Possible use in psychology of threshold concept in order to study sensemaking processes

Abstract

Manifold forms of sensemaking processes and their simultaneity pose many questions about their integration and also on their development. Human beings mean their own experience and activity in the world by forms of symbolic meaning but also by several forms of embodied meaning, in an endo-semiotic and exo-semiotic key, such as the construction of artifacts, instruments, monuments, stories, myths. The culture in this perspective is not considered a repository of information and become an intersubjective process that develops over time and is rooted deeply in various embodied forms. Authors discuss the notion of threshold through two possible paths. The first one allows us to demarcate the boundaries of the domain of semiotic research and at the same time to reflect on the specificity of the different processes of sensemaking, from biological processes (vegetative and animal) to typically psychological processes, characteristic of human beings and of cultural dynamics. The second one deals with dynamics of transformation of the processes of sensemaking, claiming that the relationship between an organism and its environment has a gestaltic quality, whose form is constantly changing. The notion of threshold is developed in reference to the changes and transformations that mark discontinuous passages and developments within phases of stability.

Keywords

Sensemaking process semiotic threshold discontinuity continuity semiotic freedom

The work of Prof. Robert Innis goes through a variety of issues of great relevance to the semiotic and psychological debate, drawing important inputs from the philosophy of pragmatist tradition. With great interest, an exciting dialogue is plotted between the pragmatist philosophy and cultural psychology, bringing out the figure of a human being characterized by active participation in the weaving of relations with the world. Various ways to get experience, a constant activity of signification and interpretation are not limited exclusively to a logocentric approach but they result founded on several forms of embodiment, on building instruments, artifacts and symbolic nonverbal devices.

In this argumentative frame, the use of the concept of “thresholds of sense” finds its anchoring:

‘thresholds of sense’, that is, how to picture or describe the fundamental matrices in which meaning arises for human beings and gets embodied in cultural forms, the principal theme of cultural psychology and of a philosophical semiotic. (Innis, 2016)

From my point of view, the concept of the threshold can be regarded as one of the possible focal points of all the work and as a hinge on which all the work rotates. It can use to introduce the lower limit and upper limit within which experiences are possible and make sense.

In this way, issues of great importance emerge. What are the fundamental processes by means of whom meanings are generated? What are the extremes beyond whom the experiences of human beings cease to be significant? Do we observe homogeneous processes and phenomena within a range defined by these limits? Which conceptualization presupposes the idea of thresholds?

The different points of view presented and discussed in the work of Innis allow us to consider the processes of signification as processes that do not develop linearly within a gradient that goes from more rudimentary and simpler forms of interaction with the world (body, instinctivity, affectivity, sensation, motility, etc.) in the direction of more complex forms (symbolic processes, rational thinking, abstractive ability, use of verbal language, etc.).

We wonder what would happen if we accepted such a linear view. What place could ever be assigned to cultural processes? Depending on the positioning of the culture on a more concrete gradient or on a more abstract gradient, we would be led to consider the cultural processes differently. Radicalizing in order to simplify, we would be led to consider culture as a set of unaware behaviors – acquired through experience – and regulating automatically and routinely interactions with others and the world. Alternatively, in the other case, we would be led to consider culture as a sum of many information and semantic contents conveyed by the language and discursive practices.

The work of Robert Innis protects us from these simplifications and linearism! The work of Innis argues that the activity of signification of human beings is composite, multicenter, multilevel, creative and transformative. This is not limited to discursive activity (logocentric assumption is overcome), it is rooted in the forms and in the ways of embodiment and experiences, finding other important forms of active sharing in external and figurative forms of the art, in the processing raw material by means of instruments, in the modification of the external world, in the creation of myths and stories far beyond any rational logic and conscious.

So what can be a first outcome of the dialogue between psychology and philosophy? And even more specifically between cultural psychology and pragmatic philosophy? We believe to find a fertile ground for the opportunity to re-consider and differently re-conceptualize some historical dualisms: the MIND-BODY dualism in primis; the INDIVIDUAL-SOCIETY dualism in secundis; the AFFECTIVITY-RATIONALITY dualism in tertiis. The work of Innis, with great precision, goes through all three of these dualisms.

