Re: Approaching "Empathy" and clinical phenomenology

[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,  I'll also answer in line and in blue print to keep the order of response straight.

 

In a message dated 7/24/2010 7:52:12 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

I will insert responses in line below:

On Jul 24, 2010, at 8:20 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

On Jul 22, 2010, at 5:16 PM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

First, "intentionality" comes from the root verb intendere which means "to reach."  Brentano understood the term to mean that awareness is always of an object; there is no such thing as bare awareness.  Husserl took this notion and "set it in motion."  For him the phenomenological process involved focusing on and asking questions about what appears, and this process leads to other awarenesses.  For example, he says we can look at a triangle, and we can wonder what it would look like from another perspective.  We can move it or ourselves so that we can see what it would look like.  In fact, we can build up a complex understanding of the appearances of a given triangle that we synthesize in our minds but of which we cannot have an actual visual awareness.

 

Phil:  Yes.  I know.  The "triangle" is conceived as a whole even though we only "see" one side of it.

Sylvia:  In the Cartesian Meditations (#3 I think) Husserl discusses and gives great weight to the mind's synthesizing capacity.  He also noted human curiosity, which leads the synthesizing  process.  He actually goes into detail about wondering what the triangle would look like from another perspective, and he speaks of several differents perspectives, all of which gives us a complete understanding of the appearance of a plain triangle.  It is here that intuition comes into play!   The mind synthesizes a complex "knowable," and Husserl gives this as an illustration of how the mind--by paying attention to what is given in experience and asking questions about it out of the mind's own curiosity--we construct or synthetically develop a grasp of an an intuitable whole.  We cannot intuit such wholes without constructing them, since they do not appear in immediate experience; the mind's understand follows only after the essence has been constructed through the use of the method of inquiry.   

Phil:  I believe intuition if the grasping at once of the intentional object as a whole thing.  Below you lecture me on the definition of categorial vs categorical, but I think you've got it wrong.  I could, for instance, think of justice (a categorial intentional object), and I think of it as a whole thing.  If I think of a false positive, I think of it AS false positive.  It comes as one whole concept.  I can also, as you say, entertain my curiosity, but the grasping of the whole is the intuition.

Sylvia:  Phil,  if we are going to talk about Husserl's view, then let's stick to what he actually says, rather than some second- or third-hand of what someone else says.  In The Cartesian Meditations (#3) H says we construct the complex idea that we then intuit.  Consider the implications of the position you are asserting:  since the complexity of a datum of experience does not appear in immediately experience, we construct the complexity and only then can we intuit the complex idea.  Your position would assert that somehow we make up the complexity rather than synthesizing it by means of our ability to ask questions/change views and gather greater details of the idea, say, of triangle or justice empirically.  If you were correct you would have Husserl saying that we generate the complexity apart from experience.  Keep in mind, that the complexity of the complete concept of "triangle" does not and cannot appear.  Our ability to intuit a complex idea is directly the result of our ability to synthesize facets of that complex from experience of each of the facets.  Intuition of a simple datum is not a problem; intuition of anything complex depends entirely upon the mind's ability to synthesize the complex whole out of appearances (discovered through the use of the method).  You have not understood this important point in Husserl.

 

   We can carry this process forward by seeing that the same person might also wonder about the relationships of the sides to the angles, or the angles to each other, or the sides to each other.  Then can move on to wondering/questioning what the triangle would look like in three dimensions, and what that would mean for the relationships among the angles and sides, etc etc.

Phil: Actually, I don't think it's more the process you describe but the immediate conception of the whole triangle.  We conceive of the entire triangle all at once; it "appears" to us in that way and not in pieces through an addition of logic.  The is why it is also called an "intuition."

Sylvia: I think you have missed this point in Husserl, since we cannot intuit complex intelligible wholes merely by observing immediate experience.   It's important to keep in mind Husserl's views on the naturally curiosity of the mind and its ineluctable impulse to synthesize wholes. 

