Citations related to SUBJECTIVITY
(works cited listed at bottom):
“Subjects in relation, in process, as open systems are always already
inclined to deliberate. Therefore the dread that Juergen Habermas, Nancy
Fraser, and other deliberative democrats feel in the face of
poststructuralist theories of subjectivity is unwarranted. To the
contrary, those interested in the project of deliberative democracy should
welcome this theory of subjectivity, just as subjects-in–process can come
to welcome the others in their midst.” McAfee, Noelle, Habermas, Kristeva,
and Citizenship. Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 20.
“We can never come to subjectivity apart from our relations with others.
The self always has an ‘intersubjective core.’ For another, we come to
subjectivity by participating in language, or more broadly, in
communication. It is only in making a normative claim to an unlimited
communication community that I finally have self-coincidence as a ‘I.’
Moreover, Habermas recognizes that subjectivity is a contingent affair,
that it arises in variable situations in which some potential subject
accepts this contingent life it is living as its own and claims for itself
an identity.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell
U. Press. 2000. p. 35.
“Insofar as the ego is created by identification with alien images, the
sense of unity is purely fictive.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship.
Noelle McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 64 in describing the Lacanian
sense of identity.
“Thus, within the context of scientific materialism, the subjective realm
of human perception, reasoning, and language are set in opposition to the
objective realm of the physical world, its inexorable laws, and
mathematics. While the objective realm has taken the place of the sacred,
the subjective realm has taken the place of the profane.” Wallace, B.
Alan. The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness.
Oxford University Press. 2000. p. 35
“Taking into account the role of human subjectivity appears to be equally
taboo in both religious and scientistic fundamentalism. According to many
schools of religious fundamentalism, the subjective minds of humans are
seen as insignificant in relation to the supreme mind of God; and the
deeds of humans pale in contrast to the works of the Almighty.” The Taboo
of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness. B. Alan Wallace.
Oxford University Press. 2000. p. 38
“In this view the subjective and objective poles of the continuum are
vacuous. There is no way to justify the assertion that anything posited is
purely objective or purely subjective. The world of human experience
consists of a fusion of both elements, or better said, a primordial
nonduality of those elements. Similarly, the ‘fact that a truth is toward
the ‘conventional’ end of the convention-fact continuum does not mean that
it is absolutely conventional–a truth by stipulation, free of every
element of fact.’ This assertion by no means implies that such dualistic
notions as subject and object are useless. On the contrary, they point out
a practical distinction that is of great importance; but this distinction
is only functional, not ontological as understood by the traditional
dualism of scientific materialism.” The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a
New Science of Consciousness. B. Alan Wallace. Oxford University Press.
2000. p. 64. [subquote is Hilary Putnam, Representation and Reality. MIT
Press. 1988. p. 113]
“Like the Copernican shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the
solar system, the shift from scientific materialism to radical empiricism
entails a shift from a matter-centered concept of reality to a holistic
view of mental and physical phenomena as dependently related events.” The
Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness. B. Alan
Wallace. Oxford University Press. 2000. p. 75.
“The Ables have created a different but deep connection. It seems to be
rooted in a mutual appreciation of the other’s capacity to enter relation
as a distinct and whole human being. They each seem to recognize and
respect both the other and themselves as complicated persons who bring
something important and different, but often complementary, to the
relationship.
“As self-possessed persons who share a commitment to sustaining a
relationship they treasure, they do not seem surprised by the appearance
of differences, nor do they take them as a suspension of their connection,
nor expect that the differences will be resolved if one of them simply
molds herself or himself to the preferences of the other. Not only does
the relationship continue in the face of the difference, but they seem to
find their successful, collaborative handling of the differences to be an
especially satisfying aspect of the relationship. Both their closeness as
a couple and their evaluation of the quality of their decisions are
enhanced, rather than troubled, by their difference. Difficult though it
may be, they ultimately value the experience of being forced by the other,
or by their commitment to the relationship, to take seriously the
integrity of the different world view from which the differing preference,
opinion, or plan of action arises. Like respectful and enlightened
anthropologists, they regularly visit, and deeply appreciate, the other’s
‘culture of mind.’ At their best, they suspend the tendency to evaluate
the other’s ‘culture’ through the lens of their own, and seek rather to
discover the terms by which the other is shaping meaning or creating
value. Not only does each seem to benefit from frequent ‘travel’ to the
other’s ‘culture,’ but the one who is ‘being visited’ also seems to
appreciate the experience of having the other come in with a nonimperial
stance to see how reality is being constructed....”
“... the Bakers’ account reflects a qualitatively different way of
constructing conflict and difference. Theirs is also a story of surviving
disillusionment, but the truth they have been seeing as an illusion is not
the truth of romance, it is the truth of modernism. Long ago, they say
they set aside the truth that the source of their closeness lay in their
sharing the same identity. The truth they are now in the process of
setting aside is that the source of their closeness lies in the respectful
cooperation of psychologically whole and distinct selves.”