We do not have to attack indiscriminately these distinctions; indeed, we recognize the value that such dualisms have historically had. Just think of the advances in medicine based on the separation of the body from the soul, or, the development of computational machines and software as reifications of rational abstract minds, or, the social and political evolution tending to guarantee the rights of the individual but also the development of democratic political systems, etc.

These oppositions founded assumptions of epistemology of Western thought and its scientific philosophical paradigms, and social, cultural and political movements. We could in fact draw a history of the evolution of philosophical, scientific, legislative and artistic thoughts, retracing the historical fluctuations along these polarizations.

In the work of Innis, the centering of semiotics and the intense dialogue between pragmatic philosophy and cultural psychology allows us to observe that the culture (in its various forms of embodiment) is configured as a dynamic process characterized by a dialectic of interdependence between these polarized vertices (mind-body, individual-otherness, affectivity-rationality).

It is clear for time, the knowledge cannot be separated from its own act of production. These dualisms, rather than be based on the opposition of different ontologies, pertain to the system of observation of the observer, its conceptual instruments of detection and analysis of phenomena (Bateson, 1979; Chiozza, 1976; Khun, 1969; Maturana & Varela, 1987).

The re-consideration and the overcoming (really possible?) of these dualisms do not go in the direction of homogenizing some distinctions in order to find a super-inclusive category. It goes in the direction of identifying and letting communicate dialectically such polarities as salient issues (not ontological realities!) of the human being. Ontogenetic development of the single human being, but also the evolution of human kind, is organized around the knotting and the looking for possible solutions about these three polarities.

The semiotic turn (Eco, 1976; Fabbri, 1998; Lotman, 2000, 2005, 2009; Neuman, 2003, 2008; Peirce, 1935; Sebeok, 1986, 1999; Sebeok & Danesi, 2000; Valsiner, 2007, 2014) can offer great contribution to this discussion, by confronting in a multidisciplinary and anti-dogmatic manner with philosophy and psychology, by enabling a fruitful exchange and acculturation, by contributing both in terms of scope and generalization and in terms of depth and accuracy.

Dealing with sensemaking processes means to move towards the direction of grasping the development, the transformations and life of the human being in intersection with the environment, with other people and with himself. To address these issues in dynamic terms, we have to surrender every ontology (namely, hypostatization and definition of isolated units) in order to grasp the transformative dynamics in which the human being is, at same time, both a complete unit and part of a larger system.

It is exactly the question that Innis reports in his work citing the Susanne Langer’s concepts of individuation and involvement (1967). The one presupposes the other. Placed in terms of the paradigms of complex systems, it is an issue that involves both the closing and opening of the system to its environment. In terms of Maturana and Varela (1980), an autopoietic organism requires the closure of the organization (the definition of identity) and the opening of the structure (the continuous exchange of information, energy and matter with the environment).

As shown in the work of Innis, the classical functional cycle of perception and action of von Uexküll (Kull, 2001; von Uexküll, 1934) is opened in the form of a whirl and spiral. The cycle perception/action is not the closed, repetitive and static result of recognition of stimuli and predetermined responses. The perception/movement cycle (that the physician, philosopher and psychologist von Weizsäcker – 1940 – defines GestaltKreis, literally “structure with form of cycle” – Masullo, 1992) forms a swinging chain, each time dismantled and reassembled in a contextual manner where memory, perception, movement, attention, imagination and relationships with the world and with others are semiotic processes endo-exo-embodied. This cycle has proleptic value, namely, every changing starting from a crisis of the present experience projects the living being into the future.

Possible issues of thresholds: (1) systems of classifications; (2) dynamics of transformation

Thresholds and systems of classifications

Sebeok (2001) clearly states that where there is life there is semiosis and vice versa. Within this broad framework, the concept of threshold finds possible multiple uses. From the point of view of the use of the semiotic disciplines, their domain of expertise and scope, Umberto Eco (1976) – distinguishing between the process of signification and process of communication¹ – raises the question of the lower and upper thresholds for the exercise of semiotic disciplines.