Phil:  Well, I guess I disagree. I think we can and do grasp complex wholes.  I never said it had to be "merely by observing immediate experience."  That is your imagination here.  It could be by perception, and it could be by simply imagining/thinking.  Also, lets get something straight; I'm not putting myself out as a Husserl expert.  I am talking about a current understanding of these ideas, and I draw from here and there.  I'm rough and eclectic.  You may not like that.  So, when you come in telling me I don't understand Husserl, you may be right, and to that I will say, "So what?"  He's been dead a long time, and even his students when he was alive didn't follow him down every alley.

Sylvia:  Well, you certainly speak in an authoritative way about his ideas, without having wrestled with his actual texts.  The complexity of triangularity or of justice does NOT appear in experience.  It is constructed out of reflection on experience with constant checking any understanding against experience.  We can only intuit a complex whole that we have intuited.    This makes a huge difference if we are to understand how the method actually works in Gestalt therapy.

  Ultimately, if all of the questions were asked, and all of the views and the proofs of the theorems were worked out, the person would, in principle, arrive at the entire discipline of trigonometry.  Brentano's concept of intentionality is static.  Husserl's is dynamic.  If one doesn't grasp this difference one hasn't really understood Husserl's advance beyond Brentano, and it limits one's ability to understand the phenomenological process.

Phil:  Whatever.  I don't mean to be dismissive, but I'm wanting to get to the main point.

Sylvia:  The "main point" is that what you are attributing to Husserl's understanding of "intentionality" is not his understanding, but gets no further than Brentano's.

Phil:  Maybe.  Maybe not.  See my comments about not being stuck to Husserl above.

 Husserl envisioned situations in which people from a variety of backgrounds would approach their inquiries, first calling into question their own assumptions and grounding them in experience.  And then they would proceed in all of their inquiries (1) taking no principle or idea or belief for granted, and thus bracketing whatever cannot be put to an empirical test.  (2) Would constantly consult experience, and then test against experience any hypothesis or attempt at understanding by checking it against further experience.  And (3) not prejudge what will be important or unimportant in experience; rather being open to the possibility that even the smallest detail of experience might prove to be important.

 

This is exactly what we are doing in Gestalt therapy. (1) We do not put people in categorial pigeon holes, but we seek to understand them on their own terms.

Phil:  Did you mean to say "categorical" rather than "categorial?"  It's important for me to understand what you mean.  I think what you actually do is to make people categorial intentional objects.  And that is accomplished through your theorizing about them.  While this might be necessary for professional case conceptualization, I don't think it's the whole story in terms of our praxis.

Sylvia:  "Categorical" means "without exception."  "Categorial" means "a member of or pertaining to a definite category."  I mean "categorial." as I wrote. 

Phil:  You might need to read Robert Sokolowski (one of the people who writes about phenomenology and who is still alive) in his introduction to phenomenology, chapter 7 on "Categorial Intentions and Objects."  We are not talking about syllogisms and logical categories.  We are talking about intentionality, and I wanted to make sure I understood you.  When you said that we do not put people into categorial pigeon holes, I began to wonder if that is not what we actually do at times.  When we make a person into some form of "one of those" or when we watch them and say to ourselves, "projecting," are we not identifying a categorial intentional object–a process going on which is a participle, sharing both verbal and nominative qualities?  I think it verges on it.  And that would be a form of thematizing.

