene.
Sometimes the m otivation is then seen as com ing from the outside,
from a third party who can control actions from afar. The (imagining)
ego is caught not in a world o f the other’s larger acts, but in the
other’s series o f fragm ented behaviors. Action is no t organized into
complex units, and there is no complex general project to which smaller
units o f action are subordinated (Watkins, 1978, 54-55).
However the virtue of not knowing from the others’ point o f
view their m otivations and thoughts, is that indeed the scene can
then be an expression o f the im agining ego’s point o f view. The
satisfactions o f egocentricity can go undisturbed by a semi-autonomy
of the other.
3. Degree of complexity of perspective on the character
a. Character is known from an external perspective only.
A lthough the character may act and may be attributed
psychological properties, it is given no voice. The motivations
for his or her actions are assumed.
b. Character is known from an internal perspective. He ex­
presses a point o f view. His actions are understood from his
point o f view only.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT 119

c. Character is known from internal and external points of

view. Here there is an alternation of perspectives on the char­
acter so that his actions and speech can be understood from
both his point o f view and from the other’s. Here one sees
and can be seen.
At the beginning of this continuum (a), where the first character
is known only through the second’s eyes, the first character serves the
second’s self-image; for example, an assailant is created to sustain the
other’s role as an innocent victim. At the end of this continuum (c),
one character’s reality can be challenged by the other. The scene is
deepened as the possibility arises for different constuals or perspectives.
“Characters possess degrees of being in proportion to the variety of
perspectives from w hich they can w ith justice be p erceiv ed ”
(Burke, 1945, 503).
4. Degree of specification of identity of character
a. The imaginai presence of the other is indicated by the
self’s speech but by no other indication. The self speaks as
thou to someone, but it is not clear to whom.
b. The imaginai presence of the other can be noted by the
linguistic structure o f the thought or speech. For instance
the phrases of speech m eet the constraints of conversation
or o f dialogue, not m onologue: where there is a question, an
answer follows; where there is a comment, an acknowledgment
follows. This is so despite the absence o f any indication that
the person is speaking to an imaginai other who has an identity
other than th at o f the habitual self— such as a change in
intonation, addressing a character by nam e or, if in play,
designating a different play object to represent a character.
Much o f thought has this implicitly dialogical structure with
no clear articulation as to who the speakers are; i.e., “N ow
what shall I do today? How about finishing up the paper? I
don’t think there is enough time. You always say that.”
For instance in the following segm ent o f play, despite
the absence o f explicit reference to a separate character by
nam e, changes in voice, or g estu re, one can d e tect a
conversation going on, an imaginai dialogue, between two
voices which can be described as a “supportive instructor”
voice and a “pupil” voice.
120 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
Example'. David is engaged in solitary play with a tinker
toy. He says the following: “The wheels go here, the wheels
go here. O h, we need to start it all over again. We need to
close it up. See, it closes up. We’re starting it all over again.
D o you know why we wanted to do that? Because I needed
it to go a different way. Isn’t it going to be pretty clever,
don’t you think? But we have to cover up the m otor just
like a real car.” (Kohlberg, et al., 1968, 695)
c. The other presents him or herself as a specific identifiable
personality.
 CHAPTER TEN
Relativi’g ing the Ego and
the Birth of Dialogue

A
s psychic life is peopled with multiple characters who enjoy
varying degrees of autonomy and who are known in their
complexity, there occurs a radical shift with respect to the
“ego.” The “I” becomes not just the one who observes the others. It
is now seen as well. It too is like a character, with certain styles of
being and interacting which the imaginai others recognize: organizer,
narrator, confidant, supervisor. One character may see “ego” as power
hungry, another as an infidel, always deserting him or her. Each re­
veals a different persona, often eclipsing our habitual conceptions of
ourselves. As the imaginai others speak and act, they do not just an­
swer the “I’s” questions, but speak about the “I” and also about their
relations with each other, seemingly apart from the ego. As in literature,
[the] characters do not develop only single and linear roads
o f destiny but are, so to speak, human crossroads. It is
within this pattern, this meshing together o f individuali­
ties, that they preserve their autonom y... (Harvey, 1965, 69)
Through this process there is a relative de-centration of psychic life,
which can restrict the strength and functions of the ego. Truth becomes
redefined. It is not the province of a single voice, but arises between
the voices at the interface of the characters’ multiple perspectives.
This narrowing of the ego’s domain, this view of the ego as
another character, would at first seem antithetical to the current trend
of ego psychology in the direction of ego strengthening. Hillman
122 RE-CONCEIl ENG A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
(1975b, 25-26) points out that in psychoanalytic thought a dom inant
fantasy is the Roman-like process o f ego developm ent. Consider
Freud’s description o f this process:
To strengthen the ego, to make it m ore independent of
the superego, to widen the field of perception and enlarge
its organization so that it can appropriate fresh portions
o f the id, where id was there the ego should be. It is a
work o f culture. (Freud, 1932/1965, 106)
In a m ore polycentric psychology, this gradual assimilation o f other
p o rtio n s o f psyche by the ego is n o t the goal. In a polycentric
psychology, one attuned to and respectful o f the multiplicity of the
Self, one would attem pt to restore some autonom y to the colonies.
O ne function o f personifying is “ to save the diversity and autonom y
o f the psyche from dom inion by any single pow er.... Personifying is
the soul’s answer to egocentricity” (Hillman, 1975b). T he ego, though
not strengthened through the assimilatory process envisioned by Freud,
is nonetheless fortified as its function becom es one o f being aware
o f the multiplicity around and within it.
N o t only is there a multiplicity o f imaginai others experienced in
the distance, but the “I” changes role or identity, as in dreams and
playing— now whiny child, now scientist, now sophisticated cosm o­
politan. T he everyday subtle changes in intonation, gesture, or m ood
give way to the imaginai figures beneath them , as happens in a dream,
where anger may be revealed as a lion or Hitler, or an unknown rapist.
This shift in the position and function o f the “I,” its relativization,
is a prim ary difference betw een m odern and pre-m odern novels.
D. H. Lawrence writes that “You m ustn’t look in my novels for the
old stable ego o f character. There is another ego, according to whose
action the individual is unrecognizable” (1962, 282). Robert Kiely, in
a discussion o f Lawrence and James Joyce, notices that in their work
the “self is released from the prison o f ‘stable form ;’ it is projected
into the environm ent, freed to move from shape to shape” (1980, 11).
M odern novelists for the m ost part have abandoned an om niscient
narrator who tells the readers the “truth” about each character, who
sees the characters as extensions o f himself. N ow the characters are
m ore often free to tell their own stories, and the tale of each is
relativized by the voices of the others.
RELATIV1ZING THE EGO 123
Luigi P irandello’s play, S ix Characters in Search of an Author,
classically portrays this situation. Here the six characters enter a theater
where a play is being rehearsed. They attem pt to tell their stories in
an effort to find an author who will help let their suffering be known.
Each character has his or her own version which pits itself against
the others’ in an effort to claim reality.
In studying the dramatic nature o f thought we need to becom e
familiar with all the modes o f narration exhibited in literature. They
will help us see how variously we each organize the multiplicity we
find within thought— how we, like authors, shift between om niscient
and non-om niscient postures with respect to the voices we encounter
in dreams, fantasy and thought. In the om niscient novels o f the past26
the author or one o f his characters w ould describe all the other
characters in the beginning of the work. The characters’ attributed
dispositions were then borne out in subsequent scenes. The belief
among novelists o f this period (from Trollope through Austen) appears
to have been that an accurate accounting o f who one is can either be
given as a static description of characteristics or a listing o f how one
responds externally to a series o f situations (Daiches, 1960, 15).
T he critic D avid D aiches points out th at in the nineteenth-
century novel
characters were deployed before the reader (author and
reader standing together, as it were, on the reviewing stand,
with the author where necessary whispering explanatory
remarks into the reader’s ear) and revealed their inward
developm ent by their outward behavior. The correlation
between internal and external, between moral or intellectual
developm ent and appropriate observable action or in­
action was taken for granted. (1960, 2)
Standing there together amidst a stable hierarchical society, the author
could take it for granted that he and the reader shared the same sense
26 As we shall see in Chapter Eleven, the novel was born during a historical
period when the experience of hearing voices was being turned over by religion to
psychiatry. It is little wonder, then, that the surrender and devotion to voices so
characteristic of the religious experience should be carefully avoided by the early
novelists, who seemed to control the medley of characters mediated by the novel
much as God had his creatures. Paradoxically, during the Romantic period, as religion
continued to lose to science its dominion over the definition of reality, literature
began to assume some of the functions of religion vis a vis respect for the autonomy
of the voices.
124 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
o f what was significant in life. “W hat was significant in hum an events
was itself m anifested in publicly visible doing or suffering, in action
or passion related to status or fortune” (Daiches, 1960, 4). O m ni­
scient narration was possible because people agreed about the nature
and perception o f reality. Reality was som ething objective, som ething
“out there.”
Ju st as astronom y had displaced m an from the center so had
philosophy, and so would literature in its turn. Locke argued that we
each know our own im pressions of reality but not reality per se. If
reality itself is not knowable, what happens to a literature “whose
object is the im itation o f reality? It too is then destined to undergo a
shift o f center” (Tuveson, 1974, 25-26).
It was not simply that omniscience began to fade as one narrative
technique replaced another. But rather the om niscient style became
an im possibility for m any authors, partly because reality itself seemed
to be changing. It changed as the twentieth century approached, bringing
w ith it the ho rrors o f w orld wars, the thriving o f m ultiple and
discrepant ideologies, and the insights o f a new science, and psy­
chology. The objective position became untenable, leaving us to see
how we each effect the known. Nowadays we m ight nostalgically side
with Virginia W oolf in looking back on Jane Austen’s period when
the world was a com m only shared one. W oolf remarks o f Austen:
To believe that your impressions hold good for others is
to be released from the cramp and confinement of per­
sonality. One o f the marks o f the m odern novelist is that
he is unable to hold that belief, (quoted in Daiches, 1960, 3)
And thus the author had to find a different place to stand in relation
to the characters.
Modern literary criticism is filled with debates about what happens
when the previously om niscient author withdraws from the work and
allows the characters to carry the drama (see Harvey, 1965). Even if
the characters appear spontaneously and have their own ideas about
the unfolding drama, does not the author observe and coordinate
these events, searching for the m ost expressive details and m om ents
to convey the plot?
In short in imaginai dialogues in which the ego is made relative
and non-om niscient, it does not cease to fulfill im portant functions.
A part of the ego— sometimes called the “observing ego”— sometimes
RELATIVIZING THE EGO 125

