KARL JASPERS FORUM

Target Article 33

CLAIMING GIAMBATTISTA VICO AS A NARRATIVIST/CONSTRUCTIVIST
by James C. Mancuso
28 October 2000, posted 16 January 2001

[1]
Scholars who have adopted constructivist/contextualist world views have revived an interest in the writings of the Neapolitan scholar, Giambattista Vico. In this essay I will relate some of the central propositions found in Vico's (1992/1744) master work, La Scienza Nuova (The New Science), to foundational propositions embedded in a theory of personal constructs. To proceed toward that goal I will offer considerations and recommendations about the use of the psychological elements that scholars have signified by use of terms (1) such as construction, category, concept, idea, attitude, perception, perspective, schema, notion, module, and so forth. Thereupon, I will discuss some of Vico's writings to show the links between his positions and the issues which are important to modern constructivist theorists. I will highlight, particularly, the ways in which Vico provided a solution for the problem of explaining how persons acquire, develop, and use the psychological elements known as constructions or categories. I will show that Vico's solution to this problem entailed the use of propositions that can be compatible with propositions that are used by behaviors scientists who have promulgated narrative approaches to explanations of human conduct.

[2]
CONSIDERING THE TERM CONSTRUCTION AND ITS REFERENT

As a reader of constructivist literature might observe, the term construction has been used to signify a central element in constructivist theory. When a constructivist uses the term construction he/she intends to signify a psychological something. When I have produced text containing the term construction, I have wished that my reader would "think of" a personal, internal representation of an object or event. When I have used the term construction in a discourse, I would not have objected strongly if my dialogue partner had resorted to metaphor to come up with his/her personal construction of construction. I would not have objected had my dialogue partner begun by thinking of a construction as an internally represented map. Simply stated, my constructivist explanations have begun with the proposition (implicit or explicit) that through very complex, but very rapidly executed, psychological operations every event or object that a person encounters evokes a construction - a "mental map" of the object or event.

[3]
Despite the extensive grounding of the term construction, the continued use of the term has become problematic. In the first place, the term construction can have at least two referents. On the one hand, the term signifies a process. One can say, "The construction of the building has been completed." On the other hand, one can say, "The building stood as a magnificent construction," thereby using the term to signify a concrete object. When using the term to discuss psychological functioning, one encounters the same confusion. A writer can create sentences such as, "The person engaged in a construction of his construction."

[4]
Furthermore, the continued use of the term places a semantic restriction on efforts to continue a dialogue based on constructivist principles. Consider the preceding paragraphs. In an effort to lead the reader into the development of a usable "definition" of the term construction, I found that the best metaphor to which I could allude was the metaphor of a "mental map." Many of the users of repertory grid technology (See Mancuso & Shaw, 1988) use a mathematical form of the "mental map" metaphor. That is, the effort to locate an object or event in multidimensional space by use of multidimensional statistical technology allows an investigator to assess the similarities between dimensions (bi-poled construct) in a congeries of dimensions, and then to represent the object or event under consideration as the point at which all the compressed dimensions intersect.

[5]
Although the use of the "mapping metaphor" has a long history, I find it useful to note the ways in which that metaphor is reflected in the work of Sarbin, Taft, and Bailey (1960). Instead of using the term construction, they used the term module. They elaborated their metaphor as follows: "The dimensions of a [modular] space are cognitive dimensions. Each module may be specified by a set of coefficients or co-ordinating values on dimensions (p. 120). And, "The module is the cognitive counterpart of the organization of objects in the ecology. An object in the ecology may be represented as a point or region in a dimensional system. . . . A region within the space -- determined by co-ordinate values on intersecting dimensions -- cognitively represents an ecological object when the dimensions are, so to speak, in the head" (p. 107) And, "The term "module," . . . has been selected to stand for the basic unit of cognitive organization" (pp. 119-120).

[6]
Such metaphors are entirely too static. I intend to have colleagues attempt to construe differently that which, in my previous writing, I have referenced by the term construction. I wish to have the reader think of something like a "multimedia collage."

[7]
As a person encounters an event or object, he/she constructs an internally represented "multimedia collage" by which to know the encountered object. The internal representation can be discussed, metaphorically, as a "multimedia collage" built of visual representations, colored symbols, sounds, static forms as well as moving forms, and so on. By advocating the use of this metaphor, I intend to influence my dialogue partners to regard the creation of the internal multimedia collages as an active process that is in continuous flux, having no fixed form beyond that which a person uses from time to time to "know" the object/event. The use of a multimedia collage must be regarded as an doing, not as a passive happening. Persons assemble such multimedia collages from inputs from distal objects/events and from their acquired personal construct systems (See Mancuso, 1996). By use of the symbolically represented judgment dimensions in their personal construct systems, persons may assign attributes to objects/events. Following this assignment of attributes, a person may begin to build a distinctive collage for use in locating a particular object/event in the stream of psychological activity in which he/she engages. Internal multimedia collages include representations of causes and effects that link them to other collages that a person creates to "know" the ongoing stream of continuous inputs. Such linkages allow persons to use collages as they engage the continuous, all-important process of using the master behavior-guiding collage – the collage by which they know the object labeled well-formed narrative (See Mancuso, 1996, 1986; Mancuso & Sarbin, 1998, 1983 for the perspective on narrative used in this essay).

[8]
Note that I have not abandoned the collage construct. I have no doubt about the utility of incorporating a collage signified by the term construct. In other places my colleagues and I (e. g., Mancuso, 1976; Mancuso & Adams-Webber, 1982; Mancuso & Shaw, 1988; Mascolo & Mancuso, 1990) have elaborated upon George Kelly's (1991/1955) initial uses of that collage. I continue to regard the construct as the basic psychological element. I continue to follow propositions that a person invents, builds hierarchical systems of, and stores and retrieves constructs for use in building internal multimedia collages. I will return to this point in a later section of this essay.

[9]
When I try to indicate that to which I have referred when I have, in my previous writing, used the term construction, I reference the statement of one of the greatest pianists of the 20th Century. He was asked to comment on the claim that he practiced very little. He replied, "That is not true. I practice almost constantly. I practice when I am sitting in a plane, when I am waiting in a hotel lobby for a friend to join me for dinner, when I am sitting at the side of the swimming pool, and so on." When this great pianist "practiced" he would be "running off his 'multimedia collages.'" He could internally represent the "feel" of his muscles as he executed intricate movements over the piano keyboard. He could "see" the conductor, the other members of the accompanying symphony orchestra. He could "hear" the notes from the violin section that cued his entry. He certainly could hear the notes that emitted from the piano as he varied his attack, increased the legato of a phrase, and so on. If he tried hard enough, he might even "feel" the upset stomach that resulted from the bad meal that he had bolted on his way to the concert hall!

[10]
In order to prompt my colleagues to construe those inner representations more as I would construe them, I shall abandon the use of the term construction, and shall use the term psychological collage in its stead. My choice of this term should be obvious. In a discourse on art, a writer can use the term collage to designate an artistic composition of diverse materials and objects assembled and arranged over a surface. A collage, despite the diversity of the materials, object, colors, etc., would have some kind of unifying theme. The elements would be "connected." Indeed, the term collage derives from terms signifying glue. With the technology available today, an artist’s collage can contain moving segments and varying lighting arrangements, and it can certainly be three-dimensional.

[11]
And, of course, since I wish to designate a "psychological" composition of diverse materials, I will use the term psychological collage. I will even override the recommendations of a respected colleague and I will coin the neologism psychollage.

My effort, in this lengthy elaboration of my reasons for choosing the term psychollage, has been aimed at prompting my readers to follow the construction processes by which I have constructed the psychollage which I intend to signify by my use of the term psychollage.