Sylvia:  You can consult the dictionary if you don't agree with me.  Categorical is an "absolute" descriptor; categorial simply refers to membership in or pertaining to a definite class or categorial.  Please give me some credit for having been a professional philosopher, and for understanding these basic concepts.  Now to Husserl.  Yes it's quite true that Husserl was interested in the imperfect appearances in experience of universals essences, and thus there is no room in Husserl's philosophical outlook for any interest in the concrete individual as a unique being.  So Levinas is correct that in Husserl we cannot avoid thematizing in all of our perceptions/experiences.  BUT my interest--and I would hope your interest as a Gestalt therapist--is in the transformation of Husserl's method as we use it in Gestalt therapy.  It's quite true that we sometimes think a person is projecting, is a borderline, is co-dependent, and so on and so forth.  BUT here is the essential point about any and all of these working hypotheses or hunches or first impressions:  we must subject all of our interpretations and hypotheses about a real and unique person to the test of actual experience of that person.  No thought about a person we are working with has any value at all unless it holds up under the test of actual experience with the client.  We are masters in the art of asking questions and developing experiments, BUT we know nothing of the answers to those questiions unless the client reveals the answers.  And what the client shows us is often different from what we first thought about them.  That is an essential characteristic of Gestalt therapy.  In Meditation #4 of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl insists that we constantly check our thoughts again direct experience as we develop more and more complex understandings.  Every element of complexity must be verified by direct experience with this unique person, the client.  It is because our method demands of us that we not pre-judge our clients, that we build up an understanding of each of them only by means of our experiences with them, that we only know what they reveal to us--for all of these reasons, it can be truthfully asserted that we do NOT thematize our clients.  Psychoanalysts and lots of other approaches thematize, but a Gestalt therapist wants to know this here-now unique person, not how he/she resembles anyone else.

 

This is why I bridle whenever I read you as lining up with Levinas's interpretation of Husserl, and then importing this into what we do in Gestalt therapy.  I do not believ for an instant that y ou impose your personal interpretations on your clients. Rather, I believe you help them reveal to you who they are, how they behave, and how they are becoming.  I believe you honor them in their uniqueness, and do not feel you've done the right thing by finding the right category in which they fit.  I would be amazed if you told me you go about categorizing your clients, that your thoughts about them take precedence over what they actually reveal of themselves and how they live to you.  I think you use the the method of clinical phenomenology, yet I do not think you have seen how we in Gestalt therapy have turned Husserl's basic method on its heads, and employ it not to discover universals but to meet the uniqueness of real and unique persons. 

 

Let me be clear on a central point:  I do not understand what we do in Gestalt therapy from the Levinas' understanding of Husserl, namely, as "thematizing" or "placing a client in a definite category."  I think the idea of thematizing as applied to Gestalt therapy is a serious misunderstanding. 

Phil:  I know that you do.  In order to escape it, one MUST reject the basic representing of objects in the phenomenological process. One must say that we have direct contact with things as they are, and I know that that is not acceptable to many phenomenologists.  I wonder if it was acceptable to Husserl; you know him.  What do you think?  If we think about something we are thematizing that thing.  As soon as you start theorizing, not only have you left behind the very phenomenological method you've been expounding here (because you abandon bracketing in horizontalization–I have read Spinelli too), but you are doing what Levinas abhors.  His is an emphasis on transcendence; the Other transcends our ways of knowing.  In the theological turn in French phenomenology, there is a tension between immanence and transcendence as people struggle with Levinas, Husserl, and Heidegger.  It's just not a cut-and-dried issue, and various people come down on the side of immanence while others come down on the side of transcendence.  So, Sylvia, welcome to the club!  You are free not to embrace Levinas.  

Sylvia:  I can't make it any clearer than I already have that I am certain few if any Gestalt therapists believe they are operating under the limitations of Husserl's position that we can only know what appears in awareness.  I believe the most common position among Gestalt therapists is that we live in a world that we are able to know, at least that we know alot about it, even if there are aspects of it for which we do not have the proper equipment.  So I believe the most common stance is one of modified realism, never Husserlian idealism.  It is a serious mistake to think that Husserl thought we never theorize, or to think that Gestalt therapists never theorize,.  But what is missing in what you say, and how you understand phenomenology, is that all of our theorizing is grounded in previous experience and all of it is for the sake of orienting us to aspects of possible experience that would either verify or disconfirm our theorizing. We may think that a given client is, say, projecting when she reports certain events; but we absolutely must put this to the test of further experience.  It might lead us to develop an experiment or to ask certain questions.  If this disconfirms what we speculated about the client's process we will drop the idea. 

