In this paper I would like to introduce a particular style of phenomenological analysis and I hope to demonstrate that some propositions which, when first encountered in philosophical form seem quite abstruse, nonetheless have very practical implications for the actual work of therapy and personal growth. I am drawing on both eastern and western sources, philosophic and poetic. One of the hallmarks of phenomenological analysis is its insistence upon remaining as close as possible to actual experience and in this respect, life is poetic rather than logical. I would like to begin with a verse from Korea which more eloquently describes the clarity of seeing which phenomenology aims to help us to approach.
The mind-mirror is so limpid and bright;
Guest and host are both destroyed.
The brilliant shining is unobstructed;
All forms are vividly clear.
(Songchol Sunim, quoted in Sunim 1985, p.v)
DEFINITIONS
In western existentialism, eigenwelt means one's personal world and mitwelt means the world one associates with. Literally the terms translate as "own-world" and "with-world". In eastern philosophy, the own-world is the host and the with-world is the guest which visits us and which we treat with great respect. The "own-world" expresses our attempt to be authentic. The "with-world" is the realm of things and persons we interact authentically with. There is a natural interdependence between them.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
(Polonius, in Hamlet I,3.)
So far so good. The important point to grasp, however, is that the terms eigenwelt and mitwelt relate to basic questions about the way we experience the world and therefore about what being authentic might mean. Phenomenology is the attempt to look more deeply into the process of experiencing, an attempt which leads to a breaking down of the subject-object or host-guest distinction. We shall see, therefore, that to assume that eigenwelt is equivalent to one's private world and mitwelt is one's social world would only be true in a very loose sense. Really we are here talking about two aspects of our mentality just as much as we are talking about zones in the world around us. Mitwelt can be one way of experiencing and eigenwelt another.
As zones within the world I experience, eigenwelt refers to all those things which help to define me as me while mitwelt refers to all the things which I experience as being "on my side", as standing with me. The attempt to list which objective entities fall into each zone is, however, doomed to failure, because the way we view things shifts all the time.
As mentality, eigenwelt refers to the process of identification. My eigenwelt exists in interdependence with my identity. It has to do with the reflexive mode of consciousness. Mitwelt refers to the process of absorption, to losing myself in something, to "getting with it".
Implications for Therapy
Therapy is an attempt at authentic communication. So in the therapy situation, client and therapist are mitwelt for each other. The client also brings with him/her a mitwelt from outside of the sessions. As this is revealed and comes to be shared by the therapist, a degree of identification between client and therapist becomes inevitable. The therapist retains, however, the ability to step outside of the mitwelt provided by the client and the client may thus also acquire this ability.
Clients sometimes talk about themselves (eigenwelt) and sometimes about what goes on in life around them (mitwelt). Therapists commonly regard the former as more productive than the latter and often undertake to educate the client to "say I". The fact that eigenwelt and mitwelt are simply shifting perceptual frames upon the same personal reality, however, suggests that effective work may be done in either mode.
PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology is the study of consciousness, or, we may say of perception and experience. The most basic fact which phenomenology relies upon is the observation that one never finds a consciousness (or we might say a mind) without an object. No object, no consciousness. Consciousness can never be separated from objects. Now, objects of experience make up our mitwelt, our context. Consequently it makes no sense to think of a person as separate from a context.
Existentialism is the tradition of philosophy which develops the idea of how a person remains inseparable from context while nonetheless standing out from it. Phenomenology is the study of how what stands out is constantly shifting and of how, far from generating intolerable uncertainty, this circumstance is actually the basis for our being able to experience the world as real.
Phenomenology is also the attempt to understand things in their own terms. This means, amongst other things, that human things need to be understood in human terms rather than in the terms of natural science. To understand in terms of natural science is to understand cause and effect. To understand in human terms is to understand a drama.