[12]

THE USE OF PSYCHOLLAGES

In a discourse guided by traditional psychollages, one might say that a person places every encountered object or event into a category. I would prompt my dialogue partners to desist from using the term category as the "mental map" that they might apply when they encounter the signifier psychollage. Traditionally, persons have been prompted to assume that objects and events "belong" to out-there existing categories. Traditionally, persons have been prompted to assume that the process of knowledge development entails the discovery and refinement of the extant categories to which objects and events "naturally" belong. From this perspective, one might say that the well-educated person "knows" a vast array of categories, and can efficiently and accurately locate an object and event into its "correct" category. For example, a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist might assume that he/she can efficiently and accurately assign a person to an officially approved diagnostic category, such as those that appear in The American Psychiatric Association's (1994) current diagnostic manual (DSMIV). The categorizing "mental health worker" who is esteemed as an astute diagnostician assumes that he/she can observe the overt behaviors - language use, body movement, responses to tests, and so forth - of any potential "patient," and can then assign that person to the "correct" diagnostic category.

[13]
A convinced constructivist would warn users of the diagnostic narrative that they have "invented" the categories, and that they should cautiously use those categories only so long as the categories prove useful for guiding action within a diagnostic/treatment episode. The constructivist would believe, in fact, that unfortunate consequences can result from the process of determining that a person should be placed in a category that has no utility for guiding action in the diagnostic/treatment sequence (See Mancuso, Yellich, & Sarbin, in press).

[14]
Hard line constructivist psychologists and philosophers would object, as well, to using terms such as accurate diagnosis or correct category when people speak of physical illnesses. Such constructivists would rather that a medical diagnostician discussed his/her construing processes by speaking of "useful categories," or "agreed upon psychollages." A diagnostician using the latter terms indicates that he/she appreciates the flux of category systems - appreciates the possibility that someone might invent psychollages that will prove to be far more useful in guiding action in the diagnostic/treatment sequence.

[15]
The constructivist might claim also that he/she also attempts to make important distinctions by insisting that scholars use the signifier psychollage rather than the signifier category. In the first place, the use of the term psychollage alerts persons to the assumption that the "mental maps" that persons place over objects and events that are distal to his/her nervous system are to be regarded as human inventions - creations that humans "assemble" for use in relating to the construed objects. A psychollage is not discovered!! From the time that a person's nervous system is adequately developed (at the end of the fifth month of in-uterus life), he/she confronts the chaotic deluge of energy changes that can trigger the special nerve cells that respond to one or another energy - the sensory cells that "gather input" that is transmitted through the nervous system. A constructivist would prompt acceptance of the position that "categorizing" psychollages stand as a core element of a person's psychological functioning. By developing and using categorizing psychollages a person can respond to sets of input patterns with more efficiency and more economy of psychological effort. But, while recognizing that the development and use of psychollages facilitates psychological functioning, a constructionist can hold to the assumption that psychollages change and bend. A person does not "pull" a psychollage out of the distal objects and events, he/she works to develop useful categorizing psychollages and then "pushes" them - imposes them - on to objects and events that he/she takes to be the source of energy changes that provided the input to his/her "sense organs." Sometimes the "bending" of a psychollage forces a change that will make that psychollage more useful in ensuing efforts to construe objects and events.

[16]
A constructivist would, for example, want his listener - call him Gregory - to assume, for example, that from his encounters with hundreds of objects that appear, disappear, and reappear to produce particular patterns of inputs, Gregory eventually had developed the categorizing psychollage to which he can assign the signifier person. Gregory, as he developed the psychollage person, found it useful to construe an object as a person if that object stands erect on two legs, speaks words, has a head atop its body, moves on its own volition, etc. Thus, using that psychollage, Gregory could, with high probability, usefully predict the upcoming flow of action and could successfully anticipate how that object - the person - would respond to Gregory's own conduct. One could say that Gregory would have made a category mistake if he had construed something that adults would construe by use of a psychollage labeled baby with his person psychollage. Yet, a constructivist would further assume, Gregory eventually would have elaborated his psychollage person, so that in certain contexts he could construe a new-born human as a person. Gregory might, the constructivist would expect, elaborate his psychollage person so that he can apply his personal psychollage as he tries to reach a position on the complex issue of termination of the life of a prenatal human. Would Gregory's personal psychollage person be useful to him as he tries to lay out action sequences involving a two-month-old fetus?

[17]
ACCESSING USEFUL PSYCHOLLAGES

A person's psychollages, of course, facilitate his/her psychological functioning at those times when he/she can confidently access a psychollage that will successfully guide his/her action relative to a particular object or event. As a person encounters an object or event, how does he/she access a psychollage that eventually will prove useful as a guide to his/her ensuing actions?

[18]
Though any response to this latter question will evoke controversy, I would prompt persons to assume that a person INSTANTIATES a psychollage on the basis of first identifying DIMENSIONS - constructs - that would direct the accessing of a useful psychollage. One can think of a system of personal constructs as an index list. As the person receives sensory inputs, those sensory inputs activate constructs which the person has already developed. When a pattern of sensory endings has been stimulated, the signals from that pattern are transmitted through the nervous system to coalesce with stored representations of innumerable patterns. Somehow, by this process the person is able to conclude that the object or event associated with the pattern of stimulus inputs "has" certain attributes.. Having located the inputs appropriately on available constructs, the activated constructs then index - "point to" - other dimensions from which to build a psychollage that would be useful as a means of "knowing" - construing - the total input pattern.

[19]
The most readily apparent source of controversy surrounding this formulation relates to the issue of the ways in which a person acquires the dimensions which are then used to process the stimulus input patterns. It is very easy to adopt the assumption that a person can "look out onto the world" and immediately "perceive" the presence of a "characteristic" of an object or event. Using this easy-to-adopt formulation, a person assumes that the "characteristic" is a part of the object or event and that the person simply reaches out to "feel" or "see" the presence of the characteristic in the object or event.

[20]
A constructivist could not readily adopt this naive realist formulation. An objection to adopting this formulation can be illustrated by discussing psychollages such as tone deaf or perfect pitch. An observer can assume that persons acquire the ability to distinguish musical tones through some kind of a inborn functioning that allows a person to determine readily the location of a sound on the pitch dimension. Despite the confidence in which this psychollage has prevailed, the psychollage is constantly challenged by findings that people who do show "perfect pitch" were exposed to particular experiences which could have prompted them acquire pitch dimensions and then to develop the skill of locating auditory input on those dimensions.

[21]
As I discuss the use of personal constructs, I speak of locating stimulus inputs along constructs. The use of this language derives from the assumption that the constructs, so far as psychological functioning is concerned, are best represented as a two-poled judgment dimensions. It is useful to think of constructs as having a range of applicability that is limited by the two ends of the construct. Examples of constructs would be short-tall, meek-aggressive, passive-active, good-bad, and so forth. A person might for example, judge that it would be useful to assign the attribute active to a person with whom he/she has contact. By using the two-poled construct passive-active, the judge can determine that the person is very active, suggesting that the person being judged would be located at the extreme active end of the judge's passive-active construct.

[22]
In short, as my version of a constructivist, I relentlessly pursue propositions which support the overall position that persons create and use psychollages as personal psychological entities. Psychollages eventually serve to compress the chaos of constantly impinging sensory inputs. The individual develops for his/her own use a system of constructs from which he/she assembles psychollages that allow him/her to anticipate the flow of continued inputs. One can assume that a constructivist sees no utility in attempting to determine if a person's psychollages "match" objects and events that "exist" in the world "outside of" an individual's construction system. For a person operating as my kind of constructivist, the evaluation of a psychollage centers around criteria of utility. Does a particular psychollage facilitate the anticipation of the continued flow of events? Would the use of an alternative psychollage allow more effective anticipation? Can colleagues agree that the psychollage enhances interaction with the distal ecology?

[23]
In the end, however, a constructivist must assume that he/she cannot evaluate his/her psychollages by use of tests that measure the extent to which his/her constructions "match" the source of the energies that produce the inputs that evoke the use of one or another psychollage. A constructivist might say, "It doesn't matter whether or not there is a 'real' chair there. What matters is that I construe whatever produces this particular pattern of inputs by using my personal psychollage chair. If, by construing the inputs I am receiving as a chair, I can anticipate how my conduct toward that object will progress, I have no need to make assumptions about what is 'really' there. Perhaps I can convince others to construe the source of that particular pattern of inputs by using my psychollage chair. If so, I can anticipate a wider range of unfolding events by being able to assume that others share the use of my personal psychollage chair. Similarly, it doesn't matter if psychollages 'are there' as a part of a persons psychological system. Ultimately, the utility of the psychollage psychollage will depend on whether or not an observer can more adequately anticipate human behavior by using the psychollage psychollage."

