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Process?
How I Read the Structure of the PM Text: What is a 'Kind' of Process?
by Greg Walkerden (gregw@acay.com.au)
1. As I read the Process Model, what it is doing is describing a set of KINDS of
process that make up our lived experience. The main KINDS of process described
are:
body tissue processes, e.g. drawing in oxygen and passing out carbon dioxide, (described in sections I to V of the
PM as Gene lays out his basic model of 'life as process'),
behaviour, e.g. fight and flight, (section VI)
culture and symbol, e.g. speech, (section (VII)
heeding 'Direct Referents' (felt senses), e.g. focusing as we know it, (section VIII).
2. These KINDS of process are layered: focusing is a form of listening-speaking,
speaking is a form of behaviour, and behaviour is a form of body tissue process.
Each 'higher' layer is supported by the organismic processes that enable the'more
primitive' layers to function. A new layer 'emerges' when a new kind of 'implying'
or 'symbolising' or 'holding together the whole of what is in the previous layer'
emerges ... Gene talks about this as a "doubling" of that which is 'implied': the
body tissue process *is also* behaviour: so a penguin doing a mating dance on
the snow is both body tissue process in a rudimentary sense - tissues pressing,
stretching and contracting in patterns that enable feet, wings, head to move:
these tissue processes *imply* gravity and ground - and behaviour - the dance
*implies* awareness of the other penguin's responses. So (at least) two sets of
implications are active at once: there is a "doubled implying".
3. This layering does not involve a sense of *separate* processes occurring
concurrently. Rather, "there is only ONE implying" because there is only one life
process. The PM therefore develops a set of concepts to account for mutual
influence between processes that does not take *time* - that is about 'strands' of
life process that are, in part, mutually influencing each other as they arise
together: we have "interaffecting" and "everything crossing with everything". But,
if every possible implication of everything had ALL its weight NOW, we could not
account for forward movement, change - because all the implications would be
played out now. So the Model includes a distinction between things implied but
'held', and things implied that are 'in play' ...
It's important to see what's happening here, as the model is being built. *If* we
simply used ordinary words with their ordinary meanings we could not say what
has just been said in the last paragraph. 'Interaffecting' seems to describe
something that 'happens' but takes no time - which is impossible, if 'happen' and
'time' are understood in the usual way. But rather than be constrained by the
assumptions - the cosmology - built into ordinary language, Gendlin is taking
something complex and familiar from ordinary experience, and seeing what
concepts need to be built to explicate it. He does this typically in two stages: he
develops "leap" concepts - concepts in which we are saying what we want to say,
even though they are paradoxical when considered in the context of ordinary
understanding. *Then* he develops a more sophisticated model that builds to (an
evolved version of) the "leap" concepts.
Reading my text, even though it draws on the PM, is like reading a set of "leap"
concepts: I am sketching enough of the PM as I understand it to indicate that the
Model is plausible, but not enough, I imagine, to render it 'natural' and 'easy' for a
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reader. *That* level of comfort could only come through one's own more intricate
reading of / dialogue with the PM text.
4. Part of what motivates the development of this Model is the desire to explicitly
account for the intricacy, richness and distinctiveness of FIRST PERSON PROCESS:
what it is to live bodily in the world *as ourselves*: NOT as people-observed. For
instance, *my* sense of the social spaces in which I live is *intensely* intricate
and open-with-possibilities compared to what an observer interpreting my actions
can see ... I am aware of the possibility of talking to many people, although I talk
only to one, I am aware of the possibility of many alternative stances (wary-
friendly, trusting, defensive, reserved-relaxed, ...), although I take a *particular*
stance ... The observer can't *see* the social space in which I am making my
choices ... If you had *only* third person data, you would have only a weak
characterisation of social behaviour. As Gene has said on many occasions, the
concepts that are "in the library" to describe human experiences are "too poor" to
do justice to the intricacy and diversity of living-as-ourselves. For instance,
describing focusing in our public (philosophical and psychological) language, we
get stuck needing to say that focusing brings out meanings that are already there,
OR that it creates meaning, neither of which does justice to the embeddedness
and creativity of 'carrying forward' what was there just now ...
