A Process Model

by Eugene Gendlin, Robert A. Parker (Contribution by)

Overview

Eugene T. Gendlin (1926-2017) is increasingly recognized as one of the seminal thinkers of our era. Carrying forward the projects of American pragmatism and continental philosophy, Gendlin created an original form of philosophical psychology that brings new understandings of human experience and the life-world, including the “hard problem of consciousness.”
A Process Model, Gendlin’s magnum opus, offers no less than a new alternative to the dualism of mind and body. Beginning with living process, the body’s simultaneous interaction and identity with its environment, Gendlin systematically derives nonreductive concepts that offer novel and rigorous ways to think from within lived precision. In this way terms such as body, environment, time, space, behavior, language, culture, situation, and more can be understood with both great force and great subtlety.

Gendlin’s project is relevant to discussions not only in philosophy but in other fields in which life process is central—including biology, environmental management, environmental humanities, and ecopsychology. It provides a genuinely new philosophical approach to complex societal challenges and environmental issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810136199
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	11/15/2017
Series:	Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

EUGENE T. GENDLIN (1926-2017) received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1964 to 1995. He was honored four times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was awarded the 2007 Viktor Frankl prize by the city of Vienna and the Viktor Frankl Family Foundation. He is the author of a number of books, including Focusing, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.

ROBERT A. PARKER is a psychologist and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapist at the Focusing Institute.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Body-Environment (B-En)

Body and environment are one, but of course only in certain respects. Let us carefully define them. The body is a nonrepresentational concretion of (with) its environment. But body and environment also differ in some of their characteristics and doings. Let me define four kinds of environment (en).

En#1 is the spectator's environment, what spectators define in their en which may affect an organism. For example, it is en#1 when scientists or hunters define the environment of an animal. They define the en factors. They do it in their own terms. Some monkeys live in trees, others on the ground. The spectator defines these en factors as there, separately from the animal. The spectator may also note something (pollution for example) that is about to affect the animal while the animal does not yet notice. The spectators' bodies interact with "the animal's environment," their own environment attributed to another living body.

En#2 is the reflexively identical environment; it is identical with the organism's living process. 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. Here we are not calling it "environment" because it is all around, but because it participates within the life process. And, "body" is not just the lungs, but the lungs expanding. Air coming in and lungs expanding cannot be separate. The point is that we need not split between the lungs and air.

Take another example, walking. 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. If the body is hanging in air and attempts to walk, its swing will be much wider and it will not move forward; it won't be walking. In deep water "walking" will immediately be thrashing; the motions will be different. The body cannot enact the same behavior without the ground. And the ground cannot be ground-pressure (it cannot be this en#2) without the behavior. Without walking there is still a ground in the sense of en#1, but not as en#2. The en#2 is a function of ongoing living, and exists only in that living.

The familiar statement "the environment is a function of the organism" receives here a more exact understanding. 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. Of course its species members are different, but so is the rest of the en. Environment#2 and the body are functions of each other. In just this sense there is "no reality" except the various ones that are implicated in the various living processes.

Thus body is both equal and not equal to en! Rather than staying with such paradoxes, we are building distinctions and concepts. We have been able to specify some exact respects in which it is and is not equal.

Body and en#2 imply each other — it is basic to this philosophy that "imply" is being defined, but we cannot yet define it from here alone. But we can notice that what are usually called "body" and "en" look different, even when we say that they are part of one event (foot and ground, air and lungs). They are not look-alikes. The mutual implying between body and environment is "non-iconic," that is to say nonrepresentational. The muscles and bones in the foot and leg do not look like the ground, but they are very much related. One can infer hardness of the ground from the foot, the leg, and their muscles. In an as-yet-unclear way "one can infer" means that the foot implies the ground's hardness. Other kinds of terrain or habitat imply different body parts. Since the body and the en are one event in en#2, each implies the other. They imply each other in that they are part of one interaction process, one organization. Or, we could say, each is a part of a larger organization which includes the other. Each functions as it does only in this wider functioning organization.

This use of "imply" also says that the whole event is already there even if the body aspect or the en#2 aspect are thought of alone.

En#2 is always in some process and identical with the body-in-some-process.

En#3 is the environment that has been arranged by the body-en#2 process. The body accumulates (is) a resulting environment. The mollusk's shell, the spider's web, or the beaver's tree when it falls, these are their main environment, but they are results of the animal's body-en#2 process. En#3 is wider than en#2.

