Part of the Casswiki article series Cassiopaean Experiment
This distinction is a concept of the FOTCM Work. The idea is that different people use identical words but understand and intend very different things with these. This is a well known phenomenon of exterior humanity.
During one’s formatory years, a person acquires a semantic map of the world. This map determines what concepts are available for use by thinking. This also involves associations between emotions, value judgements on what one may or may not feel, emotional values of words and so forth. The psychological term “working model” is somewhat related to this.
Words are only symbols which are connected to individual semantic maps. These maps can be compared to dictionaries. The juvenile dictionary generally contains textbook or dictionary definitions of words, without depth and nuance brought by prolonged use and experience.
The adult dictionary is more integrated, where words have a richer set of meanings, one could say that there are more connections between concepts and thinking has thus more to choose from. The greater connectedness may even be a literal fact at the neurological level. Such connectedness comes about by exercising all aspects of the mind simultaneously, linking the concept at several levels, abstract, allegoric, concrete, emotional and so forth.
Some persons may be very apt at cognitive skills like specialized problem solving or mimicry but lack essential depth of meaning. These could be said to operate with the juvenile dictionary. This is the case with psychopaths, to take an extreme example.
An important idea of the FOTCM Work on the self is to build one’s dictionary, to establish new neural connections. This is not purely an intellectual exercise. In fact, what people call thinking is often prescribed by emotional value judgements and engrained mental habits. Detecting and countering these barriers can expand one’s dictionary. The expression ‘thinking with a hammer’ is often used for this.
This concept is introduced in detail in the Wave series at the Cassiopaea site.