On the one hand, a lower threshold as a natural limit is conceptualized, below which the phenomena are considered as not semiotic because deprived of a sign-functions. This threshold defines the stimuli cannot be considered signs, due to their natural character and not prompted by any convention and code (Eco, 1976, p. 33). However, even a signal is not considered a sign, because in terms of theory of information a signal is a unity of transmission that can be computed quantitatively regardless of its possible meaning (Eco, 1976, p. 34).

On the other hand, the attempt to define the upper threshold leads Eco to say that culture can be fully studied under semiotic profile (Eco, 1976, p. 43). Eco examines three processes (in addition, of course, to the verbal language) considered as constituting any culture: (1) the production and use of objects that transform the relationship between human being and nature; (2) family relationships as the primary core of institutionalized social relations; (3) the exchange of economic goods (Eco, 1976, p. 36). This analysis leads Eco to consider culture as a semiotic phenomenon not only founded exclusively on communication but also on signification because of its intrinsic interpretative nature.

We observe that these thresholds had the merit of opening a prolific debate about the lower and upper limits of the processes of signification. In fact, they – arising from the attempt to redefine the disciplinary field of semiotics – met with both favorable and discordant opinions. Moreover, they have also posed the question of semiotics beyond an anthropogenic focus.

For example, with Sebeok, following and expanding the use of Peircian classification of signs, the study of the processes of meaning has been extended to every living form, claiming equivalence between semiosis and life. Every living species has its own system of modeling the world, depending on its ability to use signs iconic, indexical and symbolic (Danesi & Sebeok, 2000).

The difficulty of defining sharply thresholds and the effort to extend other forms of life in the study of the processes of signification pushed to revise the concept of threshold, leading to the formulation of the concept of semiotic threshold zones (see Kull, 2009).

In this context, the specific minimum requirements (the lower threshold) of semiosis are defined by the possibilities of appearances of processes such as memory, self-replication, recognition, agency, inside-outside distinction, codes, semiotic controls, etc. (all these characteristics, involving one to another, are present already in the cell).

The meaning given here to the term “threshold” is not to define the areas of scientific research and application of the different branches of semiotics, but it is that one to highlight specific semiotic processes depending on their characteristics. In the words of Kull:

This can correspond to the logical differences between iconic, indexical, and symbolic semiosis. These major types of semiosis assume different types of memory, and different levels of learning, and different capacities to establish new relations. Simultaneously, this leads to different types of umwelten, which can be identified correspondingly as vegetative, animal, and cultural umwelten². (Kull, 2009, p. 23)

In synthetic way:

Vegetative semiosis is capable of just recognition (based on the very strict memory) by means of iconic relations, but it is not able of transformation. Iconic representations do not have spatial and temporal features.

Animal semiosis is capable for association by means of indexical relations. Here, we find abilities for associative learning. That requires either a central nervous system or an immune system that can recode the relation between sensory and motor organs according to the correlations learned (Kull, 2009, p. 21). In this sense, there is a certain way to transform relation within a possible range.

Cultural semiosis, typical of human beings, is capable of combination for means of symbolic relations, and its representation has both spatial and temporal features (Kull, 2009).

Examining in particular the characteristics of cultural semiosis, we observe that the symbolic threshold is a separation barrier very special. Humans can be aware of their surroundings, because they are able to distinguish objects from things and relations with them (Bains, 2006). The creation of language allows the creation of time and

of a temporal umwelt with its distinctive past and future together with an ability for chronesthesia, or mental time travel. This corresponds to the emergence of new types of memory in humans that is necessary for narration, for building narratives. (Kull, 2009, p. 22)

The complexity of cultural semiosis is made possible by language and

the appearance of signs that signify a relation itself, relation as a relation. Such is, for instance, the connecting sign “and” – whose object is just a relation, a free relation-as-such, a relation that can be universally built between anything and which is independent of the objects between which this relation takes place. (Kull, 2009, p. 23)