5. The fundamental manoeuvre that Gene makes to enable development of a
Model that is a better tool for characterising our lived experience is to *assume*
interaction (that body-process and environment-engaged are one happening) and
to *derive* from this our experiences of separation, stability, etc. ...
5.1 To develop this intuition he inverts the usual relationship between 'perception'
and 'explication' in philosophical models of experience: he derives 'perception'
from a schematic of 'explication'. Ordinary language has many terms that take for
granted that our observations inform us about *the world*, rather than about
*ourselves*. So when we give 'perception' a central role as we characterise
experience, we emphasise the *separation* of observer and observed. When we
start from 'explication', ambiguities more evident within it are foregrounded: we
cannot say what a text is*independently* of the readings we give of it. In a
'reading', author and reader both participate, but we cannot cut the 'reading' up
to differentiate their contributions. Taking 'explication' as our paradigm, Gene
places a radical 'interdependence' at the heart of his Model: it is not possible to
define a (radical) 'boundary' between person (as process) and environment.
But texts are a special case. Is it sensible to build a model for *all* experiencing
starting from 'explication'? 'Explication' seems to be 'perception + interpretation',
so it seems to be more complex than 'perception', not something more basic. In
essence Gene's answer to this is: the roots of explication are in the lives of plants.
Observing a plant we can 'read' it as a structure in which certain biochemical
processes occur. Reading plant life in this way we take the entity, plant-
as-structure, to be fundamental, and explain the processes *from* the structure.
Yet we can also 'read' a plant in a way that takes *process itself* to be
fundamental. And this is a very plausible model: *being alive* is far more
fundamental to 'being a plant' than its physical structure is. The structure only
survives if the life process maintains it. And (in our *experience*) life process
always comes first: the first bits of an organism's structure are created by its
parents' life processes, and its life process (as seed, egg, ...) is a carrying forward
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of its parents' life processes.
As a plant lives, it carries forward the interaction of sun, water, nutrients and
living body, maintaining itself, extending roots towards water, and leaves (stems,
twigs) towards the sun. This interaction - this living - 'carrying itself forward' is
the plant tissue process doing its kind of 'explication'. Explication in a human
sense is layered on top of this.
5.2 Taking aliveness as a starting point in this way suggests an alternative
'cosmology'.
a) Instead of the *physical* body being the core of an organism, the physical
body is better understood as an intimate part of the *life process's*
'environment': an environmental layer that it creates and recreates for itself to
continue on in.
b) From the perspective of life process, time needs to be understood via a more
complex model. *Observing* a plant's life we might simply say: 'living happens in
time'. But from the perspective of the life process itself, in some sense time is
*interior* to the process. In the present, the past is often 'jelling' or 'focaling' or
coming to expression. And in the 'jelling' or 'focaling' or coming to expression,
there is (an intricate, open) 'implying' of the future. 'Implying' and 'unfolding' are
each other's inverse. But they do not *mirror* each other. Rather, as we live, we
'lean into' our future: life processes imply their own forward movement (in a way
that texts lead into their 'readings') ... but in an open way (in the way that a text
can be faithfully explicated in many directions). And as we live from our past, its
ongoing significance for living *now* unfolds. The past observed in space-time
does not change, but the past's presence in ongoing living changes. Because
'implying' is 'open', we feel the weight of what *was* differently, after we
recognise that it has carried forward to *this* (much as each generation has its
own Shakespeare, even though the texts of Shakespeare's plays and poems do
not change).
This relationship, implying and carrying forward, is at the heart of the Process
Model: any living that occurs 'implies' further occurring that will carry it forward
(e.g. hunger implies eating, eating transforms the hunger) ... but this'implying' is
more open, indeterminate and unspecifying than the usual meaning of 'implies'
conveys. The further occurring isn't determined by what has just occurred in the
way that a logical implication is determined. Nor is the indeterminacy just
contingency: we are not talking about openness to random intrusions. We are
trying to characterise an openness that is, as it were, richly textured and
evocative, but unresolved.
