THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGES WITHIN FILM
SEEN FROM A MULTIMEDIA SEMIOTIC THEORY
Paolo Teobaldelli
(1998)
(I wrote this paper in 1998 for the mailing list
filmphilosophy base in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Then for personal problems I could not send it to the
list. I found it within my papers some months ago
and decided to publish into my site without changing
the format, wich is the one used at that time in
the publishing within the list.
The reference you find to Teobaldelli: 1998, 1999,
was at the time Teobaldelli: 1998a 1998b, because
both works were still in progress; that is the
only details that I changed)
Introduction
The question I would like to treat here is that of languages
within film. Such a question opens up a lot of theoretical
and methodological problems which are strictly bound to the
difficult theoretical status of the terminology (and of the
theories) used within filmtheory in regard to that specific
question: I refer to terms like _language_, _medium_, _code_,
_sign system_, _channel_, _meaning_, _signification_, _sign_.
These terms in fact, which are coming from different interrelated
disciplines such as linguistics, semiotics, communication theory
etc., are rather ambiguos and lacking of a good theoretical base
able to confer to them a high heuristic value while approaching
those type of cultural products which present a high complexity
for what concerns their own physical configuration.
The key of such an ambiguity and fallacy can be easily
recognised through an historical analysis which would follow
the conceptual development of those terms [1]. This analysis
shows that there is a urgent need to re-think communication
theory and semiotics from a _multimedia_ point of view, i.e.
from a perspective that would be open to the consideration of
the co-presence of different languages within a communicative
context. It is for example the case of filmic texts, where it
is possible to find written and oral verbal language mixed
with figural systems. However, before to face directly with
the problem of languages within films, I need here briefly to
summarise the main problems emerging from the _mono-medial_
perspective of communication.
1. From language to languages: the impasse of communication
sciences.
The first fact that a scholar of communication encounters
while approaching the first works on communication (at the
beginning of our century) is that there is mention only of
the verbal language.
Communication is conceived of as constituted only by verbal
language and consequently all the terms above mentioned are i
ntended to refer to this language. This is mainly due to the
fact that the most acknowledged theories about communication
at that given time come from philosophy and linguistics.
Philosophy, with its logical tradition, points to logic as an
abstracted language having verifiable feature. Thus
signification is conceived of as a highly rational process of
(verbal) enunciation having a precise grammar (association
rules). Such a language is rather a 'pure' one.
It refers neither to spoken language nor to the written one,
but rather to an ethereal language having really no concrete
existence, no _physical properties_.
It is therefore framed within a strong _metaphysical setting_.
Linguistics deals only with verbal language too, but
according to its empirical status, it takes into account the
physical aspects of language as mostly spoken language. Yet
its roots are mainly philosophical (Aristotelis, Nominalism,
Port-Royal School etc.), and at a deep insight it is quite
easy to recognise such metaphysical roots in its most
important formulations; it is enough to remind the well known
distinction between _langue_ and _parole_ by De Saussure.
However, the confrontation with the concrete spoken language
causes within linguistics a dialectical tension between
static formal models and the complex dynamics of the empirical
linguistic phenomena.
Yet, before to go on, we have to take into consideration the
birth in the same period of the so-called _mathematical
theory of electric communications_ [2]. This theory tried to
solve the problem of the transmitting of verbal texts through
electric lines, of the long-distance communication. Its task
was thus a technic one, and precisely to transform letters
into electric pulse able to be then re-transformed as letters.
It is the well known base of the so-called
_information theory_. The problem was solved with the use of
binary coding; the key concept is that of _information_
conceived of as a statistical quantitative measure (the
bigger is the probability of occurrence the lower is the
content of information [3]).
The mathematical theory of communication was imported within
linguistics by Roman Jakobson (Jakobson:) and it has had
subsequently a great influence on both semiotics and
communication theory; such an influence is so far still a
strong one.
According to the assimilation of information theory the term
of _language_ conceived as verbal language is easily brought
near that of _code_ . The conception of the language as code
is in fact really close to the formal setting coming from
philosophy. The language is seen as a definite set of signs
corresponding to a definite set of _contents_ (the meaning)
[4].