The syntax is the main feature of human language (Sebeok, 1996). It is absent in the sign-systems of animals and vegetative, and it is the necessary condition in order to the creation of propositions and sentences. As a result, the semiotic ability of the human being – without in any way denying iconic and indexical levels – is capable of a radical innovation compared to the semiotic processes of other living forms:

Symbols, as the relations built upon indexes, can move (the otherwise indexical) maps, can combine, reorder and rearrange them, can put them into asymmetrical sequences, etc. This is necessary, in order to create the phenomenon of time, an umwelt that has in itself a distinguishable past and future together with a capacity to represent these. Thus conscious purpose becomes possible, and the vast diversity of culture, with its many forms of tragedy and joy. (Kull, 2009, p. 23)

It is important to stress that the concept of threshold zone, within the broad studies in biosemiotics, does not presuppose the idea that human being no longer uses lower processes, due to overcoming various thresholds semiosis. In the human being, we observe an oscillating process between different and simultaneous ways of meaning making. We observe an oscillation between regular/continuous/gradual/continuous trends and irregular/abrupt/sudden/catastrophic/discontinuous trends. These oscillations allow the emergence of complex forms of contextualized sensemaking. Such a processuality is effected through the entanglement in complex forms of multiple trajectories of signification, which are endo-somatic/exo-somatic, subjective/cultural, individual/collective, emotional/rational.

The thresholds in the dynamics of transformation

In this section, we intend to develop another possible meaning of the concept of threshold. We will refer it to the idea that the threshold marks the point of discontinuity within an organism–environment relationship. That causes the configuration of a new relational contextual form in which it is impossible to separate the parts and components without destroying the unity of development.

The human being is in fact a complex system made up of infinite potential relational networks, that are part of larger, multicenter, multilevel complex systems (defined simultaneously by both biological needs and constraints of historical and cultural trajectories) (Tronick, 2004, 2007). The dynamics and the development over time of the subjectivity of a person require to integrate the complexity, the potentiality and the wideness of her relational ties in order to achieve them in a concrete way.

Faced with the impossibility of computing and define in a precise and rigorous way the domains of interaction, development and action of the human being (due to the difficulty of holding together a large number of domains and due to epistemological error to consider such domains as an independent ontological units without reciprocal and mutual presupposition), the notion of form becomes of great richness and usefulness.

Already the Gestalt approach (Ehrenfels, 1890; Katz, 1950; Koffka, 1935) highlighted the importance of considering the whole as endowed with independence and identity, advising of the risk encountered in the atomizing and splitting an organism and its developmental processes (Valsiner & Rudolph, 2011).

In this paper, we use the notion of form without limiting ourselves to the idea of a two-dimensional figure constituted by permanent demarcation of its borders (fixed in time), but we mean the plastic and dynamic configuration of multiple relationships that moment by moment are carried in salience (De Luca Picione, 2015; De Luca Picione & Freda, 2014, 2015a, 2016).We mean here the form as the result given by the cultural and historical relation between the systemic complexity of the subject and the ecological systemic complexity.

Adhering to a morphogenetic perspective (D'Arcy, 1948; Goethe, 1790, 1807/1817; Maruyama, 1963, 1978, 1980; Spencer-Brown, 1979; Thom, 1972, 1988, 2006), the abstract notion of form relates to a dynamic, flexible, temporary process. This process aims both to be repeated (because once a form has emerged, it exerts a mimetic attraction, it constitutes a memory, it exerts a recursive process) and to change and transform.

In this sense, we sustain that the process of sensemaking can be considered as a morphogenetic dynamic process where the form of subject–environment relationship is a local and temporary configuration taking meaning of experience and definition of a state of the world where is possible to interact (a scenario of somato-psychic-social interaction) (De Luca Picione & Freda, 2014, 2016; De Luca Picione, 2015; De Luca Picione, Dicè, & Freda, 2015; Freda & De Luca Picione 2014; Margherita, Gargiulo, & Martino, 2015; Martino, Onorato, D’Oriano, & Freda, 2013).

