The new phenomenology of carrying

forward
E.T. Gendlin

Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5801 S. Ellis

Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, USA (e-mail:
[email protected])

In this paper I show a new approach to what phenomenologists call

"phenomena," a deliberate way to think and speak with what is more
than categories (concepts, theories, assumptions, distinctions ...).
Some categories are always implicit in language, and language is
always implicit in any human experiencing. So what I just called the
"more" cannot be separated from implicit categories and language.
This is well known. What is little known is that experiencing always
goes freshly beyond the categories and the common phrases. I have
been establishing a deliberate way to think with more. This is
crucially needed in philosophy, but it has seemed impossible. We can
reformulate the problems it involves.

Most philosophers gave up on phenomenology long ago, because it

was recognized that neutral description is impossible. Description
involves categories. Sartre's dialectical categories differed from
Merleau-Ponty's functional approach. Therefore their "descriptions"
differed from each other and from Husserl's. It was soon said that
phenomenology finds no phenomena at all, only the same
philosophical issues that have always been contested. The
phenomena seemed to depend entirely on the categories (through
history, culture, and common language forms). Philosophers were
tempted, like Heidegger in the years after Being and Time, to deal
with categories apart from phenomenology, from the top down.
Everyone can now see that working with the categories alone is not
at all hopeful. None are ultimate and their use always involves an
"excess" which fits neither within categories nor can it be had
separately. This impasse has led to the dead-end aspect of
postmodernism. It frees us from any privileged set of categories, but
leaves us only with an aporia, still only on the level of concepts. But if
one recognizes that language is inherently metaphorical and not
controlled by concepts, then there need be no dead end.

It is now evident that philosophy needs to employ more than

conceptuality, but the current "return" to phenomenology need not be
a retreat from postmodernism. Phenomenology need not back away
from the problem of the relativity of descriptive categories and
approaches. We have ways to think with the so-called "excess." I
have shown that it is much more than a texture of[Page 128]old
concepts. What I call "experiencing" is not separable from concepts,
but it plays crucial, directly demonstrable roles in ongoing thinking. It
performs functions that concepts cannot perform.

The "excess" is our situated experiencing in the world, in situations

with others. It does not utterly depend on categories. History and
culture are insufficient to handle even an ordinary day. The common
phrases do not limit our next steps of action and thought. Applying
different categories does indeed bring forth different phenomena, but
the direct experiencing of whatever we study always responds very
precisely, always just so and not otherwise, and always with more
than what could follow just from our categories. Experiencing is a
"responsive order," as I call it. [1] This order is always unfinished in
regard to further conceptual form, but always more finely organized
than any conceptual forms. If you are willing to think with the
"excess" rather than leaving it behind, you can attend to it directly at
any juncture of thinking. Then you can notice that it will not permit
you to say most of the cogent things you can easily say. It will stay
opaque, stuck and mum unless and until just certain sentences
"come" to open it. Such freshly formed, often metaphorical sentences
show that language is deeply rooted in experiencing and not
controlled by extant concepts or categories. If we think from where
these arise, we can examine and redirect some of the functions which
implicit experiencing provides at that particular juncture of thought.

I am summarizing what I call a "reversal of the usual philosophical

order" in my philosophical work. Philosophies have long claimed a
basis in experience, but "experience" was always construed according
to the concepts and categories of that philosophy. The concepts were
always read into experience. This is still done today when the
"excess" is understood as just a texture of old concepts. Only a
phenomenology can employ the functions of experiencing beyond the
variety of concepts. In works I summarize here, one can find a
philosophical way to show and directly employ some of its functions
in thinking and speaking.

We find neither objectivism nor indeterminacy. Where others see

indeterminacy, we find intricacy – an always unfinished order that
cannot be represented, but has to be taken along as we think. It is a
much finer, more organic order that always provides implicit
functions, whether we attend to them or not. I will try to show some
of these functions in the first part of my paper.

To speak with and from what is more than the categories, we employ
the capacity of language for new sentences. This capacity of language
is rooted in the human body as reflexively sensed from inside. The
reflexivity is currently being missed, because attention is understood
along the lines of perception, as if a neutral and unexamined person
over here directs a neutral beam at some already separate object
over there. If we attend to experiencing directly we find[Page
129]that we live with situational bodies which always sense
themselves in sensing anything else. So the first half of my paper
concerns the functions of what is more than categories, especially the
inherent interrelations of language, situations, and the human body.
The second half of my paper concerns the reflexivity of attention,
self-consciousness and first-person process.

1.

Phenomenology as I understand it, determines its own use of

language. It can develop new categories of description. It can
examine and direct the use of logic and theory. Phenomenology for
me is not the small phenomenology which understands itself as only
describing conscious experiences cut off from the universe, from
other persons, and from the "unconscious" depths of person and
body. I will touch on these topics to show that they are not beyond
phenomenology as I have always understood it. Phenomenology is
small when it accepts a small corner within the world-picture of the
reductive sciences.

A philosophy that can think with more does not assume the science
picture. It does not assume, in Russell's words, that logic is the
"furniture of the world." We want to derive and understand the great
power of logic and science, and grasp how these are embedded in
more than themselves. We badly need to add a new and different
kind of science to augment that world-picture. Husserl's refusal to
assume the reductive ontology was sound, and we can go much
further in the direction he opened. We can derive this and also other
ontologies in and from phenomenology.

In use, all concepts involve more than their clean logical patterns. But
if we do not pay more attention to this, then we seem to have
nothing left, when the concepts fail. There is no new road, only
arbitrariness where the concepts break. We find ourselves in a welter
of conceptual possibilities, a mix of all the concepts and theories we
have read and thought. We can move in all sorts of possible
directions, old and new. Many analytic distinctions can always be
made, and need not be foolish. In this plethora what we choose to
say is arbitrary.

Where I wish to point is a little further. The welter of old concepts is

here, but they do not alone determine what we find. Let me ask you:
When no concept seems to work, what more do you find here? I think
you find that you are still here, of course, in midst of your situation,
and you can still find your hope for something from your foray into
the topic. Perhaps you were pursuing an unclear lead, the sense of
something promising. In that case this is also still here. Along with
this you feel implicitly all you ever learned and[Page 130]thought, but
not as a welter, rather as it relates in a focal way to what you are
tracking. None of this goes away.

What you find is not disorder, not limbo, not just flow, not some
concept together with the opposite of that concept. Rather, you find
an intricacy, pregnant, implicitly ordered, perhaps partly opaque.
From this intricacy you may at times be unable to go on, at least for
a while. This implicit intricacy is quite different than the welter of
analytic concepts and possibilities.

