Connecting Mindfulness Practice to Generative Semiotic Activity-Self-Other Referent in Umwelt and Semiosphere.

In this comment paper on von Fircks (2023a), I would like to focus on four issues and offer some reflections on them: first, what is happening in the process of a new I arising through mindfulness meditation practice? I would like to supplement the dialogue between Buber and Rogers in 1957 on the dynamism of I and Me, which is the basis of Mead's theory of self formation, in which I and Me separate, discover and meet a new self. The second, is that meditation, which at first glance appears to be an internal meditation practice and a personal activity, leads to a semiotic mediated social process. The Tao and early Buddhist ideas that form the background to the experiential process of mindfulness meditation will be reviewed, and the significance of people experiencing the interdependence of non-human nature and the environment through the practice will be discussed. Third, connecting this to the idea of Umwelt (Uexküll) and the semiosphere (Lotman), an attempt is made to extend the otherness as a collating body of self formation to Umwelt. Fourth, mindfulness meditation focuses attention on the breath. In relation to Mead's focus on the environment under the skin, i.e. corporeality, I will supplement the psychological meaning of cultivating the body's sense of interoception through the sensing of repetitive movements of tension and relaxation. Through the above, what kind of semiotic mediating function does mindfulness meditation have in relation to the construction of the new I, and how does it lead to the creation of social meaning? We would like to discuss these points. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: The article does not contain any studies with clinical trial. This, clinical Trial registration is not applicable.

Free Association and Inner Speech-On the Internal Form of Words.

This comment paper reviews Fossa (2022) from the perspective of the semiotics of inner speech. The syntactic and semantic features of inner speech described in Vygotsky, Thinking and Speech, Chap. 7, are, on the one hand, a source of creativity through the affective dimension of inner spech and, on the other hand, a therapeutic function of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy. The function of inner speech in the pre-reflective dimension is the focus of Fossa's edited volume. In order to reinforce this argument, the present paper takes as its cue the internal forms of words discussed by Potebnya and examines them. The internal form of words has certain primordial features and evokes a figure (образ; picture). Internal forms have figurative properties. Through this context-independent figuration (phonological, visual image, experiential sense of meaning), semantics causes a unit with other words in a loose semantic linkage. As they are not bound by the external form of segmented speech, they bring about a sense of reification, as if the internal form repeats itself in the proximity of semantic sense, even if the manifested expressive content is different. The internal form of words, in which the form conveys meaning as it is, reveals the semiotic character of dreams and free association, which psychoanalysis uses as clinical material. Many psychotherapies actively use pre-linguistic mediating effects, because surrendering to the internal forms that are repeated in inner speech allows the subject to return to a pre-reflective dimension from which a new subject can be recovered. From the above, this paper has shown that in the boundary zone of the transition from inner speech to outer speech situations, exposure to alterity, to intimate unknown, is involved in the constitution of the subject.

Mind-Body Correlation and its Logic: the Experience of "Invisible Body".

This paper aims to investigate mind-body correlation and to propose an understanding of the unique movement of the invisible body in psychotherapy. The author examined the intermediate field of mind and body with reference to concepts of mind-body boundary in different schools. And they were examined once put into clinical practice based on bodily micro events sensed in the relational field. It intends to explain how the in-between area of mind and body was generated based on a clinical picture gathered through listening to clients' dream narrative. It was shown that a logic different from linear causal theory is significant to explain mind-body correlation. Based on the theory of Buddhism, the author introduced a nonlinear logic of Utsushi (projecting, transferring, and reflecting) as an attempt to present an explanatory model of mind-body correlation. In conclusion, the phenomena of disease can be described not only through physiological and biological viewpoints but also through the narrative meaning of the illness in the client's life history. The logic of Utsushi was effective in bridging a dual description of the biological and the narrative/biographical.

Continuity and Discontinuity between the Psychological World and the Biological World.

In this commentary paper I try to make complementarily more discussion on two question. First, the target paper (Zagaria, Andò, & Zennaro, 2020) points out the lack of continuity in the concepts used in psychology. The authors aim for a rigorous definition which is necessary to rebuild mud figures of psychology, but is that the only direction? Second, the evolutionary psychology seems to allow for a diversity of methodologies, but is there any limitations and possibilities of approaching the origin of the mind from biologically based methods? To answer this question, I went back and examined Freud's earlier studies and Vygotsky's theoretical considerations from the history of psychology. As a result, it was pointed out that the shift from the biological world to the psychological world had a fundamental problem of conversion from quantity to quality. As a clue to its elucidation, I considered on the semiotic mediation, the psychological causality, and the work of apperception.

The possibility of a fuzzy zone of semiotic activity.

In this commentary I tried to further develop the idea of Madureira (Integr Psych Behav Sci, 42(2), 2007), who challenges to clarify the complex sexuality problem of homophobia from the viewpoint of the cultural semiotic activity. Two remarking points were proposed in this commentary article. First, I took notice of the boundary phenomenon constructed between the homophobia and the other. It has a cultural meaning. Concerning with this process, I introduced and examined the concept of tonus that is sensed a subtle changing process of tension in self-other relationship. The second, I discussed about the fuzzy zone of semiotic activity. If one can feel in oneself fuzzy awareness into the source of discomfort affect, it is able to be a creative moment in the tension of fuzzy field (A and non-A) where generates dialogical activity in both vertical and horizontal. Through this discussion, I proposed some remarks for the dissolution on the culturally constructed prejudice of sexuality.