Approaching "Empathy"

[Sean Gaffney]

Folks, 

Approaching is accurate...I have now had two goes at the Translator's Introduction. flitting between mc Intyre, Calcagno and Marianne's paper on our home-page, which I am now reading for the fourth time...

I have just read a paragraph (page XXI) of stunning simplicity which seemed like a door with a key in it:

"Furthermore, this psycho-physical individual only becomes aware of its living body as a physical body like others when it empathically realizes that its own zero point of orientation is a spatial point among many. Thus, it is first given to itself in the full sense in reiterated empathy:"

"reiterated empathy" contains so much.

So almost ready to fully start on the main text itself...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

This reminds me of Jean-Louis Chrétein's treatment of the call and the response.  We only know the call in our response.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Steinians:

This also reminds me of the awareness-consiousness continuum in which contact begins in the biological body as an organic function of the o/f field and develops further through sensation as phenomenal awareness and consciousness. 

Situate this in the world necessarily inclusive of others and we add the meeting of perspectives. 

I like the quote, below.

I hesitate over her word “spatial.” Is she referring to my physical body within the co-ordinates of mappable space or my livedbody as a phenomenon with spatiality?

Does she mean that reiterated empathy anchors me in the former much as looking in the mirror and seeing myself touching myself while I experience my livedbody “doing” the established me as one organization?

Is reiterated empathy similar to Mead’s “I see you seeing me”? That is the touchstone for the emergence of self.

Good stuff, Seán.

Now if this conversation would only pay my bills.

Dan

On Jul 20, 2010, at 9:37 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

Just so that I can keep within the current parameters of my understanding, could Chrétein's call and response be paraphrased as "reiterated calling" in as much as the resonse is itself a call?

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

Your response to my call...maybe our "reiterated calling"...or me seeing you seeing me... evokes memories of our minor altercations in a 2009 issue of Gestalt Review. In my response, I regretted that neither of the two formulations we use in Gestalt therapy - the organism/environment field, or person/environment field - adequately the wholeness of our experience. I proposed psycho-organism as a possibility. I think I prefer "psycho-physical" as  used in the quote. Anyway, yes. worth looking further at.

As for the questions you raise, I can only refer you to the Translator's Introduction, xviii onwards to the quote on xxi.

I can also hope that one or other of our more established Steinian colleagues may give it a go!

I agree: doesn't pay the bills, but sure makes being alive more interesting!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

Thanks for referring me back to the Translator’s introduction.

What happens if we substitute “contacting” for “Fusion”?

I like your “psycho-physical.” “Psycho-organism” not so much.

But I have a problem with both in that they do not privilege the human organism.

You know my objections to person/environment. I would restate my objections differently today. Are they third person descriptors?

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

See below...

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:

Seán:

Thanks for referring me back to the Translator’s introduction.

What happens if we substitute “contacting” for “Fusion”?

Where exactly? 

I like your “psycho-physical.” “Psycho-organism” not so much.

Actually, "psycho-physical" is Stein's...

 

But I have a problem with both in that they do not privilege the human organism.

By which you mean?? Please, I'm interested... 

You know my objections to person/environment. I would restate my objections differently today. Are they third person descriptors?

Let us return here at some future point. my sense is that we are building on our knowledge-base, adding dimensions to gestalt therapy that seem worthy of exploring: not exactlyHusserl, more than Lewin, a different direction than Heidegger...

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

I can’t get to the office it seems:

When we use the term “psycho-physical,” what are we saying about the relationship between the phenomenal, the psychical, and the physical? 

What is “psycho”?

(I have some ideas. But not now.)

By the way, Heidegger led to the Daseinanalysis etc. He has an important application to “subjectivity” and psychotherapy despite his insistence in B and T that he was not addressing the personal. 

His seminars to the psychiatrists in Switzerland were clearly about psychotherapy.

So we or I are not going in different direction. 

[Dan Bloom]

Phenomenal is physical. 

Or to put it differently, to parse the phenomenal into material and non-material aspects is problematic.

I’d prefer to avoid this.

The biological body and the livedbody are properties or even dimensions of the human being. Contacting is a process that transcends property distinctions or crosses the dimensions. 

On Jul 20, 2010, at 12:45 PM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Dan,

How about "phenomeno-physical"? 

And it is Stein and Heidegger who (maybe) went in different directions. You are always of us.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

So, back to the drawing-board.

Though I must admit the thought of "phenomeno-something" energises me.

I was going to write "fires" me, but then that would cast you as the NYFD - and even you might blanch at such an accolade!

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Remember that I am sketching as I write. None of this is in ink!

NYFD!

Am I Irish enough?

[Philip Brownell]

Related to our sojourn into authenticity I ran across Des Kennedy's Marianne Fry Lecture on authenticity.  It's pretty good.  Do you guys have it?

Phil

On Jul 20, 2010, at 1:01 PM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Sean Gaffney]

Well, you can always claim that you know me. Might work...anyway, any thoughts about "phenomeno-something" or even if you think it's worth pursuing?

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

To our home page, to our home page! Des "Merleau-Ponty" Kennedy, former Jesuit, fluent Gaelic speaker, yeah - to the home page files!

And thank you.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

I have just uploaded some more resources if anyone is interested (the
Marianne Fry lecture by Des Kennedy on Authenticity and several
articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Adolf Reinach,
Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness, Empathy, Emmanuel
Levinas). These are relevant to our study of intersubjectivity and
empathy as we encounter them in Stein.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Remind me how to get them, Phil.

[Dan Bloom]

Never mind.. Got it.

[Dan Bloom]

Des’s article is lovely. Where did you find it?

On Jul 20, 2010, at 3:03 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

[Haydn]

Stein has a technical meaning for 'psyche' which she develops in
particular in the 'Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities'. So
I'll just say it's a term that will become more apparent in its
meaning for Stein (Lebech discusses it in her study guide pp.1-2).

Stein sees the human individual (psycho-physical) as comprised of four
realms (well in terms of analysis not in terms of reality as we are an
integrated whole), Sawicki gives an overview of these realms on p.
XVII of the 'Editor's Introduction' to Stein's 'Philosophy of
Psychology and Humanities'. These four realms (psycho and physical)
are:


Realms lawfulness that imparts
coherence with each realm

The physical - mechanical causality -(here
we are causally connected to the physical world, but not to other
sentient beings as such).

The sensory or sensate - sentient causality - (open
to causal influences among sensate individuals).

The mental or intellectual - rational motivation - (open
to motivational influences among intelligent individuals)

The personal or individual - personal motivation -
(motivationally connected to the world of value, but not to

other personal beings as such).

So 'person' is a technical term for Stein. A person is value-tropic or
open to the 'world of values', and motivation also plays a key role
with regard to Stein's analysis. But this comes after Stein's
constitution of the psycho-physical individual in 'On Empathy'.

All this should be made more apparent in due course, but just to give
an outline of the road ahead.

Best,
H.

[Dan Bloom]

Thank you.

[Philip Brownell]

At a site for all the Marrianne Fry Lectures; there are several of them.

[croc...@aol.com]

"Phenomenal" is not only physical. Any revelation and any event of any
kind is phenomenal. We as bodied persons are constantly engaged in
revealing-events (revealing and receiving revelations), in n
dimensions. The physical is only one kind of dimension. Phenomenology
is about discovering the interrelationships among revelations in the
several dimensins in which they (and we) occur. I believe that empathy
is one such event.

Sylvia

Dan,

How about "phenomeno-physical"? 

Seán

See below...

Seán:

Where exactly? 

Dan

Dan,

Seán

Steinians:

Good stuff, Seán.

Dan

Folks, 

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

=

[croc...@aol.com]

This seems like an anti-holism position. Too many partitions to suit
me.

Sylvia

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

I didn’t say it was ONLY physical. I regret my brevity.
It seems that you are implying that I did and then paraphrasing some of what I actually said.

Actually, concerning “phenomena,” I am most drawn to thinking that the concept is outside considerations of the physical and non-physical. Phenomena are. They show themselves as themselves.
We “dismember” them according to the manner of our inquiries into them. If we look for the physical/non-physical dimensions, we might find it.

I do not think that phenomenology is only about finding interrelationships among several dimensions. This is one of Husserl’s projects.
Phenomenology is also an interpretative stance. It is a way of understanding being-in-the-world, that is, how that which is in-the-world discloses itself.

One of the wonderful things about the history of phenomenology is that the field has gone through many different developments. Not only has its original source in Husserl offered different points from which it could develop (he was hardly consistent), but the field ramified over time and over place. Different intellectual cultures developed it differently. And it continues to develop.Even in the United States now there is the East and West Coast schools of phenomenology!

So I won’t make any statements that begin “Phenomenology is....”.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

Interesting point.
I wonder if she brings it together.

I also have questions about the partitions themselves.
Of course I would. I need to read a whole lot more. :)

[Philip Brownell]

An event of "any kind" is phenomenal? Really? What about a synapse in the amygdala? That is an event. What about the rains in Haiti. They are an event for the people in Haiti, but right now in Bermuda its dry and we need more rain. Perhaps there is a butterfly connection, but I don't think it rises to the level of a phenomenal event (for me).

I am interested in what you are saying about other possible dimensions, but I don't know of these are phenomenal.
Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Phil:

If it ain’t experienced or experienceable, it ain’t phenomenal.

Any event is not phenomenal to my way of understanding how we use it here. We could call something “phenomenal” as a colloquial way of saying it would be amazing IF we could be able to experience (“Black holes are phenomenal”), but that is not the “phenomenal” of phenomenology. :)

Dan

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan,

 

You said:

"Phenomenal is physical. 

Or to put it differently, to parse the phenomenal into material and non-material aspects is problematic.

I’d prefer to avoid this."

 

Then in your response to what I wrote, you have essentially paraphrased my point.  Intentionality is central to phenomenological process, and intentionality is all about discovering how what is present in experience "points to" other factors to which it is connected (there are several senses of "connected", depending on what the experience is about).  Since we hold that meaning is about the relation of figure to ground, as we try to understand/interpret present experience, we attempt to discover the relationships of this-here-now to what--prior to the inquiry--was in some sense hidden in the ground.  Our way of interpreting experience is NOT about imposing meanings on experience, but of hermeneutically allowing/helping the meaning to emerge into new experience.  In other words, our way of interpreting  involves exploring and experimenting with what appears, following out the connections/intentions of what appears.  Hence we discover the meaning by a phenomenological/hermeneutical process of tracking the figure to its wider context, its ground.

