Intersubjective Space Research Articles

Trust in evaluating the effectiveness of intercultural communication

The paper is dedicated to the issue of evaluating the effectiveness of intercultural communication. On the basis of empirical study that included qualitative content analysis, modeling and an expert survey, the main criteria for evaluating effectiveness were formulated based on the theory of social systems by Niklas Luhmann: (a) formation of a space of active intersubjectivity; (b) production and reproduction of new forms of communication. Based on these criteria, the authors propose a system of indicators. Criteria and indicators for evaluating and self-evaluating the effectiveness in intercultural communication were highly appreciated by experts and can be recognized as the main ones for assessing the effectiveness of intercultural communication within the framework of the activity-phenomenological model.

Intraregional Geopolitical Imaginaries in Europe: Hungary and Poland Vs. France and Germany

ABSTRACT This article critically describes and compares intraregional geopolitical imaginaries as they appear in the official discourses of two groups of states in EUrope: Soft Eurosceptic discourse of Hungary and Poland vs. Europhile discourse of France and Germany. The analysis is carried out through application of pragmatic analysis and language games analysis of official speeches of the leading politicians of these states delivered in the year 2018 on the theme of ‘Future of Europe’. The theoretical framework of Rule-oriented Constructivism and the analytical framework of Critical Geopolitics guide this research. This research complements existing literature on geopolitical imaginaries highlighting the importance of linguistic practices, spatial understandings and intersubjective spaces in EUropean integration.

Ground Zero: A Common Ground for the Analytic Dyad

The memories and the visual images of 9/11 are embedded in the public psyche as remnants of a collective trauma, and this collectivity can serve to create a common ground and an intersubjective space for trauma work. In addition to emphasizing the importance of enactive witnessing and recognition in the healing process, I discuss in this paper the impact of trauma, including that of 9/11, that has been experienced from afar, as I was living in Ohio on September 11, 2001. I will also address the impact of experiencing a traumatic event from a physical distance on trauma work, using the concept of “distance” both literally and figuratively. The clinical illustrations provided all involve witnessing 9/11 on a television screen. Each vignette illustrates how the images themselves can be used as actual screens on which to project earlier trauma history. Similarly, part of the clinical work was done from afar. Telephone and virtual therapy at certain times facilitated both disclosures and, paradoxically, enhanced feelings of closeness. The analyst’s engagement in the process of witnessing facilitated connection to dissociated areas of experience, but enactive witnessing brought cohesiveness and clarity to the fragmentation caused by trauma and lack of early recognition. The clinical stories illustrate how this engagement enabled both participants to enliven deadened, dissociated parts of the self.

Creative encounters: exploring contact boundaries through the creative process

ABSTRACT Integrating creative processes within therapeutic encounters encourages us to be in contact on many levels and layers. Creativity may bring us into contact with our inner world and knowings, with the intersubjective space we share with others and with the world around us. This creative contact calls us into action, experimentation, imagination, risk taking, embodiment, and it cultivates our ability to be responsive. Three creative arts therapists write expressively into a hybrid online/in person workshop they facilitated during PCE2021. While witnessed by online observers, the workshop invited in-person participants to use movement, visual art-making, creative writing, and enactment to reflexively explore and experiment with their own dynamic ‘contact boundary’. This personal inquiry was then opened to an experience of how others in the group may make contact and place boundaries in different ways and places. The authors thread creative narration alongside descriptions of theories informing their choice of various processes. This article invites the reader into the workshop experience aiming to facilitate vicarious exploration of each reader’s own contact boundary in relation to self and others, and open consideration of movement as a sometimes confronting but often rewarding therapeutic mode.

Collective mindfulness: Somatic attention to group and self in meditation practice in Israel

Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in body‐based mindfulness in the context of Vipassana meditation practice, we analyze collective mindfulness spaces, including group sittings, virtual group sittings and the use of mindfulness applications. We show that mindfulness offers a unique kind of togetherness. It opposes direct social engagement while still offering a supportive social space where others move from an audience to bodily co‐dwellers. We track the tensions in replicating this form of togetherness in virtual settings, where, paradoxically, the physical distance ends up exposing people's social identities while still limiting embodied synchronization. We illustrate how the social spaces of mindfulness serve as liminoid sanctuaries beyond everyday social‐interactive life, providing relief from the political and economic stress in which Israelis live.