the “reflective self-representation” (Schafer, 1968)— is an agent for

an awareness o f the dialogue as it unfolds. We can liken this part of
the Self to a stage manager, narrator, or “histor,”27 or to the internal
observer that actors becom e aware o f when they are playing a part.
In Stanislavski’s words,
As I was taking my bath I recalled the fact that while I
was playing the part of the Critic I still did not lose the
sense o f being myself... Actually, I was my own observer
at the same time that another part o f me was being a
fault-finding, critical creature... I divided myself, as it
were, into two personalities. One continued as an actor,
the other was an observer. Strangely enough this duality
not only did not impede, it actually prom oted my creative
work.
An actor is split into two parts when he is acting. You
recall how Tommaso Salvini put it: “An actor lives, weeps
and laughs, he observes his own tears and mirth. It is this
double existence, this balance between life and acting that
makes for art.”
As you see, this division does no harm to inspiration. On
the contrary the one encourages the other. M oreover we
lead a double existence in our actual lives. But this does
not prevent our living and having strong emotions. (1936,
19, 167)
This division is like the one we experience when we read and
imagine. The book’s scene is more vivid to us than the one we literally
inhabit— as is the imaginai other with whom we converse in thought.
But at the same time there exists ready to hand what Schumaker calls
“aesthetic distance,” the realization that the imaginai scene exists in a
universe apart from the room we are literally in. Some portion of
awareness stands ready to see both realities (Schumaker, 1960, 15).
Schafer speaks o f this process in psychoanalytic terms, maintaining
that what differentiates daydreams from psychosis is the presence or
easy recall o f a “reflective self representation,” that is, an “implicit
or explicit notation accompanying realistic thought that it is thought
27The “histor” seeks to “find out the truth from the various” characters. He is
“the narrator as inquirer, constructing a narrative on the basis of such evidence as
he has been able to accumulate. The ‘histor’ is not a character in the narrative, but
he is not exactly the author himself either. He is a persona, a projection of the
author’s empirical virtues” (Scholes and Kellogg, 1966, 262, 265fj).
126 RE-CONCEIVING A DEA ELOPMENTAL THEORY
(e.g., memory, perception, anticipation, etc.) and not concrete reality”
(1968, 109). In a fantasy which revolves around an imaginai figure, there
is a “splitting o f the ego” which “allows other ego processes to remain
realistically oriented to internal and external circumstances and to note
the actual absence o f the imagined p erso n ...” (Schafer, 1968, 111).
Whereas, in psychosis, there is a “limited or slow reversibility of the
suspension of the reflective self representations” that occur in daydreams
(96).
To enrich our thinking about these changes in “reflective self repre­
sentation” and “the ego,” let us return to literature and see how it dealt
with the deterioration of the omniscient stance— again analogizing the
author and “her” characters to ego and “its” multiplicity. The decline of
the omniscient narrator in fiction— often it was the author’s voice— did
not entail the end of narrators. Rather narrators joined the ranks of
characters. They too became fallible, their perspectives assailable.
W hat kind o f narrators succeeded in carrying on within this more
com plicated reality? M ight these narrators not be models for an ego
struggling am idst the multiplicity of mind? Let us look briefly to
those employed by Flaubert, James, and Conrad.
Flaubert tried consciously to remove him self from the narrative
in Madame Bovary and found “that if the om niscient author is elimi­
nated, the only remaining basis for the ‘point o f view’ that justifies
the text has to be the consciousness o f someone: a character o f the
novel” (M orrisette, 1961-62, 4). W ith a decline in omniscience there
was a heightened sensitivity to character. Flaubert became so involved
in the process o f transition from one character’s point o f view to
another that he suggested “that a novel could be written whose value
would lie not in its subject at all but in its relationships and articulations:
un livre sur rien, a book about nothing” (M orrisette, 1961-62, 4). Here
Flaubert came close to that aspect of imagination that is based not
on story or plot but on the relationship between characters, between
points o f view. It is the ongoing, ever evolving imagination that does
not cease with this denouem ent or that chapter. Flaubert conceived
o f a novel m ore like the conversations in thought (a novel later to be
written by Nathalie Saurraute and James Joyce, am ong others). It has
been said of the works of Joyce and Faulkner that such a novel becomes
an existence in itself— it is not about som ething, it is som ething
(Szanto, 1972, 5).
RELATIVIZING THE EGO 127
Henry James also realized that surrendering the om niscient stance
meant that he must discover some other center or focus through which
the story could be told. To achieve this the author m ust leave him self
and enter the consciousness o f the character: “A beautiful infatuation
this, always, I think, the intensity o f the creative effort to get into the
skin o f the creature” or character (James, quoted in Friedm an,
1955, 1161).
But through what kind o f consciousness should the story be seen?
James felt this character should be “finely aware,” “an illuminating
intelligence,” his mind a “lucid reflector” and “the m ost polished of
possible m irrors.” The new narrator must not only have the capacity
to be agitated by what he sees. He must also have the capacity to be
surprised, even bewildered. Edith W harton agreed with James:
It should be the storyteller’s first care to choose his
reflecting mind deliberately, as one would choose a build­
ing site...and when this is done, to live inside the mind
chosen, trying to feel, see and react exactly as the latter
would, no more, no less and, above all, no otherwise. Only
thus can the w riter avoid attributing incongruities of
thought and m etaphor to his chosen interpreter, (quoted
in Friedman, 1955, 1165)
The author gradually receded from the novel. He intruded less
and in some cases disappeared altogether. James Joyce said that the
author was “refined out o f existence” As Friedm an (1955) points out,
this refinem ent entailed gradually limiting the author’s channels of
inform ation and possible vantage points by staying within the con­
sciousness o f a particular character or set o f characters.
This limitation o f the author’s vision— from om niscience to the
point o f view of a character— reflected a radical change in the function
o f fiction. Fiction could no longer imitate factual reality, but could
only present imaginative reality (Scholes and Kellogg, 1966, 262), that
reality to which one has access only through the eyes o f characters.
In some cases the author handed over his job to a “w itness-narrator.”
Such a character did not possess the omniscience o f the author, but
through certain devices was able to supplem ent a m erely hum an
understanding of the minds and goings on about him. For example,
Joseph Conrad would often use as his narrator a character “in whom
others felt com pelled to confide,” a sharer o f secrets. The diaries and
128 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
letters o f others would fall into his possession. It was his or her
presence w hich w ould be sought by the other characters for their
late-night confessionals— in the jungle, by the fire, and at the pub.
W ould not such a narrator be a fitting herm etic go-betw een to
the multiple voices one encounters: now a diplomat, now a confidant,
now a drinking partner, depending on which character one is trying
to understand? T he flexibility, intelligence, em pathy and savvy
required by this kind o f ego would be learned by interaction with
characters, just as our ease with other people is gained slowly through
early bungling, embarrassment, faux pas, and self-centeredness brought
“rudely” to our attention.
The developm ent we have been describing does not have to do
with the enlargem ent o f the ego or with the building o f ego strength
in all its aspects. It does however, have to do with an increased ability
to allow other voices to speak (which relativizes the ego) and with the
increased agility o f an observing ego which can be attentive to these
imaginai dialogues. This quality o f ego which is akin to a narrator
cannot be assum ed to be present. The ego all too often identifies with
a given character without awareness of having done so. For example,
take a man who identifies with a strong, independent, m asterful char­
acter and is unaware that this is but one psychic possibility am ong
many. Though he may alternate between positions o f independence
and dependence, feelings o f strength and feelings o f im potence, there
may be little or no recognition on his part of these shifts in character.
As imaginai dialogues develop from dialogues in which the “I” is
om niscient to ones in which the “I” is one voice am ong others, the
term “dialogue” deepens in m eaning. It pertains no t only to the
linguistic structure of com m unication between two or m ore parties,
but to that kind o f relating— often felt as spiritual— which preserves
the integrity of both self and other. One neither abdicates selfhood
nor incorporates the other. Each can address and be addressed. The
developm ent o f this m anner o f relating— from “I-It” to “I-T hou”
relation— is the central theme o f M artin Buber’s philosophical and
religious work.
For Buber these styles o f relating are not limited to person-G od
or person-person relations, but include m an’s relation to nature and
intelligible form s— ideas, deeds, works o f art (Pfuetze, 1973, 157).
B uber contrasts abstract m onologic thinking to dram atic speech­
RELATIVIZING THE EGO 129
thinking. He finds dialogic thought to be characterized by directedness
to an other and openness to the unpredictable: “O ne can never know
what the other will say, nor rehearse one’s reply” (Pfuetze, 1973, 129).
In “I-It” relations the other is a thing which I use, experience, or
manipulate. I notice only those aspects o f him, her, or it which relate
to my purpose. I do not come to know the other in her essence. N or
do I come to know more deeply my own being. For Buber each person
has two “ I ’s :” the “I” o f “I-It” and the “I” of “I-T hou.” In “I- It,” I
am never wholly myself, just as the other is not wholly him self or
herself: “I becom e through my relation to the Thou, as I becom e I, I
say Thou” (Buber, 1958, 11). This development from “I-It” to “I-T hou”
is never com pleted once and for all. O ne continually falls back into,
and then struggles out of, a relation o f “I-It.”
In Daniel Buber (1915) writes that although we may first address
the other, eventually we m ust be able to be addressed by the other—
a process analogous to the doll’s change from being a passive recipient
of the child’s action to its increasing anim ation in early childhood
play. It is in this addressing and being addressed in relationship that
self-knowledge arises.
Buber argues for a mysticism in which the integrity o f both self
and other is preserved. He argues against either a dissolution o f the
self into otherness, or the negation of otherness through the assertion
of “the all em bracing character o f the self” (Pfuetze, 1973, 138). In
dialogue one asserts the primacy of relation and struggles to maintain
that tension rather than totally identifying with or incorporating the
other. Buber firmly asserts the autonom y o f the other, working against
a theory o f imagination that returns all images to the “I.”
The tree is no impression, no play o f my imagination, no
value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against
me and has to do with me, as I with it— only in a different
way. (1958, 8)
Similarly with artistic forms:
This is the eternal source o f art: a man is faced by a form
which desires to be made through him into a work. This
form is no offspring o f his soul, but is an appearance
which steps up to it and demands o f it the effective power.
The man is concerned with an act o f his being. If he
carries it through, if he speaks the primary word out of
130 RE-CONCEIVING A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
his being to the form which appears, then the effective
power streams out, and the work arises.
I do not behold [the form] as a thing am ong the “inner”
things nor as an image o f my “fancy,” but as that which
exists in the present. If test is made o f its objectivity the
form is certainly not “there.” Yet what is actually so much
present as it is? And the relation in which I stand to it is
real, for it affects me, as I affect it. (9-10)
The autonom y o f the other does not exclude the possibility of
putting one’s own life into it for a while. W ithin dialogue there are
m om ents in which one feels as though one were the other. Buber
describes being with a pine tree and identifying so completely with
the tree that he felt its bark as his own skin and its cones as his own
children (1915,133). In this m om ent, however, the being o f the tree is
not reduced to the being of the man. This m om entary identification
with the tree is similar to Cary’s emphasis on the author’s sympathy
for his character. Dostoevsky, Cary claims, was Ivan while writing
“Pro and C ontra.” T hrough this sym pathy he experienced Ivan’s
argum ents from the inside, even though they contradicted his
intentions as author.
For Buber then, true dialogue with an imaginai other is a reciprocal,
m utual relation in which the other is autonom ous and has the free­
dom to address as well as to be addressed. In such a dialogue one
w ould approach the other w ithout intending to use or even to
“ experience” him or her. For in experiencing, Buber claims, we con­
strue that experience arises from a self rather than between oneself
and the world: “The world has no part in the experience. It perm its
itself to be experienced but has no concern in the matter. For it does
nothing to the experience, and the experience does nothing to it”
(1958, 5). True dialogic relation is not based on verbal exchange, but
rather on the autonom y of the other and one’s openness to the other.
Indeed, there need be no words spoken for such a relation to exist.
Though this meeting occasions the development of the “I,” it radically
mitigates against egocentricity. As dialogue may appear in silence, so
may m onologue be present within dialogue with another. While all
th e linguistic requirem en ts o f dialogue may be satisfied in a
conversation, a relation more akin to m onologue, to “I-It” relation,
may nonetheless prevail.
RELATIVIZING THE EGO 131
For Buber as for Jung, the developm ent o f a sense o f the other’s
autonom y does not entail the self’s subservience to the other’s will;
one does n o t necessarily do w hat a voice m ight say. Instead, the
autonomy of both sides of the relation— “I” and “Thou”— is retained.
“I-It” and “I-T hou” are two modes o f existence which charac­
terize our relationship to others, bo th literal and im aginai. They
correspond to E rich F rom m ’s distinction betw een “having” and
“being:” “In the having m ode of existence my relationship to the
world is one o f possessing and owning, one in which I want to make
everybody and everything including myself, my property” (1976, 12).
In the being mode the other is not incorporated and is allowed to
change. T he o th er is p erm itted to exist in h is /h e r autonom y,
authenticity, truth, and aliveness. From m , in To Have or To Be , traces
the transition from a societal emphasis on “being” to one on “having, “
and sees the rise o f industrialism as a cultural turning point.
Industrialism , From m m aintains, succeeded by virtue o f two
psychological premises:
(1) that the aim of life is happiness, that is, maximum
pleasure, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or sub­
jective need a person may feel (radical hedonism); (2) that
egotism, selfishness, and greed, as the system needs to
generate them in order to function, lead to peace and
harmony. (1976, xxv)
Profit, meanwhile, lost its original meaning o f “profit for the soul”
and began to m ean only material profit.
It may seem farfetched at first to speculate on how these dom inant
them es— which sustain our present culture, and in part breed our
psychologies o f imagination— impinge on our relation to imaginai
others. However if we look at this transition as it unfolded for the
Romantics, we find that while imagination was first lauded for its
“sympathy”— its capacity to free us from a self-centered world and
allow us into the roles o f others— this same chameleon-like activity
o f imagination was later used to expand the limits of the Self, to
enrich the Self with the bounty o f the world. The poet would take on
the qualities o f the other— literal or imaginai— in order to expand
himself. The rhetoric and sales pitches of much contemporary popular
psychology concerning the imagination reflects this shift. We are urged
to “expand our potential” through tapes and exercises that treat the
132 RE-CONCEIVING A DEV ELOPMENTAL THEORY
figures o f the imaginai like consum er merchandise, like pawns of the
ego to be used only for its own enrichm ent and betterm ent. In therapy
where imaginai dialogues can be observed in detail, one often finds
the characters them selves objecting to being treated as the ego’s
objects: being used, being lectured to, being “had.”
In noting these differences am ong imaginai dialogues, we are
moving toward considerations of pathology. Though we have argued
against many of the usual notions o f pathology with regard to the
imaginai we can now begin, from a standpoint of basic respect for
the imaginai, to articulate how the view point presented here might
itself conceive o f developm ent and pathology.
 PART IV

Therapeutic Implications:
YLntertaining Voices
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Voices of Hallucination

B
y now it should be clear that it has been our m odem scientific
conceptions o f reason and reality— and the social conventions
that result from them — that have dictated our psychological
theories o f imaginai dialogues. These same conceptions are respon­
sible for assigning pathology and devising treatm ent strategies. It
should com e as no surprise th at the brand o f im aginai dialogues
com m only referred to as “hearing voices” or “hallucination” should
have fallen prey to historical shifts tow ard secular and scientific
conceptions o f reason and reality— shifts which have led our society
to laud imageless logic as the very apex of reason and thought and to
prom ote the perceptible as the only legitimate reality.
Imaginai dialogues are often looked at askance by clinicians. The
suggestion that a person ought to entertain m ore characters, allow
them greater autonomy, and enable characterizations to unfold which
are more vivid and articulated might lead many to believe that we are
encouraging hallucination, dissociation or fragm entation o f the
personality, a dangerous weakening o f the ego— and perhaps even
that we recom m end becom ing a “split personality.”
However as we have seen, the entertaining o f a multiplicity of
autonom ous and vivid characters is com m onplace in the creation of
literature and the practice of religion, and is hardly synonymous with
pathology. The term “hearing voices” immediately warns us o f the
monological and non-reciprocal nature o f many o f these experiences
where one receives, hears, the voice’s message but does not necessarily
136 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
respond to the voice or engage it in dialogue. It also warns us o f the
often undeveloped nature of the characters involved, as it is often
just the voice that comes to be known.
W hat a culture designates as psychopathological reflects its values
and assum ptions, its goals for thought and behavior. We can see this
when we examine “hallucinations.” The Oxford English Dictionary (1933)
reveals that the word is relatively new, having entered the English
language in 1646 with the Enlightenm ent, and only gaining its present
m eaning in the last century with the births of psychiatry and psychol­
ogy as sciences.28 As a w ord it is derived from the Latin (h)allucinari;
to wander in mind, to talk idly. Its first meanings (in 1652) were “to
be deceived, suffer illusion, entertain false notions, blunder, m istake”
(Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, 1245). In the
nineteenth century it took on its m odern meaning o f an apparent
perception which lacks an object (Larger Oxford English Dictionary, 1933,
44). T he gist o f the earlier definition— to mistake, to entertain false
notions, to blunder— was certainly carried forward and helped allocate
hallucinations to the bins of psychopathology. Gradually the defini­
tions o f “ delusion,” “hallucination,” and “illusion” w ere again
differentiated.29The presence o f hallucinations in persons not suffering
from drug toxicity, neurological difficulties or fever was taken as a
sym ptom o f schizophrenia.
W here had hallucinations been in W estern conceptions before
the nineteenth century? Certainly the experience o f w hat is now called
“hallucination” was n o t an altogether new m ovem ent o f m ind.
Before the rise o f science with its focus on objectivity, and the secu­
larization o f experience, what are now designated as hallucinations,
were probably thought o f as visions: “The action or fact o f seeing or
contemplating something not actually present to the eye;” “something
which is apparently seen otherwise than by ordinary sight; especially
28Sarbin and Juhasz (1967, 1) note the first English use of the word hallucina­
tion in a translation o f Lavater’s Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nygbt in 1572. In
this work hallucinations were “ghostes and spirites walking by nyght, and strange
noyses, crackes, and sundry forwarnynges, whiche commonly happen before the
death of menne, great slaughters and alterations of kyngdomes.”
29Van den Berg (1982a) notes that Asclepiades made use of historical sources
to differentiate between hallucinations and illusions, and that the Asclepian differ­
entiation between these phenomena is much like our modern notions. Despite this
early treatm ent, however, English definitions did not distinguish these phenomena
until Esquirol’s work (1833, 1838) became widely known.
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 137
an appearance o f a prophetic or mystical character, or having the
nature o f a revelation, supernaturally presented to the m ind in sleep
or in an abnorm al state” (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1933, 2363).
While many visions were valued as means o f access to G od and
His angels, to the Virgin Mary and other saints, other visions were
dealt with as blunders. As rem ote as psychiatry’s current notions of
hallucination may seem from the earlier treatm ent o f visions by the
Church and its Inquisitors, the form er derives in part from the latter.
Sarbin and Juhasz have traced the curious history o f how the
mystic and Scholastic treatm ents o f visions became assimilated into
the medical model o f hallucination. Just as the psychiatrist m ust dis­
tinguish between “ordinary” imaginai experience and “hallucination,”
so did the early Church fathers distinguish between various kinds of
visions. The mystics’ treatment of vision is exemplified by St. Augustine
(1967, 354-430), who diagnosed how far removed the vision was from
immediate sense experience. He judged it superior the m ore intel-
lectualized and immaterial it was (as with a Platonic idea) and the further
rem oved from the sounds o f tim e, space, and corporeality. T he
Scholastics, exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), diagnosed
visions no t in term s o f level o f em bodim ent (corporeal versus
intellectual or immaterial), but in term s o f the source and content of
imaginary experience. While visions were valued as bridges between
m an and the supernatural, the region o f the supernatural with which
one was in contact was of the greatest concern. St. Thom as and his
followers had the difficult task of determ ining w hether the source of
the vision was celestial, infernal or natural— w hether the figures were
those aligned with God or those with the Devil.30Their task was further
com plicated by the fact that the Devil was known to tell falsehoods
and to disguise him self in the costum es o f those closest to God.
F ortunately the D evil was m ore likely to appear corporeally than
intellectually. B ut the qu estion o f level could n o t definitively
differentiate between visions. Those visionaries entertaining figures from
’“The psychoanalyst Leston Havens (1981) has proposed that the difference
between saints and hallucinating patients may have to do with the kind or quality
of advice the voice or figure gives the patient. This is a kind of differentiation
based on what the voices have to say, rather than whether they are perceptual or
non-perceptual. It is thus analogous to the older differentiation between the interlocu­
tors, the “who’s,” of imaginai dialogues. Development in this model is described as
“upgrading” the voices who give bad advice, by voices gradually becoming more
like the analyst’s voice.
138 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
non-C hristian m ythology w ere publicly derided, hum iliated, and
som etim es burned at the stake as witches along w ith those who were
considered “dem oniacal or out o f their senses or if the source of
their vision appeared Satanic” (Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967, 341).
St. Ignatius (1491-1556) also concerned him self with the source
o f the vision and created a preceden t for ex post facto analysis o f
hallucination later to be borrow ed by psychiatry: if the effect o f the
vision is good, it is from God; if it is bad, it is from the Devil (Sarbin
and Juhasz, 1967, 342). The m odern version goes as follows: if the
person is considered insane, the imagining is thought of as a halluci­
nation and as bad; if the person is considered o f sound m ind, the
imagining is either creative or strange, but not bad.
St. Theresa o f Avila (1515-1582) is given the critical role o f being
the first religious figure to favor turning over to medicine the diagnosis
o f visions and imaginings. To protect her visionary nuns from the
purges o f the Inquisition, she argued “that certain imaginings may
be the effect o f infirm ities and sickness and, as such, persons experi­
encing them were not responsible” (Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967, 343).
N atural sources such as melancholy, a weak imagination, drowsiness,
and sleep or sleep-like states were seen to vie with celestial and infernal
sources, thus liberating the seer from a negative diagnosis o f dem on
dealings.
While saving visions from the Devil— and thus the visionary from
the stake— this reassessm ent also caused visions to begin to lose their
positive association with G od and the angels. The visionary and her
visions were delivered to the asylum, and there the doctor was given
the task o f diagnosing the reported imaginings o f the patient. He
already knew certain facts about the imaginer— that others suspected
the patient o f insanity, had observed w hat they considered inappro­
priate behavior (particularly inappropriate role behavior), and had
found the patient disturbing to be around. The doctor needed these
other facts to form ulate a diagnosis:
The choice o f words and the syntactical arrangem ent are not suf­
ficient criteria for the diagnoser to make a confident judgment of
hallucination unless he is willing to run the risk o f mislabelling
the imaginai and verbal products o f poets and playwrights and
nearly everybody else. Since spoken or written reports may ob­
scure truth through ellipsis and metaphor, the diagnoser has no
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINA TION 139

