Giuseppe Mininni

“Measuring up to Measure” Dysmorphophobia as a Language Game

We look into the transformation of meanings in psychotherapy and suggest a clinical application for Wittgenstein’s intuitions concerning the role of linguistic practices in generating significance. In post-modern theory, therapy does not necessarily change reality as much as it does our way of experiencing it by intervening in the linguistic-representational rules responsible for constructing the text which expresses the problem. Since “states of mind assume the truths and forms of the language devices that we use to represent them” (Foucault, 1963, p. 57), therapy may be intended as a narrative path toward a new naming of one’s reified experiences. The clinical problem we consider here, the pervasive feeling of inadequacy due to one’s excessive height (dysmorphophobia), is an excellent example of “language game” by which a “perspicuous representation” (the “therapy” proposed by Wittgenstein in the 1953) may bring out alternatives to linguistically-built “traps”, putting the blocked semiotic mechanism back into motion.

Change in Psychotherapy: A Dialogical Analysis Single-Case Study of a Patient with Bulimia Nervosa

Starting from the critical review of various motivational frameworks of change that have been applied to the study of eating disorders, the present paper provides an alternative conceptualization of the change in psychotherapy presenting a single-case study. We analyzed six psychotherapeutic conversations with a bulimic patient and found out narratives “for” and “against” change. We read them in terms of tension between dominance and exchange in I-positions, as described by Hermans. These results indicate that the dialogical analysis of clinical discourse may be a useful method to investigate change from the beginning to the end of therapy.

The Diatextual Construction of the Self in Short Message Systems

This article extends the use of the personal position repertoire beyond the psychotherapy domain, adopting it as a research method applied to the psychology of communication. The aim is to investigate the features of short message system (SMS) communication in a sample of late adolescents. Across 2 analyses on the same corpus of 3,890 SMS messages, evidence has been presented that a composite index of contents could be related to an overall index of dialogical positions. The results have been supported by diatextual analysis (Mininni, 1992, 2000), so as to better grasp the relations among interlocutors, text, and context; thus recalling the dialectic process of sense construction realized through communicative events. Consistent with the predictions derived from previous research, the study suggests that new media actually emphasize the development of self positions.

Narrating organizational change: an applied psycholinguistic perspective on organizational identity

Abstract According to the traditional mainstream perspective in organizational research, organizations are conceptualized as environments basically oriented toward the production of goods and services and/or to the implementation of the skills mastered by their operators. However, according to a narrative approach to organizations, workplaces – as well as organizations in general – could be conceived of as discursive constructions, that is, as social spaces where a thick network of narrations and discourses are informally produced and “packaged,” thus shaping and featuring the most authentic dimension of organizational identity. Therefore, in order to capture the actual ethos of an organizational context, researchers should be ready to disentangle the network of collective narrations and discourses which is shaped through and by the shared and/or contested/negotiated practices of accounting. In line with such premises, the paper analyzes a corpus of empirical evidence, collected within the organizational context through focus group discussions, in an attempt to show how discursive and narrative cues actually work as yeast for the self, even within a critical moment of transition, such as organizational change, which challenged cohesion and stability of both organizational and individual identities.

The dynamics of sense making: a diatextual approach to the intersubjectivity of discourse

Abstract Psycho-semiotics is a qualitative research perspective aiming at developing the seminal intuition by Peirce (Collected papers, Harvard, 19311958) according to whom man is a complex network of signs. Hence, text and talk-in-interaction are the basic psycho-discursive practices ( Wetherell, Subjectivity 22: 7381, 2008) where the intersubjective nature of sense making is revealed. Peirce is an inspiring point of reference for psycho-semiotics also at a methodological level, since he considered not only deduction and induction as research practices able to characterize the process of scientific knowledge production, but he emphasized an inferential modality labeled abduction. Moving from such assumptions, the aim of the present paper is to introduce the notion of diatext as a reflexive way to enhance the value of this abducing procedure. Diatextual approach is a specific methodological orientation within critical discourse analysis specifically aimed at capturing the dynamics between interlocutors, text, and context which characterize any kind of human interaction. A corpus of empirical data, collected within different social contexts, will allow us to discuss and to understand how diatexts actually work as yeast for human discourses.

