"The Mind and its Expression"

De Gruyter eBooks, 2013

This article provides a sketch of the theoretical framework of German Expression Psychology (GEP) and discusses the forms and functions of bodily and verbal types of communication that express inner states. Starting with a brief historical overview, we discuss general concepts of the German Expression Psychology framework, in particular with respect to the definition of expression, the relationship between expression and its subject, and the perception of expression. Within each of these areas special attention is given to the face, body and voice as indicators of inner states. Following this general overview of German Expression Psychology, we focus on the contribution of three selected authors, namely, Philipp Lersch, Paul Leyhausen and Egon Brunswik, who have been particularly influential in the field of German Expression Psychology. For Lersch, we consider the co-existential relationship between affect and expression, the detailed anatomical description of expressions, as well as the analysis of dynamic aspects of expressions. Leyhausen added an ethological perspective on expressions and perceptions. Here, we focus on the developmental aspects of expression and impression formation, and differentiate between phylogenetic and ontogenetic aspects of expression. Brunswik's Lens Model allows a separation between distal indicators on the part of the sender and proximal percepts on the part of the observer. Here, we discuss how such a model can be used to describe and analyze nonverbal communication on both the encoding and decoding side. Deriving from the presentation of all three authors, we outline the general relevance of German Expression Psychology for current research, specifically with respect to the definition and function of expressions and perceptions, and existing approaches to the study of verbal and nonverbal behavior. 35. Body and speech as expression of inner states 551

Psychological Inquiry, 2005

Acta Analytica-international Periodical for Philosophy in The Analytical Tradition, 2010

Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzles surrounding the seemingly privileged, first-person access we have to our own minds. His is an attempt to answer the question: What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have? In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide. In Section 1, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 2, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 3, I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely: What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them? I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.

2007

This article provides a sketch of the theoretical framework of German Expression Psychology (GEP) and discusses the forms and functions of bodily and verbal types of communication that express inner states. Starting with a brief historical overview, we discuss general concepts of the German Expression Psychology framework, in particular with respect to the definition of expression, the relationship between expression and its subject, and the perception of expression. Within each of these areas special attention is given to the face, body and voice as indicators of inner states. Following this general overview of German Expression Psychology, we focus on the contribution of three selected authors, namely, Philipp Lersch, Paul Leyhausen and Egon Brunswik, who have been particularly influential in the field of German Expression Psychology. For Lersch, we consider the co-existential relationship between affect and expression, the detailed anatomical description of expressions, as well as the analysis of dynamic aspects of expressions. Leyhausen added an ethological perspective on expressions and perceptions. Here, we focus on the developmental aspects of expression and impression formation, and differentiate between phylogenetic and ontogenetic aspects of expression. Brunswik's Lens Model allows a separation between distal indicators on the part of the sender and proximal percepts on the part of the observer. Here, we discuss how such a model can be used to describe and analyze nonverbal communication on both the encoding and decoding side. Deriving from the presentation of all three authors, we outline the general relevance of German Expression Psychology for current research, specifically with respect to the definition and function of expressions and perceptions, and existing approaches to the study of verbal and nonverbal behavior.

Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2008

The relevance of inner speech for psychological life has been recognized in the literature, and several scales and questionnaires have provided evidence. However, evidence coming from direct observation of the phenomena is still rare. The aim of this study was to specify modes of verbalized inner speech as expression of self-consciousness (reflexivity or internal conversation). Eighteen adults (between 19 and 34 years old) were instructed to express aloud their thinking during a task with the Brazilian version of the Raven Progressive Matrices Test. Participants' thinking-aloud verbalizations were submitted to a qualitative analysis based on three reflexive steps of semiotic-phenomenology: description, reduction, and interpretation. Description revealed a structure of verbalized inner speech organized on the basis of three main typifications: visual description, logical reasoning, and dialogue. Reduction recognized dialogical relations as an essential feature underlying verbalized inner speech, characterized by two different aspects of information and communication. Interpretation indicated that an accurate account of the conscious expression of dialogical relations requires understanding the communicative process as a logical relationship with an emphasis on its pragmatic function. The conscious experience of reflexivity is disclosed as both temporal (a marked presence) and spatial (marked as an absence).

Scripta, 2014

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2017

Russell Meares, together with Robert Hobson, was one of the pioneers of the 'conversational model' of psychotherapy, which they worked on together in the 1960s when Meares, who is Australian, was doing his psychiatric training in London at the Maudsley and Royal Bethlem hospitals. Many readers of the BJP will remember Hobson (who went on to train at the SAP), a wonderfully warm, learned and witty speaker, who directed a therapeutic community at the Maudsley for 20 years and later became a central figure in psychotherapy in Manchester. He died in 1999. Meares too went on to a distinguished career in Australia; he is now Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Sydney. The conversational model is a psychotherapy approach focusing on selfexperience, using ideas from many sources and echoing especially those of William James. Like Winnicott, it emphasized the experience of aliveness and well-being, and one original theoretical feature it stressed is the importance of 'doubling', the twofold awareness of how one is and how one seems to another-initially achieved by internalization of the 'protoconversation' (Trevarthen's term) between mother and preverbal infant. In health, the outcome is said to be the 'stream of consciousness' (James' term), seen as a positive freedom from arrests and fusions (transferences), and characterized by feelings of coherence, continuity, agency and so forth. 'Conversation' is the agent of relatedness; it is with an other who is perceived as a 'fellow' (as in 'fellow-feeling'). This practical and humane model, crudely described in my summary but worked out with great intellectual sophistication, was developed in response to the sort of patients Hobson saw at the Maudsley, deemed at the time 'unanalysable' and who would probably nowadays be diagnosed 'borderline personality disorder'. The conversational model still exists, only slightly modified, under the name psychodynamic interpersonal therapy (PIT). It was well ahead of its time when Hobson invented it, and many of its ideas foresee those of today's intersubjective schools and of such approaches as mentalization therapy. In the present book, Meares sets out to enquire more deeply into the philosophical and evolutionary implications of the 'conversational' approach (and by extension of most of our modern interpersonal approaches. I don't want to suggest that Meares' thinking is in any way narrow. On the contrary, it has the depth, generosity and willingness to value different disciplines and ways of thinking that we now very much need, after an age of rather extreme specialization). His argument expands the insights of the conversational model to society as a whole. He begins with the key idea of analogical relatedness, that's to say, relatedness in which one participant gives a response to the other that matches the other's