There are phenomenological variables at this "edge." Sometimes the

sense of such an edge is already there, calling for our attention, but
usually we need a quiet minute of attending to where it can come.
And when it has come, if we leave it even for a moment, then we
only remember it. We need another quiet minute to find it again.
When it comes, it may be open to be spoken-from. Or, it may be
closed and opaque, requiring us to return repeatedly before it opens.
It may be a diffuse sense from which many strands can be
articulated. Or, there may be one single focal implying like a felt lead
or an insistent sense of something. In Experiencing and the Creation
of Meaning, I found interesting relations among these variables. [2]
Much work has since been done on this kind of datum.

I have been speaking about concepts breaking down, but even when
they work well, we can always go to the implicit intricacy. It is a
more organic order, a more precise and more demanding kind of
order, a very finely determined order, very different from logic, yet
responsive to logic. It contains a great many implicit distinctions and
entities, but you can easily assure yourself that it has much more
order than these, and an order of a different kind.

Now I must point to the mode of language I have already used here.
Can I really use words such as "organic," "order," "precise," "kind,"
"determined," and "different," to speak of more than conceptual
distinctions? These words seem to mean certain conceptual
distinctions. Does not "order" always consist of discrete entities and
patterns? Does not "organic" refer to certain defined entities? But in
my sentences the words have not remained within their old
meanings. When we speak from the intricacy, the sentences can add
to the meanings of the words. We notice this especially when we
have trouble finding words. Then we can sense the physical strain as
the implicit words rearrange themselves in our bodies, so that when
they come, they arrive newly arranged. Words can acquire more
meaning when they come in sentences that come freshly at the edge
of the implicit intricacy.
You need not be a philosopher to find yourself at such an edge. You
might be tracking a half-formed new observation in any field. Or, you
might be in midst of writing a poem. Or, you might find yourself in a
troubling situation which no obvious action can resolve. With the
usual view of the body as a machine, it may seem surprising that the
body can feel a situation, and what[Page 131]is more, can imply and
demand a next step of speech or action that has never been seen
before. But we are familiar with this bodily "knowledge" from many
practical situations. We know that we cannot base our actions just on
what we can conceptualize. We have to use our implicit bodily sense
of the whole situation. We may find a way that resolves our bodily
unease, or not. We decide when we must, but perhaps a large
discomfort remains hanging there. This bodily discomfort "knows"
some of the intricacy which the decision did not take account of. But
when a decision does sit right in our bodies, how well we sleep that
night!

Right now, for example, where do you sense your reaction to what I
am saying? If you have not stopped to articulate it, then it is still only
a physical sense of implicit meaning, perhaps excitement, perhaps
discomfort, at any rate a bodily sense which only a philosophical body
could create. It is not an emotion, not a mere feeling about this
discussion, but an implicit intricacy, a cluster of implicit philosophical
thoughts.

But I am getting too far ahead. Let me choose one example and go
into some detail. I hope the example will let me point to the close
relation between language and the body. In my example you will note
the physical "coming" of words. The example should also show how
we can find where the implicit intricacy opens. Thirdly it should show
how we recognize when we did not speak from the implicit intricacy,
and when we did.

Say you are writing a poem. You have six or eight lines but the poem
is not finished. It wants to go on. In an implicit way you feel (sense,
have, live, are ...) what should be said next, but you do not know
what to say. The phrases that come do not precisely say it. You reject
one phrase after another. How are you able to do this? You do not
know what to say, but you recognize that these phrases do not say it.
Something implicit is functioning in your rejection of them. Lovely
phrases come. Some are so good, you save them for another poem.
But THIS demanding implicit sense still hangs there.

You may be distracted for a moment. Now the demanding sense is

gone. You quietly re-read the poem so far, and there, at the end of
what you have, there it is again! And you still cannot say it.
What or where is "that," which is there again? It is so stubborn and
precise. Your body understands the phrases that come. It knows the
language and demands – I say implies – something more precise.

Your hand rotates in midair, your body knows what needs to be said
and has never as yet been said in the history of the world (if it is a
good poem).

Eventually the right phrases come!

What does the word "come" say here? How do words come to us?
This "coming" needs to be studied. How do the right phrases come
and how are they recognized?

[Page 132]

As a poet you need not worry over these questions. Poets work in
what Husserl called the "natural attitude." But as philosophers and
phenomenologists we want to think with, from, and into this unclear
but more precise demanding edge, and think into this coming of
words. When we then speak from there, these three words
"language," "concept," and "body" will have acquired more meanings.

As philosopher observing yourself as poet, you find that THIS, which

needs to be said, is more precise than the common phrases. How or
where do you have this? Your rotating hand almost says it. Your
whole body demands (implies) THIS. But now the word "body" speaks
from your body as sensed from inside, not only your externally
observable body.

The implicit meaning does not exist before or without language. In

animals the inwardly sensed body exists before language. But the
human body is never before language. But the implied meaning is not
the result only of language. The relation of language to the body is
more intricate than just with or without. Your body understands well
the language and the phrases it rejects. But it can generate a bodily
implying that goes beyond what the already-shared common
meanings could imply. The body knows the language, and it always
moves on freshly again, beyond the already existing meanings.

The body physically rearranges the same old words, so that they
come to us already arranged in new phrases and sentences. This is so
in all ordinary speech, not only in fresh thinking. We do not look up
single words and paste them together. If we hear ourselves saying
the wrong thing, we can only stop, regain the implicit sense of what
we were about to say, and wait for another set of words to come.
The "coming" of words is bodily, like the coming of tears, sleep,
orgasm, improvisation, and how the muse comes. But here we have
to be careful. The higher animals also sleep and have orgasms, and
very complex lives even without language. But language is implicit in
the whole human body (not only in our brains). Language is implicit
in our muscular movements and in every organ. It is implicit in what
rouses or spoils our appetites, and in what disturbs our sleep. The
language is part of culture and history, but the body is always freshly
here again, and can say "no," even when culture and reason say
"yes." If you enter there, you find a finely ordered cluster of strands,
far more intricate than culture. The body can insist on some new and
more sophisticated way that has never as yet been found, and may
never be found. We often need to find our way beyond the cultural
forms. Similarly, improvisation and the muse come in a bodily way
beyond the already existing forms.

Although what we called "you" does not control what comes, the
implying is not an otherness (not an "alterity"), not another self, not
unreachable. Rather, what comes in this way feels more deeply and
uncensoredly from yourself,[Page 133]than anything that you could
construct. Now the words "you" and "self" tell of degrees of selfness,
since we are most ourselves when there is a fresh and surprising
coming through the body.

There has been no established word for this kind of bodily datum. The
words "perception," "idea," "emotion," "feeling," "affective,"
"kinesthetic," "proprioceptive" all mean something else. Do not call it
by an old word; people will not be able to find it. Let it generate an
odd fresh phrase. It is a felt meaning, a felt sense, the direct
referent, the implicit demanding.

