Signs and voices in psychotherapy

Signs (e.g., words, gestures, tokens, pictures) point to something besides themselves and are observable. Using signs, events can reproduce themselves (in part) across time and space. Signs change meaning each time they are u sed, but they also accumulate meanings from each use. Voices are active sub divisions (or collectivities) of people, internalized agents representing p eople, and events formed from traces of previous experience. People can Ire understood as communities of voices. Most theoretical approaches to psycho therapy recognize some forms of multivoicedness. Multiple voices may repres ent depth of resources and flexibility or fragmentation and dissociation, d epending on the strength of the meaning bridges between the voices, which a re constructed of signs. This article reviews research findings and problem s that led me to my interest in signs and voices, and gives psychotherapy c ase examples of sign-mediated assimilation of problematic voices into the c lient's community of voices.