The development of individual purposes: Creating actuality through novelty

This chapter proposes a theoretical model to make sense of how any human being can face future challenges at the present through cultural signs: which particular forms the sign-construction takes, how deep (or shallow) the hierarchical structure of semiotic mediation is, and how temporary or quasi-permanent it might be. The model is rooted in Vygotsky's focus on the dialectical nature of human development, and elaborated in life-course psychology by TEM (Trajectory Equifinality Model of Tatsuya Sato). The making of individual purposes is a process of anticipating the future relations with the changing context. Novelty is the ever-present—transitory—link between what these future relations are, and how they relate with the already known. Human development takes place on the borderline of the past and the future—creating the notion of the present as if it were a solid state of being, rather than an ephemeral state of eternal becoming