All known concepts are available, but their patterns are not what we
find here. If we had nothing else, we would be in limbo. But we have
much more than the concepts – we have language forming freshly
and oddly to say all this. And we have what language can freshly
speak from, which is anything but indeterminate. What comes in this
way from the intricacy is more finely organized, usually on a new
plane, skew and around the corner from the common meanings. Now
let me consider the great question which must obviously be asked
here: How are we able to recognize when we are speaking from the
implicit intricacy, and when not? We want to grasp how. The fact that
objective observers can reliably distinguish it is now well established.
We have a good deal of research to support this claim. [3]

But how do we recognize carrying forward? How does the poet

recognize the right line when it comes? The poet in the "natural
attitude" need not explain this, but it is now our turn as philosophers
to speak from this. Implicitly we "know" the answer, but we cannot
easily say it. People say that the words "match" the feeling, but
words and feeling have no common shape like two congruent
triangles. When people in the natural attitude say "match," this is
sufficient for them to "know" what they mean, but if we examine
what they mean, we find that this word "match" does not speak-from
what happens. It speaks from the usual concepts of representation,
of a match or copy which is impossible here. A sentence is not a copy
of a feeling.

But can we say what does happen? Or can we only negate the old
notion of representation? Do we have more here than the old
concepts? Of course we have more here. We have what happens, and
also the power of language which can speak freshly from what
happens. Let us permit the language to do this, and also observe how
it does this.

Instead of the word "match" we invite fresh whole sentences. The

poet rejected the many lines because the more precise
implying continued to hang there. None of those lines could take it
along. Now it no longer hangs there, because that special line
has carried the implying forward.

Was the new line already hidden in the implying? No, the line came
from, but was not in the implying. The pattern we spoke of as: "came
from but was[Page 134]not in" is more complex than representation.
We are speaking from it; we are taking it along.

Does the implying become explicit? No, not at all! The implying does
not become words, even after the newly-phrased words arrive. The
implying never turns into something explicit, as if now it is no longer
there. If the implying were no longer there, the poet would not know
to prefer just these words. Rather, these words carry the implying
along with it. They bring it. They carry it forward. They take it along.
They bring this implying with them, which is how the poet knows to
keep just this line.

At last the poet knows what the implying "was," but is this quite the
same implying that was there before? We cannot say yes because the
poet didn't quite know what was implied. We cannot say no because
then there would be no connection and no reason to keep these lines.
Here again the old concepts break, and again I point to the more
intricate pattern we find, and to the power of fresh language to speak
from it. We can do much more than deny that the implying is the
same or different. As philosophers we recognize the "same and
different" as the arch principles of the logical use of concepts.

In commenting on my philosophy, Mohanty wanted to divide carrying

forward. He wanted to know which part was there before and which
part is new and different. Instead, let us speak from the pattern that
we do find here. [4]

The fresh language of "no longer hanging there" and "carried

forward" now becomes a new concept, but also an instance of a new
way to use concepts. Fresh language leads to a new concept when
there is a pattern, something we can see also in many other places. I
think you will find yourself using the concept of "carrying forward" at
many junctures. There has been no way to speak from this relation
between implying and words, but now there is.

As a concept, "carrying forward" does also have the usual kind of

pattern, a structure, a kind of diagram in empty space. It contains
the spatial pattern of forward (and backward), and also the pattern of
"carrying," i.e., something taken and moved by something else. But
this alone says very little. The concept means our use of it at this
juncture, where words (it could be actions) let a precise implying no
longer hang there, but take it along. Without taking this juncture
along, the concept does not say much. So it does not substitute for
the role which the implicit intricacy plays here. We do not substitute
the concept for the intricacy; rather we take the intricacy along so
that the concept can speak-from this intricate juncture.

But is not something a "concept" only because its pattern goes free
from the juncture at which it first arises, so that it is applicable
elsewhere? But the pattern of this concept is not only a separable
spatial diagram. The pattern is also its relation to the carried-forward
intricacy. When we apply "carrying[Page 135]forward" elsewhere, we
apply this juncture. Let me explain how such a concept is applicable
at other junctures.

Concepts that carry their implicit junctures with them are much more
precise. They mean what they do at that juncture in that situation.
When applied elsewhere they bring their first implicit
juncture into the new implicit juncture. So they do not have the same
effect there, nor just a different effect, but again more than same or
different. Can language say what we do find? The concept's first
implicit juncture "crosses" with the new juncture, to produce just this
next change at this new juncture. We can enter into its effect. Then
we find that crossing opens every concept so that it can do more than
before. We also find that it opens each new juncture so that there is
more there than before. The crossing of two junctures does not bring
the lowest common denominator but rather a great deal that is new
to both of the two that cross.

In a logical order every additional meaning is a further limitation of

the result. It decreases the "degrees of freedom." But intricacy has
the responsive order in which, the more requirements have been
formulated, the more further possibilities are thereby opened. I was
able to show this in Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning.

When two patterns function only logically, they do limit each other
down to their lowest commonality. Our capacity for logical patterns is
an enormously valuable human power, but we do not lose it if we also
use the kind of pattern which happens with intricacy. "Carrying
forward" and "crossing" are two more-than-logical concepts I have
introduced. In the crossing of two intricacies, each becomes implicit
in the other insofar as it can. This is an extremely precise implicit
process. When we enter into this implicit effect, we find that the new
possibilities are much more precisely differentiated than what we had
before.

(See C&D for this philosophy of language and word-use.)

For example, earlier I distinguished experiencing from the arbitrary

analytic plethora. This distinction has its meaning just at that
juncture, in order to find both. I said only: "If you go further, what do
you find you have there?" Other than for the sake of finding them, I
did not distinguish them. Even so I had to say that the analytic one is
already implicit in the experiential one. So this was not the separable
pattern of "two." When we apply this odd diad elsewhere, we can
expect it to do more there, than can follow from it here. But concepts
really always bring their intricacy along. When we apply any concept
elsewhere, we can enter the intricacy to find what effect it has had
there.

Things do not come separately with external relations between

already- cut units. Experiencing precedes units. We create units. We
fashion them retroactively, and thereby gain the powers of logical
inference. We can create[Page 136]logical theory without assuming a
reality that consists of logical units. And, we can always re-enter the
intricacy after any logical inference.