The main consequence of this general view is that given a
_language_ and its _rules_ the production and consumption of
a message is ensured without taking care of the concrete
communicational context, i.e. it is a perfectly symmetric
process between a sender and a receiver considered as sharing
both the same code and rules. The main consequence of this
assumed simmetry is that both the context and the agents of
communication are not considered as problems. The attention
focuses therefore mainly on the message of communication. In
this sense to use the term code should mean to conceive of a
language as an highly formal language. However the term code
is used nowadays in a wider sense, yet what sense it would
have is quite difficult to say.
However, such a setting didn't fit very good with the
observation of physical pehomena occurring within the
communicational context. The first ones recognising that,
were anthropologists. As they were working with cultures and
concrete languages really far from the western ones, they
realised that the logic formal model of linguistics was
unadequate to describe what they analysed directly, and E.T.
Hall firstly recognised that communication is not only a pure
verbal phenomenon [5]. This process goes from the 40's to the
60's. But the first lucid critics to this formal setting came
from the anthropologist Birdwhistell who wrote:
"Thus the conception has been that the brain, by definition a
naturally good producer of logical thoughts composed of words
with precise meanings, emit these under proper stimulation.
That is, good, clean, logical, rational, denotative,
semantically correct utterances are emitted out of the head
if the membrane between mind and body efficiently separates
this area of the body from that which produces the bad,
dirty, illogical, irrational, connotative, and semantically
confusing adulterants. Good communication thus takes place if
the unadulterated message enters the ear of the receiver and
goes through a clean pipe into an aseptic brain...The focus
upon communication and its measurement from this perspective
is dominated by such an atomistic and loaded conception of
man and his behavior that research or theory about
communication becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive
(Birdwhistell: 1973, p.66)"
Birdwhistell, by recognising the role played by gesture
within communication, tried to inquire gesture as a system of
communication. This was the first step towards what we call
_Non-Verbal Communication_. Yet Birdwhistell approached
gesture with the heuristic tools of linguistic. He spoke of a
_Multichannel Communication_ where different systems of
communication (verbal and non-verbal ones) co-occur in time
and space. But the signification of those systems is
conceived of as being a separate one. Each system is seen as
having own signs corresponding to _meanings_.
The same setting is the one developed within semiotics (also
stemming from the encounter of semiotics with information
theory; see in regard: Teobaldelli: 1998; 1999)
This setting is nowadays still mostly shared and used and it
is one of the biggest problems of any communication theory,
inasmuch it has been so far acknowledged that within face-
to-face communication there is no system working
independently from the others, as Lotman cogently observes:
"The complex object was lead back to a sum of simple objects.
[...] As we can see now, there are in reality no sign
systems which work exactly, as isolated forms having
functional precise senses, alone in itself. [...] They
work only because they are bound in a semiotic continuum
filled up by semiotic Objects of different types, belonging
to different levels of organisation (1990, 288; translation
mine [6])"
This fact sets hardly under question thus the traditional
verbal-like notion of language and of its synonima (sign
system, semiotic system, code, medium etc.).
We can now turn our attention to film as language, starting
with the recognition of filmic objects as texts [7]
presenting a complex configuration which is not reducible to
a single language.
2. The filmic text and the lack of heuristic means
Aurand [8], by dealing with the tendency to analyse film as
narration, argues that philosophy seems to avoid any
reasoning on its formal aspects, that it to say any analysis
of its signs and meaning. The question which Aurand
underlines, is in my opinion a good one. Philosophy seems in
fact still not to recognise the relevant role of non-verbal
elements, preferring to focus the attention on language. The
problem is that most of philosophical works on signification
are based upon a strong logic relation between (verbal) sign
and meaning, a pure and verifiable one. This setting cannot
recognise the role that non-verbal signs have within the
signification process without at the same time loosing its
strong theoretical base; such a base in fact comes from the
conception of verbal language as an autonomous and self-
sufficient sign system. In this sense philosophical thinking
seems really not to have good heuristic means to get close to
the way signification is built within filmic texts (as well
as within any cultural texts which would not be purely verbal
ones).[9]
Yet, on the other side we have to say that also communication
theory and semiotics seems not to be on the right way, since
it can be seen how their conception of the sign-meaning
association, as an association which could be conceived of as
a general one (i.e. without referring to a specific sign
system,), is rather strictly depending from more general
(philosophical) assumptions, which come from the perspective
of knowledge and signification centred on verbal
language[10]. This fact seems to bring also semiotics and
communication theory not too much close to the way
signification is built within filmic objects (as well as
within any texts which would not be purely verbal ones).