Implications for Therapy
In therapy we do not meet the client as he is, we only meet him as he is with us. This simple fact makes most "assessment and diagnosis" meaningless. Everything which a client says in therapy is meaningful only in terms of a context and that context is generally implied rather than spelt out. In particular, a problem only exists in relation to an intended plot. Absence of food is not a problem to a hunger striker, but it is to a refugee. We do well to be extremely wary of the notion of cause and effect in psychology. It is obvious that people who have experienced similar circumstances make very different lives out of it. We may loosely say that a person's present distress is the "result" of a trauma identified in their history but when we say this we are not actually saying that how they are now is determined by what happened then, merely that their story makes sense when we know what they have suffered. We should not forget that there would be many other possible stories which would also make sense in the same circumstances.
THE NATURAL ATTITUDE
Terms like eigenwelt and mitwelt are part of a phenomenological critique of what is called "the natural attitude". The natural attitude is the mentality of everyday life, the taken for granted assumptions behind everyday communication and the ordinary conceptualization of the world. This paper illustrates some of this critique.
At a philosophical level such a critique is important primarily because of the questions it raises about the nature of existence and of being. The study of these questions is called ontology. We have earlier, for instance, questioned the accuracy of "assessment" on the grounds that a person does not exist outside of a context. The statement that a person does not exist outside of a context is an ontological proposition. It asserts something about the nature of existence.
For therapists, a thorough examination of ontological questions is interesting but is not really necessary. For us, the critique of the natural attitude is important primarily for three less profound reasons:
1. questioning hidden assumptions is an essential part of the therapy process and so is an important skill to acquire;
2. therapists need to be free from the natural attitude if they are to avoid judgementalism.
3. the natural attitude hides as much as it reveals about the actual nature of experience;
In this paper, it is the nature of experiencing which will be the main focus.
The critique of the natural attitude brings forward an alternative which Husserl calls "the personal attitude". When we are in the personal attitude we are aware not of a "world out there" but of a person's flow of experience. He says that "what is in question is not the world as it actually is but the particular world which is valid for the persons, the world appearing to them" (Husserl 1970, p.317). This world revealed in the personal attitude Husserl called the "life-world" (lebenswelt). The life-world is made up of holistic experiences whereas the natural world is made up of discrete entities.
Implications for Therapy
The primary implication of suspending the natural attitude in therapy is that it means giving up the idea that a person is some kind of mechanism that needs to be repaired. Human life and experience simply is not like that. People live stories and weave meanings in a manner which is quite unlike the way that machines operate. As therapists we are interested in the way things have become meaningful for this client. This means, commonly, aiming to understand the person as they are rather than aiming to change them. In phenomenological therapy we aim for understanding and trust change to take care of itself. We are, however, here refering to a particular kind of understanding, as will, I hope, become clear.
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION (EXPERIENCE)
In the natural attitude we assume that perception or experience is a process in which one party, the subject experiences or perceives another party, the object. This is a perfectly workable assumption for everyday usage. It does not, however, stand up to closer examination, as we will see, since there is no way that subject and object can be found separate from each other. Insofar as eigenwelt and mitwelt are equated with subject and object, they are inseparable.
The notion of a subject is a product of something called "reflexivity". When I think about myself, I am being reflexive. We see immediately that therapy involves a great deal of reflexivity. The phenomenological critique of the natural attitude suggests, however, that when we are being reflexive, we may not be doing quite what we think we are doing.
For the moment, however, we may simply establish the natural idea that consciousness is sometimes reflexive and sometimes not. We can also note, at this point, another interesting characteristic of experiencing which is that it is sometimes focused (or central) and sometimes peripheral.
We say that consciousness is reflexive when I am conscious of myself doing something and non-reflexive when I am just doing it. In the former case I am experiencing the world as eigenwelt. In the latter case I am experiencing it as mitwelt.
However, it is not as simple as this, because, it is not just that when I am in one mode the other has disappeared, it is rather that when one mode is foreground, the other is background and vice versa.