It has long been known that concepts bring their implicit junctures
and are not the same in different contexts, but this was always
considered a terrible limitation which has to be ignored if we want to
make sense. Concepts were therefore said to "drop out" all their
intricacy, as if the actual intricacy consisted only of "particulars"
subsumed under them. But concepts do not drop out their intricacy,
and the intricacy does not consist only of subsumed detail. When
concepts are treated as empty patterns, they seem to close the
intricacy which is always there and can always be entered. Although
this closing is vital for logic, it has given concepts a bad reputation as
if they must always close us to more. This is not so.
In contrast to spatial patterns which have no inherent value-direction,
we find that experiential implying has a life-enhancing, forward-
moving character. The implied new steps (of language or action) are
in a life-forwarding direction. What we usually call the "direction" is
defined by some external aim or mark. The externally-defined
"direction" can change at each step, but in its implicit intricate
meaning we say, looking back, that the surprising steps of carrying
forward were in "the same" direction all along. The body's organic
direction is prior to the externally defined "direction." As a society we
must be careful that the great progress of the logically reductive
sciences does not lead us to lose this little-understood characteristic
of body process.

We see that language, body, and situational interaction are a single

system together. Every situation consists of hundreds of possibilities
for actions and speech-acts. Those are culturally given routines, but
an individual body can sense not only the routine patterns, but also
new life-enhancing steps beyond the forms and routines.

Experiencing is always a sequence. If we apply "carrying forward" to

a whole sequence, the concept has a new effect. We can think of the
sequence as a constant carrying forward of implying into new
implying which is in turn carried forward into still newer implying.
This process is a "zig-zag" between what is implied on the one hand,
and statements or actions on the other. Implying and occurring
respond to each other.

If we employ the zig-zag, we can monitor whether we are speaking

from the implicit intricacy, or not. Suppose you have some half-
formed new ideas for a paper, and now you have a chance to talk
about it with someone. You have a rich implicit sense of what you
want to say, but nothing written. Talking about such an implicit sense
may kill it. You seem to have had only two dull ideas. But we know
that talking about it can also maximize and expand it. Then you are
amazed to find so many strands, all still developing. What does this
depend on?

[Page 137]

My point here is: You need not wait till you get home, and either
deplore speaking prematurely, or happily laud the power of dialogue.
If you keep returning to the implicit, you can check step by step
whether the implicit is being carried forward. If it shrivels, quickly
discard the statement. Better words will come.

This example will now help me to discuss a far-reaching conclusion:

Whether you will say retroactively that you "had" a rich idea or a thin
one depends not only on what you had, but also on whether it was
carried forward or not. Carrying forward has two past times, both the
recorded time behind it, and the retroactive past looking back from
now. In the recorded past you might remember how it seemed before
you began speaking. In the retroactive time you now say what the
implying really "was." Neither is invented. Both are very precisely just
what they are.

The carrying-forward sequence gives us a new concept of time. For

example, the new line lets the poet know what was "really meant" by
the previous lines. Now they may need revising, but this will be a
sharpening, not just a change. The process has reached back behind
itself to carry forward what the previous lines "meant." Retroactively
one can now explain just what it "was" in the earlier lines that has led
to this new one. There is not only the remembered past, but also a
new past, a second past which is experienced from the present, back,
but very precisely, not arbitrarily. [5]

I call the carrying forward sequence "nonlaplacian." Laplace said if he

could know all the particles and their velocity at any one moment, he
could tell us everything about the past and the future. The zig-zag
stands in contrast to the Laplacian logic. We need both. Logical
inference is indispensable and arrives where nothing else can. You
might often want to pursue 39 purely logical steps in a row, but after
that, or at any point, you can institute the zig-zag process in which
each step can revise the whole.

Action and speech-acts occur into implying so that it becomes a next

implying. The present is constantly also the going back behind itself
to bring the past implying into the newly implied future. This pattern
is more intricate than linear time. It is a time of internal relations,
rather than the usual time which consists of perfectly present
positions that are not related to each other unless an observer
externally relates them.

What I have presented are small samples, small bits from a

philosophy. My intention is only to indicate a new way in which we
can do phenomenology of language, phenomenology of the body, and
phenomenology of concepts.

To move to the second section of this paper, I must rely largely on

references to the detailed philosophic work I have written elsewhere.
I have to mention it and then skip it.

[Page 138]

I could show only a little here. We have become able to employ and
(by means of the employment also characterize) many of the ways in
which the intricacy functions in thinking, in language, and in action,
as well as in logic and science.

Thereby the philosophy has also developed several practices which

are being widely taught. I will mention them at the end.

In addition to "carrying forward" and "crossing" we have developed

other such more-than-logical concepts, for example "implicit
governing," and "unseparated multiplicity."

We have also found certain characteristics of more-than-logical

processes. The one I mentioned is that more conditions increase the
degrees of freedom.

I have already mentioned the Process Model in which the carrying

forward process exhibits itself and develops concepts with which to
understand itself. These non-Laplacian concepts are both internally
and logically connected. They are inherently phenomenological, but
also have the powers of logical inference. They consist partly of the
implicit functions themselves, but they can also serve as purely
logical concepts which can apply to the data of the reductive sciences.
This makes it possible to augment the latter so that we can think also
about living things and human beings. [6]

This philosophy provides a new way to go on from where most

philosophers stop. Of course they all employ the intricacy. Philosophy
sharpens and usually repositions the main terms, which can happen
only because terms work in the intricacy. Some philosophers also
point to the intricacy. We can stand on their shoulders and go on
from their work, both because we can enter the intricacy, and
because we can let fresh language speak from it in new sentences
and with new patterns. In this way we can employ a philosopher's
contribution more effectively. Also in this way we can go on from
Husserl.

2.

Husserl discovered what I call "the intricacy." And then he did not
stop short of it, as so many others did. He entered it and classified a
thousand or so facets, like Adam in Paradise naming all the animals.

In his way, Husserl already found that the present occurs into the
previous implying and brings it forward as the new implying. He
denied that time consists only of pure presents. He found that there
is always also a protention of the not-yet. For example, as I now
begin this very sentence, you are already ... Yes. And, if I stop, you
feel as if we had stopped in midst of a broad jump. Phrased in my
terms, he found that the present happens into a previous protention,
and is also a new protention. If we enter further into the intricacy
here, we find carrying forward.

[Page 139]

Husserl also found that the intricacy cannot be exhausted. He says:

dass jede noch so weitgespannte Erfahrungsmannigfaltigkeit noch nähere und

neue Dingbestimmungen offen lässt, und so in infinitum. [7]

that every manifold of experience, however far extended, leaves open still
closer and new determinations of things and so ad infinitum.

He says as I just did, that the application of a concept requires us to

enter into the intricacy again, to find what the concept did there:

Der Ausdruck ist nicht so etwas wie . . . ein darübergezogenes Kleid; er ist
eine geistige Formung, die an der intentionalen Unterschicht neue intentionale
Funktionen übt, und von ihr korrelativ intentionale Funktionen erfahrt. Was
dieses neue Bild wieder besagt, das muss an den Phänomenen selbst . . .
studiert werden (Ideen I, para 124, p. 307).

