Between the Lines: Unconscious Meaning In Everyday Conversation
New York, Plenum Press, 1999
http://www.perseusbooks.com/index.html
 
 
Introduction

This book is an introduction to the way our unconscious mind creates hidden meaning in everyday conversations and is a new way to uncover these hidden meanings and the unconscious feelings that generate them.  My method is practical and concrete and can be initially learned in less time than it takes to read this book.

In the process, this book will take you on, what I, at least, think is a fascinating and pioneering trip through the mind, a trip that will take you through an intriguing web of meanings in social conversations created by feelings, pun-like sounds, double entendres, and other everyday uses of language.  The ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, said that we don't learn anything new, we simply remember what we already know on some deep level.  Thus, because this book is about human feelings and about how we use sound when we talk, it will not be so much about learning something new and strange (though it's that, too), as one of startling recognition.
If nothing else is certain about most human beings, one fact is very clear: we like to talk a lot.  But are we aware of the full meaning behind our talk?  The research from various fields suggests that we are not.  We take so much for granted in our daily lives, it'sas if we are only half awake, unmindful of a great deal of the hidden meaning in our conversations.  It's as if we're talking in our sleep.
As we engage in our daily activities, most of us take part in social conversations of one kind or another with family, friends, and with colleagues at work, and we are unaware of much of the hidden meaning in those conversations.  It's no secret that language is highly symbolic, of course, but how symbolic it is, we have no precise idea.  Talk has levels of unconscious meaning of which we consciously know nothing.  It's perhaps disheartening, but apparently true, that much of the time we don't know what we're talking about.
If we listen with a trained ear to the words, phrases, and tones of voice people use, we can glimpse their hidden feelings and thoughts.  This applies to adults and also to children.  This book, then, is about training the ear, so to speak, to hear hidden and unconscious meanings in individual and social conversations.
It's during coffee breaks and after meetings are over, where "free flowing" conversation is the rule, that many topics are thrown out for possible discussion.  Some engender our interest, and we may stick with them for a while-and some don't.  Why?  Most researchers attribute this sort of "random talk" to a milling-around process whose function is simply to help members of a conversation get acquainted.  But is such topic-hopping, in fact, random?  The answer is "no," it isn't.
I've been researching unconscious meaning in conversations in my small group dynamics laboratory and have found some fascinating, indeed, often bizarre findings.  For example, what does it mean and how do you explain a group of people discussing the topic of skindiving or the topic of twins?  The literal answers to these questions are clear.  They were simply talking about skindiving and about twin siblings.  In fact, however, the topic of shindiving was a kind of metaphorical or encoded way of expressing their concerns about my deep analysis of a group member's behavior, i.e., the topic of skindiving is an unconscious response to my deep analysis of members' behavior.  Likewise, the apparently literal topic of twins was a kind of metaphorical or encoded way of expressing concerns about the two trainers who were co leading the group, i.e., the topic of twins equates to the two trainers in the group.
This kind of unconscious or encoded talk has not been systematically observed or explained psychologically.  Certainly, there are books that purport to explain how to interpret unconscious meaning, but the method typically advanced is so general as to be almost useless.  This book, however, is based on a very concrete and specific set of rules for recognizing and analyzing unconscious meanings in everyday conversations.  These examples of unconscious language are what I call subliteral conversations.  The term subliteral simply indicates word meanings that are unconsciously attached to the conscious and accepted meanings of words, i.e., their literal or standard meanings.
We overlook a great deal of what's happening in our everyday life.  When we look out at our lawn, we see a relatively homogeneous patch of green.  But biologists who have specialized knowledge looking at the same lawn will see a whole lot more than just a patch of green lawn.  The same is true for the psychologist or linguists looking at everyday conversations.  This book will provide the language, concepts, and other tools that will allow you to see things you never saw before.  And what you see will astonish you.  It did me.
The implications of my findings for understanding how language and the mind work are themselves mind boggling-and I am not exaggerating here.  The story of the origins of these findings is one of the more fascinating stories in the history of psychology (see chapter 2).
The question that may arise now is, why did I wait so many years to write this book?  Again, the answer is not simple.  However, there are two basic reasons.  First, I wanted to wait until I had the research on my complete methodology published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.  The second reason is that the time seems right for acceptance of my methodology by a general audience and by a wider professional community . . .

Perspective Of The Book
This book is about the way literal topics and language use in conversations have symbolic or unconscious meaning attached to them.  In other words, talk about twins is considered literal when the talk is simply about twins, and does not have any added metaphorical, symbolic, or unconscious meaning.

