Fighting does not occur in a “truncated act” (Symbolic process beginning with “animal gestures”—Gendlin and Mead: 4)

When Gendlin uses the example of a “threat gesture” and says, “Fighting is focally implied, but fighting is not occurring” in “Chapter VII-A: Symbolic Process” of “A Process Model,” this would correspond to what Mead calls a “truncated act”:

The “threat gesture” is the relevanting first bit of the fighting sequence. That bit is also a major bodily shift, fight-readying. ... In this new sequence each bodylook is a version of the same behavior context. The behavior context is not changed as it would be in behavior. For instance, fighting is focally implied, but fighting is not occurring. It continues to be implied. The behavior context continues to be the one that implies fighting. The new sequence is not behavior; it does not change the behavior context as a behavior sequence would. The new sequence is a string of versions of the (otherwise) unchanged behavior context. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 116–7)

Most social stimulation is found in the beginnings or early stages of social acts... This is the field of gestures... That certain of these early indications of an incipient act have persisted, while the rest of the act has been largely suppressed or has lost its original value, e.g., the baring of the teeth or the lifting of the nostrils, is true, and the explanation can most readily be found in the social value which such indications have acquired. It is an error, however, to overlook the relation which these truncated acts have assumed toward other [life] forms of reactions which complete them as really as the original acts, or to forget that they occupy but a small part of the whole field of gesture by means of which we are apprised of the reactions of others toward ourselves. The expressions of the face and attitudes of body have the same functional value for us that the beginnings of hostility have for two dogs, who are maneuvering for an opening to attack. (Mead, 1912, p. 402 [SW, 135–6])

It is thought that this “Fighting is not occurring” leads to the concept of “pause.” The pause may correspond to “inhibition” in Mead’s terminology:

Gesturing is a pause in behaving. The bodylooks are a new kind of environmental rendering. When they occur they cf the body into feeling the behavior context it feels. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 124)

Human conduct is distinguished primarily from animal conduct by that increase in inhibition which is an essential phase of voluntary attention, and increased inhibition means an increase in gesture in the signs of activities which are not carried out; in the assumptions of attitudes whose values in conduct fail to get complete expression. (Mead, 1910, p. 178 [SW, 110])

However, compared to Gendlin, Mead may not have discussed the gradual evolution of humans from animals including the intermediate stages.

Anyway, simply raising the arm with the fist changes the behavior context without the actual behavior of hitting the other:

Raising the arm with the fist relevants fighting. The versioning sequence alters how fighting is implied. It alters the behavior context in a way behavior cannot do. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 121)

The gesture in some sense stands for the act as far as it affects the other form. The threat of violence, such as a clenched fist, is the stimulus to the other [life] form for defense or flight. It carries with it the import of the act itself. (Mead, 1934, p. 53)

I have already written in my other blog that before the pause occurred, the gesture could not yet be called a symbol, and Suzanne Langer would have called it a signal (Tanaka, 2024, March). Meanwhile, we humans “are able to think about the object without reacting to it overtly at all” (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 64). In other words, we humans are able to think “about” James without the overt behavior of looking for him at all, and we are able to think “about” Napoleon without the overt behavior of bowing to him at all. Such “aboutness” begins to be constituted even in the intermediate stages of the animal-to-human transition. This is what it means to be able to see things not as signals but as symbols.

We see how symbols arise, continuous with behavior but changing the behavior possibilities without any actual behavior. (Gendlin, fair copy, p. 8; 2012, p. 149; 2018, p. 120)

So “without any actual behavior” corresponds to the fact that we humans “have our anger every time” or “nurse its anger” in the following quotes:

The animal will either fight right now, or its fight-readying will subside. We can nurse our anger, have it every time we put ourselves gesturally into the situation, although it isn't present. (Gendlin, 1973, p. 376)

It is true that the male cat will either get angry (ready to fight), right now, if there is another male cat here, or the fight-readying will subside. The cat cannot sit at home and nurse its anger, as we can, by reconstituting a situation symbolically, and feeling in it. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 127)

Thus, the state of receiving the other’s gesture as a symbol rather than a signal is what we can call “aboutness.”

In light of the above, it is easy to understand the intent of arguing that the “animal gesture” in the section “a) Bodylooks,” which is before the pause “without any actual behavior,” does not constitute an “aboutness.”

... the fight-inducing “animal gesture” is not “about,” it is behaving. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 127)

... small changes in the body looks, moves, and sounds come very close to being something like symbols inasmuch as their small occurrence drastically shifts the behavior context .... Nevertheless they are just behaviors and do not constitute an “aboutness.” The growl, the turning to run, the beginning to hit, are part of behavior sequences. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 116)

The very fact that the dog is ready to attack another becomes a stimulus to the other dog to change his own position or his own attitude. He has no sooner done this than the change of attitude in the second dog in turn causes the first dog to change his attitude. We have here a conversation of gestures. They are not, however, gestures in the sense that they are significant. We do not assume that the dog says to himself, “If the animal comes from this direction he is going to spring at my throat and I will turn in such a way.” (Mead, 1934, p. 43)

If the dog “says to himself,” it would be “about” as a result of taking the other dog’s attack as a complete symbol, once it is no longer accompanied by the actual behavior. In reality, however, the “animal gesture” before the pause occurs is only “very close to being something like symbols”. In other words, the “animal gesture” in the section “a) Bodylooks” is merely a signal with an immediate behavior.

References

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. (1910). What social objects must psychology presuppose? The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7(7), 174–80.

Mead, G.H. (1912). The mechanism of social consciousness. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 9(15), 401–406.

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

Mead, G.H. (1964/1981). Selected writings [Abbreviated as SW] (edited by A.J. Reck). University of Chicago Press.

Tanaka, H. (2024, March). Responding to a picture as a picture: Eugene Gendlin and Susanne Langer.