1993, volume 2 ISSN 1021-5573

ELECTRONIC VERSION
© The Author(s)

pa pe rs on
s o c ia l re p re s e n t a t io n s
-threads of discussion-

te xte s sur le s
re p ré s e n t a t io n s s o c ia le s
-espace de discussion-

te xtos sobre
re p re s e n t a c io n e s s o c ia le s
-espacio de discusión-

a rbe ite n übe r

s o z ia le re p rä s e n t a t io n e n
-diskussionsfelder-

laboratoire européenne de psychologie sociale, maison des sciences de l'homme, paris

área de psicología social, universidad autónoma de barcelona
institut für psychologie, universität linz
institut für psychologie, technische universität berlin
département de psychologie, université montpellier III
 Editors Scientific Advisory Board

Fran Elejabarrieta, Universidad Jean-Claude Abric, Aix-en-Provence

Autónoma de Barcelona María Auxiliadora Banchs, Caracas
Uwe Flick, Technische Universität Felice Carugati, Bologna
Berlin Jean-Pierre Deconchy, Paris
Christian Guimelli, Université Annamaria Silvana de Rosa, Roma
Montpellier III Celso Pereira de Sá, Rio de Janeiro
Wolfgang Wagner, Universität Linz Willem Doise, Genève
Gerard Duveen, Cambridge
papers on social representations is a joint Agustin Echebarría, San Sebastian
publication by Institut für Psychologie, Nicholas Emler, Dundee
Universität Linz, Institut für Psychologie, Denise Jodelet, Paris
Technische Universität Berlin, Area de Lenelis Kruse, Hagen
Psicología Social, Universidad Autónoma de Serge Moscovici, Paris
Barcelona, and Département de Psychologie,
Université Montpellier III. Its publication is Albert Pepitone, Philadelphia
supported by the European Laboratory of Social Jorge Vala, Lisboa
Psychology, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Mario von Cranach, Bern
Paris.
CONTENTS Volume 2 (1993)

Robert M. Farr, The Theory of Social Representations: Whence and Whither? 130
Pina Boggi Cavallo & Antonio Iannaccone, Représentations Sociales et
Construction des Connaissances 139
Jean-Blaise Grize, Logique Naturelle et Représentations Sociales 151
Serge Moscovici, Introductory Address 160
Gerard Duveen, The Development of Social Representations of Gender 171
Annamaria Silvana de Rosa Social Representations and Attitudes: Problems of Coherence
between the Theoretical Definition and Procedure of Research 178
Francesca Emiliani, Folk Science and Social Representations: some Comments 193
Glynis M. Breakwell, Social Representations and Social Identity 198
Marisa Zavalloni Identity and Hyperidentities, the Representational Foundation of Self
and Culture 218
Wolfgang Wagner, Can Representations Explain Social Behaviour? A Discussion of
Social Representations as Rational Systems 236
 I DENTITY AND H YPERIDENTITIES : THE R EPRESENTATIONAL
F OUNDATION OF S ELF AND C ULTURE *

Marisa Zavalloni
Université de Montréal, Canada

Cognitive science and social psychology, today, are shifting their self-defining metaphor
from the study of human information processing to the study of meaning- making (Bruner
1991, Varela 1989). Culture, a fundamental purveyor of meaning, thus, acquires a central
place in the cognitive agenda (Gardner 1985). The goal, according to this author is to develop
an explanatory framework in which "the interaction of cognitive factors with affective and
cultural factors can somewhat be modeled" (p.387).
We could expect to see a convergence between the contemporary search after meaning,
that characterises the "new look" in cognition and the growing research on social representa-
tions. This research domain was introduced by Moscovici (1964) to explore the interplay
between cognition, affect and culture and as a critical alternative to the then dominant behav-
iorism and attitude research (Moscovici 1963). Social representations could fit in a model that
integrates meaning, culture and the working of the mind. They also provide a psychological
construct more appropriate to this task as compared to other concepts. Today, with the entry
of culture in psychology, the traditional hypothetical constructs such as dispositions,
motives, attitudes give way to ideas of construction, of transaction; social representations
research may thrive in this new analytical context. In this paper I will address the interplay
between words and representations in the creation of identity and culture.

Culture, identity and representations: a transactional story

According to the emerging transactional contextualism, human actions, mental events or
the Self need to be situated, which is to be seen as continuous with a cultural world; any
psychological act can be seen as an emergent property of inter-relationships1. Since, in the
transactional context, the traditional conceptual apparel of psychology, based on individual
causation and statistical measures, is becoming useless, the trend has been to borrow the
concepts and the methods of anthropology, history, linguistics and literary criticism rather
than conceive a specific transactional psychology or by becoming aware of the potential of
social representations to that end.
For instance Bruner (1991) argues that in order to understand the nature and the origin of
the Self, an interpretive effort is required, akin to that used by a historian or anthropologists
trying to understand a period or a people. The Self, thus, becomes a "story teller," and its

* Position paper presented at the First International Conference on Social Representations, Ravello, Italy,
October, 1992.
1 For example, Bruner (1991) asserts that: "Self must be treated as a construction that, so to speak, proceeds
from the outside in also from the outside out, from culture to mind also from mind to culture." (p. 106)

