This article proposes a reading of liminal transitions in semiotic terms; that is, as a byproduct of the dynamics of sensemaking consisting of how two components of meaning interact: the observable side of meaning (Significance in Praesentia)—the rupture directly experienced by the interpreter—and a further generalized meaning—the semiotic scenario (Significance in Absentia), which makes the lived experience interpretable. Due to its pre-semantic and affective nature, in the liminal hotspot the semiotic scenario keeps a certain version of the self alive, regardless of the changes occurring in the real world. The conditions that favor such dynamics are briefly outlined as well as some implications for theory, methodology, and intervention.
AppreyM. (1983). Liminality as metaphor in adolescent psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, 6(1), 3–16.
3.
BarrettL. F. (2006). Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 20–46. doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_2
4.
BettisP. J. (1996). Urban students, liminality, and the postindustrial context. Sociology of Education, 69(2), 105–125. doi: 10.2307/2112801
5.
BettisP. J.MillsM. R. (2006). Liminality and the study of a changing academic landscape. In AnfaraV. A.MertzN. T. (Eds.), Theoretical frameworks in qualitative research (pp. 59–71). London, UK: Sage.
6.
BoeijeaH.DuijnsteebM.GrypdonckbM.PoolA. (2002). Encountering the downward phase: Biographical work in people with multiple sclerosis living at home. Social Science and Medicine, 55(6), 881–893. doi: 10.1016/S0277–9536(01)00238–6
7.
BowlbyJ. (1960). Grief and mourning in infancy and early childhood. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 15(1), 9–52.
8.
BrunerJ. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21.
9.
ColeM. (1998). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. London, UK: Harvard University Press.
10.
DokaK. J. (1984–85). Expectation of death, participation in funeral arrangements, and grief adjustment. Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, 15(2), 119–128. doi: 10.2190/HG24-EBR1–503H-C69V
11.
FreudS. (1955). The interpretation of dreams. In StracheyJ. (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Vols. 4 & 5. London, UK: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1899)
12.
GergenK. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
13.
GonçalvesM. M.RibeiroA. P.StilesW. B.CondeT.MatosM.MartinsC.SantosA. (2011). The role of mutual in-feeding in maintaining problematic self-narratives: Exploring one path to therapeutic failure. Psychotherapy Research, 21(1), 27–40. doi: 10.1080/10503307.2010.507789
14.
GrecoM.StennerP. (2017). From paradox to pattern shift: Conceptualizing liminal hotspots and their affective dynamics. Theory & Psychology, 27, 147–166.
15.
HallidayM. A. K.HasanR. (1989). Language, context, and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
16.
JacksonJ. E. (2005). Stigma, liminality, and chronic pain: Mind–body borderlands. American Ethnologist, 32(3), 332–353. doi: 10.1525/ae.2005.32.3.332
17.
JamesW. (1884). What is an emotion?Mind, 9, 188–205.
18.
KofoedJ.StennerP. (2017). Suspended liminality: Vacillating affects in cyberbullying/research. Theory & Psychology, 27, 167–182.
19.
LeimanM. (2002). Toward semiotic dialogism: The role of sign mediation in the dialogical self. Theory & Psychology, 12, 221–235. doi: 10.1177/0959354302012002631
20.
LinellP. (2009). Rethinking language, mind and world dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of sense making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
21.
LuborskyM. (1994). The retirement process: Making the person and cultural meanings malleable. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 8(4), 411–429. doi: 10.1525/maq.1994.8.4.02a00050
22.
MannariniT.CiavolinoE.NittiM.SalvatoreS. (2012). The role of affects in culture based interventions: Implications for practice. Psychology, 3(8), 569–577. doi: 10.4236/psych.2012.38085
23.
MärtsinM. (2010). Identity in dialogue identity as hyper-generalized personal sense. Theory & Psychology, 20, 436–450. doi: 10.1177/0959354310363513
24.
MärtsinM. (2014). Self-regulation by signs: A social semiotic approach to identity. In SalvatoreS.GennaroA.ValsinerJ. (Eds.), Multicentric identities in a globalizing world. Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 5, pp. ix–xx). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
25.
Matte BlancoI. (1975). The unconscious as infinite sets: An essay in bi-logic. London, UK: Gerald Duckworth and Co.
26.
MaturanaH. R.VarelaF. J. (1987). The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. Boston, MA: New Science Library/Shambhala Publications.
27.
McCreaF. B. (1983). The politics of menopause: The “discovery” of a deficiency disease. Social Problems, 31(1), 111–123. doi: 10.2307/800413
28.
MoscoviciS. (1976). La psychanalyse, son image et son public [Psychoanalysis: Its image and its public] (2nd ed.). Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France. (Original work published 1961)
29.