 

Too many people think that phenomenology is nothing more than phenomenalism, that is, simple description of appearances.  But in fact, an inquirer into a given domain of facts, proceeds from a background of previously empirically grounded principles and verified conclusions, and from this ground asks questiions of what appears in experience.  We in Gestalt therapy are grounded in personal and professional experience and understanding, and this helps us to focus in certain ways.  Then employing the three principles of Husserl's method (bracketing every assumption that is not empirically grounded, beginning and constantly checking with experience, and horizontalization), we gradually come to know more and more about how the person lives, and in that process dance with the person in ways that can bring about more satisfying ways of living. 

 

Phil,  as I said to Dan in another email, I feel very frustrated that even though both of you read my carefully researched paper on Husserl's philosophy and his method and how we have adapted it in Gestalt therapy, I don't see even the least bit of influence my work has had on your thinking.  I'm not expecting any kind of slavish agreement, but at least some engagement with what I have written in that paper.  Yet both of you write as though you have no acquaintance with anything I said there.  I feel both frustrated and disappointed by that.   

What we do in Gestalt therapy is exactly and absolutely the opposite of thematizing. 

Phil: I disagree.  It's more complex than that.

=

Sylvia:  I don't see you wrestling with the complexity.  I don't see you perceiving the close connection between clinical phenomenology and hermeneutica:  both are concerned with the emergent meaning of specific events or the living of unique persons.  I certainly think that your importation of Levinas' interpretation of Husserl into what we do in Gestalt therapy, when in fact the two are diametrically opposite. 

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,
I'm taking your comments one at a time.

On Jul 26, 2010, at 1:55 AM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

> Phil, if we are going to talk about Husserl's view, then let's
> stick to what he actually says, rather than some second- or third-
> hand of what someone else says. In The Cartesian Meditations (#3) H
> says we construct the complex idea that we then intuit. Consider
> the implications of the position you are asserting: since the
> complexity of a datum of experience does not appear in immediately
> experience, we construct the complexity and only then can we intuit
> the complex idea. Your position would assert that somehow we make
> up the complexity rather than synthesizing it by means of our
> ability to ask questions/change views and gather greater details of
> the idea, say, of triangle or justice empirically. If you were
> correct you would have Husserl saying that we generate the
> complexity apart from experience. Keep in mind, that the complexity
> of the complete concept of "triangle" does not and cannot appear.
> Our ability to intuit a complex idea is directly the result of our
> ability to synthesize facets of that complex from experience of each
> of the facets. Intuition of a simple datum is not a problem;
> intuition of anything complex depends entirely upon the mind's
> ability to synthesize the complex whole out of appearances
> (discovered through the use of the method). You have not understood
> this important point in Husserl.

First, I am not going to talk about "Husserl's view." As I told you,
I don't put myself out to be a Husserl expert. You are the person who
wants to go through Husserl in detail, and I commend you on your year-
long, careful analysis of his work. I chose to go a different route
because I have different interests. I chose to read other people who
can summarize for me the position of Husserl (and others) and present
various facets of phenomenology. Thus, I have the introductions to
phenomenology by Sokolowski and Moran, The Phenomenological Mind: An
Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, by Shaun
Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and
the Sciences of Mind, by Evan Thompson, various companions to
phenomenology and existentialism, various articles such as the ones by
Luft (on natural attitude and phenomenological reduction) and Giorgi
and Giogi (on the phen. method in psychology), a great book in which
various philosophers have contributed (Neuroscience and the person:
Scientific perspectives on divine action, published by the Vatican
Observatory), and on and on. My inquiry takes me to a different place
than yours has you.

No, I never said that I think we generate complexity apart from
experience. I agree that we synthesize facets, etc. For instance,
when you look at a box, and you cannot see the other side of it, you
do not tell yourself you are seeing a two-dimensional object–a
rectangle. You tell yourself you are seeing a cube, and you "fill in"
that part of the object you cannot see. But you do this all at once;
you do not conduct geometric calculations or logical deductions. You
simply "get it." That's the intuition. Yes, of course the mind
constructs this and it differs from the raw data of perception, but so
what? By the way, this is exactly what thematizing is at its base.
You cannot escape it.