 

I agree that we should avoid thinking in terms of "material and non-material" since this is far too limited.  It's better to think in terms of the many forms experience takes.  It's better to speak in terms of experience in terms of dimensions, since we know there are many kinds of experience.  Non-material covers: personal, interpersonal, social, aesthetic, spiritual, and many more (many of which we haven't yet either discovered or don't understand well enough to give it a name).  And the physical itself is complex, comprehending not only sensory but also extra-sensory, living and non-living, simple and complex, and so on.

 

Further our experience is holistic, simultaneously involving numerous dimensions reciprocally influencing each other, often in ways so complex that we do not yet understand.

 

Love, Sylvia

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Phil,

 

My ontological view (with Aristotle) is that anything that has an effect is real, and there are many kinds of effects, many of which are essentially non-material even if they happen to involve materiality.  Anything that happens is in principle open to being experienced (become a received appearance), whether it is experienced or not.  Moreover, how it is experienced may be by means of instruments of various kinds. The rains in Haiti were certainly experienced. The firings in the brain are, in principle, experiencable by means of instruments.  The flapping of a butterfly's wings could, in principle, be experienced and its effects mapped.   This is the old issue of: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it make a sound?  If we mean by "sound" that someone actually hears it, then no, if no one is there; but if we mean that the air is affected by sound waves such that any hearing person could hear it if there were someone there, then yes, it makes a sound.  Explosions in outer space and light emitted from distant planets and suns is experienced, but many years later; and such things were happening long before there were any seeing beings.  But if there had been seeing beings they could have seen it.  In other words, whatever happens can, in principle, be experienced in some form or another.  An "appearance" is something that "appears," and as such is an event-term.

 

As for many dimensions, we know that love and honor and shame cannot be essentially reduced to the physical. Being fully present with another person in an intimate experience in which each person reveals his/her inmost truth is not essentially physical.  Feeling the presence of another person is not reducible to sensory experience or to the merely physical. The experience of something intrinsically mysterious,  and interacting with that mystery in ways that do not try to reduce it to a controllable thing is not essentially physical.  The thrill and elation of seeing your baby look up and smile at you the first time is not essentially physical.  Being moved by a great singer or hearing a familiar piece of music played in a startlingly and wonderful way is not reducible to the merely physical.  In our lives we constantly live in numerous dimensions, and the events in these dimensions constantly interact reciprocally and holistically.    

 

Warmly, Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/21/2010 6:55:28 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

An event of "any kind" is phenomenal? Really?  What about a synapse in the amygdala?  That is an event.  What about the rains in Haiti. They are an event for the people in Haiti, but right now in Bermuda its dry and we need more rain.  Perhaps there is a butterfly connection, but I don't think it rises to the level of a phenomenal event (for me).

I am interested in what you are saying about other possible dimensions, but I don't know of these are phenomenal.
Phil

On Jul 21, 2010, at 7:22 PM, croc...@aol.com wrote:

> "Phenomenal" is not only physical.  Any revelation and any event of any kind is phenomenal.   We as bodied persons are constantly engaged in revealing-events (revealing and receiving revelations), in n dimensions.  The physical is only one kind of dimension.  Phenomenology is about discovering the interrelationships among revelations in the several dimensins in which they (and we) occur. I believe that empathy is one such event.
>
> Sylvia
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com>
> To: edith-stein...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Tue, Jul 20, 2010 10:53 am
> Subject: Re: Approaching "Empathy"
>
>

> Phenomenal is physical.
> Or to put it differently, to parse the phenomenal into material and non-material aspects is problematic.
> I’d prefer to avoid this.

[CROC...@aol.com]

Dan,

 

Yet astronomers do experience black holes indirectly as they cause the bending of the light emitted from other spatial objects.  A phenomenon is, by definition, is something that appears.  If something actually appears it has effects of some kind whether those effects are experienced by a conscious being or not.  Whatever happens is, in principle, experiencable by a sensient being, whether there is actually a sentient being there to have the experience of not.  Our interest, however, is in what we learn from experience and how these appearances affect us.

 

Love, Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/21/2010 7:04:39 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, d...@djbloom.com writes:

Phil:

If it ain’t experienced or experienceable, it ain’t phenomenal.

Any event is not phenomenal to my way of understanding how we use it here. We could call something “phenomenal” as a colloquial way of saying it would be amazing IF we could be able to experience (“Black holes are phenomenal”), but that is not the “phenomenal” of phenomenology. :)

Dan


On Jul 21, 2010, at 9:53 PM, Philip Brownell wrote:

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,

You write from what I understand to be a critically realistic perspective, and I share that perspective.  Thing happen whether or not anybody is there to experience them happening.  They are events in the real world.  As such, they are ontic.  As such, to me, they are not necessarily phenomenal.  While the ontic field is one size fits all, there is no one-for-all phenomenal field.  There are as many phenomenal fields as there are people who have experiences.  The world of potential experience seems to be one of your dimensions, but potential experience is not actual experience.

I agree that there is something, a dimension, that people throughout the writing ages have called "spirit."  It overlaps the mental and the psychological (where psyche = soul).  I believe spirit permeates both soma and psyche, but that's because I can't escape it.  I can't explain it.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Sylvia,

When you write: In our lives we constantly live in numerous dimensions, and the events in these dimensions constantly interact reciprocally and holistically - then you are for me describing precisely that which Stein set out to explore. Her schema of "realms" - as presented here by Haydn and available also in Marianne's writing - is for me a way of understanding this complexity rather than a description of an individual. Marianne Sawicki says it better than I can:

"Borrowing from Scheler, Stein identifies four phenomenal divisions of activity within any human individual: the physical, the sensate, the mental, and the personal."

I am enjoying the contributions of your incisive mind.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Sylvia,

I agree with you that intentionality is central to phenomenological process.  However, I don't think intentionality in itself is "all about" how what is present points to other factors to which it is connected.  Wouldn't that be the hermeneutical process?  

To me intentionality is the aboutness of experience. It is simply the observation of the valence of experience.  It is about something.  Period.  To me, that is also what makes intentionality basically paradoxical and what makes what we do as gestalt therapists experimental. We simply observe what is, what is currently going on.  We do this IN the natural attitude, accepting what is given as given, without conducting a reduction.  That is the phenomenal tracking we have, until now, been calling the phenomenological method, but it really is not the philosophical phenomenological method at all.  It is a paradoxical and experimental process.  When a person starts making sense of "what is," he or she has shifted to still something else.  That would be the hermeneutics of experience.

There are also two ways in which this whole process (intentionality and hermeneutics) is thematizing.  The intentional object is a construction of the transcendental ego, the constituting ego–the therapist's observation.  Thus, when in the presence of the client, the therapist begins to "see" what the client's experience is "about," the therapist forms an intentional object of the client, and that objectifies him or her.  The simple aboutness is thematizing even without the meaning making.  If, on top of that, a therapist begins making meaning of his or her intentional objects / client features, then that is a further and more elaborate thematizing.  It is this thematizing that Levinas abhors.

How do we escape thematizing?  In one sense we cannot, but in another sense we can if we accept the intentional object/the client's experience as an icon pointing to something more mysterious that we cannot fully grasp.  It is not an end in itself.  It is an incomplete and somewhat saturated phenomenon that we allow to overwhelm our usual ways of knowing and making meaning.  We simply experience the client as he or she reveals and as she or he is given. And that cannot be done if there is any kind of reduction being carried out; it has to be in the natural attitude.

Phil

[Philip Brownell]

Yes and yes. But. What Stein says still seems to relate to the actual as opposed to the simply potential.

Phil

[Sean Gaffney]

Phil,

I find myself hooked by your use of "potential".

It is so different to "possible", yet often gets used as if it were a synonym.

"Potential" for me is closer to "probable".

Let me try it: "What Stein says still seems to relate to the actual as opposed to the simply probable."

Now, I want to try replacing "actual": "What Stein says still seems to relate to the realised as opposed to the simply probable."

Am I making any sense - or are you making any sense of me?!!!

I can still sense a piece of meaning waving at me from these variations...and all I can do is wave back, for the moment.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

The indirect experience of a black hole is phenomenal, of course!!!!!

What a microbiologist sees through a microscope, a radiologist on an X-ray, and so on, are experiences.

 

Experience is experience, direct or indirect. 

You missed my point entirely.

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

Me too, and I have to get work.  Damn.  Work.

Later,

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

As I said, I regret the brevity of my initial comment that implied I meant phenomenal is ONLY physical. I thought the sentences following that comment made it clear what I meant. 

You only responded to the first three words of my message

And paraphrased the rest of my message!

So we paraphrase one another.

That means we were in agreement.

Is there such a thing as a “paraphrastic circle”

I’m not sure if your comments about interpreting and intentionality are directed toward what I wrote. 

Is it? It doesn’t seem to be.

I understand what you say and understand what you mean. I have a somewhat different take on this, as you can tell from the way I described it in my message. I approach this from a worlded orientation.  

We could tickle out our differences elsewhere.

Dan

On Jul 22, 2010, at 2:59 AM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

Phil (and Sylvia):

Who on earth would willing step into a hornets nest?

No on. 

But here I go. 

In a limited way, though

“Intentionality” is a horse of so many colors that we need to bring in a biologist to be sure we aren’t confusing different species.

Sylvia and I had a tussle over a misunderstanding about this. I talked about one definition of intentionality in Husserl (intentionality as the directedness of consciousness and as that which constitutes objects of consciousness, etc) and she another (intentionality as part of the formal structuring of mental objects such as geometric planes and so on — H’s Third Cart. Med I think). We talked at cross purposes. 

In Husserl, intentionality could be said to be the aboutness of experience and how experiences are logically structured.  There are other meanings of intentionality in Husserl, too.

Heidegger was critical of Husserl’s intentionality for exactly the reason, you, Phil discuss when you say we remain in the “natural attitude.” Husserl’s intentionality is revealed via the reduction. Heidegger said that reduction was a mistake. We must remain as beings-in-the-word. The natural attitude our worldedness. He understood “intentionality” to be a function of the way Dasein is in-the-world, that is, part of the understanding of you and me together, embodied, historical, relational. 

Phil, the phenomenological method that is gestalt therapy is not the method of Husserl’s reduction, but the method of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenological method. (I was on the way to this in my GR article.) This is a worlded or situated intentionality, which is of the patient AND the therapist. The interpretation is achieved through therapeutic dialogue, not otherwise. This includes intentionality as the directedness of experience, or contact, and sees intentionality as emergent of the therapist/patient relationship, field, or world. 

