Gendlin’s writings that prepared “A Process Model”
There are two types of Gendlin's writings related to “A Process Model (APM)” (Gendlin, 1997/2018): the first type is his writings that prepared APM, and the second type is his writings that supplemented APM after its completion. This time, I would like to highlight the first. I think the following six writings were essential in his preparation for APM. I have written below which chapter (or section) each writing corresponds to in APM and compiled the anthology.
Correspondence
A phenomenology of emotions: Anger (Gendlin, 1973a)
It corresponds to Chapters II, VII-A ("a) Bodylooks," "e) Expression," "g) Pictures," & "h) Seens and heads"), VII-B ("a) Internal space" & "b) The FLIP"), and VIII ("a) Introduction").Experiential psychotherapy (Gendlin, 1973b)
It corresponds to Chapters II, IV-A ("a) The body (when a process stops) is what continues; it is the other process," "d-1) Symbolic functions of the body", & "f) Focaling"), Appendix to Chapter VI ("k) Behavioral body-development"), and VIII ("d) Relevance and perfect feedback object").The client's client (Gendlin, 1984)
It corresponds to Chapters I, II, III, IV-A ("d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation", IV-B, VI-B ("e) Object formation: Objects fall out"), and VIII ("a) Introduction" & "b) Direct referent and felt shift").Imagery, body, and space in focusing (Gendlin et al., 1984)
It corresponds to Chapters I, II, III, IV-A ("d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation", VI-A, VI-B ("d) Pyramiding"), VII-A ("j-1) Separate senses" & "n) Fresh formation of sequences and tools"), VII-B ("b) The FLIP"), and VIII ("a) Introduction" & "e) Schematic of the new carrying forward and the new space").Theory of the living body and dreams (Gendlin, 1986, pp. 141-62)
It corresponds to Chapters I, II, IV-A ("h-1) Crossing, metaphor, law of occurring", V-A ("(b-2) A second kind of new event may occur in the so-called stopped process"), VI-B ("d) Pyramiding"), Appendix to VI ("f-3) Perception behind one’s back" & "k) Behavioral body-development"), VII-A ("g) Pictures" & "j-1) Separate senses").Thinking beyond patterns (Gendlin, 1991)
It corresponds to Chapters II, III ("Some Motivations and Powers of the Model So Far"), IV-A ("d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation" & "h-1) Crossing, metaphor, law of occurring"), VI-B ("c-1) Had space", "k) Behavioral body-development," & "m) Kination: Imagination and felt sense" ), VII-A ("g) Pictures," "h) Seens and heards," "j-1) Separate senses", "j-4) The pre-formed implicit (type a)", & "m) Making and images"), VII-B ("a) Internal space," "b) The FLIP," "f-3) Lateral crossing and collective crossing", & "Appendix to f: Details do not drop out; universals are not empty commonalities"), VIII ("a) Introduction").
I can say that the discussions in "Chapter V-B: Stability: The Open Cycle" and the discussions in the second half of "Chapter VII-B: Protolanguage" are not found in many of his preceding works. It can be said that APM first elaborated on these discussions.