choice but to use as his raw data observations other than the spoken
or written reports o f imaginings. These other observations focus
on the psychological status conferred on the suspected hallucina­
tory concurrent with his other statuses, such as mental hospital
patient, poet, novelist, etc. (Sarbin, 1967, 374)
The m edicalization o f the societal approach to imagining was
unfortunate for a num ber o f reasons. While St. Theresa had argued
that it was “as if,” her sisters were ill, medicine dropped the “as if,”
turning m etaphor into fact. This “ fact” then called for doctors to
devise treatm ents for the imaginings that had always existed. Though
the hallucination was no longer labeled in term s o f level (higher or
lower), content, or source (celestial or infernal), the hallucinator was
labeled insane or sick (Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967).
Rather than discriminate between voices the physician needed
only to discriminate between image and “reality” to determ ine whether
or not the reported imaginings were erroneous.
This judgment, just as in the case o f the Augustinian practitioner,
was a rather complex inference requiring great language sophisti­
cation and a large number o f shared concepts on the part o f the
both speaker and hearer. However, because o f the new pseudo­
objective terminology, the practitioner probably considered the
judgm ent to be a simple, scientific diagnosis. For example, a
memory-image o f a picture o f the Virgin that the subject had
seen before would not have been an erroneous image. O n the other
hand, the image (memory-image) o f the village washerwoman, if
called “The Virgin Mary” by the seer would have constituted an
erroneous image. By the scientific rules o f the time, the image of
any mythological figure, if taken for “reality” would have consti­
tuted an erroneous image. The physician was thus called upon to
distinguish between the various senses o f identical words: W hether
they were meant literally [“I (corporeally) now see the Virgin Mary”]
or figuratively [“(It is as if) I now see the Virgin Mary”]. (Sarbin
and Juhasz, 1967, 345-346)
The doctor’s job was to judge the imaginings o f people already con­
sidered insane. The presence of hallucinations was a criterion for
being insane, but a patient’s presumed insanity predisposed the doctor to
judge his im aginings as hallucinations— a diagnosis derived from
circular reasoning.
Esquirol’s (1833, 1838) work set the stage for the consolidation
of the medical m odel of hallucination. He distinguished illusions
140 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
from hallucinations and argued that while illusions may appear in
healthy people, hallucinations are invariably pathological. This meant
that despite people’s com m itm ent to systems of reality different from
that o f m odern science, their visions, in retrospect, could be diag­
nosed as crazy. Socrates, St. Catherine o f Siena, D ante, and countless
others now becam e victims o f the medicalization o f imagination.
In the late 1800s the new psychologists in their treatm ent o f hal­
lucination, looked back to such experiences as the inner voice Socrates
relied upon to adm onish him when doing som ething undesirable to a
god, the being who followed D escartes down streets urging him not
to abandon his search for truth, to Swedenborg’s conversations with
angelic visitors, and to Saint Catherine’s espousal to Christ and called
these all hallucinations, “fallacies o f perception” (Parish, 1897, 39,
77-78). The possible desirability o f such experiences was rarely acknowl­
edged as the em phasis was on differentiating the perceptual from the
imaginai, on establishing the claim that such experiences are internal
and psychological rather than external and “real.” Rather than searching
for distinctions between various imaginai experiences, the focus was
on differentiating the “purely” perceptual from the imaginai.
The psychologists who took part in this m ovem ent began to meet
with protest beginning in the middle o f the last century and continuing
into the present century (Michea, 1846; Brierre de Boism ont, 1859;
Ball, 1883; Gurney and Myers, 1884; William James, 1892). But the
protest was interrupted by World War I and its message faded away
as behaviorism displaced the study o f consciousness, thought, and
imagery (Sarbin and Juhasz, 1967, 352). An interesting opposition to
the equation o f hallucination with pathology emerged at the Interna­
tional Congress o f Psychology in Paris in 1889. Psychologists such as
Sidgewick protested that hallucinations occurred not just in persons
o f “m orbid” personality but in perfectly healthy people as well and
proposed a census (The International Census of Waking Hallucinations
in the Sane) to prove it. In 1894 Sidgewick studied 15,316 people of
good health, who had not suffered from mental illness. He found
that 7.8 percent o f the 7717 m en and 12 percent of the 7599 wom en
reported having hallucinatory experiences. Given the prevalent equation
o f severe m ental illness with the occurrence o f hallucination, it would
not be surprising if the actual percentage were even higher due to
people’s fears o f adm itting to such experience. The census, however,
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 141
did not successfully dissolve the equation between hallucination and
mental illness. Before this equation could be challenged psychology’s
com m itm ent to a scientifically defined notion of reality would have
to be addressed.
O n close inspection of examples of hallucination in the psychiatric
literature, one finds that the term “hallucination” is a general category
for a broad array o f experiences. In all instances it is a pejorative
term . For example, hallucinations can be experienced through all the
sensory modes. They can be experienced as occurring inside or out­
side the body, confused with the perceptual or merely experienced
alongside the perceptual, or fleeting impressions or almost continuous
presences. Fundam ental to the various theories, how ever, is the
notion o f the perceptual or quasi-perceptual nature o f hallucinations
and, correspondingly, their appearance in “norm al” space, be that
inside or outside the physical body. Here we confine our interest to
hallucinations which involve an imaginai figure, although our critique
o f the treatm ent of these kinds o f hallucinations in the literature will
have more general implications for other forms of hallucination as well.
The emphasis in theories o f hallucination lies predom inantly on
the following two com m itm ents and priorities: 1) that which arises
from perception and sensation should be m ore vivid than that which
arises from imagination;31 the objective world, the consensually agreed
upon, should be more vivid than the imaginai and the subjective; 2)
external space should be reserved for perceptual and objectively
verifiable phenom ena. Thus the imaginai, which is subjective, should
be experienced in internal “psychological” space. W hen these rules
are broken— w hen an im aginai figure appears perceptually and
externally, or rivals the perceptual in in ten sity — the resulting
experience is labeled a hallucination. The hallucination breaks in upon
the usual vision o f reality. Pathology becom es coincident with a fail­
ure to experience images as internal an d /o r a preoccupation with
imaginai persons or events that rival the perceptual in intensity or
com prom ise its agreed-upon priority. W hen one experiences an event
31 Sarbin points out that commitment to the assertion that perception and
sensation should be radically distinguishable from the imaginai was falsified over a
century ago by Galton and by the classic experiments of Seashore in 1895, Perky in
1910, and Wilson in 1941. In these experiments images and percepts are confused
by normal subjects “under conditions of poor illumination and sound or in eco­
logical settings that are impoverished for familiar cues” (Sarbin, 1967, 377).
142 THERAPEUTIC IMPEICATIONS
which breaks through the usual conventions concerning the internal
and the external, the imaginary and the perceptual, one can “feel”
crazy or fear craziness. H allucinations m ost threaten those who
conceive o f them selves as “in control” (by virtue of their obedience to
the perceptual).
The usual psychiatric approach to hallucination is one of efficient
cause. T he hallucinator, as a result o f his “inability to discriminate
between thoughts and perceptual experience” (Freeman, Cam eron,
and M cG hie, 1966) or his “failure to m aintain an adequate differ­
entiation between internal experiences and the perception o f experiences
occurring outside the self” (Blatt and Wild, 1967, 18), confuses an
internal thought with the objects occurring in ordinary perceptual
space. Thus hallucination becomes defined as “an internal image that
seems as real, vivid, and external as the perception of an object”
(Horowitz, 1970, 8).
T he usual therapeutic strategy is to “help” the patient return to
the usual no tions and values about reality agreed upon in our
psychology: namely, that w hat is not consensually validated should
be experienced as internal, residing in psychic space; that this inter­
nal experience should not com pete with or im pair relations to “real”
others; that the proper contents o f this internal space are not figures
but thoughts. An example o f this kind o f approach to hallucinations
is given in Leston H avens’ psychoanalytic paper “The placem ent and
m ovem ent o f hallucinations in space: Phenom enology and theory”
(1962). H ere a developm ental line proposed for hallucinations is a
gradual m ovem ent o f the hallucinated presence from outside the self
to inside the self, and ultimately to becom ing integrated into the self.
From H avens’ point o f view the hallucinated figure is experi­
enced in external space in order to satisfy specific needs for external
objects (i.e., people). Havens speculates that in some cases the per­
son, because o f a failure o f introjection, needs an external figure to
com pensate for the absence o f an internal one. For Havens the more
“m ature position” for the imaginai object is “the position closer to
identification” (1962, 432). Thus hallucination becom es defined as
“the substitution o f an imaginary object for a real one that was never
identified w ith” (434). The rule o f thum b is summarized by Jaynes:
“W hen the illness is m ost severe, the voices are loudest and come
from outside; w hen least severe, voices often tend to be internal
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 143
whispers; and when internally localized, their auditory qualities are
som etim es vague” (1976, 91).
Some phenom enologists (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 334/f and van den
Berg, 1982a) have disputed whether the “hallucinator” actually cannot
discriminate between a perceptual experience and a hallucinogenic
one. A lthough their examples and argum ents do not disprove the
existence o f such a lack o f discrim ination, their work introduces
differentiation into the less than subtle “perception vs. fallacies
o f p ercep tio n ” distinction. If one looks closely at first-person
accounts o f hallucinations, one finds accounts where the patient does
not confuse the imaginai voice or figure with his or her perceptions.
In The Autobiography oj a Schizophrenic Girl (Sechehaye, 1951) many
such examples are given by the patient, Renee:
... strident noises, piercing cries began to hammer in my head. Their
unexpectedness made me jump. Nonetheless, I did not hear them
as I heard real cries uttered by real people. The noises, localized
on the right side, drove me to stop up my ears. But I readily distin­
guished them from the noises of reality. I heard them without
hearing them, and recognized that they arose within me.
I threw things to the right, toward the locked French windows
where I localized my Persecutor, the System, Antipiol—pillows,
the water pitcher, my comb. I wanted to chase Antipiol, to crush
him so that I would no longer hear his voice.
Actually in all honesty, I saw no one. I heard no voice. Yet there it
was, not an emptiness, not a silence. There was a considerable
difference between this part of the room and the others. The cor­
ner at the right was alive, personalized; there was someone very
real there, empty though it was.
I continued to respond to voices which, though I actually did not
hear them, existed nonetheless for me.
After I left the hospital I no longer heard Antipiol’s voice. I say
“heard” for I do not know what other word to use to convey the
impression of actually hearing an invisible something occupying a
corner of the room and saying disagreeable things to which I was
obliged to answer. Just the same, I did not really hear them. (42, 62-64)
In these examples the hallucinated figure occurs alongside or
144 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
am idst32 perceived objects but is not seen as the same. Such examples
allow us to differentiate experiences where the imaginai is confused
w ith the perceptual and those w here it is differentiated from the
perceptual but granted an equal or greater priority to objective thought
and reality. T hat these two kinds o f experience are so rarely differen­
tiated in the literature on hallucination— examples o f the latter being
identified as the form er— points to a failure not just on the patients’
parts but on the doctors’; a cultural failure to which doctor and patient
are prone in different ways. Hallucinating people do not ask us to
come and see the figure, to listen for his words. They are aware that
this spectacle, this voice, is in their world and not in the one we share
(van den Berg, 1982b). They create special names for these voices and
their conversations, differentiating them from those we share: “language
magic,” “secret language,” “painful long-distance conversation,” “cold
castigation language,” “court-of-law punishm ent language,” “deadly
language,” “grand onanism concert” (Gruhle, 1929). By this language,
they make clear to us that the disturbing features o f these imaginai
experiences lie in the quality o f relationship between themselves and
the figures— the abusive, cold, distant, judging, deathly forms of being
together. W hen hallucinations are scrupulously imitated by the doctor,
and the patien t given the task o f differentiating this perceptual
experience from the hallucinatory one, all non-delirious patients are
able to tell the difference (Zucker, 1928).
O ur cultural failure is a failure to identify a realm o f experience
which is not hallucinatory in the strict sense o f a confusion with
perception, but whose images rival or supplant the priority given to
the objective. W hen this realm is active, a person
...does not see and hear in the normal sense, but makes use o f his
sensory fields and his natural insertion into a world in order to
build up, out of the fragments of this world, an artificial world an­
swering to the total intention of his being. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 341)
W hen this intention is given attention the interruptive nature of such
experiences— in terru p tiv e to the priority o f in terpersonal and
52Van den Berg (1982b) emphasizes this quality o f the imagining being amidst
the perceptual: “Hallucinating, according to its nature, is to see (hear, etc.) that
which another does not see, amid that which everyone, including the patient him­
self, sees. This ‘amid’ is a prerequisite in the same way as light is a prerequisite of
darkness. To hallucinate means to have a world strictly of one’s own in the frame­
work of reference in the social world” (160-161).
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 145
intersubjective reality— recedes. Too rarely are patients queried closely
enough about the nature o f their “hallucinatory” experiences to
determ ine w hether they are hallucinatory in the strict sense. Such a
distinction does n o t m atter to those w hose p o in t o f view gives
unqualified priority to the objective.33 For instance Havens (1962, 430)
describes a wom an who experiences her dead father as a constant
com panion, sitting on her shoulder and talking to her at length. But
she does not see him. She knows he is dead, and she comes to know
that she should speak to him internally rather than audibly.34 This
experience is m ore like that o f an “imaginary com panion” than of a
hallucination.
In childhood as in ancient Greece, dreams are experienced as
happening in the world— the bedroom, the hall, the closet (Piaget, 1960).
“ Explanations of hallucinations “presuppose the priority of objective thought,
and having at their disposal only one mode of being, namely objective being, try to
force the phenomenon of hallucination into it. In this way they misconceive it, and
overlook its own mode of certainty and its immanent significance since, according
to the patient himself, hallucination has no place in objective being” (Merleau-
Ponty, 1962, 335).
34The person whose imaginings are diagnosed as pathological and/or as “hal­
lucinations” has breached some of the following implicit social contracts (among
others) which resulted in having his or her imaginings diagnosed at all: (1) One
should either attend to the “real” people present, or pretend to do so (Goffman,
1981). If a person speaks aloud to an imaginai figure in the company o f others, he
has openly displayed that his attention is elsewhere. (2) One should not request or
demand, implicitly or explicitly, that other people attend to one’s own inner con­
cerns when one is not attending to these other people (Goffman, 1981). By speak­
ing aloud to an imaginai figure in the company o f others, one demands their atten­
tion to a reality which is not their own. (3) One should not argue that a world one
has access to that others do not equals or exceeds in importance the world that is
shared by all. (4) One should not engage in conversation with “imaginary” people
when “actual” people are present and presumably willing to converse. (5) When
imagining, one should do so internally. One should not experience one’s imaginings
amidst one’s perceptions (i.e., externally). (6) One should ensure that the most
vivid experience is intersubjective experience, not private imaginings. Corollary 1:
Perception of material reality should always be more vivid than imagining. Corol­
lary 2: Material, secular reality should supplant spiritual reality, if the latter entails
entertaining the imaginai figures of a belief system other than the scientific. (7)
One should present oneself as unitary. If multiplicity of self is experienced, it
should be dealt with through forms of speech that do not challenge a unitary
vision of the self (e.g., calling the figures “aspects of myself,” “parts o f myself,”
“my personae,” “representations of people I have experienced in the past”). (8)
O ne should assume responsibility for one’s imaginings: “It is I who create the
characters;” “Even though it may seem like she who did it, it was actually I.”
146 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
In childhood, “The world is sdll the vague theatre o f all experiences”
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 343). Then the child is taught that his experience
is “only a dream :” “ O h, you were only dreaming,” says the helpful,
reassuring parent, who opens the door o f the bedroom closet to show
that there is no lion there. “It is just in your m ind.” T he child is
taught to withdraw fantasy and dream from the world. W hen and if it
appears there again in adulthood the adult, like the child, becom es
terrified; m ore terrified than the child, not because o f the lion but
because o f the fear o f being crazy. W hat the child is not taught in our
culture is that fantasy does sometimes look like perception; how to
differentiate the two when they do look alike; how to make it clear to
others that one can differentiate between them; and how to treat such
experience m etaphorically rather than literally. If one can learn these
things one is not so pressured to turn one’s back on the figures who
so clam or to be heard and understood. The patient whose imaginings
are subject to th e d o cto r’s diagnostic eye m ust be linguistically
sophisticated enough to supply the appropriate qualifiers when un­
der exam ination: “‘It is as if I hear a voice,’ or ‘it appears to be a
ghost,’ or T imaginedI saw the Virgin Mary’” (Sarbin, 1967, 371). W hen
an individual has the linguistic skills necessary to convince the doctor
that he is speaking m etaphorically but does n o t use them , the
individual is involved in a breach o f social contract.
We can approach our preoccupation with hallucination as a by­
product o f our m odern m odel o f mind and reality. Were the imaginai
m ode m ore valued in our culture, hallucinations would m ost likely be
seen as visions, as entrances to another, equally or m ore valued world
than the perceptual. T he externality, vividness, autonomy, perceptual
or quasi-perceptual nature o f some imaginai dialogues would not
appear problem atic. Pathology would have to be redefined in relation
to an alternative vision o f reality and purpose. Hallucinations signal
the power o f the imaginai to intrude on ego consciousness. It is a
p o w er th a t is un w elco m e to th e m o d e rn o rg a n iz a tio n and
conceptualization o f mind, a power that threatens the ego’s sense of
control and reality.
If we were to adjust our priorities the problem atic features o f
imaginai dialogues would not have to do with their experienced ex­
ternality, vividness, quasi-perceptual nature, or the autonom y o f the
figures— as these all contribute to the vivification o f an imaginai
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 147
world— but with those features o f some imaginai dialogues that negate
or flatten the complexity o f each character, making drama superficial
and dialogue either im possible or stereotypic. In instances where the
imaginai is equated with the perceptual, one would hope to allow it a
sense of reality apart from perceptual reality. This is necessary not
only for the sake o f reality testing but also so that the figures can be
heard metaphorically rather than literally. From the viewpoint o f valuing
the dramatic quality o f mind it would not be the quasi-perceptual
quality per se o f an imaginai dialogue that would be worrisom e, but
the quality of relation between self and imaginai other. It is precisely
this focus that Erwin Straus pursues in his classic phenomenological
study o f hallucinations, “Aesthesiology and Hallucinations.”
H allucinations, says Straus, are pathological variations o f the
relationship betw een self and other. In hallucination the relation
between self and imaginai other is m ost often non-reciprocal. The
hallucinator feels reached, touched, spoken to by the other— his
boundaries are intruded upon— but he cannot reach or touch the other.
The self is infinitely reachable, offering no resistance to the other:
“ [The] patient is denied any spontaneous and free survey of the world;
his thoughts being heard, his m ind being read, denote that the barri­
ers o f his intimate life have been leveled off, that the innerm ost sphere
o f his existence has been invaded” (Straus, 1958, 168). Indeed the
Self is characterized by a passivity which “removes the reachable to a
limitless rem oteness” (Straus, 1958, 165). The passivity is often joined
by a feeling of im potence.
The common order of things, in which each object has its place,
with its own limited range and sphere of influence, is no longer
valid. There are no boundaries...there is no organization of space
into danger- and safety-zones. (Straus, 1958, 166)
To reflect, says Straus, one m ust have a space o f detachm ent in
which to stand. While these qualities do not characterize all halluci­
nations, they are true o f a certain class o f hallucinations (often
associated with schizophrenia and paranoia) in which the imaginai
other is an intrusive, condemning, abusive and commanding presence.
O n inspection it is generally only when the hallucinated imaginai figures
take this posture and the hallucinator either responds with acute fear
and passivity or takes action in our shared reality to cou nter the
attacks that hospitalization a n d /o r a diagnosis o f acute psychosis
148 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
occurs.35 T he focal feature is n o t the hallucination’s vividness or
quasi-perceptual nature, but the nature o f the structure o f relation
between self and imaginai other that is a reflection o f that psychical
totality which is called pathological.36This structure o f relation is not
specific to imagining and its “hallucinations,” but characterizes the
person’s relation to “actual” others and their other modes of existence.
Straus stresses the annulm ent o f reciprocity between self and
other in hallucinatory experiences. T he sensory m odalities— usually
our m eans o f gaining access to the reality o f the other— are distorted
and inverted. Rather than being our path o f access to the richness o f
the world, it is the hostile other’s route to the abnegation of our
freedom. Vision is blinded by light rays, by movies projected upon
the self. Audition is deafened and defeated by the willful voices of
the other. O ne cannot defend oneself by rem oving oneself in space
or covering one’s ears. Touch becomes inverted so that while I cannot
touch the other, I am overcome by being sprayed at, blown at, electrified.
The imaginai others turn all their attention on the self. The self
feels that all these voices are concerned only with him:
The Other is a realm of the hostile, in which the patient finds him­
self quite alone and quite defenseless, delivered up to a power
that threatens him from all sides. The voices aim at him, they have
singled him out, and they separate him from all others. He is cer­
tain that they mean him and no other; he is not surprised that his
neighbor can hear nothing. Indeed, he is not surprised at all; he
does not question, neither himself nor others nor things; he does
not test his impressions, nor evaluate them according to general
rules. (Straus, 1958, 166)
3a “In my experience hallucinatory objects are most often helpful, approving
and loving early in the course of their relationship. The paranoid person is hospi­
talized only after this friendly period is over and accusations and reproaches have
set in” (Havens, 1962, 430).
36 The D utch phenomenologist J. H. van den Berg argues, as did Moreau de
Tours (1845) earlier, that “A hallucination like any other artificially isolated phe­
nom enon, can only be rightly observed in a study of the psychical totality, which is
disturbed in some way. This being-disturbed should be the first and foremost sub­
ject o f the study. The result o f the study can only be called satisfactory when it
can be shown that hallucination is possible— even necessary— on the basis o f this
being-disturbed or within the context o f a disturbed existence” (van den Berg,
1982a, 103). Instead of hallucinations being seen as a sign o f pathology, it is the
presence o f a disturbed state that predisposes us to look at the structure and
function o f imaginings. As we have seen, not all hallucinations are troublesome,
nor is the general healthy population exempt from these outbursts o f the imaginai.
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 149

