Abstract
While the sociocultural embeddedness of imagination received the researchers’ attention over the last years, less research was dedicated to the embodied dimension of imaginary processes. Nevertheless, any person engaged in imagination is always also a body. Moreover, there is no clear limit between imagination in thought, and in exploratory external actions. The aim of the present paper is to contribute to the theorization of the embodied dimension of imagination, by drawing on Zittoun, Cerchia and Gillespie’s imaginary loop model. We discuss the notion of here-and-now reality entailed in this model with the help of Schuetz’ notion of provinces of meaning and argue that this definition of the here-and-now allows to use the loop model for the analysis of activities in which the body movements occupy a central place. This argument is sustained by the example of an analysis of aikido practice. This analysis leads us to propose to complete the imaginary loop model with a forth dimension representing the degree of embodiment.
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Notes
We keep the original formulation (see James 1890, p. 292), which is singular, although the plural form seems us more accurate.
Elsewhere, we have called “distal spheres of experience” these worlds generated, or explored, through imagination (Zittoun and Gillespie 2016).
Data was collected as part of the first author’s Master dissertation in 2014 (see Gfeller 2015).
This identification was possible as the first author is an advanced aikido practitioner and instructor.
We use the word “technique” in this text in order to refer to a standard series of movement that starts when the partner attacks and ends when the partner is either immobilized or projected. It refers to the Japanese word “waza” (技).
Such combination of observation, participant observation, and self-confrontation interviews thus enables to document a higher psychological function such as imagination (Zittoun 2016).
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Gfeller, F., Zittoun, T. The Embodied Dimension of Imagination. Expanding the Loop Model. Integr. psych. behav. 55, 73–88 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09550-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09550-3