Dialogic Book-Sharing as a Privileged Intersubjective Space.

Parental reading to young children is well-established as being positively associated with child cognitive development, particularly their language development. Research indicates that a particular, “intersubjective,” form of using books with children, “Dialogic Book-sharing” (DBS), is especially beneficial to infants and pre-school aged children, particularly when using picture books. The work on DBS to date has paid little attention to the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the approach. Here, we address the question of what processes taking place during DBS confer benefits to child development, and why these processes are beneficial. In a novel integration of evidence, ranging from non-human primate communication through iconic gestures and pointing, archaeological data on Pre-hominid and early human art, to experimental and naturalistic studies of infant attention, cognitive processing, and language, we argue that DBS entails core characteristics that make it a privileged intersubjective space for the promotion of child cognitive and language development. This analysis, together with the findings of DBS intervention studies, provides a powerful intellectual basis for the wide-scale promotion of DBS, especially in disadvantaged populations.

“All we need is a home”

This article retraces the aftermath of the eviction of a squatted building that took place in Rome (2017). It draws on ethnography among Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants, analyzing their search for home, and critically engages with the concept of vulnerability. It explores how the evictees—hundreds of people living in “vulnerable homes”—coped with this event by relying on community ties and the process of home-making enacted in an otherwise empty setting. It also shows how the language of vulnerability was mobilized as a moral and bureaucratic resource both by public authorities, to select those to protect, and by evicted people, to claim their rights. Vulnerability emerges as an intersubjective space of experience that people learn to navigate and in which anguish and creativity overlap.

“If only he were blind”: Shame, trauma, and dissociation among women with body dysmorphic disorder in physically intimate relationships

ABSTRACT Background Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) involves a debilitating preoccupation with one’s appearance and associated difficulties in social and interpersonal relationships, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Quantitative research has investigated the severity of relationship difficulties in BDD, while qualitative research has primarily focused on intrapersonal phenomena, although interpersonal difficulties, including with physical intimacy, have frequently emerged from these studies. Aims This study explores how women with BDD make sense of their lived experiences of physical intimacy in the context of current partner relationships. Method Six adult women participated in individual semi-structured interviews. The data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results The analysis generated three superordinate themes: 1) The shame in being seen, 2) Disgust and detachment during intimacy, and 3) A flawed self, unworthy of relationships. Conclusions This study demonstrates how appearance-related concerns filter into the cognitive, behavioural, and emotional intersubjective spaces of physically intimate partnerships. Shame or trauma may be triggered and may be managed through disengagement or dissociation. Clinical implications These findings support calls for a full psychological assessment of the contextual and interpersonal components of BDD, and further suggest that psychological interventions for shame, trauma, and dissociation, such as compassion-focused therapy, imagery rescripting, or body-focused therapies, may be helpful additions to cognitive-behavioural or exposure and response prevention interventions for practitioners working with BDD.

Embracing the Paradox: A Bodhisattva Path

This article addresses the significance of paradox as a steady presence in our lives. Contradictions and ambiguities often lead to aversive states of anxious uncertainty where straightforward answers are often unavailable yet sought after to alleviate existential insecurities. In conditions where narratives of ambivalence intensify, such as during the worldwide COVID-19 crises, our traditional socio-evolutionary inclinations to avoid them either through denial or active resistance become more noticeable. It also leads to distress in intersubjective spaces especially when uncertainty and perceptions of threat stand as correlates, and we start to fear what we do not understand. In this paper, I consider wisdom responses from a Buddhist perspective to help us acknowledge the value of paradox, highlighting how changes in the formulation of our self-concept can help with that. I draw upon select principles and insights from the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra, two texts within the Mahaprajnaparamita sutras of Mahayana Buddhism. Through these, I examine some inherent paradoxes as vital components of a larger ontological unity, the recognition of which can act as an enabler to the Bodhisattva path. This path is worthy of exploration, allowing us to move past the need for closure and instead focus on reconciliation, disclosure, and epistemic humility.