Between self and other there is “no co-partnership, no discursive

elucidation” (Straus, 1958, 166). Dialogue would be rare between such
figures, as would the deepening o f characterization. Contrary to claims
that the hallucinated figures are so vivid that they rival perception,
one finds that their characterization is shallow and superficial. The
voice m ost often appears disembodied and motivations for the figure’s
actions are unarticulated, except from the external perspective— as in
paranoid states when the habitual ego attributes motives to the figure.
The schizophrenic hears voices, not persons. Occasionally, it is
but one voice, but more often it is some, many or “they” voices
emanating from an anonymous group: the Communists, the Masons,
the Jews, or the Catholics. (Straus, 1966, 286)
The relation o f the voices to other characters is not pursued. All
focus is on the self.
Understanding, shared or individual, demands some kind o f indif­
ference, the possibility o f detaching oneself from the impact o f
impressions, o f reflecting about oneself, o f putting oneself into a
general order in which places are interchangeable. (Straus, 1958,
166-167)
But in hallucinatory experience this interchangeability, this indifference
and detachm ent are precisely those qualities that are absent.
In Sechehaye’s The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl, Reneé
realizes when she begins to becom e well that not only have her hal­
lucinations disappeared but the people around her are “no longer
autom atons, phantom s, revolving around, gesticulating w ithout
m eaning,” as were her hallucinated figures. “They were m en and
wom en with their own individual characteristics, their own individu­
ality” (1951, 71). She says of her therapist:
Mama too had changed in my eyes. Before she had appeared like
an image, a statue that one likes to look at, though it remains arti­
ficial, unreal; but from this m om ent on she became alive, warm,
animated, and I cherished her deeply. (71-72)
A t the same time Reneé begins to feel as though she can influence
things. She realizes for the first time that she can rearrange the furniture
in her room : “W hat unknow n joy, to have an influence on things; to
do with them what I liked” (71). As her hallucinations recede, a passive
ego role changes into a m ore active one, stereotypic figures into more
animated and particularized ones.
150 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
In H annah G reen’s account o f schizophrenic experience, I Never
Promised You a Rose Garden, a change in the nature o f the relation
between self and imaginai others signaled psychosis and the need for
hospitalization. Initially D eborah had enjoyed the com panionship o f
gods in an imaginai kingdom called Yr.
Its gods were laughing, golden personages whom she would wander
away to meet, like guardian spirits. But something changed, and
Yr was transformed from a source of beauty and guardianship to
one of fear and pain. (Green, 1964, 61)
D eborah then felt im prisoned in Yr. The Collect chanted curses at
her, as she was “subject and slave to the Censor.” “Once her guardian,
the Censor now turned against her” (62). She did not challenge these
characters as to the justness o f their punishm ent and persecution of
her, but suffered them passively during her period of greatest sickness.
A crucial part o f her therapy was her therapist’s suggestion that she
m ight take a m ore active role.
The doctor rose to mark the session’s end. “We have done very
well this time, seeing where some of the ghosts of the past still
clutch at you in the present.” Deborah murmured, “I wonder what
the price will be.” The doctor touched her arm. “You set the price
yourself. Tell all of Yr that it dare not compromise you in this
search of ours.” (113)
As D eb orah began to fight the m ercilessness o f the C ollect,
becom ing less passive, m ore distanced and reflective, the gods’ char­
acters changed again. Once again D eborah enjoyed their banter, wit,
laughter and poetry. They became “amiable spirits” (268). For Deborah,
successful treatm ent did not necessarily m ean the disappearance o f
her gods, but an increased freedom to join in the world o f other
people, which entailed her being able to disobey her gods and stand
firm against their relentless punishments. She differentiated herself from
their rule.
The tyrannical and punitive nature o f the voices in many halluci­
nations is also evidenced in Perceval’s Narrative: A Patient’s Account of
His Psychosis, 1830-1832 (Bateson, 1974). The period which led to
Perceval’s hospitalization was m arked by voices com m anding what
he should do and think. W hen he would carry out their orders, the
voices would criticize his attem pts to obey, making him feel im potent
and worthless. Perceval relates that during a year o f his illness he
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 151
scarcely uttered a syllable or perform ed an act that was not inspired
by his “spirits.” Perceval understood his cure as coinciding with a
change in how he heard and understood the spirits, not with their
disappearance. In short, he came to realize that “the spirit speaks
poetically but the man understands it literally,” that he was not sup­
posed to do literally what his spirits had dictated but to hear them
poetically. This shift from the literal to the m etaphorical required a
differentiation of self from the spirits so that com m and by the spirit
and obedient action by the self was not a reflexive sequence. The
self learned to stand apart from the spirits and hear them, rather than
surrendering the ability to act and speak to the spirits. Straus remarks
that it is no wonder that in many languages (Greek, Latin, Hebrew,
French, German, Russian, English) “the words ‘hearing’ and ‘obeying’
are derived from the same root” (1966, 281). In English “to obey”
stems from the Latin obaudire meaning to listen from below.
In an anthropological account o f hallucinations, The Spirit Posses­
sion of Alejandro Mamani (Sanders, 1976), a Bolivian Indian commits
suicide to escape the voice o f a spirit. As his tribe was accustom ed to
hearing the voices o f spirits, it was not the presence of the voice that
drove him to desperation but the loss o f his ow n freedom and
autonom y with respect to the spirit. In short the voice would not
stop speaking to him even when he tried to sleep. His activities and
thoughts were constantly interrupted by the spirit’s voice. He felt
im potent, passive, and denuded o f his agency. Ritual ceremonies did
not give him distance from the voice, and so he turned to death as a
means o f silencing his torm entor.
It may at first appear contradictory to say that the person who is
judged to be hallucinating may at the same time be both seeing the
imaginai other egocentrically and feeling overwhelmed and threatened
by the other’s presence. Asking the person to hear the voice o f the
imaginai other might be seen as encouraging a toppling o f the ego.
But perhaps it is precisely the egocentric stance toward the voice that
makes it seem so frightening (he or she is known only from one point
o f view), that increases its degree o f insistence and intrusion into the
conscious life o f the “hallucinator.” W hen a voice is finally listened
to, and not just denied or struggled against, it frequently complains
about how the imaginer never listens to it or takes it seriously.
152 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
D espite different m etapsychologies (phenom enological, Jungian,
psychoanalytic), a num ber o f clinicians have turned to m eet the voices
o f th eir patients, encouraging a m ore active and m utual relation
between patient and voices. Lockhart, in “Mary’s dog is an ear m other:
Listening to the voices o f psychosis,” describes the treatm ent o f a
patient who had been hospitalized for head-shaking and auditory
hallucinations. Lockhart reports that the patient felt “controlled” by
the voice o f his neighbor, Teresa, and com plained o f “being weary
o f being her puppet. He wanted nothing to do with her, resented this
constant sexual battering and wanted to be rid o f her” (1975, 149).
Instead o f focusing on the head-shaking behavior or reality testing,
and instead o f siding with the patient’s desire to be rid o f Teresa,
Lockhart attem pted to create an environm ent where the voice could
be talked to and about. The clinical result was that the voice became
less intrusive and the character o f the imaginai figure changed from
that o f a controlling woman, preoccupied by sex, to a quasi-religious
figure. T he religious aspect, however, did not appear until the patient
had satisfied in fantasy the sexual demands made by Teresa. A relation
o f control was transform ed to one of greater mutuality. In Lockhart’s
w ords, “ O nce an individual begins to relate actively to the inner
images, the controlling nature o f these autonom ous psychic processes
is softened and often transform ed” (1975, 152).
Medard Boss, in Psychoanalysis and IPaseinanalysis, describes a series o f
attem pts to treat an intelligent woman, suffering from visual and au­
ditory hallucinations. At first Boss used D ubois’ “persuasion” method,
trying to help the wom an “gain distance from the ugly visual and
auditory phenom ena by calling them mere hallucinations w ithout any
reality” (1963, 8): no success. Boss then treated them physiologically,
as “expressions and results o f a disturbed m etabolism in the brain
tissues” (8-9), showing the patient an EEG as proof, again with no
success. The wom an laughed at all his physiological and naturalistic
explanations. Boss then conceded to his patient that her hallucina­
tions “were no t sim ply nothing,” but insisted that they did not
“correspond to an external reality, but represented only an internal,
purely psychic reality, consisting o f hidden em otions and tendencies
of the patient herself” (10). He argued that these psychic realities
were being projected onto external objects. But the patient did not
accept this either, objecting to Boss’ attem pts to make mere fictions
THE VOICES OF HALLUCINATION 153

o f the spying figures of her experience, to “dispose o f them as mere

hallucinations and projections of my own unconscious or some other
psychic reality” (10). M uch like Jung, Boss found him self turning to
listen to the voices and to studying their materialization in the patient’s
drawings. The patient said her drawings “come out o f nowhere, just
suddenly appear, emerge from som ewhere behind the drawing paper,
and all of a sudden they are there, looking at m e” (11). They are not
experienced as internal voices but as beings who approach her from
w ithout, indeed who spy on her. The therapy began to move when
Boss finally said to her,
You are perfectly right. There is no sense in granting one reality
priority over another. It would be quite futile for us to maintain
that the fable before us is m ore real than your motorcycling spies
merely because they elude my perception and are perceptible only
to you. Why don’t we let both o f them stand as the phenom ena
they reveal themselves to be? Then there is only one thing worth
our attention. T hat is to consider the full m eaning-content o f that
which discloses itself to us. (13)
Boss begins to hear not just the w om an’s reality o f being the
victim o f spies but to hear the reality o f the spies— that is, that these
spies occur because of two enemies, “mutually barred against each
other and consequently antagonistic to one another, and where one
party wants to annihilate the other or at least to conquer it and bring
it under its own dom inion” (13). From the spies’ point o f view the
wom an has been fighting them off as enemies. Boss, interpreting the
war as the w om an’s rejection o f her own erotic nature encourages her
to stop fighting the spies: “Let the spies come and give them full
pow er to do as they w ish, and just see w hat hap pen s” (14). Boss
reports the wom an now felt understood and placed her confidence in
the treatm ent.
In each o f these cases the voices initially sounded destructive,
intrusive. But this was so not from the voices’ point o f view but from
the ego’s. As a mutual relation was fostered— in place o f ridding,
negating, defensive plays against the voice— it became possible to
see w hat the imaginai figure wanted and how he or she saw the ego.
In each case there was a granting o f reality to the voice, and at the
same time an attem pt to hear it metaphorically, to satisfy it in fantasy.
The voice’s attem pt to control is viewed finally in relation to how the
154 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
ego is treating the figure, rather than as a contextless attack to be
avoided by patient and therapist.
O f great im portance is the fact that im provem ent was brought
about not by arguing the priority o f intersubjective reality over the
preobjective reality o f the imaginai (i.e., not by urgently attem pting
to ensure that the person could differentiate between percept and
image). The work o f doctor and patient was to understand the figure
and to find a m ore reciprocal mode o f relating.