[24]
THE CONSTRUCTIVIST ANTI-REALISM OF GIAMBATTISTA VICO

A constructivist would have no difficulty developing hypotheses to explain why the masterwork of Giambattista Vico floated in the backwaters of intellectual history. His propositions had developed directly from his effort to hold back he flood of realist, formist, and mechanist thought that the leaders of The Enlightenment were promulgating among European intellectual circles. Such realist positions impelled scholars to "discover" categories, whereas Vico worked to understand the ways in which people develop and use psychollages.

[25]
In particular, Vico contested those assumptions evolving from following the epistemology of Rene Descartes; which, according to its adherents, would lead scholars to "natural law" and "truth" through following mathematicized logic.

One of the clearest expressions of the central position that Vico gave to human psychollages is found in his discussion of the creation of the gods. "By means of these three divinities [Jove, Cyblele, and Neptune, the creators of the psychollage referenced by the names of these gods] explained everything appertaining to the sky, the earth, and the sea. . . . Nowadays we reverse this practice in respect of spiritual things, such as the faculties of the human mind, the passions, virtues, vices, sciences, and arts; for the most part the ideas we form of them are so many feminine personifications to which we refer all the causes, properties, and effects that severally appertain to them" (Vico, 1744, p.128 [402] (2) ).

[26]
Vico stated two of his central axioms as, "curiosity -- that inborn property of man, daughter of ignorance and mother of knowledge – when wonder awakens our minds, has a habit, whenever it sees some extraordinary phenomenon of nature, for example, a sun to dog, or midday star, of asking straight away what it means" (p. 71, [to 189]); and "The human mind is naturally impelled to take the delight in uniformity" (p. 73, [204]). Being thus impelled, "the first men, the children, as it were, of the human race, not being able to form intelligible class concepts of things, had a natural need to create poetic characters; that is, imaginative class concepts or universals, to which, as to certain models or ideal portraits, to reduce all the particular species which resembled them" (p. 74 [209]).

[27]
It is at this point that Vico joined battle with the rationalists of The Enlightenment Primitive people did not use rational, logical methodologies to develop the "imaginative class concepts" (the psychollages) with which they know their world. They created psychollages by poetic devices - metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche, and irony. "When men are ignorant of the natural causes producing things, and cannot even explain them by analogy with similar things, they attribute their own nature to them. The vulgar, for example, say that the magnet loves iron" (p. 70, [180]).

[28]
One can understand the intensity of Vico's conflict with the rationalists only if he/she understands the powerful position of The Roman Catholic Church as The Church battled heterodoxy during Vico's lifetime. According to the orthodox position, people, having been given their nature directly by the god of The RC Church, "had the nature of" rationality. One would need to tell the long story to describe the ways in which Vico maneuvered around this orthodox position in order to support his claim that early people could not use the kind of logic described by scholars such as Descartes. The point is that Vico's opponents were supported not only by the ultra-optimism of The Enlightenment thinkers, but also by the defenders of church orthodoxy.

[29]
The position of both sets of Vico's opponents also gained support from implicit and explicit acceptance of the realist ontology embedded in their overall world view. As noted, from the perspective of RC Church scholars, people "have the "nature" imparted to them by the deity by whom they were created. From this realist perspective, all objects and events "have a 'nature' ". From this perspective, all philosophers should legitimately commit their work to the project of discovering the nature of all objects and events. Vico's stance toward this underlying position is revealed when he discusses the development of human institutions, "The nature of institutions is nothing but their coming into being at certain times and in certain guises whenever the time and guises are thus and so, such and not otherwise are the institutions that come into being" ( p. 64, [147], emphasis added). One could say, in other words, that the nature of an event can be nothing more then the psychollages imposed on those events by the persons who are attempting to "know" those events. The psychollages created through poetic devices - through using poetic figures to create myth - stand as metaphysical truth. "So that if we consider the matter well, poetic truth is metaphysical truth, and physical truth which is not in conformity with it should be considered false" (p. 74, [205]).

[30]
"What Vico realized, then, was that truths are analogical, not tautological, and that a cognition of what is real and what is fictional in the world is not objective and self-evident, in itself but depends on the prevailing criteria of belief" (Mali, 1992, p. 201).

[31]
VICO'S POSITION ON THE ACQUISITION OF PSYCHOLLAGES

From the position that Vico's presented 256 years ago, one can easily transition to a fundamental postulate about personal psychological life. "A person's psychological processes are channelized by the ways in which he[/she] anticipates events" (Kelly, 1991/1955, p. 32). A person anticipates events by assembling and then interconnecting the psychollages that he/she uses to know the events and objects encountered in his/her ecology. A person then uses those psychollages as "standards" against which he/she compares the continued flow of inputs (Mancuso & Adams-Webber, 1982; Carver & Scheier, 1981). Important psychological consequences follow the failure to anticipate that results from a person's inability to assemble a useful personal psychollage (Mascolo and Mancuso, 1990, Mancuso & Sarbin, 1998). To build a theory of personal conduct, one must formulate propositions about the ways in which persons build and use psychollages.

[32]
Vico had set out to explain the evolution of social practices and institutions. He had reached the conclusion that, "the world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles are therefore to be found with the modifications of our own human mind" (Vico, 1992/1744, p. 96, [331]). To guide his investigations, he came to believe, he could analyze myth and fables to gain insight into the modifications of human minds (the evolving psychollages) that had guided the founders of civil institutions. The psychollages used by the founders of first societies could be extracted from their myths and fables. "Vulgar traditions must have had public grounds of truth, by virtue of which they came into being and were preserved by entire peoples over long periods of time" (p. 64, [149]). The "public grounds of truth" on which those traditions had been based would be found in the psychollages embedded in the prevailing myths and fables circulated in those first societies. The myths and fables provide the "true uniformities" on which traditions are based. "Achilles connotes an idea of valor common to all strong men, or Ulysses an idea of prudence to all wise men" (p. 128, [403]).

[33]
Of course, Vico needed to take up the primary problem. By what means did the poets who created the myths invent "uniformities" - the categorizing psychollages - such as valor and prudence. To start, Vico would have his dialogue partners regard the creators of those myths as one would regard what Piaget (1952/1936) classified as preoperational children.

Hence poetic wisdom, the first wisdom of the gentile world, must have begun with a metaphysics not rational and abstract like that of learned men now, but felt and imagined as that of these first men must have been, who, without power of ratiocination, were all robust sense and vigorous imagination. This metaphysics was their poetry, a faculty born with them (for they were furnished by nature with these senses and imaginations); born of their ignorance of causes, for ignorance, the mother of wonder, made everything wonderful to men who were ignorant of everything. (p. 116, [375].

[34]
Vico construed the beginnings of children's psychollages through this formulation "The nature of children is such that by the ideas and names of the men, women, and things they have known first, they afterward apprehend and name all the men, women, and things that bear any resemblance or relation to the first" (p. 74, [206]). " . . . the first peoples, who were the children of the human race" (p. 167, [498]) created myths that incorporated the metaphorically-derived psychollages used to define the nature of the first societies.

The myth makers were poets. They confronted objects and events and by metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony they built psychollages by which to know those objects and events. (3)

[35]
VICO'S VIEWS ON HUMAN USE OF LOGIC TO DEVELOP PSYCHOLLAGES.

In the discussion above, I have briefly elaborated on Vico's claim that humans, particularly primitive humans, have invented psychollages through the use of poetic devices. I have by-passed a discussion of Vico's propositions about the ways in which more intellectually advanced humans use logic formulations in the inductive and deductive processes by which they assemble psychollages. His argument with the leading lights of The Enlightenment centered on his claim that they had attempted to discuss the psychological workings of earliest humans on the basis of a belief that those psychological workings paralleled the workings of scholars of The Enlightenment. "When the scholars began to take notice of [the principles of humanity] and . . . to investigate them, it was on the basis of their own enlightened, cultivated, and magnificent times that they judged the origins of humanity, which must nevertheless by the nature of things have been, small, crude, and quite obscure" (p. 60, [123]).