We can set up a continuum of greater and lesser seeming separability. The beaver's tree seems quite separable from the beaver, a bird's nest also; a spider's web is separable from the spider who will live on and make another if we destroy this web. The mollusk's shell isn't as separable yet we think it separate. How about our hair — is it not a product of the body? But our skin too. And the body too!

The body of any creature is the result of its life process. En#3 includes the beaver's felled tree, but also the beaver's body. The environment which the process produces is wider, but it includes the body.

En#3 is another, a different way in which body and environment are one (the body is environment), but since this environment is wider than the body, this equation isn't perfect. How body and en#3 imply is more complicated. (See IV-A-h-4.)

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. The skin-line is not the great divide. En#3 stretches from the beaver's tree into its body to the cells. En#3 is the environment that has already been regenerated by body-process. It is the web and also the spider's body and its parts and sub-parts.

The life process goes on in en#3; it goes on in the spider's web as well as in its body.

The body is an environment in which body-process goes on further.

The body was made from an embryo engaged in process. The body structure is not only made but also maintained by ongoing processes — if they stop, the body disintegrates.

See the lines on a seashell, a small first part is already a seashell, and was the smaller animal's shell; rings and rings more are added on by growth. The shell has the nature of an action track, it is process concretized. The body is also like that, a record, an action track.

When aspects of en#3 get reinvolved in life process, they are thereby also en#2 (both within and outside the skin-envelope body).

The process is body-en#2 and goes on in body-en#3. But only some results of life become en#3, only those in which it goes on. En#1 is what the spectator observes all around the body, but the body also has its own environment which it has made.

But if en#3 affects the body only if it is again en#2, is the distinction only for a spectator? Of course it is one body, not two. En#3 can affect the body only insofar as it reenters en#2. But then it matters very much that this en#2 is not all new; it is also already a product of this life process. The process goes on in its own products. Say a different tree is about to crash and hit the beaver — the observer may see that it is about to happen. But en#3 does not reenter the process in that arbitrary way. The very tree the beaver gnaws will not hit it. It will affect the beaver in many ways once it is on the ground, but these will be importantly different from the intrusion of a tree that was not already en#3. The body implies the environment that the body already "is." Life happens largely with environments that life has produced or modified. The process goes on largely in its own products.

The main "environment" of any animal is its species members, other animals like it. These are products of the en#2 process of the species. In that sense they are quite obviously en#3 (and, when something is ongoing, en#2). By far the greater proportion of animal activity is with and towards them. The mother for the infant, female and male for each other, the group for the individual, these are crucial environments. We must not take the physical environment as our basic model of environment, although that too will often already be en#3 — already organized by the life process when the current life process draws it in as en#2.

En#3 is the cement you walk on, the mole's hole, the beehive, the anthill, and our bodies and theirs. The life process (en#2) makes itself an environment in which it then goes on further. We can call it the "homemade" environment, or the "domesticated environment" — en#3.

The use of the word "in" is as yet unclear (when I say that the process goes on "in" en#3) because we do not wish to begin with any clear notion of space. We have and use our space, of course, but let us permit new concepts of space to arise from our interactional concepts. (We will "derive" the distinction between "external" and "internal" in VII-B.) Many quite different kinds of space can be generated from the process (both conceptually and experientially), as we will see. So let us allow this two-directional "in" to stand.

What "inside" and "in" mean is no simple question. The simple "in" of a skin-envelope assumes a merely positional space in which a line or plane divides into an "outside" and an "in." But the ground pressure is exerted not just on the sole of the foot but all the way up into the leg and the body. From most any single bone of some animal paleontologists can derive not just the rest of the body but also the kind of environment and terrain in which the animal lived. In breathing, oxygen enters the bloodstream-environment and goes all the way into the cells. The body is in the environment but the environment is also in the body, and is the body. We can say that en#3 participates in en#2, or we can say that the body-en#2 process goes on in the en#3.

En#0 is a fourth type. Something may someday affect the life process and be en#2, but is not now. This has never happened, and is not now any creature's en, not even the spectator's. In the seemingly infinite richness of the unborn, something may happen which has not yet, and will then be definable in terms of the process in which it participates. Let us allow ourselves to talk of this now. We don't want to say it plain isn't. Since this has no reality as en#2, and since en#3 is the result of en#2, we need a term for "environment" that has never been functioning in a life process.