An expression is not as one might suppose . . . like a covering dress; it is a

psychic formation which performs new functions at the intentional underlayer,
and experiences correlative functions from it. The import of this new picture
must be . . . studied at the phenomena themselves.

Husserl approached the intricacy with certain unquestioned

categories, for example his top divisions between perceiving, feeling,
and willing. He did not question linear time, geometric space, and
mathematical logic, because it was his project to derive these from
the intricacy. He saw that he could derive the clear and stable forms.
He considered that his project would be completed if he could find all
that is involved in deriving these. And, he also assumes that the
intricacy is finite in this regard:

Der Ausdruck is vollständig, wenn er alle synthetischen Formen und Materien

der Unterschicht begrifflich-bedeutungsmässig ausprägt; (Ideen I, para 126, p.
309, my italics).

An expression is complete when it conceptually and meaningfully

explicates all synthetic forms and materials of the underlayer.

Here I find in the margin my own note from when I first read this text
many years ago. It says: "Is there an 'all'?"

Even in regard to any one concern, the intricacy can always lead
further, and can enrich and complicate the earlier findings. But that
never makes them wrong or useless. Unless one finds an error (which
is something distinctly different, but this demands another intricate
and unfinishable discussion), one retains the earlier steps, although
the further intricacy becomes implicit in them.
[Page 140]

Had Husserl not so often re-entered, he would have thought early on

that he had completed the work and made everything clear that could
be clear. But he was frustrated in his assumption that
phenomenology reveals a single realm of permanent objects and
relationships. Whenever he returned where he had found all his
specific detail, he found that it had opened and developed further.
Now he had to write a more differentiated description. "Others build
edifices" he said, "whereas I only dig further and further into the
ground." In other words, he found carrying forward and the
responsive order, but did not recognize it as an inherent
characteristic of experiencing and phenomenological speaking-from.

If we enter the intricacy at any of the junctures Husserl opened, and

if we are not bound by his logical concern and his categories, we can
go further at any point. We cannot go further just with his concepts
and essences alone, but we can, if we let them take the intricacy
along, if we think not just with his concepts but rather with the
intricacy and the concepts.

With old habits we might wrongly assume that such a spot is entirely
the result of his categories, so that it would disappear if we question
them. But this is not so. As Experiencing and the Creation of
Meaning shows, the intricacy we find by means of concepts and
categories is not controlled by the concepts and categories. In the
intricacy they do not act as if they were logical premises which
control what we will find. What we find with them does not need to
remain consistent with them. What we directly find at any juncture
where we apply concepts, can immediately require a further
differentiation in the very concepts which led to it. The intricacy is not
determined by any hierarchy of concepts. Even the smallest detail,
seemingly subsumed under a lower concept, can lead to an
experiential differentiation which reformulates the top categories. I
showed this "reversal" in Experiencing and the Creation of
Meaning and in a new procedure, "thinking at the edge" (TAE). [8]

Husserl found the implicit too, but he thought of it as a "halo" around

the edges of clear perceptions, like peripheral vision. He assumed
that if he looked directly at anything implicit, there would be only
clear perceptions there. We need not assume this. Husserl extended
this perceptual model to all other reports from the reflective
phenomenological level.

The highest honor we can bestow on a philosophy is to make it

fruitful and significant in the future, by thinking further with it, across
its limitations. For Husserl the unclear halo is only at the edge of
what we perceive. This is largely true for perception, although
Merleau-Ponty showed that even a head-on perception can include
much that is not clear. But with perception what is unclear is usually
at the periphery. If instead of perception we consider language and
meaning, we find, instead, that the "halo" is the center. To find what
a statement means, we have to understand its implicit meaning.

[Page 141]

This is the central meaning, not the edge. Words mean the change
they make when they are said. The change happens implicitly in the
situation. If we examine what it is that functions as the statement's
meaning, what difference it makes to say it, what the point of it is,
we discover that the implicit intricacy is what actually functions when
a statement functions. When we say "I understand it," the
understanding is an implicit intricacy. When we do not understand a
statement, we can only repeat the statement. We repeat its form of
words. But when we understand the statement, we can speak from it
in many ways.

For philosophy the model of clear perceptual objects found over there
and capable of being formulated alone, utterly breaks down. We
cannot use perception as the model for language or most everything
else. An implicit intricacy functions centrally, and we have to study
how speech, thought, and action function in relation to it. Philosophy
cannot model itself on the reception of "external" perceptual objects.
It has to study the process by which the external/internal distinction
comes about (A Process Model, VIIB).

The limitation of the model of perception is related to the problem

about the categories of description. The two problems go together.
With perception as the basic model, the categories of thinking,
feeling, and willing seem apt. A percept seems to be a mere
apprehension. It seems to split itself off from our affect about it, and
our will to do something about it.

Husserl's work is phenomenological in that he always begins from the

intricacy and finds much more there, than can follow from what he
brought. But, by reentering one can follow how the intricacy
differentiates itself further.

Husserl knew not to attempt one logically coherent system from his
many independent articulations from intricacy. Each of these provides
access to reenter the intricacy. It is because Husserl enters the
experienced intricacy that he can generate so many new terms and
distinctions at points where there had been only a supposedly simple
pattern before. But it is also for this reason that he does not make
analytically desirable distinctions when he does not directly find them.
For example, among the many questions Zahavi very justly raises, it
seems true to me that Husserl does not make the following
distinctions. Zahavi says:

Ultimately Husserl tends to equate (1) the first-personal mode of givenness,

(2) self-awareness, (3) a certain basic sense of ego-centricity, and (4) the very
life of consciousness. [9]

The phrase "tends to equate" says a little too much, but I think
Zahavi is right that Husserl does not make the distinction which
would set apart how the ego's self-awareness is a structural
characteristic inherent in all experience. Zahavi[Page 142]is also right
to argue that this is Husserl's view. Self-awareness is structurally
inherent, not merely the perceiving of, or the "presence" to
experiences. Zahavi is pursuing a cogent line of argument against
Pothast, who seems to reduce Husserl's account just to the I's
perception and ownership of experiences. Zahavi writes:

If the ego is conceived as something standing opposed to or above the

experience, it is difficult to understand why the ego's awareness of the
experience should count as a case of self-awareness. [In] Husserl's discussion
. . . the ego . . . is not [just] something standing apart from the stream of
consciousness, but is a structural part of its givenness (my italics)

I think Zahavi is right, that Husserl did not construe the "I" only as a
presence over against experiences. But given the juncture at which
Husserl describes what is directly experienced, and given Husserl's
logical categories, I think that Husserl is right not to make the
distinctions which Zahavi makes in (1)-(4) above. As Zahavi says,
Husserl finds and says that self-experience is inherent in the very
structure of any experience. There are many places where Husserl
obviously speaks-from more than mere ownership. But I think one
cannot distinguish the inherent self-consciousness with the language
and kind of concepts Husserl had available.

