Private Speech and Imagination: The Liminal Experience Between Myself and Others

Abstract

This article presents the results of a theoretical investigation that aimed to develop a comprehensive model regarding the phenomenon of imagination and private speech as liminal experiences of consciousness. A theoretical articulation between the phenomena was developed to explain how imagination and private speech allow to make sense in the liminal space between inner and outer worlds. It is concluded that the double role of iconic and verbal signs allows to configure future experiences and to construct meanings in the transitional space between oneself and others. The iconic and verbal signs used in imaginative and private speech processes, respectively, allow to experience situations ‘as if they were real’, and at the same time, to distance from them as a mental play separated from reality. This is all based on an affective matrix which determines the emergence of mental meanings and mental content. This article constitutes a contribution to the study of micro-genetic intrapsychic liminal processes.