Anthology
Chapter I: Body-Environment (B-En)
Body and environment are one system, one thing, one event, one process. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 99)
Body and en are one event, one process. For example, it is air-coming-into-lungs-and-blood-cells. We can view this event as air (coming in), or as (a coming into) lungs and body cells. Either way it is one event, viewed as en or as body. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 4)
If you are a land animal, the ground you walk on is part of how your feet are built, and not only your feet. The muscles up into your thighs, your posture, and the whole balance of all your organs already include the ground against which you press when you walk. The sensation and internal feel-quality of all your organs and muscles comprehend how you walk on solid earth. Your walking-pattern is implied in the feel of your whole body. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 143)
The same pressure which is the foot’s on the ground is also the ground’s pressure on the foot. We can separate ground from foot, but not ground’s resistance from foot’s pressure. The en#2 is not the separable environment but the environment participating in a living process. The en#2 is not the ground, but the ground-participating-in-walking, its resistance. The behavior cannot be separate from this ground-participating. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 4)
Each species lives in its own mesh of objects which cannot be perceived by other species in the same way. (Gendlin, et al., 1984, p. 260)
We can clarify what the ethologists mean by saying that there is no single reality, only the reality of each species. It is in the sense of en#2 that each species has a different environment. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 5)
For example the bloodstream is the environment of the cells. Each internal tissue has its environment. The body is both environment and living process. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 99)
The bloodstream is often called the environment of the cells it feeds. The many processes in the body have various parts of it for their environment. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 6)
Chapter II: Functional Cycle (Fucy)
The body implies not only the many behaviors not now going on, but also the environments in and with which these implied behaviors can occur. For example, if feeding is implied, that implies food. If burying feces is implied, that implies a scratchable ground. ... The “interactional” aspect of the body is that its implied behaviors also imply the environment. (Gendlin, 1973a, pp. 372-3)
At the feeding part of this cycle the body implies food and cannot go on without it. At the defecation part of the cycle the body implies the ground in which feces can be buried. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 99)
... body-events are always also environment-events. The implying of further body-process also implies the environmental aspects involved in those body-events, for example the food, and the ground. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)
I say that hunger implies feeding, and of course it also implies the en#2 that is identical with the body. Hunger implies feeding and so it also implies food. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 9)
When, in biology, functional systems are considered, it is clear that “hunger,” for example, ... leads to feeding behavior and perhaps also to hunting, tracking, killing, tearing, chewing, defecating, scratching the ground and burying feces, resting, and also getting hungry again. I want to use the word “implies” here. I want to say that when hungry, the body “implies” tracking, feeding, defecating, that feeding “implies” scratching the ground to bury feces, and so on. (Gendlin, 1973a, pp. 371-2)
... eating isn’t just a reaction to food. Rather, food becomes an object only with the organism’s digestive process, which runs through stages of hunger, food search, feeding, satiation, defecating, and, after a while, hunger again. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 99)
... the body's own continuity is expressed in the word “implying”—any present bodily event is also an implying of the body's next events. ... The feeding is also the implying of defecating, ground-scratching, burying, and getting hungry again. Hunger is an implying of food-finding and feeding. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)
Hunger also implies digesting, defecating, scratching the ground to bury the feces, getting hungry again. These are a string of en#2s as well as ways in which the body will be. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 9)
Chapter III: An Object
The implied action, for instance eating, might not happen because there is no food. An implied action can not happen if the people and things it involves are missing. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 99)
If the animal is hungry and there is no food, feeding cannot happen even though it is the body's implied next event. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)
If the creature does not instantly die because some process is stopped, then we have an implying that was not changed by an occurring. For example, the animal remains “hungry,” that is, food and feeding are implied but do not occur. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 14)
Chapter IV-A: A Different Concept of the Body, Not a Machine
d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation
The more complex pattern emerging here is a non-Laplacian sequence: The whole series cannot be predicted from one step, because each step carries forward an implied change in implying. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 95)
... for us an interaction (a process, body-environment) implies its own changing. It has to be non-Laplacian. ... Already in II we said (but did not show) that the body’s implying is non-Laplacian—the implying of the whole sequence changes at each point. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 32)
Laplace said that if one event in physics were fully known, all others before and after it could be determined. That was because he assumed only a logical implying — a single determined sequence. He assumed one fixed possibility-system. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 95)