Papers on Social Representations - Textes sur les Représentations Sociales

(1021-5573) Vol. 2 (3), 1-235 (1993).
2 M. Zavalloni

narrative provides the basis for understanding identity.2 Yet, I will argue that transactional-
ism, contextualism and constructionism are no more logically bound to the interpretive stance
and to the study of language and narrative per se than to the hypothetical constructs of the
nomothetic psychological tradition.
Even the best analysis of a narrative will not answer the crucial question that has triggered
the constructivist and transactional "revolution": what happens when a person as a body\
brain\ mind encounters others or a cultural event? For instance, in recent years, all-male
workshops organized as wildness retreats by Bly (1990) to initiate men to "the deep mascu-
line", have attracted tens of thousands of participants3. These participants listen, among
various interventions, a fairy tale by the Grimm brothers, about Iron John helping a young
prince to gain power; many of them experience a feeling of empowerment and other gratify-
ing mental states. How can we understand the power of a fairy tale to affect thousands of the
educated, grown up men? How to explain this curious creation of a fictitious self?
A linguistic or hermeneutic analysis of Iron John or of Bly's speeches and of the partici-
pants' responses as narratives will not reveal the process by which the body\ mind\ brain
participates in a communal creation of men, as a general category, and of the private Self as
powerful. For this we need to understand how what we call the subjectivity comes into being
while prodding the external world.
It may be interesting to know that a narrative can be characterized by its sequentiality, its
factual "indifference," its unique way of managing departures from the canonical and by the
nature of its dramatic qualities (Bruner 1991). However, the psychological effects produced
when being in touch with Iron John stem from a mental activity of another order, which deals
with matters of personal and social identities. Nor traditional psychology nor the interpretive
stance is equipped to explore it. The specificity of a constructionist and of a transactional
psychology will be to understand what happens when the language of relationship or of
reflexivity is articulated by consciousness. Instead of a surrender to literary criticism, to
linguistics or to anthropology, one could imagine for psychology a future of "transactional
cooperation" with these disciplines. Recent developments in the area of social representations
indicate that steps in this direction have been taken (Jodelet 1991).
In this paper I will focus on the interplay between social representations and self represen-
tations that is to say on the issue of identity formation or creation and identity maintenance.
A psychology of culture and of identity creation would require exploring the exchanges
between people on social and cultural matters at their point of impact where the external
(discourse) and the internal (the representational level) collide. At that moment, the discursive
present meets the past (memory) and produces an idea, a representation or a discourse that
combines the two. In this psychological domain, each act of consciousness integrates,
somehow, the present with the past while reaching toward the future.
The crucial point is that whenever words/ thoughts about the world are produced or
received, something else is activated at the periphery of consciousness as background think-

2 Similarly Gergen (1991) notes the deep interest of researchers to understand how identities are constructed
by learning people's common sense beliefs about themselves and others in reference to the narrative
tradition with no reference to social representation research.
3 Bly's book bearing the same title scaled at the top of the best sellers list of the New York Times. As
reported by Faludi (1991) the attendants were not marginalized drifters: "Bly's retreat roster were lawyers,
judges, doctors, accountants, corporate executives; at one wilderness experience, the group included several
vice presidents of Fortune 500 companies and television-station owners".
Identity and Hyperidentities 3

ing. 4 At this moment the relevant dimensions of the inner world resonate "subconsciously"
with the present experience. I will argue that by displaying and analyzing the content of the
affective and representational elements that are activated as background thinking, we can
construct an approximative model of the agent (self) in transaction with her social ecology as
a dynamic energy in a space in which the inner world and the culture meet. This model
address simultaneously the process of subjectivity creation and of identity formation as a
"cultural engine." From that standpoint, the modalities of culture/ person transactions acquire
a new visibility.
Background thinking, a subconscious representational content, triggered automatically,
that is to say, outside volitive consciousness, has remained outside the grasp of both tradi-
tional psychology and of the interpretive sciences. By exploring its working structure and
dynamic, we may understand how the inner world encounters the outer world selecting what
it will incorporate, and then responds to the world with its own creations.

Background thinking: the compressed context of identity words

We introduced the term ego\ ecology (Zavalloni 1981, Zavalloni & Louis-Guerin 1984,
Zavalloni 1986, 1990) more than a decade ago to account for the modalities of person/culture
transactions. In this perspective, identity is seen as a form of consciousness, that is to say as
a representational, affective and discursive conglomerate negotiated in a continuous transac-
tion between a person and a particular cultural and historical context.
We found that culture/person exchanges are mediated not only by language, visual means
or actions but also, at a subconscious level, by an affectively charged conglomerate of repre-
sentations, figures and experiential memories that we called background thinking. When a
person speaks or thinks about any meaningful group, men, women, Black, White or what-
ever, the content of e/motional memories, desires, interests is subconsciously activated at the
periphery of consciousness.
We could describe background thinking in the area of personal and social identity, as a
compression, experienced subconsciously, of all the contexts in which words, representa-
tions, or actions dealing with Self, Alter and society have occurred under conditions of
affective arousal. When we display this "compressed material" through the method of repre-
sentational contextualization, we find an invariant structure that I have called the affective-
representational circuit, and the content of this structure, evolves in a continuous resonance
with the world (Zavalloni 1981, 1990).
The aim of this paper, is to extend the ego\ecological analysis of person/ culture transac-
tions in order to further explore the phenomenon of resonance, as the dynamic element in
person/ culture transaction and to develop a model that describes these transactions, the
identity paradigm. The analysis will focus on how "the past of things present" participates in
monitoring the continuous transactions that go from the inside to the outside and vice versa; it
will, also, examine the continuous oscillation by which a cultural theme moves from the
private to the cultural and vice-versa and will consider what this implies for meaning -
making. For example, the power theme in Bly's usage of Iron John, continuously oscillates
between the fairy tale character, men as a general category, and the Self of each workshop's
participant. This oscillation allows the power theme to strike, so to speak, its various targets,

4 Background thinking could fit into what Searle describes as the preconditions for the work of intentionality.
Background thinking is where the work of preintentional capacity, is hidden.
4 M. Zavalloni

and to disseminate, helping to create new aspects of reality both as culture and as men's
identity.
We deal with a psychological situation, in which communal history intersects with
personal identity. To analyze it, we need to extract from the flow of consciousness and from
the sounds of the world, those elements that are common to both. For instance, in relation to
social identity, words such as men, women, Black, White designate social groups, but, also
denote the social dimension of the person. On the one hand, groups are part of the political
process of society, on the other hand as representational objects they are related to a person's
identity and part of the cultural landscape. I will use the term hyperidentity to characterize
groups as the sum of all the representations produced about them. I will, also, use the term
figure to describe a unique group representation. These concepts seek to express the transac-
tional nature of group representations, as they emerge in the cultural space and address the
Self.