In my research during the past 25 years using T-groups ("T" stands for training) in controlled laboratory conditions and from everyday settings, however, I have found that a great deal of language and conversation considered only literal by both a speaker and a listener is actually a kind of "metaphorical" unconscious communication of which the speaker is unaware.  But not always.  As even Freud is reputed to have said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" (i.e., not a phallic symbol).
Generally speaking, during these times of informal chatter, unconscious meanings are most clearly visible.  Thus, during highly structured conversations, like business meetings, for example, unconscious material may be difficult to recognize, but just before such meetings or during the first few minutes of "Warming up" where ritual greetings and "small talk" are socially required, there is often a wealth of unconscious meaning being communicated.
Despite the fact that much of our life is spent talking to each other, surprisingly little is known about the complexity of meaning in our talk.  Most people are usually just too busy talking to recognize what is being said unconsciously, and scientists are too busy focusing on grammar, semantics, rhetoric, and other more formal aspects of language.  The full meaning of our words goes unheard.
In the group therapy and the small group research literature, however, occasional and brief instances of what I call subliteral conversations have been sporadically noted and generally called symbolic communication.  Indeed there is no shortage of books and articles on hidden meanings.  Such hidden meanings, however, are almost invariably explained in what has become cliched Freudian terminology or some general variant thereof, with no method to verify that the talk is in fact "symbolic."  Because Freud has become a household name in our culture, I should make it clear that although much of what is Freudian may be symbolic, not all that's symbolic is necessarily Freudian, especially the subliteral theory of language and mind that I present in this book.
Without a method, such Freudian analyses become simply intuitive interpretation, and "metaphorical" utterances become mere coincidence or random puns.  Indeed, when I first began publishing my findings, reviewers almost immediately dismissed them as-at best-Freudian, as coincidence and-at worst-as "schizophrenic," as "wild puns," as "sheer fantasy," or as simply "ridiculous."  Since that time, I have developed an extensive systemic method divided into fourteen major categories with over sixty separate cognitive and linguistic operations to analyze-but more important-to validate unconscious or subliteral conversation in everyday life (see Appendix).  Although my approach to understanding the mind is to analyze the psyche, it is not psychoanalysis; my approach is based on a linguistic and cognitive framework.

Usefulness And Scope Of The Book
And so, of what use is all this understanding of unconscious meanings in talk, and to whom is it useful?  First, it's useful for just about anyone because there are many situations in everyday social life and at work where information about what people may be "really" thinking or feeling is difficult or impossible to obtain.  Listening subliterally can yield valuable and interesting information.  The many illustrations throughout this book reveal the multifaceted nature of human relationships-indeed about human nature itself.  The examples and illustrations I've gathered through the years confirm what we often suspect is going on beneath the polite surface of social relationships and also frequently reveal new and poignant insights into age-old and near-archetypal human concerns.  These concerns include eternal issues revolving around gender, sexuality, sexual preference, race and ethnicity, age, authority, leadership, religion, communication, and the individual versus the group.  Thus, they reveal a lot to us about human relationships in all their complexity, stereotypes, and prejudices (see chapter 9).

Second, this book is specifically useful for therapists and mental health counselors who conduct individual and group sessions to obtain information not consciously available to clients to observe unconscious psychodynamics.
Third, my method can be useful to those who attend the many support groups that meet to discuss personal issues and problems.
Fourth, it's useful for those who manage or lead the increasing number of small groups or teams in the business world.
Fifth, for those who conduct research on the dynamics of these groups and teams, it can be an important adjunct method for recognizing and uncovering otherwise hidden dynamics.
Sixth, many of the examples I present speak to cultural beliefs and rituals and their subliteral meaning.
Seventh, my findings cast new light on the nature of language and our use of it. And lastly, for anyone who is interested in how the mind works, this book has important implications.
Finally, a word about psychology books.  There is no shortage of books on psychology written for a general audience.  General audience books about psychology can be important.  They disseminate valuable information about everyday life.  They are important, too, for helping people understand psychology.  There is often a downside to popular psychology books, however.  For years I have railed, both in speech and in print, against some of these books that are what I call "pop psychology."  Pop psychology books are characterized by wild speculation, based only on personal experience, not scientific research!  This is done by people who should know better.  At least in psychology, personal experience is not a good basis for knowing how the mind or the world really works. Let me offer a glaring example . . .
Even though I've developed an extensive method to validate subliteral conversations, scientifically speaking, it's too early to make any absolute claims.  But this is not to say that the analysis of subliteral conversation is just a hypothesis.  Given my methodology, the history of similar findings, and that many of the findings are compatible with other cognitive research and theory, the methodology constitutes something more than a hypothesis, but something less than accepted fact.  And there is nothing wrong with this.  Indeed, this puts subliteral findings in fairly good company in psychology and in other scientific areas of knowledge.  Accordingly, research will undoubtedly continue to modify my findings.' In any event, while I believe this is more than a hypothesis, I recognize that others may not agree-and reasonably so.  But, I hope by the end of this book I will have convinced you that something real is going on that we haven't recognized before . . .