/
 CHAPTER TWELVE
The Fish-Tady and the Tittle Girl:
A Case History Told From the
Points of View of the Characters
Within every[one] there is an inconsolable child.
—Andre Schwarz-Bart
conversation between Tolstoy and Gorky, Gorky reports that
[Tolstoy] rubbed his chest hard over the heart, raised his
eyebrows, and then, remembering something, went on:
“One autumn in Moscow in an alley near the Sukhariot
Gate I once saw a drunken woman lying in the gutter. A
stream of filthy water flowed from the yard of a house
right under her neck and back. She lay in that cold liquid,
muttering, shivering, wriggling her body in the wet, but
she could not get up.”
He shuddered, half closed his eyes, shook his head,
and went on gently: “Let’s sit down here... It’s the most
horrible and disgusting thing, a drunken woman. I wanted
to help her get up, but I couldn’t; I felt such a loathing;
she was so slippery and slimy I felt that if I’d touched
her, I could not have washed my hand clean for a month—
horrible! And on the curb sat a bright, gray-eyed boy, the
tears running down his cheeks: he was sobbing and re­
peating wearily and helplessly: ‘Muum...mu-um-my...do
get up.’ She would move her arms, grunt, lift her head,
and again—back went her neck into the filth.”
 156 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
He was silent, and then looking round, he repeated
almost in a whisper: “Yes, yes, horrible! You’ve seen many
drunken women? Many— my God! You, you must not
write about that, you m ustn’t.”
“Why?”
He looked straight into my eyes and smiling repeated:
“Why?” Then thoughtfully and slowly he said: “I don’t
know. It just slipped o u t...it’s a shame to write about filth.
But yet why not write about it? Yes, it’s necessary to write
all about everything, everything.” Tears came into his eyes.
He wiped them away and smiling, he looked at his hand­
kerchief, while the tears again ran down his wrinkles. “I
am crying,” he said. “I am an old man. It cuts me to the
heart when I rem em ber something horrible.”
And very gently touching me with his elbow, he said,
“You, too— you will have lived your life, and everything
will remain exactly as it was, and then you, too, will cry
worse than I, m ore ‘streamingly,’ as the peasant women
say. And everything must be w ritten about, everything;
otherwise that bright little boy might be hurt, he might
reproach us— it’s untrue, it’s not the whole truth,’ he will
say. H e’s strict for the truth.” (1920, 80-82)
Tolstoy suddenly sees through the gray eyes o f “that bright little boy”
and reverses his stance. A t first he had automatically sought G orky’s
prom ise to ignore the drunken woman. Then through his streaming
tears he becom es aware o f the price o f this ignorance— the little boy.
W ith this insight, the boy begins to gain a voice which confronts
Tolstoy. “ I t’s un true, it’s no t the w hole tru th .” Tolstoy ends up
w anting to write the truth as the boy lives it.
It is just such a shift— from Tolstoy’s point o f view to that o f the
character o f the small boy— that distinguishes a psychotherapy which
respects the autonom y and necessity o f imaginai figures. In such a
therapy one tu rn s outside o f the spontaneous and habitual ego
responses to the characters in order to hear from them o f their truths.
The ego stance changes from ignoring to observing.
W hen thought is heard as dialogical the therapist’s task becomes
one o f helping to make explicit the various voices it contains. As well
as attending to “history” and the “literal” events of daily life, therapist
and patient try to discover the multiplicity o f imaginai histories and
events which the characters make reference to and act from. As a
result o f these tasks case history can no longer be narrated by the
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 157
therapist in an om niscient style, largely from an external point of
view. Case history needs to reflect the psychic multiplicity uncovered
in the therapy, allowing the characters to tell their stories from their
own points o f view.
Because in a case told from the characters’ point o f view the
process of therapy recedes into the background, let me begin with
some procedural details. In this kind o f therapy the whole room is
used as a place of enactm ent. There is freedom to move, to lie down
on the floor, to enlist the therapist as a co-character, to scream or cry.
This freedom is established to facilitate the unfolding of the characters.
The patient may speak about w hat has happened during the week,
but there is often a move to who was involved imaginally-—which
characters— and how the event was seen from their different per­
spectives. In a way, one is asking “W hat is the dream o f this event?”
“W hat is the imaginai background?”
For instance if som eone complains o f depression, we need to
know what the imaginai sense o f the depression is and who, which
character(s), suffer it. Is the scene of the depression a parched m oon­
scape, an isolated bog o f quicksand, or a bleak room ing house? Does
one’s depression express itself as an abandoned child, an aging man,
a struggling single m other taking care o f everyone? Even when the
person identifies at first with the depression (“It is just me who is
depressed”), he can often give hints to the images beneath: “I feel so
old;” “I feel like I never want to leave my bed, like an invalid;” “I
draw the curtains shut, so it will be like night inside.” In som e
depressions, as in this case, the external picture may appear fine,
“ correct.” He may have a job, primary relationship, friends, perhaps
children. But within m om ents the individual may be painfully aware
o f not really feeling alive. Daily life may be experienced as a sequence
o f prescribed motions that “should”— are calculated to— give pleasure
and fulfillm ent but do not.37
In the case presented here38 o f a wom an in her late thirties, the
depression was suffered by the character o f a child.39 W hen the
37Marion Milner (pseudonym Joanna Field) describes this kind of depression
in A Life of One’s Own (1981). See also Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child (1981).
38 Gratitude is extended to “Laura” who allowed two years of her psycho­
therapy and imaginai dialogues to be audiotaped, transcribed, and shared here.
39For readers interested in pursuing the significance of the imaginai child, see
Hillman (1973), Bachelard (1969), and Jung and Kerenyi (1949).
 158 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
wom an’s thoughts were listened to closely the small child’s voice could
be heard.
Therapy usually com m ences with the presentation o f the ego’s
point o f view about what is w rong and how it m ight be “ fixed up.”
Beginning active im agination and imaginai dialogues does not solve
this dilemma, for one usually finds oneself taking the ego’s point o f
view toward the characters. For instance with the imaginai child this
often means that the child’s dem ands are seen as “childish.” O ne is
willing to speak to the child now if there is a guarantee that by doing
so the child will grow up and cease to be a nuisance. The child’s
feelings and w ants are experienced as yet ano th er burden to be
navigated.
The woman, Laura, would initially be hopeful that the child would
grow up. She would inquire about the child’s age with eagerness, feeling
a sense o f im provem ent if the child said she was ten rather than eight
and a sense o f defeat if all at once the child turned baby or repeated
the same scene at the same age over and over again.
The naturalistic developm ent o f a child growing up is not coinci­
dent with imaginai development. The first step in imaginai development
is for the child’s story to be heard m ore on its ow n term s, and less on
the ego’s. Several things can help prom ote this process. At times when
the habitual ego’s point o f view and the child’s are radically opposed,
and one can tell it is not letting the child be heard w ithout rushing in
with objections and negations, one can have the child talk directly to
the therapist. T he therapist acts like a novelist might. She wants to
know w hat the world is like to that character. She is interested in how
the child sees the ego point o f view and other relevant characters.
Therapist and patient try to be like Conrad’s narrators— persons in
whom others feel com pelled to confide. The characteristics o f the
narrator m ust, therefore, change as the confidant varies. In this case
the child loved to talk in the session. W hen Laura talked the whole
time, Little Laura was angry and would begin to ask for time for
herself. A second helpful thing is to search out the personification(s)
of the ego’s point o f view. Once it too can be treated as a character,
whose perspective is im portant but only partial, the person’s narrator
can m ore freely arise. The narrator’s position is like that o f the thera­
pist. H e or she has less o f an investm ent in any particular character
over another and is m ore interested in the unfolding o f the drama
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 159

between the characters. The narrator is an observing presence who

can reflect on and mediate between the other characters.
Let us try to begin our case from the characters’ points o f view.4"
O ur story begins therefore with a young girl, “Little Laura,” who felt
chronically abandoned by my patient. H er father had died when she
was a child. H er m other had not cherished her aliveness. Then she
found herself with my patient, whom Little Laura reported most often
ignored her, tried to lock her out o f im portant life decisions (whom
to marry, whether to have children, what to do professionally). At
times she said she had felt so pushed out o f the body and threatened
with extinction that she had gotten my patient into physical accidents,
partly as revenge for being so excluded. She thinks another character
is trying to kill her by pushing her out of the body.
The wom an the imaginai child spoke of, Laura, arrives at the first
session o f therapy depressed. She begins to cry. She has recently had
her third child. D uring the pregnancy she began to feel m ore and
m ore alone. She is now housebound again and separated from full
involvement with her work. She struggles with her oldest child, with
whom she often feels colder and tighter than she would like. “W hat
is this marriage?4041 This family? This house?” she wonders— where
she feels so alone, so far from fulfilling her ambitions? Too many
responsibilities, too little time, too many things she wants to do— a
story familiar to many wom en in their thirties, torn and bloodied by
conflicts among the things they love. W ho are the forces in this battle?
W ho first complains that life is not livable as it is currently arranged?
Little Laura. Laura feels the sadness o f this child and hopes that by
paying her some attention she can be made to grow up and cease
being so disruptive.
But when Little Laura is allowed to speak she makes it clear that
her goal is not to grow up but to be allowed to live and exist. At first
she feels alm ost dead and acts extremely passively.
Something is draining off the juice and making me get
smaller... Something is making me dizzy. I don’t know
40The words of the characters, Laura, and the therapist are as originally spo­
ken and recorded in the sessions.
41 Hillman (1973) speaks of the necessary relation between the abandoned imagi­
nai child and marriage: “Because every home established, every nest, niche or habit
offers the abandoned child a sanctuary, marriage unavoidably evokes the child” (367).
 160 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
where my weight is. I don’t feel like myself anymore. Like
someone’s trying to sabotage me. And I feel stiff. I feel
like someone is trying to kill me, to stop me from mov­
ing. Everything is atrophying, nothing is going to be any
good anymore.
As we speak m ore to her she gives her own history, which borrow s
som e events from Laura’s life but puts different em phasis on them.
For her the death o f her father and her best friend are the m ost im­
portant events. T he ego point o f view thought that these events had
been m ourned enough, and would ask, “Will I always keep crying
over this my whole life?”— fearful that she would becom e “stuck” on
it. T he little girl returns to her grief over this abandonm ent again and
again. She feels that the father enjoyed and supported her liveliness,
let her play spontaneously and was pleased by her inventiveness. W hen
the little girl begins to feel m ore alive, she experiences at the same
m om ent the deep sadness over the father’s absence. If one sided with
the ego’s p o in t o f view, on this m ourning— th at it was possibly
pathological— and did not give it space, one would be denying the
child her liveliness. And so she cried and cried. T he habitual ego
point o f view is m irrored in the character o f the M anager or the
Organizer. This organizing one finds crying about the dead father
acceptable only if one cries and then never cries again. She feels
“embarrassed over being attached to these dead people. It is indecent. “
The second part o f the little girl’s life that m ost preoccupied her
was how she was never consulted about the m ajor life decisions Laura
had made: W hat job to take and how to do it, whom to marry, whether
to have children, and if so how many. As our speaking with her seemed
to bring her m ore to life, her depression took the form o f anger. She
felt the only way to survive was for Laura to leave her family behind.
The child in a session speaks to me about Laura:
Little Laura-, I just don’t think it is fair to let her win like
this. It’s just the same thing every time she gets to talk.
And she talks about love, and intimacy and everything
and then she wins, because those things are always al­
lowed to win. Last time she went to a therapist she won.
He said she should get closer to her husband and be more
intimate with friends. She may say she doesn’t want me to
die, but she won’t do anything. No one likes me anyway.
There’s no use talking. I don’t want more time. I don’t
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 161
want to deal with it. I don’t want to keep making all those
compromises. I want to get out. This is the last straw.
There is nothing left for me. I know I’m going to give in.
I’ll take what you give me, Laura, and try to make some­
thing with it.
Here Little Laura cries for a long time and then says,
But it doesn’t feel like I can do it. It doesn’t feel like there
is anything left. It feels like a fiction that I ever did any­
thing. You can’t keep doing nothing and expect that the
thing will survive. If you don’t do the work for years and
years you’re not that anymore. It’s ridiculous.
W hen finally given a chance to speak she would rail against the con­
ventions she assumed had blotted her out: m arriage and m otherhood.
Therapist-. So you feel betrayed by the compromises.
Little Laura-. Sure.
Therapist As though they were done just to appease you
rather than having your interests in mind?
Little Laura-. Yes. They were done because I would insist
on them sometimes. But when it comes to making a big
decision about whether or not to have a baby, then I don’t
get to talk. She’s [Laura] too strong. It’s only if there are
little decisions afterwards then I get to vote. So that when
we were pregnant I could go take classes—well three week­
ends away doing a workshop. It really was a farce. I’m
allowed to feel productive for a little tiny piece of time.
It’s not enough time, it’s not enough to keep something
going. It’s just enough to keep the edge off. So I don’t
feel completely empty and dead, but I’m no fool. I get
taken in by it and I feel a little better. I’ll think I want to
go away for a few days to work, but it is foolish. It is
nothing real. I don’t know what I want. What I’m saying
is I want to quit. I don’t want to have this family. It’s just
pissing me off that she can win by saying, “This feels
good,” or “I love somebody, “or you know, it’s like that’s
the only thing that is important. It wins without explana­
tion. I have to explain everything. If I want to do something
I have to explain why it is important, it has to be part of
a big plan. It’s not enough for me to just want to live in
another place or go someplace because I want to do it. I
have to have a reason. It has to be part of a career plan,
and she [Laura] doesn’t have to have a reason. I don’t
162 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
know who it is we arc explaining it to. But it is like there
is somebody deciding who’s right.
Therapist Like a judge.
Tittle Taura\ Yes, somebody who decides how the time is
spent, whether it is more important to get the mold out
of the refrigerator or get ready to do some work. I just
don’t think it is fair that she gets to win all the time.
For a long time Laura assumed that the child stood for her work,
that the child wanted to leave the household to do intensive work. It
was true that Little Laura was interested in some o f the work, but she
was not reducible to it. Equating the child with creative work was a
way o f justifying time spent with Little Laura to the Organizer. At
times the child herself would use this rationalization. At other times,
she was able to ask for attention w ithout having to prom ise to
produce things in return.
The third im portant thing to Little Laura was reliving her baby­
hood with her m other. The child as a baby does not want to move
forward in space. She holds her breath and has a hard time talking.
She says to her m other: “Are you going to stay? Will you lie down
with me for a little while ?”
Tittle Taura to Mother. I want you to lie down with me,
against my back. Put your arm around me...
Therapist to Tittle Taura-. What does your mommy say or
do?
Tittle Taura to Therapist Oh, just that she wants to get on
to the next thing.
Tittle Taura to Mother. I want you to lie down next to me,
and go to sleep...just close your eyes. I don’t want you to
look at me, I don’t want you to think of me. Just lie down
now and go to sleep. Don’t think about anything. Noth­
ing. You stay there...don’t go... You stay there and don’t
go. I want it to be all dark. I want to lie there in the dark,
and just be a shape. You wait. You can dream...but no
thinking. OK? It’s like we could be floating...like in a
boat. You used to do it, you used to... Why not? But you
did. I want you to be there right against my back. Like
there is some kind of weight on my spine. I don’t want you
to be lying there and thinking about when you have to go.
It is tem pting to understand this scene between a m other who
does not w ant to just be with her child, who is driven to organize and
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 163

do things, and a child who can hardly breathe or talk in her presence,
as a m etaphor for Laura’s experienced relation to her actual m other.
We could say that this essentially uninterested m other made the father’s
support all the m ore missed and longed for. T hat may well be so.
However, it is also true that Laura has m ost often taken this role of
abandoning busy m other to the imaginai child. She may prom ise to
spend some time with the child, but this can be easily avoided by
claiming to have lists o f things to do or by merely not being present
to the child during the appointed time. A bandonm ent by m other and
the death of the father was not som ething solely in the past, but a
daily situation for the child.
So far we have presented L ittle Laura in her abandonm ent,
depression, despair and anger. But as the m otif o f the divine child in
m ythology and literature shows, these are accompanied by some sort
o f magic and wonder (see Jung and Kerényi, 1949).
Laura as N arrator did struggle to find time to spend with Little
Laura. And as she became m ore successful at this— which m eant be­
ing the go-between for Little Laura and the Organizer, the child and
the wom an who longed for the security o f her family— the magic
emerged. There began a process where Little Laura, who had been
forced out o f the body, began to take a part o f it. W hen the child was
given space in Laura’s body, the body loosened, relaxed. A t times, it
felt as though the body and her energy were becom ing huge, like a
gigantic balloon, taking up the whole room. At other times the child
was experienced as a region o f the body, or as a round hole in the
solar plexus that allowed direct entrance to the world. Little Laura
was now open in spirit, loved to play, to imagine. She did not yell at
Laura’s children, but jostled and joked them into obedience. She ended
up not always disliking the dom estic scene and seeing it as her dow n­
fall, because as Laura allowed Little Laura to be present in her intimacy
with her family, depression was lightened, and the time she spent
with her family becam e m ore enjoyable, m ore pleasurable. Little
Laura’s dem and that Laura leave her family had been very strong in
the beginning. As Jung warned in his autobiography (1961, 187), it is
extremely im portant not to literalize at first what a character asks for.
Little Laura wanted life, and once this was more assured, she talked
more lovingly o f Laura’s husband and children.
 164 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
U nfortunately Little Laura was very vulnerable, and Laura’s rela­
tion to her was tenuous to begin with. T he O rganizer was much m ore
developed, and would squeeze the child out, taking over not only
decision-making, but the body as well. Just as the actual m other had
sent Little Laura back to the classroom after inform ing her o f her
father’s death, so the Organizer left no time for feelings. It would
take a while for the N arrator to realize that the body was tight and
dead, Litde Laura depressed and angry and the status quo strengthened.
It was not enough to be on the side o f Little Laura. In order to make
room in her life for the spontaneity, creativity, and liveliness o f the
child, the N arrator needed to know inside and out the forces, the
characters, who opposed the child. The characterization o f each one
was deepened as the others became m ore articulated.
A t first we m ight see the M anager-O rganizer as a dictatorial
wom an, im m ersed in a mania o f doing, o f endless details. She is
tense and somewhat shallow, working like an autom aton w ithout a
deep sense o f meaningful priorities or heartfelt com m itm ents. We
m ight side too m uch with the little girl’s anger against her. But just as
we did not want to assume the absolute correctness o f the ego’s view
o f Little Laura, we do not want to accept as im partial the child’s view
o f the Organizer. We want to move into the Organizer’s autobiography
and point o f view.
O ne day Little Laura had been relentlessly dem anding that Laura
leave her home.
Tittle Taura to Taura\ You got to let me up. And I’m really
going to give it to you and you’re really going to have to
do what I want. And that’s going to mean that you really
have to leave this time. You know there is no compromise.
You are getting too old. This is too important.
The O rganizer who wanted the hom e felt torn apart.
Organiser to Therapist I feel like everything will be torn
into tiny little shreds, and that I won’t be able to hold
onto anything. It will all be in shambles. I just see this
mess, this big mess. I feel like she is going to burst through
me.
There are little tiny pieces of paper and things are
kind of floating, like there is no gravity. And things being
shredded and fragmented. But as though the people were
in pieces too.
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 165