[36]
In short, the scholars of The Enlightenment had failed to understand that they needed to take into account the perspectives of primitive persons when they had attempted to develop knowledge about the origins of societies and all the questions that would arise when one began to explore the origins of perspectives on justice, laws, social stratification, etc. The Enlightenment scholars could not, Vico argued, assume that social practices and institutions began as a result of revelation (4) or logical derivation of the necessities of developing the practices that the primitives had evolved. What the philosophers of his time offered as they analyzed the development of law, for example, was not a universal natural law. "Wherefore, just as the natural law of the philosophers (or moral theologians) is that of reason, so this natural law of the gentes is that of utility and force, which as the jurisconsultants say, is observed by nations . . . . 'as the occasion requires and human needs demand.' " (p. 411, [1084]).

[37]
Vico took the position that logic methods developed late in the history of human psychological development. Thus, though the major portion of the text in The New Science elaborates his propositions about the ways in which primitive humans developed psychollages through mythopoetic devices, he did not discount logic as a means of developing useful psychollages.

[38]
The following passage can be taken as one of the best summaries of Vico's position on the formation of psychollages:

. . . . . And the order of human ideas is to observe the similarities of things first to express oneself and later for purposes of proof. Proof, in turn, is first by example, for which a single likeness suffices, and finally by induction, for which more are required. Socrates, father of all the sects of philosophers, introduced by induction the dialectic which Aristotle later perfected with the syllogisms, which cannot proceed without a universal. But to undeveloped minds it suffices to present a single likeness in order to persuade them; as, by single fable of the sort invented by Aesop, the worthy Menienius Agrippa reduced the rebellious Roman plebes to obedience. (p. 136, [424])

[39]
By presenting the propositions outlined in the above text, Vico offered his solution to a psychological problem that continues to evoke a stream of debatable solutions: By what means does a person acquire the ability to assemble a psychollage that he/she can use to anticipate the flow of inputs that will follow his/her encounter with one or another event. How, for example, does a man acquire the ability to assemble a psychollage understanding father so that he can anticipate successfully the consequences of a role enactment guided by that psychollage.

[40]

THE ISSUE OF THE FORMATION OF PSYCHOLLAGES IN MODERN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Though the issue has a much longer history in modern psychology, one can review the work published by Sarbin, Taft, and Bailey (1966) - a landmark text in the initiation of the "cognitive revolution" in psychology.

As noted above, Sarbin, Taft and, and Bailey used their psychollage module in ways that Sarbin (Mancuso & Sarbin, in press) would now write about psychological collages. "The dimensions of a [modular] space are cognitive dimensions. Each module may be specified by a set of coefficients or co-ordinating values on dimensions (Sarbin, et. al, p. 120).

[41]
Sarbin, et al. could draw on the conclusions of a considerable body of the studies (Stevens, 1957; Galanter, 1956; Shepard, 1958a and b; Brunswick and Kamiya, 1953; Osgood, Suci, and Tannebaum, 1957) that had been completed by the time of the writing of their book to justify their choice of dimension as the basic unit from which to theorize about human behavior. Though few behavior theorists explicitly state that a psychollage akin to Sarbin et al's dimension stands as the basic unit in their theory, the reading of any number of theories indicates that the dimension, or a similar psychollage, stands as the basic unit in the plethora of behavioral science theories that have been written during the three decades following the publication of Sarbin, et. al's 1960 work. And, as a reading of works such as those written by Lingle, Altom, and Medin (1984), Ashby, Boynton, and Lee (1994), and Keil, Smith, Simons, & Levin (1998) will reveal, the psychollage has continued to serve as a basic unit of discussion in behavior theories. As one would also expect, the continued use of the psychollage dimension (which often goes under other names such as features, attributes, characteristics, etc.) has also generated considerable discussion of how one might include the psychollage in theories human conduct.

[42]
To borrow from one of those works, the psychology of personal constructs (G. Kelly's, 1991/1955), I will regularly use the term construct or bipolared construct to name the basic unit for which Sarbin used the term dimension. My reading of the literature that includes discussion of the psychollage construct has encouraged me to make a more specific statement about constructs. Following through on work from Kelly's basic position Adams-Webber and I (Mancuso & Adams-Webber, 1982), concluded that "Each construct represents a single bipolar distinction, such as happy/sad. The form of the distinction is dichotomous" (p. 5). By taking this position, we gave the response to a question that remains a problem to some investigators who discuss the psychological process of assembling a psychollage: Should one regard a dimension - a construct - as unipolared or should one regard a construct as bipolared? Lingle, Altom, and Medin (1984) framed considerations that would guide the development of theoretical positions regarding bipolarity. "The component attributes of categories [psychollages] can be described in terms of either dimensions or features. . . . choice of dimensional or featural attributes can have important implications for assumptions of category structure and processing" (p. 82, material in brackets inserted by JCM). Lingle, et al, rightly contend that "dimensions contain mutually exclusive values, and zero typically indicates a particular level along a dimension, rather than the complete absence of the dimension" (p. 82).

[43]
In the more familiar terms of personal construct psychology, dimension refers to a bipolar construct, where zero indicates that the event to be located on the construct is out of the range of convenience of that construct (Mancuso & Eimer, 1982). One can take as an example the construct short/tall, which allows adherence to a view which seems to agree with Lingle, et al.'s position that quantitative "components" can best be represented by dimensions -- whereas qualitative components are best represented by features. If a person were processing an event along the short/tall construct, locating that input at the tall (or short) end of the construct would be to judge that the event "matches" a prototypically tall (or short) exemplar of that event. If the range of convenience of the construct short/tall did not extend to the object -- that is, short/tall do not count in locating the object in a category (a psychollage) - a zero scaling would be applied.

[44]
Though Sarbin et al did not specifically enunciate the bipolarity proposition, their discussion of the quantification processes by which an analyst can study module organizations suggests that bipolarity would be a feature in their psychollage for dimension. For example, they endorsed factor analytic techniques (p. 127), through which an item may be assigned either a positive or a negative value on a dimension. (That early endorsement of the use of these techniques clearly presaged the extensive use of multi-variate analyses as a tool to study personal cognitive organizations. See Mancuso and Shaw, 1988). Sarbin et al's discussion and graphic illustration of the processes of locating event-related inputs in modular space and of inference-making allows a reader to infer that they would concur with the bipolarity hypothesis as it is expressed in the following statement by Osgood and Richards (1973): "Meaning elements are analyzable into simultaneous sets of bi-polar semantic features, these features being variable in sign and (in the general sense) in magnitude. . . . Each semantic feature has a non-arbitrary polarity, one pole being cognitively positive and the other negative (p. 385-386).

[45]

Taking a position on the bipolarity issue becomes theoretically important for several reasons. Among other reasons, we would find it useful to assume that in each person's unique personal construct system, the polarities of constructs are aligned. On the basis of such an assumption, Osgood and Richards demonstrated that when persons were asked to pair the adjective ugly with the adjective kind, they used the disjunctive term BUT - e. g., "John is ugly but kind." From such demonstrations one can conclude that the inference process takes into account the polarities of constructs when accessing constructs such as ugly/attractive and mean/kind to build a psychollage by which to locate a set of inputs.

[46]
EXPLAINING THE ACQUISITION OF DIMENSIONS AND THE BUILDING OF PSYCHOLLAGES

Having worked out suitable psychollages to be labeled dimension and module (psychollage), a constructivist can take up issues related to the problems of explaining the ways in which persons acquire dimensions and assemble modules (psychollages).

Sarbin et al., for example, wrote, "Only when the characteristics of the object can be compared with the characteristics of other objects a dimension can be formed. The dimension is always a matter of variation among occurrences within the framework of a single characteristic or class of characteristics" (p. 93).