Let me first cite the evidence to support Zahavi's reading, and then
show what would be needed to provide phenomenologically the
distinction which Zahavi proposes.

Husserl includes (without making a distinction) not just the presence

of experiences to the "I," but also "my 'what I do and suffer'" along
with "my consciousness."

Husserl says:

Auch mein Leib ist mir gegenüber als Körper, aber nicht als Leib; der Stoss,
der . . . meinen Leib trifft, trifft "mich." (Beilage VI of Ideen II)

Also my body is over against me as Körper but not as Leib. The blow which hits
. . . my Leib hits 'me.' A stab into my hand: I am stabbed.
It is interesting here to compare Wittgenstein on the relation of
person and pain in the body. [10]

The blow to Husserl's "Leib" which reaches what he calls "mich"

clearly goes beyond what is presented over against his "I." I might
see my knees and feet over against me, but the stab reaches not just
my hand but me. It opens the body directly to phenomenology, not
just as a mere pre-condition, as Merleau-Ponty usually discusses it.
And it supports my reading of his "my 'what I[Page 143]do and
suffer'" which I quoted above. In reading Husserl we can definitely
establish his finding of an "I" that goes beyond mere consciousness-
of (mere presence to, ownership of), although one has to search for
special spots. As Zahavi says, Husserl gives no distinct account of
how the "I" is inherent in the very formation of experiencing rather
than only present to experiences.

Husserl puts his self-observations in quotation marks because he

maintains the reflective stand of the pure phenomenological "I," but
what he finds within the quotes is his "me" which includes much more
than this supposedly pure "I." I don't agree that the reflective
phenomenological reporter is a pure perceiving, but I can credit the
report on the bodily "I" as much more than what is perceptually
presented in front of us.

Zahavi rightly seeks an account of the "I" as a self-awareness that is

inherent in every experience. But on what phenomenological grounds
could we devise such an account? Of course we would not want just
to invent one of many possible purely analytic theories. To go further
we need to:

(a) return to Husserl's source, the implicit intricacy where he found

what he wrote about,
(b) enter further into the intricacy which opens at this edge,
(c) let language form itself newly in relation to the intricacy, and
(d) allow the language to speak-from nonlogical patterns which (by
applying them) we can elevate to the role of new concepts.

The intricacy will respond variously to various kinds of attention and

distinctions. If we come with the familiar distinctions and look for the
familiar result, we can find the old familiar things once again. Of
course one can find the familiar, already entitized packages such as
memory, imagery, emotions, perception, feeling, and willing. So we
can surely also find the way in which all "experiences" are inherently
mine. Experiences are not things that exist alone.

We easily find the "I" which issues our "ray" of attention. And as
Husserl says, we can indeed shift this attentional "viewing beam"
(Blickstrahl). We just did this by shifting our attention to the body
from inside. But do we find these many "experiences" there? For
example, take "yesterday." Is yesterday an experience, or
is an experience rather that moment yesterday when . . ., or perhaps
just only one of the many strands of relevances and consequences
which went into that moment? Now we can say that experiences are
not waiting there, in advance of our attention. They are not pre-cut.

Any way of attending to an experience or experiences is already a

carrying forward from the implicit intricacy. What seemed to be one
experience can become articulated into several, and each can be
further articulated into many more directly experienced strands. The
common philosophical language has[Page 144]no way to speak of an
implicit multiplicity, a multiplicity that is not already separated. If we
speak from what we just found in new phrases, we can call
experiencing an "unseparated multiplicity." This is a third non-atomic
concept we need.

By shifting the relevance implicit in our attending, we can take the

smallest most specific "experience" and find inside of it myriad
strands which could each again be "an experience." In this respect
"this moment" or "yesterday" do not contain less than what we can
come to notice in "life" or "the human condition."

Now we can say that there are no "experiences" as an already

separated multiplicity like stamps in an album or marbles in a bag.
Experiencing is variously and endlessly differentiable not only by
speech and action, but also by attending to this, rather than to that.
"Mere attention" is not mere. What attending lifts out is a product.
Attention has the same power to lift something out, as any distinction
in a phenomenological treatise does. Attention is an active
symbolizing, but never arbitrary. The response to it can surprise us
and force us to change our categories.

What attention brings is not arbitrary because experiencing is always

symbolized at least by the events that led up to this moment, and it
almost always implies, demands, and pre-figures a next step.
Attention, (consciousness, awareness, presence-to, . . .) is no merely
neutral beam of light, although in some respects this can be said of
it. It is always also a special kind of further symbolizing and
entitizing.

Of course the categories and concerns we bring are not just arbitrary
either. We respond within an ongoing continuity, or to an implicit
demand. We can evaluate this by entering into the implicit sense of
it. Or, if such a demand is not already there we attend with the
project of letting such a demand form so that we might know what to
do next. No attention operates alone. It always comes from and with
a mesh of physically sensed relevance just as any other kind of
symbolizing does, and it is therefore questionable, relative, and
various, and yet also always in a precise and demanding relation to
the implicit intricacy which motivates it.

The attentional "beam" emerges from an intricate mesh of knowing,

bodily feeling, and doing which are not separate departments. When
this mesh changes, what attention can possibly bring, changes as
well. We can enter this mesh at any time and carry forward some of
what "was" functioning in it.

We can study various kinds of attention. Rather than imposing some

old classification, we can know that there will never be one final list of
kinds. Instead, we can let newly relevant "kinds" emerge here, as I
will do now.

Rarely although very pleasantly, we attend just in a neutral way, just

being and looking. We might manage such neutral attending for some
time. Usually[Page 145]we soon "notice" a distinct this or that. This is
a second kind of attention. We feel our felt intricacy being carried
forward into the constellation of just this detail. And as we attend to
it, it may become insignificant, or grow and develop. This is a third
kind of attention.

More often our attention is not a peaceful neutral just being and
looking. Rather, we attend in order to search for something or keep
track of something. We attend only in a certain relevance, which is
part of our situation and which we "know" and feel without going into
it. Recall Sartre in a restaurant looking everywhere for the absent
Pierre, thereby seeing none of the people who were there.

We have already discussed the kind of attention which turns to a

bodily sense of implicit intricacy. Sometimes we find that it is already
there (as in my poetry example). But usually a felt sense comes in
the body only if we attend to its bodily coming before it comes. This
is easy once one is familiar with this kind of attention, but when new
it seems odd and difficult.

A special kind which we have discussed, is attention to the sense of

an unresolved philosophical problem. A forward step, sometimes a
whole series of such steps, may come if we "just" keep our attention
on it. But if we enter what is happening at such times we find that
fresh philosophical thinking involves an amazingly sophisticated type
of attention. It involves making a bodily change in which we "set
ourselves" in a certain way. Now we will reject the endless streams of
distractions. We will constantly return to just this pregnant spot. Each
time we check again: Have we returned? Do we indeed have back
again that unresolved physical sense for the problem? We are very
stubborn and deliberate about holding our attention there, and yet
also very delicate and permissive to allow whatever comes to come,
so long as it comes from "it."

