This article was downloaded by: [University of Ottawa]On: 16 August 2014, At: 18:10Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Psychoanalytic Dialogues:The International Journalof Relational PerspectivesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpsd20

Cultural and conceptualdissonance in theoreticalpracticeCarla Massey Ph.D. aa consultant to the Institute for Urban FamilyHealth Care , 14 East 4th Street, #507,NewYork, NY, 10012Published online: 02 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Carla Massey Ph.D. (1996) Cultural and conceptualdissonance in theoretical practice, Psychoanalytic Dialogues: TheInternational Journal of Relational Perspectives, 6:1, 123-140, DOI:10.1080/10481889609539110

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10481889609539110

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information.Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities

whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 6(l): 123-140, 1996Symposium on Language and Psychoanalysis-Part II

Cultural and Conceptual Dissonance

in Theoretical Practice

Commentary on RoseMarie Perez Foster's

"The Bilingual Self: Duet in Two Voices"

Carla Massey, Ph.D.

FOSTER DRAWS OUR ATTENTION TO THE EXPERIENTIAL WORLD OF

"bilingual" people and "bilingual" treatment. She impresses onus the profoundly important role language plays in creating,

organizing, and defending our experiential worlds and psychic histories.I welcome and fully support her efforts to bring issues related to doingbilingual/bicultural treatment and issues pertaining to language andpsychoanalytic practice into a public forum for discussion. There hasnot been enough discussion.

Broadly speaking, there are two problems Foster opens up in herpaper. The first problem concerns the division between some bilinguals'differing experiential language-worlds. She persuasively shows theprofound therapeutic difference languages make, if shared in theanalytic dyad, in engaging with both worlds and the conflicts betweenthem. She conveys the power that the "music, meaning, and mood oflanguage" has to transport the analytic dyad between these worlds, andthrough the treatment process. She argues that a bilingual analystoffers bilingual patients the possibility of access to linguisticallydefended aspects of their affective experience and "enhanced trans-formational possibilities for transference enactments." She alerts us to

I would like to thank Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Ph.D. and Elissa Weintraub for theirthought-provoking conversations, which informed this commentary. I am especiallygrateful to Joseph Glick, Ph.D. and Muriel Dimen, Ph.D. for their elucidatingcomments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

Carla Massey, Ph.D. is in private practice in New York City and is a consultant tothe Institute for Urban Family Health Care.

123 © 1996 The Analytic Press

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

124 Carla Massey

the transference—countertransference dilemmas that may be encoun-tered in the passage between language-worlds.

The second problem, that Foster unwittingly opens up in her paperconcerns the relationship between theory and practice, in particular,how different conceptions of language promote or pose obstacles to thetherapeutic goal of engaging differing language-worlds. While I havemuch sympathy for Foster's opening up the issue of therapeutic workwith multiple language-worlds, I find that she implicitly adopts a looseaccount of language that is more problematic than not. In contempo-rary theoretical discourse, the issue of "language"—of what it is andwhat it isn't, and, if it can be studied, how?—is one of the more hotlydebated topics. Without addressing the full range of positions withinthe emerging discourse, I shall dwell on the distinction between theformal study of language as a system and the investigation of languageas it is spoken in the world.1

In the 19th century this distinction was characterized by Humboldt(cited in Werner and Kaplan, 1963), a German philosopher oflanguage, as the distinction between language as "ergon"—as an objec-tive product or structure—and language as "energia"—as energy andactivity. At the turn of the century, this distinction was characterizedby de Saussure (1959), the Swiss linguist, with the terms la langue andla parole. Modern linguistics is concerned with describing the systematicaspects of la langue as they are manifest in specific national languages.Modern linguistics, Julia Kristeva (1981), the linguist and psychoana-lyst, explains,

hopes to find the general principles and elements, which one cancall the linguistic universals. La langue therefore appears to be notan evolution, a family tree, or a history, but a structure, with lawsand operational rules that must be described. The separation laZangue/speech [parole], paradigm/syntagm, synchrony/diachronyindicates very well this orientation of linguistics toward la langue,paradigm, and synchrony, rather than toward speech, syntagm, anddiachrony, [pp. 217-218].