“Unlike the Ables, the Bakers are prouder of the way they suspect rather
than honor their sense of their own and each other’s wholeness and
distinctness. At least they are suspicious of any sense of wholeness or
distinction that is limited to an identification of the self with its
favorite way of constructing itself. They are suspicious of their own
tendency to feel wholly identified with one side of any opposite and to
identify the other with the other side of that opposite.”
“When they take this suspicion to their experience of conflict or
difference in their relationship, a quite different picture emerges from
that sketched by the Ables. The Ables consider themselves at their best
when, in the face of difference, they do not disdain the other but seek to
discover how the other’s point of view arises out of a ‘culture of mind’
with its own coherence and integrity. But what is never open to question
is that the respectful anthropologist is visiting a foreign culture. In
contrast, the Bakers consider themselves at their best when, in the face
of difference, they stop to see if they haven’t, in fact, made the error
of identifying themselves wholly with the culture of mind that gives rise
to their position (which now shows up as a kind of ideology or orthodoxy)
and identifying their partner wholly with a foreign culture of mind that
gives rise to their partner’s position (which now shows up as an opposing
ideology or heterodoxy). Mr. Able comes over to discover the world of Mrs.
Able, but in all his respectful discovering he never questions his premise
that this is not his world. When Mr. Baker comes over to try on the
perspective he has identified with Mrs. Baker, however, he is vulnerable
to discovering another world within himself....”
“... For the Bakers, the good working of the self and its recognition by
the other begins with a refusal to see oneself or the other as a single
system or form. The relationship is a context for a sharing and an
interacting in which both are helped to experience their ‘multipleness,’
in which the many forms or systems that each self is are helped to emerge.
While the Ables begin with the premise of their own completeness and see
conflict as an inevitable by-product of the interaction of two
psychologically whole selves, the Bakers begin with the premise of their
own tendency to pretend to completeness (while actually being incomplete)
and see conflict as the inevitable, but controvertible, by-product of the
pretension to completeness.”
“Both the Ables and the Bakers satisfy the demands of the modernist
curriculum to construct the self as a system or form. At the heart of the
difference between their constructions of conflict are these two related
questions about that self: (1) Do we see the self-as-system as complete
and whole or do we regard the self-as-system as incomplete, only a partial
construction of all that the self is? (2) Do we identify with the
self-as-form (which self then interacts with other selves-as-forms) or do
we identify with the process of form creation (which brings forms into
being and subtends their relationship)? Another way of putting this second
question is: Do we take as prior the elements of a relationship (which
then enter into relationship) or the relationship itself (which creates
its elements)?” Kegan, Robert. In Over Our Heads; the Mental Demands of
Modern Life. Harvard University Press. 1994. pps. 310-313.
“She [Kristeva] points to the Freudian notion of the unconscious, saying
that the ultimate foreigner is the foreigner within each of us, our own
internal strangeness, our unconscious. ‘Strangely, the foreigner lives
within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks
our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder’ (Kristeva
1991, 1). It is because we have not come to terms with this internal
strangeness that we project strangeness onto others. That is why the
foreigner is so compelling and still so threatening: he reminds us of our
own internal not-as-homeness. The only way to come to terms with the
foreigners in our midst is to come to terms with the foreigner within.
‘The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises,
and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners,
unamenable to bonds and communities.’” Habermas, Kristeva, and
Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 103-4.
“In other words, if we do not find ways to deal with internal
foreignness–if we do not come to be at home with ourselves–we will not be
at home with those others in our midst, those with whom we are struggling
to share political community. Community itself will be difficult to
achieve. It may well be that problems that affect modern political
societies, such as problems of racism, nationalism, and xenophobia, are at
least in part a result of the psychic maladies affecting subjectivities
today.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell U.
Press. 2000. p. 104.
“Yet in the individualistic model of subjectivity, it is a challenge to
conceive of why people would choose to come together to build public
relationships. The notion of autonomous, unified subjectivity leads to the
problem of how people get along in the world; they’re bound to just ‘put
up’ with others....”
Alternatively, a theory of relational subjectivity suggests another model
of group action, what we might call complementary agency. By this I mean
people coming together in order to create new, broader understandings of
what is in their interests. They help each other flesh out a more
comprehensive picture of the whole.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship.
Noelle McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 134-5
“Instead of taking relational subjectivity as the end of politics, we
should see it as the very possibility of politics.” Habermas, Kristeva,
and Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 161.
“Apart from others, subjectivity is inconceivable. Accordingly, the
borders of selves and of communities are always in flux, never fixed,
always open.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell
U. Press. 2000. p. 188.
“An unencumbered self, nimble enough to cope with an unpredictable economy
and an insecure personal world, is deprived of fundamental sources of
nurture. Defining dependence as a sign of weakness, believing that persons
find real identity ‘on their own,’ rather than with others with whom they
share a life; forming interpersonal ties that do not create a community of
fate in which what happens to one is of fundamental importance to
others–these experiences necessarily undermine the self.” Swidler, Ann.