SPACE
Consciousness (mind) is spatially organized. In the natural attitude we think of ourselves as existing in space with the things of our world also occupying space around us. Our minds are intrinsically organized to experience the world in terms of space. Or, we could say, spatiality is a quality of consciousness itself.
We can get some sense of the relativity of this by thinking about how we experience time. Generally we try to make sense of time by converting it into space. We think of "distant" events, "long" and "short" periods of time, of the past as "behind" us and the future "ahead" of us and so on. It is clear enough that this is a metaphor not a literal truth. The mind feels as if it understands space. It does not really have any direct grasp of time so it converts it into what it does understand, space.
Another aspect of this spaciality of consciousness is the way we think about our own mental life. We say that our ideas and our memories and our imagination are all part of our "inner" life. They are "inside" us. Sometimes we say that a particular idea or feeling is "deeper" than others. We talk about our "inner" life as being arranged in "layers". This kind of speech is so much a part of everyday life that it is difficult to unhook ourselves from the idea that it is how it is. But a little reflection shows that all these terms are simply a metaphor by which again we try to comprehend something which is not readily understandable. Actually "where" mental contents are is probably not a meaningful question if we try to take it literally.
In fact the notion of mental contents as being "inside" us is of relatively modern origin. It is a product of the civilizing process which requires that persons be individuals. Being an individual requires me to carry my world around with me. The person in modern society has been individualized to a great extent. In earlier times, many of the experiences which we situate "within" ourselves were situated "outside".
We generally believe that this internalization is progress and that it was a failing of our ancestors that they saw the world around them as full of vital forces. We call the latter "projection" which literally means throwing out. This is because we believe that when a member of an aboriginal tribe experiences the presence of a spirit in a tree, say, he is actually experiencing something which exists "in" himself.
We should pause a moment, however, before we assume that we have, in our modern natural attitude, got the right end of the stick. After all, how we think of the world has powerful consequences. It makes a great deal of difference whether I believe that a phenomenon is a god or a projection of a mental complex for instance. Relating to a god is a powerfully elevating experience. Being in the grip of a mental complex is a form of mental sickness (Jung 1929 CW 13, p.38).
Furthermore, the notion that our psyche is "inside" us takes us away from our actual experience. This can be illustrated by doing a small experiment. Imagine, if you will, a matchbox. Get the image clear in your mind's eye. Now, try to determine for yourself where the image of the box is situated. When I do this, I find that the image is about two feet in front of me, roughly at eye level. I do not experience the image as inside me.
Consciousness perceiving Imaginary Object
Fig 1: Is the "object" outside or inside?
Let us extend the experiment a little. You have the image of the matchbox in front of you. Now try to view it from the other side. What happens? In my case, I find that I now have an image of myself viewing the matchbox and I also have an image of the view that I would have of the box if I were on the other side of it. So even my experience of myself is not always "from the inside".
In order to restore our normal orientation (ie the natural attitude) we will now tell ourselves that what we have done is to project our imagination "outside". Experientially, however, throughout this experiment, none of the things which we naturally believe to be "inside" have been experienced as such at any stage. It simply is not the case that we had an image inside and then threw it out. The image was out there from the beginning. In the life-world, therefore, our imagination is mostly outside of ourselves.
Implications for Therapy
This is important in therapy because when people tell us about their relatives or about the events of their lives, imaginatively they are experiencing them and this experiencing is not an experiencing of things "inside" themselves, but of an invisible world which is thickly populated all around them. The consulting room becomes a stage within which a throng of "others" become present for the client.
If you start to think about your mother, where do you experience her as being? Close at hand, far away, just behind you, by your side? If you watch carefully as a person starts to get in touch with experiences about another person, you will see the head, or at least the eyes, turn in a particular direction.
As a therapy session proceeds, the world of the client is elaborated throughout the space which client and therapist physically occupy. Clients, just like everyone else, bring their mitwelt with them.