Me, myself, and God: Religion as a psychocultural resource of meaning in later life

The present paper addressed the different meanings attached to religion as cultural resource in the course of life. Indeed, abundant cultural research has confirmed that religion could be a powerful symbolic system that shapes people’s beliefs and attitudes. Its significance may depend on contextual factors and may vary over time and place, thus showing different implications across cultures and group cohorts. To better investigate such assumption, this paper involved a group of elderly believers (convinced Catholic believers and converted to Buddhism believers) as to analyze the role played by religion in their life experience. Narrative interview, content, and diatextual analysis helped reconstructing different cultural interpretative repertoires of religion in late life: a source to answer to the essential questions about life, an anchor to face the present and the future, a sociocultural resource for well-being.

The “Weight” of Words on the Forearms During Relaxation

In this paper we examined the influence of repetition of weight-related sentences on the involuntary pressure forces of the forearms, when in a relaxed state. These forces were involuntary oscillations, exerted by muscle movements of the breathing-cycle and muscle movements of the arm on force sensors. We constructed a linguistic bio-mechanical system (Ablasmi), where in each arm of a padded relaxation chair contained special sensors that were specifically designed to detect the pressure forces of each forearm while participants listened to the specific recorded weight-related sentences. In this experiment we used some classic sentences, such as “your right/left arm is heavy,” inspired by Autogenic Training (Schultz in Le training autogene. Paris, PUF, 1974) and some sentences, such as “your right/left arm is made of lead,” inspired by Grossmann’s relaxation technique. We observed that when the recorded sentences were directed to the right arm there was a significant increase of involuntary pressure forces on the right forearm. Additionally, we observed the same effect on the left forearm for the sentences directed to the left forearm. Thus, we believe we have provided experimental evidence of a definite linguistic effect of weight-related sentences on the involuntary pressure forces of the forearms. The implications of these findings are discussed.

A rose is more than a rose … the diatextual constitution of subjects and objects

Abstract This paper integrates contributions coming from psychology with a phenomenological and semiotic perspective and focuses on the relationship of reciprocal constitution between “Subject” and “Object.” This relationship is evoked through radically different concepts such as the notions of “experience,” “consciousness” and “embodiment,” focusing attention on “discourse” as a macro-procedure generating the mutual link between Subject and Object. Therefore, the relationship between subject and object is identifiable through the text, namely “diatext.” It will be further argued that human beings act as “diatexters” of their existence in the world. Accordingly, psycho-discursive practices have the performative power to constitute both objects and subjects because they offer a creative solution by interlacing the “Body-Mind-Problem” to the “Mind-Culture-Problem.” In detail, the discursive resource granted by metaphors may be recognized as a modelling matrix embodying thought, as the interweaving of conceptual fields and as reasoning processes.

Old Roots, New Branches: The Shoots of Diatextual Analysis

The present contribution focuses on the discursive perspective, which finds its roots in the several “turns” that animated the previous century. Besides the “discursive” and the “narrative” turns, the “contextual turn” has highlighted that meanings shape themselves in a context, which could be seen both as a “cotext” (the linguistic around) as well as an extralinguistic frame (Slama-Cazacu 1959/1961). Such perspective allows considering texts as diatexts (Mininni et al. 2008), namely as “efforts after meaning,” aimed at manifesting their dialogical correspondence with a specific “context” (Slama-Cazacu 2007). The cognitive engagement and the affective involvement of the interlocutors during an interaction demand a constant monitoring activity on the need for attunement between intentions and situational bonds.

Subjective Wellbeing Between Organizational Bonds and Cultural Contaminations

Positive Psychology has recently attempted at “enlarging the paradigm,” explaining the understanding of the human experience of the world. By contrast, for Critical Psychology, “enlarging the paradigm” means moving away from an individualist conceptualization of the psychological. The present article aims at “redistributing the Psychological” toward directions already marked by cultural and discursive conceptions of human experience. Within a transdisciplinary frame, labeled as Psycho-semiotics, Diatextual Analysis has been adopted to investigate the rhetorical modes used by socially excluded enunciators (drug users, immigrants, atypical workers, elderly people, and some categories of churchgoer) to elaborate their own experience of well-being through affective labor and self care.