Friday, April 2, 2010
Self/personal difference irt multiple perspectivity
life as literary psychology, part 1 of 5
Beyond “my” assimilating what others say (or accomodating it to one’s own interests), we commonly want to implicitly appreciate the other’s perspective, assess the other’s genuineness, or keep up with a play of perspectives. “Knowing They Know That You Know” renders so-called “mind reading” as “one person’s ability to interpret another person’s mental state...in order to assess its validity” such that interaction—interpersonal action—involves “keep[ing] track of ... different mental states at [the same] time.” Selves can be considered irt “how well an individual is able to track multiple sources,” when the “source” is another person.
Obviously, a very ordinary activity of understanding (appreciating) each other’s genuineness or perspective is being conceptualized in terms of tracking ability, interpretive ability, and mental states. The ordinary sense of this is valuable in reading because it’s integral to daily life; but it can also be theorized.
A common pleasure of fiction is the reader’s access to other selves, other minds, “behind” the evident personalities between characters. Here, we have magical access to an integral difference we seldom confess: the difference between sense of Self and evident personality that we’re known for, usually variously, depending on the relationship. Our lives are full of interpersonal relations whose boundaries implicate one Self in an array of interpersonal relationships, and fiction gives us easy access to wonders of the difference between Self presence and presence with others.
The pleasure of finding that “novels are frequently constructed around mistaken interpretations” is a godly access to the difference between innerworldliness and outerworldliness, self understanding (confusion, prospecting, etc.) and interpersonal representation. The “layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking” in ordinary life is organized for us in the psychological story, whose “layers” are scenes informing each other within the emerging Act prevailing over them, Act leading to Act within the emerging story prevailing over them, place to place within space, horizon in play with horizon (or against) times with times within Time. Each character may evidence, imply, or hide a different sense of self in each aspect of the story, where complexity of character becomes trOpical of complexity of each’s sense of the world, the play of all, a play of the world.
Especially, “people find the interaction of three minds compelling” as oneself (mind one) relating to two others relating to each other, because “I” entertain a single difference (contrast, complement, conflict, etc.) as two interpersonal relations to “me.” They play out—unwittingly, at least—what makes a difference to me.
A keynote of drama, in daily life as in art, is the differences—luminous, haunting, enchanting, disturbing, or mysterious—among evident self (personality), implied (projected) self—”Is it just me, or do you not really love me?”—and hidden self—hidden from oneself, thereby from the other; or not hidden from oneself, but hidden from the other; projections that are partially accurate; evident genuineness that’s partially valid—evident, projected, and hidden self amid interplays of interpersonal—evident—relations (often with each episodically projecting in their own way) of developing selves.