En#0 is not what does function but has not been recognized. Vast reaches of the universe are involved in our process; these are all already part of en#2. En#0 is that with which some en#2 might come to be, but has not. (We need not assume that what is, must become en.) If something new enters en#2, it is determined as much by life process as by en#0.

But is en#0 spatially distinct from what is already en? Or may it be right here in what is participating? Obviously we must choose the second, if we choose at all, because the space relation is as yet undefined.

In these definitions process is first. We don't assume the "body" and the "environment" and then put them together. Later we will develop terms to speak of "the body." Right now it is ben#2.

With later terms we will be able to say what part of en#3 is the body.

Body structure is always involved in some processes, or else it disintegrates. It is a structure from process, for further process, and only so.

Body and en#2 and #3 imply each other because each is part of one organization that includes the other. Each functions as it does only in this wider functioning organization. This use of "imply" stems from the fact that the whole event is already referred to, when we think only of the body, or only of the en.

CHAPTER 2

Functional Cycle (Fucy)

Let us not begin by simply assuming that we live and think within an old model of time. Although we use linear time since it is inherent in our language and experience, other kinds of time are inherent in them as well, perhaps kinds of time that have never been explicated before. Let us see what model of time develops from explicating the explication process. No explication is ever equivalent to what (". ....") it explicates. "Explication" and "process" have time implicit in them, of course, but not only linear time. Let the present, past, and future arise later from the process, as we did in chapter I, when we used the words "body" and "environment" to say that they are one interaction process. Then we can distinguish them later with new terms that develop from the processes.

In the old model of linear time-bits we would have to say, for example, that a given bit of foot-pressure implies three different ground-pressure bits: one, by resisting, first enables the foot to press; a second is equal and opposite to the foot's pressure; a third ground-pressure is the result of the foot's pressing. The fact that one bit needs all three is an ancient problem with the linear model.

The "body" implies all three, if someone makes bits. So all three were implied when we said (in chapter I) that "the body implies the environment," although only now do we see this.

A whole string of en#2 is implied by the (any this) body-en#2. And it may imply many strings. If an animal hears a noise, many situations and behaviors will be implicit in its sense of the noise: places to run to, types of predators, careful steps, soundless moves, turning to fight, many whole sequences of behavior. Meanwhile the animal stands still, just listening. What it will do is not determined. Surely it won't do all the implicit sequences — perhaps not even one of just these but some subtler response.

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. It might imply the chase to get the food which may be far away. 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.

If digestion is my model instance, then the process is cyclical. Hunger also implies getting hungry again after defecating and sitting a while. I call this a "functional cycle." In such a cycle any "this" event implies all the rest, all the way around. But let us not decide that the sequence is simply predetermined, as is usually assumed.

Also in walking no single foot-pressure-ground-pressure event simply is. If there were suddenly such a single is, the animal would fall. Its weight is already on the way to ... (Momentum cannot be expressed as mere change of location.) The "bit" moves the animal over. Or it might be a bit near the beginning, the increasing foot-pressure-ground-pressure with the weight coming onto the foot. Any bit to which one might point implies the whole movement of walking. Any occurring is also an implying of further occurring. And each bit implies something different next.

If a spider is taken off its half-finished web and placed elsewhere, it goes on as soon as it can, spinning where it left off. It spins outwardly the rest of the net which thus has a hole in it. Like digestion, its web-spinning process cannot just begin again in the middle. The events cannot follow in just any order. More intelligent animals can re-include feedback from what they did in ways which would let them begin at the beginning of an interrupted action, but even so this involves quite a different sequence than an uninterrupted action. Living cannot well be thought of as unit events related to other events only by position, that is to say single events that one could rearrange in any order. I don't mean that anyone claims that living events can occur in any order. But why this is not possible is thought of only in terms of externally imposed relationships of things in an observer's space. Let us instead allow the spider to generate time and continuity. The spider's own process has its own order. The rest of the web will remain implied until the environment #2 cooperates in the occurring of the rest of the net. Each occurring is also an implying, and this stays the same unless it is changed by an environmental occurring that has a certain very special relation to the implying.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "A Process Model"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Northwestern University Press.
Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Foreword by Rob Parker

Acknowledgments

Introduction by Eugene Gendlin and David Young

Prefatory Note

Chapter I: Body-Environment (B-En)

Chapter II: Functional Cycle (Fucy)

