Dialogical Self - Historical Background

Historical Background

DST is inspired by two thinkers in particular, William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, who worked in different countries (USA and Russia, respectively), in different disciplines (psychology and literary sciences), and in different theoretical traditions (pragmatism and dialogism). As the composite term dialogical self suggests, the present theory finds itself not exclusively in one of these traditions but explicitly at their intersection. As a theory about the self it is inspired by William James, as a theory about dialogue it elaborates on some insights of Mikhail Bakhtin. The purpose of the present theory is to profit from the insights of founding fathers like William James, George Herbert Mead and Mikhail Bakhtin and, at the same time, to go beyond them.

William James (1890) proposed a distinction between the I and the Me, which, according to Morris Rosenberg, is a classic distinction in the psychology of the self. According to James the I is equated with the self-as-knower and has three features: continuity, distinctness, and volition. The continuity of the self-as-knower is expressed in a sense of personal identity, that is, a sense of sameness through time. A feeling of distinctness from others, or individuality, is also characteristic of the self-as-knower. Finally, a sense of personal volition is reflected in the continuous appropriation and rejection of thoughts by which the self-as-knower manifests itself as an active processor of experience.

Of particular relevance to DST is James's view that the Me, equated with the self-as-known, is composed of the empirical elements considered as belonging to oneself. James was aware that there is a gradual transition between Me and mine and concluded that the empirical self is composed of all that the person can call his or her own, "not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account". According to this view, people and things in the environment belong to the self, as far as they are felt as "mine". This means that not only “my mother” belongs to the self but even “my enemy”. In this way, James proposed a view in which the self is 'extended' to the environment. This proposal contrasts with a Cartesian view of the self which is based on a dualistic conception, not only between self and body but also between self and other. With his conception of the extended self, that defined as going beyond the skin, James has paved the way for later theoretical developments in which other people and groups, defined as “mine” are part of a dynamic multi-voiced self.

In the above quotation from William James, we see a constellation of characters (or self-positions) which he sees as belonging to the Me/mine: my wife and children, my ancestors and friends. Such characters are more explicitly elaborated in Mikhail Bakhtin's metaphor of the polyphonic novel, which became a source of inspiration for later dialogical approaches to the self. In proposing this metaphor, he draws on the idea that in Dostoyevsky's works there is not a single author at work—Dostoyevsky himself—but several authors or thinkers, portrayed as characters such as Ivan Karamazov, Myshkin, Raskolnikov, Stavrogin, and the Grand Inquisitor.

These characters are not presented as obedient slaves in the service of one author-thinker, Dostoyevsky, but treated as independent thinkers, each with their own view of the world. Each hero is put forward as the author of his own ideology, and not as the object of Dostoyevsky's finalizing artistic vision. Rather than a multiplicity of characters within a unified world, there is a plurality of consciousnesses located in different worlds. As in a polyphonic musical composition, multiple voices accompany and oppose one another in dialogical ways. In bringing together different characters in a polyphonic construction, Dostoyevsky creates a multiplicity of perspectives, portraying characters conversing with the Devil (Ivan and the Devil), with their alter egos (Ivan and Smerdyakov), and even with caricatures of themselves (Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov).

Inspired by the original ideas of William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, Hubert Hermans, Harry Kempen and Rens van Loon wrote the first psychological publication on the “dialogical self” in which they conceptualized the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I-positions in the (extended) landscape of the mind. In this conception, the I has the possibility to move from one spatial position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The I fluctuates among different and even opposed positions, and has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices function like interacting characters in a story, involved in processes of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each of them have a story to tell about their own experiences from their own stance. As different voices, these characters exchange information about their respective Me's and mines, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self.