In an experiment by Vermersch you are asked to do three things

which require your attention at the same time. [11] You find you
cannot do it – until you place them into a rhythm so that they really
become one thing, one pattern of activity. You discover that the
"beam" of attention is not loose. It cannot oscillate quickly. You
discover why. The reason is yourself! The beam is YOU and you
cannot bring yourself so quickly back and forth.

The fact that so much – and especially we ourselves – are implicitly

involved in the humble "beam" of attention can now come together
with what I have said about experiencing as a "carrying forward"
process, and about internal time. We might miss the inherent
togetherness of self-consciousness and the internal time of carrying
forward, because we are so accustomed to read the model of
perception into everything, as if our consciousness were only a
perceiver, added on to percepts. But here we have been pursuing a
philosophical lead, the sense that self-consciousness is structurally
inherent in the very making of experiencing, not just the perceiver of
it.

[Page 146]

Experiencing, I argue, is inherently a process of carrying forward,

occurring into implying, reaching back behind itself in going forward.
The carried-forward implying is also the present and also the next
implying. The sequence generates itself by means of the carrying
forward relation.

Carrying forward is the continuous recognition that what is happening

is what "was" implied. Experiencing involves theinherent re-reception
of itself from moment to moment, a re-having of experiencing
internal to the self-generating of experiencing.

Now we can enter directly into our experiencing of what we call "mere
attention," to see if we have spoken from it, and if it responds with
more. Is this intricacy carried forward if we say that attention is also
a self-reception? "Of course," I find myself saying, "I always felt
implicitly that I was meant by "pay attention!" If I was "not paying
attention," it meant thatI myself had wandered away inside, and was
not there with the event. So, of course.

The concept of "carrying forward" lets us think how we differ from

machines. The process of constant re-recognition of the implying
differs from mere reception considered as mere impact, for example
on a film in a camera. The film does not "know" that it received
anything. There is only impact. Of course there is impact also in
experiencing, but the reaching behind itself in going forward
constitutes a re-reception, a reception of the fact of reception, which
is also the further implying that brings the further occurring. In my
model the feedback generates the next step so that awareness is
inherent in the moment to moment genesis of behavior. There can be
no division between awareness and events that could supposedly
happen without it. In the animal world, even the lower animals, such
event series do not exist. I have developed a conceptual model in
which the usual flat "is" and the separated "of" are replaced by a
single implying-occurring pattern. We can build sophisticated
concepts using this pattern which we actually find when we articulate
experiencing. Phenomenology can develop its own concepts, and
become able to think beyond the inanimate model of time-space-
fillers.

Without the continuous recognition inherent in carrying

forward we would not be there. There would not be consciousness or
attention, only some hypothesized third-person events. Rather than a
merely added light, consciousness is the self-generating
of experiencing.

I must point out the sharp difference between this reflexive re-
reception internal to experiencing, on the one hand, and what we call
"reflection" on the other hand. The reflexive re-reception generates
the process. It generates each next bit of process. A first-person
process happens through this reflexive re-reception. On the other
hand, when we reflect, we take a separate stand in relation to the
past. The reflexivity of carrying forward is not the past,[Page 147]not
reflection. It is the self-generating of the present. "Reflexivity" is a
more complex concept of the present.

Now we must ask: Is that what a person is, a bodily-situational mesh

generating itself by its implying into occurring, its self-sensing? Is
that you? Is that me? I go to see directly: The concept does indeed
speak-from how I am always there again having already been there
before. This is certainly enough reason to keep the concept and the
intricacy it carries forward. It has powerful logical implications despite
not consisting of logical units itself. I think you will find it a very
useful concept. But of course it is only a thin little pattern, very far
from carrying me forward in my myriad ways that I sense implicitly
as me. So, of course, when we think about ourselves or self-
consciousness, we think from THAT, and not just from this concept,
or just from any concept. We think from the intricacy from which it
speaks, which is always capable of much that cannot follow from the
concept.
Leibnitz said that each person is a different mirror of the whole.
Nobody else can replace you. You cannot define you. A person is
anoematic. You cannot become an object of your knowledge. To think
about what a person is, you have to think you.

I want to conclude by touching on the topics I mentioned at the

outset, to show that phenomenology can be basic to them and is
certainly not excluded from them.

Levinas said that another person is not just your other, not alive to fit
you or to frustrate you by being other than you need. The other
person is not your other. Another person is alive in different
dimensions, another life with its own issues, and not what the issues
seem to you to be, not how they seem to be other-than yours.
Levinas is right about this. But this does not mean that you are not
connected. The other person is already inherent in your bodily
carrying forward of your situation. How you are a self remains
mysterious; how you are the other people and the things is obvious.

The reality of the other person who keeps me company is not based
on "same" or "other." Implicit intricacy gets past the old notions.
Another person keeps me the most company when we touch or look
at each other silently and implicitly. Each of us is a thick implicit
process. If we relate to each other from there, then we can be very
close with very little content shared. Or, we can share a lot but the
company is thick only if we relate from there. Of course another
person may not choose to interact from the implicit level. Then we
are at a distance. Even so I can relate to that implicit level, since it is
there.

Phenomenology has no problem going beyond a single person's

private experiencing, because experiencing is inherently an
interaction process in a situation with other people and things. What
appears is neither internal nor external, neither just private nor just
interactional. My situation is not[Page 148]"subjective" since the
others in it are more than I can experience, but neither is it
"objective" since my situation does not exist apart from me. My
situation is a function of me, although the other people and things in
it are not a function of me. Again we find a pattern that is more
complex than "subjective" or "objective," or a combination of these
artificial two. Rather, our interpersonal interactions are patterned so
that we count on the ways in which the others have "private"
experiencing, while the process of private experiencing is itself always
the carrying forward of situations with the others. This is a more
complex pattern than can be reduced to logical units. Yet it is totally
familiar. Each is inherently implicit in what the other is.
"My" body is a situational body-environment interaction. Rather than
just a structure in space and time, every organ of the human body is
better thought of as a carrying forward. The body is situational,
suffused by "me" and how I live in my situations.

Phenomenology does not exclude "the unconscious." A few steps into

implicit intricacy reveal what we then say "was" implicit. After many
"zig-zag" steps we can look back and apply the phrase "was
unconscious," knowing of course that this is the retroactive past from
here. About the earlier time we know that "it" was not there as it is
now formed, but whatever was there could give rise to these steps
through which it has now appeared.