Hyperidentities and their figures: groups as cultural creations

A great deal of both political and of "cultural" activity is spent describing, prescribing,
legislating about women, men, social classes, ethnic groups, "races" or other collective
entities. We can imagine the cultural space as an open "clipboard" to which anyone can affix
a figure that describes those groups. A figure can take many forms: it could be a discourse, a
text, a painting, an argument, an exemplary act or a metaphor, ranging from the trivial to the
complex, from the innocent to the malevolent, which addresses a social group. These
discursive and representational contents will be described as figures of hyperidentity. The
term hyperidentity refers to social groups as a loose collection, of all the figures that are
produced about them and that are exchanged in the cultural space. Some of these figures are
internalized as expressing the Self.
The term hyperidentity figure that I use to describe a wide range of cultural creations about
humans, hints, also, at the fact that all representations of human nature, whatever their
source: philosophical, religious, artistic or "scientific," activate, implicitly or explicitly the
representations of persons as prototypes or exemplars of a social group. Also, by looking at
descriptive, prescriptive or ontological statements as hyperidentity figures, we acknowledge
that they reflect much more than their stated intents; each of these figures emerges as the
expression of wider identity processes.
Hyperidentity figures can be described as cultural elements that are embodied and ener-
gized by the brain/mind of those who create and of those receive them. Inside the person, so
to speak, as part of the identity system, these figures are invested by desires and emotions
that were produced, originally, in a different context. We will refer to this identity process as
a resonance effect. The power of these figures to influence the cultural space is conditional on
their capacity to produce a resonance in those who receive them, that is to say activate a pre-
existent affective representational circuit.5 When that happens, hyperidentity figures become

5 If, in line with traditional psychology, we think about groups or social categories in terms of beliefs, or of
attitudes, we are bogged down in the impossible task of answering questions that these terms impose:
what is the relation between attitudes and personality?, where these beliefs come from?, how to determine
if these beliefs are true, somewhat true or false, given the nature of the objects that they describe? In this
line of research, not only the life of the mind in its complexity, and the passions of the social world are
erased, but fictitious entities (hypothetical constructs such as attitudes or motives) are accorded a reality
status.
Identity and Hyperidentities 5

powerful weapons in political and social struggles. The issues of social and cultural
influences could, profitably, be addressed in this framework.
Seeing men, women, Quebecers, philosophers or whatever as hyperidentities enables us
to analyze social categories or groups as communal creations; this frees us from concerns
about their "true" nature, and from any kind of essentialism.
The term, hyperidentity figure, also, points to the indeterminacy, or to the polymorphism
that characterizes our ways of experiencing the social world. A personal statement, a fairy
tale, or a "scientific" theory, seen as hyperidentity figures, become interchangeable. We can,
then understand the similarity of the effects that they can produce. Each identity figure, what-
ever the source, functions by reactivating as background thinking a same affective-represen-
tational- circuit. Thus, it would not be surprising that often a private belief does not differ
substantially from an influential view about a social group. The difference between the two,
rests instead, on the context of power and influence within which each acts. As an example
let us compare what Freud wrote about men and women in his youth, with an influential text
he produced in old age.
At age nineteen, he wrote to his friend Silberstein that: "a thinking man is his own legisla-
tor, confessor, absolver. But a woman, let alone a girl, has no inherent ethical standards, she
can act correctly only if she keeps within the bounds of convention, observing what society
deems to be proper." At age seventy he wrote: "I cannot evade the notion (though I hesitate to
give it expression) that for women the level of what is ethically normal is different from what
it is for men...." (1931) meaning, of course, less.
The original impulse to control women is played back, half a century later, offering the
same contrasted figures of lofty men and unethical women. By now, these figures are
wrapped in the mantle of "science," and we know how effectively they have been used in
promoting the social control over women and in comforting male identities.6 This example,
also, illustrates how enduring identity figures can be as part of the identity system of a
person.
Viewing these statements about men's dedication to higher values in contrast with wom-
en's lack of ethical standards, as hyperidentity figures, frees us from having to decide, if they
represent a stereotype, a prejudice, a belief, an aspect of men's and women's essence, a
desire, or even, a subconscious, mental activation of particular people. It also makes it easier
to recognize that these contrasted figures are similar to those produced, throughout history,
by men to justify their politics of control and domination against women, and have
contributed to create a world that, also, reflects their desires.
Stories, fictional characters, just as political and scientific statements about humans as
groups, can be seen as hyperidentity figures that contribute to create a cultural space to
which, we as individuals, resonate positively or from which we recoil. For example, Iron
John, a figure of masculine hyperidentity derived from a fairy tale, becomes in Bly's hand a
tool by which the "power theme" resonates with deep seated childhood desires, bringing to

6 To contend, as it is often done, that Freud's concept of women (what is being described here as an
hyperidentity figure) simply reflects the culture of his time, fails to recognize that this same culture has
produced different figures of women. For instance those of John Stuart Mill that young Freud translated
into German (to earn some money) and from which, as attested by his letters to Martha Bernays, he
strongly dissented.
6 M. Zavalloni

the many men exposed to it, a feeling of power that spreads to the representations of men, as
a general category.
The concept of hyperidentity renders perceptible the constructed nature of social groups,
but, more importantly, it enables us to identify their building blocks, the hyperidentity figures
as transactional creations. The idea of hyperidentity figure provides a link between the
cultural domain which is of interest to historians, to literary critics, and to anthropologists
and the psychological domain. It allows us to navigate between these domains, each offering
a particular standpoint, while preserving the full integrity of these figures.7
For example, the tale of Iron John, may have charmed and empowered Bly as a person,
but this fairy tale character becomes means to give (with a fee) power back to men who
according to Bly are threatened by the "feminine" principle. Iron John is the rescuer of
"princes" who have become "yogurt-men" (Bly's own invented hyperidentity figure). Bly's
success shows the power of fiction to influence the cultural space, while activating, some-
times, dangerous emotions and desires of particular individuals.8
Hyperidentity figures can be analyzed, simultaneously, as components of the identity
system and of the cultural space. As part of the identity system, these figures are relational
tools, or weapons of influence to bend others to our desires; they are also sources of
symbolic power, of fantasy gratifications. Once propelled in the cultural space, these fictions
can become reality, producing changes, revolutions, or reactionary trends. This analysis,
also, provides the basis for a new reading of cultural material that address the identity system
in its impulse to create an environment of compatible "minds."
For example an ego\ecological reading of the Futurist Manifesto (Marinetti 1909) demon-
strates that what was at stake was the creation of a masculine hyperidentity with figures cele-
brating speed, war, violence, immorality, disdain of women, and the struggle against femi-
nism. 9 The resonance of these figures expressing a male fundamentalism, can all too well be
documented in the personal and political postures of Mussolini, dominated as it was, by the
fantasy of an aggressive, triumphant male. A reciprocal resonance could be observed. The
writing of Marinetti supplying the soul of Fascism, and Fascism the power to realize the
Futurists' program of violence, dishonesty, war and the submission of women.10 The Futur-
istManifest has contributed to a process of reality creation whose consequences have been
tragic. This process can be reconstructed by studying the collision between hyperidentity
figures that were popular at the time (Nietzsche's Overman, Bergson's creative force), the