[47]
Sarbin, et al. then took recourse to classical logical formulations to explain the ways in which a novel object is assigned to a category. To start this process of explanation, of course, Sarbin would need to explain the ways in which a person can use dimensions in order to assemble a psychollage (module) that can be accessed to categorize objects and events. Sarbin, et al. wrote:

... we have regarded the modular organization as static, with its structure being established by a passive recording of sensory events initiated from the extra-organismic ecology. In fact, the process which builds up cognitive organizations is an active one and the organizations themselves are constantly being revised by new interactions of the organism with the ecology. (p. 118)

[48]
Sarbin et. al. did not go on to describe the ways in which constructs are assembled, attached to, or otherwise incorporated into a repeatedly accessible psychollage (module). The closest that they came to writing about the origins of repeatable psychollages is seen in the following sentences: "Inductive summation of common factors, resemblances, identities, or equivalences provides an empirical basis for the formulation of postulates [where postulates are regarded as psychollages]. The main feature of induction is the statement of a generalization based on the recognition of similarities in multiple contexts" (p. 49, material in brackets inserted by JCM)

[49]
Like other early theorists, Sarbin, et al. appear to have accepted some kind of stimulus response associationist formulation to describe the development of the repeatedly accessible psychollages. That is, after the person has acquired a suitable set of constructs, he/she encounters events and objects which can be ranged on specific sets of constructs. Following successful functional interaction with those events or objects on the basis of having located them within psychollages that can be built from available constructs, there will be a tendency to repeat the use of that psychollage when one encounters objects and events that can be ranged appropriately on the constructs which allow assignment of the object to that psychollage. "The person is functionally dependent on achievement of the cognitive organizations proportional to the ecological organizations. That is, to satisfy functional (survival) requirements, his cognitive organizations must be reasonably proportional to those organizations in the ecology" (p. 87). "... we assert that events in the external world take on meaning as they are instrumental in solving problems for a person" (p. 51).

[50]
Sarbin, et al. used classical logic theory to explicate the process of assigning a novel stimulus event to a category [using a psychollage to cover novel inputs]. "In its most general form, inference is the cognitive transformation of one set of events through another set of events which produces new knowledge about the first" (p. 45). In essence, they defined the process as follows: (1) inputs are placed on the cognitive dimensions; (2) the dimensional characteristics are taken to be the defining and incidental properties of a category [the event is regarded as an instance of a class [e. g., angry person]; (3) the module becomes the subject term of a major premise, [e. g., angry persons are dangerous]; (4) the module becomes the predicate term a minor premise [e. g., John is an angry person]; (5) other predicates are applied to the subject term in the minor premise on grounds that the subject of the minor premise is an exemplar of the psychollage that became the predicate term in the major premise [e. g., John is dangerous]. If having construed the subject of the minor premise by use of the psychollage that was the predicate term in the major premise functionally serves to anticipate the continued flow of inputs provided during interactions with the subject of the minor premise, the construer will have gained new knowledge about the subject term in the conclusion of the syllogism.

With Sarbin, et. al's earlier theoretical efforts as a base, one may review some of the recent efforts to deal with issues related to problems of acquisition and use of constructs and psychollages

[51]
THE ORIGINS OF CONSTRUCTS. HOW DOES A PERSON ACQUIRE A SET OF CONSTRUCTS?

In that the idea of "inborn somethings" has had a long history in the development of psychological theory, one can follow the tempting route of proposing that a person’s genetic structure will arrange to gift the individual with a series of ready-made constructs. Harnad (1987), for example, takes seriously investigators' conclusions "that infants are born with categorical representations for speech sounds, perhaps encoded in syllabic chunks" (p. ) He regards this special class of feature-detection models as being analogous to the visual feature detectors models proposed by Hubel & Wiesel (1979). At the same time, he proposes that "Features that are not innate must be learned from experience, so categorical representations for learned categories consist of learned feature detectors" (p. 18).

[52]
I take the liberty of concluding that Harnad had meant to say, "Features that are not processed through innate feature detectors" rather than, "Features that are not innate..." ( I cannot understand how a feature could be innate.) I then transmute Harnad's sentence into, "Features that are not processed through innate feature detectors must be processed through feature detectors that are learned from experience." When a theorist declares the need to discuss the learning of detectors to process constructs on which to locate inputs, as does Harnad, what purpose is served by offering propositions about innately given feature detection systems? I would recommend that we set out to offer justifiable propositions about the ways in which the detector systems for all bi-polared constructs are "learned."

[53]
My study of the passages such as that written by Harnad leads me to conclude that those who write such passages expect us to agree that we must deal with a real world of features, objects, or configurations that are extant in the world's events. I suspect that when those writers use the term inputs they intend to signify a psychollage built on the presupposition that the world of features, objects, and configurations enters the psychological system as features, objects, and configurations. The psychological system must be transformed, through experience, so that such extant features can be "detected." It appears that some commentators fall into the trap of accepting that belief, and then respond to a challenge to explain an individual's acquisition of constructs by yielding a strong epistemological constructivism. For example, "Well, there are some innate feature detectors! Humans can automatically detect features and then use basic level categories!" My propositions, to be sure, would not follow from a presupposition that events sit "out there" containing constructs (or features) that the person must somehow "pick out" and then incorporate into his/her construct system.

[54]
The propositions of many who comment on acquisition of constructs seems to rely on formist/realist positions, which has led commentators, for several thousand years (at least), to consider it useful to regard psychological functioning as if one could make a useful distinction between perceptual processes and cognitive processes. Perceptual processes give persons direct access, through the use of innate feature detectors, to basic level categories! Cognitive processes involve mediation of inputs to determine the category to which one assigns the input-producing event. Goldstone and Barsalou (1996) wrote a survey which reflects a reliance on this distinction, and intended to "illustrate ways in which conceptual [psychollage] processing is grounded in perception, both for perceptual similarity and abstract rules" (p. 1) and to "discuss the advantages, power, and influences of perceptually based representations" (p. 1, material in brackets inserted by JCM).

[55]
Unfortunately, Goldstone and Barsalou did not satisfactorily verbalize the psychollage which is to be accessed when they use the term perception. I am led to conclude that they had intended to designate a process which takes place within the psychological system at that moment when sensory energies transform into neural energies to become inputs into the psychological system. From their use of the term amodal processes, which I deduce they mean to use as a term which may substitute for conceptual processes, they would regard perceptual processes as modal; that is, as those psychological processes which occur contemporaneously, in real time, when one of a person's sensory modes functions. Goldstone and Barsalou's text also allows me to infer that whatever takes place in the psychological system as one of the sensory modes operates will recur at later times when the person engages in a categorization process (a cognitive process, a process of assembling a psychollage).

[56]
What do Goldstone and Barsalou assume to be the process that takes place at the time during which of the sensory modes functions? Again, I could only attempt to use hints given in their text to make deductions regarding this question. They said, "Perceptual . . . representations, because they preserve aspects of the external object in relatively raw form, can represent certain aspects of the represented object without explicit machinery to do so" (p. 6). They then proceeded to indicate that "seemingly abstract properties can be computed by analogue devices" (p. 6). They then attempted to illustrate by examples which involve complex manipulations of spatial representations - height, width, length, etc., and combinations of these representations.

[57]
At another point they said:

"Because the overall similarity process has its roots in perception, the features it utilizes are biased toward features that perception makes available. Thus, features like shape, color, size, texture, and position are important, because perceptual systems make them readily available to the overall comparison process. Other features are less likely to be incorporated into overall similarity, because they are not as available. The consequence is that natural constraints are placed on the overall similarity, thereby mitigating the problem that it is unconstrained." (p. 9)

[58]
Here then, they reveal the use of the assumption that "perception makes features available." I again raise the questions, "Are the features of an event simply recorded by the perceptual process? Are there no categorization processes involved in ascribing a particular length (tall?), width (narrow?). or shape (pentagonal?) to an event?"

[59]
Adhering as strictly as I can to my constructivist assumption, I would claim that a person must first acquire the constructs by which to construe events in terms of short/tall, narrow/wide, or curvilinear/rectilinear.

[60]

What I see to be a conceptual trap can be evaded by taking seriously the term inputs. Uninterpreted inputs do enter the system. A theorist would go astray if he/she were to confuse a psychollage labeled inputs as with psychollages that she/he might invent for use in construing internal representation, such as construct, dimensions, psychollages, schemata, modules, etc. It is advisable to insist that inputs be regarded as firings of neural endings.. A psychological system must build constructs on the base of those inputs -- energy transformations at the sensory endings which fire off networks of neurons. We would agree with Goldstone and Barsalou as they attempt to diminish the distinctions between perception and conception; but unlike them, we would eliminate the distinction by claiming that all input must be "cognized" through the person's use of personally invented constructs.