Different processes of sensemaking (from those with pertinences more concrete and specific to those with greater abstraction and generalization) contribute to configure a total form, whose synthetic quality is directly related to the phenomena of differentiation, specialization and asymmetrization. Lotman (2005) lucidly clarified both the need for synthesis and the identification and asymmetrization for a semiotic process can take place (see the notion of semiosphere and that of structural irregularities).

The form is a dialectic emergence that marks a new context of interaction, mediating in time between opposing tendencies: similarity and difference, generalization and specificity, conservation and innovation. The foreground/background relation of morphogenetic process implies that there is a constant and ever-changing interaction between the inside and the outside, the before and the after (Valsiner, 2014).

In reference to the morphogenetic dynamics, the concept of threshold acquires considerable importance and interest, since the change from one form to another occurs by means of sudden and abrupt transformations that have the quality of catastrophic jumps (De Luca Picione & Freda, 2015a). The threshold is therefore the transition from one level of specific interactions with a certain identity, stability and inertia (where small changes are carried out in a gradual manner and through small additions), towards a new and different level. The threshold represents a phenomenon of instability, discontinuity, irreversibility that marks the transition from one form to another.³ The identification of specific thresholds allows you to trace the dynamics of the processes of development and transformation of the organism-environment relationships.

The process of sensemaking, in its morphogenetic frame, is therefore a dialectical process, punctuated and open (never-ending) (Tateo, 2015; Tateo & Marsico, 2014; Valsiner, 2005, 2014) in order to mediate between different temporal relations (continuity/discontinuity, past/present/future) (Freda, 2011; Freda, De Luca Picione & Martino, 2015) and spatial relations (background/foreground, inside/outside, part/whole) (De Luca Picione & Freda, 2014).

Only through the overturning, the crisis, the breaking of continuity, the disruption of equilibrium, a new process of semiosis is established. In fact, in every intersubjective relationship through dialogical form (discontinuous in nature, and based on asymmetry – Lotman, 2005) there is a transition from virtuality to actualization, from possibility to facticity, from generalization to singularity.

Compared to gradual changes – constant over time – which retain the identity of the central semiotic system (Lotman, 1990), the threshold achieves a difference, a reconfiguration that is “perceptible.” The dynamic between continuity and discontinuity is essential for every living being and every mental process (Bateson, 1979). The development of the mind – through the experiences and the use of the signs associated with them – needs to configure the system person-environment, moment by moment, both in terms of continuity and discontinuity. In this reciprocal presupposition between continuity and discontinuity, the thresholds (namely the abrupt steps from one state to another) contribute to create differences, on which the gestaltic relationship organism–environment can reconfigure itself and become active.

In each experience, a person is struggling with the interconnection of processes having a different temporal connotations (memory, perception and creativity) and processes with different spatial and topological connotation (the person is at same time a subjective center, a border of inter-subjective relationship, a periphery within social processes) (De Luca Picione & Freda, 2015).

The notion of threshold is of great interest from a micro-analytical perspective. In fact, in every moment through the process of construction of meanings, people are able to define contextual experience and what is relevant and what is not. This kind of discretization by means of semiotic processes takes on a value that is not taken-for-granted (namely an absolute and a-contextual category), but it is an increasingly contextual and relational process.

The discretization made by means of processes of sensemaking is a morphogenetic process of catastrophic redefinition, achieved moment by moment in the micro-genesis of experience and regulated by more general and abstract semiotic mediators (see model of semiotic transitory hierarchies – Branco & Valsiner, 2010, 2007, 2014).

Conclusion

The presence of multiple forms of signification processes and their simultaneity pose many questions about their integration but also on their development. The work of Robert Innis offers a richness of guidelines about ways the human being means own experience and activity in the world.