Thematizing is inevitable. I have a lot to say about this. I did in Philadelphia and I will in Berlin. It is an inauthentic way of being (in Heidegger’s term), everyday, and inevitable. And we move through it in our therapy via contacting and dialogical contacting. We relate to one another as other outside of this inevitable thematizing. You know this.

I could continue for pages.

I hope this discussion doesn’t become a fight about the right meaning of intentionality or the phenomenological method. 

As I said, there are many different and correct meanings. 

(I was once accused of not understanding phenomenology when I  wrote that the description was central to the phenomenological method. Then I found about 6 quotations from Husserl in support…..)

If anyone needs me to cite references for what I offer now, I will.

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

I am haunted by the precision  philosophers bring to “actual,” “real,” “existent,” and “potential.”

I need to study more before I wade into this!!!

There is a limit to my amateur-ity

On Jul 22, 2010, at 5:51 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

[Philip Brownell]

I understand.  I get the worlded sense of things: dasein, or being there among others.  Fits with contact.  Also with the givenness of phenomena.

Phil

[Dan Bloom]

Yes.

I was thinking about what makes me prefer Heidegger to the Husserl tradition. I came up with 3 things, immediately.

One is how Heidegger presents worldedness.  He really is straight forward and explicit. Husserl and Co are inconsistent, convoluted, and sometimes Cartesian. 

The second is that Heidegger is process oriented. Throwness is a continuing process. Dasein is an entity continuously moving in time. 

Three: He bases thi on a well-developed concept of being that includes such things as mood and understanding — from which we can frame an existential aspect of gestalt therapy

Husserl and his followers have some of this, but so far I haven’t seen it as fully developed as in Heidegger. I’ve seen psychotherapies based on Heidegger, but few based on Husserl and Co — except for his method. (Spinelli may be an exception. He actually incorporates noema and noesis in his approach.)

I am open to learn more. None of my ideas are conclusions to which I am personally loyal.

[Sean Gaffney]

So now let us see if Edith Stein has anything to offer us...apart from the incidental possibility on this site of maybe, just maybe, having corrected the lazy slide into a more and more meaningless use of "phenomenological" as a core characteristic of Gestalt therapy. I have found this very useful and supportive.

Maybe Scheler with his Sympathy and Stein with her Empathy will open a path towards therapy...

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

The givenness of phenomena is relatedness to thrownness.

The world is given to us. We don’t form it through intentionality, reason, or any suprasensible Kantian faculties or intuitions. At the same time, in our being as beings-in-the-world we change and are changed our worldedness.

Otherwise there couldn’t be psychotherapy.

This is a Stein Group. Otherwise I’d explain to you how I currently understand gestalt therapy as a modified Husserlian and Heideggerian psychotherapy. We were an existential phenomenological psychotherapy from the beginning. 

Dan

On Jul 22, 2010, at 8:40 AM, Philip Brownell wrote:

[Dan Bloom]

Except for your use of the word “meaningless,” I concur.

Fire away. I want to learn!

By the way, Laura claimed to have been influenced by Scheler. And Klages.

So we gestalt therapists are can trace our lineage to Lebensphilosophie?

[Sean Gaffney]

Dan,

HELP! Without the word "meaningless" the sentence is...well...meaningless, surely.

As for Lebensphilosophie, wasn't Bergson part of that movement? And isn't Bergson referenced in PHG (a bit of Gestaltspeak, Haydn, if you're reading)? So yes, maybe so. Dilthey, Bergson...Laura Perls into Fritz Perls...Goodman would have had knowledge of Dilthey and Bergson surely also...

Anyway, back to Empathy. 

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Seán:

Bergson? For sure. He was one of the most popular philosophers of early 20th C philosophers.

Why Dilthey? 

I just read some Shutz.

I take back some of what I said about the post-Husserlians….

I learn….

Dan

[Dan Bloom]

In his book on HD, Cassirer, and Davos, Gordon says that beneath all thinkers is an unaware organizing metaphor that shapes their thinking and actually makes it appealing to those whose thoughts have a similar unaware shaping metaphor. 

Interesting.

[Sean Gaffney]

Ah! isn't this what some of us would call "field"?

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Sean Gaffney]

Dilthey? In at the thick of it! Even if Heidegger became critical of him later...

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Sure. 

Bur explicitly?

I am waiting to read Bernd Bocian’s book on Fritz.

Laura never mentioned Dilthey.

When was Heidegger critical?

When he threw away “metaphysics”?

I read last night about Heidegger’s theories on Nietzsche. Very interesting.

You see how hard it is for me to leave Heidegger.

I read an article by Stolorow in the currrent issue of the J of Phenom Psychology. On HD, Nietzsche and psychotherapy.

[Dan Bloom]

I finally know the meaning of “field.”

“Can of worms.”

[Philip Brownell]

is that the ontic can of worms or the phenomenal can of worms?

[Dan Bloom]

Let me get back to you on that.

If you recall, I don’t distinguish between the phenomenal and the ontic.

[Sean Gaffney]

Can of worms? NO. 

"Nothing unconnected ever happens" (Malcolm Parlett). YES!

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Haydn]

That's right Seán,

I'd see these realms as coming out of Stein's descriptive analysis of
human experience as such, and from the perspective her own 'holistic'
individual working from within the phenomenological reduction. Thus,
the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the
reduction (one is experiencing the other individual from 'within', not
that one steps into another person's shoes as is traditionally
understood by empathy - empathy is Ein-fühlung (i.e. in-feeling), here
she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence
of other individuals (given that the existence of the other is
suspended from within the reduction) from 'within'. That is, our
experience of the other within seems to point to their existence (e.g.
if I am happy, my primordial experience is of happiness, it fills me,
but then I notice a girl on the street crying, the non-primordial
experience that now arises primordially in empathy is sadness, the
sadness was not emerging from me primordially, but now 'arises'
because of the 'other', otherwise why should I feel this sadness?, as
Stein states

'In my non-primordial experience I feel, as it were, led by a
primordial one not experienced by me but still there, manifesting
itself in my non-primordial experience' [On Empathy, p. 11].

So this aims to give epistemological credence to an external world
beyond the 'reduction'. She reaches out to 'reality' from within the
epoche.

The Four Realms:

Through the descriptive analysis of 'her' experience Stein is
confronted with 'causal experience' (such as when she gets hungry, or
tired ), she has no control about getting hungry it is 'caused', e.g.
the cells want to be fed, the mitochondria need to create some power
etc. The sensate, here she is describing feelings of joy, sadness
etc. that she encounters as an individual, the mental, at this level
she describes how she as an individual can understand or is motivated
by particular objects etc), the personal, here she describes her
experience of being open to valuation.

Later she will talk about the experience of 'lifeforce'. Stein
believes we experience 'lifeforce' in the following ways, e.g. when we
get tired our lifeforce goes down, when we sleep it goes up.
Motivation can affect our lifeforce, e.g. if a mother is in a car
accident and her child is stuck in the car, she may be physically
exhausted from injury, but she may gain energy from 'outside' via
'motivation' and 'values' (love of child) to gain an immense amount of
energy to break open the car to save her child (here we are moving to
mental/personal realm -motivation/value). This is, as outlined before,
the subject of Stein's 'Phil. of Psy and Humanities'.

Mutually Permeable:

These four realms are mutually permeable within an individual. We have
to be careful to say individual rather than 'person' as person is a
realm open to motivation and value. The causal realm and the personal
realm are mysterious on some accounts, we can't exactly access
someone's personal realm but we can uncover what the values of a
person are by virtue of their acts, their decisions etc., but we can
never fully access the personal or the causal.

We gain access via the sentient and mental realms. I'll try an
example, e.g. someone puts their hand in a fire, (causal), the person
roars, we can understand the 'roar' - the feeling is of pain
(sentient), we expect the person to run and put their hand in water
(intelligent/mental), but the individual decides to put their hand
deeper into the fire (personal valuation) - we are perplexed as to
why the individual would do this ... it is not as such open to us ...
here the 'rational' aspect of values come into play which again is
discussed later in the 'Phil of Psych. and Humanities'.

In terms of Methodology:

Of course Stein is dealing with the method of phenomenology that
existed at the time of her writing, 'On Empathy' was defended in 1916.
She, as part of the Göttingen group kept with what they considered
Husserl's early realist phenomenology rather than going with him
towards transcendental idealism.

It must be kept in mind that Heidegger's development and Merleau-
Ponty's advancements in Phenomenology (these developments often with
much disappointment from Husserl) were not there during the writing of
'On Empathy'.

Intentionality is (as you quite rightly pointed out) a hugely
difficult subject also - an interesting article on Brentano's
revaluation of the Scholastic concept of intentionality into a root-
concept of descriptive psychology which influenced Husserl is
available here ... http://eprints.nuim.ie/997/


I am reading Seán, the Gestalt information I'm afraid is beyond me,
there's certainly a lot going on in this group, it's hard to keep up
at times.

Incidentally, Scheler's term for sympathy is (Einsfühlung, i.e. Eins-
fühlung, one-feeling, there is only an 's' that makes the difference
between Einfühlung (in-feeling) and Einsfühlung (one-feeling)).

H.

[Dan Bloom]

“Nothing unconnected ever happens” is absurd.

It is one of those flights of fancy sentences of lovely rhythm and seeming profundity that makes no sense at all to me.

Let me see.

Oh yes. 

Maybe in the mind of God.

Or on the brow of Gaia.

“He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

How about this? We can create one huge set of occurrences whose members shall be those events with one thing in common -- that they have occurred. Then we can say they are connected by virtue of their membership in the set.

Ta da!

Pardon me for going off on Malcolm’s mysticism. 

But when it is used as a basis for gestalt therapy or as a predicate of our metatheory, I cannot let it pass.

Dan

[Sean Gaffney]

Haydn,

First and foremost, my warm appreciation to you for hanging on in here with us and providing such supportive responses. Sylvia, Dan, Phil and I are well used to a mixture of personal banter and profundities, often a breakneck speeds.

You have no doubt noticed that I usually note when we are in "gestaltspeak"for your benefit - and usually in brackets...of course!

See my comments etc. below - in blue (Dublin's colours, of course!).

