Deep Dialogism, Inner Voices, and Mental Health

The idea of dialogic interchange between mutually influencing “voices” within an individual has long played a part in psychology and the philosophy of mind. Although the dialogic aspects of human cognition are the most explicit in inner speech, some authors have argued that other types of mental activity can be (or always are) dialogic. In this paper, we introduce two dimensions of dialogism—strength and depth—and present a particularly deep form of dialogism of the mind. We provide one possible interpretation of deep dialogism from the developmental perspective. Further, we show how this form of dialogism has important payoffs for explaining the mechanisms and the phenomenology of human psychological experiences in general and mental health conditions in particular.