A Semiotic Approach to Developmental Transitions: A Young Woman’s Dedication to Religious Consecrated Life

Abstract

This study aims at providing a theoretical contribution to the general understanding of developmental transitions of the self-system along life course by the concept of semiotic complexes . Tendencies in developmental science have insisted on considering micro-, meso-, and macrogenetic dimensions of human life as a condition to understanding the development of a life trajectory. Most theoretical tendencies, however, lack a specific focus on meanings and time, and these are core aspects to a semiotic and systemic approach to human development. Semiotic complexes are about highlighting the semiotic nature of micro-genetic processes. We present the historical and theoretical roots of the concept and apply it to a case study in which we analyze developmental transitions of a young consecrated religious woman in the process of formation in a Catholic institution. Anchored on the dialogic paradigm and, specifically, on Developmental Cultural psychology, we assume that the self-system is constituted in the core of creative tension within the subject–other–world relationships. The philosophical notion of temporality refers to various interconnected dimensions of time, one of which concerns the intrapsychic stance, that is, the formation of a cultural-personal mode of sense-making regarding one’s own developmental trajectory along the life course. By means of intra- and interpersonal relations, which are constantly renewed by present experience, the unique biography of each person is (re) constructed amidst the perennial relationship between internal and external time, between subjectivity and objectivity. The subject constructs his own life trajectory based on mutual adjustments between the Self and the Other. The theoretical section of the text is divided into three parts. In the first, the notion of temporality is explored considering the concept of duration (durée) proposed by Bergson. The second one expands the notion of temporality to provide the basis for the comprehension of cultural-personal time, shaped through sociocultural relations, and the third part explores issues of continuity and change in the self-system, focusing on the negotiations between the temporality of self and the temporality of the other. The point here is the role of the pressure exerted from outside by particular groups and institutional settings that shape her meanings and the continuity of a sense of self along with deep social and institutional ruptures, in the context of religious vocational training in four Catholic convents/seminaries.