ZONES AND MODES
Equipped with the understanding that consciousness is spacial, we can reconsider the earlier statement that eigenwelt and mitwelt can be read either as referring to modes of consciousness or as zones in the world of our experience. A first step out of the natural attitude is achieved when we realize that these are really just two ways of saying the same thing. The zones in our life-world (lebenswelt) are our own modes of consciousness and vice versa. We "naturally" use two different vocabularies for "outside" occurrences and for those which we consider to be "inside" ourselves because this enables us to preserve the inside-outside structure of our (natural attitude) world. In the life-world, however, the two are the same.
Within the natural attitude we assume that the mind is organized spatially because it is a reflection of the "outside" world. We assume that the outside world must be spacial and that therefore our minds get organized that way by encounter with it. The natural attitude assumes that the outside world comes first and that the mind comes second. However, there is no way we can unscramble this chicken and egg question of whether we see the world spatially because that is how our minds work or whether our minds work that way because that is how the world is. We simply cannot know. Phenomenology, however, by pointing up the fact that the mind is not a passive receiver but rather an active "grasper" of experience, suggests that we do impose a great deal more upon our perceptions than we are at first ready to admit.
Stone walls doe not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage;
If I have freedome in my Love,
And in my soule am free;
Angels alone that sore above,
Injoy such Liberty.
(Richard Lovelace, To Althea from Prison)
THE INTENTIONAL SUBJECT
Recall once more the image of the matchbox. You have the image clearly before you. Now, can you locate the "observer of the matchbox"? Where is the observing consciousness located? Doing this exercise carefully, trying to get precision, is quite difficult but certainly not impossible, though one might be left with a certain degree of irresolvable vagueness about the precise spot. Nonetheless, perhaps you decide that it is to be found at a point somewhere inside your skull.
Fig 2. Where is the observer of the object?
Now, try to keep this point in view. Once you have stabilized your sense of where the view-point is, go one step further. Try to determine from where you are looking in order to see this viewing point. Where is the consciousness which is viewing the viewing consciousness? At this point you may experience a "funny feeling". This is because it is at this juncture that we may be jolted out of the natural attitude.
Fig.3: Where is the observer of the observer?
Of course, the experiment can be carried a step further. Can you find the position of the observer of the observer of the observer? If you can do this, you will probably find that you have a sense that this third level observer can observe not only the last one but all the others. You might also find, and certainly will find if you carry the experiment on through enough stages, that you have located the latest observer outside of the space occupied by your physical body. This too produces a funny feeling.
This experiment also reveals that we have here the possibility of an infinite regression. The location of the viewer can only be determined by establishing a new viewpoint which is "outside" of that point. Complete reflexivity of consciousness is therefore impossible. What one reflects on is not what one is reflecting with. The ego (perceiver) is thus always something which transcends the act of perception and remains elusive, slipping away each time we think we have pinned it down.
AWARENESS
Sometimes reflexivity is confused with awareness. While full reflexivity is not possible, awareness is. I think we can all recognise that there is a difference in quality of consciousness between those times when we are aware that we are doing something and those times when we are "lost" in the activity. The former state, which I am here calling awareness, is not actually one in which I am conscious of myself as subject so much as one in which I am aware of what I am doing, rather than just doing it. In everyday language it is the difference between doing something "deliberately" and "absent mindedness".
Awareness is rather like turning the light on. Awareness does not imply any particular object. Reflexivity, on the other hand, is defined in terms of its object, an object which remains forever elusive.
Awareness is a spacious quality of consciousness in which things are experienced as "just so". Awareness is a state in which it is as though the "plot" of our life were held in abeyance for a moment. Everybody experiences this in special moments such as when coming upon something particularly beautiful unexpectedly. For a moment one simply sees it. This kind of direct perception stands outside the natural attitude and is completely free from self-consciousness. Very soon, however, for most of us, our habitual attitudes crowd back in and dull the vision. These "special moments" are the subject of the Japanese verse form called "haiku" which seek to capture instants when a person is at one with what is perceived.