7 This is a central consideration in the epistemological and methodological shift that will permits the
development of a transactional psychology. We replace the variabilisation of natural data, by embedding
these data in their representational and affective context. The generality and lawfulness of the mind will be
located not in fictitious hypothetical constructs (such as attitudes or motives), but in dynamic and
structural invariances that underlay the production of social discourse and actions.
8 As reported by Faludi, an attendant of Bly workshops recalled the following exchange: "Robert, when we
tell women our desires, they tell us we are wrong." Bly instructed: "So, then you bust them the mouth."
After someone pointed out that this statement seems to advocate violence against women, Bly amended it,
"Yes I meant; hit those women verbally!" (Faludi, 1991, p. 310)
9 "We want to exalt the aggressive movement ... the slap in the face and the fist. we want to glorify war the
only hygiene of the world ... patriotism, militarism ...We want to glorify war the only hygiene of the
world, militarism, patriotism the gesture of destruction of the libertarian and the disdain of Woman."
10 Marinetti the author of the Futurist manifesto, was the recipient of important honours during the fascist
period, and he remained, to the end, faithful to Mussolini. At sixty he volunteered in the war of aggression
against Ethiopia, years later, during World War II, he enlisted for the Russian front and then followed
Mussolini into the Republic of Salo.
Identity and Hyperidentities 7

political landscape (the birth of Feminism, social unrest), the identity system of the players,
and an unexpected access to unlimited power.
By addressing the identity system as a consumer and a producer of hyperidentity figures,
we can confront, more precisely, the transactional processes between the culture and the
person. In the ego\ ecological perspective, the identity system has emerged as a continuous
process characterized by a simultaneous activation or "working in concert" of language,
representations, affect and biographical memories. Background thinking, already described,
has been identified as a central element in this process and its role will be, now, further
explored. We will start by discussing its experiential status which is ignored by traditional
psychology. The introspective intuitions of some thinkers manifest some awareness of the
existence of this elusive psychological content. They will bring us close to the experiential
core of this idea.

Background thinking: some "deep" intuitions

Vigotsky
Vigotsky was deeply interested in the relation between language and thought and was
probably the only psychologist to foresee the hidden power of the single, meaningful word.
He considered the meaningful word as the elemental unit of psychology, comparable to the
cell in the living organism. He wrote that: "The word is related to consciousness as a minia-
ture world is related to a larger one, as a living cell is related to an organism, as an atom to
the cosmos. The meaningful word is a microcosm of human consciousness" (p.194).
He distinguished between the meaning of a word which is given by the dictionary and the
sense of a word. The sense of a word is the aggregate of all the psychological facts emerging
in our consciousness because of the word. Here he comes close to the notion of background
thinking. Vigotsky wrote: "The word considered in isolation in the lexicon has only one
meaning....in living speech this meaning is only a stone in the edifice of sense." Conscious-
ness operates through this infusion of sense. The titles of literary works such as Hamlet or
Anna Karenina reflect this law of the infusion of sense in the purest form: "The sense content
of the entire work is really contained in one word. (1934 Thinking and speech p. 308).11 His
notion of the "meaningful" word fits our understanding of background thinking as the aggre-
gate of all the facts of consciousness associated to an identity word or figure, which are
quintessential "meaningful words".
Vigotsky, also, explicated what has become a recurrent, but unanswered criticism of
traditional psychology and of cognitive science. According to him: "The separation of the
intellectual side of our consciousness from its affective, volitional side is one of the funda-
mental flaws of all traditional psychology." In this tradition, thinking: "is separated from the
fullness of real life, from the living motives, interests, and attractions of the thinking human"
(p.189).

11 This aspect of his thinking has been neglected and even criticized by his translators and commentators. The
chapter in which this idea was discussed was not included in the first translation of his book (1968). Then,
Wertsch (1985), his principal commentator, for instance, argues that, subsequently, linguist have shown
that meaning is located in the sentence not in the word. However, Vigotsky's "meaningful" word refers to
an entirely different matter. It is not "meaning" in the conventional "foreground" sense, that is being
discussed, but meaning as an act of consciousness.
8 M. Zavalloni

Even today, the challenge remains and it involves finding elemental principles of mental
life that are respectful of its "relative" complexity. In the ego/ecological analysis of the iden-
tity system, background thinking has emerged as the locus in which thinking, language and
affect are embedded into the living experience and in the social world.

Sartre
Another example of the "experience" of background thinking, may be found in a Sartre's
note, published posthumously. He writes : "I see these men going by: I say "there are men."
At once I am a man. But if I have objectivized my subjectivity, simultaneously I have
projected all my subjectivity upon them.( 1983 p.22). The expression "all my subjectivity"
can be interpreted as the awareness of a wide range of "compressed" mental content (or
background thinking) which is activated when Sartre's attention is captured by the view of
some men (resonance effect).
This text suggests something more: the experience of a reversible co-construction of the
Self and the group.12 The reversibility between the representations of self and of the group
has also emerged as a central finding of ego/ ecological research. In the resulting model, the
co-construction of the personal and of the collective is analyzed in terms of a continuous
oscillation at the representational and experiential level between the two.

Freud
The awareness of background thinking as "compressed" mental content is also suggested
in Freud' introspective reflections about the meaning, for him, of being a Jew. After saying
that he was not a believer, Freud added: "...Plenty of other things remained over to make the
attraction of Jewry and Jews irresistible - many obscure emotional forces, which were the
more powerful, the less they could be expressed in words . . . " He then added: "Because I
was a Jew, I was free from prejudice . . . and able to stand opposition." Here, as in the
previous example, the experience of a co-construction between the self and the group is
recognized but not theorized. In this statement, the saliency of affectivity in the experience of
a subconscious link between himself and the group is, also, notable. These "many obscure
emotional forces," and the "irresistible attraction" that a group may produce will be revisited
as part of the model of the identity system that will be presented below. The " affective
dimension as the under theorized aspect of the identity system is, also, echoed in the next
example borrowed from Nietzsche.