3. A basic problem of languages within film: the notions of
channel and medium.
In this sense most of terminology used in the field of Media
studies and of filmstudies as well is highly problematic.
I have at this point to explain myself with a little example:
- it is often used the term _audiovisual_as filmic.
Rather this term, which stems from the confusion between the
notion of _medium_ and the notion of _channel_ (which is the
consequence of both the influence of information theory on
communication and media studies and the lack of a serious
reflection about the notion of _medium_) is really
problematic.
If we look deeply at the notion of _audiovisual_ we see in
fact that it presupposes that the nature of the medium is
given by the channel with which we perceive it, i.e. the
auditory and visual ones. Yet it can be argued that there are
a lot of other textual types that are audio-visual (in the
sense that their being perceived is an audio-visual
phenomenon), above all the
(1)face-to-face communication: we see the other person while
he is speaking,
(2) theater.
At the same time there are audiovisual events that although
cannot be considered texts, but they rather are audio-visual
phenomena: for example if I see a car running along the
street I contemporary hear the sounds it emits. Thus I'm in
front of an audiovisual phenomenon [11].
Which one would be the theoretical cogent difference between
the two type of audiovisual phenomena, i.e. between a filmic
text displaying a car running along the street and a car
running along the street?
It seems to me consequently that the use of the term _audio-
visual_ is quite a problem, and mainly that it doesn't help
in understanding the specificity of filmic.
Another problem arising from the relatioship between verbal
and non-verbal elements within filmic texts is that regarding
the notion of _medium_.
_Medium_ in fact, is used in many senses. Sometimes it is
identified with the channel (giving many problems to the
analysis as I already suggested above), some other times it
is used as a synonimous of the semiotic notion of _sign
system_, some other times again it is used as the filmic
itself when someone speaks for example of the _filmic medium_
(this use stems from an attention to specific technologies
and get near to the sense of _means_: in this sense for
example the notion of _mass media_, as those technological
means which permit a wide broadcasting of a text).
In regard of the last two uses, there is a basic problem,
since the contemporary presence of verbal language and of
figural elements would not be considered as a single medium,
but rather it is often said that there are two _media_. Thus
how is possible to say that film is a _medium_ presenting two
_media_? This fact has many consequences: above all the
tendency to divide the signification of each system from that
of the other one. This is caused by the fact that till now
there are no shared model which try to integrate the
significant role of both as an aggregate, rather to think of
them as autonomous systems operating in a self-sufficient
way.
The basic consequence of a mono-medial perspective is that
signification is thought as separated from the concrete
communicative context, since it consists simply in the static
association between signs and contents within a sign system.
In the mono-medial perspective we have thus two types of
separation:
- the separation of signification from communication;
- the separation of the signification belonging to a _system_
- and that of another possible system co-occurring in time
and space in the same concrete communicative context.
In this way the filmic text, that presents itself as a unique
text, is thought as it were separated; it seems to me that,
if Aurand has reason in saying that philosophy conceives of
film as a _narration_ underlining its _verbal_ elements (the
story, the plot etc.) on the other side one has also to
underlines there is an opposite tendency to identificate
filmic essentially with its figural elements (shots and
frames).
The central indication emerging from this situation is thus
that instead of separating the filmic we should rather
dispose of an _integrated model of communication_ able to
furnish valuable heuristic tools[12].
4. From the mono-medial perspective to a multimedia
semiotics.
Therefore it seems to me that we should start to think to
some other possible models of communication, by avoiding the
general mono-medial perspective in its multiple forms (and
thus _semantics_, the notion of communication as
_transmitting of information_, terms like _sender_ and
_receiver_ and so on).
