Minick (1987) Thinking and Speaking (283-284)
We must now take the final step in the analysis of the internal planes of verbal thinking. Thought is not the last of these planes. It is not born of other thoughts. Thought has its origins in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interest and impulses, and our affect and emotion. The affective and volitional tendency stands behind thought. Only here do we find the answer to the final “why” in the analysis of thinking. We have compared thought to a hovering cloud that gushes a shower of words. To extend this analogy, we must compare the motivation of thought to the wind that puts the cloud in motion. A true and complex understanding of another’s thought becomes possible only when we discover its real, affective-volitional basis. The motives that lead to the emergency of thought and direct its flow can be illustrated through the example we used earlier, that of discovering the subtext through the specific interpretation of a given role. Stanislavskii teaches that behind each of a character’s lines there stands a desire that is directed toward the realization of a definite volitional task. What is recreated here through the method of specific interpretation is the initial moment in any act of verbal thinking in living speech.
Because a volitional task stands behind every expression, Stanislavski notes the desire that underlies the character’s thought and speech in each lines of play. As an example, we will present the text and subtext in an interpretation that is similar to that of Stanislavskii’s.
| Text of the play | Parallel desires |
| Sophia: Oh Chatskii: I am glad to see you! | Wants to hide her confusion |
| Chatskii: You’re glad, that’s good Though, can one who becomes Glad in this way be sincere It seems to me that in the end, People and horses are shivering, And I have pleased only myself. | Wants to appeal to her conscience through mockery. Aren’t you ashamed! Wants to elicit openness |
| Lisa: But, sir, had you been behind the door, Not five minutes ago, You’d have heard us speak of you, Miss, tell him yourself! | Wants to calm Chatskii and to help Sophia in a difficult situation. |
| Sophia: It is always so – not only now You cannot reproach me so. | Wants to calm Chatskii and to help I am guilty of nothing! |
| Chatskii: Let’s assume it is so. Blessed is the one who believes, And warm his life. | Let us cease this conversation |
Understanding the worlds of others also requires understanding their thoughts. And even this incomplete without understanding their motives or why they expressed their thoughts. In precisely this sense we complete the psychological analysis of any expression only when we reveal the most secret internal plane of verbal thinking – its motivation.
With this, our analysis is finished. We will now briefly consider the results to which it has led. In our analysis, verbal thinking has emerged as a complex dynamic whole where the relationship between thought and word is manifested as a movement through several internal planes, as a transition from one plane to another. We carried our analysis from the most external to the most eternal plane. In the living drama of verbal thinking, movement takes the reverse path. It moves from the motive that gives birth to thought, to the formation of thought itself, to its mediation In the eternal word, to the meanings of external words, and finally, to words themselves. However, it would be a mistake to imagine that this single path from thought to word is always realized. On the contrary, the current state of our knowledge indicates that extremely varied direct and reverse movements and transitions from on plane to another are possible. We also know in general terms that it is possible for movement to be broken off at any point in this complex path in the movement from the motive through the thought to inner speech, in the movement from inner speech to thought, or in the movement from inner to external speech. However, our task was not to study the varied movements that are actually realized along the trajectory from thought to word. Our goal was merely to show that the relationship between thought and word is a dynamic process. It is a path from though to world, a completion and embodiment of the thought in the word.