“Saving the Self: Endowment versus Depletion in American Institutions.”
pp. 41-55. Madsen, Richard et al. Meaning and Modernity: Religion Polity
and Self. University of California Press. 2002. p. 52.
"Own is a very big word in therapy; you own your life, as if there's a
self, an individual, enclosed self, within a skin. That's individualism.
That's the philosophy of therapy. I question that. The self could be
redefined, given a social definition, a communal definition." Hillman,
James Networker, Sept/Oct 1991.
"However, the double bind is not merely a 'damned if you do, damned if you
don't' situation. In and of itself, a no-win situation cannot drive
someone crazy. The crucial element is not being able to leave the field,
or point out the contradiction; and children often find themselves in just
such a situation. Thus Laing sums up the double-bind predicament as: 'Rule
A: Don't. Rule A.1: Rule A does not exist. Rule A.2: Do not discuss the
existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A.1, or A.2.'
"What happens to a child caught in such a situation? Clearly, he will have
to falsify his own feelings, convince himself that he really doesn't have
a case, in order to maintain the relationship with his mother or father.
"'He was glad to see her [writes Bateson] and impulsively put his arm
around her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she
asked, 'Don't you love me any more?' He then blushed, and she said, 'dear,
you must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings.' The
patient was able to stay with her only a few minutes more and following
her departure he assaulted an orderly and was put in the tubs.'" Berman,
Morris, The Reenchantment of the World, Bantam, 1981, pps. 226-7.
"At each of these major shifts, infants create a forceful impression that
major changes have occurred in their subjective experience of self and
other. One is suddenly dealing with an altered person. And what is
different about the infant is not simply a new batch of behaviors and
abilities; the infant suddenly has an additional 'presence' and a
different social 'feel' that is more than the sum of the many newly
acquired behaviors and capacities. For instance, there is no question that
when, sometime between two and three months, an infant can smile
responsively, gaze into the parent's eyes, and coo, a different social
feel has been created. But it is not these behaviors alone, or even in
combination, that achieve the transformation. It is the altered sense of
the infant's subjective experience lying behind these behavioral changes
that makes us act differently and think about the infant differently. One
could ask, which comes first, an organizational change within the infant
or a new attribution on the part of the parent? Does the advent of new
infant behaviors such as focal eye contact and smiling make the parent
attribute a new persona to the infant whose subjective experience has not
as yet changed at all? In fact, any change in the infant may come about
partly by virtue of the adult interpreting the infant differently and
acting accordingly. (The adult would be working within the infant's
proximal zone of development, that is, in an area appropriate to infant
capacities not yet present but very soon to emerge.) Most probably, it
works both ways. Organizational change from within the infant and its
interpretation by the parents are mutually facilitative. The net result is
that the infant appears to have a new sense of who he or she is and who
you are, as well as a different sense of the kinds of interactions that
can now go on." Stern, Daniel, The Interpersonal World of the Infant,
Basic Books, New York, 1985, pp. 8-9.
"As the first wonder of my Himalayan discovery began to wear off, I
started describing it to myself in some such words as the following.
"Somehow or other I had vaguely thought of myself as inhabiting this house
which is my body, and looking out through its two little round windows at
the world. Now I find it isn't like that at all. As I gaze into the
distance, what is there at this moment to tell me how many eyes I have
here--two, or three, or hundreds, or none? In fact, only one window
appears on this side of my facade, and that one is wide open and frameless
and immense, with nobody looking out of it. It is always the other fellow
who has eyes and a face to frame them; never this one.
"There exist, then, two sorts--widely different species--of human being.
The first, of which I note countless specimens, evidently carries a head
on its shoulders (and by "head" I mean an opaque and coloured and hairy
eight-inch ball with various holes in it) while the second, of which I
note only one specimen, evidently carries no such thing on its shoulders.
And until now I had overlooked this considerable difference! Victim of a
prolonged fit of madness, of a lifelong hallucination (and by
'hallucination' I mean what my dictionary says: apparent perception of an
object not actually present), I had invariably seen myself as pretty much
like other people, and certainly never as a decapitated but still living
biped. I had been blind to the one thing that is always present, and
without which I am blind indeed--to this marvelous substitute-for-a-head,
this unbounded clarity, this luminous and absolutely pure void, which
nevertheless is--rather than contains--all that's on offer. For, however
carefully I attend, I fail to find here even so much as a blank screen on
which these mountains and sun and sky are projected, or a clear mirror in
which they are reflected, or a transparent lens or aperture through which
they are viewed--still less a person to whom they are presented, or a
viewer (however shadowy) who is distinguishable from the view. Nothing
whatever intervenes, not even that baffling and elusive obstacle called
"distance": the visibly boundless blue sky, the pink-edged whiteness of
the snows, the sparkling green of the grass--how can these be remote, when
there's nothing to be remote from? The headless void here refuses all
definition and location: it is not round, or small, or big, or even here
as distinct from there. (And even if there were a head here to measure
outwards from, the measuring-rod stretching from it to that mountain peak
would, when read end-on--and there's no other way for me to read
it--reduce to a point, to nothing.) In fact, these coloured shapes present
themselves in all simplicity, without any such complications as near or
far, this or that, mine or not mine, seen-by-me or merely given. All
twoness--all duality of subject and object--has vanished: it is no longer
read into a situation which has no room for it....