We can phenomenologically study how we use logic – for example in

philosophical analysis, or in computing our bank account. We do it by
holding the implicit intricacy aside, it is always there. We "know" why
we are pursuing this logical chain just now, and what it means for our
philosophy or our finances. We keep all this aside so as to follow
"only" the logic. Without this implicit holding-aside, the logical
thinking would not be possible. Logic brings out what nothing else
can. [12] Logic has remade the world so that it can support six billion
people. But logical analysis must always be positioned by someone,
and it can be repositioned. The results of the logical chain have their
meaning within the context that is being kept aside. Logic does not
control where it begins and ends. It also does not control the creation
of the defined units it requires. One slight shift in the implicit
meaning of any one unit can utterly undo a logical conclusion. By
entering the implicit directly, we can generate a whole territory of
distinctions and new entities, and then position the logical analysis
where it is informed by the implicit intricacy. We can much better use
the great human power of logic when we can enter the implicit and
consider where to position and re-position the logic, and how to
create its units. We do not need the assumption that reality consists
of defined units.

Phenomenology does not exclude science; rather it derives the forms

of science as well as alternatives to them. One of the major
implications of my argument concerns what I call "third-person
science," especially the relation[Page 149]of consciousness to
neurology. I argue that third-person events supposedly just filling
empty space and time constitute an obvious construction, a wild
assumption, floating as they seem to do over there at separate points
alone, requiring an "idealized observer" to interconnect them. This
kind of science has made more progress than any other in human
history, but we can surely add another kind of science which can also
employ a more complex first-person model. We have developed such
a model far enough to show its possibility.
I have been arguing against the assumption that consciousness is a
mere addition to events considered as if they could happen in the
same way without consciousness. The reflexivity of the person is not
a mere "consciousness-of," not an addition to perceived things, as if
percepts existed as mechanical events, leaving consciousness an
empty "of," which can seem unnecessary. The current concept of
"consciousness" is the poor remainder that is left-over when
reductive science defines the content as if it consisted of events that
can occur alone. To split the things away makes us a mere "of," of
events in a third-person world without us. The third-person science
needs to be augmented by a first-person science. [13]

From this philosophy of the implicit have come two practices. Yes,
philosophy now comes with practices, just as philosophy did in
ancient times. What is now called "Focusing" consists of simple steps
to attend in the body where the implying can come. We have a lot of
phenomenology on how this is done. Focusing is useful in many ways,
and has now generated a world-wide network of trained teachers and
focusing partners. Focusing is often done alone, but is also practiced
regularly with a listening partner. One need not understand the
philosophy to do this practice. It enables one to find and enter the
intricacy.

A second practice has developed just in the last three years. It

enables one to find that use of language which brings fresh phrasing,
not caught within the old assumptions. It is called "TAE." As in
focusing, one takes turns with a listening partner. We find that most
people have a deep response to the following question:

In your professional field or in your life, what do you 'know' and cannot yet
say, that wants to be said?

When we enter the implicit we find not just a plethora of unseparated

strands, but also something "known" that seems in need of being
said, something demanding which could not be said, something that
was perhaps "hanging there" for many years. People find no words to
say it. Each word that is attempted could bring some vital strand, but
of course the word means something else and would be
misunderstood. By letting whole sentences come from what[Page
150]they wish this old word could mean, people soon find fresh
phrases coming from several strands of what had been one dark
knot. These new sentences do not say something else. They cannot
be misunderstood. If they make sense at all to someone, they say
their new sense.

If TAE is followed all the way, it leads to the formation of a theory, by

which I mean a set of concepts that are implicitly-emergent and also
logically interlinked. Most people do not come so far, but they find it
exciting and politically empowering to become able to speak and
think from what had been a mute knowing. The usual report after
TAE is "I've been talking about it ever since!!" Also, "I love being able
to think. I did not know I could think."

For us as philosophers, the process develops concepts. Any topic that

is articulated from the implicit will go much further into that topic.

The directly sensed intricacy vastly exceeds the common generalities.

In any field almost anything we wish to think about lies waiting with
its much finer intricate order. If we make our home at the edge of the
implicit intricacy, we can employ all formulations, all logic and
mathematics, all measurements and third-person variables, and we
can then also enter the implicit intricacy to which they have just led.

Speaking-from implicit intricacy can revolutionize most any topic. One

can transform any topic by thinking with, – and also about – how the
implicit functions in that topic. Once you know how to let this datum
come from the implicit, you can use it in anything you are
investigating. You can find some of what was hidden in what seemed
clear. You can find what needs to be said and has not been possible
to say, a gift and a demand. Then your body's language can
rearrange its words to speak from it.

NOTES
[1] "The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism," Man and World 30/3
(1997): 383-411.
[2] Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning (New York: Free Press,
Macmillan, 1962); 2nd paperback edition (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1997).
[3] See www.focusing.org for an overview of the research. Twenty-seven
successive studies have shown that higher levels on the Experiencing
Scale (applied to the tape-recorded interviews) correlate with more
successful outcome in therapy. The philosophy has led to wide
applications in psychotherapy and other fields.
[4] "Reply to Mohanty," in Language Beyond Postmodernism: Saying and
Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy, ed. David M. Levin (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1997). See also "Crossing and
Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface Between Natural
Understanding and Logical Formation," Minds and Machines 5/4
(1995): 547-560; and "Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language
and Situations, in "The Presence of Feeling in Thought, ed. B. den
Ouden and M. Moen (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 25-151, also
at www.focusing.org.
[5] For the new time model, see A Process Model, IV, V (available
at www.focusing.org,[Page 151]printed from Focusing Institute,
1997), here, IVB.
[6] Much of the philosophy is available at www.focusing.org, click
philosophy.
[7] Edmund Husserl, Ideen I and II (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950 and
1952), Ideen I, para 3.
[8] "Introduction to Thinking At The Edge" (TAE), The Focusing Folio, 2004.
[9] Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, Evanston, 1999).
[10] "If someone has a pain in his hand . . . one does not comfort the hand,
but the sufferer: One looks into his face" (Philosophical
Investigations 286). See also my "What Happens When Wittgenstein
Asks: 'What Happens When ...?"' in "Zur Sprache Kommen: Die
Ordnung und das Offene nach Wittgenstein," [conference paper,
University of Potsdam, 1996] Philosophical Forum 28/3 (1997), also
at www.focusing.org.
[11] Pierre Vermersch, Carbondale Conference, Southern Illinois University,
2001.
[12] See the power of patterns, derived in A Process Model, VIIA.
[13] See First-Person Science, www.focusing.org.
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• Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and
psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of
Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is
concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit
intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of
Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in
Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries
and Gendlin’s replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network
of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this
philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American
Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy.
He was a founder and editor for many years of the Association’s Clinical
Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His
book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in
seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body
Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.
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