Highlighting new research paper - Kimmel et al 2024

“Introjecting” imagery: A process model of how minds and bodies are co-enacted

Authors:  Michael Kimmel, Stefan M. Schneider, Vicky J. Fisher

Published by Elsevier, Science Direct. Language Sciences, Vol 102 (2024) 101602.

LINK TO PAPER:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2023.101602

ABSTRACT

Somatic practices frequently use imagery, typically via verbal instructions, to scaffold

sensorimotor organization and experience, a phenomenon we term “introjection”. We

argue that introjection is an imagery practice in which sensorimotor and conceptual aspects

are co-orchestrated, suggesting the necessity of crosstalk between somatics, phenomenology,

psychology, embodied-enactive cognition, and linguistic research on

embodied simulation. We presently focus on the scarcely addressed details of the process

necessary to enact instructions of a literal or metaphoric nature through the body. Based

on vignettes from dance, Feldenkrais, and Taichi practice, we describe introjection as a

complex form of processual sense-making, in which context-interpretive, mental, attentional

and physical sub-processes recursively braid. Our analysis focuses on how mental

and body-related processes progressively align, inform and augment each other. This

dialectic requires emphasis on the active body, which implies that uni-directional models

(concept 0 body) are inadequate and should be replaced by interactionist alternatives

(concept 5 body). Furthermore, we emphasize that both the source image itself and the

body are specifically conceptualized for the context through constructive operations, and

both evolve through their interplay. At this level introjection employs representational

operations that are embedded in enactive dynamics of a fully situated person.