He gives rise to issues concerning both the forms of symbolic meaning but also forms of embodied meaning, in an endo-semiotic and exo-semiotic key, such as the construction of artifacts, instruments, monuments, stories, myths. The culture in this perspective ceases to be considered a repository of information and become an intersubjective process that develops over time and is rooted deeply in various embodied forms.

In this work, we chose to discuss the notion of threshold through two possible paths. The first allows you to demarcate the boundaries of the domain of semiotic research and at the same time to reflect on the specificity of the different processes of sensemaking, from biological processes (vegetative and animal) to typically psychological processes, characteristic of human beings and of cultural dynamics.

The second deals with dynamics of transformation of the processes of sensemaking, claiming that the relationship between an organism and its environment has a gestaltic quality, whose form is constantly changing. The notion of threshold is developed in reference to the changes and transformations that mark discontinuous passages and developments within phases of stability.

The processes of sensemaking (in their various interconnected extensions endo-semiotic, psychological, cultural and social) allow you to define the relationship between a subject and one’s own environment, by setting an appropriate contextual ways of interaction, action and development.

Therefore, the processes of sensemaking do not have ontological value, as they are changeable, plastic and able to reconfigure in the face of contextual changes and of developmental processes of the subject.

The notion of threshold, allows us to focus incisively processuality, transformations and the historicity of processes of signification. It allows us to move from the logic of the ontology to the logic of becoming. It also allows us to discuss the transactional processes and the interdependency of polarities within a relationship without the risk of dualistic assumptions and epistemological reification (i.e. body vs. mind, subject vs. otherness, affectivity vs. rationality).

Highlighting the characteristics of openness and non-linearity, we discussed processes of sensemaking as transitory and contextual morphogenetic configurations of organism–environment relationship. Such a synthetic quality of the processes of sensemaking is achieved through interdependence of memory processes and the acquisition of habitus, actual reconfiguration of the relations and proleptic opening into the future.

In the human being, the cultural and historical characteristics transform the organism–environment relationship in subject–world relationship, with more degrees of freedom but also a greater complexity (De Luca Picione, 2015; Esposito & Freda, 2015, 2016).This freedom realizes the possibility that the forms of interaction with the contexts are innumerable and potentially endless. In this sense, the challenge (on a par with a developmental task) for the human being is to find – in a continuous development – one’s own subjective configuration between identity/otherness, body/mind, affectivity/rationality, so that the cultural ground constitutes a fertile ground for the development and not a strict canalization of habitus, ideologies and behaviors.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Raffaele De Luca Picione, PhD, graduated first in Political Science and then in Clinical, Dynamic and Community Psychology, he deals with meaning making processes within clinical and healthcare relationships through a semiotic and dynamic psychological perspective. He is interested in the processes of subjective meaning making in a cultural field and particularly about affective semiotic processes, in reference to the relationship between thought, emotion, and language.

Maria F Freda is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. She belongs to the directive team of the Italian Health Psychology Association (SIPSA) and Italian Psychological Association (AIP). Her scientific interests, expresses in numerous research works, publications and participation to conferences, are focalized in the last years on: (a) action -research methodology, oriented to clinical and psycho-social model of intervention; (b) narratives as construction processes of experiences and as intervention device; (c) the focus on the quali-quantitative methodology of research of texts and discourses analysis.

References

Bains

(2006) The primacy of semiosis: An ontology of relations, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Bateson

(1979) Mind and nature: A necessary unity, New York: Dutton, pp. 238.

Branco, A., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Towards cultural psychology of affective processes: Semiotic regulation of dynamic fields. Estudios de Psicología, 31(3), 243–251.

Chiozza, L. A. (1976). Cuerpo, afecto y lenguaje: psicoanálisis y enfermedad somática (Vol. 66). Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidos.

D'Arcy

T. W.

(1942) On Growth and form (Revised edn), Cambridge: Cambridge University.

De Luca Picione

(2014) The case of Neuman’s “Computational Cultural Psychology”: An innovative theoretical proposal and welcomed toolbox advancements. Europe's Journal of Psychology 10: 783–791.