[61]
If I reject propositions about innately given constructs and immediate apprehension of features, I must continue to try to invent psychollages to account for the ways in which constructs become a part of a person’s psychological system. Unhappily, I have found no elaborate explanation of how constructs are built. There is much discussion of how psychollages are assembled and reconstructed using dimensions (See, for example, Ashby & Maddox, 1998; Ashby, Boynton, & Lee, 1994; Johnson & Mervis, 1998; Keil, Smith, Simons, & Levin, 1998, Sloman & Rips, 1998); but I have not found discussions of how a person would acquire the two-poled constructs that are used as a person engages in a categorization process.

[62]
We might start by working carefully with the hints available in reports of studies which relate to Kelly's (1993/1955) suggestion about contrast (p. 43-45) to propose that constructs develop from the system's ability to contrast two similar patterns of inputs to a third dissimilar pattern. Sarbin, et al. in 1960, suggested that they would accept "some type of dispositional concept" (p. 26). "By means of such concepts the effects of external stimuli can be combined with innate physiological tendencies and the accumulation of previous experience into some cognitive structures that form a part of our postulate systems" (p. 26). [To enhance my claim that this statement provides a promising lead into formulating propositions about the acquisition of constructs, I would insert the term anatomical structures before the term innate physiological tendencies.] The human neural system is structured, through genetic processes, in ways that allow (or predispose) the infant to compare inputs.

[63]
One can see some basis for this claim by considering findings recently reported by Marcus, Vijayan, Rao, and Vishton (1999) who showed that seven-month old infants acquire internal representations that they use as they cognize and re-cognize the patterns within the auditory inputs provided by ordinary speech.

[64]
Marcus, et. al. showed that infants can distinguish a pattern of phonemes, such as li na li (ABA grammar) from a different pattern, such as an ABB pattern (ga ti ti). That is, the infants habituated to the ABA pattern showed more behaviors indicating attention when they were then presented with an ABB pattern. In effect, the infants were able to extract a "rule" from the first set of presented stimuli, ABA, and were put into a state of preparation for effort when the use of that rule failed to allow assimilation of the second set of presented stimuli, ABB. Creation of the rule requires a process well beyond a simple stimulus-response associative process, in that the rule summarizes a relationship between different phoneme combinations. To explore the origins of two-poled constructs, an investigator would want to extend the work of Marcus, et al. to understand how the infants had previously built the constructs which allows them to distinguish the vowels and consonants from which the syllables had been constructed. Marcus, et. al., note that the assumptive structure that underlies their work includes often unspoken propositions acknowledging that "To recognize that an item is reduplicated, a system must have the ability to store the first element and compare the second element to the first" (p. 79). One can note that Marcus, et. al. used three worded "sentences" in their study. Assuming that the infants in this study do have the ability to store and to contrast representations of the stimulus elements, one could conjecture that the infants used already existing constructs to construe the patterns. Every "word" (li, ga, etc.) that Marcus, et al. presented to the infants involved a consonant-vowel sequence. Thus, to have any confidence in any conclusion derived from this study, one would need to assume that the infants had mastered a prototype of the construct consonant/vowel, and that all vowels could be categorized on the construct closed/open. Additionally, one would need to assume that the infants could range consonant sounds on constructs that might be labeled (by adults) labial/glottal and so forth. If one did not assume that the infants could locate phonemes on these judgment dimensions, one could not assume that they could categorize two phoneme patterns such as li and ba as being different. If they could not locate the two patterns (B and B, e. g. li and li) on the same end of a superordinating construct, they could not extract an ABB (ga, is followed by li, li) rule that might be verbalized by the statement, "two similar phoneme combinations after one phoneme combination that differs from the two." To expect that the infants could develop that rule, one also would need to assume that the infants had developed time-related constructs; namely, before/after and separate/consecutive.

[65]
These considerations of the Marcus, et. al., study allow me to conjecture that if an infant aged seven months can extract a "rule" about vowel-consonant combination, he/she also enjoys the availability of a neural system that allows the creation of two-poled constructs. At birth (and perhaps before birth), infants can "hold" input patterns in some kind of neural store, allowing for comparison of that pattern to ensuing patterns. Indeed, I would claim that the results of the study are best interpreted by working from an assumption that the infants under study already had developed some very complex two-poled constructs, particularly constructs by which they could categorize phonemes. As noted above, some investigators have proposed that phoneme recognition functions are "built into" the psychological system of humans. What then of the time-related constructs (before/after) that must be used to learn a ABB pattern or a ABA pattern? Shall we simply add those "feature detectors" to the list of inborn judgment scales?

[66]
In summary, studies such as that reported by Marcus, et. al., allow me to propose that infants show an ability (an ability which is associated with the neural structures that exist for several months before its birth) to build an internal representation, to store temporarily such representations, and to compare a series of input representations. Such ability would allow an infant to invent and to use two-poled constructs as it categorizes inputs. Sarbin, et al. (1960) presaged this proposition when they wrote; "Only when the characteristics of the object can be compared with the characteristics of other objects can a dimension be formed" (p. 93).

[67]
INVENTING NEW PSYCHOLLAGES AND CATEGORIZING NEW STIMULUS PATTERNS

In the years following "The Cognitive Revolution" that was generated by works like Sarbin et al's 1960 work, psychologists have consumed several forests worth of paper as they have recorded their positions with regard to the issue of how to construe category formation and use. How does one invent a new category? How does one determine that a novel stimulus pattern shall be assigned to one or another category. At this point I will draw from the extensive efforts that investigators (See Ashby & Maddox, 1998; Keil, et. al., 1998) have made to give convincing answers to these questions and I will offer only a brief summation of the alternative responses to these questions.

[68]
One group of commentators proposed that a category (a psychollage) is formed by identifying the locations of event-produced stimulus patterns on a series of constructs. In 1960 Sarbin et al would have agreed. "A region within the space – determined by co-ordinate values on intersecting dimensions – cognitively speaking represents an ecological object when the dimensions are, so to speak, in the head. These regions are the modules [psychollages] of our cognitive theory" (p. 107, material in brackets added by JCM). Once formed, the psychollage can be used to "know" other "new" events and objects by determining whether or not the construct space occupied by the stimulus pattern associated with the "new" event sufficiently overlaps the construct space of the already-formed category. To answer the question, "Is Peter angry ?" a categorizer would locate the inputs assumed to arise from the object, Peter, along a series of constructs - auditory inputs from Peter's vocalizations loud, visual inputs from Peter's body orientations tense, visual inputs from blood level changes in Peter's face red, etc. The inputs associated with Peter's conduct would overlap the construct space occupied by the psychollage angry, therefore Peter would be placed into the angry category.

[69]
Other commentators construed the formation of categories [psychollages] differently. An alternative position states that a person invents categories through the invention and applications of rules. Again consider the category angry, as it is applied in the sentence, "Is he angry?" What construct space defines the psychollage angry? A commentator might claim that it is more parsimonious to say that a person learns a rule: "An angry person is one who perceives that he/she is the target of an unjustified harm." In other words, the events are construed in terms of the cause of the inputs rather than in terms of the locations of the stimulus inputs on a series of constructs. A causal rule determines the placement of the object. Peter could be "pretending," and would overtly create input sources that instigate one to "detect the features" of anger as he/she observes Peter. On the other hand, if the observer "knows" that Peter has been the target of unjustified harm, the observer will use the psychollage anger to categorize Peter. In this way, rule-based propositions about category assignment would prove to be a better explanation of human functioning.

[70]
Neither of these positions, however, explain the ways in which persons acquire the psychollage angry.