1The relevance of this distinction to my discussion emerged in conversation withJoseph Glick.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 125

In contemporary psychology there is a spectrum of views of languagethat take the systematic la langue orientation and treat language as adefinable product of the mind, which manifests or reflects intrapsychiccontents and structures, representations, schemata, unconscious ideas,and the like (for examples within psychoanalysis, see the work of Rap-paport, 1942; Holt, 1951; and Blatt and Lerner, 1983). There is also aless dominant emerging spectrum of views that take la parole [speech]orientation and treat language as a lived phenomenon (e.g., seeMerleau-Ponty, 1962, 1973; Werner, 1963; Schafer, 1976, 1992;Vygotsky, 1986; and Dore, 1989).

Foster, in the attempt to establish a convincingly legitimate accountof the importance of the divisions between some bilinguals' language -worlds, tends to take la langue orientation, and conceive of languagesas codes—as static, rule-governed, systems. While she notes the clini-cal importance and transformational powers of the "music, mood, andmeaning of language," she emphasizes this conception of language as"code." This conception does little, however, to convey a sense of thesensorial, affective, ambiguous, paradoxical, and pragmatic qualities oflanguage. Although Foster notes the possibility for interdependencebetween languages, she emphasizes and only elaborates on the inde-pendence of one language from another. She treats languages as if theywere distinct and bounded systems.

I suggest a much less static and definitive conception of languageand a more inquiring approach to the topic in general. According tothis orientation, although languages may include or draw on codes,they can not be reduced to codes. We speak languages. Languages live,breathe, and change. Indeed, it can be argued that consideringlanguage as code obscures what is essential to language in use—that itoccurs in conversations, in moments of encounter between speakers.Foster's conception of language may be a fitting description in somerespects of the isolation of and rigid split between the language-worldsof some bilinguals. It does not, however, speak to what else happensbetween language-worlds, what happens in bilingual therapy, or poten-tially, in any therapy. I regard this static conception of language withsome dismay, especially from a clinical standpoint, because it omits asense of how language is a dialogic activity, a mode of being, and ameans of transformation, as much as it is also a means of sustainingconstancy and defense. Is the language we live in just a systematic set

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

126 Carla Massey

of rules, signals, and symbols? Does this conception of language as codespeak for the stories we tell, our slips of the tongue, our coining of newwords, the words we burst into in song, prayer, or curses—the languagewe. are particularly concerned with in clinical practice?

The underlying and unacknowledged tension between differingconceptions of language shows up as tensions within Foster's own useof language. She blithely mixes theoretical terms, including those takenfrom psychoanalysis, cognitive science, Vygotsky's psychology, andneurology without noting their differing assumptions and theoreticalparadigms. She shifts her conception of language sometimes in a spaceof mere two sentences. For example, she writes, "Words are symbolic,object-relational capsules of the past. They are the voice of self andother." In one sentence, words are "object relational capsules" and, inthe next, "the voice." This is quite a shift in conception. To shift from"code" to "voice" is to shift from la langue to la parole orientation. Oneimage is a static, impermeable, inanimate object; the other, an alivephenomenon of a living person. One image conceives of the words of alanguage as composing a code; this is la langue orientation. The otherconceives of those same words as voice (s); this is la parole orientation.

Foster's conception of word meaning, as she presents it here, drawsfrom different schools of thought. The notion that words compose acode and are "object-relational capsules" assumes a certain representa-tional view of mind and referential view of how language becomesmeaningful. They are cognitive notions about language that assumethat meaning is stored in the mind in the form of representations orschemata. Verbal expressions refer back to these representations andschemata, serving as their manifestations, copies, or reflections.According to this view, meaning is located inside the mind before it isspoken or written. This representational and referential conception oflanguage is used by many object relations theorists (for example, Holt,1951; Blatt and Lerner, 1983).

The notion of voice, in contrast, is used in a variety of ways, mostlyamong theorists using a less statically intrapsychic and more sociallyalive conception of language. I would like to elaborate on one particu-lar notion of voice, that of the Russian literary critic and philosopherMikhail Bakhtin, whose writings have clinical relevance, especially forthose with a relational orientation (Massey, 1991). In his view, anutterance is constituted by "voices." A voice is a "semantic position," a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 127

point of view on the world, "one personality positioning itself amongother personalities" (Emerson in Bakhtin, 1984, p. xxxvi). Meaning iscreated in the interweaving of voices that constitutes an utterance.Voices are defined by linguistic and metalinguistic characteristics suchas tone, style, idiom, situation, spatial markers, metaphors, and the fieldof responses evoked. Emerson, an editor and translator of Bakhtin's,claims this notion of voice "lies at the base of Bakhtin's non-referential—that is, responsive—theory of language. An utterance responds bothto others without, and other embedded within itself (pp. xxxvi—xxxvii). This notion of voice brings us to a much more permeable,alive, and relational conception of language.