The institution, mental disability and the psychoanalyst: Prospects presented by a revival of intersubjective receptivity in groups

ABSTRACT This presentation aims at giving an account of a novel group project, conducted with adults with mental and/or psychic disabilities. The evolution of post-war psychiatry in France is marked by several important changes. The development of psychotherapy in institutions asserts the role of psychoanalysis in the institutional sphere. We then will describe the environmental contexts for the reception and support of the mentally disabled subject as it currently exists in France, highlighting their effects on psychic disability. This novel project takes place in a medico-social institution, a residential home in which live eight adults with disabilities, women and men, aged 19 to 55, and at a particular moment in institutional history. Sustained by several mediations, it is first through the support of a jigsaw puzzle project that the experience is initiated. Then a writing workshop will be organised, whereby residues of proceedings will find a form in which to be recorded. The objective will be the implementation of intersubjective space, despite the impediment identified at the level of individual subjective psyches. The effectiveness of the methods used can be detected in the intersubjective connections, allowing the renewal of symbolization and creativity.

Exploring the relationship between collaborative dialogue and the learning of L2 form

Informed by Vygotskian sociocultural theory, this study is an exploration of the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of collaborative dialogue when learning second language (L2) form. The learning of one male Qatari undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) learner was traced as he interacted with three different partners to complete three different form-focused tasks over a period of five weeks. The grammatical structure targeted was the simple past passive. An analysis of the participant's interactions reveals that the efficacy of collaborative dialogue can be influenced by a number of factors, including: the learners’ linguistic knowledge and abilities, the learners’ ability to create and maintain an intersubjective space, and the sensitivity of mediation provided. This study contributes to a greater understanding of how L2 learning occurs within classroom interaction.

Médiation artistique et ambiances sensorielles groupales dans le processus de symbolisation : le Tesseract d’Arvak

ObjectivesThis paper explores the relationship between the effects of group dynamics and engagement with art on the symbolization processes among children with autism spectrum disorder. The authors investigate how the participation of a mixed group of schoolchildren and their teachers in an art-based initiative could encourage the inclusion of children with special needs with their “ordinary” schoolmates. The researchers focused on the “sensory atmosphere” within the group, enhanced by the different senses (sight, sound, touch, and the body in movement) in a collective experience of creative transformations. The resulting hypothesis is that the simultaneous exposure to multi-sensory modalities, the sensory atmosphere, and to the group dynamics during the creative activity would motivate constructive encounters with children who had no access to language and were excluded from social bonding at school. MethodThe clinical participant observations were conducted in an art workshop outside the school with a mixed group of schoolchildren (“ordinary” and special needs) and their teachers. The modulations of the sensory atmosphere in the group and the ambulation of a particular child, whose autistic defenses had previously excluded him from any possible shared experience with his peers, were analyzed, using the psychoanalytic approach of group dynamics and the practice of art-mediation in group therapy. The artistic activities in and by the group made it possible, through the proposal of a created-to-create object operating as a transitional mediator, to (re)energize the modalities of communication and connection: on the intrapsychic level for each group member, and on the intersubjective level among all group members. The presence of the adults and the group dynamic fulfilled the functions of holding and containment for the joint emergence of a creative process and group psychic processes. ResultsThe artistic object, as a third-party mediator to the mixed group members, and its resonance with other co-created elements emerging from the multi-sensory modalities during the creative engagement, enhanced a reassuring sound envelope and a familiar sensory atmosphere. The reorganization of the group dynamics, on both manifest and latent levels, allowed for a potential bonding experience, by indulging the group in a collective creative production. During the first session, a “getting-used-to” stage was identified. The children were invited to explore the art workshop that contrasted with the spatial-temporal organization in their classrooms. In the fourth session, the object of mediation allowed for the transformation of the archaic elements originating in the various sensory modalities into elaborated elements of a collective creation process. It operated as a script which would be taken up and re-addressed in the group. A progressive construction of stylistic differentiation at the end of this stage was identified as a potential engagement in the process of symbolization. DiscussionThe authors suggest the figure of the Tesseract, a four-dimensional object (the three dimensions of space to which time is added), to represent the phenomena of interlocking, scaffolding, and transformation of the bonding and connections that the art-based device was able to provide on the different levels of temporality, in the intrapsychic and intersubjective spaces, between this autistic child and the group. This figurability makes it possible to underline the role of the various sensory modalities in regards to the process of symbolization in the group, at the topographical (the space of the workshop) and topological (the deformation of the created-to-create objects) levels; both influencing and supporting the unconscious-preconscious passage of the sensory archaic elements to formal signifiers. ConclusionLike the cubes of the Tesseract, always in process, both containing and contained, these clinical participant observations hope to show that another way of thinking about inclusive education is possible, which could emphasize the possibility of a “being together” that is less dependent on the movement from pathology to normalization. The process of transformation is based on the encounter between the “body of the creator” and the “body of the work” and is not only based on the two-dimensional data of the body-psychic relationship. The child with autistic spectrum disorder can initially be welcomed in his or her “sensorimotor anchoring” within a frame co-constructed by the adults who also participate in the group activities. He or she can temporally use the group psychic apparatus to experience the presence of the artistic mediation and the humanizing encounter of the other.