MyburghJ.HatfieldR. D.CheekR.KokS. K.McDonaldC.ShohamM.BurkeM. E. (2012). Midlife as change facilitator. International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, 11(4), 143–156.
30.
OsgoodC. E.SuciG. J.TannenbaumP. H. (1964). The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
31.
PrigogineI. (1980). From being to becoming time and complexity in the physical sciences. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
32.
RussellA. S. (2013). In the world but not of the world: The liminal life of pre-Constantine Christian communities (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6fp4z5kz
33.
SalvatoreS. (2012). Social life of the sign: Sensemaking in society. In ValsinerJ. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 241–254). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
34.
SalvatoreS. (2013). The reciprocal inherency of self and context: Notes for a semiotic model of the constitution of experience. Interacções, 9(24), 20–50.
35.
SalvatoreS. (2015). Psychology in black and white: The project of a theory-driven science. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
36.
SalvatoreS.FredaM. F. (2011). Affect, unconscious and sensemaking. A psychodynamic, semiotic and dialogic model. New Ideas in Psychology, 29(2), 119–135. doi: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2010.06.001
37.
SalvatoreS.ValsinerJ. (2014). Outlines of a general psychological theory of psychological intervention. Theory & Psychology, 24, 217–232. doi: 10.1177/0959354314524295
38.
SalvatoreS.VenuleoC. (2008). Understanding the role of emotion in sensemaking: A semiotic psychoanalytic-oriented perspective. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42(1), 32–46. doi:10.1007/s12124–007–9039–2
39.
SalvatoreS.VenuleoC. (2010). The unconscious as source of sense: A psychodynamic approach to meaning making. In WagonerB. (Ed.), Symbolic transformations: The mind in movement through culture and society (pp. 59–74). London, UK: Routledge.
40.
SalvatoreS.VenuleoC. (2013). The field dynamic nature of sensemaking: Theoretical and methodological implications. Papers on Social Representations, 22, 22.1–21.41.
41.
SalvatoreS.ZittounT. (2011). Outlines of a psychoanalytically informed cultural psychology. In SalvatoreS.ZittounT. (Eds.), Cultural psychology and psychoanalysis in dialogue: Issues for constructive theoretical and methodological synergies (pp. 3–46). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
42.
ShwederR. A.SullivanM. A. (1990). The semiotic subject of cultural psychology. In PervinL. A. (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 399–416). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
StennerP. (2016). Liminalität, Un-Wohl-Gefühle und die affektive Wende [Liminality: Un-wellbeing and the affective turn]. In MixaE.PritzS. M.TumeltshammerM.GrecoM. (Eds.), Un-Wohl-Gefühle Eine Kulturanalyse gegenwärtiger Befindlichkeiten [Un-wellbeing: A cultural analysis of contemporary feelings] (pp. 45–67). Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag.
TurnerV. (1979). Frame, flow and reflection: Ritual and drama as public liminality. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 6(4), 465–499.
49.
TurnerV. (1987). Betwixt and between: The liminal periods in rites of passages. In MahdiL. C.FosterS.LittleM. (Eds.), Betwixt and between: Patterns of masculine and feminine initiation (pp. 3–19). Chicago, IL: Open Court.
50.
ValsinerJ. (2007). Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology. Psychological Studies, 54, 238–239.
51.
ValsinerJ. (2012). The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
52.
ValsinerJ. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London, UK: Sage.
53.
Van GennepA. (1960). The rites of passage (VizedomM. B.CaffeeG. L., Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
54.
VenuleoC.MossiP.SalvatoreS. (2016). Educational subculture and dropping out in higher education: A longitudinal case study. Studies in Higher Education, 41(2), 321–342. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2014.927847
55.
VenuleoC.SalvatoreS.MossiP. (2015). The role of cultural factors in differentiating pathological gamblers. Journal of Gambling Studies, 31(4), 1353–1376. doi: 10.1007/s10899–014–9476-z
56.
VološinovV. N. (1986). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
57.
WernerE. E.SmithR. S. (1992). Overcoming the odds: High risk children from birth to adulthood. New York, NY: Cornell University Press.
58.
ZamboniC. (2009). Liminal figures, liminal places: Visualizing trauma in Italian holocaust cinema (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
59.
ZittounT. (2004). Symbolic competencies for developmental transitions: The case of the choice of first names. Culture & Psychology, 10(2), 131–161. doi: 10.1177/1354067X04040926
60.
ZittounT. (2007). Dynamics of interiority: Ruptures and transitions in the self development. In SimãoL-M.ValsinerJ. (Eds.), Otherness in question: Labyrinths of the self (pp. 187–214). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