Chapter III: An Object

Some Motivations and Powers of the Model So Far

Chapter IV: The Body and Time

Chapter IV-A: A Different Concept of the Body, Not a Machine

a) The body (when a process stops) is what continues; it is the other process

b) There is only the whole implying

c) The body is the subprocesses; they are body-en #2 and #3 all the way in

d-1) Symbolic functions of the body

d-2) Some requirements for our further concept formation

e) Everything by everything (evev)

f) Focaling

g-1) Relevance

g-2) Old and new models: some contrasts

h-1) Crossing, metaphor, law of occurring

h-2) Degrees of freedom

h-3) Schematized by schematizing (sbs)

h-4) The two directions of sbs

Chapter IV-B: Time: En#2 and En#3, Occurring and Implying

Chapter V: Evolution, Novelty, and Stability

Chapter V-A: Intervening Events

Chapter V-B: Stability: The Open Cycle

Chapter VI: Behavior

Chapter VI-A: Behavior and Perception

Chapter VI-B: The Development of Behavior Space

a) Motivation

b) Cross-contextual formation

c) Behavior space

c-1) Had space

c-2) Had space-and-time

c-3) Two open cycle sectors

d) Pyramiding

e) Object formation: Objects fall out

Appendix to Chapter VI

f) Resting perception, impact perception, and perceiving behind one’s back

f-1) Resting perception

f-2) Impact perception

f-3) Perception behind one’s back

g) Relevanting

h) Juncturing

i) Compression

j) “Breaking back” to a more primitive level

k) Behavioral body-development

l) Habit

m) Kination: Imagination and felt sense

Chapter VII: Culture, Symbol, and Language

Chapter VII-A: Symbolic Process

a) Bodylooks

b) The dance

d) Doubling

e) Expression

f) The new kind of CF

g) Pictures

h) Seens and heards

i) Action

j) Universals (kinds)

j-1) Separate senses

j-2) Kinds

j-3) Three universals

j-4) The pre-formed implicit (type a)

k) Action and gesturing

l) Slotted rituals

m) Making and images

n) Fresh formation of sequences and tools

o) Schematic terms: Meshed; implicit functioning; held; reconstituted

o-1) Meshed

o-2) Implicit Functioning

o-3) Held

o-4) Reconstituting

Chapter VII-B: Protolanguage

a) Internal space

b) The FLIP

c) The order

d) Absent context in this present context

e) Crossing of clusters and so-called “conventional” symbols; exactly why they are no longer iconic of the body in each situation, and how they are nevertheless organic rather than arbitrary: The internal relations of proto­linguistic symbols

f) Language formation: Two kinds of crossing

f-1) The mediate carrying forward, what language use is

f-2) Collecting context(s), the formation of kinds

f-3) Lateral crossing and collective crossing

f-4) Word-formation

f-5) Short units

f-6) The context of a word; collected contexts and interaction contexts

f-7) Syntax

f-8) Language use; novel situations

f-9) Discursive use versus art; re-eveving versus re-recognition

f-10) New expression

f-11) Fresh sentences

f-12) Deliberate

f-13) More than one context; human time and space

g) When is the FLIP? Cessation of sound-formation in language use

Appendix to f: Details do not drop out; universals are not empty commonalities

Chapter VIII: Thinking with the Implicit

a) Introduction

b) Direct referent and felt shift

c) The new kind of sequence

d) Relevance and perfect feedback object

e) Schematic of the new carrying forward and the new space

f) Rapid statements of points that instance direct referent formation

f-1) How an VIII-sequence makes changes in the VII-context

f-2) Any VII-sequence from the direct referent is like a new “first” sequence in relation to the VII-context

f-3) “Monad”

f-4) VII-statements from a direct referent instance that direct referent.

f-5) The new “universality” of the direct referent

f-6) The old universality of VII is implicit also

f-7) The whole VII-complexity, not just the collected kinds, is carried forward and universalized in the new way; we can now derive the IOFI principle

f-8) The direct referent, and the new universalized complexity, was not there before direct referent formation; the direct referent is not a “reflecting upon” what was there before

(“from 1/2 to 2”)

f-9) Direct context crossing makes novelty but still instances the lack

f-10) Many words, like “direction,” are used in an IOFI way in VIII

Appendix to VIII: Monads and Diafils

Monads

Diafils

Conclusion and Beginning

Notes

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a masterful contribution to its field, both highly original and qualitatively sound. Moreover, it is a pivotal work in the large oeuvre of its author, a world-known figure in a number of fields in academia and in the many practice fields he has touched.” —Mary Jeanne Larrabe, editor of An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
 

From the Publisher