Representative Functions

REPRESENTATIVE FUNCTIONS (darstellende Funktionen), a term used by many German psychologists to denote that component of expressive activity which, gradually overlaying in the process of the evolution of the human psyche the more elementary form of expressing experiences - immediate expressive movements, lies at the basis of the human ability to share with other people images of observed objects and phenomena. Being primarily a means of inter-human communication, the manifestations of R.F. are especially characterized by the use of conventional forms, signs, and symbols, however only within the designation of concrete phenomena. As soon as the symbols lose their concrete figurative content and the formation of abstract concepts begins, - we pass on to the next stage of expressive activity - into the sphere of the manifestation of the abstracting (or 'meaningful') function (Bedeutungsfunktion). Of course such a three-stage division can have only a conditional meaning, since in each individual expressive phenomenon an attentive analysis can always discover the simultaneous presence of products of different stages. R.F. has special practical significance because, on the one hand, it plays an extremely important role in the creation of such forms of communication between people as language and writing, and on the other - it lies at the basis of artistic creativity. The study of the most primitive, initial phases of development of all these products of human culture, namely - primitive language and drawing, provides essential assistance in understanding the psychological mechanisms operating during its realization. One of the most primitive forms of language is the aggregate of monosyllabic combinations of sounds - root-words, from which each has the task of expressing a certain individual image. These words are not arranged, as in modern cultured speech, in a definite syntactic order, but strung together one after another as various visual pictures successively arise in the imagination of the speaker, forming what Kretschmer calls asyntactic series of images. The further development of such a primitive language proceeds in two directions: first, in the direction of complicating the images themselves to be transmitted, and then - in the direction of creating grammar, i.e., improving the form of words and the structural design of connections between them. As for the evolution of images, it occurs not only together with the development of language, but also simultaneously in other different areas of human expressive activity, most clearly revealed in drawing. Primitive drawing abounds in numerous fantastic figures combining heterogeneous forms: people with heads of animals, tails, hooves or claws and so on, animals, plants and even inanimate objects with a human face, etc. This concentration of several images in one is usually called agglutination. Agglutinative phenomena include the so-called displacement of meaning from the whole to some separate part of it. Another important feature of primitive expressive processes is the tendency to stylization, in which the following psychologically most important trends can be distinguished: a) to the isolation of the essential, b) to the simplification of form (especially to the reduction of real images to the degree of geometric figures) and c) to the repetition of the same forms in the form of bilateral symmetry or multiple ornamental interweaving of the same motif into the drawing. These primitive tendencies are under the influence of affective relations and evaluations and, significantly changing the actual form of the depicted phenomena, lead to the formation of symbols and to the substitution of the latter of what is actually there. Thus the sign takes the place of the thing, often preserving however in the consciousness of the person using it an equal value with the latter and thus laying the beginning of a whole system of magical associations and interpretations, which on the one hand have special significance in religious symbolism, and on the other - in the depiction of erotic relations. The described primitive mechanisms and tendencies in the process of the development of human creative activity undergo significant change and are largely displaced by the activity of more complex laws conditioned by new forms of social relations; however their influence is felt even in modern manifestations of R.F. both in simple forms of inter-human communication and in art. The pathology of R.F. covers an extremely wide area. In the sphere of speech, those disorders belong here in which the crystallization of speech structures and images is affected. These include, if gross aphasic phenomena are excluded, primarily errors and slips observed often even without significant organic lesions, as well as disturbances of the associative process which hinder the intelligibility of speech products or even completely destroy it. Such are the so-called flight of ideas, speech confusion, etc. As for drawing, the most authoritative researcher of its peculiarities in the mentally ill (primarily schizophrenics) Prinzhorn considers the most characteristic its return to primitive forms: on the one hand an abundance of 'magical' symbols, and on the other - the domination of aimless play with forms, the tendency to repeat the same motifs, sometimes also the striving to carry out some one purely formal principle at the expense of the achieved impression and even meaning. Thanks to all this a sharp contradiction arises between what is depicted and the means used for this purpose, which as if acquire an independent life. Often it is generally impossible to establish any connection between the drawing and the value attributed to it by the artist. Finally, sometimes the striving to depict something meaningful disappears completely, and remains a contentless sketching of stereotypically repeated curls, heads, etc. (similarly to how often this is done by a normal person in a state of distraction). - Views on the nature of R.F. represent primarily the product of purely psychological analysis, not yet confirmed by data on the physiology of the nervous system; in connection with this for its pathological manifestations R.F. does not yet have sufficient anatomical-physiological explanation. One can only say hypothetically that its disturbances are connected with such lesions of individual brain systems which lead to general disorders of the whole apparatus of higher nervous activity in its entirety.