Foster, in an attempt to develop a social perspective of language,refers to another Russian theorist, Vygotsky. Although Vygotsky didnot articulate a conception of "voice," he viewed, as Bakhtin did,language as primarily a social, rather than an intrapsychic,phenomenon. Vygotsky and Bakhtin did not conceive of linguisticexpressions as external copies of some internal representation. Mean-ing, for them, was not first inside or outside, but in constant fluxbetween the two. They emphasized the way in which language, mind,and world are continually in interaction, each, in turn, transformingthe other.

I should think that Foster would want a conception of language thatelucidates interpersonal and cultural aspects of experience. Herconception of word meaning, though, does not clearly address theseaspects of experience. For example, she writes,

One might say that like Lacan's (1977) notion of word meaningas a long chain of signifying links that symbolize permutations ofinstinctual desire, an object-relational view of language acquisi-tion might see word meaning as a chain of selfobject configura-tions and negotiations ripe with the affective, cognitive and socialcomponents that went into its elaboration.

From both Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's perspectives, this conception ofword meaning would be problematic. Without getting into a discussionconcerning the problems of taking the word as a unit of meaning, Iwould like to focus on the Foster's image of a chain. This image is toolinear and sequential to convey the rich interrelations and interdepen-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

128 Carla Massey

dencies each word's meaning has with other words, people, andcontexts. From a Vygotskian perspective, it loses the sense of languageas a mediational medium.

It loses a sense I'm not sure Foster wants to lose: the sense of reflex-ivity, reciprocity, and back and forth that occurs in dialogue and thedialogic life of word meaning. If word meaning, as Bakhtin wouldassert, is shaped in dialogues, whether with other people or with one'sown impulses, the image of a chain just doesn't convey that. Theconception of meaning as determined by causative, sequentially orga-nized associative chains was used by Freud (1895, 1900) in his earlytheorizing and better fits with an intrapsychic, mechanistic, and deter-minist view of language and mind, the very view that Vygotsky andBakhtin criticized. According to Bakhtin's notion of "dialogism," wordmeaning is generated in its multiple interrelationships with the multiplecontexts in which it is used.

Bakhtin criticized the systematic representational view of languagebecause it ignores these multiple dialogues embedded in our everydayconversations and interior speech (Massey, 1992; see also Volosinov,1973, 1976). He transports the understanding of unconscious phenom-ena from an intraindividual psychic world of covert structures andprocesses to the contexts and conditions of social interaction. Heunderstands what psychoanalytic theorists describe as unconscious,latent, behind, beneath, or hidden, as apparent and present in forms ofcommunication and their relations to multiple contexts. He claims ourlanguage speaks of how our selves are inextricably woven with others.Dialogue permeates our every word and gesture. Bakhtin (1984)describes what he calls the "double-voiced" quality of speech:

Our practical every day speech is full of other people's words: withsome of them we completely merge our own voice forgettingwhose they are; others, which we take as authoritative, we use toreinforce our own words: still others . . . we populate with our ownaspirations, alien or hostile to them [p. 195].

Bakhtin (1981) believes linguistic phenomena have an interpersonallife of their own that is not reducible to internal representations. Heclaims:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 129

Within the arena of almost every utterance an intense interactionand struggle between one's own and another's word is beingwaged, a process in which they oppose or dialogically interani-mate each other. The utterance so conceived is a considerablymore complex and dynamic organism than it appears whenconstrued simply as a thing that articulates the intention of theperson uttering it, which is to see the utterance as a direct, single-voiced vehicle for expression [pp. 354-355].

This realization of the very alive interpersonal quality of speech is whatmakes Bakhtin's work particularly relevant to clinical practice. It is thisrealization that opens the way for a kind of listening and speaking thatadmits, promotes, and affirms the changes that occur in the course ofconversing. Bakhtin argues that the inherently dialogic quality ofhuman speech has not been fully appreciated. He asserts that thisdialogue is the subject of any utterance as much as its thematiccontent.