Nietzsche
The intuition that there are feelings or affects that have not been identified and named, but
that operate specifically in the creation of identity (as a mixture of character and of destiny) is
suggested by Nietzsche. He observes that language can create an obstacle to our understand-
ing of internal phenomena. When words lack we fail to observe with exactitude: ...."there
where the kingdom of words ceases, there the kingdom of existence also ceases. Anger,
hatred, love, pity, desire, knowledge, joy, pain - all these words apply to states that are
extreme: states that are softer, more average, and particularly lower, which play constantly,

12 Elsewhere (Zavalloni, 1986, 1990), I have analyzed how, in Sartre's writings, the word "genius" appears
simultanously as a characteristic of men's in general and of various dimensions of his identity including
autobiographical narrative.
Identity and Hyperidentities 9

escape us, although they weave the web of our character and of our destiny " (ital. ours
p.96).
Because these lower emotional states have not received a name, they have not been
studied, argues Nietzsche but they create our identity (character and destiny combine nicely to
convey the idea of identity), and play constantly. The notion of a specific identity-linked
emotion/ energy has bveen described in the ego/ecological analysis as part of the identity
paradigm (Zavalloni 1990). A light, but perceptible, emotional arousal could be observed,and
introspectively perceived by our respondents both adults and children and when the
background thinking of identity words/ figures (used to describe in-groups and the Self)
begins to be displayed. An animated voice, the eagerness to talk, a Self involvement, are the
visible signs of an emotion, which in relation to this activity, has no name. The implications
of the existence of a particular form of identity - related affect or energy for this area of
mental functioning will be discussed below.
These few examples, perhaps not without some ambiguity, illustrate how "compressed"
subconscious thoughts and emotions in the area of identity are experienced; they also offer a
sample of groping scrutiny to understand this elusive domain. The challenge, then, will be to
learn their role in meaning- making processes, in the creation of reality and consequently, in
culture/ person transactions.

Thinking about self and culture: the identity system as a species of

thought
Until now, we have discussed some aspects of culture/person transaction by using terms
such as creation or construction; however, the crucial issue is to understand how this
creation/ comes into being. These terms, which are the mainstays of post-positivist and post-
modern psychology, all too often are used without addressing the process of the mind by
which creations are created.
Bly narrating the story of Iron John, Freud reflecting about men, women, and the mean-
ing of being a Jew; Sartre reacting to passers by, Nietzsche describing unnamed, identity-
related, emotions, all these performances could be interpreted as a particular species of
thought, the working of the identity system.
The question could be raised of how many species of thought there are. The issue is far
from settled. Wittgenstein, for instance, said that he developed the notion of language games
to free the philosophy of his earlier work. He thought that he and Russel had been misled by
concentrating on one type of thinking and of language, the assertoric sentence, into trying to
analyze the whole of language as though it consisted of nothing but that type, or as though
the other uses of language could be analyzed as variations on that basic theme.
More recently, Simon (1990) distinguished two "species" of thought: one that can be
described by using the problem- solving metaphor, the other which fits the reasoning
metaphor. The problem solving metaphor describes those "species" of thought that are at
work when playing chess, solving problems of elementary physics, making medical
diagnoses and so on. A reasoning metaphor fits research on concept formation or on the
validity of formal syllogisms. Bruner (1991) distinguishes between narrative and proposi-
tional thinking; another popular classification differentiates between procedural and declara-
tive knowledge (Andercon 1985).
10 M. Zavalloni

The species of thought thus described, are ill fitted to account for how we think about the
world and ourselves, how we steer a course of action or how we justify our beliefs, briefly,
how we practice our identity. Vigotsky observed that language combines within itself the
function of social interaction and the function of thinking; he would then ask how these two
functions are related, what brings about the presence of the two functions, how they develop
and how they are structurally intertwined (1934, p.95). This issue could be clarified by
accepting the idea that culture, and identity making, reflect the working of a specific species
of thought. In this area, the thinking function of language is combined with its function of
social interaction and of cultural creation.
It is important to note, here, that what it is usually called the Self, is not something which
is outside its contents; therefore, I have preferred to use the more inclusive term of identity.
Psychosocial identity refers to the person as an inner environment which comprises all that a
person thinks, feels, and does about Self, Alter and society (Zavalloni 1986). Identity
therefore could be seen as the person spelled out in its living context.I will argue that identity
as a species of thought consists of an affectively charged memory content that operates
through a continuous process of resonance with the world.13
The pervasive "species" of thought that accompanies our journey trough life, can be
described as a particular orchestration of experiences, memories and affects through which
language unfolds in its concrete living totality. This is of course what we "see" when we use
the terms "identity", person, or "subjectivity" in order to avoid summoning up an improbable
essence.
The issues of how a subjectivity (or a person or a particular identity) comes into being and
how culture is created cannot be dissociated. The private Self is also a "cultural engine" that
assimilates and sometimes produces hyperidentity-figures, in a continuous collision with
what is out there. Automatically, outside volitional consciousness, the identity system
engages the world by resonating with what is compatible in the world. Simultaneously, a
creative, self affirming impulse emerges, that contributes to shape the world in the direction
of the sameness with itself. Stated differently, the inner and the outer environment tend to
corroborate each other.14

The identity paradigm: some preliminary considerations

The concept of hyperidentity was introduced to free us from thinking about groups in
terms of an "essence." It, also, helps us to see groups as an aggregate of representations and
of figures that possess potentially, an enormous power by their impact on the person as a
body/ brain/ mind. Similarly, the concept of identity is intended to free us from conceiving
the Self as an "essence" or as a hypothetical construct independent of the discursive, repre-
sentational and affective content that converges on identity words.

13 I first introduced the notion of an affective identity resonance to account for the internalization of cultural
heroes during adolescence (Zavalloni, 1982). Further research suggested that the "resonance effect" could be
the mechanism by which the culture is mapped into brain and by which the brain produces and
disseminates new cultural forms, or objects (Zavalloni, 1990). Stated differently, resonance is the dynamic
that underlies person/culture transactions.
14 This elf affirming impulse, may be close to Nietzsche's notion of will to power. Heidegger (1984)
interprets this idea as a basic affective state and thus he comes near to what I have described as a basic
identity energy, a will to be, that by unfolding can become will to power.
Identity and Hyperidentities 11