I tried to build a new model as a proposal towards what can
be defined as a _multimedia semiotics_, a theory which I also
call an _integrated theory of human multimedia
communication_. The basic feature of this model stems from
the assumption that communication is a phenomenon presenting
a high complexity which is not to be reduced to the atomistic
mono-medial view, or as Petoefi writes:
"since it is very seldom the case that all elements of a
communication belong to one and the same class of signs, we
should rather speak of multimedia communications (Petoefi,
1989, 510-511)"
According to this assumption we have to consider
communication as a construction of signification with the
help of one or more systems (where with the term system I
refer to a theoretical abstraction of a physical semiotical
matter [13]).
Thus _signification_ is not simply a static and mechanical
association between signs and contents, but rather is what
emerges from a complex semiotic whole. It can consequently be
composed of more than a system, of more _semiotical
elements_.
However I will try now to explain this view by discussing
directly filmic text.
5. Approaching signification of filmic.
The analogy (or metaphor) of film as language is really old,
and I don't want to summon up its history. I would like
shortly to underline that at first it is a methodological
metaphor and that subsequently such a methodological
assumption becomes a theoretical one. This due to the
mistakenly interpretation by theorists of the first
theoretical work [14], but it stems also from the importance
that linguistics and communication theory gradually assumes.
Yet this theoretical jump cristallises the _film as language_
metaphor, in a simmetrical analogy. As the main theories of
language conceive of language as a formal static code, such a
static view is applied also to filmic texts. These becomes
then a static object made by a chain of shots, that can be
analysed as a static object, i.e. in its physical surface as
a succession of stills [15].
The problems arising from such a view are really difficult to
solve. Such a view in fact doesn't recognises in its
theoretical assumptions the importance of main factors due to
the communicative concrete context as the factof being the
relationship between film and viewer (i.e. the dynamic
movement of the filmic space and the perception/understanding
of it) a problematic one, nor it seems to have good heuristic
means to understand for example the a-symmetrical co-presence
of different and multiple semiotic elements (figures, spoken
verbal language, written verbal language, sounds, rumors
etc.), inasmuch such a view is centred on the mono-language
communication.
However the main problem stemming from such a static view is
in my humble opinion the presupposed symmetrical association
between the physical part of sign and the one of meaning. In
this sense the signification of a text seems to be nothing
but the succession of discrete units of contents transported
by physical means (the medium). In a previous work [16] I
analysed a german strip by Guido Sieber [17] where the
succession of the verbal elements builds a text dealing with
how to seat educately at the table during lunch, while the
figural elements builds a text showing a grotesque serie of
awful behaviour during lunch. The contrast of these two
(medial) elements builds a text where the signification is an
ironical view of education and of mankind. If we look at this
texts by using the traditional theories we won't ever get
near to its real significant function within the concrete
communicative context.
This the same for what concerns filmic texts. The fact is
that a semiotic textual system (term I do prefer instead of
sign system) bring into being a lot of communicative
strategies and procedures in order to build a semiotical
dimension, a semiotically based environment, which is
something more that a succession of sign expecially in a
really complex textual system like film [18].
The filmic text (as well as other types of text) construct a
dynamic signification, which is the result of the encounter
between the physical object (the text) and someone being in
front of it. From this encounter the text takes its living
feature. Signification is not something living per se, but
always something arising from a communicative relationship.
In this relationship the _signification_ of the filmic object
is re-activated in its high complexity. Such a
_signification_ is in my opinion, not to be conceived as the
bi-dimesional static decoding of meaning, but rather as the
re-activation of a _semiotically-constructed world_ (which I
call _interactional textual world_), i.e. a multidimensional
environment, within a _relational space_, i.e. the space of
the encounter between a text and human beings. In a wide
sense by relational space I refer to the space of knowledge,
being it, in the sense of Peirce, always a tripartite
relationship. I enriched this assumption of Peirce's
philosophy with the help of the notion _potential space_
worked out by Winnicott (1971). He conceived of such a notion
as the intermediate zone between child and mother developing
due to the separation from the mother's breast. In this sense
I use the notion of _potential space_ as the _tertium_ we are
looking for in order to solve the question of the
subject/object relationship. In fact Winnicott's notion of
potential space is a heuristic notion able to go beyond the
opposition between these two terms, being nothing but the
space of the necessary mediating process between subject and
object. Winnicott's idea is that our experience is in reality
neither an internal state nor an external one, but in a way
it is an experience of an intermediate zone where we develop
ourselves by playing, by creatively acting.