The introduction of a dialogic conception of language brings intoquestion the distinctness of the boundary and interrelationshipbetween languages for a bilingual person. From Foster's point of view,

the bilingual person presents a packaging puzzle, as it were, inwhich two language-bounded experiential systems are housed inthe confines of a single mind. It is as if their internal life and expe-rience of self comprise a delicate duet of voices emanating fromtwo different symbolic worlds that must coexist, cooperate, andprobably compete to ultimately form the illusion of a harmonizedbilingual self.

When we examine this "packaging puzzle" of Foster's, many questionsemerge. How do you define the boundaries around language and"experiential systems" and count them? Where does one end and theother begin? How do languages interrelate? What terms do we use todescribe their interrelationship and why? Should we describe it in termsof coexistence, cooperation, competition, and harmonizing? Whatabout collage, conversation, and dialogue? Once two languagesbecome interrelated, are there really two? Does describing a "bilingual"person as having two "language'bounded experiential systems" impose more

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

130 Carla Massey

clarity than there is? When a bilingual person comes into treatment,does one assume he or she has two language-bounded experientialsystems? What happens in the course of a psychoanalysis? Does notpsychoanalytic treatment, with all its cultural conventions and assump-tions, introduce yet another language-world?

Following la langue orientation to language, Foster assumes thatlanguage can be "bounded," defined, separated, and counted, thatthere are boundaries between languages and between language andexperience. Consider, however, the person who is born into a bilingualenvironment where languages are fluidly switched. Languages may notbe associated with any particular developmental stage, great lifechange, or trauma. There may be more overlap than boundarybetween languages. The boundaries may not be clearly defined. Con-versely, consider, the person born into a monolingual environment,where there may be boundaries among his or her language-worlds.These boundaries may be marked only by differences in tone, idiom, ordiscourse styles. Particular discourse styles for this monolingual personmay be associated with particular developmental stages, great lifechanges, and traumas. There are boundaries among discourse styles,and genres within a language.2 To assume that a bilingual person hastwo separate encapsulated psychic organizations and realms may be asmisleading as assuming that a monolingual person does not have twoseparate, (meta)linguistically demarcated psychic organizations orrealms.

In other words, although there may be ways that speaking marksexperiential differences, it is not a specific language per se that marksthe separateness of psychic organization, but the interrelationshipbetween the language and the context—the who, what, when, where,and why—in which the language is lived. Language is inseparable fromperson and world. What marks the boundary between one language and

2According to Bakhtin (1986), genres are associated with certain routine or ritual-istic forms of communication. Genres are relatively stable types of spoken or writtenlanguage characterized by certain "thematic content, style and compositional struc-tures" that are specific to certain human activities. Professional papers, dinner-tabletalk, and baby-talk are some examples of genres. They are determined by the particu-lar expectations and assumptions speakers have of each other and the particularactivity or scene in which they are engaged. Foster's descriptions of the courtly, old-fashioned Caribbean manner and speech of her patient is the description of a genre.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 131

another may not be a particular vocabulary and grammar. As Wittgen-stein (1953) notes,

. . . one human being can be a complete enigma to another. Welearn this when we come into a strange country with entirelystrange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of thecountry's language. We do not understand the people. (And notbecause of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) Wecannot find our feet with them [p. 223].

Once one considers the difficulty of drawing boundaries betweenlanguages in the bilingual's and multilingual's experience and betweenlanguage and experience more generally, one discovers the difficulty ofcounting languages. Consider, for example, two multilingual speakerswho share the same native language and family background and speaka second language on a daily basis. These speakers meet and speak toeach other in this second language but feel they are speaking a third.3

The importance of questioning this counting is not to arrive at anaccurate procedure of enumeration, but to awaken an awareness ofwhat happens at the edges of languages, an awareness of the metalin-guistic and extralinguistic surroundings without which we would neverunderstand each other.

Foster emphasizes the separateness between languages learned indifferent environments—an emphasis deriving, in part, from her focuson the immigrant's experience. The separateness of language-worldsmay be an important quality of the immigrant's experience. I, however,would emphasize the importance of questioning any bilingual patientas to how separate the different language environments are, when theybecame separate, for how long, and in what way. To ask these ques-tions makes it important to ask what makes or made language envi-ronments separate from each other and through what connection, ifany, can one travel between. Are there telephone calls, letters, pack-ages sent with a visiting relative, dreams, memories, flashbacks? Haveimmigrant, bilingual patients re-created with food, talk, and relation-ships some of the old language-world in the new? The answers to thesequestions I have continually found of great clinical relevance whileworking with immigrant populations in New York City. The question

3I am thankful to Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Ph.D. for this example.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

132 Carla Massey

is, How isolated is the living in and about one language-world from theliving in and about another language-world? Is it only about location?Many children I have worked with live on a San Juan/New York shut-tle between speaking Spanish and speaking English, either onelanguage or the other depending on the location or situation. Othersshuttle between languages, speaking "Spenglish" within locations orsituations.