Laplace was the man who said, “If I knew where all the particles of the universe are right now, and the speed and direction at which they are moving, I could tell you the whole past of the universe, and predict all of its future.” ... He might as well have said that if he knew 2 + 2 he could know its future. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 32)
If there is no implying, if every event is only what it already is, what connects the events? The answer is that connections are thought of as external to the events: they are thought of as time and space connections supplied by an "idealized observer.” ... empty space and empty time which are assumed to consist of mere points that must wait for an observer to connect them. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 108)
The usual conceptual model deprives everything of implying and meaning, not just living bodies. It constructs its objects in empty positional space and time, so that everything consists of information at space-time points. The space and the objects are presented before someone—who is not presented in the space. It is rather someone who connects the space and time points. The connections come to the points only externally; they are added by anonymous people called “the idealized observer.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 34)
f) Focaling
... an artist standing before an unfinished design that has never yet existed also senses what “it needs.” (Gendlin, 1991, p. 146)
When an artist draws an exactly right line in an unfinished drawing, no aim exists in advance to determine the line. The artist feels and says that the unfinished drawing “needs something.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 46)
h-1) Crossing, metaphor, law of occurring
For example, how is your anger like a chair? (It just sits? It might get thrown at someone?) If you try it with your anger, what comes may be new. How does that work? You let all about chair interact with all about your anger and—something comes. Then you say it “was” always true of you. But actually it was made by crossing them just now. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 150)
For example, you can cross toothbrushes and trains. Then you might say, “Yes, I see, a toothbrush has only one ‘car,’” or you might say “They both shake us,” or “It would be great to have my personal train.” There are always a great many results from a crossing, but they are never arbitrary. Two things cross only as they truly can. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 52)
Chapter IV-B: Time: En#2 and En#3, Occurring and Implying
Food and all its characteristics are implicit in hunger. But hunger could also be carried forward by something new. The implicit is never only formed. Intravenous feeding can carry digestion forward and so can odd foods. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 100)
Eating is familiar to the observer, but intravenous feeding also carries the process forward. A wonderful variety of modes of feeding is found in nature. The implying implies “some way” of carrying forward, not any one way. What carries forward in the “usual” process is just as new to the implying as intravenous feeding. Implying is always open, and what occurs into it does not equal it. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 66-7)
Chapter V-A: Intervening Events
b-2) A second kind of new event may occur in the so-called stopped process
A new pattern can occur although the animal never did it before. ... Dropped into water, it tries to “walk” but thrashes instead. Its motions are new; they are more and bigger than walking. A new sequence can occur without having been in the body’s repertory. It happens when a standard sequence would have come, but the environment in which it occurs has changed. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 144)
As an example, say a walking animal falls into the water. Walking in water immediately assumes an unusual form since the movements do not encounter ground‑resistance. So there is also no foot pressure. The movements will therefore be much wider. We call it “thrashing.” The example shows that when the usual events cannot happen, what can happen may seem like quite a lot more. Thrashing is a new sequence. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 75)
Chapter VI-A: Behavior and Perception
We cannot begin with perception as if objects were there waiting simply to be photographed. What a living body perceives is first made with that body's own complex implying. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)
According to the usual way of thinking, perception is a kind of intake along the lines of photography or radio reception. This approach does not work out very well. ... most importantly, the old way of thinking does not enable us to relate perception clearly to behavior and body-process. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 86)
Chapter VI-B: The Development of Behavior Space
c-1) Had space
The plant's body pre-figures, implies, and recognizes the light, but not as something visual. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 129)
For example, a plant might bodily grow toward the sun. I cautioned there that this is not yet a space that the body-process feels and perceives. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 98)
d) Pyramiding
When environmental interaction is greatly restricted (by sleep, drugs, deep relaxation, “altered states,”) the bodily process is narrowed. The usual totaling which makes the familiar objects cannot occur. Instead, very primitive ancient sequences that are always implicit, actually occur. Any outer event then comes into these. These experiences can be very valuable. ... One finds out some of that vast richness when some usually implicit sequences visibly occur. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 263)
All experience involves crossing, but in dreams (and some other “altered states”) one can actually see the “crossing.” One can see it because the crossing is unfinished, still going on. ... In some altered states a small facet can enter into how subsequent events form. Its effects can show up in everything else. (Gendlin, 1986, pp. 152-3)