An alternative set of propositions concerning category formation and use. Before proposing an alternative perspective on category formation and use I note the "rehabilitation of narrative" in the social sciences. One now can find extensive support (Bruner, 1986; Kerby, 1991; Mancuso, 1996; Sarbin, 1986) for Sarbin's (1986) "narratory principle:" ". . . . human beings think, perceive, imagine, and make moral choices [that is, use psychological collages] according to narrative structures" (p. 8, material in brackets added by JCM). Narrative becomes involved in every human effort to "makes sense" of the world of occurrences

[71]
With the narratory principle before us, I note that the discipline of psychology and investigations of categorizing behavior began when the dominant world views guiding the discipline could be identified as formist/realist perspectives. Psychologists regularly worked from the viewpoint that knowledge was acquired by building "true" internal simulacra of the events associated with the inputs. Furthermore, psychologists regularly sought to "discover" the laws that formalized the workings of the "out there world." Thus, the task of the psychologist was to uncover the "real" laws that describe the ways in which people discovered "real" categories by which they could "accurately" know the objects in the distal ecology.

[72]
At this point, I state the claim that, despite the level of sophistication of studies into the processes of categorizing, psychologists continue to worry about whether or not people can "accurately" categorize objects and events. The most visible sign of this implicit assumption is seen in experimental practices that follow from the assumption that categorizing tasks can be isolated from the continuous flow of a person's psychological activity. The important question that should underlie any observation of a person engaged in categorizing must be: What is the function of creating and using this category? In a person's ongoing life, he/she creates categories and locates objects and events in those categories in order to facilitate his/her anticipation of events. A person's classifying activity occurs in "episodes that are not arbitrarily simplified, fragmented, ecologically impoverished, and replicable" (Sarbin, 1977, p. 37). Consider the artificiality of the context of a cognitive science experiment. What ongoing events does the participant in an experiment anticipate by engaging the task of classifying strangely constructed stimulus patterns? Perhaps, the participant anticipates gaining the approval of the experimenter! Perhaps the participant anticipates that if he can quickly evolve a category the experimenter will promptly release him from his mandatory obligation to take part in a psychological study!

[73]
The rehabilitation of narrative allows us to uncover a major point of contact between Vico's (1992/1744) masterwork and modern efforts to explain the acquisition of psychollages. One should note that while Vico extensively elaborated the ways in which mythopoesis underlies the creation of all human creation of psychollages, he also consistently analyzed the historic status of psychollages - particularly psychollages relevant to the creation of social institutions - through analyzing the myths in which the ancients had embedded those psychollages.

[74]
Had Vico clearly enunciated the narratory principle, he might have pursued the claim that the ancients invented and then assigned objects and events to categories on the basis of whether or not such assignment will allow the object or event to serve a useful role in the myth that the epic poets had created. In that, "The adequacy of the narrative cannot, therefore, be measured against the meaning of prenarrative experience but, properly speaking, only against alternative interpretations of that experience" (Kerby, 1991, p. 84), a composer of myths can never, outside of his/her myths, test whether or not an object or event is "really"an exemplar of the category into which it had been placed. The myth makers could have no test the of the utility of their categorization of objects and events other than detecting congruence between the flow of events and the myth in which the object or event had taken the role to which the narrator had assigned it. In short, the person assigns an object or an event to a category in order to build to a narrative that will be validated through that narrative's enactments having allowed the person to maintain an optimum level of discrepancy between the narrative and the continued flow of inputs. And, of course, the myth makers would not have perpetuated a myth unless they had judged that use of the myth maintained an optimum level of discrepancy. Vico's implicit acceptance of propositions similar to the foregoing led him to make the statement: ". . . Since the first men of the gentile world had the simplicity of children, who are truthful by nature, the first fables could not feign anything false; they must therefore have been, as they have been defined, above, as true narrations" (p. 131, [408]). The primitives could test the adequacy of a particular myth only against the adequacy of an alternative myth. Thus, each successive alternative myth necessarily gains the status of "truth."

[75]
Recall the above example of attempting to assign Peter to the category angry in order to fill in a slot in a narrative. He is construed in the setting and beginning elements of a narrative. Something caused Peter's response. Peter's status is the effect of one or another event. Whatever input-related attributions an observer makes to Peter, those attributes serve, primarily, to assign him a role in the narrative that will guide the narrator’s processing of continued inputs. Peter, having been assigned a role on the basis of his having been construed by use of the poetically invented angry psychollage, might carry out a role enactment that is the cause of another event. The caused event's categorization, like Peter's categorization, is important to the narrator only because of the role that the narrator assigns to the object or event as he/she authors his/her anticipatory narratives. Though many studies have attempted to explicate which attributes a person assigns to an event before categorizing that event as an anger event, we can agree that the most salient psychollage used to categorize an event as an anger event is the cause of the event. If an observer is attempting to build an anticipatory narrative involving another person and if he/she places an event in which the person under observation has been involved in an unjustified physical or psychological harm situation, the observer will very likely construe the observed person by using the anger psychollage. The attributes that the observer assigns to the observed person's physical movements, vocalizations, etc., are not as important in determining his/her categorization as are the cause attributions that the observer has made. In other words, the events or objects are not categorized only on the basis of "perceptual features." Categories that are invented on the basis of metaphor and other poetic devices are tested on the basis of how well one can predict the continued flow of inputs after having assigned an object or event a role in one of the narrative element slots in an anticipatory narrative. The test of the "truth" of a particular categorization entails assessment of the level of discrepancy between the created narrative and the continued flow of inputs. In this way, the categorizing psychollage used in a narrative that allows the person to maintain an optimal level of discrepancy becomes a psychollage that the person will reassemble in situations that can be indexed by the basic set of constructs that the person used as he/she authored the successful narrative.

[76]
Let me reiterate this analysis by using a different kind of example. A student, Milton Ingeny, has on his desk a very large mug. In that mug he has about two dozen objects. An experimenter, Professor Sapienza, appears in Milton's study area and asks Milton to place those objects into a category. I would regard Milton's psychological functioning using propositions about his efforts to build an anticipatory narrative. Milton would build a narrative about his self as protagonist. Professor Sapienza's actions would fill the cause slot in the self-authored story that would guide Milton's continued action. As he builds his anticipatory narrative, Milton would fill the goal slot. Milton might set a goal that is very different from that which Professor Sapienza had set for Milton when she devised the anticipatory narrative of her self as investigator. In Professor Sapienza's self narrative, she has set the goal of demonstrating which features Milton uses as he makes the classification. In Milton Ingeny's narrative, he classifies the psychologist as someone who is trying to discover his inner workings - "as all psychologists do." Milton will create a narrative in which he will pursue the goal of prompting the experimenter to classify him as smart. He quickly responds, "All those objects in that cup can be classified as writing instruments." The experimenter, being a high level psychologist rather than a run of the mill evaluation specialist, wants to discover which "features" Milton has used to assign those objects to the category writing instruments. Noting that each of the objects is different-colored, Professor Sapienza eliminates color as one of the features. She reaches into her brief case and extracts a bundle of objects which Milton can construe as round when viewed on end, very long relative to the diameter of the end, and so forth, and asks Milton to indicate the category into which he would place this bundle of objects. Continuing to attempt to use the narrative in which he intends to create the outcome of the experimenter construing him as smart, Milton quickly responds kindling sticks for a wood stove.

[77]
I am not sure how the experimenter will have categorized Milton, but I think it is clear that Milton has categorized the objects under observation in terms of the role they might play in anticipatory narratives that he would author in order to predict the continued flow of inputs. Pens and pencils are instruments that take a role in self narratives, as are long, thin sticks of wood. As a person goes about his/her everyday life he/she encounters stimulus patterns that require him/her to build anticipatory narratives in which his/her producing a set of actions will cause an outcome that will bring to a conclusion a particular episode in the flow of his/her self narrative. A person searches the ecology for an object to which he/she can assign attributes that index a particular psychollage that can fill a role in his/her anticipatory narrative.