At one point when Little Laura was criticizing the Organizer, the
latter said that she had to make her body stiff, because “otherwise I
feel like I’m floating away and drowning.” As the O rganizer’s vulner­
ability appeared, the Narrator could better protect her, and Little Laura,
feeling more space, grew less bitter. Their warring would only recur
when Laura had been out o f touch with the child.
The Organizer also misses the father but is too afraid o f these
feelings to acknowledge them. She’s afraid that her sadness and longing
are intolerable. And so she sets about accomplishing things on lists,
trying to keep up a pace that would not allow for feelings. As Laura
spent m ore time with Little Laura, the Organizer appeared m ore re­
assured that the feelings would not overwhelm her, or destroy her home.
This awareness initiated a new phase in their relationship— one
in which the Organizer did not stand in opposition to Little Laura
and later to the Fish-Lady, but tried to aid them. And also, where the
later characters o f the Fish-Lady and the N arrator became m ore aware
o f the O rganizer’s values and fears. The other side o f the O rganizer’s
trying to accomplish things was her desire to be safe and protected.
The N arrator says o f her, “She is afraid o f being hurt, afraid of
doing things that will hurt her back, afraid that she won’t get enough
to eat. She will always make sure she eats som ething before she goes
out o f the house. She is meticulous about seeing that the children get
enough to eat. If she is tired, she wants to go to bed.”
Instead o f experiencing the M anager or Organizer as a dictator,
she begins to be seen as som eone who tries her best but who needs
help in order to make correct decisions. H er qualities o f organization
and planning begin to be admired.
Laura to Therapist I really need to keep up the dialogue
with Little Laura. If I don’t do it I feel like the Organizer
always misinterprets things. She can’t quite get it. It is
always a little wrong in the direction of trying to make
sense out of every single thing.
It’s almost like the Organizer doesn’t have any sense
of her own...just like a computer. So if I don’t put in
enough of the right information she gets it wrong and
tries to make things orderly
I’m afraid of her. I misinterpret too what she is doing.
She’ll set up an order of doing things and I’ll say “Oh,
OK we have to do this and that,” instead of realizing that
166 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
she is just doing the best she can with what input there is.
Every time I’m quiet about it and say “OK this is what
we have to do” then it doesn’t occur to her to ask me.
And that’s the problem, I wait to be asked. “Is this OK?
How are you feeling? Are you still there?” And some­
times she just forgets to do that. She wants everything to
be under control.
Little Laura also had initially felt sabotaged and drained, but was able
through Laura’s and the N arrator’s attention to her to have periods
of vitality where she gives freely back to the N arrator. She makes a
joke, gives some advice and reassures. In one session the N arrator
was anxiously inquiring how the child was: “Does she feel cheated or
m iserable?”
Little Laura to Narrator: I don’t know why you expect me
to be miserable. You seem to want me to feel bad. I feel
fine. No, I don’t feel miserable. You spent a long time
talking to me this morning, and you’ve been talking to me
every day. [Here there is a change. Little Laura for the
first time responded to attention. She doesn’t feel de­
pressed or cheated despite the habitual ego’s still think­
ing of her as weak.]
We’re doing a lot of the work, I think. You’re trying
to find out where I am in your body, what helps me move
around and go down deeper. That’s all quite fun for me. I
think you get all cramped up when you do the other work.
[Here there is a beginning of reflection back to the Nar­
rator.] You probably need some exercise or something to
help you feel more released. As soon as you arrive in the
morning you start working. You could take ten minutes
and dance you know. Or fool around and you don’t do it.
Maybe I’m a little relieved not to have you pay so much
attention to me. I feel like I’m getting stronger. This is a
good relationship here. Here you’ve got a project to work
on, and I can kind of work on my own and feel stronger
and more solid without any danger that I’m going to miss
anything. Later you’ll spend more time with me.
Decision-m aking has gradually undergone a radical change. W hereas
initially Little Laura was too weak to speak up, now the multiplicity is
acknowledged by child, N arrator, and Manager. W hen a decision is to
be made, one o f them says “Hold it— a conference” and after each
side has its say, some sort of com prom ise is worked out.
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 167
Little Laura is not just “in” an imagination, she has an imagination and
loves to fantasize spontaneously. She did not want to be constrained
to being in Laura’s w orkroom or my therapy room. W hen asked where
she would like to be or where she was, Little Laura had no difficulty
describing the imaginai scene surrounding her.
Little Laura to Laura and Therapist I’m imagining Chris
[Laura’s son] and I are going sledding. It’s a fairly big hill
with lots of little hills. The snow is pretty deep. As we
walk along he keeps falling down. He’s singing. And then
we pretend we are opera singers. [She sings aloud.] We
sing back and forth to each other. Then we get up to the
top of the hill. And then he gets scared of going down,
and he says he doesn’t think he can go down. But he is
kind of enjoying being scared. Then I lay down on the
sled and he gets on top of me. When we go down the hill
it is very quiet, and late afternoon. There is a bump and
he shrieks and yelps, and grabs on to me like he is going
to fall off. When we get to the bottom there is an open
field. He says, “Let’s do it again, Let’s do it again.” I say,
“Wait a minute I want to sit here for awhile.” I have a
battle with myself as to whether I want to really walk all
the way back. Then it seems like the playing is over. He’s
a little tired. He keeps stopping to look at things as we
walk home. Instead of walking back, we decided to walk
through the woods.
As Little Laura gained in aliveness, assertiveness, and spontaneity,
an interesting shift occurred. Laura went to the aquarium one day
and realized that the “inner person who always wants to move is
identified with a fish, where the tail moves as much as the rest o f the
body, the whole spine. T hat’s the sort o f m otion she always wants to
do. So sometimes now it feels like I’ve got a fish trapped inside o f a
cage, and the cage gets rigid sometimes and doesn’t let the fish move
at all.” A t first the Fish-Person alternated between being a Fish-Child
and a Fish-Lady. Then there was a clear differentiation between the
Fish-Lady and Little Laura. The Fish-Lady increased dem ands for
m ovem ent and imagining. She was not concerned with the loss of
her father any m ore— that was left to Little Laura. Little Laura wanted
to move too, to jump and wriggle, but not in as sexual a way as the
Fish-Lady did.
 168 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
I purposely describe this development as a differentiation and
not a split. From a psychoanalytic theoretical point of view this addition
of another character would seem like a regression, since a goal is to
integrate the voices into one. I, however, am approaching characters
from a dramatic point of view. In drama, a single character can be­
come more and more complex, but it cannot include in itself the full
range of possible characters without losing the distinctiveness of each
unique point of view. As the spontaneity and vitality of the child
grew it was more aptly expressed as fishiness than as childishness.
This did not mean that the child had grown up in some naturalistic
fashion. Little Laura became more childlike and eventually became
differentiated into two separate children.
As mentioned, the Fish-Lady demanded that Laura’s life should
include her even more.
Fish-Lady to Laura: I don’t understand. You figure all this
stuff out and then you get into this trap where you can’t
feel good and you can’t move around, and you think that
every tiny concession you make to me is a big deal. I
don’t see why it is such a big deal. You feel as though
what I want is unnatural or like there is something wrong
about it, it’s not something you’ll let yourself go after. It
seems to me like it ought to be like eating or sleeping.
You treat it like it were a chocolate soda. Something real
special that you can only do when there’s a lot of time. I
mean even if you don’t have time to eat, you can have a
snack, throw something in your mouth. I mean I guess
that’s what you’ve been doing the last couple of days.
The Fish-Lady voices her complaints against the Organizer to Laura
and the Therapist:
Like she—the Organizer—has the ability to decide what
she wants and then she goes and does it. I don’t have that
ability quite. It’s as though I don’t have any legs. So I can
only say what I need and then I have to get someone else
to set me up to do it. And I feel like I ought to be growing
legs but I don’t know that I can do it any faster.
And the Organizer answers back:
Well, I guess really that I don’t like water, I don’t like to
get wet, or to be suspended, to be in a state where I don’t
have structure. I don’t like not knowing what comes next.
Like you got out on the porch to make a snow angel and
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 169

