Psychodynamics in Mass Media Society

Abstract

Communications systems have become the central organizing framework of Western society as they have progressed from a position of simply serving to unite society to a status of cultural domination. Through an exploration of definition, the complexity of communications is obviated. The very complexity involved is seen as cause for anxiety, leading to a conceptualization of communication as a psychodynamic process of essential importance to human personhood. Attempting to analyze the complexifying factors in the process of communicating, the author presents a six-level “Noetic Continuum” which delineates a variety of psycho-social stages from which the sender and the receiver may come to the communication interaction. A new communications model is then outlined, emphasizing the degree of experience overlap between the sender and receiver and the commonalities of their symbolic vocabularies as critical factors in the successful communication exchange.