[78]
Objects of many different sizes and colors may fill the role of "producer of visual symbols." For convenience in communicating about those objects, Milton uses the linguistic label writing instruments. As he enacts the self narrative in which he has assigned one of those objects to the role of cause of symbols, the ecology provides him with feedback cues that are entirely congruent with the psychollage that he uses in his anticipatory self narrative. For example, Milton, to reach another goal, needs to leave a message on the desk of a friend. He searches the ecology for a long, thin object that will fill the role of writing instrument in the anticipatory self narrative that he had built The long, thin object he finds on his friend's desk allows him to create the series of letters and words to relate the message to his friend. The "truth" of the classification the object he has used has been established. Of course, Milton could reach for one of the objects on the desk, having built an anticipatory psychollage in which that object will satisfactorily fill the role of writing instrument, only to discover that the object does not produce visual symbols. Whereupon, experiencing considerable discrepancy, his psychobiological functioning puts him into a state of preparation for effort. That preparation for effort might then be expressed through a vigorous launching of the object toward the wastebasket, accompanied by the vehement declaration, "Twenty gadgets in that damned mug, and I have to pick a ball-point pen that has dried out!!!"

[79]
Another example might be useful. On questioning, most people would agree that the color dull-gray to white coloring of sea gulls would be regarded as a distinguishing attribute of those birds. Until recently, most computers reflect the same range of light waves that allow us to attribute the same color to computers. Yet, if one were to ask people who are familiar with computers to describe the psychollage by which they construe computers, very few persons would agree that a computer's color distinguishes it from other objects - that computers HAVE the feature of greyness.. It would be easy to make the claim that people would place those objects in the computer category in terms of how we use them as we carry out our anticipatory narratives. "I am to submit a paper to the editor. I sit at my computer and load my word processing program. The computer becomes a tool by which I can control the transformation of electronic energies into visual representations of words, etc., etc, that is, it is a part of a writing system." A person would categorize an object as a computer if it fits into a validated narrative. Self narrative involving a computer as a part of a writing system do not encourage the use of a color attribute..

[80]
Why would one regard the color of seagulls as a distinguishing feature for those birds, whereas color has little utility as a feature of a computer? Using the narratory principle, may I hypothesize that the color of those birds easily becomes an outcome element in the scripted story of biological evolution? Would someone who has not been prompted to build the evolution story script indicate that a sea gull’s color is one of its salient features? Or, in stories involving comparison to other birds, the grey/brownish construct rapidly emerges as a feature by which one can rapidly assemble a psychollage for seagulls.

[81]
To repeat my point: In our daily life, we attain affirmation of the validity of our classifications of objects and events by assessing whether or not particular objects and events suitably fill particular roles in our anticipatory narratives; where the criteria of suitability is the attainment of congruence between the continued flow of events and a constructed narrative in which the psychollage has filled the slot in one of the story's elements. The assessment of salience of distinctive features to objects or events does not establish the validity of the psychollage. The person determines that a particular psychollage fits over an object or event if the use of that psychollage allows the object or event to fill a role in a narrative that successfully anticipates the continued flow of inputs.

[82]
From this position one would explain new knowledge in terms of a person having affirmed the validity of having used a psychollage that fits over a particular object or event so that the object or event can be used as an element in a slot in an anticipatory narrative. A lump of charcoal can be regarded as writing instrument after a person had used that psychollage and then used the charcoal to fill a causal slot in the self story about creating visual symbols. A vitriolic epistle may be taken as a valid effect element in a narrative about an angry person, after having included that letter in the protagonist action slot of a story having the setting that includes an unjustified psychological or physical harm. Psychollages are invented in order to assign objects and events to roles in the self stories that persons create in order to anticipate the continued flow of events.

[83]
CONCLUSION

To illustrate the connections between the 260 year old writings of Giambattista Vico and a contemporary theory of personal construct psychology, I have chosen to put special focus on Vico's propositions concerning the invention of psychollages. I have first highlighted the constructivist orientation that guided Vico's explication of the ways in which person use poetic devices to invent novel psychollages by which to know objects and events.

[84]
I then elaborated on Vico's propositions by fully noting the central role of narrative in Vico's theorizing. I promote acceptance of the claim that Vico had so thoroughly immersed himself in the analysis of myth that he overlooked the importance of laying out propositions about the ways in which persons assess the utility of the psychollages that they insert into the elements of well-formed stories. By testing the extent to which a psychollage of an object or event allows an object or event to fill the role in one of a well-formed story's elements, a person determines the continued utility - the "truth" or "validity" - of the psychollage. A person determines the utility of a psychollage if the story that the person creates using a newly acquired psychollage serves to maintain a optimal level of discrepancy between the created narrative and the continued flow of events.

[85]
Closer inspection of Vico's work can elaborate other contacts between a contemporary theory of personal construct psychology and Vico's theories.

[86]
Certainly, Vico's insistence on the necessity of understanding the psychollages used by those whom we study fits snugly with a personal construct psychology. Vico unequivocally states, and repeats variations of his axiom: "Doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat" (p. 92. [314]). Though a modern reader might find this statement to be convoluted, a personal construct psychologist can recognize that Vico told his readers that in order to develop a doctrine about an object or event one must begin with the psychollages that the people first applied to the objects or events that they attempted "to know." To clarify further his axiom, Vico warned his readers that they should not use modern psychollages as if those psychollages been used throughout the history of people. The primitive people, in their first efforts to construe a particular object or event used psychollages that differed radically from those used by modern philosophers. Vico stated that in order to achieve the insights that he had achieved about the formation of social institutions, he had to ". . . . descend from these human and refined natures of ours to those quite wild and savage natures, which we cannot at all imagine and can comprehend only with great effort" (p. 100, [338]). A familiar modern variant of Vico's axiom would be, "Sociality Corollary: to the extent that one person construes the construction processes of another, he may play a role in a social process involving the other person" (Kelly, 1991/1955, p. 66).

[87]
One can find one of Vico's most intriguing constructivist statements embedded in one of his strong statements. He prefaces his explorations with the claim that "We shall show clearly and distinctly how the founders of gentile humanity [the primitive peoples] . . . . . by [creating a] particular physics of man, in a certain sense created themselves" (p. 112 [367], material in brackets added by JCM). Thus, in 1744, Vico succinctly presaged the use of a psychollage by which to understand the psychological processes that modern psychologists discuss as reflexivity. That is, he articulated an early version of reflexivity by stating that his theory would demonstrate that by creating psychollages about human nature, humans engaged in self-creation.

[88]
Finding this passage in Vico surely incites a constructivist to wonder why so clear a statement about self creation became submerged by the kind of realism and positivism that prompted psychologists to concentrate their efforts on finding "real traits," "the biological substrate of traits," "the inheritance of physical structure that would account for inherited traits," "innate intelligence," etc.

[89]
By this review of some of the highlights of Vico's Scienza Nuova, I hope to prompt other constructivists to give more than glancing attention to the work of Vico's seminal philosophical formulation. I have no doubt that a constructivist will find in that work many axioms that parallel those used by modern constructivist psychologists. In addition, I have tried to show that a close reading of Vico can prompt a constructivist psychologist to develop useful insights. The danger of reading Vico, I have found, is that one can become quite disappointed at having spent so many years of his/her professional career chasing positivist/mechanist formulations without having discovered that constructivism was alive and well in Naples in 1744 - despite the strictures that had been imposed on thinkers such as Giambattista Vico by the hegemony of The Roman Catholic Church and the rationalists of The Enlightenment.

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ENDNOTES

(1). In this essay, I will use the formalism of using an Italic font when writing the naming term by which a construct or construction is signified.

(2). Pages and paragraph numbers are used in citing Vico’s masterwork, La Scienza Nuova, (1744/1992).

(3). A reading of The New Science clearly shows that Vico would have anticipated many questions that modern psychologists would raise concerning his formulations regarding the invention of psychollages. In that his responses are not particularly relavent to the goals of this essay, I will resist the temptation to digress into a discussion of the ways in which he might have answered those questions.

(4). Vico deftly worked out a circuitous route by which he could claim that The Hebrew people had had their laws and institutions revealed, and that his analyses applied to "The Gentile people", who had reverted to a barbarous and primitive state after the Hebrew god had cursed the sons of Noah. In this way, he skirted the opprobrium that might result from questioning by the inquisitors of the Roman Catholic Church.

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James C Mancuso

Emeritus Prof. of Psychology, 15 Oakwood Place, Department of Psychology

Delmar, New York 12054, Univ. at Albany SUNY

(518) 439-4416

Albany, NY 12222

http://www.capital.net/~soialban http://www.capital.net/~mancusoj