you didn’t know what to do next. That makes me uncom­

fortable. You’re crawling around on the floor doing exer­
cises and that makes you feel good, but I don’t know what
that leads to ... I wish that you didn’t need all that kind of
thing. I wish that we could just go to work somewhere
and go get a job, and have that separate from home. That
way home and work would be separate. At night the job
would be finished. This way I feel like you resent every­
thing that I do, you resent every kind of job that I have to
do. And I resent all of the demands you make. I feel like
I have to give in to you or else you’ll get really mad. I
would like things to be more cut and dry. A list of things
to do and then do them. And when I’m done with what
I’m supposed to do then I could feel alright about it.
Laura to Therapist She’s [the Organizer] saying she’d rather
not have a body, but I think it is also not having any feelings.
She holds her breath.
But the scenes of the first phase are still mainly there— namely, that
there is a willingness on the O rganizer’s part to help out, if she knows
what to do. Laura asks the Organizer:
Laura-. How do you feel if this stuff goes into my body
and the Fish-Person gets bigger? And specifically if she
gets a tail?
Organiser. That would be great, because then I would know
what to do.
Laura-. It’s like the tail would be the thing that steers you.
Organiser. You see I’ve been going around and planning
things. You know. But I don’t know where you want to
go. I do it with the eyes. But if you just got down to your
tail then you could steer it.
Laura to Therapist It was the first time she has been nice
to this other one or even made a joke or anything. And
then the next week I was feeling very high after some
work. I said to the Fish-Person, “What would you eat under
these circumstances?” The Fish-Person said: “Caviar and
sushimi” [laughter], and that was her first joke.
Just as Little Laura had at first spoken only to Laura and had then
practiced being present during our sessions, then with her family and
then outside the home, so too the Fish-Lady began to want to go
outside the confines o f the work room and the therapy room . She
says to me:
170 THERAPEUTIC IMPEICATIONS
Fish-Lady: I always like it if I get a chance to try some­
thing outside my room. Sometimes I try in the supermar­
ket for a little bit.
But she fears that other people w on’t accept her:
Fish-Lady: When I am with others, I can feel like I am
drowning. Like I’m breathing in water like a fish and all
of a sudden someone says, “My God, you’re breathing
water.”
Still, she continues:
Fish-Lady. I don’t like the feeling of developing all this
energy and then being all enclosed and alone. There is no
way for it to travel. The image is that I need some kind of
a corridor or a space or a direction. That I can see where
it is going, so it is not just...so it can unfold into some­
thing else. I feel partly like I don’t have any eyes yet. We’ve
been working on my tail and back. But I can’t see.
Therapist How could Laura help you with that?
Fish-Lady. Maybe one thing I would like to do is go places
and look at things I’ve never seen before. I get into a
panic about what to do with the energy. I get to the edge
of the room and there is nowhere to go. I need to see that
there is something outside the boundary that I can go to.
I get in a panic that there is nothing out there. So when
the energy gets high I stop. I don’t want to get sort of out
and feel like I’m on a cliff [cries] and nowhere to go.
Therapist So Laura needs to bring in some things from
outside or to take you out so there are some things to
have dialogues with, to pull your energy in a certain
direction.
Fish-Lady Yes. I don’t like that feeling, where I feel like
I’m alone [Fish-Lady cries].
It becom es clear to Laura how to bring forth the Fish-Lady:
Laura to Therapist I’ve been doing fine as long as what I
am doing is to get the fishy side to be bigger, feel good,
relax and it seems more and more that it is a lot of ques­
tion of tension in the body. That once I relax certain
muscles she just comes out. She’s much more susceptible
to that. I’ll just start breathing or working on my spine
and little by little I’ll feel filled up. Often I’m only filled
up to here and then I’ll have to work on my neck, so she
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 171
comes also into my head. She is more alive and playful. I
have spent a lot of time slowly trying to do that...
It feels like what I’ve been doing is working on the
body so she can be more present, like taking the lid off
the bottle so the genie can come out. And now it is like
that feeling that the genie gets too big for the bottle, needs
more room than the bottle.
Indeed the Fish-lady says, “I feel like my job is to get the body working
again.” She begins to make clear her priorities o f being in a clear
state, o f “really feeling here.”
Fish-Lady: I don’t feel like anything has happened until
we’ve gotten into a certain state... Just saying, “Well how
about if we work for an hour?” isn’t enough. It could be
that I just wander around the room or something.
The Fish-Lady pushes to clarify who becomes out o f focus and sleepy
during work times. It was often Little Laura who wanted her Daddy.
At times the clear “ state” would occur outside the context of
work and in the world.
Laura to Therapist-. I felt much more grounded in Wash­
ington than I usually feel. I felt like I was finding some­
thing out. It was just a feeling of being much more wher­
ever I was all the time, like right in a place. Its that sort
of feeling you have when details just sort of leap out at
you, and you really just see where you are. It wasn’t hap­
pening all of the time. There are times when I am in the
mood and everything seems beautiful or like a painting.
It wasn’t like that. More of a feeling of weight, of feeling
right there... I didn’t feel like I had to run around all the
time. I felt more than I ever do that I had some idea of
what I wanted next all the time. Without having to wait
for it.. .there weren’t any in-between things going on. This
time it was much more like breathing and eating. Then on
the drive to Philadelphia, it was really an interesting feeling,
sort of the same thing, but I was driving. It is almost like
a texture, more than a feeling or a thought. I think it is
like there is less distance between myself and the world, I
have come out of myself more. The road felt closer. It
felt like the car was lower down on the road. That I didn’t
have to go at a particular tempo, and if there was a jam at
a toll booth, I didn’t care, which is very unusual for me. I
had the feeling that—I thought about what we had talked
172 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
about, about the quality of being abandoned. And at some
point I said to myself on this drive, “I am my own father.
I am going to take myself on this drive the way he would
take me on this drive.” And that’s all. So I was doing for
myself what I can do for my son.
W hat were som e o f the changes these imaginai dialogues encour­
aged? T he presence of the imaginai child changed her relations with
both her husband and her children, adding a certain playfulness and
flexibility to daily events. Work, family and the wiggling m ovem ent
of the fish did not seem necessarily antithetical anymore. H er work
was re-grounded from a carrying out o f w hat the O rganizer thought
she “should” do (a m ore superego, driven approach), to a waiting and
nurturing o f inspiration from Little Laura and the Fish Lady. Laura
felt less torn apart by the conflicting points o f view, though it was
clear she needed to work to retain an awareness o f the multiplicity o f
voices who shaped her inner life in order to m aintain her energy and
working relationships am ongst the characters.
T he depression which had opened the door to this drama gave
way to em otional energy and bodily aliveness, as the voices were al­
lowed to express themselves. Laura learned that m ore im portant than
the results o f her actions was to achieve a way o f living daily life
with the openness, vitality, and vibrancy so characteristic of the Fish-
Lady. Before one becom es aware o f the characters within thought
and action, one often successively identifies w ith them , unconsciously
becoming one and then another. For instance one spends the morning
moving as the Organizer— frantically, breathlessly bringing to view
other tasks to be done before the one at hand is com pleted. T hen one
lapses into the depression o f Little Laura in the afternoon— that one
who cannot yet feel her body, who is sensitive to abandonm ent. Once
these identifications can be seen one can both begin to be aware of
when the identifications are shifting and begin to interact with the
particular characters rather than just being subject to them . O ne
becom es aware that none o f the voices can tell the whole truth, though
each has an im portant story to relate. Dialogue with the characters
can gradually supplant im m ersion in them. These shifts bring about
the change from literal to psychological and m etaphorical modes of
understanding.
W hen one is identified with a character, let us say the abandoned
child, reality ceases to be multifaceted. Reality becomes the child’s
THE FISH-LADY AND THE LITTLE GIRL 173
reality, with all its instances and proofs o f rejections, its m om ents o f
subjugation. W hen the narrating ego is taught to watch for identification
and to dialogue with (or at least listen to) the characters’ m onologues,
then “reality” can be seen from different points o f view. From the
perspective which sees thought as essentially dramatic therapy does
not on all occasions aim at increasing identification and unification,
but often at increasing differentiation and interaction. This experiencing
o f the self— as a collection o f voices, organized through dialogue,
observed by a narrating ego with a keen sense o f m etaphor— has its
own stability, spontaneity, strength, flexibility, reliability, and continuity.
It is a self which grows to tolerate conflict, ambiguity, and subtlety; a
self which practices its empathy, humor, understanding and compassion
on those within as well as those without.
M ost often we see the imaginai from the ego’s point of view. In
the dialogues between Little Laura, the Fish-Lady and Laura, we caught
occasional glimpses o f how the characters saw the imaginai and how
their points o f view differed from that o f the habitual ego.42 For
instance,
Little Laura to Therapist. I’m the one that was there before
all of these people started talking... I don’t have all of
those voices; it is the older one who has all of these. And
I can help her if she just asks me what to do, because she
can’t tell sometimes. She gets a little afraid that there are
too many. And even though she knows that it isn’t crazy,
it’s like it sounds like something that could be crazy...
She needs to remember that it just goes on in her head,
and that really she has this very solid body. She lives in a
place and she has these nice people whom she lives with
and they love her. And those things, like those voices, are
versions of things, but not one of them is everything.
They are not everything and even if they fight with
each other, she has to remember that the real part in the
world is very ordinary and solid. She gets so that she feels
she has to believe them, whichever one is talking and then
she goes nuts, because the other one starts talking and
she feels she has to do what that one wants. And then she
thinks that they can’t possibly live together if they want
42For additional commentary about how we treat voices—confining them to
“inner space,” failing to hear them, and inundating them with our psychologisms—
see Hillman (1977).
 174 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
both of those things. It’s because she’s pushing them to
say the most extreme thing they can think of. It’s not what
they ordinarily ask. Once she comes out of there and plays
a game with her daughter or talks to her husband or works,
then she has fun, isn’t forcing anything and it doesn’t seem
complicated. And I know that she wants to do that. I just
think that sometimes she ought to ask me or something. I
think it is easier when you let them all talk in their own
voices. What drives you crazy is when you try to interpret
everything. Interpret one of them to the other one, with­
out really hearing exactly that one. Well, sometimes it’s
weird. Like the fat lady who talked last week was differ­
ent from her saying “part of me wants to stay home, part
of me wants to leave and work, part of me wants...” The
fat lady didn’t sound like part of her. It sounded like a
completely different person. So that when she gets that
way, it’s not as crazy, it doesn’t feel like she is demanding
anything.
Therapist If she can let herself be separate?
Little Laura-. Even though it feels when you say it more
strange, it really does make it less crazy.
Little Laura describes the imaginai as a group o f voices each
with its own version o f things, no single one to be taken as truth in
and o f itself. Little Laura argues that the voices, although in Laura’s
head, are not just “part” o f her. They need to speak in their own
voices as separate people. From her perspective, craziness is interpreting
the voices as part o f oneself, denying them their autonomy. A t the
same time she does not belittle the day-world reality o f body, family,
and friends, but rem inds Laura o f them.
A year after this Laura had just emerged from a fight between the
Fish-Lady and the Organizer. She said, “I t’s a relief to experience
these things as separate. A n d ...it seemed less confusing than when I
would say I am arguing with myself, and it wasn’t that differentiated.
O n the other hand, they seem stronger.” So here differentiation does
not serve a defensive function, diffusing affect, but results in clarifying
the psychic scene and actually intensifying emotion.
W hen there is a lot o f fighting and Little Laura feels like no one
is paying her any attention, she says “I just begin to feel like I’m
imaginary.” For her the habitual ego, the Organizer, makes the real
imaginary by ignoring it and devaluing it.
THE FISH-EADY AND THE LITTEE EIRE 175
As the child is allowed to becom e real we find, as Jung did, that
the child is both “all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same
time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning and the
triu m p han t end. T he ‘eternal child’ in m ind is an indescribable
experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative”
(1968c, § 300). T his child, like others before her— E ros, A pollo,
P ro teu s— found its Fish, in its own way and its own time. D evelop­
m ent did not mean “growing up,” but establishing conversations within
which Little Laura, Fish-Lady, and the O rganizer could be real and
tell their own stories, their own truths.
As we have seen, the prevailing developm ental theories assign
im aginai dialogues to childhood. As Flillm an points out, it is no
w onder that therapy so often goes back to childhood,
...for that is where our society and we each have placed
imagination. Therapy has to be concerned with the child­
ish part of us (not for empirical developmental reasons)
but in order to recreate and exercise the imagination. (1973,
168)
The drowning child caught in the undertow o f a dream , an adult’s
piece o f “childish” behavior that will not be extinguished, and a small
child’s voice that asks for M ommy in a m om ent o f fantasy are often
our entrances into imaginai dialogues. The child within us is accustomed
to speaking out to animals and puppets, to those who have died and
those who are absent, to those invisible guests who grace our table
o f thought. May we listen for their voices!
Psychotherapy may continue to help reflect and perpetuate the
sociocultural bias against imaginai dialogues by continuing to mislabel
experiences o f the imaginai, assigning many o f them a pathological
status, discouraging the rep o rtin g (and perhaps the conscious
experiencing) of thoughts’ many conversations. It can continue to
see psychic multiplicity solely as the product o f schizoid operations,
“hearing voices” as nothing but an aberrant m ode of mind. But we
will continue to dream. We will continue to fantasize. We will continue
to speak to ourselves and others in the privacy o f our thought. We
will continue to take on others’ voices and intonations, and we will
continue at times to act and speak in ways that surprise us— as though
for the m om ent we have given over our place to another.
176 THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS
We will continue to dream, and the dream will show us that beneath
our cultural organization o f self and conceptions about thinking,
thought spreads itself out before us as imaginai scenes filled with
characters and situations which are not always mere representations
o f w hat has already been experienced.
Psychotherapy need not always go from the dream ’s characters to
thought and its associations, but can also move from thought to its
scenes and characters— so thinly disguised are they, so ready to speak.
The dram atic form employed by some psychotherapies is not a form
or a technique applied to thought and feeling, nor is it an appropriate
form simply because it reflects our dialogical relation to others in the
world. D ram a arises from and expresses the structure o f thought
itself, with its multiplicity o f figures and viewpoints, and its lifelong
conversations.
 EPILOGUE

T
he very din of imaginai voices in adulthood— as they sound in
thought and memory, in poetry, drama, novels and movies, in
speech, dreams, fantasy and prayer— has led us to question
the efficacy o f contem porary developm ental theories for fully under­
standing imaginai dialogues. These theories would lead us to believe
that the imaginai dialogues o f children’s early speech and play are
largely subsumed by the dialogues o f social discourse and the m ono­
logues o f abstract thought. W here they persist into adulthood they
are m ost often seen either as pathological or as a means o f rehearsing
and rehashing social interaction (i.e., in service to shared reality). While
not denying that imaginai dialogues play roles in the child’s development
of self-regulation o f behavior, abstract thought, and language skills,
and that imaginai dialogues supplem ent a deficient “reality” which
often falls short of wish, we have questioned w hether these are their
only functions.
It has been suggested th at these dialogues n o t only reflect,
distort or prepare for the com m on reality o f social interaction, but
that they are creative o f imaginai worlds and imaginai relations as
well. These can be valued not just as subordinate to social reality, but
as a reality as intrinsic to hum an existence as the literally social. The
value and power o f this imaginai reality has been severely circum ­
scribed, and at times castrated, by the presuppositions o f the m odern
scientific outlook w hich our developm ental psychology shares.
D evelopm ental psychology has lent its weight to prevailing social
conventions that dictate the perm issible and im perm issible form s of
speaking with and through imaginai figures. Thus to reawaken a sense
178 INVISIBLE GUESTS
o f value for imaginai dialogues we have o f necessity gone outside
the bounds o f this scientific outlook to literature, mythology, and
religion— regions where these dialogues have not had a peripheral
significance, but a central one.
H ere we do not find that imaginai dialogues disappear in time, as
they are converted or subsum ed into higher form s o f thought. The
characters do not become less multiple, less articulated, less autonomous,
or m ore silent. O ne line o f developm ent suggested by literature,
mythology, and religion is that imaginai figures becom e m ore released
from the dom inion o f the self (i.e., m ore autonom ous), m ore articu­
lated, and m ore differentiated through their multiplicity. Interactions
with these imaginai figures develop from m onologue to dialogue— to
relations which are reciprocal, where the integrity o f each party is
maintained. O ur unearthing o f this other developm ental fate should
not be taken as a rigid prescribing o f teloi, but as an alternative way
o f approaching imaginai dialogues which liberates them , particularly
those o f adulthood, from a place o f censure. W hen the spontaneous
dialogues o f thought are approached from this point o f view they
flower into drama, poetry, or prayer. Far from revealing themselves
as a prim itive form o f thought, these dialogues reveal the complexity
o f thought as it struggles between different perspectives, refusing to
be simplified and narrowed to a single standpoint.
Although our focus has been unremittingly on “imaginai dialogues,”
the subtext o f this discussion has been an exam ination o f the effect
o f developm ental and scientific theory on our conceptions o f the
im aginai in general. To those w ho value the im aginai the word
“ developm ent” has com e to have the face o f an enemy, o f one who
derogates, belittles, explains away, calls names. From a position o f
respect, both for w hat the concept o f developm ent can m ean and for
the experience o f the imaginai, I have tried to show where they may
begin to m eet, such that a developm ental approach to the imaginai
need not eliminate its very subject.
 AFTERWORD
On “Holding Holy Converse” with the Stranger:
The Development of the Capacity fo r Dialogue

B
uber teaches us that in the Hasidic apprehension o f reality “a
divine spark lives in every thing and being, but each such spark
is enclosed by an isolating shell. Only m an can liberate it and
re-join it with the Origin: by holding holy converse with the thing
and using it in a holy m anner” (1970, 5-6). As I read back over Invis­
ible Guests, now fourteen years since its initial publication, I can hear
my own attem pts to describe a m anner o f relating to the other that I
could call “holy.” For in the end, the developm ental path I prescribed
aims at the allowing o f the other to freely arise, to allow the other to
exist autonom ously from myself, to patiently wait for relation to
occur in this open horizon, to move toward difference not with denial or
rejection but with tolerance, curiosity, and a clear sense that it is in
the encounter with otherness and multiplicity that deeper meanings
can emerge. It is through this m anner of dialogue with the stranger
that liberation and re-joining can occur.
I came to this sensibility through a sustained gaze on the unfolding
o f imaginai relations, particularly w hat I would call dialogical ones.
Now, fourteen years later, I w ant to underscore w hat is mainly
im plicit in this text. Namely, that this m anner o f holy converse
describes equally as well our relations with others, as it does our
relations with ourselves, imaginai others, the beings o f nature and
earth, and that which we take to be divine. Relationships with imaginai
180 IN ]'ISIBLE GUESTS
others th at are dialogical— in the ways defined here— are, in tru th ,
a sub-text o f “holy converse” m ore generally.
When we emphasize this frame there are a number of develop­
mental theorists whose work bespeaks the interpenetration of these
domains in terms o f the development of dialogical capacity: for
example, the peer therapy of Robert Selman; the work with adoles­
cent girls of Carol Gilligan and her colleagues; the work with women’s
ways of knowing of Mary Belenky and her colleagues; the large group
dialogue work of David Bohm and Patrick de Mare; and, finally, the
liberational pedagogy of Paulo Freire. I will turn to these as exemplars
to help us see some o f the developmental threads that crisscross
between dialogical domains, and to establish signposts beyond this
text for those who wish to pursue the cultivation of dialogue.
The Capacity to Play and the Capacity to be a Friend:
Differentiating and Coordinating the Perspectives of Self and Other

K
lein and W innicott, am ong others, noted that some disturbed
children have an incapacity to play, which psychotherapy m ust
address. In W innicott’s words: “ ...w here playing is not possible then
the w ork done by the therapist is directed tow ards bringing the
patient from a state o f not being able to play to a state o f being able
to play” (1971, 138). Selman and Schultz, working with the interper­
sonal relations o f em otionally disturbed children, have noted that
interactive fantasy play is markedly absent in the history o f children
whose interpersonal understanding is at primitive levels. These children
do not understand that self and other can interpret the same event
differently; i.e., the o th er is no t un derstoo d to have an interiority
different from my own. They are unable to differentiate between an
unintentional act o f another and an intentional one (the action is
equated with the intent). N either do they differentiate physical from
psychological characteristics of the person (i.e., if the person is deemed
pretty then she is a good person). In short, they are unable to “differ­
entiate and integrate the self’s and the other’s points o f view through
an understanding o f the relation between the thoughts, feelings, and
wishes of each person” (1990, 6).
This capacity to differentiate and integrate the self’s and the other’s
points of view is at the core of dialogical capacity. As Selman and
AFTERWORD 181
Schultz point out, a deficit in this ability shows both in problem atic
interpersonal relating and in an absence o f the dialogues o f pretend
play. H ow ever, he also describes how the seeds for in terpersonal
dialogue can be planted in the dialogues o f play. In his pair therapy
work with children who are isolated by their own patterns o f w ith­
drawal or aggression, he pairs a submissive, withdrawn child (self­
transform ing style) with a child who is overcontrolling, sometimes
downright bullying (other-transform ing style). Initially they each cling
to his or her own style, making impossible a deepening of relationship.
Selman and Schultz share an image from a session with two such
boys where one traps the other in the up position on the seesaw.
There is no movement! In pretend play these two boys initially replicate
their roles on the seesaw:
Andy initiated a fantasy in which he was the television/
comic book character “The Hulk,” a large, powerful, fear­
some m utant who is good inside, but who cannot control
his feelings to let the good direct him. Paul then took a
part as “Mini-Man,” a being o f his own creation who is
smaller than anything else in the world and can hide in
flow ers... The play was a fantasy in which one boy had
the power to control the thoughts and will o f the other
by virtue o f a psychological “force-field. (169-170).
W ith these roles personified, however, each boy is as though seduced
into wanting to em body each of the available roles. Paul experim ents
with putting up his force-field and then with “zapping” his partner,
just as Andy relaxes his grip on power and enjoys the submissive
position o f “Mini-Man.”
Theoretically speaking we believe that this switching
of roles in play is a key therapeutic process, in effect a
way to share experience. Andy was able to relax his
defenses and express the message that part of him was
happy to be or even needed to be controlled, taken care
of, told what to do. He could abandon for the moment
the tenderly held goals for which he generally fought so
fiercely... And Paul, often too frightened to take the ini­
tiative in actual interactions, was able to take steps to­
ward assuming the control that he felt was too risky in
real life, despite its practical and emotional attractions...
When it is just play, children can dress rehearse for changing
roles on the stage o f real-life interaction. (171)
182 INVISIBLE GUESTS
Here we see the interrelation between the dialogues of play and
those of social discourse. Now, rather than “inner speech” being the
internalization of actual social discourse, as in Vygotsky’s theory, we
see the dialogues of play as the seed that travels up into the soil of
friendship and collaboration. Indeed, in Selman’s third year of work
with these boys, we see them able to withstand the storm of each
other’s emotions, to venture into different roles with one another,
and to begin to share around the deepest area of each boy’s concern.
Sustaining One’s Voice Amongst Others