The monolingual person may also live in different language worlds.What are the differences between a bilingual and a monolingualperson? How is the bilingual who has learned a second language in aseparate environment different from a monolingual person who movesto a "separate environment" and learns another way of speaking thesame language? I do not deny that there could be important differ-ences, but I wonder what they are. Adopted and foster children oftenare examples of the latter case. They move from one culture, class,racial setting to another, while staying within the same language (in anabstract sense). Might both moves engender similar experiences? Mightboth lose words, idiomatic expressions, jokes, curses, and dearisms—that language which expresses the strongest, most intimate feelings?The loss of a country may be much more profound, but not necessarily.

Although it may be more noticeable with multilingual patients, allpatients' worlds partake of differing language-worlds, each of which hasits colloquialisms, tones, discourse styles, and genres. Perhaps what ismost important is not whether a person speaks one or two languages,but to discover if and how variations and changes in the qualities ofone's speech are related to changes in one's experience—howlanguages are involved in living life. This requires a detailed inquiryinto the circumstances in which different languages, dialects, discoursestyles, and genres are learned, used, and switched. Foster does note theimportance of the developmental and relational context in whichlanguages are learned, especially in the early years. Many people intreatment are working on the divisions among their worlds, which theirlanguage use can mark, however subtly. These divisions may be morenoticeable (to some) as changes in familial relationships and moresubtly as changes in the prosody, idiom, and word choice of theirlanguage. A change in caretaker without a change of language can beas profound for a toddler as a change in country and language can befor an adult. Foster recommends that anyone working with a multilin-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 133

gual patient should keep in mind that the "fixed language-relateddifferences in ways of being and experiencing can also provide themechanism for defensively isolating or dissociating deep levels ofpsychic conflict." I would just add that this is something to be kept inmind as a possibility with any patient.

Foster structures the plot of her story of a "bilingual" treatment interms of the shifts between Spanish and English. This kind of account isfar more convincing of the importance of language in the psychothera-peutic process than the wealth of empirical evidence presented in thetheoretical sections of the paper. In an effort to substantiate andlegitimate her clinical observations, Foster presents her theoreticaldiscussion in the form and rhetoric of the empirical/positivist paradigm.The cognitive and information theories from which her conception oflanguage is loosely drawn are formulated within this paradigm and positobjective notions of truth and knowledge. Her emphasis on languagesas static distinct systems is particularly well suited to an empirical/posi-tivist approach because it construes language as a definable, objectiveentity.

According to an empirical approach, hypotheses are verified on thebasis of observations made, using procedures and measures that assurereliability, validity, and objectivity. Observations meeting these criteriaare the evidence for the hypotheses. Foster attempts to verify, or atleast substantiate, her clinical hypotheses concerning the dualities in"bilingual" experience on the basis of "evidence" from neurocorticaland cognitive research. This evidence, she writes, "indicate [s] thatlarge segments of bilinguals' languages are stored in separate areas ofthe cortex." Using such evidence for clinical purposes is extremelyquestionable. What does it mean for language to be "stored in separateareas of the cortex?" What is meant by language in this statement?Does it mean to speak, to read, to write to understand? One mustexercise some caution in attempting to understand the relationshipbetween a function or behavior, like speaking, and cortical location.That a function is correlated with a cortical injury does not mean thefunction is "located" there. It may mean that something in that loca-tion could be involved in making that function possible (see Church-land, 1993, p. 144). Much else is also involved. There are othercontextual factors that affect the influence a cortical lesion has, such asspecific characteristics of the person. In addition, one must consider the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

134 Carla Massey

meaning of the event, the response of the person (i.e., his or her copingstrategies), the responses of those in the person's social world, and thedynamic interaction of these factors over time.4

Even if one grants the assumption that "large segments of bilingual'slanguages are stored" in separate areas of the cortex, it is quite a leapto go from these reported neurocortical findings into the clinical situa-tion, a leap that bypasses many questions. For example, what does itmean, if "language" is indeed physically located in two distinct areas ofthe cortex? According to the sources Foster refers to, it certainly seemsto make a difference if one has a cerebrovascular insult or deteriorativeorganic brain syndrome that affects that area, but what if one never hassuch a cortical event? What difference does this difference in corticallocation make in terms of the way one's experience becomes mean-ingful and problematic such that one seeks treatment? Even if somecapacities for different languages are located in different regions of thecortex, this does not mean that the act of speaking and the meaning ofspeech in the analytic situation are located in separate regions of thecortex, or located separately otherwise. Separate cortical locationswould not necessarily indicate that the use or meaning is separate fordifferent languages.