He writes:
"That play is in fact neither a matter of inner psychic
reality nor a matter of external reality (Ibidem, 96)"
And further:
"The baby's separating-out of the world of objects from the
self is achieved only through the absence of a space between,
the potential space being filled in the way that I am
describing.
It could be said that with human beings there can be no
separation, only a threat of separation; and the threat is
maximally or minimally traumatic according to the expericence
of the first separatings.
How one may ask, does separation of subject and object, of
baby and mother, seem in fact to happen, and to happen with
profit to all concerned, and in the vast majority of cases?
And this in spite of the impossibility of separation?
[...] where there is trust and reliability is a potential
space, one that can become an infinite area of separation,
which the baby, child, adolescent, adult may creatively fill
with playing, which in time becomes the enjoyment of the
cultural heritage.
The special feature of this place where play and cultural
experience have a position is that it depends for its
existence on living experiences, not on inherited tendencies
(ibidem, 108)"
This means that we have an emotional need bound up with it,
and our consciousness itself is due to it.
Therefore it is the necessary ground of _signification_ as a
continuous processing of our reality. This lively acting
within the potential space is for me the semiotic acting,
i.e. the construction of semiotic wholes; the creativity
develops itself as a semiotic process which practices by
constructing such objects.
The resulting notion is that of _semiotic space_ as the space
where we semiotically process our everyday life [19] by
constructing semiotic wholes, i.e. texts.
The multidimensional environment of a text (such as a filmic
one) is not reducible to its physical surface, but rather is
a complex communication-based dynamic function of its many
constructive elements, whose key lies in the human cultural
constant activity.
That means that signification is a creative dynamic process
that cannot be grasped with the poor bidimensionality of the
traditional perspective based upon a single _precise
language_.
Filmic texts are then a special complex type of semiotic
constructing. They are composed with a complex mixture of
real matter (what is usually called pro-filmic events i.e.
people interacting), written verbal elements (titles,
didascalic scripts of silent films), special effects and
lights, sounds and rumors. All these elements compose a
_special world_ which can enjoy, terrify or even teach us, a
world we experience during the interaction with that text.
Filmic texts are then a special complex type of semiotic
constructing which is really far from the _logic model taken
from verbal language_.
I think we have to take into serious consideration this fact.
Notes.
[1] I have been working out this analysis from 1992 in two
phases. In the first phase (from 1992 to 1994) I worked out
an analysis mostly centred on communication theory,
linguistics and semiotics (see Teobaldelli 1998). In the
second phase I enlarged the analysis to philosophy and
psychology (see Teobaldelli: 1999).
[2] The development of the model of the mathematical theory
of communications followed three basic steps: the publication
of an essay by Nyquist (1924) dealing with the speed of
transmission of messages in telegraphy; a research of Hartley
(1928) about the measure of the quantity of information and
the decreasing of noise (Hartley: 1928) and the well know
work by Shannon e Weaver (1949).
[3] This measure stems from a basic postulate which links the
concept of information to that of _uncertainty_. It is
assumed in fact that the communication of a known or certain
event have zero content of information. Therefore information
can be considered as a reduction of the initial uncertainty.
If we suppose to have a definite whole of possible symbols X,
of which S (i.e. the source) is on the point to transmit one
to R (the recipient), we can say that R considers all the
symbols (and the signals corresponding to them) as equally
probable. Since, as said, the quantity of information is
expressed in terms of reduction of the initial uncertainty,
and inasmuch are all the symbols equally probable,
consequently all the symbols will contain the same quantity
of information, i.e. I=log2 x; to each symbol we will thus
assign the probability of occurrence p=I/x ; therefore (by
substituting the x ---> x= I/p) the content of information
will be log2I/p.
Shortly speaking we can say that the content of information
is proportionally inverse to its probability of occurrence.
The information theory offers to us only a quantitative
measure of information, by excluding any other level
(semantic, semiotic, cultural ones). It takes into account
only the _formal properties_ in the ambit of the technical
level, i.e. the formal properties to be transformed into
electric pulse.
[4] In this sense is to be seen the referring De Saussure
made to other types of code, which is not a consciousness of
_non-verbal languages_. De Saussure in fact doesn't speak of
kinesics or gesture, but of precise signalling systems as the
road signalling, the death-and-thumb alphabet, etc., i.e.
those systems where the correspondance between sign and
content is 1 to 1.