Suddenly I hear a cuckoo singing outside the window.
The spring mountains which fill my eyes are all my old home.
Returning from drawing water, I turn my head.
Blue mountains in white clouds without number.
(Sosan, quoted in Sunim 1987, p.128)
Reflexivity, we have seen, can only be approximated. Reflexivity without awareness is called self-consciousness and is an obstacle to peak performance. A non-reflexive unaware state is called "absent mindedness" or "day dreaming" or "being on automatic pilot" or "being pre-occupied". Non-reflexive awareness occurs when one is whole-heartedly involved in life. Reflexivity within awareness is a meditation exercise which is likely to make one laugh. This last is found in the Rinzai koan practice.
THERAPY PROCESS
As the client elaborates a world for us, we become aware of it as a mitwelt, a context. If our manner of therapy is imaginatively rich, we will become aware of this mitwelt around us, we will enter into it and move around within it. We will become aware also of how the client positions him/herself in relation to it. The eigenwelt will be construed from the mitwelt. This distinction is important. The mitwelt is revealed but the eigenwelt is construed, or, we might say, constructed.
If we remember the matchbox experiment, it was not until the matchbox was in view that it was possible to attempt to locate the observing consciousness. The object is a precondition for the subject to be constructed.
This, of course, is a complete reversal of the natural attitude which assumes that I exist before I encounter others. Analysis of the process of perception, however, strongly suggests that the sense of there being a subject, an "I", is constructed out of the experience of there being an object. Objects are experienced. Subjects are not. Subjects have to be construed from indirect evidence.
CONSTRUCTING AND DECONSTRUCTING A SUBJECT
Some approaches to therapy see the task essentially as being that of helping the person to construct a stronger sense of the subject, a stronger sense of self. The therapist is then only concerned with the notion which the person has of him/herself. This is called strengthening the ego.
Phenomenology, as we have just seen, deconstructs the self and places the emphasis not upon the notion of a subject, but, rather, upon the process of experiencing.
This is best explained by examples:
Client: "My mother is always criticising me",
Therapist 1: "You find it difficult to stand up to her"
Therapist 2: "I have a sense that you can hear her voice in your ears as you say it"
or
Client: "The devil is tempting me"
Therapist 1: "It is a struggle resisting temptation. I wonder what it is that you want to do."
Therapist 2: "So he is here now. What is he saying?"
or
Client: "My marriage is in a mess"
Therapist 1: "Sounds like it is getting you down."
Therapist 2: "A mess - like untidy, tangled, chaotic, - it's really messy"
Therapist one is attuned to the idea of building self-esteem. This is not bad but it is still firmly locked inside the natural attitude which prescribes that there is a problem to solve, that the problem is the property of the subject and that if the subject can be strengthened, then the problem will be overcome. By operating from this framework, therapist 1 effectively turns the client's context into a gegenwelt (Brazier 1992), which is a "hard" world we come up against rather than a mitwelt.
Therapist two is attuned to the evidence which the client presents of the experience he is having. This therapist has dropped the assumption that there is a problem to solve and has abandoned the natural attitude of assuming that there is a subject ego existing independently of the flow of experience. The experience itself is the matter in hand. This therapist also assumes that the qualities perceived in the object are equally qualities of the subject.
BEYOND SELF ESTEEM
What is clear from these examples is that "building self esteem" is of dubious value as a goal for therapy except in an incidental sense. Indeed, most of the goals of therapy assumed in the natural attitude are likely to be achieved only as by-products rather than as direct constructions. When we view therapy "from outside" we can see goals for it like building self-esteem, changes in personality, improvements in relationships and so on. From inside the therapy process itself, however, the perspective changes and we find that these goals are not achieved by pursuing them directly. They are the symptoms of a vibrant life, not things which can be contrived piecemeal.