Foster claims that, "at the very least," evidence from neurocorticaland cognitive research

suggests that each of the bilingual's language codes may somehowprovide an organizational schema for the processing of affectiveand cognitive experience. These [organizational] schema areimplicated at the level of neural representation, conceptual orga-nization, memory storage, and some manifest personality traits.

Foster translates her clinical observations into the language of cogni-tive theory in an effort to legitimize them. Are such concepts andconstructs as schema, neural representation, and memory storage morereal, more true than clinical descriptions? Are neurocortical data

4In neuropsychology there has been an ongoing controversy concerning the rela-tionship between location and behavior. See Luria (1962) for a historical perspectiveof this controversy and a discussion of the understanding of neurocortical functioningin a developmental and sociocultural context. Also see Kaplan (1983) for a discussionof the static achievement localization approach versus the dynamic process approachto neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 135

"harder," more physical, more true than clinical description?5 What isthe function of such hard "evidence"? Is it used to inform or to legit-imize? These questions pertain to our methods and the confusion thatmethods that pose as proofs produce. This is a problem that Wittgen-stein (1953) criticizes in psychology:

"For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptualconfusion. (As in the other case [of set theory,] conceptual confu-sion and methods of proof.)

The existence of the experimental method makes us think wehave the means of solving the problems which trouble us; thoughproblem and method pass one another by" [p. 232].

From my point of view, these problems concern the very notions of"bilingualism" and "monolingualism," the definition of language, andsuch questions as what happens between languages, and are thereboundaries between and around languages and if so what are they? Thepresentation of "evidence" without discussion of these questionscreates more problems than it solves.

Theories with objective assumptions about truth and knowledge donot acknowledge that theories are rooted in the cultural and historicalcontexts in which they are formulated. Considering the variousconceptions of language available, Foster's choice to house her clinicalwork in the language of cognitive and information theory, in some ofthe more acultural conceptions of language and mind, is notable. Incontemporary debates in the social sciences, in particular in postcolo-nial cultural and deconstructive discourse, writers have become com-mitted to explicating the cultural and historical structures and assump-tions of theory and investigating the relationship between theory andpractice (Foucault, 1972; Jameson, 1981; Derrida, 1982; Spivak,1990). A noteworthy example of this kind of work is Foucault's (1965)Madness and Civilization, which shows how the conceptions and treat-ment of insanity have changed through history.

Foster, in an effort to substantiate her clinical observations withobjective, "hard" data, does not look at the cultural and historical

5For a more elaborate elucidation of the issue of the "hardness" and "softness" ofdata refer to Rorty's (1993) discussion of Spence's (1993) paper.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

136 Carla Massey

context in which cognitive and information theories were created andthat forms their biases. These theories are products of modernist, indus-trial, technological cultures. Foster uses the rhetoric characteristic ofthese cultures to describe, analyze, and understand the culturalconflicts of a woman living between this culture and a Latin Caribbeanone. For example, in the following passage Foster describes the"bilingual" person's situation in life in the following terms:

Whether a second language was acquired in a different environ-mental context or in a different developmental period (e.g., inschool, on migration), or whether a second language simply wastaught in early life by another caretaker, each code system willrepresent a separate composite of unique relational/contextualexperiences. At the level of neurocognitive organization, theliterature reviewed earlier suggests that many of the cognitive andaffective components of these experiences were processed andstored in memory along language-specific organizational schema.

This rhetoric transforms human experience into "components" to be"processed and stored" according to some "organizational schema."This is human experience assembly-line style. I would venture to guessthat this theoretical position makes things much more organized thanany of us, "bilingual" or not, are. This is theory that flies high above thecontradictions and "livedness" of life. These theories are particularly illsuited to articulating the experiences of disorganization, confusion,conflict, shock, loss, and irony common to the immigrant "bilingual"experience. Are these culturally encoded theories, which do not admittheir own cultural roots, best suited to our understanding the"bilingual" experience?

