Exploring the Preconscious
Prompted by a response from Hayden Moore to my article In the Beginning Was the Need to Eat and Drink.
Animals are born with the ability to communicate with one another. I believe that humans are, as well, by way of facial expressions and gestures. I believe that before we learn to communicate with words, humans do so with facial expressions and gestures. As we acquire language skills, we lose our pre-verbal communication skills, like losing our baby teeth.
Have there been studies of the communication abilities of babies with one another and with adults? Are some adults able to tap into talents that have atrophied in the rest of us? Are they able to understand others and express themselves to others without words to a degree that the rest of us would consider a “sixth sense” or “mindreading” or “telepathy?”
I’m reminded of Wordsworth’s musings about the sensitivity and awareness of children that we lose as we grow up and “the world is too much with us late and soon.” I wonder to what extent some of what we lost can be recovered.
After my father, at nearly 90, had a stroke and couldn’t speak, he became adept at communicating with facial expressions. He made many friends and had a rich social network at his nursing home, without saying a word.
Perhaps in addition to our conscious and our subconscious we have a pre-verbal conscious or preconscious, that never completely goes away and that we could and should make better use of.
