Research: The endophasic self: inner language between normal and pathological.
This research project emerges from a theoretical background of Vygotskian research, which is useful for exploring certain key points: the formation of psychological systems; the development of higher mental functions; the ontogenesis of meaning and the relationship of co-realisation between thought and speech. In particular, Vygotsky's pioneering study of internal language, in addition to providing the basis for its linguistic analysis and for the examination of its cognitive and meta-cognitive functions, highlights the problem of the “meaning” of our inner language, as a concentration of the psychic representations evoked by words, which are difficult to translate into external language. This Vygotskian framework becomes a source of possible reflections on the relationships between words, consciousness and psycho-bodily intimacy, opening up an interdisciplinary dialogue – particularly between the philosophy of language and psychoanalysis – interested in the planes of formation and verbal translation of our psychic interiority. The aim is, therefore, to investigate the centrality of endophasia as an internal verbal channel of access to consciousness, representation of the self and formation of a stable autobiographical memory. Within this horizon of discussion, the proposal of an endophasic Self marks an attempt to delimit a fundamental region in the process of construction and self-representation of the subject, directed to a significant extent by our inner language, whose dialogical model testifies to the internalisation of the word, the role and the perspective of the other. However, in continuity with the so-called positive functions of inner language – which guide our interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships – dysfunctional uses are distinguished, often considered symptomatic of psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression; so that another important area of discussion is the distinction between positive and pathological uses of inner speech, in relation to the resulting effects of self-representation. The proposed dialogue between the philosophy of language, endophasic research and psychoanalysis aims to explore their common dimension, identified in the work of reconstruction and healing of the subject through speech, an inexhaustible source for the extraction of new meanings.
Keywords: philosophy of language; psychoanalysis; inner speech; endophasia; meaning; self-representation; consciousness; interiority; otherness; dialogicity.