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Haydn <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

That's right Seán,

I'd see these realms as coming out of Stein's descriptive analysis of
human experience as such, and from the perspective her own 'holistic'
individual working from within the phenomenological reduction. Thus,
the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the
reduction (one is experiencing the other individual from 'within', not
that one steps into another person's shoes as is traditionally
understood by empathy - empathy is Ein-fühlung (i.e. in-feeling), here
she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence
of other individuals (given that the existence of the other is
suspended from within the reduction) from 'within'.

This is complex. I am utterly fascinated when I read "the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the reduction" and "here she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence of other individuals". I am cognitively breathless at the implications of these phrases as they unfold in my mind... 

That is, our
experience of the other within seems to point to their existence (e.g.
if I am happy, my primordial experience is of happiness, it fills me,
but then I notice a girl on the street crying, the non-primordial
experience that now arises primordially in empathy is sadness, the
sadness was not emerging from me primordially, but now 'arises'
because of the 'other', otherwise why should I feel this sadness?, as
Stein states

'In my non-primordial experience I feel, as it were, led by a
primordial one not experienced by me but still there, manifesting
itself in my non-primordial experience' [On Empathy, p. 11].

So this aims to give epistemological credence to an external world
beyond the 'reduction'.  She reaches out to 'reality' from within the 

epoche.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. So you mean, she really did it...a phenomenological study of an event that presupposes the existence of an other, and shows from within her study that, yes - the other does exist and I can connect with her through empathy.

The Four Realms:

Through the descriptive analysis of 'her' experience Stein is
confronted with 'causal experience' (such as when she gets hungry, or
tired ), she has no control about getting hungry it is 'caused', e.g.
the cells want to be fed, the mitochondria need to create some power
etc.  The sensate, here she is describing feelings of joy, sadness
etc. that she encounters as an individual, the mental, at this level
she describes how she as an individual can understand or is motivated
by particular objects etc), the personal, here she describes her
experience of being open to valuation.

Later she will talk about the experience of 'lifeforce'. Stein
believes we experience 'lifeforce' in the following ways, e.g. when we
get tired our lifeforce goes down, when we sleep it goes up.
Motivation can affect our lifeforce, e.g. if a mother is in a car
accident and her child is stuck in the car, she may be physically
exhausted from injury, but she may gain energy from 'outside' via
'motivation' and 'values' (love of child) to gain an immense amount of
energy to break open the car to save her child (here we are moving to
mental/personal realm -motivation/value). This is, as outlined before,
the subject of Stein's 'Phil. of Psy and Humanities'.

Is the term "lifeforce" Edith's own or a borrowing from Lebensphilosophie? Or even Scheler?

Great - and thanks! NUIM certainly seems to be a goldmine of treasures these days. Must be interesting for you to be there, and I hope to visit you - maybe in December when I come home for Christmas? 

I am reading Seán, the Gestalt information I'm afraid is beyond me,
there's certainly a lot going on in this group, it's hard to keep up
at times.

Incidentally, Scheler's term for sympathy is (Einsfühlung, i.e. Eins-
fühlung, one-feeling, there is only an 's' that makes the difference
between Einfühlung (in-feeling) and Einsfühlung (one-feeling)).

I love the way you kept this priceless little tid-bit 'til last. I'm likely to stay awake pondering the implications....

Again, thank you.

Seán

 

H.

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Phil,

 

If we make a distion between phenomenal field as (1) involving someone's awareness, and 2) appearances as real events, then the confusion goes away.  If, on the other hand, we accept the premise that the only reality we have the "right" to talk about is the awarenesses of sentient beings, then we can't talk about events in which no one is present to experience them.  Since we both take the position/assumption of critical realism we can talk about the two kinds of fields of phenomena.  Any event can, at least in principle, be experienced by some method (directly or through implements).  It's important to be clear about which definition one is using in a given discussion.

 

As for the experience of "spirit," many, many people report having had spiritual experiences.  So there is something real there (in what ever way "there" is to be understood).  For me there exist real and significant mysteries: existents that are intrinsically  ultimately unknowable, uncontrollable, and unpredictable.  Every human being is, at depth, such a mystery, and ultimately we experience their mysteriousness only by meeting them in the present and being open to their revelation, which can never be forced.  That is why, in my opinion, a Gestalt therapist must somehow be open to his/her own spirituality if he/she is to meet the other at the deepest levels.  For me, the spiritual is one of the dimensions of what-is, and I agree that it can/has the power to affect everything else.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 3:19:36 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

You write from what I understand to be a critically realistic perspective, and I share that perspective.  Thing happen whether or not anybody is there to experience them happening.  They are events in the real world.  As such, they are ontic.  As such, to me, they are not necessarily phenomenal.  While the ontic field is one size fits all, there is no one-for-all phenomenal field.  There are as many phenomenal fields as there are people who have experiences.  The world of potential experience seems to be one of your dimensions, but potential experience is not actual experience.

I agree that there is something, a dimension, that people throughout the writing ages have called "spirit."  It overlaps the mental and the psychological (where psyche = soul).  I believe spirit permeates both soma and psyche, but that's because I can't escape it.  I can't explain it.

Phil

On Jul 22, 2010, at 3:22 AM, CROC...@aol.com wrote:

Hi Phil,

 

My ontological view (with Aristotle) is that anything that has an effect is real, and there are many kinds of effects, many of which are essentially non-material even if they happen to involve materiality.  Anything that happens is in principle open to being experienced (become a received appearance), whether it is experienced or not.  Moreover, how it is experienced may be by means of instruments of various kinds. The rains in Haiti were certainly experienced. The firings in the brain are, in principle, experiencable by means of instruments.  The flapping of a butterfly's wings could, in principle, be experienced and its effects mapped.   This is the old issue of: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it make a sound?  If we mean by "sound" that someone actually hears it, then no, if no one is there; but if we mean that the air is affected by sound waves such that any hearing person could hear it if there were someone there, then yes, it makes a sound.  Explosions in outer space and light emitted from distant planets and suns is experienced, but many years later; and such things were happening long before there were any seeing beings.  But if there had been seeing beings they could have seen it.  In other words, whatever happens can, in principle, be experienced in some form or another.  An "appearance" is something that "appears," and as such is an event-term.

 

As for many dimensions, we know that love and honor and shame cannot be essentially reduced to the physical. Being fully present with another person in an intimate experience in which each person reveals his/her inmost truth is not essentially physical.  Feeling the presence of another person is not reducible to sensory experience or to the merely physical. The experience of something intrinsically mysterious,  and interacting with that mystery in ways that do not try to reduce it to a controllable thing is not essentially physical.  The thrill and elation of seeing your baby look up and smile at you the first time is not essentially physical.  Being moved by a great singer or hearing a familiar piece of music played in a startlingly and wonderful way is not reducible to the merely physical.  In our lives we constantly live in numerous dimensions, and the events in these dimensions constantly interact reciprocally and holistically.    

 

Warmly, Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/21/2010 6:55:28 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

An event of "any kind" is phenomenal? Really?  What about a synapse in the amygdala?  That is an event.  What about the rains in Haiti. They are an event for the people in Haiti, but right now in Bermuda its dry and we need more rain.  Perhaps there is a butterfly connection, but I don't think it rises to the level of a phenomenal event (for me).

I am interested in what you are saying about other possible dimensions, but I don't know of these are phenomenal.
Phil

On Jul 21, 2010, at 7:22 PM, croc...@aol.com wrote:

> "Phenomenal" is not only physical.  Any revelation and any event of any kind is phenomenal.   We as bodied persons are constantly engaged in revealing-events (revealing and receiving revelations), in n dimensions.  The physical is only one kind of dimension.  Phenomenology is about discovering the interrelationships among revelations in the several dimensins in which they (and we) occur. I believe that empathy is one such event.
>
> Sylvia
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com>
> To: edith-stein...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Tue, Jul 20, 2010 10:53 am
> Subject: Re: Approaching "Empathy"
>
>

> Phenomenal is physical.
> Or to put it differently, to parse the phenomenal into material and non-material aspects is problematic.
> I’d prefer to avoid this.

> On Jul 20, 2010, at 11:25 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:
>
>
> Dan,
>
>

> Your response to my call...maybe our "reiterated calling"...or me seeing you seeing me... evokes memories of our minor altercations in a 2009 issue of Gestalt Review. In my response, I regretted that neither of the two formulations we use in Gestalt therapy - the organism/environment field, or person/environment field - adequately the wholeness of our experience. I proposed psycho-organism as a possibility. I think I prefer "psycho-physical" as  used in the quote. Anyway, yes. worth looking further at.
>
>
> As for the questions you raise, I can only refer you to the Translator's Introduction, xviii onwards to the quote on xxi.
>
>
> I can also hope that one or other of our more established Steinian colleagues may give it a go!
>
>
> I agree: doesn't pay the bills, but sure makes being alive more interesting!
>
>
> Seán
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Dan Bloom <d...@djbloom.com> wrote:
>
> Steinians:
>
>
> This also reminds me of the awareness-consiousness continuum in which contact begins in the biological body as an organic function of the o/f field and develops further through sensation as phenomenal awareness and consciousness.
> Situate this in the world necessarily inclusive of others and we add the meeting of perspectives.
>
>
> I like the quote, below.
>
>
> I hesitate over her word “spatial.” Is she referring to my physical body within the co-ordinates of mappable space or my livedbody as a phenomenon with spatiality?
>
>
> Does she mean that reiterated empathy anchors me in the former much as looking in the mirror and seeing myself touching myself while I experience my livedbody “doing” the established me as one organization?
>
>
> Is reiterated empathy similar to Mead’s “I see you seeing me”? That is the touchstone for the emergence of self.
>
>
> Good stuff, Seán.
>
>
> Now if this conversation would only pay my bills.
>
>
> Dan
>
>
> On Jul 20, 2010, at 9:37 AM, Sean Gaffney wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Folks,
>
>
> Approaching is accurate...I have now had two goes at the Translator's Introduction. flitting between mc Intyre, Calcagno and Marianne's paper on our home-page, which I am now reading for the fourth time...
>
>
> I have just read a paragraph (page XXI) of stunning simplicity which seemed like a door with a key in it:
>
>
> "Furthermore, this psycho-physical individual only becomes aware of its living body as a physical body like others when it empathically realizes that its own zero point of orientation is a spatial point among many. Thus, it is first given to itself in the full sense in reiterated empathy:"
>
>
> "reiterated empathy" contains so much.
>
>
> So almost ready to fully start on the main text itself...
>
>
> Seán
>

> --
> www.egenart.info/gaffney
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> www.egenart.info/gaffney
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> www.egenart.info/gaffney
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> --
> www.egenart.info/gaffney
>
>
>
>
>
> =

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Thank you, Sean.  I'm glad we're meeting here!

