go to content

WORD AND IMAGE: THE PROBLEM OF CONTEXT

Vadim S. Rotenberg

E-mail: vadir@post.tau.ac.il

Dynamische Psychiatrie/ Dynamic Psychiatry, 1979, 54, 494-498.

Many articles included in the corporate monograph "The Unconscious", like other publications of recent years, demonstrate that a crucial factor in gaining an insight into the nature of the unconscious psychic is the study of the qualitative distinctions between the processes of information treatment which take place in the left and the right hemispheres. The fact that the left hemisphere is related to the speech function while the right is responsible for the direct perception of objects and phenomena and space orientation has permitted to define these processes as verbal-logical and spatial-image thinking respectively. It is emphasized that verbal thinking is analytical functioning on the discrete principle, i. e., is instrumental in performing a series of consecutive operations which ensure the analysis of relationships between objects and phenomena. In contrast, image thinking functions on the simultaneous principle ensuring the synchronous holistic perception of objects and the grasping of their interrelationship. The analytical function of verbal thinking is closely bound to speech as the mode of communication of discrete and unambiguous information.

In the past few years, however, a number of authors have been tending (perhaps without a distinct awareness of this tendency) to attribute the specific features of these two types of thinking exclusively to the features of the thought material. This approach implicitly makes any handling of verbal material (words) a function of verbal thinking and any handling of images a function of image thinking. The experimenter frequently takes it for granted that words are always addressed to the mechanisms of verbal-logical thinking while images are addressed to the system of image thinking frequently discounting the fact - well-known from experiments which involve the cutting of the corpus callosum - that the right hemisphere is capable of understanding words and, within limits, even simple verbal constructions and although at this stage it remains obscure what predetermines the bounds of this hemisphere's verbal potential and the thinking based on its functions it is obvious that at least the verbal nature of the material is not the decisive factor here. Furthermore, works by E. A. Kostandov disclose that the information processing systems of the right hemisphere respond before those of the left hemisphere to nonverbal as well as to simple verbal stimuli. Nevertheless the explanations which are offered for this phenomenon are based on the assumption that the overriding factor is the qualitative specifics of the material itself: presumably, the right hemisphere identifies only the spatial configuration of the letters which comprise the word while semantic analysis is carried out only by the left hemisphere. Thus, both in experimental studies and in theoretical works the quality of information itself (its verbal or image character) is held to be the crucial factor in the activation of either type of thinking. The organizational characteristics of information both at the moment of its presentation and in the process of its subjective perception are usually ignored.

The author assumes that it is a serious error and that, most important, the basic distinctions between the word and the image wholly depend on whether the word occurs in a context of words and the image in a context of images or whether they occur outside such contexts. The word as such is really far from definite in meaning. On the contrary, most of the words are polysemantic. This is reflected in dictionaries, in which the majority of the words are registered in multiple meanings, some of them even opposite of others. The word becomes monosemantic only in a context, more exactly, in one that obeys the laws of verbal-logical thinking. V. V. Nalimov cites conclusive examples showing that in contexts which defy these laws, for instance, in the koans of meditation, the word can gain several meanings, again some of them even opposite of others. Context dislocation devices are also observable in belles-lettres, when the accentuated word is written separately, followed by a stop or dots. The "telegraphese" of a number of contemporary writers, their changeover to chopped phrases, many of them unconnected, apparently represent another attempt at expressing polysemy by "dilution" of the context. The transference of the word from polysemy to monosemy when it enters the context being a sufficiently well-investigated question the above observation is a commonplace.

The dynamics of the image is far less thoroughly investigated. Unlike a word, an image isolated from others (as much as this is possible) appears to be sufficiently definite, concrete and unambiguous, so to speak, an equal of itself. But at the same time any image as an element of the actual world is complex and multifaceted. While the word owes its polysemy to its potential for a change of meaning depending on the context the unambiguous image owes its complexity to its inexhaustibility: no analysis can yield an exhaustive characteristic of the image. Due to this property the image introduced into a context of other equally complex images gains multiple interpretation and the meaning of these concatenated images becomes totally inexpressible, as in the recounting of dreams although the subject feels that his dreams had some meaning. Possibly, the multiple meaning of an image in the context of image thinking is due to the fact that the individual properties of images, their facets, can interact on several "semantic planes" at once, and these individual interactions may appear to be conflicting and otherwise logically incompatible. As a result, the inter-image relations in the context can be ambivalent, with simultaneous attraction and repulsion - something that impedes the expression of such relations in a logically ordered verbal form as well as their conceptualization.

Presumably, image thinking obeys the laws of association while verbal thinking operates on the principles of juxtaposition and comparison. At any rate, the difference between the two types of thinking is due precisely to the different laws of context organization rather than the thought material. There can be a discrepancy between the material and the laws of organization of the context. Film men know what they call the Kuleshov effect - a situation in which the sense perception of shots depends solely on their montage interrelation. A shot in the context of another two shots is perceived by different subjects identically and in strict accordance with the context like a word in a phrase. In this case the images are put together in accordance with the laws of verbal-logical thinking and only quite definite facets of each image are chosen for their linking. But the films frequently exhibit exactly opposite cases, in which what would appear to be quite definite images are linked in such a way that the result is poorly expressible but extremely powerful and highly subjective impressions and many complex associations which defy unambiguous interpretation (as in the recounting of dreams). In such cases the laws of inter-image contextual relationship are specific to image thinking. On the other hand, in works by major poets like, for instance, Pasternak words, which formally are elements of verbal thinking are related by a context which typifies image thinking - a factor which creates the sensation of inexhaustibility precluding any alternative adequate conveyance of the poem's meaning. The impossibility of adequate replacement represents a characteristic of image thinking while verbal-logical thinking admits of many interchangeable combinations which preserve the meaning of the context.

Image thinking exhibits interesting features in pathological cases. For several years the author has been performing a regular research in the character of dream activity in neurotics discovering that, compared to healthy testees, they register a drop in the number of dream accounts and their dreams themselves are simpler. In a number of instances their dreams offer better material for disclosing the character of the intra-psychic conflict: in the dream it assumes more manifest forms than in healthy individuals. Similar changes in dreams have been discovered in the cases of some other psychic and psychosomatic disorders. The author has hypothesized that in different forms of pathology the laws of contextual relationship specific to image thinking become upset and there is a fall in the potential for the free handling of images. They lose their multiple meaning and such impoverishment of image thinking reduces the potential of psychic defense. Another example of impoverishment of image thinking in neurotics is the hysterical conversion symptom. It is on record that hysterical paralysis or amaurosis lend themselves to a relatively simple and more or less unambiguous interpretation as an expression of an objectionable motive in non-verbal behavior.

To sum up, the difference between the types of thinking above all lies in the contextual organization of information and the specific feature of the left hemisphere is not its ability to generate speech but its ability to logicize the context - both words and images. The right hemisphere ensures the wealth of interrelations between images or their verbal symbols which underlies all forms of psychic protection as well as the creative and other processes which are inextricably bound up with the unconscious psychic.