For me, the empirical/positivist paradigm in which Foster presentsher theoretical discussion is distracting with its conceptual problems,while the narrative form she uses in her case illustration provides aclearer and more compelling communication of "bilingual" treatmentand its dilemmas. Her clinical story is more convincing because itconveys, as stories tend to do, the way a situation becomes meaningful,in this case a "bilingual" treatment. Perhaps, as Bruner (1993) suggeststhe narrative mode is better suited, in some respects, to the inquiry ofthe meaning of human events. After reading Foster's theoretical discus-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

Commentary on Foster 137

sion I met the case illustration with relief, as she met the shift tospeaking English in her analytic work. I wondered at our feeling"relief." I grew up here in urban America, in a culture immersed in theempirical paradigm and its language. Story telling and listening havebeen my escape. Perhaps each of our theoretical perspectives is aresponse to the language-worlds through which we have traveled.

Foster's theoretical discussion remains split from her case illustration.The very structure of her discussion into theoretical and clinicalsections in the structure of her paper, one that is an institutionalconvention, recreates the very "bicultural" split with which she and herpatient struggle. In this way, her paper unwittingly opens and shows thesplit between theory and practice and the disengagement betweenmethods and problems that exist in our discipline. Why do we keepclinical case description separate from theoretical discussion? Why doestheoretical discussion come first and clinical discussion second? Thisconvention shows the discipline's Cartesian and empirical assumptionsabout inquiry, truth, and knowledge, according to which hypothesesare presented first and empirical data, as evidence, second.

Foster's approach both to theorizing, in general, and to the concep-tion of language, in particular, limits the possibility for dialogue andmultiplicity. To return to the earlier discussion concerning the notionof "voice," I continue to be puzzled by Foster's claim that words are"the voice of self and other." Her use of the singular form of "voice"caught my attention and resonated with other single voiced aspects ofher paper. Perhaps I am making too much of a small difference. Butconsider the omission of any mention of the differences among theoriesor the controversies surrounding them, and consider the presentationof theories as objective truths. This is not to say that there is noopenness to dialogue on Foster's part. There is a wealth of dialogue inher paper, especially with other perspectives within the disciplines ofpsychology, psychiatry, and neurology, but this dialogue remainsconfined by the dominant positivist approach to inquiry and theassociated models of mind and conceptions of language in thesedisciplines.

This monologic approach is also apparent in her concluding state-ments concerning the goals of clinical treatment. She asserts that "agoal of the analytic work must be integration of the multilingual self-experiences of our own past. I conceive of this goal as a sonorous illu-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

138 Carla Massey

sion where all the voices in our bilingual duet are speaking as one." Isthis a goal of analytic work? Is it even possible? It may well be an "illu-sion." How could we live, think, speak, and carry on alive psychic andrelational lives without dialogue? Why would a person want all thevoices of the past, of one's different language-worlds, to speak as one?Such a wish can only evoke a cacophony of suppressed dissonantvoices.

Here, at the end of her paper, it seems that this cacophony of voiceshas not been invited into the theoretical forum, nor the dissonance ofthe multilingual experience with psychoanalytic and cognitive theoryfully addressed. Voices continue to "yak" outside. Perhaps, if the theo-ries used allowed for dialogue and multiplicity—and even held themup as goals—the cacophony of voices would subside and take onconversational tones. Perhaps the voices of one's past cannot speak asone. The problems of multiplicity are not necessarily solved by reduc-tion. The worst problems occur when voices stop talking to each other,when voices are suppressed and not heard. This monologic approach issurprising considering Foster's attempts to awaken our awareness to thepossibility of more than one language-world. This monologic approachworks against our understanding the relational and cultural aspects ofour experience and clinical work. There are other possible clinicalgoals and theoretical approaches, which would require opening up thisbinary vision of "bilingual" experience to include voices that are able tospeak to and in both language-worlds. In clinical work, the considera-tion of the distinction between la langue and la parole, betweenlanguage as an objective structural entity and language as speech,dialogue, and activity, enables us to understand how language lives inthe therapeutic interaction and allows us to encounter meaning in themaking. While this distinction is problematic in itself as a product ofdualistic Cartesian thinking, which reproduces the split that is critiquedhere, it has been used here to show the difference that different con-ceptions of language make. Other distinctions need to be considered,as well, such as those among language as it is written, gestured,dreamed, painted, and somaticized.