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 3:27:40 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, sean...@gmail.com writes:

Sylvia,

When you write: In our lives we constantly live in numerous dimensions, and the events in these dimensions constantly interact reciprocally and holistically - then you are for me describing precisely that which Stein set out to explore. Her schema of "realms" - as presented here by Haydn and available also in Marianne's writing - is for me a way of understanding this complexity rather than a description of an individual. Marianne Sawicki says it better than I can:

"Borrowing from Scheler, Stein identifies four phenomenal divisions of activity within any human individual: the physical, the sensate, the mental, and the personal."

I am enjoying the contributions of your incisive mind.

Seán

--
www.egenart.info/gaffney

[Dan Bloom]

Haydn and Seán:

This is wonderful!

Haydn, thank you for this and putting up with our banter and my scribblings.

Seán, I withdraw my riff about in response to “connections.” We have an honest and strong disagreement. 

Let me comment, below, too:

On Jul 22, 2010, at 4:08 PM, Sean Gaffney wrote:

Haydn,

First and foremost, my warm appreciation to you for hanging on in here with us and providing such supportive responses. Sylvia, Dan, Phil and I are well used to a mixture of personal banter and profundities, often a breakneck speeds.

You have no doubt noticed that I usually note when we are in "gestaltspeak"for your benefit - and usually in brackets...of course!

See my comments etc. below - in blue (Dublin's colours, of course!).

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Haydn <h.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:

That's right Seán,

I'd see these realms as coming out of Stein's descriptive analysis of
human experience as such, and from the perspective her own 'holistic'
individual working from within the phenomenological reduction. Thus,
the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the
reduction (one is experiencing the other individual from 'within', not
that one steps into another person's shoes as is traditionally
understood by empathy - empathy is Ein-fühlung (i.e. in-feeling), here
she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence
of other individuals (given that the existence of the other is
suspended from within the reduction) from 'within'.

This is complex. I am utterly fascinated when I read "the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the reduction" and "here she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence of other individuals". I am cognitively breathless at the implications of these phrases as they unfold in my mind... 

If this is within the reduction then this is outside the natural attitude. I am reminded of Zahavi’s article on Husserl’s intersubjectivity in which Z argues that H finds the other from with the transcendental Ego. Intersubjectivity is implicit in subjectivity. I need to review Z and where he dates his sources in H.

That is, our
experience of the other within seems to point to their existence (e.g.
if I am happy, my primordial experience is of happiness, it fills me,
but then I notice a girl on the street crying, the non-primordial
experience that now arises primordially in empathy is sadness, the
sadness was not emerging from me primordially, but now 'arises'
because of the 'other', otherwise why should I feel this sadness?, as
Stein states

'In my non-primordial experience I feel, as it were, led by a
primordial one not experienced by me but still there, manifesting
itself in my non-primordial experience' [On Empathy, p. 11].

So this aims to give epistemological credence to an external world
beyond the 'reduction'.  She reaches out to 'reality' from within the 

epoche.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. So you mean, she really did it...a phenomenological study of an event that presupposes the existence of an other, and shows from within her study that, yes - the other does exist and I can connect with her through empathy.

I also like this. But Seán, aren’t you troubled by the reduction? I am. I know that she is working with the 1916 Husserl model and I and we must take her as she is. 

The Four Realms:

Through the descriptive analysis of 'her' experience Stein is
confronted with 'causal experience' (such as when she gets hungry, or
tired ), she has no control about getting hungry it is 'caused', e.g.
the cells want to be fed, the mitochondria need to create some power
etc.  The sensate, here she is describing feelings of joy, sadness
etc. that she encounters as an individual, the mental, at this level
she describes how she as an individual can understand or is motivated
by particular objects etc), the personal, here she describes her
experience of being open to valuation.

Later she will talk about the experience of 'lifeforce'. Stein
believes we experience 'lifeforce' in the following ways, e.g. when we
get tired our lifeforce goes down, when we sleep it goes up.
Motivation can affect our lifeforce, e.g. if a mother is in a car
accident and her child is stuck in the car, she may be physically
exhausted from injury, but she may gain energy from 'outside' via
'motivation' and 'values' (love of child) to gain an immense amount of
energy to break open the car to save her child (here we are moving to
mental/personal realm -motivation/value). This is, as outlined before,
the subject of Stein's 'Phil. of Psy and Humanities'.

Is the term "lifeforce" Edith's own or a borrowing from Lebensphilosophie? Or even Scheler?

Good question. And Bergson’s elan vital? Schopenhauer’s Will? 

Mutually Permeable:

These four realms are mutually permeable within an individual. We have
to be careful to say individual rather than 'person' as person is a
realm open to motivation and value. The causal realm and the personal
realm are mysterious on some accounts, we can't exactly access
someone's personal realm but we can uncover what the values of a
person are by virtue of their acts, their decisions etc., but we can
never fully access the personal or the causal.

We  gain access via the sentient and mental realms. I'll try an
example, e.g. someone puts their hand in a fire, (causal), the person
roars, we can understand the 'roar' - the feeling is of pain
(sentient), we expect the person to run and put their hand in water
(intelligent/mental), but the individual decides to put their hand
deeper into the fire (personal valuation)  - we are perplexed as to
why the individual would do this ... it is not as such open to us ...
here the 'rational' aspect of values come into play which again is
discussed later in the 'Phil of Psych. and Humanities'.

In terms of Methodology:

Of course Stein is dealing with the method of phenomenology that
existed at the time of her writing, 'On Empathy' was defended in 1916.
She, as part of the Göttingen group kept with what they considered
Husserl's early realist phenomenology rather than going with him
towards transcendental idealism.

I want to know more about this. 

It must be kept in mind that Heidegger's development and Merleau-
Ponty's advancements in Phenomenology (these developments often with
much disappointment from Husserl) were not there during the writing of
'On Empathy'.

Of course. We cannot read backwards. It is important to take her on her own terms. As I said in another email, I consider Heidegger to be tilling an entirely different field. 

Yet I do read backwards and forwards as I try to learn. 

Intentionality is (as you quite rightly pointed out) a hugely
difficult subject also - an interesting article on Brentano's
revaluation of the Scholastic concept of intentionality into a root-
concept of descriptive psychology which influenced Husserl is
available here ... http://eprints.nuim.ie/997/

Thank you for reminding us about the complexity of intentionality. 

Great - and thanks! NUIM certainly seems to be a goldmine of treasures these days. Must be interesting for you to be there, and I hope to visit you - maybe in December when I come home for Christmas? 

I am reading Seán, the Gestalt information I'm afraid is beyond me,
there's certainly a lot going on in this group, it's hard to keep up
at times.

Incidentally, Scheler's term for sympathy is (Einsfühlung, i.e. Eins-
fühlung, one-feeling, there is only an 's' that makes the difference
between Einfühlung (in-feeling) and Einsfühlung (one-feeling)).

I love the way you kept this priceless little tid-bit 'til last. I'm likely to stay awake pondering the implications....

“EinSfühlung”! Fascinating

To me sympathy implies  an asymmetrical from one who is sympathetic to the person who is the object of sympathy. Empathy implies a symmetrical relationship. 

[CROC...@aol.com]

Dear Phil,

 

I'm going to respond to your email in pieces.  I want to deal with this part on its own.

 

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.  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.  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.

 

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.  Thus we put aside our preconceptions about the person and stand open to however and whatever the client shows us.  We are not primarily concerned about the issue of "is this really true, did it really happen that way?"  Rather we want to know how what they are revealing to us verbally and nonverbally works systemically in how they live in their world.  We track the uniquely personal logic of the person's revelations to discover what is connected to what in the way they live.  (2) We begin and end with our experience with the client.  Being open to his self-revelations (both verbal and nonverbal) something often prompts our curiosity; we often have a tentative hypothesis about it.  BUT we do not stay with our own understanding unless it checks out in further experience with the client, either by further inquiry or an experiment.  Everything we know about the client we discover through experience with the client, beginning and ending there.  (3) We do not prejudge what revelations will be significant and important, but some small detail--like someone coughing repeatedly as they tell a story, someone twisting a lock of her hair, someone wrapping her arms around herself when she begins to talk about her boyfriend, someone suddenly becoming very still, etc etc--may turn out to lead to a hugely important piece of therapeutic work.  We do not prejudge what will be important but rely on our own curiosity and care to help us focus and to explore further so that the client reveals himself more and more.

 

The phenomenological process is a hermeneutical process! Here we trace out how what the client reveals to us (figure) leads to emergent figures that were previously hidden in the ground.  In that way we discover the meaning of her twisting a lock of hair, coughing while telling a story, becoming very still, etc.  Over time, both client and therapist come to an understanding of the unique ways in which the client's living is organized, and along the way many intentions/connections begin to shift and change. 

 

Sylvia

 

I don't have any more time now, but tonight I'll return to the rest of your email.

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

You are very clear. Thank you for that!

But you imply there is only one meaning to intentionality and accordingly one way to understand it in gestalt therapy. 

This afternoon I was reading Alfred Schutz description of it. Although he was an orthodox Husserlian, he made it clear that insofar as intentionality had any relevance to social science, it meant the directedness of consciousness including the intentional object and the intending ego or subject. He developed this further. I simplify. 

We can also look at Heidegger.

Or we can look at John Searle.

Or Giorigi and Giorgi.

Or Spinelli.

Or Shaun Gallagher.

Or......

I offer this so we can avoid a tussle over “intentionality.”

By the way, I am sure Phil already knew the relationship between Brentano and Husserl. :)

love,

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

Hi,

I'm going to try to respond in line below:

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

Dear Phil,

 

I'm going to respond to your email in pieces.  I want to deal with this part on its own.

 

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.

  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."

  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.

 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.