In dreams and with hypnosis and drugs, the usual behavior space is narrowed so that it does not implicitly contain as much as it would in the waking state. We find that very old (“primitive”) sequences form then, and implicitly contain some (a variable amount) of the usual context of implicit sequences. In those states we can observe the familiar experiences still forming, and we can notice how many are implicit and focaled in ordinary experiences. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 102)
e) Object formation: Objects fall out
The part of the implied environment which might or might not occur is called an “object.” (Gendlin, 1984, p. 100)
Our III object could only be absent, but the VI object can be present, and it can also be absent. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 104)
Appendix to Chapter VI
f-3) Perception behind one’s back
You can physically feel the space behind you. If there is someone following you on the street at night, your body-sense includes what might happen and the possible ways you might act. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 143)
Merleau‑Ponty pointed out that we perceive and feel the space behind us even without hearing or seeing anything directly. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 106)
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k) Behavioral body-development
... babies learn to crawl and walk by an inborn process implicit in their inherited bodies. (Babies don't crawl by imitating or learning from the adults!) Every specie of animals has many such inborn behavior patterns implicit in its body. (Gendlin, 1973b, pp. 323-4)
You inherit not only your chest and lungs, but also the way they breathe. The way a structure works lies in how it is built. We inherit our internal organs and the way they work. The glands, heart, and stomach are not just physical structures; their intricate actions are inherited too. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 143)
We inherit not just our lungs, but — of course — also the breathing behavior. We inherit not just our legs, but also crawling and walking. Infants eventually start crawling, they do not learn it from observing the adults around them.(Gendlin, 1991, p. 132)
Would you think the lungs inherited, but breathing learned? Would you think the heart inherited but the pumping not? And why would legs be inherited but not walking? I ask students: “How do tiny children learn to walk? They answer “From watching the adults.” Then I ask: how do they learn to crawl? (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 110)
At first the scientists tried to find some learning to explain these behaviors. Some researchers even investigated whether these behaviors might be learned in the womb while the mother performs them. Sufficient experiments have now excluded every possibility of learning. Very complex inherited behavior patterns have been found in all animal species. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 142)
For a long time the behaviorists insisted that the animals must learn their complex behaviors. When animals were raised in a cage in a lab, they thought the animals must have learned while they were carried in the womb. But what is learning? Without some equipment, no thing can learn. Something is always inherited when there is learning. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 110)
m) Kination: Imagination and felt sense
The old scheme is wrong, that only the five senses (separately or in sum) tell about a situation. In fact, one would be hard-put to describe any human situation just in bits of tactile roughness, color, sound and smell, put together by some rational unities. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 81)
In traditional Western philosophy ... Experience had to be built out of receptions by the five sense‑organs. In order to think of those as the source of experience, one had to jump from colors and smells to the experience of objects, things, and situations. One was not supposed to notice that even the simplest situation cannot be thought of as bits of color and smell. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 112)
Chapter VII-A: Symbolic Process
a) Bodylooks
... in those animals which live together in societies—for example, monkeys—the fighting between males is still incipiently present but is obviated by a system of gestures. A male animal is superior to certain others in the tribe and inferior to certain others, and this hierarchy is determined by fighting strength. A male animal turns his back to another to indicate submission. (Gendlin, 1973a, pp. 384-5)
Among animals who live together in the same territory there is a social hierarchy. Each monkey turns his back when he sees those above him in the order, and receives this submissive gesture from all those below him. This animal ritual, so-called, takes the place of the fighting sequence. Only the last bit of fighting sequence occurs, and obviates the fighting. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 115-6)
If he [a male animal] does not perform this [submissive] gesture then there is an actual fight, at the end of which one of the two animals will finally turn his back and submit. Thus the origin of this gesture can be guessed as the submitting end of a fight. When the end gesture occurs without a fight, the fight is skipped. (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 385)
... if the lower monkey fails to turn his back, then fighting does occur. The fighting sequence is implicit, even though it rarely occurs. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 116)
e) Expression
How the body looks and sounds, the patterning of face and posture and sound, we call “expression.” The living body's expressive patterning affects others of the same species even in animals, although for them such patterns are part of behavior, of situation-changing. (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 375)
The animals express quite a lot, but except for special behaviors, these carry only us forward. The animals do not express, therefore, to each other. What does carry them forward is that they behave with each other. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 122)