"My first objection was: my head may be missing, but not its nose. Here it
is, visibly preceding me wherever I go. And my answer was: if this fuzzy,
pinkish, yet perfectly transparent cloud suspended on my right, and this
other similar cloud suspended on my left, are noses, then I count two of
them and not one; and the perfectly opaque single protuberance which I
observe so clearly in the middle of your face is not a nose: only a
hopelessly dishonest or confused observer would deliberately use the same
name for such utterly different things. I prefer to go by my dictionary
and common usage, which oblige me to say that, whereas nearly all human
beings have a nose apiece, I have none.
"All the same, if some misguided sceptic, over-anxious to make his point,
were to strike out in this direction, aiming mid-way between these two
pink clouds, the result would surely be as unpleasant as if I owned the
most solid and punchable of noses. Again, what about this complex of
subtle tensions, movements, pressures, itches, tickles, aches, warmths,
and throbbings, never entirely absent from this central region? Above all,
what about these touch-feelings which arise when I explore here with my
hand? Surely these findings add up to massive evidence for the existence
of my head right here and now after all?
"I find they do nothing of the sort. No doubt a great variety of
sensations are plainly given here and cannot be ignored, but they don't
amount to a head, or anything like one. The only way to make a head out of
them would be to throw in all sorts of ingredients that are plainly
missing here--in particular, all manner of coloured shapes in three
dimensions. What sort of head is it that, though containing innumerable
sensations, is observed to lack eyes, ears, mouth, hair, and indeed all
the bodily equipment which other heads are observed to contain? The plain
fact is that this place must be kept clear of all such obstructions, of
the slightest mistiness or colouring which could cloud my universe.
"In any case, when I start groping around for my lost head, instead of
finding it here I only lose my exploring hand as well: it, too, is
swallowed up in the abyss at the centre of my being. Apparently this
yawning cavern, this unoccupied base of all my operations, this nearest
but virtually unknown region, this magical locality where I thought I kept
my head, is in fact more like a beacon-fire so fierce that all things
approaching it are instantly and utterly consumed, in order that its
world-illuminating brilliance and clarity shall never for a moment be
obscured. As for these lurking aches and tickles and so on, they can no
more quench or shade this central brightness than these mountains and
clouds and sky can do so. Quite the contrary: they all exist in its
shining, and through them it is seen to shine. Present experience,
whatever sense is employed, occurs only in an empty and absent head. For
here and now my world and my head are incompatibles: they won't mix. There
is no room for both at once on these shoulders, and fortunately it is my
head with all its anatomy that has to go. This is not a matter of
argument, or of philosophical acumen, or of working oneself up into a
state, but of simple sight--of LOOK-WHO'S-HERE, instead of
IMAGINE-WHO'S-HERE, instead of TAKE-EVERYBODY-ELSE'S-WORD-FOR-WHO'S-HERE.
If I fail to see what I am (and especially what I am not) it's because I'm
too busily imaginative, too 'spiritual', too adult and knowing, too
credulous, too intimidated by society and language, too frightened of the
obvious to accept the situation exactly as I find it at this moment. Only
I am in a position to report on what's here. A kind of alert naivety is
what I need. It takes an innocent eye and an empty head (not to mention a
stout heart) to admit their own perfect emptiness." Harding, D.E., On
Having No Head, Arkana (Penguin Books), 1961, pp. 5-9.
“Thus our very identity, Kristeva writes, is ‘on trial.’ And our
subjectivity, being heterogeneous, is constantly being reformed and
remade. So there are at least two sources of heterogeneity and openness:
the chora as the wellspring of desires and energy movements, which is
manifest in the semiotic elements of signification, and the vulnerability
of the subject as a system open to other systems. The subject-in-process
is always a subject-in-relation, internally and externally. He or she is
never constituted once and for all, but is always a provisional, tenuous,
open system, hence alive in the fullest sense.” Habermas, Kristeva, and
Citizenship. Noelle McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 71.
“Cartesian dualists reify both objective physical processes and subjective
mental processes–taking both types of phenomena as inherently existing,
independent substances–and they have never provided a satisfactory
explanation for how these two different types of substances can interact.