  Thus we put aside our preconceptions about the person and stand open to however and whatever the client shows us.  We are not primarily concerned about the issue of "is this really true, did it really happen that way?"  Rather we want to know how what they are revealing to us verbally and nonverbally works systemically in how they live in their world.  We track the uniquely personal logic of the person's revelations to discover what is connected to what in the way they live.  (2) We begin and end with our experience with the client.  Being open to his self-revelations (both verbal and nonverbal) something often prompts our curiosity; we often have a tentative hypothesis about it.  BUT we do not stay with our own understanding unless it checks out in further experience with the client, either by further inquiry or an experiment.  Everything we know about the client we discover through experience with the client, beginning and ending there.  (3) We do not prejudge what revelations will be significant and important, but some small detail--like someone coughing repeatedly as they tell a story, someone twisting a lock of her hair, someone wrapping her arms around herself when she begins to talk about her boyfriend, someone suddenly becoming very still, etc etc--may turn out to lead to a hugely important piece of therapeutic work.  We do not prejudge what will be important but rely on our own curiosity and care to help us focus and to explore further so that the client reveals himself more and more.

Phil: We each have our ways of understanding what we are doing.  Maybe that's as good as it gets.  I have to put things away and get down to the street to catch my ride home.  I'll try to get back to this, but if I don't, I'm sure we'll find our way back around to it yet again.  This is, after all something we've been discussing for awhile.

Phil

[Haydn]

Dear Dan, Seán et al.,

You're welcome, I hope to just outline what I know mostly in terms of
the expert sources - and it helps me to learn, hopefully I won't
misguide any of you.

I must admit, it is interesting to see how psychotherapists
communicate, it's very dynamic in this virtual environment, I can
certainly see that you all have a great ability to make the most of
group forums and to think and respond very rapidly! Imagine what
'reality' must be like.

Seán, December would be great, you can let us know when you'll be
coming to Ireland and we can make sure our calendars are freed up.
There is indeed a bit of phenomenological presence in NUIM (Classic,
Scholastic and Renaissance being the other areas of the staff) alright
and a lot at UCD (Dermot Moran etc). UCD have extended links to
Copenhagen (Prof. Zhavi's university) so there's a lot of
phenomenological interest in Ireland at the moment. UCD have linked to
TCD too in order to cover the Analytic approach which is probably the
more prevalent philosophical movement now in Anglo-American speaking
universities.

Now I don't know how to write in Green or Gold (yet) (An Mhí Abú) in
this environment :-). So I'll just have to respond with an asterix.

> This is complex. I am utterly fascinated when I read "the essence of the act of empathy is itself defined within the reduction" and "here she also seems to epistemologically demonstrate the probable existence of other individuals". I am cognitively breathless at the implications of these phrases as they unfold in my mind...

* Yes, empathy is defined by Stein from within the reduction. Ever
since Descartes the existence of the external world has been
problematic, so Stein helps in her approach. Whether it proves the
existence of the other 100 percent is debatable. You could imagine an
individual arguing that a brain in the vat could be making up the
experience of the 'other'. But Stein does try to distinguish between
fantasy, memory, perception and empathy which seem to overcome this
objection (On Empathy p. 10-11).

>If this is within the reduction then this is outside the natural attitude. I am reminded of Zahavi’s article on Husserl’s intersubjectivity in which Z argues that H finds the other from with the transcendental Ego. Intersubjectivity is implicit in subjectivity. I need to review Z and where he dates his sources in H.

*Well Stein will later on in 'On Empathy' speak about the necessity of
empathy to constitute our own 'individual', later she will talk about
an I/We constitution when she considers the (community). It appears
that an I can't be constituted without a 'We' as in an 'I' needs
another 'I'. We can try to imagine constituting an 'I' without another
'I' - to unfold our 'I'. For example, It is interesting to think of
the way children brought up by wolves would appear to constitute
themselves like the wolves (although there is much discussion on feral
children - are they mentally compromised prior to living with the
animals etc). Here the 'I' of the individual is not fully constituted
as an 'I' ... it needs another human individual to unfold as an 'I'.
If the child was placed in a dark room and just fed by some means but
not communicated to or see humans, we can imagine that its 'I' would
not be unfolded.

In terms of Husserl's work on intersubjectivity, Sawicki's article
'Making Up Husserl's Mind on Constitution', Yearbook of the Irish
Philosophical Society, 2007, points out that Stein had particular
input into the writings of Husserl's 'Ideas II' on the area of
intersubjectivity etc. She had found working with Husserl very
difficult, as Husserl kept writing rather than spend time editing. So
Stein was editing the work and 'filling' in the gaps.

> Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. So you mean, she really did it...a phenomenological study of an event that presupposes the existence of an other, and shows from within her study that, yes - the other does exist and I can connect with her through empathy.

> I also like this. But Seán, aren’t you troubled by the reduction? I am. I know that she is working with the 1916 Husserl model and I and we must take her as she is.

* Well, yes, it took me a while to get this, that is, that the other
is argued for via experience that is given within the epoche, the
experience of the other is 'in-felt', empathy happens 'within' not out
there. I guess she is just describing how we empathize, we find that
we don't leave our body to 'sit' into someone else's to feel what they
feel, we 'see' them and 'within' a 'feeling' arises.

Dan that is true, it is within the reduction, but Stein is opening the
reduction slowly and surely, she is working within but taking us out
while remaining true to the method. She seems to take off towards the
end of 'On Empathy' and some think that she has left the method
behind. But sure we'll have to wait and see what you think about that.

With regard to the natural attitude, this was particularly problematic
for me when considering the methodology of Stein in her approach to
empathy and neuroscientists when they 'explained' empathy in relation
to mirror neurons. Mirror neurons were discussed from the 1990s
onwards, when e.g. 'I lift a hammer' certain neurons in my mind/brain
fire, when a person watches me pick up the hammer - the same area of
neurons in his/her mind/brain fire.

So it is as if the observer was lifting the hammer by merely watching
the other person lift the hammer (the action is mirrored), but the
action is specific to each individual's mind. Scientists analysing
this information tend to do so from outside the reduction, but surely
when they think about 'empathy' and what empathy 'is', the best way to
do that is to use the method of phenomenology - to get to its
(empathy's) essence, to describe it in such a way, that it cannot be
but that which it is described to be by definition?

There are a few books on the topic of natural science and
phenomenology and how the two might meet especially in the realm of
mathematics e.g. Richard Feist, 'Husserl and the Sciences',
particularly the chapter on Weyl who Husserl approved of in his
lifetime.

http://books.google.com/books?id=bsmqdTaGejAC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=Richard+Feist+Husserl+and+Sciences&source=bl&ots=6ekzUP7Thp&sig=mkGnMNuFcTTE1lVXl6Z_EbR7-oM&hl=en&ei=RsZITM-rJJ720gSAq7yECw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

And Evan Thompson's: Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the
Sciences of the Mind, http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Life-Biology-Phenomenology-Sciences/dp/0674025113

Thompson uses Stein's philosophy of empathy in one of the final
chapters in his analysis of mirror neurons.

>Is the term "lifeforce" Edith's own or a borrowing from Lebensphilosophie? Or even Scheler?

>Good question. And Bergson’s elan vital? Schopenhauer’s Will?

*Well I think it's quite novel to Stein - Lebenskraft, Sawicki states
in 'Phil of Psy and Humanities' p. xvii

'phenomenologists like Husserl and Stein regarded consciousness as a
living fabric constantly weaving itself in experience. They described
the present moment as continually going over into the past. Yet at the
same time, they said, consciousness is able to 'recall' past
experiences or 'look forward' to new ones. This so-called stream of
consciousness is investigated by Stein with the help of a sustained
metaphor: electric current. Electricity was still a relatively new
technology in 1919, when Stein was composing these treatises, and it
seems to have piqued her imagination. She depicts sentient life in
terms of a current that is continually generated, transformed, and
allocated to various activities. Life requires an expenditure of
power. Stein coins the phrase 'lifepower' (Lebenskraft) to designate
our finite but renewable capability for living, that is, for having
lived experiences of various kinds. Experiences occurring within the
physical and sensate phenomenal realms will either deplete or
replenish the 'voltage' of available lifepower; but by how much cannot
always be predicted because we can tap into other sources of lifepower
as well [e.g. from motivation etc.]. Fluctuations in lifepower provide
the evidence which leads Stein to distinguish the phenomenal realms as
she does [causal, sentient, mental, personal]'.


Angela Alles Belo - has an article on this area that might be of
interest:

http://international-journal-of-axiology.net/articole/nr8/art07.pdf

> > Mutually Permeable:
>
> > These four realms are mutually permeable within an individual. We have
> > to be careful to say individual rather than 'person' as person is a
> > realm open to motivation and value. The causal realm and the personal
> > realm are mysterious on some accounts, we can't exactly access
> > someone's personal realm but we can uncover what the values of a
> > person are by virtue of their acts, their decisions etc., but we can
> > never fully access the personal or the causal.
>
> > We gain access via the sentient and mental realms. I'll try an
> > example, e.g. someone puts their hand in a fire, (causal), the person
> > roars, we can understand the 'roar' - the feeling is of pain
> > (sentient), we expect the person to run and put their hand in water
> > (intelligent/mental), but the individual decides to put their hand
> > deeper into the fire (personal valuation) - we are perplexed as to
> > why the individual would do this ... it is not as such open to us ...
> > here the 'rational' aspect of values come into play which again is
> > discussed later in the 'Phil of Psych. and Humanities'.
>
> > In terms of Methodology:
>
> > Of course Stein is dealing with the method of phenomenology that
> > existed at the time of her writing, 'On Empathy' was defended in 1916.
> > She, as part of the Göttingen group kept with what they considered
> > Husserl's early realist phenomenology rather than going with him
> > towards transcendental idealism.
>
> I want to know more about this.

*The historical change in Husserl's writing? Or Stein's understanding
of motivation.

> To me sympathy implies an asymmetrical from one who is sympathetic to the person who is the object of sympathy. Empathy implies a symmetrical relationship.

*There is also the German word mit-fühlung (mit-with -feeling) another
way of saying 'sympathy'.




H.

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Haydn,

On Jul 22, 2010, at 7:35 PM, Haydn wrote:

> So it is as if the observer was lifting the hammer by merely watching
> the other person lift the hammer (the action is mirrored), but the
> action is specific to each individual's mind. Scientists analysing
> this information tend to do so from outside the reduction, but surely
> when they think about 'empathy' and what empathy 'is', the best way to
> do that is to use the method of phenomenology - to get to its
> (empathy's) essence, to describe it in such a way, that it cannot be
> but that which it is described to be by definition?

I think a person operates within his or her world. Would Edith's horizon find room for naturalism? For a phenomenal process within the natural attitude? Or would she have rather automatically gone to finding answers within the reduction? If some people think she was beginning to leave it (toward the end of On Empathy, as you say), then perhaps she was.