g) Pictures
Animals do not react to pictures. The cat will react to the picture of a cat as to a flat cardboard object. If it did respond to the cat aspect of the picture at all, it would respond to it as a real cat. Animals have no way of responding to pictures as pictures. (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 374)
This duality of pictures can be brought home, if we recall that animals cannot respond to pictures as pictures. A bird cannot react to both at once: The bird reacts either by pecking at the piece of cardboard, or — with fear — by fleeing from the cat. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 114)
Animals don’t respond to pictures of something. The cat will either treat the picture of a cat as a piece of cardboard to sit on or to shove with its paw, or else, if the cat does recognize the pictured cat, it will respond to it as to a real present cat. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 125)
You expect the cardboard to make a noise if you tap it, but you would be shocked if the cat meowed instead. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 114)
A picture is of something that need not be present. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 125)
A dog might urinate against any tree, so we can say the dog treats trees as universals; it can recognize a tree. Or, since the dog urinates against just one tree at a time, we can say that the dog treats trees as particulars. Like us the dog responds both to a tree and to this tree, but for the dog there is not yet the distinction. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 116)
Animals could be said to treat everything as universals, every tree the same way. Or one can say that animals don’t respond to a class as such, but always only to this, here. The distinction doesn’t exist yet. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 127)
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, 1973a, 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)
j) Universals (kinds)
Animal psychologists have found that a bird will take flight, and also warn the other birds, if it merely sees the linear drawing of a cat's head. ... The visual pattern produces the bird's response, But, the response is to a cat, not to a pattern. (Gendlin, 1991, pp. 114-5)
Only the human observer who can already separate and respond to visuals and sounds as such can notice that the bird reacts to the outline shape of the cat’s head, or that the cat responds to the sound of a bird. The bird reacts to a cat, and the cat to a bird. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)
In one species of fish the males have a red circle on their bellies. When a male sees another, they fight. The male also will fight a floating toothpick that has a little red paper circle suspended from it. We scientists say that the fish responds to the red circle. But of course the fish responds to another fish. Their bodies do not imply such purely visual things as red circles (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 261)
For example, ethologists find that the male of a certain species of small fish fights when it sees the red dot on the side of another male. The ethologist suspends a little white piece of cardboard with a red dot on it from a toothpick, and when the fish sees this it immediately begins fighting behavior. Doesn't this show that the fish do respond to a configuration of just color? But it is the ethologist who has discovered a just color configuration. For the fish it is another fish, not a red circle. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)
Only humans respond to pure looks, something purely visual. ... I respond to the picture as a picture and never lose track of being in the room, not in the mountains. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 261)
To see something and also take it as “only” visual is more complex than ordinary events. Seeing the mere image of the mountain involves seeing the mountain and that it is a piece of cardboard. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 151)
Only humans can hear “a sound” or see something that is only visual. To be only visual it must be a picture; even if it is the present object’s ... look, or sound, it is taken as look, or sound. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)
What we take to be “just” a sound is actually a very complex product. Animals don’t hear sounds—they always hear other animals, trees falling, complex events. The “mere sound” is a more sophisticated and symbolic human product, not an original element. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 151)
The purely visual, or the sound, the smell—these are symbolic products .... (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)
j-4) The pre-formed implicit (type a)
I hear the sound of an animal moaning, but I know it to be the wind vibrating the door jamb. ... Until patterns are movable as patterns, an animal is heard, not the sound of an animal. The cat hears a bird, not a sound. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 121)
Later on there will be a sequence of having the likeness. Then the wind can sound like someone moaning, and the clouds can look like people. ... Right now the wind sounds like the wind, and the clouds have cloud patterns. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 135)
m) Making and images
Animals make quite complex things, nests and spider webs, but they do not vary patterns and they don't move them around. Human making is so special because it happens in terms of patterns. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 120)
Animals make things, nests, beehives, spider webs, etc. But humans make by rearranging the patterns of things. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 138)
Monkeys cannot put two sticks together to make one long stick that would reach a banana they want. They cannot treat the sticks as length-shapes, because they do not see length-patterns as such. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 120)