Philosophical idealists who reify the mind by asserting it as an
inherently existing, independent entity--while maintaining that objective
phenomena are mere epiphenomena of the mind–have never provided a
satisfactory explanation for how physical epiphenomena can influence the
mind. Philosophical materialists who reify matter by asserting it to be an
inherently existing, independent substance–while maintaining that
subjective mental processes are mere epiphenomena of matter–have never
provided a satisfactory explanation of how mental epiphenomena can
influence the body. The common error in all three of these philosophical
positions is reification, which makes it impossible to construct
compelling theories accounting for interrelationships among reified
entities of any kind.” The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of
Consciousness. B. Alan Wallace. Oxford University Press. 2000. p. 82.
“The more I struggle to fathom this critical moment, the more complex it
becomes. Eventually, I am driven to conclude that I am–the I is–a moment
of complexity. The networks in which nodular subjects form create binds
and double-binds that cannot be undone. Turning back on myself to look at
myself looking at myself, I realize thought is never my own, and thus
thinking can never come full circle. As I try to think about, speak about,
write about what seems to be happening, I discover that words are not mine
but are merely borrowed for a brief moment.” Taylor, Mark C. The Moment of
Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. University of Chicago. 2001. p. 232.
“To be open, for a human being, is to be alive. ‘The psyche is one open
system connected to another, and only under those conditions is it
renewable,’ writes Kristeva. ‘If it lives, your psyche is in love. If it
is not in love, it is dead.” Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship. Noelle
McAfee, Cornell U. Press. 2000. p. 69.
“Compare our times to the medieval era, for example. The sociologist
Sorokin, in his exhaustive study of the cycles of cultures, defined an
‘ideal’ type, such as occurred in the Middle Ages in which a unitary
structure of faith and ethics, and of hierarchical political and religious
institutions, prevailed. In contrast to such a consensus that gave the
spiritual dimension the highest value, our modern era since the
Renaissance has granted the highest honor to the achievement of
individualism and to an outlook that establishes materialism as the
framework of our philosophy of ‘the good.’ In this type of culture, called
by Sorokin ‘sensate,’ the ‘abundant life,’ which used to convey the
implications of spiritual enrichment, has come to signify the acquisition
of things.
“In this trend from unity to diversity we find truth becoming increasingly
relative. We live by differing truths. Does this imply that truth is
illusory and futile to seek? A difficult point for many to grasp is that
it is the task of each and all of us to find our own truth, even though
consensus may not make its appearance to reassure us.
“To be creative is to be original, and to achieve one’s unique
individuality is a creative work. As we grow into self-fulfillment we
become increasingly idiosyncratic. An accomplished individual becomes in
some degree an anomaly!” Perry, John Weir. Trials of the Visionary Mind:
Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process. State University of New York
Press. 1999. P. 15.
“It’s my conviction that slight shifts in imagination have more impact on
living than major efforts at change.” Moore, Thomas. Soul Mates: Honoring
the Mysteries of Love and Relationship. Harper. 1994. P. viii.
“But a Darwinian interpretation of neural information processing offers
two general reasons to suspect that we genuinely are self-determining and
intentional creatures: one, because the operations are not prespecified;
and two, because there is no clear dividing line between neural signal
processing and neural architecture in a system where the circuits are
created by patterns of signal processing. Evolution is the one kind of
process able to produce something out of nothing, or, more accurately,
able to create adaptive structural information where none previously
existed. And the raw materials are the ubiquitous noise and context of the
process. So an evolutionary process is an origination process–perhaps, as
Richard Dawkins once remarked, the only known mechanism capable of being
one. Evolution is the author of its spontaneous creations. In this regard,
we do not need to explain away the subjective experience. We are what we
experience ourselves to be. Our self-experience of intentions and ‘will’
are not epiphenomenal illusions. They are what we should expect an
evolution like process to feel like!” Deacon, Terrence. The Symbolic
Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. W.W. Norton. 1997.
P458.
“Our central and ongoing task in life, from the point of view of a
field/phenomenological or experiential model, is the mapping and
manipulating of the full field of experience into an integrated whole or
gestalt which combines enough elements of inner needs and outer conditions
to support our living and growing and generally moving on. We call this
‘generally moving on’ process development. Again, this is a process and a
point of view that bring evolutionary thinking, psychological process, and
what we call ‘meaning-making’ together into a coherent perspective.”
Wheeler, Gordon. “The Developing Field: Toward a Gestalt Developmental
Model.” From The Heart of Development; Gestalt Approaches to Working with
Children, Adolescents and Their Worlds. Edited by Gordon Wheeler & Mark
McConville, Gestalt Press, 2002. Pps. 37-82. P. 60.
“The self that acts creatively to unify the field into wholes of meaning
and action, the self that is itself a developmental achievement,
integrating all the other developmental field lines and themes we have
been discussing in these new terms, is itself a narrative self, a
story-maker and a story, by its very Gestalt nature. In this way, finally,
development can be viewed as the narrative therapies view it: as the
development of a coherent, meaningful, contextualized self-and-life-story.
