Abstract
My intention is to offer a phenomenological analysis of the process of social referencing, as this phenomenon has been observed in the interactions that occur between young children (6–15 months) and their mothers in the “visual cliff,” the unusual toy, and the stranger situations (Feinman, 1985). A phenomenological analysis (Heidegger, 1982; Husserl, 1913/1931) dictates that I (1) “deconstruct” (Derrida, 1978) the concept of social referencing by untangling the theoretical, methodological, and conceptual problematics that are embedded within it; (2) analyze the structures of social referencing as the phenomenon is experienced in the social situation; (3) locate social referencing within the caregiver-child social relationship; and (4) describe social referencing as lived experience, offering, in the process, a proposed ontogenesis of social referencing in early childhood. It will be necessary to discuss, in terms of points 3 and 4, the psychoanalytic and linguistic theories of the mother-child relationship that Jacques Lacan (1956/1968, 1977c, 1973/1978, 1982; Bowie, 1987; Grosz, 1990) has developed. Indeed, at one level, this chapter may be read as a “Lacanian interpretation of social referencing.”
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Denzin, N.K. (1992). A Phenomenological Analysis of Social Referencing. In: Feinman, S. (eds) Social Referencing and the Social Construction of Reality in Infancy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2462-9_5
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