De Luca Picione

(2015) The idiographic approach in psychological research. The challenge of overcoming old distinctions without risking to homogenize. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 49: 360–370.

De Luca Picione

Dicè

Freda

M. F.

(2015) La comprensione della diagnosi di DSD da parte delle madri. Uno studio sui processi di sensemaking attraverso una prospettiva semiotico-psicologica. Rivista di Psicologia della Salute 2: 47–75.

De Luca Picione

Freda

M. F.

(2014) Catalysis and morphogenesis: The contextual semiotic configuration of form, function, and fields of experience. In: Cabell

K. R.

Valsiner

(eds) The catalyzing mind. Beyond models of causality. Annals of Theoretical Psychology Vol. 11, New York, NY: Springer, pp. 29–43.

10.

De Luca Picione

Freda

M. F.

(2015) The processes of meaning making, starting from the morphogenetic theories of René Thom. Culture & Psychology 22: 139–157.

11.

De Luca Picione

Freda

M. F.

(2016) Borders and modal articulations. Semiotic constructs of sensemaking processes enabling a fecund dialogue between cultural psychology and clinical psychology. Journal of Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 50: 29–43. DOI 10.1007/s12124-015-9318-2.

12.

Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics (W. Weaver, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

13.

Ehrenfels C. von (1890/1988). On “Gestalt Qualities”. In B. Smith (Ed. & Trans.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory (pp. 82–117). Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

14.

Esposito

Freda

M. F.

(2015) Evaluating training context competence of use: Productive and unproductive models of use. Evaluation and Program Planning 50: 77–87.

15.

Esposito

Freda

M. F.

(2016) Reflective and agentive functions of narrative writing: A qualitative study on the narratives of university students. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 50(2): 333–357. doi: 10.1007/s12124-015-9323-5.

16.

Fabbri, P. (1998). La svolta semiotica. Roma-Bari: Laterza.

17.

Freda

M. F.

(2011) Understanding continuity to recognize discontinuity. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science 45(3): 335–346.

18.

Freda

M. F.

De Luca Picione

(2014) The identity as a system of translation of the boundary between subject and context. In: Salvatore

Gennaro

Valsiner

(eds) Yearbook of idiographic science Vol. V, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

19.

Freda

M. F.

De Luca Picione

Martino

M. L.

(2015) Time of illness and illness of time. In: Simão

L. M.

Guimarães

D. S.

Valsiner

(eds) Temporality: Culture in the flow of human experience, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publisher.

20.

Goethe

J. W. von.

(1790) Versuch die metamorphose der pflanzen zu erklären, Gotha: Carl Wilhelm Ettinger.

21.

Goethe, J. W. von (1807/1817). Die Absichteingeleitet. In ZurMorphologie. Jena.

22.

Gould

S. J.

(1982) Exaptation – A missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology 8(1): 4–15.

23.

Innis

(2016) Between philosophy and cultural psychology: Pragmatist and semiotic reflections on the thresholds of sense. Culture & Psychology. 22(3), 331–361.

24.

Katz

(1950) Gestalt psychology: Its nature and significance, New York, NY: Ronald.

25.

Koffka

(1935) Principles of Gestalt psychology, New York, NY: Harcourt Brace.

26.

Kuhn

T. S.

(1962) The structure of scientific revolutions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

27.

Kull

(2001) Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. Semiotica 134: 1–59.

28.

Kull

(2009) Vegetative, animal, and cultural semiosis: The semiotic threshold zones. Cognitive Semiotics 4(Supplement): 8–27.

29.

Langer

S. K.

(1967) Mind: An essay on human feeling Vol. 1, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

30.

Lotman

(2000) Universe of the mind, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

31.

Lotman

(2005) On the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies 33(1): 205–229.

32.

Lotman

(2009) Culture and explosion, Berlin: De GruyterMouton.

33.

Margherita

Gargiulo

Martino

M. L.

(2015) Dream narration in healthy and at-risk pregnancy. Dreaming 25(2): 88–102.

34.

