Chapter 1: Multiple Presences of Recursivity: An Action Research Study

Recursivity is a capacity unique to the human mind. In the domain of linguistic discourse, it is evidenced by to and fro movements followed by the superimposition of a new direction and gives rise to paradoxical statements or the insertion of parenthetical statements—narrations within narrations. In the case of behavior, it takes the form of shifts between different scenarios created by the mind, such as play, rituals, or theater. In general, a fragment of a stream of behavior or a proposition is encapsulated, separated for a moment and then reincorporated. It is clearly possible to show that the underlying mental operation hinges on the unique human psychological capacity of being, at the same time, “inside” and “outside” the main stream of the mental process that guarantees the continuity and coherence of all human behavior. We characterize this capacity as becoming an observer. It is fully applied in the case of play and fantasy dreams, that is, in instances of the “other realities” that humans are capable of inhabiting. The final implication would be to raise the question of whether the particular aspects of the reality defined as play, theatre, ritual, myths, and so on, are part of our life as legitimately as the reality regarded in a vulgar sense as “real.”