I know that my interest in phenomenology comes from the need to account for human experience and the way people think, feel, and behave. When I am with a client, I am most assuredly locked down to the lived body and the life world of things as given. I am curious if you can see a reduction in what a therapist might do, one who accepts the client as he or she is, as presented.

Phil

[Philip Brownell]

Hello,
This is to let you all know that Sarah Borden has joined. She is busy with family and so may likely be reading only for awhile. Just wanted you to know.

Warm Regards,
Phil

[John Gurmin]

Dear Phil,

Interesting question. As you probably know the later Stein studied
Aristotle and Aquinas and thus was confronted directly with realist
philosophers. One of her final works 'Finite and Eternal Being' tries
to bring insights brought from phenomenology and Aristotelian-
Scholastic thinking together and it seems you are aiming to bring
together the phenomenological reduction and the natural attitude - or
at least find the bridge between the two.

There is an interesting work of Stein's where she compares Husserl's
thinking to Aquinas', which can be found in 'Knowledge and Faith'
trans. Walter Redmond, (ICS, 2000) written in 1929 for Husserl's 70th
birthday. In this work Stein compares her learning of Aquinas with
Husserl, it's from pp.1-63 and is in two columns, one with Husserl's
view, the other with Thomas and how their philosophical positions
might 'fit' or not 'fit'.

Stein says that 'phenomenology could not succeed on [the] course [that
Husserl wished to take it] - and this was the constant objection that
his own students raised against its Founder - in winning back from the
realm of immanence 'that' objectivity from which he had after all set
out and insuring which was the point: a truth and reality free from
any relatedness to the subject' (Knowledge and Faith, p. 32, column
b). This was the position of the Goettigen school of which Stein was
a follower and which did not follow Husserl towards Transcendental
Idealism.

So the early phenomenological realists would still hold that the
object or other subject existed in reality and that phenomenology was
an aid to scientifically analyzing that reality. Husserl saw
phenomenology as a 'rigorous science' which was to be devoid of
presuppositions and which aimed to ground the other sciences. So, when
the client comes into the office and you chat with them I presume this
would be in the natural attitude, but then as you go into therapy,
then the reduction might be of benefit, when you realize that the
client is effecting you by causing 'sadness' within, here empathy as
Stein defines it is occurring. If the client cries and you forget your
'I', then perhaps this is sympathy or contagion rather than empathy.
Stein considers contagion in 'On Empathy'.

But perhaps the hermeneutical developments in phenomenology which come
later offer the therapist more flexibility in their use of
phenomenology. But I think that it is good to keep these in mind while
reading the texts of Stein, to see how the two disciplines can relate,
perhaps by reading her descriptive analysis of psychological states of
her own and others some deeper correlations can be found between the
two disciplines.

For me it is the epistemological aspects of phenomenology which are of
primary interest, the way it as a method aims to ground all other
forms of knowing without presuppositions (if that is possible), and
the way that Stein is aiming to use the method to define acts of
empathy, memory, perception, and the disciplines of psychology and its
subject matter.

H.

[Dan Bloom]

Haydn:

Excellent comments.

You are helping me remain clear about Stein so as not to lose her in the complex differences among phenomenologists.

If it is possible ever to proceed without presuppositions is one of the pivotal issues for me. I will set that aside as I study Stein.

Dan

On Jul 24, 2010, at 9:29 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

> Dear Phil,
>
> Interesting question. As you probably know the later Stein studied Aristotle and Aquinas and thus was confronted directly with realist philosophers. One of her final works 'Finite and Eternal Being' tries to bring insights brought from phenomenology and Aristotelian-Scholastic thinking together and it seems you are aiming to bring together the phenomenological reduction and the natural attitude - or at least find the bridge between the two.

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Dan,

 

First let me say that I think this discussion is much wider than studying Stein, and that we should post this particular discussion (and similar others) on the Gestalt_L and AAGTMembers list.  I imagine there are many other people would might not be interested in Stein but would be interested in this. Thus I'm posting this to the GSTALT-L  list.

 

Now to respond to your post.

 

Yes, I'm also certain Phil knows that Brentano's version is "awareness always intends an object."  But I do not think he understands that and how Husserl's meaning diverges from this, given what he says about it the post to which I responded.  In fact, I think there is widespread confusion about what the term means in Husserl and its relevance to Gestalt therapeutic processes.. Phil's statement of it does not reveal the difference. I don't know about the other thinkers you mention, but I do know that Husserl's concept of intentionality is dynamic, involving movement from examination of present experience to other contents that are suggested (reached) by present experience.  This is what we do much of the time in Gestalt therapy:exploring and experimenting with present experience in ways that lead to what is "connected" to what in the client's living, and thus to the ground in his actual living of his responses and interactions with others. 

 

It's important not to forget that Husserl was both a Platonist and a mathemetician, and that from both of the elements in his background his orientation would be to follow out what present implies (reaches toward) and leads the mind to other contents.  In Plato, for example, it is impossible to understand the meaning of "justice" without examining the nature of "human," "society," wisdom," "courage," etc.  Mathematicians do not simply contemplate geometrical figures or mathematical statements, but rather, raise questions about their relationships to other figures or develop proofs of the statements by subjecting them to other statements and principles in the wider field of mathematics.  Similarly, if someone says in a Gestalt session, "I'm scared," we immediately want to know the answer to "Scared of what?"  And if the client says "I'm scared of my father," we instantly want to know "What does the father do that scares you," or "How does he scare you?" or "How do you react when you are scared of him?" etc.  We do not simply dwell on a given revelation, but engage in a variety of processes to discover how this fact operates in the person's life and in his relationships with others.

 

The important thing in understanding Husserl's method is to bracket off the goal he was trying to achieve (the system of pure essences that inform the world of experience) and to look at what is involved in the method itself.  The movement within his system depends on the dynamic character of his concept of intentionality, and that is its relevance for Gestalt therapy.  Spinelli's explanation of the requirements of the method, in my opinion, are accurate descriptions of what is required in the method: bracketing (and thus not employing) all assumptions that cannot be verified by experience; beginning and always checking/testing hypotheses and conclusions against further experience; and horizontalization (not prejudging what will be important/significant in present experience).  These are principles that operate in Gestalt therapy, and for the most part in empirical science.  Working in accordance with these principles we (Gestalt therapists) discover two major things: how the person's living is organized and how this affects his behavior; and we are able to facilitate the emergence of the meanings of the person's experience  from his  progressive self-revelations.  In this way we do not thematize and objectify the person, but we able to meet this here-now-unique-person as he uniquely reveals himself to be and as he is becoming.

 

There are differing opinions about what does and does not appear in present experience, as well as differing opinions about the goals to be achieved through the use of the method. Many of the differences among phenomenologists have to do with these kinds of differences.  We do not all assume the limitations that are inherent in Husserl's notion of experience; we are free to take a modified realistic position (and other possible ontological positions) as to the nature of experience if that seems closer to what we mean by "experience."  I think it's important for us Gestalt therapists to pay attention to what the PHG authors say in "The Present Situation" early in the original version of PHG:  the method they said they were developing was essentially an actual meeting the actual living of the person, and with the person to discover how that living is organized.  The processes of meeting and discovering open up numerous opportunities for change--and the alleviation of suffering and dissatisfaction.

 

 

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 3:57:49 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, D...@djbloom.com writes:

Sylvia:

You are very clear. Thank you for that!

But you imply there is only one meaning to intentionality and accordingly one way to understand it in gestalt therapy. 

This afternoon I was reading Alfred Schutz description of it. Although he was an orthodox Husserlian, he made it clear that insofar as intentionality had any relevance to social science, it meant the directedness of consciousness including the intentional object and the intending ego or subject. He developed this further. I simplify. 

We can also look at Heidegger.

Or we can look at John Searle.

Or Giorigi and Giorgi.

Or Spinelli.

Or Shaun Gallagher.

Or......

I offer this so we can avoid a tussle over “intentionality.”

By the way, I am sure Phil already knew the relationship between Brentano and Husserl. :)

love,

Dan

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

Dear Phil,

 

I'm going to respond to your email in pieces.  I want to deal with this part on its own.

 

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.  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.  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.

 

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.  Thus we put aside our preconceptions about the person and stand open to however and whatever the client shows us.  We are not primarily concerned about the issue of "is this really true, did it really happen that way?"  Rather we want to know how what they are revealing to us verbally and nonverbally works systemically in how they live in their world.  We track the uniquely personal logic of the person's revelations to discover what is connected to what in the way they live.  (2) We begin and end with our experience with the client.  Being open to his self-revelations (both verbal and nonverbal) something often prompts our curiosity; we often have a tentative hypothesis about it.  BUT we do not stay with our own understanding unless it checks out in further experience with the client, either by further inquiry or an experiment.  Everything we know about the client we discover through experience with the client, beginning and ending there.  (3) We do not prejudge what revelations will be significant and important, but some small detail--like someone coughing repeatedly as they tell a story, someone twisting a lock of her hair, someone wrapping her arms around herself when she begins to talk about her boyfriend, someone suddenly becoming very still, etc etc--may turn out to lead to a hugely important piece of therapeutic work.  We do not prejudge what will be important but rely on our own curiosity and care to help us focus and to explore further so that the client reveals himself more and more.

 

The phenomenological process is a hermeneutical process! Here we trace out how what the client reveals to us (figure) leads to emergent figures that were previously hidden in the ground.  In that way we discover the meaning of her twisting a lock of hair, coughing while telling a story, becoming very still, etc.  Over time, both client and therapist come to an understanding of the unique ways in which the client's living is organized, and along the way many intentions/connections begin to shift and change. 

 

Sylvia

 

I don't have any more time now, but tonight I'll return to the rest of your email.

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 3:35:12 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

I agree with you that intentionality is central to phenomenological process.  However, I don't think intentionality in itself is "all about" how what is present points to other factors to which it is connected.  Wouldn't that be the hermeneutical process?  

To me intentionality is the aboutness of experience. It is simply the observation of the valence of experience.  It is about something.  Period.  To me, that is also what makes intentionality basically paradoxical and what makes what we do as gestalt therapists experimental. We simply observe what is, what is currently going on.  We do this IN the natural attitude, accepting what is given as given, without conducting a reduction.  That is the phenomenal tracking we have, until now, been calling the phenomenological method, but it really is not the philosophical phenomenological method at all.  It is a paradoxical and experimental process.  When a person starts making sense of "what is," he or she has shifted to still something else.  That would be the hermeneutics of experience.