This openness is more obvious in conversation than in plant growth. As words
come, many things are in play: an intricately felt history of being together, a
sense of the movement of this conversation, and a multitude of other experiences
('knowing hows', 'knowing thats'). They 'cross' implicitly (*not* explicitly, as we
are not conscious of most of what is in play) ... and together, in a fresh way,
'focal' what we say next: something sayable comes. What comes in a sense
'explicates' our situation as we sense it: it carries it forward ... what I have to say
speaks to my situation: it 'expresses' being with my friend, *now*. And as I
speak, my speaking 'occurs into' my friend's experience, 'implying' my friend's
replying, and thus implying further experiencing for me - not deterministically -
but significantly. And as I speak, what I *was* experiencing takes shape in a new
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way: as carried forward into ...
5.3 In this Model, objects are derived, not foundational. We *experience* objects
as separate from us. But in the PM this is derived as a special case of ENGAGING;
its not the paradigm case for 'being'. How does Gene derive 'separate objects'
from 'interacting' ... from 'pre-separated', un-decomposed, un-strand-ed, flux?
His starting point is recognising that when a process is *stopped*, you notice
something is missing. For example, we are confronted by the components of our
car's engine when our car won't start! If we *begin* with the-whole-flux-of-
our-living, different kinds of interruption provide windows on the intricacies of our
life process ... and the process of exploration is one of unfolding intricacy from a
'whole flux' that is never decomposed, is never broken into a set of constituent
strands, is never broken up into discrete, individual processes.
Questions about 'how separate objects connect' disappear when you begin from
this place (e.g. discussions of 'knowing other minds'). Instead, with processes
central, and, in particular, *kinds* of body process, such as breathing and seeking
food, the Process Model invites us to explore the dependence on *bodily*
processes of the more sophisticated accomplishments that are *often* discussed
in a quite disembodied way (e.g. language, culture, emotions, ...). How it is that
language use layers a kind of symbol-using activity on top of the behaving we
share with animals, and how the behaving is layered on top of the body tissue
processes we share with plants, ... Talking is symbol-using, behaving and tissue
process all at once. And, as *lived*, these are strands of our one life process ...
and as *lived*, they are not, in the first instance, 'strands'. We are *one* life
process: differentiating strands like this is the beginnings of *one* way of
explicating the intricacy of our living.
By starting from interaction, and by understanding our *physical* bodies as a
kind of *environment* in which life-process (us living) goes on, we can see *why*
we have difficulty *identifying* ourselves with our bodies, when we are trying to
describe how *important* being embodied is for us. We are not our-bodies-
as-structure, we are living-process-that-is-remaking-our-bodies-as-structure.
6. Looking through the PM text for the pattern of its explications of different
KINDS of process, as I read it, the main elements that need to be described to
characterise a KIND of process are:
i) the new kind of OCCURRING, and the new kind of ENVIRONMENT (kind of
SPACE) in which it arises / occurs ... (e.g. felt senses arise in a kind of interior
space that we can 'clear' at the start of focusing; interaction occurs in a kind of
'social space'; ...);
ii) how an occurring of a particular kind *IMPLIES* further occurring ('implies' in
the open way discussed above), and how further occurring CARRIES FORWARD
the earlier ones ... or *can* carry it forward, as processes are interrupted when
something environmental that's essential is missing ... (e.g. focusing *implies*
the formation of a felt sense, a felt sense implies something more, a newly
forming felt sense carries forward the one that occurred before, ... "all living is an
occurring and also an implying (of ...)" and "implying and occurring are two
strands of bodily process" (PM IV b));
["In every sequence some kind of environment carries the body forward into a bit
of changed implying (which then makes for a further change in that environment,
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which again carries the body further." (PM VIII A) 'Occurring' always involves both
body and environment - all the way in.]
iii) what that-which-implies encapsulates or holds from the more primitive KINDS
of process (e.g. a felt sense is a "version of the whole life situation or theoretical
problem" - a particular occurring is *relevant to* what has occurred within the
simpler kind of process ... and what was happening in the simpler space is
paused); and
iv) what the new implying-process *is* in the more primitive layer (e.g. behaviour
is a form of movement; heeding a felt sense is "a kind of inward dance" ... i.e. felt
sensing is built on the possibility of being social, cultural beings).
Greg Walkerden (gregw@acay.com.au)
77 Coolaroo Rd
Lane Cove NSW 2066
Australia
Sydney 12 July, 1999
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