After a laborious but rewarding many-month long push, I finished Daniel Siegel’s remarkable book, ‘The Developing Mind’ exploring the link between neurobiology, human relationships, and how the mind and self are forms of emergent complexity. I’m going back through my notes and there are all sorts of connections with the subject material of this newsletter: writing, emotional regulation, information processing, how meaning is constructed from semantic units.

The book has introduced me to many new ideas and theories, one of which is the theory of intersubjectivity.

Basically, in the first six-to-nine months of a child’s life, the parents, during their interactions with the child, have access both to the child and to the concept of the child.

Right? Makes sense. We take that for granted because we are so used to, at this point, directly interacting with something while having a concept of that thing.

For example, when I walk up to a vending machine, I’m both directly interacting with that machine but I can also access the concept of what it is plus my past experiences of vending machines as well as my expectations of what this present interaction with a vending machine may result in -- a dispensed beverage.

But the child, in those first 0-9 months, only has “primary intersubjectivity” i.e. they only have direct, contingent communication. Everything is on a case-by-case basis and subject to chance. They have no concepts or episodic memory to compare with. Not yet, at least.

However, by about nine months, “the infant’s increasingly complex representational capacities allow for the development of an internal image of the parent, which Aitken and Trevarthen call “a virtual other.” This is “secondary intersubjectivity,” in that now the infant (like the parent since the beginning of the relationship) has the filtering process of perceiving the other person and representing those perceptions.”

Siegel goes on to say, “Beyond the first half year of life, we each have a set of “virtual others”, which are continually evoked during interactions with other people. If past attachments have been filled with uncertainty and intrusion, then the virtual other -- the internal representation of the attachment figure -- may interfere with the ability to clearly perceive others’ bids for connection.”

We have talked many times in this Substack about Direct Experience vs. Heuristics aka Cognitive Shorthand and how both mindfulness and good writing are both more likely to be achieved if we can shed expectations, thoughts of past and present, and instead really “see” what’s in front of us with fresh eyes ; re-seeing the familiar is such an important quality not just for mindfulness and writing but also to not take things for granted, loved ones, quiet moments, simple pleasures.

This idea of the virtual other sometimes impinging and interfering with the present moment is very useful, I think, for all of us. It permits a real-time adaptive reflection. We can ask ourselves in interactions that are perhaps feeling off-kilter a version of the following:

Am I truly thinking through the specifics of this moment and this interaction

OR

alternatively, is my ability to do so impaired by the intrusion of a virtual other, a secondary process?

Asking this or a version could allow for a “re-seeing” where the filters of cognition and comparison to concepts and expectations give way to a more direct, contingent experience. Hopefully, you see the lines in the person’s face and the color of the table between you and the moment becomes real and specific instead of you just interacting with the concept of them.

The applications go wider than helping us re-enter the present moment. It could lead to greater self-forgiveness.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks, during attempts at mindfulness meditation or zazen, “Damn. I suck at this.”

But if I allow myself to remember that since before the age of one, my mental models have been impinging on direct, contingent experience, then that might mitigate the frustration that comes from continually failing to remain in the present. After all, the capacity to think in time is useful for long-term strategic planning; I’m not against all cognition. But I’m against excessive cognition, against thinking constantly using concepts, expectations, mental models, and temporal thinking.

Ultimately, I can never turn the clock back and become a baby again. I can’t live in a world of exclusive primary intersubjectivity but I can look at the models around me -- nature, babies, animals -- as mindfulness coaches, calling me back out of the world of mental models, to this specific moment.

If you have read MISSY and enjoyed it, then please leave a review and rating on Goodreads and Amazon. You may think it inconsequential; but it helps.

To buy Missy, here are the relevant links. Preorders now open for North America! North America. UK. India.

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