Phil

[Philip Brownell]

In what follows I will insert my response along the way:

On Jul 26, 2010, at 1:55 AM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

You can consult the dictionary if you don't agree with me.  Categorical is an "absolute" descriptor; categorial simply refers to membership in or pertaining to a definite class or categorial.  Please give me some credit for having been a professional philosopher, and for understanding these basic concepts.

Phil:  I did consult a dictionary.  What can I say?  There are many meanings a word might have.  While I was not sure what you meant by your use of one ("categorial"), and so inquired, you seem quite sure that I don't know what I'm talking about when I suggest to you that there is at least another way of understanding "categorial" when it comes to the subject of intentionality, and then you get personally offended as if I am calling into question your expertise as a philosopher.  I think I just need to let this alone now.  Sorry you got offended.

  Now to Husserl.  Yes it's quite true that Husserl was interested in the imperfect appearances in experience of universals essences, and thus there is no room in Husserl's philosophical outlook for any interest in the concrete individual as a unique being.  So Levinas is correct that in Husserl we cannot avoid thematizing in all of our perceptions/experiences.

Phil:  Well, I believe Levinas's main bone to pick is with Heidegger, but what the heck.  One H. is as good as another.

  BUT my interest--and I would hope your interest as a Gestalt therapist--is in the transformation of Husserl's method as we use it in Gestalt therapy. 

Phil:  Talk about an understatement.  I am so much interested in such a "transformation" that I question whether or not we actually conduct a reduction.  I wonder how you've been reading me.

It's quite true that we sometimes think a person is projecting, is a borderline, is co-dependent, and so on and so forth.  BUT here is the essential point about any and all of these working hypotheses or hunches or first impressions:  we must subject all of our interpretations and hypotheses about a real and unique person to the test of actual experience of that person. 

Phil:  Think about this. You admit to interpreting, which is the construction of meaning out of experience.  You tell me in a separate post that we can only intuit by a process of constructing something from the data stream of experience.  Now, you tell me that we subject our interpretations and hypotheses about a real and unique person to the test of actual experience of that person.  BUT, what process other than this constructing process you've argued for is going to provide anything other than more meaning making?  When you form an intentional object it becomes just that–an OBJECT.  No longer do you have an intersubjective process once you start thinking about the other person (as opposed to simply meeting them).  

No thought about a person we are working with has any value at all unless it holds up under the test of actual experience with the client.  We are masters in the art of asking questions and developing experiments, BUT we know nothing of the answers to those questiions unless the client reveals the answers.  And what the client shows us is often different from what we first thought about them.  That is an essential characteristic of Gestalt therapy.  In Meditation #4 of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl insists that we constantly check our thoughts again direct experience as we develop more and more complex understandings.  Every element of complexity must be verified by direct experience with this unique person, the client.  It is because our method demands of us that we not pre-judge our clients, that we build up an understanding of each of them only by means of our experiences with them, that we only know what they reveal to us--for all of these reasons, it can be truthfully asserted that we do NOT thematize our clients.  Psychoanalysts and lots of other approaches thematize, but a Gestalt therapist wants to know this here-now unique person, not how he/she resembles anyone else.

Phil:  Sylvia, with all due respect, I don't think you understand what thematizing actually is.  What you have described is true with regard to our process, but what I think it actually describes is the process of working WITH thematization, not some kind of proof that we don't do it.  James K.A. Smith asserts that we can overcome Levinas's objection by seeing the client as an icon rather than an idol (the perception of the client points to something beyond our constructions rather than being an end itself).

Phil

[LG Brownell]

[Philip Brownell]

Not lost. Returning in process...

On Jul 26, 2010, at 1:28 PM, LG Brownell wrote:

> ....I understand I have about a -1% understanding of
> Philosophy....but what happened to Dear Edith Stein....has she
> gotten lost in the "tall grass"?
>
> L

[Sean Gaffney]

No - she's back!

