Recovering the organismic: Werner and Kaplan’s “symbol formation” 50 years later

Abstract

Symbol Formation was first published in 1963 at a time when the “Cognitive Revolution,” was in full sway. Symbol Formation was both a part of it and a counter to it. Much of the cognitive “action” might be characterized as the search for and identification of the conceptual/propositional mediation of behavior (and thought) beyond simple behaviors rooted in repetition of stimulus–response or stimulus–mediator–response pairings. While agreeing that the conceptual was an intrinsic part of psychological analysis, Werner and Kaplan (1963) sought the activity and bodily based experiential that undergirded the conceptual. Their organismic-developmental approach involved a system of inquiry that put two analytic paths in tension with one another. On the one hand the developmental path looked at language from the point of view of progressive distancing of addressor and addressee (from “primordial sharing” between infant and mother to fully articulated well-formed conceptual linguistic expressions framed for generalized audiences). On the other hand, seeking the “organismic” reversed this directionality and sought the viscerally experiential underlying the developed forms of language use. The notion of “symbol” as opposed to “sign,” was intended to bridge this gap. The distinction between symbol and sign was framed as the difference between “pointing to” and “representing.” This led to a theoretical and research paradigm that reversed the trajectory of much developmental research. The entailment of developmental and organismic notions is discussed in this paper.