Dialogues with self and others: Communication, miscommunication, and the dialogical unconscious

ABSTRACT. While social constructionist understandings of the self have stressed the importance of the self–other relation, placing emphasis on what happens in dialogues and relations with others rather than psycholog-ical processes “in the head, ” I suggest here that we can build on this tradi-tion to reintroduce notions of a dialogue with the self, or micro-dialogue, as an important part of an understanding of persons. I use the term “micro-dialogue, ” rather than the more familiar notion of “internal conversation” or “society of mind, ” to refer to a silent and invisible series of dialogues we hold for ourselves with the images and voices of others, which can emerge in surprising and unwilled ways. I suggest that this micro-dialogue is important in understanding the dialogical interactions between persons, as not all aspects of the self will enter into dialogue with others, leading to miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misrecognition. It is also possi-ble for people to fail to articulate all the latent voices or vocal tones in their own micro-dialogue, leading to an understanding of how voices and selves can become divided and allowing us to take a different perspective on a dialogical unconscious. KEY WORDS: communication, micro-dialogue, miscommunication, self, unconscious In recent years social constructionist writings have attempted to shift the focus of psychology away from individual selves and towards self–other relations, relational processes, dialogue, and discourse. This underlines one of the key elements of social constructionism: that psychological processes are not some-thing going on “in the head, ” so to speak, but are located in the “in-between” arising from people in dialogue and joint action. The genealogy of this empha-sis on self–other relations can, I believe, be traced back in part to the pragma-tist philosophies and social psychologies of William James, C.H. Cooley, an