The Dialogical Self in the First Two Years of Life

Abstract

The first aim of this paper is to present a theory of development of the dialogical self in which change originates in creative innovations during intrapersonal and interpersonal dialogues that highlight the self (Fogel, 1993, 2001b). Dialogues form into regularly recurring routines, called frames, that are either creative (changing, developing) or rigid (unchanging). Second, we argue that there is a non-verbal form of the dialogical self that first appears in early infancy. Finally, we show how the dialogical self develops systematically over the first 18 months of life by presenting a case study of some creative and rigid frames of one infant girl and her mother.