Gendlin’s “interaction first” and Dewey’s “transaction”

While Gendlin used the term “interaction” in many of his writings, he used the term “interaction first” in “A Process Model” (Gendlin, 1997/2018). I outlined some historical background of why he felt that “interaction” alone did not sufficiently convey what he meant and that it was necessary to add “first.”

“Interaction” in classical pragmatism

In “A Process Model” (APM), Gendlin discussed the “interaction of a body with its environment,” which seems to have been gradually developed into his philosophy from John Dewey and George H. Mead’s discussions of the “interaction of an organism with its environment.

Let us look specifically at how Dewey discussed the interaction between an organism and its environment.

Life denotes a function, a comprehensive activity, in which organism and environment are included. Only upon reflective analysis does it break up into external conditions—air breathed, food taken, ground walked upon—and internal structures—lungs respiring, stomach digesting, legs walking. (Dewey, 1925/1929, p. 9 [LW 1, 19])

From this passage, it is clear that the argument is based on the order that, before reflective analysis, there is first the life activity of breathing, ingesting, digesting, walking, etc., which is secondarily broken down into air and lungs, food and stomach, and ground and legs. What is being rejected here is the idea that external conditions and internal structures are independent and self-existent beforehand and then influence each other in both directions. As Dewey's ally, Mead, succinctly stated below, organism and environment are in a relationship of interdependence that cannot exist without each other:

The organism ... is in a sense responsible for its environment. And since organism and environment determine each other and are mutually dependent for their existence, it follows that the life-process, to be adequately understood, must be considered in terms of their interrelations. (Mead, 1934, p. 130)

This interactional perspective with the environment can be found in the paper “A process concept of relationship” (Gendlin, 1957), which Gendlin contributed to the “Counseling Center Discussion Paper” before the publication of “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning” (Gendlin, 1962/1997):

An organism ... lives in an environment, in inter-action with it. Hence the physiological, emotional and mental processes are in inter-action with, or toward, the environment. (Gendlin, 1957, p. 23)

At this time, Gendlin called it an organism, not a body, that interacts with its environment. In this respect, he retained the terminology of Dewey and Mead.

Inadequacy of the term “interaction”

As described above, “interaction” was the fundamental notion of Dewey’s philosophy. In his later years, however, Dewey became dissatisfied with the prefix “inter-” in the word “interaction” because he felt it did not say well what he meant.

Unfortunately ... a special philosophical interpretation may be unconsciously read into the common sense distinction. It will then be supposed that organism and environment are “given” as independent things and interaction is a third independent thing which finally intervenes. (Dewey, 1938, p. 33 [LW 12, 40]; cf. Schoeller & Dunaetz, 2018, p. 135)

This dissatisfaction also was shared by later Gendlin:

Even the prefix inter still assumes that the two things precede. But if we are not innocent about assumptions of reality, why keep the simplistic assumption that reality must be like a thing in space that first exists separately and only then interacts? (Gendlin, 1993, pp. 5–6)

... it seems we must first have a boy and a girl. Then they can interact. It seems we cannot first have an interaction. The very word “interaction” sounds as if first there are two, and only then is there an “inter.” We seem to need two nouns first. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 31)

Dewey's alternative terminology: “transaction”

In his final years, Dewey used the word “transaction” instead of interaction, to say what he meant:

Self-action: where things are viewed as acting under their own powers.
Inter-action:  where thing is balanced against thing in causal interconnection.
Trans-action: where systems of description and naming employed to deal with aspects and phases of action, without final attribution to “elements” or other presumptively detachable or independent “entities,” “essences,” or “realities,” and without isolation of presumptively detachable “relations” from such detachable “elements.” (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 108 [LW 16, 101-2])

The word “transaction” originally meant transaction in commerce:

Borrower cannot borrow without lender to lend, nor lender lend without borrower to borrow, the loan being a transaction that is identifiable only in the wider transaction of the full legal commercial system in which it is present as occurrence. (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, pp. 133–4 [LW 16, 126])

... a trade, or commercial transaction … determines one participant to be a buyer and the other a seller. No one exists as buyer or seller save in and because of a transaction in which each is engaged. (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 270 [LW 16, 242])

The idea is that there is first an activity called a transaction, which is secondarily assigned to a lender and a borrower or a buyer and a seller.

Gendlin's alternative terminology: “interaction first”

Gendlin did not adopt Dewey's paraphrase literally. However, he attempted to remedy the inadequacy by paraphrasing the word “interaction” in his way and adding the word “first” to it.

Interaction is first—that's a quick way of making this point. It is better to let reality itself be interaction process. (Gendlin, 1993, p. 5)

The process that forms the body as a structure is a body-environment interaction first, before they can be two things. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 6; 2012, pp. 146–7; 2018, p. 117)

This is of course an odd use of the word. This “interaction” is prior to two separate things that would first meet in order to interact. I call it interaction first. (Gendlin, fair copy, pp. 24–5; 2012, p. 163; 2018, p. 135)

In this way, the idea itself, as distinct from the notion of two independent and self-existent persons interacting in both directions, was inherited from Dewey in APM:

You and I happening together makes us immediately different than we usually are. ... How you are when you affect me is already affected by me, and not by me as I usually am, but by me as I occur with you. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 31)

Conclusion

The idea of interaction with the environment was already present in Gendlin's mind as a graduate student, but it was not fully developed. Later, he created his unique concept of “interaction first” while inheriting Dewey’s ideas. In this way, he thoroughly promoted the notion that life activity is primary, and the differentiation between body and environment is secondary.

References

Dewey, J. (1925/1929). Experience and nature (2nd ed.). Open Court. Reprinted as Dewey, J. (1981). The later works, vol. 1 [Abbreviated as LW 1]. Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: the theory of inquiry. Henry Holt. Reprinted as Dewey, J. (1986). The later works, vol. 12 [Abbreviated as LW 12]. Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1949). Knowing and the known. Beacon Press. Reprinted as Dewey, J. (1989). The later works, vol. 16 [Abbreviated as LW 16]. Southern Illinois University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1957). A process concept of relationship. Counseling Center Discussion Paper (The University of Chicago), 3 (2), 22-32.

Gendlin, E. T. (1962/1997). Experiencing and the creation of meaning: a philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective (Paper ed.). Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (1993). Human nature and concepts. In J. Braun (Ed.), Psychological concepts of modernity, (pp. 3–16). Praeger/Greenwood.

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T. (2012). Implicit precision. In Z. Radman (Ed.), Knowing without thinking (pp. 141–66). Palgrave Macmillan.

Gendlin, E.T. (2018). Saying what we mean (edited by E.S. Casey & D.M. Schoeller). Northwestern University Press.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. (edited by C.W. Morris). University of Chicago Press.

Schoeller, D. & Dunaetz, N. (2018). Thinking emergence as interaffecting: approaching and contextualizing Eugene Gendlin’s Process Model. Continental Philosophy Review, 51, 123–140.