Do Communicants Transmit Information in Course of Speech Communication?

The article questions if human speech communication (SC) involves a transfer of information. The information functioning in speech communication is dwelled upon in the information and systemic activity approaches. The informational approach adequately explains only the direct method of information transfer, while the systemic activity approach is relevant for the sign-mediated speech communication typical for human interaction. The more heuristic thesis is that the perception of the chain of linguistic sign bodies produced in the intersubjective space only starts the construction of the perceived speech message content by the recipient. The completeness of the constructed speech message content depends entirely on the recipient, who has the optimal common consciousness with the speaker. The purpose of speech messages is not the actual construction of the content by the recipient, but the development of the message personal meaning. In human speech communication, the communicants do not transmit information, but use verbal signs bodies to actualize images of consciousness which are developed within a single ethnic culture and therefore are common for them. The incentive for the common consciousness development by the communicants is their participation in joint activities that ensure their earthly existence.

Addressing the climate emergency: A view from the theory of practice architectures

This essay uses the theory of practice architectures to demonstrate the kinds of transitions underway as people change their practices to address the current climate emergency, with particular reference to Australia. The individualistic attitude-behavior model of behavioral change is inadequate for understanding these transitions, since they also require changes in the intersubjective spaces in which people encounter one another (semantic space, physical space-time, social space). Together, such transitions across a variety of domains can bring about transformations in “logics of life.” The theory of practice architectures is a resource for those calling for intensified action to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate climate change, offering a way to understand how intertwined changes are needed in discourses and language, activity and work, and solidarity and power to bring about transformations in logics of life. The essay draws attention to the role of hybridization, in which old practices coexist alongside new practices, in the accomplishment of transformations.

Resistance and Desire: Autofictional Satire and Intersubjectivity in Samuel Shem’s The House of God

ABSTRACT One essential function of autobiographical writing is to provide not an account of oneself but rather a model for others. Creating the self as a narrative object involves establishing an ambiguous intersubjective space, where complex acts of mirroring—the writer’s ego imposed upon the reader, the reader’s desire fulfilled within the writer’s life—complicate the assessment of authenticity. This article examines how this effect is both amplified and undercut by autofictional satire in Samuel Shem’s famous novel about his year-long medical internship, The House of God (1978). Considering the text in light of aesthetic theory, philosophy, and narrative medicine reveals how the novel’s own form deliberately resists its reader’s pursuit of an intersubjective identification. Just as The House of God’s narrator establishes an identity equally disorienting and empowering, so too does the novel’s deployment of competing genres and traditions use humour to blur the lines between aesthetic mimesis and social role-modeling, forcing us to reassess utilitarian and cathartic reading practices in the medical professions. In the era of COVID-19—a timewhen aspirational medical narratives have taken on new cultural power—Shem’s troubled negotiation between what ‘should be’ and what ‘is’ continue to challenge how we should read.