[5] He recognised the importance of the social living
context, the use of space within communication. He found thus
the _proxemics_ as the discipline studying such a
communicative use of space within different cultures.
[6] "Das komplexe Objekt wird auf eine Summe einfacher
Objekte zurückgeführt. Der in den letzen zwanzig Jahren
gefundene Weg semiotischer Untersuchungen erlaubt es uns
heute jedoch, vieles anders zu sehen. Wie man jetzt
voraussetzen kann, kommen in der Wirklichkeit keine
Zeichensysteme vor, die völlig exakt und funktional eindeutig
und in isolierter Form für sich allein funktionieren.[...]
Sie funktionieren nur, weil sie in ein bestimmtes
semiotisches Kontinuum eingebunden sind, das mit semiotischen
Gebilden unterschiedlichen Typs, die sich auf
unterschiedlichem Organisationsniveau befinden, angefüllt ist.
(Lotman, 1990, 288)"
[7] I refer here to text not in the traditional meaning of
verbal text, but rather to any semiotic object (i.e.
significant objects).
[8] Brian K. Aurand, 1998.
[9] Yet this can also be used to say that philosophy seems
really not to have good heuristic means to get close to the
way signification is built at all. One can in fact argues
that the notion of _signification_ used by philosophy is very
far to be close to the real _signification_ occurring within
concrete communicational contexts, since it is really hard to
isolate signification as a pure verbal fact. .
[10] For a deeper analysis of this problem within semiotics
and communication theory see: Teobaldelli: 1993-94; 1995;
1998.
[11] I discussed briefly this problem in: Teobaldelli, 1995.
[12] A personal proposal in this direction can be found in:
Teobaldelli: 1999.
[13] I mean, that since it is in reality hard to isolate a
single system from others co-occurring in time and space, we
should think to a single sign system _provisionally_ only as
a theoretical device that helps us in analysing. Yet we also
should consequently start to think to some new terminology.
[14] As J.M. Carroll rightly underlines, see Carroll, J.M.,
1980 pp.29-33.
[15] As unfortunately the same Carrol does.
[16] See Teobaldelli: 1993-94.
[17] See: Sieber, 1991.
[18] In this sense while I agree with Willemen's argument
about the need to think to any cultural products in its
communicative context as "essentially dialectical" as well as
I agree with his critical view of semiotics (see Goldsmith:
1998), but I think ones have to avoid furhermore the use of
any verbal analogies in trying to understand how a cultural
product, a text is produced and then works within
communicational contexts. His notion of _inner speech_ in
fact can flat the immaginative power of human symbolic
activity on the verbal constructing, while on the contrary
when someone builds a filmic text, he imagines a semiotical
space where there are events, state-of-affairs and objects,
i.e. he conceives an environment which is made up among
others by figural and verbal elements. Therefore why to call
such a symbolic activity 'speech'? (I prefer to call such a
human faculty "connective ratio"; see Teobaldelli: 1999).
[19] See in this regard: Teobaldelli: 1999.
References.
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Electronic Salon", 31 May 1998,
Birdwhistell, R.L., _Introduction to Kinesics_, Louisville,
University of Lousville Press, 1952.
- _Kinesics and Context_, Penguin, 1973 .
Carroll, J. M., _Toward a Structural Psychology of Cinema_,
Mouton, The Hague-Paris-New York, 1980.
Goldsmith, B., _To Be Outside and In-Between_, in "Film-
Philosophy: Electronic Salon", 2 October 1998
Hartley, R.V.L., _Transmission of Information_, in "Bell
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Lotman, J., _Über die Semiosphäre_, in "Semiotik", Band 12,
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- _Semiotica e Comunicazione_, Bologna 1998, italian
(in press at the time by Baskerville but it never appeared).
- _The Semiotic Space.(critical thoughts for an integrated
theory of human multimediacommunication)_, Ph.D. thesis, 1999,
published in: Subotica, 2003, ISBN 86-83135-13-6.
Willemen, P., _Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural
Studies and Film Theory_, Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press; London: British Film Institute,
1994.
Winnicott, D. W., _Playing and Reality_, Tavistock
Publications, London, 1971.
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