ABSTRACT
The multidimensional features of concentric and diametric spatial contrasts of assumed connection/separation, relative openness/closure and symmetry are prior to language and operate as a candidate protolanguage. They are not simply spatial metaphors embedded in language but are spatial systems prior to language, helping to shape it. A synthesis is being proposed between a spatial-phenomenology and a spatial protolanguage for psychology. This synthesis broadens conceptions of experience in systems terms, involving a concentric and diametric spatial interpretation of later Freud’s life and death drives and Winnicott’s transitional objects. Increasing focus is needed on spatial systemic dimensions of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, as a zone. This mediating space is examined in terms of concentric and diametric spatial interactions to challenge diametric spatial hierarchy between adult and child, while offering spatial resources to challenge cultural conformity and groupthink associated with Vygotsky’s framework. This spatial understanding as a candidate spatial protolanguage is distinguished from lexical and cognitive representation, and from socially constructed images and gestures all previously associated with a language or protolanguage. Structuralist emphasis on linguistic meaning through starkly defined contrasts rest on diametric spatial oppositions between terms; concentric spaces of mutually overlapping meanings offer different systemic preconditions for meaning in language.