This commentary has been an attempt to write (and ride) acrossdiscipline boundaries.6 This kind of writing is difficult. There is a

6These concluding remarks emerged in conversation with Elissa Weintraub.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

/Commentary on Foster 139

language barrier between our discipline and others. When words crossdiscipline boundaries, they gain and lose meaning. These losses andgains engender feelings associated with loss and discovery. Crossingdiscipline boundaries often involves profound paradigm shifts, whichengender disorientation, confusion, misunderstanding, and shock butalso clarity, relief, and surprise. These experiences are akin to those ofimmigration. The opening of dialogue between our discipline andothers means opening ourselves to these experiences.

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination, ed. M. Holquist (trans. C. Emerson & M.Holquuist). Austin: University of Texas Press.

_____ (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. & trans. C. Emerson. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

(1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. C. Emerson & M. Holquist(trans. V. W. McGee). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Blatt, S. J. & Lemer, H. L. (1983), Investigations in the psychoanalytic theory ofobject relations and object representations. In: Empirical Studies of PsychoanalyticalTheories, Vol. 1, ed. J. Masling. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, pp. 189-249.

Bruner, J. (1993), Loyal opposition and the clarity of dissent. Psychoanal. Dial, 3:11-19.

Churchland, P. (1984), Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.Derrida, J. (1982), Margins of Philosophy (trans. A. Bass). Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.Dore, J. (1989), Monologue as reenvoicement of dialogue. In: Narratives from the Crib,

ed. K. Nelson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Foucault, M. (1965), Madness and Civilization (trans. R. Howard). New York: Vintage

Books._____ (1972), The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language (trans. S.

Smith). New York: Pantheon.Freud, S. (1895), Project for a scientific psychology. Standard Edition, 1:295-397.

London: Hogarth Press, 1966._____ (1900), The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4 & 5. London:

Hogarth Press, 1953.Holt, R. (1951), The Thematic Apperception Test: Rationale, administration, and

interpretation. In: Method in Clinical Psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Plenum, 1971.Jameson, F. (1981), The Political Unconscious. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Kaplan, E. (1983), Process and achievement revisited. In: Toward A Holistic Develop-

mental Psychology, ed. S. Wapner & B. Kaplan. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, pp. 143-156.

Kristeva, J. (1981). Language. The Unknown (trans. A Menke). New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.

Luria, A. (1962), Higher Cortical Functions in Man. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4

140 Carla Massey

Massey, C. (1991), 'How do you tell how the story was told?': An examination of theconceptions of inquiry, language and narrative used to understand people from thestories they tell. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York.

_____ (1992), Becoming conversant with unheard and unarticulated voices:Bakhtin's dialogic perspective of unconscious phenomena. Presented at meeting ofDivision 39, American Psychological Association, August 17.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962), Phenomenology of Perception (trans. C. Smith). London:Routledge & Kegan Paul.

_____ (1973), The Prose of the World. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.Rapaport, D. (1942), Principles underlying projective techniques Char. & Personal.,

10:218-219._____ (1968), Gill, M & Schafer, R. Diagnostic Psychological Testing, ed. R Holt.

Madison, CT: International Universities Press.Rorty, R. (1993) Center of moral gravity. Psychoan. Dial., 3:21-28.Saussure, F. de (1959), Course in General Linguistics, ed. C. Bally & A. Sechehaye with

A. Riedlinger (trans. W Baskin). New York: McGraw-Hill.Schafer, R. (1976). A New Language for Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-

sity Press._____ (1992), Retelling a Life. New York: Basic Books.Spence, D. (1993), The hermeneutic turn: Soft science or loyal opposition.

Psychoanal. Dial., 3: 1-10.Spivak, G. (1990), The Post-Colonial Critic, ed. S. Harasym. New York: Routledge.Volosinov, V. N. (1973), Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L Matejka & I.

R. Titunik). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press._____ (1976), Freudianism (trans. I. R. Titunik). Bloomington: Indiana University

Press.Vygotsky, L. S. (1986), Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Werner, H. & Kaplan, B. (1963), Symbol Formation. New York: Wiley.Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical Investigations (trans. G. E. M. Anscombe). New

York: Macmillan.

14 East 4th Street, #507

NewYork, NY 10012

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f O

ttaw

a] a

t 18:

10 1

6 A

ugus

t 201

4