One that has clear boundaries, clear relatedness, meaningful inter- and
intraconnections and articulations, one that leads somewhere, has energy
for both presence and carrying forward in time and space into more
inclusive and cohesively meaningful wholes of understanding. ‘Here and now
and next,’ was Goodman’s phrase for it...” Wheeler, Gordon. “The
Developing Field: Toward a Gestalt Developmental Model.” From The Heart of
Development; Gestalt Approaches to Working with Children, Adolescents and
Their Worlds. Edited by Gordon Wheeler & Mark McConville, Gestalt Press,
2002. Pps. 37-82. P. 76.
“In this way, self-process is the engine of its own growth by virtue of
our inherent drive to organize the field. This is development; and this
means, in turn, that the field in and out of which development takes place
is itself a developing field.” Wheeler, Gordon. “The Developing Field:
Toward a Gestalt Developmental Model.” From The Heart of Development;
Gestalt Approaches to Working with Children, Adolescents and Their Worlds.
Edited by Gordon Wheeler & Mark McConville, Gestalt Press, 2002. Pps.
37-82. P. 77.
"Too often we are resigned to what happens in the blink of an eye. It
doesn't seem like we have much control over whatever bubbles to the
surface from our unconscious. But we do, and if we can control the
environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control
rapid cognition. We can prevent the people fighting wars or staffing
emergency rooms or policing the streets from making mistakes. Gladwell,
Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. 2005. Little,
Brown and Co. Pp. 252-3.
“The given and the made are a dialectic, neither ever excluding the other
and both constituting every meaning and moment. Without the opportunity to
change previously structured experience, and without that previous
structure to feel and think against, new experience would be impossible.
We would be trapped in an evanescent subjectivism. But, on the other hand,
without our capacity for an imagination that goes beyond experiential
regularities, without the animation of spontaneous expression and the
continuous reworking that represents our ceaseless effort to understand,
we would never be able to redeem our experience from the stasis of dead
convention. It is reflection that saves the unconscious from being nothing
more than a set of strictures, and makes it a precious resource instead;
and it is the unconscious that offers reflection the fecund and
ever-changing materials with which to carry out its life-giving mission.”
Stern, Donnel. 1997. Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to
Imagination in Psychoanalysis. Analytic Press. P. 30.
“Our conflicts over whether to know are contextualized in every instance;
knowing is a function of the interpersonal field. Each moment of the field
is defined by all levels of the interplay between the various conscious
and unconscious influences we and our interactive partner(s) bring to the
meeting. The interpersonal field structures the possibilities of
knowing–the potential for what we can say and think and what we cannot.
The field is the source of that continuous succession of personal
‘horizons’ or ‘clearings’ within which each of us exists. And yet its role
is invisible and unsuspected. We seldom have any awareness that the fields
we are always in the process of constructing with other people set the
limits on what portion of our own prereflective experience we will be able
to engage and formulate in words, and on the particular selection of
interpretive formulations of that experience that will be available to us.
Actually, we should go even further: we seldom have any awareness of
participating in the construction of a field at all, whatever its
function.
“We do have varying degrees of freedom about whether to know the fields we
have already made, however. It is sometimes possible, if we take on risk
and bear uncertainty, to reflect on the interpersonal constraints we so
easily fall into.” Stern, Donnel. 1997. Unformulated Experience: From
Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis. Analytic Press. P. 31.
“Thus contrary to what has been until recently the accepted view, the
analyst’s observational powers in the consulting room cannot be so simply
directed at an unknown presumed to have been already present ‘in’ the
patient, independent of any structure contributed by the analyst. Because
it cannot be assumed that there is a single truth, it cannot even be
claimed that the patient could see it if his eyes were not blinkered by
convention. What the patient does not yet know should no longer be
portrayed only as substantive unconscious content, but instead also must
be understood as unformulated, partially indeterminate, and actually
absent. Its possibilities are the possibilities of language, and its
formulation is an event that will be participated in by both patient and
analyst. The unconscious should be conceived as something more than a
container. It is more consistent with current practice to say, in line
with Heidegger and those who followed him, that for something to be
unconscious is for it to be so much present that we live in it instead of
seeing it. To describe something as unconscious is to say that it is
outside the range of explicit reflection.
“In modern hermeneutic views of understanding, interest is directed at
what is already known, with the intention of stating explicitly the
implicit assumptions underlying its construction. Once these assumptions
have been specified, gaps in the material become evident, and phenomena
that have fallen through the cracks of the implicit interpretive scheme
may become visible. The analyst pursues an awareness of absence by
focusing the most detailed attention on what is present. The emphasis
shifts from imposing yet another interpretation to specifying the schemes
according to which the material has already been interpreted.” Stern,
Donnel. 1997. Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in
Psychoanalysis. Analytic Press. P. 240.
