Commentary Part II: Psychological Generalization as a Mediating Process Between Context-Specific and Ontogenetic Changes¹:

This commentary chapter aims at highlighting and then discussing the notion of psychological generalization, an aspect which is taken as being central in the three chapters which integrate this book section on self and subjectification. Psychological generalization is here considered a personal process of detaching a given semiotic material from its original intersubjective context(s) of emergence towards a changed intrasubjective version of that material, which becomes an affectively laden, automatic and leading mediator over new encounters of the person with their meaningful environment; furthermore, such generalization implies in qualitative developmental changes at the level of one’s trajectory, despite its context-specific genesis. The presently proposed mechanisms involved in the broader process of psychological generalization were brought together into this chapter from two sources: first, from the commented chapters’ ideas and second, from theoretically appropriate linkages inspired by such ideas. Thus, on the one hand, Mattos (this volume) and Carla and Salgado (this volume) reflected upon the issue of the relations between context-specific changes and ontogenetic changes over time; on the other, Zittoun (this volume) specified certain mechanisms which can directly mediate the transference of context-specific transformations to ontogenetic ones—in both cases, generalization plays a relevant role. In the theoretical development proposed here, psychological generalization is seen as a twofold action: one, which initially occurs in very specific contexts of interpersonal interaction and another, which takes place at a predominantly intrapersonal experienced temporal trajectory. In order to explore such dual process further, I first explored the internalization and externalization of interpretants between the micro and mesogenetic levels of organization of experience, by considering such endeavor an initial stage of the generalization process, which is followed by the appropriation and integration of generalized interpretants by the sign-maker and sign-user subject; such ultimate interpretants’ meditational functioning eventually implies in developmental changes at the ontogenetic level of experience.