=

[CROC...@aol.com]

Hi Phil,

 

I'll respond in pieces too.  I think it is important to post this discussion to the GSTALT-L  list since it will be of interest to some people who are not involved with studying Stein.

 

Sylvia

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 4:13:27 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Hi,

I'm going to try to respond in line below:

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

Dear Phil,

 

I'm going to respond to your email in pieces.  I want to deal with this part on its own.

 

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.   

 

  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. 

 

  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.

 

 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.  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.  What we do in Gestalt therapy is exactly and absolutely the opposite of thematizing.  Our use of clinical phenomenology involves discovering through our present contact with our clients how a given client's living is organized--as a unique reality.  We are into understanding what emerges directly from the client's uniquely personal self-revelation.  That is why our use of clinical phenomenology is a hermeneutical process of discover.  Our understanding of this-here-now-person is a unique understanding, and while we can talk about it up to a point, ultimately what we know is ineffable, since language pertains to shared meaning.  Over time, we Gestalt therapists meet this unique

person--never one-among-many.

 

I think it is highly problematic to read what we do in Gestalt therapy from the standpoint of another thinker's criticism of yet another thinker.  What we do is upside-down from Husserl, and seeks the unique, not universals. 

 

 

  Thus we put aside our preconceptions about the person and stand open to however and whatever the client shows us.  We are not primarily concerned about the issue of "is this really true, did it really happen that way?"  Rather we want to know how what they are revealing to us verbally and nonverbally works systemically in how they live in their world.  We track the uniquely personal logic of the person's revelations to discover what is connected to what in the way they live.  (2) We begin and end with our experience with the client.  Being open to his self-revelations (both verbal and nonverbal) something often prompts our curiosity; we often have a tentative hypothesis about it.  BUT we do not stay with our own understanding unless it checks out in further experience with the client, either by further inquiry or an experiment.  Everything we know about the client we discover through experience with the client, beginning and ending there.  (3) We do not prejudge what revelations will be significant and important, but some small detail--like someone coughing repeatedly as they tell a story, someone twisting a lock of her hair, someone wrapping her arms around herself when she begins to talk about her boyfriend, someone suddenly becoming very still, etc etc--may turn out to lead to a hugely important piece of therapeutic work.  We do not prejudge what will be important but rely on our own curiosity and care to help us focus and to explore further so that the client reveals himself more and more.

Phil: We each have our ways of understanding what we are doing.  Maybe that's as good as it gets.  I have to put things away and get down to the street to catch my ride home.  I'll try to get back to this, but if I don't, I'm sure we'll find our way back around to it yet again.  This is, after all something we've been discussing for awhile.

 

 

Phil

 

The phenomenological process is a hermeneutical process! Here we trace out how what the client reveals to us (figure) leads to emergent figures that were previously hidden in the ground.  In that way we discover the meaning of her twisting a lock of hair, coughing while telling a story, becoming very still, etc.  Over time, both client and therapist come to an understanding of the unique ways in which the client's living is organized, and along the way many intentions/connections begin to shift and change. 

 

Sylvia

 

I don't have any more time now, but tonight I'll return to the rest of your email.

 

In a message dated 7/22/2010 3:35:12 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time, philbr...@logic.bm writes:

Dear Sylvia,

I agree with you that intentionality is central to phenomenological process.  However, I don't think intentionality in itself is "all about" how what is present points to other factors to which it is connected.  Wouldn't that be the hermeneutical process?  

To me intentionality is the aboutness of experience. It is simply the observation of the valence of experience.  It is about something.  Period.  To me, that is also what makes intentionality basically paradoxical and what makes what we do as gestalt therapists experimental. We simply observe what is, what is currently going on.  We do this IN the natural attitude, accepting what is given as given, without conducting a reduction.  That is the phenomenal tracking we have, until now, been calling the phenomenological method, but it really is not the philosophical phenomenological method at all.  It is a paradoxical and experimental process.  When a person starts making sense of "what is," he or she has shifted to still something else.  That would be the hermeneutics of experience.

=

[Dan Bloom]

Sylvia:

I am glad to see you widening this to the other lists.

You are quite right. This is a complex topic.

I just finished reading an essay on Husserl’s intentionality and its basis in his theory of temporality, most specifically on “protention.”  The author concludes by suggesting  protention, intentionality, and intersubjectivity [!] as the “foundation of phenomenology.” And this is presented as Husserl.

I mention this to note that the intricacies and variations in the interpretations of Husserl continue.  The essay was difficult but left me thinking about its application to my work as a phenomenological gestalt therapist.

Phil will answer for himself, although I find his understanding of this field sophisticated. He’s read beyond Husserl. Actually, like many, many, people who use the phenomenological method and its terminology, he does not use the term “intentionality” in a strictly Husserlian way. (Or at least a way that includes the complexity and richness of Husserl’s analysis.)

I thought I said I’d let Phil answer for himself. :)

I also like Spinelli’s distillation of Husserl’s method. Yet I think we can do better. I think he actually does do better in his most recent book, Existential Psychotherapy. He adds noetic and noematic analysis. This is an extra nuance. 

Dan

[Philip Brownell]

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.

   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.

  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.

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.  

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

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

[Philip Brownell]

Dear Haydn,

Perhaps you can help me with this.  Let me come at it again.  The phen. method–the reduction.  I understand it to be a shift in which the thinker assumes a different attitude, for one, and (as if) puts his or her mind "out of joint," disengages directly with his or her world in order to focus and to perform a critical observation–to think about it.  This, then, no longer is a normal flow of process–no longer a natural attitude.  If I'm with a client, I am thinking about them as opposed to relating to them (because all the activities of the mind, including perceiving, can be seen as cognitive and therefore "thinking").  People have called this out of joint observing a phenomenological attitude. Do I make sense?  

My problem is that my approach in psychotherapy would have me being in a real-world, engaged with it, making contact, and working relationally with the client.  Am I attempting to bridge between the natural attitude and the phenomenological reduction?  Well, I don't know.  As therapists we are not philosophizing when we do therapy.  So, the rub has always been, "How do I adapt a philosophical method to a clinical process?"  So, yes, I guess you are correct.  I believe we remain in the natural attitude and then conduct a "kind" of phen. reduction (in that we observe the client, bracket our theories and personal "noise," also called transference, and then describe to the client what we observe).

Phil

On Jul 24, 2010, at 9:29 AM, John Gurmin wrote:

Dear Phil,

Interesting question. As you probably know the later Stein studied Aristotle and Aquinas and thus was confronted directly with realist philosophers. One of her final works 'Finite and Eternal Being' tries to bring insights brought from phenomenology and Aristotelian-Scholastic thinking together and it seems you are aiming to bring together the phenomenological reduction and the natural attitude - or at least find the bridge between the two.

[John Gurmin]

Dear Phil,

There is a section in Dermot Moran's 'Introduction to Phenomenology',  that might be of interest. It is a passage where Moran describes Husserl's understanding of the reduction (s) (reducere - to lead back from the Latin) in the early stages of his writings. 

'Husserl's so called discovery of the reduction took place in the summer of 1905, but, in subsequent years, Husserl wrote many programmatic accounts concerning its nature and purpose. Husserl had a number of different theoretical reasons for introducing the notion of reduction. First it allowed him to detach from all forms of conventional opinion, including our commonsense psychology, our accrued scientific consensus on issues, and all philosophical and metaphysical theorising regarding the nature of the intentional. We must put aside our beliefs about our beliefs, as it were. Secondly, it allowed him to return to and isolate the central structures of subjectivity. By putting aside psychological, cultural, religious, and scientific assumptions, and by getting behind or to one side of the meaning-positing or thetic acts normally dominant in conscious acts, new features of those acts come to the fore. Most of all, the reduction is meant to prevent what we have won by insight being transformed or deformed into an experience of another kind, a change from one kind to another, a 'metabasis in allo geno' (Ideas I, sec 61). There is an almost inevitable tendency to 'psychologise the eidetic'. Husserl thought there would be no need for the reduction were there a smooth transition from the factual to the eidetic, as there is in geometry, when the geometer moves from contemplating a factual shape to its idealisation (Ideas I, sec 61, p. 139). In other areas, however, especially in grasping consciousness, the move to the eidetic is difficult to achieve -- hence the need for the vigilance of the epoché. 

In his earliest public discussion of reduction, the 1907 lectures series delivered in Goettingen, entitled 'The Idea of Phenomenology', Husserl introduces  a 'phenomenological reduction (IP, p. 4) to exclude everything posited as transcendentally existing, but he goes on to speak of an 'epistemological reduction' as necessary in order to focus on the pure phenomena of conscious acts as cogitationes, and to avoid misleading assumptions about the nature and existence of the sum cogitans (IP, p. 33). Husserl has in mind the specific bracketing of a psychological interpretation of what is given in the acts of knowing.' (Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, pp. 146-147). Moran goes on to consider the later developments of Husserl in 'Ideas I' and the 'Cartesian Meditations'. 

Husserl seems to be making sure that the descriptive analysis of consciousness is 'watertight' and the reduction helps us to achieve that - all our consensus on things are left aside to focus on consciousness itself devoid of any interruption. That is, Husserl realised that consciousness was 'constantly saturated with world-positing tendencies which mask its true nature [and] in order to access the realm of pure consciousness and to study the essential formations found there, [required] 'suspension' of our natural attitude towards the world' (Moran, pp. 136-137). 

I realize that you wish to be in the natural attitude with the client. I think that it is possible to be in the natural attitude as long as you like, as to take the phenomenological method (as outlined above) would require you to undertake the reduction at a particular moment in time, so you can decide to take the reduction at a particular moment, in order to be directly dealing with consciousness devoid of the distractions that Husserl was worried about.

But, again, it is an interesting question about how the two methods come together. Sylvia has a much greater advantage dealing with this question than I - given that Sylvia is both a philosopher and a therapist and I can see the discussions that are arising between yourselves as therapist-phenomenologists are becoming deeper on this particular 'problem' and are very interesting for me to read and learn from.  

I think for Stein, empathy would allow the experience of the client to be present to you from within the reduction ... so it seems Stein brings you closer to the client in that regard. I wonder is that much different from the experience of the client in the natural attitude? We usually experience people (on the sentient, mental level etc),  the phenomenological reduction would just differ in that it takes a 'scientific' approach to that experience, even if it brackets the existence of the client etc?  

 

H.