Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams

| 19→

Therefore, after an analysis of the mentalities of individual characters in the narrative, Palmer discusses how these characters interact in agential constellations and how they form groups. Not all interaction automatically will lead to intermentality or shared thinking. The term “shared” in the phrase “shared thinking”, equated with the term intermentality, often proves to be misleading. For example, if two characters are listening to a third character’s tale/sermon/narrative, although they are doing the same thing and are in the same situation (listening to the same narrative), whatever is going on in their minds is only an intramental act; there is no intersubjectivity. Only when there is some information and indicating that some elements in the third character’s story affected the two listening characters are these two put in an intermental context, because they are undergoing a shared mental experience. There needs to be a shared experience or a shared intention or, more strongly, a mutual decision making and taking of action upon some occurrence.⁷

      Another example of the misconception of the term “shared” in “shared thinking” is the false assumption regarding intermentality, especially in discussions about grouping and agential constellations, that the interaction between the characters has to be symmetric (Doležel 1998: 98). This is not necessarily true; it is possible for two characters to “share” a thought, but to have completely opposite intentions and/or motivations and thus act differently upon or make different decisions about it.

      Groups in a play always form a unity in themselves. It is true that two or more characters interact within a group and that, especially, if we are considering more than one interaction, these interactions might have different motivations. Nevertheless, the goal and motivation of a single group are one and the same. No matter how diverse the dynamics of simple interactions between the members of a group, the group’s overall movements are invariably coherent, otherwise it will turn into a dysfunctional group and eventually dissolve. The analysis of groups is made more complex by the fact that once a group is formed it will not necessarily remain the same from the beginning to the end of a play. In fact, as the action of the play develops and the characters become more nuanced, and more interaction within a group or between members of two different groups occurs, it becomes more likely that the composition of a group changes. Members drop out of a group or are cast off by the other members. Similarly, new members join a group or are recruited by the members of that group. In this way, each group in a play is an ever-changing unit consisting of more than one interaction.

      ←19 | 20→

Different types of group formation are possible. In a novel, where typically more characters are present in the storyworld and where the spatial and temporal parameters of the narrative are not limited, groups usually include more members than in drama. That does not mean that in a Palmerian approach we cannot talk about group formation, and trace intermentality when fewer characters are involved. According to Palmer, there are three different possible combinations of interaction and intermentality:⁸

      Individual vs. Individual: Intermentality between two individuals. These two characters can belong to the same group, or to a different group each. They can have opposing or confirming intermental ideas. This means that for this category, we could have four scenarios of intermentality. We could be dealing with two individuals belonging to the same group who either agree or disagree. Conversely, these two might belong to two different groups and agree or disagree.

      Individual vs. Group: On the one hand, there is the possibility that the interaction takes place within a single group. That is either an initiating intramental thought meets agreement inside the group to which an individual belongs and is acted upon accordingly, or the intramental thought can be met with the opposition of the other group members. This is a crucial point, since at this very moment of the story the individual drops out of that group and eventually joins another group – thus contributing to a higher level of dynamics in the play. On the other hand, we might be presented with situations in which the intramental thought of one character is confirmed or opposed by the collective of a different group than the other one to which he initially belongs. Each of these scenarios will provide the play with different dynamics. Confirmation might spark an attempt by the other group to recruit the character to join them. In case of opposition we might, in turn, encounter two possible outcomes. First, more and stronger enmity between the groups could evolve, or, second (should they not have had any problems prior to the interaction), the start of enmity or a potential struggle could begin (if they were not on good terms before the interaction). Either way, it is apparent that an initial intramental thought and its development into and engagement in an intermental one has the potential to cause a completely different storyline, which makes the progression of the play much more interesting.

      ←20 | 21→

      Group vs. Group: Each group has a single collective consciousness, a shared consciousness in Palmer’s terms, which acts and thinks as a representative of all members of the group, and as a result throughout the play there are interactions between two or more groups acting in accordance or in opposition to each other. It only becomes more complicated when the variable of the individual starts to unbalance the equations of each scene and act.

      Inseparable from the discussion of intermentality and groupings in the analysis of a particular text will be the question of group norms. Conventions, conforming to or dissenting from them, play a central part in the formation or malformation of groups since “group conflict can arise when then the social norms established by two or more groups are incompatible” (Palmer 2003: 346). This is crucial since it highlights the social nature of the concept of mind. Especially in the context of the analysis of groups and group formations in drama, one needs to take into consideration the fact that the individual mind is not only in constant interaction with other individual minds in a storyworld, but also with a larger social consciousness like the major ideological institutions of its society. The viewpoint each character takes towards the norms of these ideological institutions is in direct relationship to the type of interaction it establishes with the other characters. It is quite obvious that understandings are often based on shared ideological beliefs that bring forth similar mental frameworks. In a parallel manner, misunderstandings, which are considered to be a form of interaction in their own right and are by extension an intermental act, more often than not originate from a clash with a parameter of established ideology.

      In working on the social dimension of characters, Palmer’s ideas on intermental thought are invaluable. It is the relationship between the characters in a play that ensures the dynamics of a play and Palmer’s argument about the novel can definitely be applied to drama as well: he believes that readers build up expectations about characters that have a certain relationship with each other; that is, they are expected to have similar thoughts and beliefs. But these expectations exist not only on the part of the readers, but also within the storyworld the characters themselves develop certain expectations about each other. And it is the discrepancy between the expectations of two or more characters as individuals or in groups that generates the dynamics of a play. Thus, in this study, I would like to not only focus on the characters’ mutual understandings in a play, but also focus on their misunderstandings, their struggles and their competitive behaviour in the context of the play’s storyworld.

      Despite the fact that Palmer in his Fictional Minds does not go into details about the subcategories of intermental activity, it will prove helpful to indicate ←21 | 22→them in this introduction. In his article “Intermental Thought in the Novel: The Middlemarch Mind”, he further refines the concept and distinguishes between intermental thought, intermental units and intermental minds (2005: 430). Palmer further elaborates that to him intermental thought is the smallest unit of the three; it is the “minimal level” as he calls it. This level represents intermental thought or shared decision-making between two or more individuals who might not even know each other very well. The main issue here is to acknowledge that “it is not possible for two people to hold