“At these times experience and expectation are indistinguishable. When
nothing is learned, when things just happen, when experience passes by
without being noted, it is because there is no space between what is
(unconsciously) anticipated and what is (consciously) experienced. There
is no gap between them. As long as that is so, experience disappears as
fast as it takes place. It is invisible, not because it makes no
impression on one’s mind, but because the impression it makes coincides
exactly with expectations one does not even know one has. One cannot spell
it out because one has no reason to. It is taken for granted. There is no
memory of it because whatever did happen had happened before in such a way
that events will now be noticed only if they deviate. Generally, as
Schachtel, and Bartlett before him, taught, the mere existence of
expectations tends to preserve the status quo. Paradoxically, though the
perception of deviations from expectation is the source of new experience,
such perceptions are unlikely precisely to the extent that expectations
have gelled. Once in place, anticipations influence the future to conform
to their shape. We see what we expect to see–and we actually construct,
too, what we expect to see.” Stern, Donnel. 1997. Unformulated Experience:
From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis. Analytic Press. P.
242.
“Learning, in the form of an unbidden perception, is what happens when a
space appears between experience and expectation. This is true,
separately, for analyst and patient. New experience does not arise de
novo–it emerges from what has come before, it becomes visible as a
contrast to what is already known, against the background of the familiar.
Gadamer, for whom this is central, says it succinctly: ‘Only the support
of familiar and common understanding makes possible the venture into the
alien, the lifting up of something out of the alien, and thus the
broadening and enrichment of our own experience of the world.’ It is from
this vast fund of familiar and common understanding that unconscious
expectations are drawn, and it is the articulation of these unformulated
expectations that makes it possible to broaden and enrich our experience
of the world. Learning is impossible precisely to the extent that
expectations cannot be brought into language.
“The identification and explicit description of expectations is the major
task of the analysis. Analyst and patient find their way to speaking the
familiar, and then they find, in what has been spoken, other gaps that can
be worded, so that the description of experience moves always toward a
greater degree of precision and subtlety. New experience emerges naturally
and inevitably in the form of alternatives to the familiar.” Stern, Donnel.
1997. Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in
Psychoanalysis. Analytic Press. P. 243. [Subquote is Gadamer, H. 1966.
“The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem.” Philosophical
Hermeneutics. Translated by Linge. University of California Press, 1976.
P. 15.]
“Central to this emerging conception of personality is the idea that
mental representations of the psychological meaning of situations,
representations of self, others, possible future events, goals, affects,
beliefs, expectations, as well as behavioral alternatives are not
isolated, but are interconnected. We proposed that for a given individual
the likelihood that thought A leads to thought B and emotion C is guided
by a network of associations among cognitions and affects available to
that individual. Through this network, for example, thinking about a
person can activate the memory of the thoughts and feelings associated
with a particular event in the past, which in turn may lead to other
memories and thoughts that may make us smile or cry. Individuals differ
stably in this network of inter-connections or associations, and such
differences constitute a major aspect of personality.
“Furthermore, each unit is potentially connected to every other unit in
the network, and each pair of units is characterized by a distinct and
stable strength of association between them. Called recurrent networks,
one of the most notable properties of such networks is that they settle
into a set of activation patterns to satisfy multiple simultaneous
constraints represented by the patterns and strengths of connections among
the units in the network. The use of a recurrent, or parallel constraint
satisfaction, network is consistent with models of human information
processing in the broader cognitive sciences, including analogical
reasoning, attitude change, explanatory coherence, dissonance reduction,
and impression formation and dispositional inference.” Shoda, Yuichi &
Scott Tiernan. “Personality as a Dynamical System: Emergence of Stability
and Distinctiveness from Intra- and Interpersonal Interactions.”
Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2002, Vol 6, No. 4, pp. 316-325.
P. 317.
“That self-consciousness should turn out to be a vital, perhaps the vital,
variable, should not surprise us. Western culture has been confronting a
crisis of self-consciousness ever since the Renaissance, doubly so since
Darwin, and triply so since the invention of the new cultural notation,
the new literacy, created by the digital expressive field. Coming to terms
with self-consciousness means coming to terms with the kind of being we
are.” Lanham, Richard. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in
the Age of Information. 2006. University of Chicago Press. P. 180.
“In terms of personal identity, objects assist the credible, effective
performance of an identity – they are integral parts of an effective
social performance whereby objects fuse with their possessors in order to
offer a convincing social performance.” Woodward, Ian. Understanding
Material Culture. 2007. Sage Publications. P. 137.
“Winnicott says that engagements with objects occur within ‘potential
spaces’, which are a type of intermediate space somewhere between subject
and object – not the individual subject, nor the external object
environment, but the spaces of creativity and play that are created when
both meet.” Woodward, Ian. Understanding Material Culture. 2007. Sage
Publications. P. 140.