To describe how identity words operate we could use as a metaphor, Vigotsky intuition of
the "meaningful word" as the basic cell of psychology.
These words receive the physical energy, the power, and the emotions of the body, so that
they help to generate, simultaneously, the content of several psychological domains: self-
concept, life goals, feelings, values, concept formation, attitudes, group representations; that
is to say they function transdimensionally (Zavalloni & Louis-Guerin 1989).
The resonance effect produces the power of identity words by responding to what in the
cultural space strengthen and amplify them while interpellating the world. The composite
term, identity word/figure underscores their double contribution to the identity system and to
the creation of hyperidentities. The resonance effect, by reactivating the inner world when
meeting some features of the outer world produces a continuous oscillation by which the
identity word/ figure creates new contexts of meaning and of relevance.
For instance, Marinetti's exaltation of war, of militarism, and his disdain for women, are
all well documented elements of his biography. These became via the Manifesto of Futurism,
hyperidentity figures of men and of women which resonated in compatible minds, and
contributed to the arrival of Fascism which in turn realized the political program of the
Manifesto.
Identity words are transactional not only as tools of symbolic exchanges in the cultural
space, but as means by which Alter as individual (identity prototype) or as a group (of iden-
tification or of differentiation) becomes a lasting component of the identity system. Admira-
tion or contempt, love or hatred, feeling of common fate or dehumanization will then be the
affective contexts by which Alter lives in the mind (e/motional memory) as the referent of
identity words/figures.
Besides their transdimensionality, and transactionality, identity words/ figures are
transtemporal; they survive time as the focus of one's life story (biographical dimension) and
they reactivate the past into the present and orient toward the future. To describe the point of
impact, the moment zero, when something, out there, becomes part of the identity system (or
of e/motional memory), I have tentatively introduced the notion of a synergistic encounter
(Zavalloni 1986). It refers to a mental content (word or figure), that emerges in childhood, as
the result of an encounter between an interest or need derived from something lacking in the
self (experienced as an affective arousal) and a quality (activity, characteristic) of a particular
alter. This word or figure and the memory of the original encounter, then, resurface as back-
ground thinking, when a resonance is triggered by a compatible feature of the world. From
then on, the identity word/figure will become a recurrent theme, an invariant, which accom-
pany a person through life. It works as a filter that selects what will be admitted from the
world and a tool capable, eventually, of changing the world.
The triple properties of identity words/ figures: transdimensionality, transactionality,
transtemporality can be best appraised when studying influential thinkers who had the power
to change the sociocultural space. Mary Daly, the celebrated feminist philosopher, generously
explored with me some of her own identity words. I will present some excerpts obtained in
1988 and others obtained in 1991. These excerpts show how the identity system constantly
reconfigures past, present and future, while maintaining its basic sameness. Continuity and
change, in the context of identity are not antinomic.

Excerpts from a philosopher's protocol (1989)

12 M. Zavalloni

Identity words produced in association to we philosophers are: adventurous, courageous,

geniuses, passionate, intuitive and logical.
Representational contextualization of the identity word, adventurous:
Word meaning:
To be adventurous is what it means to be alive...it has to do with the work you have to do, with
encounters with exciting people and spirits and animals.
Self meaning:
I am adventurous, not in the conventional sense, but in the sense of wanting to journey into the heart
of the matter. I have had experience of moving into different dimensions, of travelling across time and
space....
Prototypes or referent:
I was thinking of myself..... I cannot say Nietzsche, I cannot say Virginia Woolf.. they all disappoint
me somewhat.
Biographical data:
1) Synergistic encounter and identity prototype:
I was four and a half years old and I fell in love with Carol who was five and a half. She was my hero,
until she moved away one year later and I lost all contact with her. She was adventurous, breaking the
furniture, scratching it. My mother who had strict rules did not want her in the house anymore. Her
mother would read us advanced books. I remember a purple, exciting book. I would listen to that.
Some years later I remember reading: The Call of the Wild. It is about a dog that was stolen, and that
escapes into the wild North; he survives, and lives with the wolf. I remember the dog howling to the
deep sky. It was a mystical experience, a spiritual travel.
[In relation to Carol (identity prototype) the word adventurous, is connected to: breaking, scratching
the furniture. The spiritual and existential trajectory that this word assumes should be analyzed in its
connection with the other identity words describing philosophers and the Self as courageous, genius,
logical, intuitive. Each identity word possesses its own trajectory, while contributing to the meaning
of all the others. The original meaning of adventurous as "breaking the rules" will reappear below].
2) Motivation and life goals.
I wanted to be a writer, my family was not educated but they gave me shining books. Not ordinary
books, they were shining, they had a kind of mystical coloration. I just knew that they were my
world, my reality. The starting point of wanting to become a philosopher was in my adolescence.... I
went swimming and as I laid n the grass afterwards, a clover blossom spoke to me: I am. It provided
an intuition of being and this intuition led me to write a doctoral dissertation whose title was The
Intuition of Being in Jacques Maritain. When I was young I attended a working class school, therefore
I could not study philosophy, it did not exist there. To do that, finally, I had to cross the ocean, to
Friburg; it was a tremendous risk. I was truly an adventurer. Although I had,almost, no money I
managed to travel throughout Europe and my mind exploded.
These quotations represent identity words as psychological cells in action. As transdi-
mensional entities, they cut across several psychological dimensions, motivation, values,
attitudes. As transtemporal entities, identity words operate as markers of important events
throughout life. In its transactional trajectory, adventurous sparks in daring, remarkable
books while creating a hyperidentity figure of women and of feminists.
From identity words to cultural creation:
To be adventurous is what Pure Lust is about: desires, the opening on the sky... I invented the word
Be-Dazzling, it is in the Wickedary, and it refers to the Be-Dazzling adventurous voyager, it creates and
carries energy to overcome the foreground with the brilliance of the Background. The relation between
Be-Dazzling and adventurous is very close. Adventure sometimes means travel, sometimes nature,
sometimes connection with another person, or an aesthetic feeling. Sometimes it is the light, the
Identity and Hyperidentities 13

spirit, the energy; this is Be-Dazzling. All this multiplicity of meaning allows you to overturn every-
thing and it is linked to taking risks; it breaks the taboo against the dullness. All this was not very
strong when I wrote The Church and the Second Sex. I started to became conscious of it when I was
writing Beyond God the Father and this consciousness intensified and expanded when I wrote
Gyn\ecology. When I broke the taboos and threw off some oppressive covering I found happiness.
Happiness is activity, as Aristotle said, you seek to know and for that I use the metaphor of the
voyager. Words are like carriers bringing the reader metaphorically over the edge. The primary struggle
is to be Be-Dazzling and not let the foreground colour it. This means to be in touch with ourselves and
with creativity, constantly risking because it is the most important thing.
This excerpt documents the oscillation of an identity word from the inner to the outer and
vice versa, and the weaving of new but related words such as Be-Dazzling. As a result new
hyperidentities figures emerge on the socio-cultural space. These figures will, then, trigger a
resonance in some readers. For instance what resonates in my own mind when reading
Daly's books among other things, is the representational context associated to one of my
identity words: the critical fringe of society (generated by the group, intellectuals).15

