[Tacit metarepresentation and affective sense of personal identity. An approach to understanding severe psychiatric disorders of adolescence and young adulthood].
Juan Balbi
Rivista di psichiatria 2011 DOI: 10.1708/1009.10983 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that consciousness is active and constructive and that implicit, meaningful mental states shape experience and behavior, with an early tacit metarepresentational system underpinning personal identity. Proposes a "tacit affective metarepresentational recurrence" as the organizational basis of a unified sense of identity and a "tacit metarepresentational mourning" as the chief foundation of most psychopathological disorders. Hypothesizes that postmodern culture and welfare-state-prolonged adolescence hinder this mourning, raising depression and suicidal behavior among young people. |
Abstract
The results of present-day research in the field of "Dissociation Paradigm", regarding the capacity of the human mind to perceive, learn, and store information that in appearance passes as unnoticed, support the constructivist hypothesis of the active, selective and constructive condition of consciousness, in addition to the existence of a tacit dimension of knowledge that operates in functional relationship with the former. Unconscious mental states are intrinsically intentional. This is to say that they imply a semantic or cognitive connotation that is capable of affecting phenomenical experience and therefore behavior. In addition, the precocious existence of a tacit metarepresentational system in normally developed children has been proven, which is essential for guaranteeing the deployment of the process of functional coevolution between affectivity and consciousness, by which the experience of personal identity is acquired. These discoveries allow the inference of a "tacit affective metarepresentational recurrence", the organizational foundation on which a unified, sustainable, and continuous sense of the experience of personal identity is structured, and also allow us to hypothesize a "tacit metarepresentational mourning", a specific type of grief which is the chief foundation of the majority of psychopathological disorders. This concept may represent a potential explanation of the severe mental disorders of adolescence and young adulthood. The hypothesis of the present work is that, in the ambiguous context of Postmodern Culture, the prolongation of the adolescent period, facilitated by the welfare state, hinders the dealing with the aforementioned mourning, leading to an increment of depressive states and suicidal behavior among young people.