Originally proposed by Timothy Leary, the perspective model of interpersonal communication analyzes semiotic comportment at three levels of exchange: Public Communication(Level I) where a person’s overt verbal and nonverbal behavior is observed by both the Self and Other in a given situation; Conscious Descriptions(Level II) which are the perceived verbal contents of messages and codes exchanged by the Self and Other; Private Symbolization(Level III) which consists of projective, indirect, imaginative content of the Self and Other as attributed to both the Self and Other. As discussed by Wilden, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan uses the simple terminology of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic to refer to the respective discourse levels. Subsequent communicologists have adopted the terminology of(1) Direct Perspective,(2) Meta-Perspective, and(3) Meta-Meta-Perspective. The perspectives model thus becomes an applied example of semiotic phenomenological method which progressively moves from(1) Description, to(2) Reduction, and to(3) Interpretation in the analysis and functional specification of human communication. These combinatory eidetic(verbal) and empirical(nonverbal) semiotic codes depict cultural preferences thereby defining the Self in theory and practice.
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