F
or authentic dialogue to occur it is not enough for one to be able
to differentiate one’s perspective from the other and to allow the
other a voice. One must also be able to maintain one’s own voice
amidst the fray of relationship. In Chapter Eleven this was addressed
in the domain of imaginai dialogues in the treatment of hallucinatory
experience where, too often, the most disturbing aspect of hallucina­
tory experience is not a confusion of perception with image but a
disavowal of the ego’s point of view as it is swamped by the voice(s)
of the other. The other’s command becomes the self’s action.
Carol Gilligan and her colleagues, in turning their attention to
normative development in preadolescent and adolescent American
girls, unfortunately found that not all the changes they witnessed in
girls were ideal. One the one hand, they found that:
As these girls grow older they become less dependent on
external authorities, less egocentric or locked in their own
experience or point of view, more differentiated from
others in the sense of being able to distinguish their feelings
and thoughts from those of other people, more autonomous
in the sense of being able to rely on or take responsibility
for themselves, more appreciative of the complex inter­
play of voices and perspectives in any relationship, more
aware of the diversity of human experience and the dif­
ferences between societal and cultural groups.
On the other hand they found:
that this developmental progress goes hand in hand with
evidence of a loss of voice, a struggle to authorize or
take seriously their own experience— to listen to their own
voices in conversation and respond to their feelings and
AFTERWORD 183
thoughts—increased confusion, sometimes defensiveness,
as well as evidence for the replacement of real with inau­
thentic or idealized relationships. If we consider respond­
ing to oneself, knowing one’s feelings and thoughts, clar­
ity, courage, openness, and free-flowing connections with
others and the world as signs of psychological health, as
we do, then these girls are in fact not developing, but are
showing evidence of loss and struggle and signs of an
impasse in their ability to act in the face of conflict.
(Brown and Gilligan, 1992, 6)
In order to m aintain the semblance o f relationship these girls
were struggling with “a series o f disconnections that seem at once
adaptive and psychologically wounding, between psyche and body,
voice and desire, thoughts and feelings, self and relationship” (7).
Too often girls were found stepping away from articulating their
thoughts and feelings if these would bring them into conflict with
others. W hat was initially conscious public disavowal o f thoughts
and feelings, over time became unconscious disclaiming. Girls then
expressed that they felt confused about what they thought and felt,
th at they were unsure. O ver tim e, m any to ok them selves ou t o f
authentic relationship— w ith others and them selvesi T hey becam e
unable to identify relational violations, and thus were more susceptible
to abuse. Brown and Gilligan began to wonder if they were “witnessing
the beginning o f psychological splits and relational struggles well
docum ented in the psychology o f w om en” (106).
To encourage girls’ resistance and resilience Gilligan and her
colleagues realized that it was not enough to help girls put into words
for others their thoughts and feelings. For many, the fear of how
their thoughts and feelings would be received had already metamor­
phosed into the girls’ not listening to themselves. And so the women
working with these girls tried to find ways to help the inner ear not
go deaf and to revive a capacity to listen to one’s selves, while at the
same time building a group where the girls could experience that
others can survive their voice(s): that authentic dialogue is possible,
not just false or idealized relations.
Akin to Selman’s move toward play, Gilligan’s team moved to­
ward supporting the girls’ diary and journal writing, their dramatic
and poetic writing, and their literally claiming their voices in their work.
184 INVISIBLE GUESTS
Dialogue— in the ideal sense— necessitates both the capacity to
deeply receive the other and the capacity to receive oneself; to allow
the other a voice and to allow the self voice.
Being Silenced vs. Opportunitiesfo r Dialogue:
Voice, Mind, Relationship, and Social Action

B
elenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986), in Women’s Ways
of Knowing. The Development of Self, Voice, and M ind, vividly de­
scribe the interpenetration o f dialogical dom ains addressed here as
they study different ways o f women’s knowing. In one group o f women
they studied w om en’s silence in adulthood was linked to family expe­
riences o f neglect and abuse. These wom en were passive, subdued,
and subordinate in adulthood. “The ever-present fear o f volcanic
eruptions and catastrophic events leaves children speechless and
numbed, unwilling to develop their capacities for hearing and knowing”
(1986, 159). These w om en experienced themselves as mindless and
voiceless. T heir childhoods were not only lived in isolation from their
family m em bers and others outside the family, but m ost often were
lived w ithout play. The intersection o f an absence o f dialogue with
an absence o f play turned out to be particularly damaging for these
children as they grew to wom anhood.
In the ordinary course of development, the use of
play metaphors gives way to language—a consensually vali­
dated symbol system— allowing for more precise com­
munication of meanings between persons. Outer speech
becomes increasingly internalized as it is transformed into
inner speech. Impulsive behavior gives way to behavior
that is guided by the actor’s own symbolic representations
of hopes, plans, and meanings. Without playing, convers­
ing, listening to others, and drawing out their own voice,
people fail to develop a sense that they can talk and think
things through. (1986, 33).
M oreover, the world becomes a place of simple dichotom ies— g o o d /
bad, big/little, w in/lose— obscuring all subtlety and texture.
W ithout play or dialogue the child is constrained within a narrow
band of reality. Both play and dialogue allow the child to visit the
perspectives o f others, as well as to dream of that which has not yet
come into reality. “W hat is” and “who one is” become radically widened
AFTERWORD 185

as one de-centers from the ego’s perspective and the given. Through
the m etaphorizing o f play one leaps past the given confines o f “ self”
and “reality.” The dialogues of play and the dialogues of social inter­
action are both creative o f the self and the liberating the self. Through
each em pathie leap, through each re-em bodim ent o f ourselves in play,
we pass beyond our usual borders and exceed w hat has been. W hat
“is” is surpassed by w hat might be, and “w ho” I am is replaced by my
transit beyond m yself— either through projection o f the self or
through the reception o f the other. Working an issue through play—
expressing it, addressing it from several perspectives, taking the role
o f the others in play— is translated into the dialogues o f thought and
those o f our everyday interactions. It should come as no surprise that
the complexity and subtlety o f a child’s play, her flexibility in moving
betw een the dramatis personae, can be seen in her participation in
dialogue and in her capacities for reflection.
Childhoods that do not give opportunity for pretend play, where
families discourage dialogue and where schools limit the classroom
experience to verbal exchanges that are unilateral and teacher initiated,
make it highly unlikely that children will learn the “give and take of
dialogue” (Belenky et al., 1986, 34), giving them access to what lies
beyond a narrow self which has been schooled for silence. For such
children, and the adults that are generated from them , words have
force only w hen uttered violently. T hus they “tend to be action-
oriented, with little insight into their own behaviors or motivations.
Since they do not expect to be heard they expect no response, the
volume o f their voices is m ore im portant than the content. They lack
verbal negotiating skills and do not expect conflicts to be resolved
through non-violent m eans” (1986, 160). T hose who do not escape
silence pass the legacy o f their early hom es onto their children:
Mothers who have so little sense of their own minds
and voices are unable to imagine such capacities in their
children. Not being fully aware of the power of words
for communicating meaning, they expect their children
to know what is on their minds without the benefit of
words. These parents do not tell their children what they
mean by “good”— much less why. Nor do they ask their
children to explain themselves...
We observed these mothers “backhanding” their chil­
dren whenever the child asked questions, even when the
186 INVISIBLE GUESTS
questions stemmed from genuine curiosity and desire for
knowledge. It was as if the questions themselves were
another example of the child’s “talking back” and “disre­
spect.” Such a mother finds the curious, thinking child’s
questions stressful, since she does not yet see herself as an
authority who has anything to say or teach. (1986, 163-164)
These wom en were not aware o f any experience within them ­
selves o f dialogue with a self or o f having an inner voice; nor did
their words express a familiarity with introspection or a sense o f their
own consciousness.
T hose wom en in Belenky’s study who were able to emerge from
silence into adulthood had the benefit o f a school which encouraged
the cultivation o f mind and an interaction with the arts, had been
able to forge significant relationships outside the hom e despite the
prohibition not to do so, or had “created such relationships for them ­
selves through the sheer power o f their imaginations, by endowing
their pets and imaginary playmates with those attributes that nourish
the hum an potential” (1986, 163).
In the o th er ways o f know ing th at Belenky et al describe—
received know ing, subjective know ing, procedural know ing, and
constructed knowing— intrapsychic and interpersonal dialogue are
intim ately related to each other, together form ing a sense o f flatness
or complexity o f reality. For instance in received knowing wom en
experience others as the authority, silencing their own voices to be
better able to im bibe the wisdom o f others. It is not surprising that
they seek to eliminate ambiguity from their worlds and can be described
themselves as literal-minded. O n the other hand, subjective knowers
conceive o f all truth arising internally, stilling their public voice, and
often turning a “deaf ear to other voices.” O ften distrusting words,
they cover disagreem ent with conform ity and live in the isolation o f
their own thoughts and inner voices.
In w hat is clearly their preferred developm ental telos, Belenky and
her colleagues describe those who experience constructed knowing.
In this way o f knowing, knowledge is contextual. There are multiple
viewpoints to be had, but not all are equally adequate to revealing
what one is trying to understand. These knowers are familiar with
listening to the inner voice or voices. Yet they know that even an
inner voice may be wrong at times, for it is but one part of a whole.
AFTERWORD 187
They are also adept at patient listening to the voices of others. They
have a high tolerance for internal contradiction and ambiguity.
Just as the child breaks the confines of the given through the
dialogue of play, so too may the adult who can move between per­
spectives and systems of knowing. Liberated from subservience to
external authority, to any one system of thought, and from slavish
devotion to their internal voices, these knowers have the dialogical
tools to break the oppressive aspects of “reality.” Their nurture, care,
and engagement with their own voices, the voices of others, and ideas
broaden out to their nurture and care of aspects of the world.
From Cultures of Silence to Fibertory Dialogue:
The Work of Paulo Freire

T
his connection between coming to see the context one is in, gain­
ing voice in relation to this context, and being able to creatively
engage in efforts to effect culture is beautifully articulated in the
work of Paulo Freire. Here silence and lack of dialogical capacity is
understood to arise through oppression, which purposely creates voice­
lessness and obscures context in order to maintain power. Freire, the
founder of the literacy movement in Brazil and radical pedagogist,
argues that for the disenfranchised, learning to read should involve a
process of becoming able to decode the cultural and socioeconomic
circumstances that shape your life and your thinking. Once able to
decode these conditions one is then able to participate in the shaping
of those circumstances. He called the first step in this empowering
process “conscientization,” a group process which allows one to
actively engage with the structures one has previously identified with
and been blind to.
In Freire’s model an “animator” helps group participants to ques­
tion their day to day experience, their concerns and suffering, exploring
the relation between daily life and the cultural dictates that suffuse it.
Here words, much like play for the child, begin to open up the realm
of the possible, liberating “reality” from the bonds of the given.
Efforts at change are directed not foremost to the individual level,
but to wider cultural change that will, in the end, effect the participants.
This change becomes possible through the second step of Freire’s
method, “annunciation.” Once a group knows how to decode the
188 INVISIBLE GUESTS
dominant paradigm and its effects— through having spoken together—
then they can begin to conceive of social arrangements which are
more just through the process of dialogue.
Why is this process necessary? Freire says that the dominant class
attempts “by means of the power of its ideology, to make everyone
believe that its ideas are the ideas of the nation” (Freire and Faundez,
1989, 74). A dominant paradigm operates by way of the monologue,
not dialogue. It requires voicelessness on the part of the other to
sustain itself. “The power of an ideology to rule,” says Freire, “lies
basically in the fact that it is embedded in the activities of the
everyday life” {Ibid., 26-27).
It is through dialogue that one breaks out o f the “bureaucratiza­
tion” of mind, where there can be a rupture from previously established
patterns. “In fact, there is no creativity w ithout ruptura, w ithout a
break from the old, w ithout conflict in which you have to make a
decision” (Freire, in H orton and Freire, 1990, 38). For Freire true
education is not the accumulation of information placed in the student
by the teacher. True education m ust encourage this rupture through
dialogue. Teacher and student m ust each be able to effect, to com ­
municate with, and to challenge each other, rather than perpetuate
dom ination through m onological teaching m ethods that further
disempower.
Freire connects dialogue with love:
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence o f pro­
found love for the world and for [women and] men. The
nam ing o f the w orld, which is an act o f creation and
re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love.
Love is at the same time the foundation o f dialogue and
dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible
subjects and cannot exist in a relation o f domination.
D om ination reveals the pathology o f love: sadism in the
dom inator and masochism in the dominated. Because love
is an act o f courage, not o f fear, love is com m itm ent to
[others]. N o m atter where the oppressed are found, the
act o f love is comm itm ent to their cause— the cause of
liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is
dialogical... (Freire, 1970, 77-78)
AFTERWORD 189
Dialogue Across Difference: Bohm’s Large Group Dialogue

I
n Freire and Faundez’s work the concept o f culture is not linked to
ideas o f unity but to diversity and tolerance. This shift toward the
acknowledgment o f diversity invites voices to speak which have been
marginalized by the dominant culture and its paradigms. This movement
from center to margin requires a process o f dialogue that assumes
difference and seeks to articulate it. Truth is not located in a particular
perspective, it “is to be found in the ‘becom ing’ of dialogue” (Faundez,
in Freire and Faundez, 1989, 32).
David Bohm, physicist and colleague o f Krishnam urti, describes
a kind o f large group dialogue where it is through the difference that
is present that one can begin to hear one’s own assumptions. Bohm
asks that once we hear these assum ptions we try to suspend them
rather than using our characteristic defensive moves o f overpowering
the other voices, defending our assum ptions as the truth. T his
acknowledgment and suspension of assumptions is done in the service
o f beginning to see w hat it is one m eans. W hen we defend an
assumption, says Bohm, we are at the same time “pushing out whatever
is new ... There is a great deal of violence in the opinions we are
defending” (1990, 15). T hrough com ing to see our own and others’
assum ptions we arrive at a place w here we can begin to think
together, seeing m ore o f the totality that comprises our situation.
Sampson is careful to rem ind us that allowing others to speak is not
enough if they cannot “be heard in their own way, on their own terms,”
rather than be constrained to “ use the voice o f those w ho have
constructed them ” (1993, 1220-1223).
H ere one is required to take a third-person point o f view towards
oneself, reflecting on how one’s actions, attitudes, and assum ptions
arise from particular ideologies. And further, how the ideologies we
are identified with have effected the other, the stranger.
Like imaginai dialogues, such dialogue in a large group requires
the su sp en sio n o f usual egoic m odes o f o p eratio n : judging,
condem ning, deem ing oneself superior (or inferior). These interfere
with listening deeply, w ith the radical entertaining o f the other, which
at the same m om ent can awaken us to where we each stand.
 190 INVISIBLE GUESTS
Coda

I
n the end, the direction of this book is not inward.. .only. It cannot
be, because imaginai dialogues do not exist separate from the other
domains of our lives. The hierarchies of our culture, schools, family—
and thus of mind— do not deeply invite dialogue. Neither does the
voicelessness directly resulting from such hierarchies of power. Here
I am trying to underscore the interpenetration of dialogues with imagi­
nai others, with dialogues with oneself, one’s neighbors, within one’s
community, between communities, and with the earth and its creatures.
The effort to section off the imaginai from this larger fabric is at best
defensive and at worst wasteful of the energies needed to work at
much-needed reconciliations. D epth psychology— if it is not to
become a Euro-American relic from the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries— must use its energy to penetrate the depths of difference.
Dialogue is the method for this hosting, penetration, and holding of
difference.
For the sake of dialogue— of love— this book points us toward
the creation of childcare contexts where the dramatic fray of play
can be delighted in, to elementary schools where the leap between
self and others in a small group can be practiced, to spiritual education
and practice where the voices within silence can be discerned and
addressed. It points us toward high schools and colleges where
previously marginalized voices can be admitted to the mosaic, changing the
underlying structure of education from the conveyance of dominant
paradigms to one of dialogue across difference. It turns us toward
the processes of non-violent communication and reconciliation that
are needed to nurture the neighborhoods and communities— and
ultimately nations— in which we are homed. And finally, it attempts
to turn us toward the dialogue beyond words required between na­
ture and humans if our actions are to finally preserve the earth.
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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MARY W ATKINS is a clinical and developmental psychologist and one

of the original members of the group of psychotherapists, writers, and
psychologists who founded Archetypal Psychology in the 19 7 0 s. A core
faculty member and the Coordinator of Comm unity and Ecological
Fieldwork and Research in the D epth Psychology M .A./Ph.D. Program
at Pacifica Graduate Institute, W atkins has w ritten numerous essays on
the confluence of liberation psychology and depth psychology and is the
author of Waking Dreams, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginai Dialogues,
and the co-author of TalkingWith Young Children About Adoption.