Creating the new from the old: entering the pirate (1991)
Identity words and their representational contexts, as living cells of the mind, do not
remain static. During their trajectory in time, they absorb new elements and respond
creatively to new contexts. What emerges, not only modify the present but also the past by
reactivating forgotten memories. In the excerpt that follows, obtained three years later, Mary
Daly explains how a new figure, the pirate, has acquired an important role in her, This figure
will be developed in her, just published, philosophical autobiography: Outercourse: the Be-
Dazzling voyage (1992).
Self meaning:
It is related to the word adventurous. I had to be a pirate to steal the idea of the pirate so that the very
concept of piracy is an act of piracy. Pirate as a female image, is close, across time, to witches, and
crones. It represents an outlaw that steals back the identity of the pirate.
Biographical data:
During childhood I loved the book Treasure Island. Before that, I remember a woman who was
peddling books and who came to our house. My mother wanted to buy for me some books about
ships. The woman snapped back: "What an idea to buy this for a little girl." So my mother got,
instead, some book advertisement about a little engine... I felt that something had been taken away
from me. I also used to take a boat up and down the Hudson River when I was a little kid. I used to
have a captain's hat and to sail in this boat. Later on I realized that Ireland is an island.
Synergistic encounter:
A few years ago I was in Ireland on a boat with some friends, wearing some head cover, one of them
said: "If there are pirates, I certainly see one." This amused me; I was on a boat sailing toward Aron
Island. It was very misty and I got the idea of the subliminal sea [an important theme in Outercourse],
I also thought of a woman pirate: Granuaile (Grace O'Mally) from County Claire; she lived in the
16th century and was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I. The Queen received her at the royal palace.
Identity prototype:
The pirate is an outlaw and, and this makes me think of Carol. As I wrote in the first chapter of
Outercourse Carol was my hero, she broke all the rules

15 The ego/ecological perspective could be usefully applied to the psychology of the reader which is an
emerging topic in the field of literary criticism. Currently, researchers work with the idea of the reader's
identification with a fictional character. This one-way approach obscures the transactional processes by
which the identity system and a cultural object communicate.
14 M. Zavalloni

...[see above], this is what a pirate does. I also remember reading Treasure Island.
[As I noted that this book was absent in the first interview she added: "before I could recapture the
image of the pirate, I ruled out any identification with the unlikeable, and very cruel pirates described
in Treasure Island].
Cultural creation:
I have the feeling that in my books I have plundered the treasures that have been stolen from women
and that I am bringing these back to them. Several women to whom I have spoken about the pirate
told me how important and powerful this figure was for them.
In the second protocol (1991), adventurous acquires a more combative meaning than in
1989, and recaptures the image of "breaking the rules" which was the first association of this
word with the memory of Carol breaking the furniture. It also resonates in the adop-
tion/creation of the pirate as a hyperidentity figure and as a metaphor for the Self.16 All these
elements can be found in Outercourse. Obviously, the book contain an additional and
dazzling wealth of creative data that go well beyond what the display of a single identity word
can offer, yet it does not alter the basic identity dynamic and validates the proposed model of
the working of the identity system.
Earlier in this paper, I suggested that in order to understand narrative as a mode of
thinking and as a key to person-culture transaction it should be read in its relation to identity
processes. The display of the background thinking associated to each identity word becomes
the crucial element for an identity oriented narrative analysis. In this protocol, the display of
the word adventurous leads us to a polyphonic narrative while demonstrating the transdi-
mensionality and transtemporality of the word. That is to say, if a word is produced to
describe an in-group it would, also, in the majority of the cases be applicable to the Self. If
this is the case, it will necessarily appear as expressing a commitment, a desire (motivation),
a project, a preference (attitude), a value, something that interpellates the world and the centre
of a biographical narrative. All of this will resonate whenever something in the world appears
as compatible with it and this resonance will produce the condition for the assimilation or the
internalization of the event. What is of particular interest in understanding how Mary Daly's
narrative unfolds from an identity structure, is, that in this case, with the publication of
Outercourse we can document how an identity word, adventurous, leads to the creation of the
pirate, a hyperidentity figure of women who are radical feminist, the pirate. Something new
has entered the cultural space and interpellates the world.17
If the display of the background thinking associated to the word adventurous validates, the
identity model that we have proposed as an account of the modalities of person/ culture
transactions, it also, justifies our reading of Bly's Iron John and of the Futurist Manifesto.
These analyses suggest a new kind of literary criticism that could weave a transactional web
between the author, h/er world, and the reader. We could develop a programme of transac-
tional cooperations between psychology and the literary disciplines, rather than simply
borrowing from them as Bruner (1991) suggested.

16 Once created, the figure of the pirate works retrospectively. As Mary Douglas notes on Outercourse (1992),
in 1973, when she was writing her first book "I had not yet had a chance of seeing all - or most of the
implications of my Dis-coverings. For example, I did not explicitly see myself as a pirate even though I
was actively engaged in that profession" (p. 151).
17 The New York Times review of Outercourse notes that Mary Dale in this book, "touches a collective nerve
in women". This is close to what we refer to as resonance.
Identity and Hyperidentities 15

The resonance effect as modus operandi of the identity system

These excerpts not only illustrate the basic characteristics of identity words: transdimen-
sionality, transtemporality, and transactionality, but also the process that underlies them,
what I have called the resonance effect (Zavalloni 1990). The conclusion seems inescapable
that the reactivation (resonance) of an affectively charged psychical material produces in the
brain a condition (chemical, electrical or whatever) for recalling past events and for new
mental creations that are culturally relevant.
In the preceding pages I have used the term, resonance, as it is commonly used in every-
day language. We constantly meet this term; for instance, "It is enormous, to hear our
thoughts resonate in (others)" (de Beauvoir 1954). In spite the popularity of resonance as
aword that names the impact that some experiences produce, the psychological phenomena
that it addresses have not been studied.18
In the present context, the resonance effect refers to the reactivation as background
thinking, of the compressed context of identity words (intrapsychic resonance). This implies
that in every act of thinking is engaged a psychic totality that reaches beyond the particular
context where this act occurs.
When an identity word enters the field of consciousness, the representational network
associated with it, vibrates, amplified, as it were, by the experience, the imagination and the
emotions that form the sedimented layers of meaning of the identity word.
What is the medium through which the resonance effect operates? I propose that this
medium is the affect. Earlier, I have described the representational context of identity words
as an affective- representational circuit (Zavalloni 1986) in which each element is invested by
a particular feeling, love and admiration for the prototype and other exemplars; pride for the
Self, feelings of common destiny with the group to whom the word applies. Also, the
interest, value, commitment that are conferred on the activities to whom the word refers (for
instance being adventurous) are forms of emotion.