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:28 PM, LG Brownell <rea...@juno.com> wrote:

....I understand I have about a -1% understanding of Philosophy....but what happened to Dear Edith Stein....has she gotten lost in the "tall grass"?

L

____________________________________________________________
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[CROC...@aol.com]

Phil,

 

The distinction I made between categorical and categorial is the traditional distinction, but as the language has developed the distinction has disappeared.  I still think "categorial" is cleaner, since it only means of or pertaining to membership in a category or class.  You objection to my usage of "categorial" was mistaken, and my insistence on making the distinction was also mistaken.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/26/2010 10:58:11 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

In what follows I will insert my response along the way:

On Jul 26, 2010, at 1:55 AM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

You can consult the dictionary if you don't agree with me.  Categorical is an "absolute" descriptor; categorial simply refers to membership in or pertaining to a definite class or categorial.  Please give me some credit for having been a professional philosopher, and for understanding these basic concepts.

Phil:  I did consult a dictionary.  What can I say?  There are many meanings a word might have.  While I was not sure what you meant by your use of one ("categorial"), and so inquired, you seem quite sure that I don't know what I'm talking about when I suggest to you that there is at least another way of understanding "categorial" when it comes to the subject of intentionality, and then you get personally offended as if I am calling into question your expertise as a philosopher.  I think I just need to let this alone now.  Sorry you got offended.

  Now to Husserl.  Yes it's quite true that Husserl was interested in the imperfect appearances in experience of universals essences, and thus there is no room in Husserl's philosophical outlook for any interest in the concrete individual as a unique being.  So Levinas is correct that in Husserl we cannot avoid thematizing in all of our perceptions/experiences.

Phil:  Well, I believe Levinas's main bone to pick is with Heidegger, but what the heck.  One H. is as good as another.

  BUT my interest--and I would hope your interest as a Gestalt therapist--is in the transformation of Husserl's method as we use it in Gestalt therapy. 

Phil:  Talk about an understatement.  I am so much interested in such a "transformation" that I question whether or not we actually conduct a reduction.  I wonder how you've been reading me.

It's quite true that we sometimes think a person is projecting, is a borderline, is co-dependent, and so on and so forth.  BUT here is the essential point about any and all of these working hypotheses or hunches or first impressions:  we must subject all of our interpretations and hypotheses about a real and unique person to the test of actual experience of that person. 

Phil:  Think about this. You admit to interpreting, which is the construction of meaning out of experience.  You tell me in a separate post that we can only intuit by a process of constructing something from the data stream of experience.  Now, you tell me that we subject our interpretations and hypotheses about a real and unique person to the test of actual experience of that person.  BUT, what process other than this constructing process you've argued for is going to provide anything other than more meaning making?  When you form an intentional object it becomes just that–an OBJECT.  No longer do you have an intersubjective process once you start thinking about the other person (as opposed to simply meeting them).  

No thought about a person we are working with has any value at all unless it holds up under the test of actual experience with the client.  We are masters in the art of asking questions and developing experiments, BUT we know nothing of the answers to those questiions unless the client reveals the answers.  And what the client shows us is often different from what we first thought about them.  That is an essential characteristic of Gestalt therapy.  In Meditation #4 of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl insists that we constantly check our thoughts again direct experience as we develop more and more complex understandings.  Every element of complexity must be verified by direct experience with this unique person, the client.  It is because our method demands of us that we not pre-judge our clients, that we build up an understanding of each of them only by means of our experiences with them, that we only know what they reveal to us--for all of these reasons, it can be truthfully asserted that we do NOT thematize our clients.  Psychoanalysts and lots of other approaches thematize, but a Gestalt therapist wants to know this here-now unique person, not how he/she resembles anyone else.

Phil:  Sylvia, with all due respect, I don't think you understand what thematizing actually is.  What you have described is true with regard to our process, but what I think it actually describes is the process of working WITH thematization, not some kind of proof that we don't do it.  James K.A. Smith asserts that we can overcome Levinas's objection by seeing the client as an icon rather than an idol (the perception of the client points to something beyond our constructions rather than being an end itself).

Phil

=