The highest apes can barely put one stick into the hollowed-out end of another stick, to reach a banana. They are not carried forward by the patterns of things. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 138)
n) Fresh formation of sequences and tools
When archaeologists find hunting tools on home sites, they know they are dealing with a later human, one which lived after the last great brain expansion. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 262)
... for millions of years people made hunting tools and left them at the hunting sites. Only very much later are tools found at home sites, that is to say they were brought home and saved. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 139-40)
Chapter VII-B: Protolanguage
a) Internal space
This capacity to respond to gestures, sound patterns, and visual patterns such as pictures involves a new type of process, one in which in one way the situation is not changed, not behaved in, and yet in which in another way allows one to process the situation. (Gendlin, 1973a, pp. 374-5)
... we see the cat, but as a picture, we would not think of petting the picture. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 113)
The simple movements of gesturing let one sequence, version, have, feel, the behavior context without changing it. Gestures don’t change a behavior context, at least not in the way a behavior would change it (one sequence being a change in how all the others are physically possible). (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 151)
b) The FLIP
The early proto-humans made hunting tools only when they were already out on the hunt. Then they left them on the hunting site, because once the hunting process was over the tools were no longer perceived objects. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 262)
Paleontology bears us out: there was really a long time when tools were made freshly at each new hunt site, and left there. Once the hunt-context was no more, the tools lost their significance. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 153)
... if I write a large check but don't sign it, it is not an action, or if I sign it but don't send it, again, it is not an action. (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 375)
For example, if I don’t sign the check, the whole thing wasn’t action. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 154)
... if I yell at my boss, “I quit,” I have acted. But if I do it when he is out to lunch, or when I know he can't hear, the same behavior was “only” expressive. I might even have an understanding with him that this doesn't count as an act but only as an expression. (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 375)
If I say “I quit” when the boss isn’t listening, it wasn’t an action. Also, if I say “I quit” to my boss in a certain context and tone of voice, again it wasn’t an action, but only an expression of dismay, a versioning of the interaction context but not a carrying forward of it. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 154)
It is ... possible, with a few moves of the limbs or a few sounds, to run through behaviors whose context—the felt meaning—is a situation not physically present. We do not need the situation physically present to do this, we have our limbs and vocal chords with us. (Gendlin, 1973a, pp. 375-6)
The buyer on the Chicago Grain Exchange raises a finger and has thereby bought a hundred carloads of grain. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 154)
For example, the situation is not just the fact that the door is locked. Rather, the situation is that I am trying to break that door down, to get in. If I run at it, will the door break or will my shoulder break? It would be a different situation if I were hiding behind the door, hoping it will hold when certain people arrive. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 93)
Situations are not the physically external facts, but the context of interactions with others, which also determines how these facts are defined. (A locked door is one thing if I am hiding from someone, but if I am trying to get out, quite something else.) (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 155)
f-3) Lateral crossing and collective crossing
In the traditional notion of concepts, they seem to be only commonalities that “drop out” the instances (as if instances contain only details that fit under them.) I will show that this is incorrect. Concepts do not drop out the instances. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 77)
Traditionally, it was thought that the different details of all ... situations drop out, leaving a commonality, an abstraction, just what the different situations have in common. I will show that this is an error, a very bad error. The collected context(s) is all the richness and complexity of each context crossed with every new one. In crossing the details don’t drop out, they are part of the eveving that a bodily event is. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 169)
Appendix to f: Details do not drop out; universals are not empty commonalities
For humans there are not only trees, but also the pattern-of a tree. We see both this tree, and that it is a tree. So do animals, but the distinction is not there as yet. ... Like us the dog responds both to a tree and to this tree, but for the dog there is not yet the distinction. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 116)
We cannot experience this rabbit without implicitly versioning “a” rabbit. This requires not just rabbits, as the cat might know. It requires the visual look of “a” rabbit, which would let us recognize a picture of a rabbit as the picture of “a” rabbit. It requires the patterns of movement of “a” rabbit, and the collection rabbit(s). We experience it not only as this but always also as “a.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, pp. 192-3)
Chapter VIII: Thinking with the Implicit
a) Introduction
Once people are accustomed to being listened to, and know the inward checking of focusing, they are quite “spoiled” for the usual type of authority. They often express shock at the unhappy fact that most teachers, gurus, and leaders cannot listen. ... What authorities say cannot get inside them in the old way.... Rather, the attempt at the old kind of authority is experienced as stupid. (Gendlin, 1984, pp. 106-7)