“Psychological research backs up James’ theories about where people
believe their ‘self’ begins and ends. It suggests objects and things are
very much a part of people’s sense of self. Belk reports Prelinger’s
research on limits to selfhood that shows people tend to understand
themselves first and foremost as embodied, though objects also rank highly
in significance. In order of ranked importance, people imagine their self
as: specific body parts (eyes, face, legs), psychological processes of
their mind (like a person’s beliefs, values or their conscience), their
personal identifying attributes (age, occupation), their possessions
(watch, computer, CDs), abstract ideas (one’s moral viewpoints), other
people (partners, parents), objects within one’s close physical
environment (pens, lamps, books), followed finally by objects within
distant environments (where one has travelled, one’s workplace).
Interestingly, note how the possessions category ranks more highly than
other people in imagining the self, suggesting the strong importance of
objects. A potential factor at work in this ranking is the degree of
personal control people perceive they have over things, which influences
their perceptions of the relative closeness of these components of self.”
Woodward, Ian. Understanding Material Culture. 2007. Sage Publications. P.
145. [Reference: Russell Belk. “Possessions and the extended self.” The
Journal of Consumer Research. 1988. 15:139-65.]
“A human being for Descartes is a thinking thing (res cogitans). A
thinking thing, however, is a representing, constructing thing, and is
especially always a self-representing or self-positing thing. The
Cartesian human being is thus at its core a self-positing, self-grounding
being. Man in this way ceases to be considered the rational animal and
instead is conceived as the willing being. Both humanism and the
Reformation, as we have seen, similarly located man’s humanity in the will
rather than the reason. Descartes is indebted to both but also moves
beyond them. In contrast to humanism, his subject is abstracted from the
historical world, and has no personality, no virtues or vices, no concern
with immortal fame. The willing subject, however, is thus not constrained
by the finitude of this world and consequently can imagine becoming its
absolute master. Similarly, the subject’s will is not subordinate to or in
conflict with the will of God. The problem that we saw at the heart of
Luther’s thought and in the debate between Erasmus and Luther thus seems
at least on the surface to be resolved.
“This subject’s rethinking of thinking as willing is the ground of
Descartes’ attempt to construct a citadel of reason for human beings
against the potentially malevolent omnipotence of God. This is
particularly apparent in his formulation of his fundamental principle. The
fundamental principle arises at the end of the path of doubt. In
Descartes’ later accounts of thinking, doubt is classified as a form of
the will, but it occupies an unusual place, since all other forms of the
will are paired opposites (affirming and denying, desiring and holding in
aversion). Doubting in one sense seems to stand between affirming and
denying, but in another sense it looks as if it should be paired with
faith or belief, which is perhaps suppressed in Descartes’ account because
of its controversial place in Reformation debates. In fact, for Descartes
the concealed opposite of doubt is not belief or faith but certainty.
Certainty and natural science thereby replace faith and theology for
Descartes.” Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of
Modernity. 2008. University of Chicago Press. P. 199.
“An analysis of an
incident occurring between a schizophrenic patient and his mother
illustrates the double bind situation. A young man who had fairly well
recovered from an acute schizophrenic episode was visited in the hospital
by his mother. He was glad to see her and impulsively put his arm around
her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she asked,
‘Don’t you love me any more?’ He then blushed, and she said, ‘Dear, you
must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings.’ The
patient was able to stay with her only a few minutes more and following
her departure he assaulted an aide and was put in the tubs.
“Obviously, this result could have been avoided if the young man had been
able to say, ‘Mother, it is obvious that you become uncomfortable when I
put my arm around you, and that you have difficulty accepting a gesture of
affection from me.’ However, the schizophrenic patient doesn’t have this
possibility open to him. His intense dependency and training prevents him
from commenting upon his mother’s communicative behavior, though she
comments on his and forces him to accept and to attempt to deal with the
complicated sequence.” Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of
Mind. Ballantine. P. 217.
Authors & Works
cited in this section:
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Berman, Morris, The
Reenchantment of the World
Deacon, Terrence. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language
Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of Modernity
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Harding, D.E., On Having No Head
Hillman, James Networker
Kegan, Robert. In Over Our Heads; the Mental Demands of Modern Life
Lanham, Richard. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the
Age of Information
Madsen, Richard et al. Meaning and Modernity: Religion Polity
McAfee, Noelle, Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship
Moore, Thomas. SoulMates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and
Perry, John Weir. Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency
Shoda, Yuichi & S. Tiernan. Personality as a Dynamical System: Emergence
of Stability and Distinctiveness
Stern, Daniel, The Interpersonal World of the Infant
Stern, Donnel. Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination
Taylor, Mark C. The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture
Wallace, B. Alan. The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science
Wheeler, Gordon. “The Developing Field: Toward a Gestalt Development
Woodward, Ian. Understanding Material Culture
