The Running Conversation in Your Head

 

One of my browsers recommended this article The Running Conversation in Your Head. I found it interesting given Trinitarian theology. There are different Trinitarian models. While I'm a convinced Trinitarian, I don't dogmatically hold to any Trinitarian model. Nevertheless, one that I'm fond of is the usual Evangelical view whereby three centers of consciousness share the one being of God. Given, that view, the article might have some relevance when one considers that humans were made in God's image. Here's a quote from the article:

Beck: You think of inner speech in terms of a dialogue. If it's between the self and the self, how does that splitting of the self work out internally? Is it like the old Freudian superego telling the id, “Don’t eat that donut?”

Fernyhough: That can be part of it. The key thing is that the self is multiple, that we have different parts to the self. Whether you want to fit that into a Freudian frame or not, that can be useful, but it’s not really the way I take it. The most important thing is that there's this basic structure of a dialogue where somebody’s speaking and somebody’s listening. It can be you as a listener but it can also be another person. I can have an inner dialogue with my mum, for example. A few people have told me over the years that they have inner dialogues with people who aren’t here anymore. It can be a dead person, it can be an imaginary person, it can be God. In the book I tried to use this as a way of rethinking the idea of spiritual meditation and of prayer. The idea of having a conversation with another being. To me, it’s all made possible by that dialogic structure that's created because of the way we develop as children. Because we internalize social dialogues, we bring in that dialogic structure and it's right there at the heart of our thinking.

Anyway, I thought the article was interesting. I'm not making any dogmatic claims about the relevance of the article to Trinitarian models. Only that it can spark some new ideas in Trinitarian thinking.