Martino

M. L.

Onorato

D’Oriano

Freda

M. F.

(2013) Donne e tumore al seno: Effetti del protocollo guidato di scrittura sui sintomi associati al disturbo post traumatico da stress. Psicologiadella Salute 1: 125–137.

35.

Masullo

P. A.

(1992) Patosofia. L’antropologia relazionale di Viktor von Weizsäcker, Milano: Edizioni Angelo Guerini e Associati.

36.

Maturana

H. R.

Varela

F. J.

(1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (No. 42), Boston: Springer Science & Business Media.

37.

Maturana

H. R.

Varela

F. J.

(1987) The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding, Boston & London: New Science Library/Shambhala Publications.

38.

Maruyama

(1963) The second cybernetics, deviation-amplifying mutual causal process. American Scientist 51: 164–179, 250–256.

39.

Maruyama

(1978) Heterogenistics and morphogenetics: Toward a new concept of the scientific. Theory and Society 5: 75–96.

40.

Maruyama

(1980) Mindscapes and science theories. Current Anthropology 21: 589–608.

41.

Neuman

(2003) Processes and boundaries of the mind: Extending the limit line, New York: Academic/Plenum Publishers, Springer.

42.

Neuman

(2008) Reviving the living: Meaning making in living systems, Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier.

43.

Peirce

C. S.

(1935) Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

44.

Sebeok

(2001) Signs: An introduction to semiotics, (2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

45.

Sebeok

T. A.

(1986) I think I am a verb. More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs, New York: Plenum.

46.

Sebeok

T. A.

(1996) Signs, bridges, origins. In: Trabant

(ed.) The origins of language, Budapest: Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study.

47.

Sebeok

T. A.

(1999) The sign science and the life science. Applied Semiotics 3(6/7): 85–96.

48.

Sebeok

T. A.

Danesi

(2000) The forms of meaning: Modeling systems theory and semiotic analysis Vol. 1, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

49.

Spencer-Brown

(1979) Laws of form, New York, NY: E.P. Dutton.

50.

Tateo

(2015) Giambattista Vico and the psychological imagination. Culture & Psychology 21(2): 145–161.

51.

Tateo

Marsico

(2014) Open complementarity in cultural psychology. In: Wagoner

Chaudhary

Hviid

(eds) Culture psychology and Its future: Complementarity in a New Key, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, pp. 77–91.

52.

Thom

(1972) Stabilitè structurelle et morphogenesè, New York, Benjamin, Paris: Ediscience.

53.

Thom

(1988) Esquissed’une semìophysique, Paris: InterEditions.

54.

Thom

(2006) Morfologia del semiotico, Roma: Meltemi Editore.

55.

Tronick

E. Z.

(2004) Why is connection with others so critical? The formation of dyadic states of consciousness and the expansion of individuals' states of consciousness: Coherence-governed selection and the co-creation of meaning out of messy meaning making. In: Nadel

Muir

(eds) Emotional development, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 293–315.

56.

Tronick

E. Z.

(2007) The neurobehavioral and social emotional development of infants and children, New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

57.

Uexküll

J. Von

(1934/1957) A stroll through the world of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. In: Schiller

(eds) Instinctive behavior: The development of a modern concept, New York, NY: International Universities Press, pp. 5–80.

58.

Valsiner, J. (2005). Open intransitivity cycles in the processes of development and their methodological implications. Invited Lecture – IV Congresso Norte Nordeste de Psicologia, Salvador, Bahia.

59.

Valsiner

(2007) Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology, New Delhi: Sage.

60.

Valsiner

(2014) An invitation to cultural psychology, London: Sage.

61.

Valsiner, J., & Rudolph, L. (2011). Who shall survive? Psychology that replaces quantification with qualitative mathematics. In Abbey, E. (ed.), Emerging methods in psychology (pp. 121–140). Seth Surgan. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

62.

Weizsäcker

V. V.

(1940) Der Gestaltkreis. Theorie der Einheit von Wahrnehmen und Bewegen, Leipzig: Georg Thieme-Verlag.