Resonance effect and the creation of the identity system

I propose that the range of emotions that accompany identity words and their various
contexts, reflects the conditions by which this mental content is memorized. we have already
described the identity system as e/motional memory (Zavalloni & Louis-Guerin 1984);
presently the notion of resonance effect provides a key to understand how the identity system
emerges, grows, and operates as a species of thought in transaction with the world.
Whenever, in the socio-cultural space, an element is experienced as compatible with the
content of an identity word/ figure/ episode (identity complex), it will trigger the affect origi-
nally associated with it. This affect will be experienced as awakened interest, desire to act, a
reactivation of the past (background thinking). The brain will, thus, automatically and
unconsciously, attain a readiness for remembering; the new element will be integrated as part
of e/motional memory, of the inner environment, that is to say of all that we have defined as
the identity system.

18 Recently Lazarus (1991) noted that more attention should be paid to "unarticulated processes" like
resonance, to fully understand how emotions are generated For him resonance refers to "an amorphous or
ineffable sense of connection between what is in us and something in the outer world" (p. 154).
16 M. Zavalloni

What is important, here, for a theoretical understanding of the identity system as a species
of thought, is the demonstration, that in this area, affectivity plays at every moment of
person/ culture transaction. It is always a precondition for reacting to and then memorizing an
identity related event. The identification of how the resonance effect works, may settle the
lingering debate as to whether cognition precedes or follows affect. For the first time, we can
conceive affect as memory-creating and the resonance effect as the trace of an elemental
identity energy that operates transtemporally, as we just saw, but also transdimensionally.
Nietzsche above mentioned observation, on the impact of lower affective states on character
creation can be expanded into a general theory of mental functioning in the area of Self, alter
and society.
As the identity word and its representational field inhabit a range of psychological dimen-
sions: values, motivation, interests, actions, identity prototypes, so the affect will produce a
particular feeling specific to each dimension: liking, attraction, admiration, desire, and so on.
In its elemental simplicity, the resonance effect provides the dynamic, the energy by which
the identity system, as e/motional memory, is continuously created, while remaining, in
many important ways the same. The system assimilates, in its transactions with the world,
what is congruous or desirable. When this is not possible, pain, discomfort, depression sets
in. Negative resonance is as powerful as positive resonance.

Resonance effect as rehearsal of e/motional memory

We have described the resonance effect, as uncovering a function of affect (emotion and
feelings) that has not been studied systematically: that of creating and not of accompanying or
of anteceding a cognitive content. Simultaneously we can argue that the resonance effect, by
reactivating the content of e/motional memory produces, automatically, the rehearsal that
memory researchers (Norman 1972) consider as required to preserve all types of memory
content. What James and then Erickson have described as a feeling of continuity that charac-
terizes a person's identity may, also, be linked to the resonance effect. It perpetuates child-
hood elements in adulthood.
To summarize the argument so far, the resonance effect:
1) produces the psychological link between words, thoughts and experiences.
2) By reactivating the past as background thinking, the resonance effect produces the
necessary rehearsal to keep it alive.
3) therefore, is responsible for the conservation of our thoughts, feelings and experiences
as e/motional memory (intrapsychic resonance).
4) predisposes the identity system to assimilate what is compatible with it in the world. It
is through the resonance effect that we respond to the environment and to a cultural, artistic,
political discourse by integrating it as part of our e/motional memory19 or by refusing it with
boredom, aversion, or fear (interpsychic resonance).
5) is responsible for the coherence and predictability of the discourse that we produce
about Self, Alter and society. The resonance effect is that by which the identity system comes

19 In Mary Daly Wickedary of the English Language (1987) E-motion is described as "Elemental passion
which moves women out/away form the fixed/framed State of Stagnation" (p. 74). The connection
between identity and e/motional memory is clearly described.
Identity and Hyperidentities 17

into being and then retains a sense of continuity, while changing, by assimilating what in the
world is compatible with the content of e/motional memory.20
6) it reactivates as background thinking, a representational and affective content, which is
not acknowledged in foreground arguments, while influencing them, all the same. As a
result, it produces a type of mental functioning which is pervasive in human experience, but
not acknowledged as such. By identifying this species of thought, the assessment of every-
day thinking in relation to logical thinking become irrelevant. Approximative concepts such
as stereotypes, prejudice, ethnocentrism, can be reassessed.

The identity paradigm: a model.

These considerations enable us to outline the notion of an identity paradigm as a model of
the identity system.
From the structural point of view, the model is founded on three sets of equivalence: 1)
linguistic, 2) psychological, 3) affective.
Linguistic equivalence means that in terms of identity, an adjective, a verb, a noun, an
adverb are interchangeable. To borrow from our previous example, to be adventurous,
adventure, to act adventurously all point to different accounts of a same underlying, referen-
tial complex.
Psychological equivalence refers to what has been identified as the affective- representa-
tional circuit . If an identity word appears on one psychological dimension, it will necessarily
appear on all the other dimensions. When one of these dimensions is in a foreground position
(as the focus of consciousness) the other will be activated as background thinking.
Affective equivalence means that the different feelings that are activated in association with
the psychological dimensions comprising the affective-representational circuit, are experi-
enced simultaneously either in foreground or background positions. These feelings are all
part of the original affect which was triggered when a feature of the external world became
encapsulated in an identity word.

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20 The temporal dimension of identity word/figure, would require a full analysis. Background thinking
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Marisa Zavalloni, Dept de Psychologie, Université de Montreal, CP 6203, Succ A, H3C 3T3 Montreal,
Canada