Working title: Singularity and Social Constructionism

The purpose of this thesis proposal is to explore the contribution of the specificity and singularity emerging from the neurophenomenological perspective to the field of relational dialogue. Realities and meanings are developed and co-constructed in this dialogue; at the same time, there emerge characteristics and singular conditions of each individual’s biological configuration, which participate in the relational domain.  Within relational dialogue, this singularity appears both as one’s own biological constitution – temperament – and a language specificity that wouldn’t be the same as the public language or “useful language games.”

In the clinical practice this becomes relevant in interactions with the other through relational dialogues, and in the necessary distinctions required to understand both the patient’s relational and experiential, private world. In relational domains we co-construct dialogic coordinations.  We might, however, overlook certain aspects of this singularity that are not always expressed by language in relational dialogue or to which we don’t attend as therapists.

Therefore, reflections on this subject arise from the clinical practice. When language is externalized and constructs communicational networks, does it articulate the private, prereflexive language that is part of the neural networks of its biological constitution? How do the linguistic and neural specificities, together with the expressions of temperament, emerge and interact in the relational and intersubjective space?

Description
This thesis works on three levels: the social construction of reality, the biological possibilities of construction of reality and the attempt to articulate these two dimensions with singularity in the construction of reality.

• 2.1    Dialogue and private language in the construction of social reality
  Social constructionism states that the notion of self is constructed in and through language and dialogue, with the self being considered as relational and in transformation.  In this sense, the self as a static, preformed entity “does not exist.”  It is only created in language and synthesizes an individual’s participation in multiple speech-moments along his or her life.  Mead (1972) maintains that the self emerges as a result of experience and social interaction; during development, information and experience are internalized through language.  The relational approach sees the self not only as a private structure of the individual, but also as the discourse of the relational self in language and in the relational space (Gergen, 1996).  Although the self is disclosed through language, one portion of the self’s experience that fails to be transmitted or communicated is an inner sensation of singularity both in the experiencing and in the self’s perspective of social interaction.  The experiencing, just as the relational self, is open to both the modifications constructed in interactions with the environment and the variations in the individual’s own physiology, so it is changed and transformed with time. These would be the so-called subjective, private and reflexive experiences - since they are not communicated verbally to others – to which only the individual has access (Mead, 1972), either through the embodied experience proposed by Varela (2005) or through an experience that is not shared with others but exists, is prereflexive and is transformed.  This portion of experience contains a history, as well as meaning or significance for the experiencing individual.  Additionally, its outline differs from that of the publicly shared experience and is supplied by the individual’s experience and history, neural connections, brain architecture, temperament and body.  This accounts for being in and experiencing the world in a distinctive manner, coexisting with intersubjectivity.
• 2.2    Biology and construction of social reality
  Within the biological sphere, information is stored not only in the semantic or syntactic memory, but also in the procedural memory, so it is transmitted from generation to generation (Cloninger, 1993). Both temperament and this information are constitutional parts of the individual and of what the self constructs in interaction.  Simultaneously, and interacting with both the environment and learning, neural connections and brain structures are in constant development and organization, imprinting an individual, distinctive stamp on the brain circuitry and, consequently, on being and doing in the world.  This biopsychosocial process is continuously interacting with the environment and, as a result, undergoing modifications.
• 2.3    Singularity in the construction of social reality
  Based on the above, the self has more than one linguistic dimension.  From a biological point of view, a number of articulated processes are identified in a dialogic relationship, which raises two questions: what do the emerging neurophenomenological specificity and singularity contribute to comprehension in relational dialogue?  And how do the linguistic and neural specificities, in conjunction with temperament, emerge and configure themselves in the intersubjective space, the dialogic domain and the articulation of language?  In the clinical practice, an attempt should be made to analyze the potential contribution of opening a space not only for the “how” as therapeutic process, but also for the “what and for whom” of the individual expressing, experiencing and constructing it in the dialogue, from his or her biopsychosocial constitution.