| How is child psychology generated? How can children perceive this world? Howdo children establish relations with this world? How is children’s language acquired?How is children’s consciousness formed? All these questions have become hot topicsconcerned and studied by psychologists. Based on the thinking of Merleau-Ponty’sembody phenomenology, it is believed in this paper that children’s cognition is aprocess in which some local phenomena are interconnected by a original relationbased on the embodied cognition, rather than the emphasis on “I” to cognize the world.In addition to genetic factors, child psychology is generated initially based ontouching the world by children themselves and they can cognize the world during thetouching process. Therefore, the cognition is generated by means of the body as astructure whole rather than consciousness, which can be recognized by the formalstructure of flesh. The body is the initial subject of cognition, and the knot andembryonic field of sense to assimilate the structure of world into an inner structure ofbody to make the world become an embodied existence. The world is in my body andit is through the perception of my body that “I” can perceive it. World is one that wecan perceive, the original existence cognized by the body, the unity of objectiverelations contained in consciousness, and in our flesh. From the actual situation ofinfant-child mental genesis, this paper discusses infant-child’s perception, relationalestablishment, language acquisition and consciousness formation. The process inwhich a infant-child becomes “a person” begins with infant-child’s perception of theworld, followed by his relational establishment and language acquisition, and finallyindependent consciousness formation, which makes the infant-child become a fullman. What is throughout in this process is the body, in which body scheme isestablished first, then body intention and expressive body are acquired, and finally, theprocess of flesh is completed.This paper consists of5chapters. In Chapter1, Merleau-Ponty’s embodyphenomenology is systematically introduced, primarily in the body schema, bodyintention, expressive body and flesh. The core idea of Merleau-Ponty is about thebody. He was mainly influenced by psychology at his early stage to discuss the bodyfrom consciousness, and at his late stage, shifted to “flesh” ontological thought bylanguage and painting. Merleau-Ponty’s child psychology was proposed in his middleperiod, in which he completed the transition from body to flesh through exploring thechild psychology and from the view of psychology, anthropology, culturology,sociology, linguistics and painting. In this paper, the body schema, body intention,expressive body and flesh in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology are fully reflectedwhile the perception generation, relational establishment, language acquisition andconsciousness formation are elucidated.In Chapter2, the generation of infant-child’s perception is expounded based onbody schema. One can perceive this chaotic world by his body at the beginning of hisbirth and determine himself existent way after experiencing various existing activities.A infant-child unifies himself with the world through his body, that is, instead ofemphasizing ‘I’ as a subject to cognize the world, he unifies himself with the worldthrough his cognition on it. Initially, infant-child’s world is intertwined together, in which themselves, world and others are a whole and cannot be separated, andinfant-child coexist with their world. In infant-child’s eyes, the world exists in theirbody, through it they can perceive their world and their body is an integrated systemthrough which they can perceive their world. Infant-child firstly perceive the world bytheir body actions, and each of the actions is based on active and direct experience.Infant-child’s perception and behavior are integrative, and their perception is thestructure of experience and a way for then to express the world.The third chapter discusses infant-child’s relational establishment based on bodyintention. At the beginning of their birth, infant-child can not distinguish themselves,the world and others, and then they can cognize themselves in the process of relationalestablishment. After that, they can gradually know the world and others by repeatedly“touching the world” and the direct contact to the world. Infant-child’s perception ofthe world is determined by perceiving others’ ways and established relations withothers. Perceptual style is closely linked with social life styles, and perceptionsubjects live in their social environment and they can experience theirself-intentionality. In the process of relational establishment, the relation betweeninfant-child and their parents is most important and constitutes the matrix of allrelations among human being. The relation between infant-child and their parents isinternal, and can be established and promoted by infant-child, while parents are theintermediators between their infant-child and the world.The fourth chapter talks about infant-child’s language acquisition based on theexpressive body. Saussure’s linquistics make people realize that language isintegrative based on its meaning and can be acquired in its expression. Merleau-Pontyagreed to Saussure’s view of language, in which it was considered that infant-child’sinitial language expressed themselves fully by their body, so that the body was theoriginal existence to express meaning and language was acquired by the expression ofbody. The development of language is a process connecting with the world and others,and the relation between language and thought is one between the body andconsciousness. Language is a way of thinking, a kind of culture, and an expression offlesh. In this paper, the structure and the nature of language are revealed by analyzingpathological speech, demonstrating that thought has a flesh in the structure oflanguage.The fifth chapter mainly deals with the formation of infant-child’s consciousnessbased on the process of embodiment. Firstly, infant-child perceive the world and theothers to establish relations with them, acquire their language through expressing theworld and the others, and finally, become those with independent consciousness. Thestructure of infant-child’s consciousness is integrated as adults’ and spontaneousactivities are predominant in the structure of infant-child consciousness. Infant-childconsciousness is an original consciousness at the prelogical stage, the originalexistential state of human. Infant-child consciousness is developed in daily life andtheir self-consciousness is gradually formed in the process of their “touching” theworld. Infant-child originally regard the world as what our perceive, an existentialstate recognized by their body, and they gradually develop into individuals withindependent consciousness under the combined action of their families, society,culture and history. Infant-child know the world in the touching and touched process,and the world becomes infant-child’s flesh in the perception and perceived process. |
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