The usual, culturally patterned interactions would not continue on their regular way if one of the participants failed to have the “slotted” feeling. If you do not feel respect for the saint, chagrin when called to order by the authorities, pleased when given a gift (and so on), the culturally structured interactions would then fail to work, to continue as usual. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 199)
... emotions make us act in ways we may regret later because while we blow up we have little reflective sense of all that is involved. And, blowing up angrily is very rarely that behavior which takes account of all of the situation.... (Gendlin, 1973a, p. 378)
Feelings and emotions are parts in a situation. For example, anger comes in a certain slot in a story and carries it forward in a partial way. We are taught to count to 10 when angry because the anger is not a sense of the whole situation. If we do what the anger implies we may later be sorry. That is because the anger does not carry forward the whole situation. Therefore the further actions the anger implies do not meet it all. Ordinary feelings and the actions they further imply carry forward only part of the situational whole. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 102)
... we are taught to count to ten when angry . . . because the angry feeling carries forward only part of the situation. Later we are sorry about what we did or said in anger. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 263)
It is well known that emotions narrow one's scope and make one miss some of a present situation. That is why we are taught to count to 10 before saying anything when we are angry. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 101)
Of course, what I felt was anger, but that is too simple. Emotions “break back,” as we saw in VII, that is to say they don’t usually carry forward (meet) the whole situation. (That is why we often regret later what we did emotionally. Other facets of the situation, which were not carried forward, are then in evidence.) So even if I had first felt my anger (in a private, slotted sequence), I would not thereby have felt the whole situation. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 200)
They [the steps of change and process] come, rather, from an unclear, fuzzy, murky “something there", an odd sort of direct datum of awareness. But most often there is no such datum at first, when people turn their attention inward. Typically one finds the familiar feelings and no indefinable sense. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 77)
It is important to emphasize that the new sequence does not begin with the direct referent. It does not wait there, to be noticed or interacted with. Rather, the direct referent is a datum, a new kind of object, which forms, falls out from the sequence. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 203)
b) Direct referent and felt shift
For example, a client may feel angry and say why. ... suppose the client says: “I'm angry, I told you why, and that's all. Nothing further comes.” (Gendlin, 1984, p. 77)
... let us say, you are angry, hurt, and chagrined. If you are asked why, you would point to the obvious. You have been publicly called such and such a name, and that certainly is the reason. Can’t everyone understand that? Wouldn’t anyone feel this way? Let us say, roundly, that, yes, anyone would feel this way, at least in our culture. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 209)
... people often have the same feelings over and over, quite intensely, without change-steps occurring. ... More intensity of familiar feelings does not bring change. People often feel and strongly express repetitious feelings, yet process-steps do not occur. The steps of change and process do not arise directly from the recognizable feelings as such. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 77)
Like anyone else, this specific person would be having feelings of chagrin, anger, and hurt. One has a tendency to go over and over these emotions and the situational context that goes with it. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 210)
e) Schematic of the new carrying forward and the new space
The body-sense of a problem as a whole is an odd kind of “object" which can be “moved" and "put down" in an odd kind of space that was not there, moments before. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 260)
Once a direct referent has formed, what one can do in the new space is also different. Now one can “put it down,” or “receive,” one can let it wait for later, one can ask how one would feel without it .... (Gendlin, 2018, p. 222)
f-10) Many words, like “direction,” are used in an IOFI way in VIII
Bodily implying of concepts, words, feelings and actions has its own “direction”: The next steps are not as yet formed; hence the “direction" is not definable. (Gendlin, 1984, p. 106)
... I want this direction, but not as definable in VII, but rather as about-to-be “changed” in an VIII–carrying forward. So far as VII can possibly define it, it is this direction into which I mean to head. But in addition an VIII use of that word would intend the “direction” not yet definable. (Gendlin, 2018, p. 231)
References
Gendlin, E.T. (1973a). A phenomenology of emotions: anger. In D. Carr & E.S. Casey (Eds.), Explorations in phenomenology: papers of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (pp. 367-98). Martinus Nijhoff.
Gendlin, E.T. (1973b). Experiential psychotherapy. In R. Corsini (Ed.), Current psychotherapies (pp. 317-52). Peacock.
Gendlin, E.T. (1984). The client's client: the edge of awareness. In R.L. Levant & J.M. Shlien (Eds.), Client-centered therapy and the person-centered approach. new directions in theory, research and practice (pp. 76-107). Praeger.
Gendlin, E.T. (1986). Let your body interpret your dreams. Chiron.
Gendlin, E.T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden & M. Moen (Eds.), The presence of feeling in thought (pp. 25-151). Peter Lang.
Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.
Gendlin, E.T., Grindler, D. & McGuire, M. (1984). Imagery, body, and space in focusing. In A.A. Sheikh (Ed.), Imagination and healing (pp. 259-286). Baywood.