BRIDGING TO ANOTHER DIMENSION: THE RELATIONAL SYSTEM OF SHAMANISM AND RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER AMONGST THE TEMIAR SENOI OF MALAYA

This paper aims at finding the relational system, religious encounter, and modernity of the Temiar community in Malaysia. The form of this research has focused on literature research (library research) by using literature as a source of research. The method used is an analysis of documents by conducting content analysis. This within-case analysis is followed by a thematic analysis across the case. The data patterns emerging from the within-case and cross-case analysis of theme, the information of Temiar’s world view is compared from several documents. Having discussed the relational systems in shamanic society and religious encounters and modernity amongst Temiar, this paper concludes that: Firstly. Shaman creates the cultural experience in the inter-subjective space of the ritual as the flow of the spirit guide through the healing ritual. The shaman is the spirit medium, a person who can receive songs from the spirit guide during dreams. Secondly, singing and dancing is an activity that in itself bridges the gulf between the physical world and the metaphysical. Thirdly, Temiars have begun to incorporate representations of varying spirit entities associated with religious conversion and modernization into their cosmology.

Measuring the Harlem Renaissance: The U.S. Census, African American Identity, and Literary FormOn Sympathetic Grounds: Race, Gender, and Affective Geographies in Nineteenth-Century North America

Measuring the Harlem Renaissance: The U.S. Census, African American Identity, and Literary FormOn Sympathetic Grounds: Race, Gender, and Affective Geographies in Nineteenth-Century North America

Scripts and Sexual Markets of Transgender People on Online Dating Apps: A Netnographic Study

In recent years, the LGBT community has seen an exponential increase in the use of specific online dating apps ( e.g. Grindr and Wapa), designed to encourage meetings and affective or sexual exchanges, that have partially disrupted the traditional way of approaching studies on non-regulatory sexuality. Indeed, they changed the very meaning that some terms assumed in the past, such as “LGBT community” or “Rainbow Community” (Masullo, Gianola, 2017; Masullo, Coppola, 2020; Bacio, Peruzzi, 2017). This study aims to answer some research questions: how transgender people use the meeting apps ( e.g. Grindr, Wapa, Badoo); which dating apps are most used by T people and how these new “communicative and intersubjective spaces” influence, orient and determine the defining processes related to gender expressivity and sexual script construction; to what extent these channels constitute spaces to meet emotional and sexual needs; and whether these spaces reflect the same discriminatory dynamics that T people experience in offline reality. This research has shed light on how the ambivalence of dating apps for T people. On the one hand, they are places of emancipation; on the other, they perpetuate the exclusion mechanisms experienced offline. The choice of a platform is crucial from an identity point of view and it roughly reflects the perceived stage of the user’s transition process. The app is regarded as a place to find confirmation and recognition of their newly acquired identity.

Концептуальные подходы к моделированию эффектив- ной межкультурной коммуникации в глобальном мире

The article analyzes and describes the current challenges faced by intercultural communication in the XXI century in a globalizing and contradictory world. Conceptual approaches to the activity-phenomenological modeling of intercultural communication are presented, its main properties and determining circumstances are highlighted. The main models that can be used to evaluate cross-cultural communication in terms of its effectiveness are highlighted. Identified, systematized and described in terms of criteria for the effectiveness of the model of intercultural communication. On the basis of content analysis, the content components selected from scientific publications are analyzed and systematized, which can then be divided into criteria, indicators, conditions and products of effective intercultural communication. The concept of "space of active intersubjectivity" is introduced into scientific circulation. It is concluded that the definition of the effectiveness of intercultural communication and its modeling in Russian science, as well as the methodological framework for systematization of its evaluation criteria, are insufficiently studied.Expert testing of basic and additional criteria and a system of indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of intercultural communication was carried out.

Being Pākehā & Researching the Experiences of Māori Women and Weight Loss Surgery: On Ethics & Ethnography

This paper proposes that the positionality of Pākehā researchers wishing to learn from Māori, can be reimagined as an atmospheric inter-subjective space within which conversations can happen across difference and between commonalities. I outline my own reckoning as a Pākehā attempting to enter this field as a part of my MA research on Māori women’s experiences of weight loss surgery. I argue that a form of differential distancing, while holding onto an ethic of care, enables a form of academic inquiry that is less stymied by the politics of permission. This paper also proposes that ethical representation can be bolstered by staying close to the logics for living of our participants and conceptualising their narratives through ‘embodied becoming’. I argue that this multi-faceted approach enables ethnography which retrieves nuance and releases participants, to a degree, from discourses that primarily frame individuals as victims of the state.