The paradox is that a person comes to life not by reflecting more and more upon him/herself but by experiencing the mitwelt more richly. A person feels real only to the extent that they live in a real world and the realness of the world is itself a function of the manner of our engagement with it. When therapist 2 in the third example above responds to the client's comment about his marriage by inviting an exploration of the quality he has attributed to it, she is involving him in it as mitwelt in a way which restores vitality to what would otherwise remain a dead stereotyped description.
EVOCATION
The eigenwelt is evoked by the mitwelt. If a client is talking about a feeling, then s/he is probably not feeling it. This is because while I am perceiving the feeling, I am separated from it: I am construing myself as in a place other than where the feeling is. If a feeling is to be evoked, this is done by focusing attention not upon it but upon that circumstance with which it is associated. I do not become fearful by thinking about fear so much as by imagining that which threatens me.
This fact has important implication for therapy since a number of clients come into therapy because they find themselves unable to get in touch with their feelings. The more they focus upon them the less they feel them. We can understand from our simple experiments with perception above, how this must be so.
The client who looks at the fear does not feel it for he has made the fear part of his mitwelt. The threatening presence which would evoke the fear lies in the mitwelt of the fear itself. The subject cannot get into the fear directly. It can only be done by conjuring the appropriate mitwelt first. This is why scene setting is an essential part of any "inner" drama. Without the scene, we do not get into it.
DISTANCE
When the fear is in the mitwelt, the person has distance from it. Sometimes the therapist helps the client put an image into the mitwelt in order to reduce its intensity. Thus when a person is beginning to relive a highly traumatic episode in imagination, it may be advisable for them to distance it, at least to some degree. Seeing the scene go on in front of us is less disturbing than being in it.
On the other hand there are many occasions when what is needed is to reduce the distance and this is, as we have just described, done by a more vivid evocation of the context.
EYE CONTACT
If we recall again the matchbox experiment, how would it be if the matchbox were to look back at us. How would this change our experience of perceiving the matchbox? This would certainly be a different matchbox experience for us. This would reduce the distance markedly. In therapy, eye contact and avoidance of gaze play a significant part in modulating the intensity of the relationship.
Mutual gaze gives us an experience of "the most perfect reciprocity in the entire field of human relationship" (Simmel 1921, p.39). Eye contact is one of the most powerful elements of communication. It provides a pre-verbal means of seeking information, declaring our intentions, validating or invalidating the existence of the other, conveying affection and touching a dimension of existence which feels archetypal or mystical (Angus et al. 1991). It puts us in touch with our own unknownness to ourselves while simultaneously giving us evidence that we have become real to the other.
Fig 4: Perceiving and being perceived
REALNESS
In the life-world, "reality" is a quality of experience, or we might say, of consciousness, rather than a quality of the things themselves. Things become real for us insofar as we interact with them in a sufficient intensity or variety of ways for them to begin to have meaning for us. Perception is, in effect, an attempt to create meaning. Perception always intends an understandable object. For the object to be understandable it must "speak to us". Actually, the terms "understanding" and "meaning" here, although accurate do not seem to do full justice to what is intended. If I were to put this more poetically I could say that we are talking about things becoming radiant for us. In the life-world, poetry is often found to be more true than science.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
(Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn)
Perception becomes radiant when we experience a "mutual gaze situation" with the other. This is when there is electricity. This experience is most obvious in the literal case of human eye-contact but is possible in all perception. It is possible to experience such mutuality with a tree, a mountain, a flower or even a mundane object.
Thou shalt, at one glance behold
The daisy and the marigold
(Keats, Fancy)
In therapy, clients seek an answering gaze (and voice) from many different elements of their life-world and it is often the therapist's task to help to bring this or that element more vibrantly to life in order that its voice be heard.
Conversely, when the mitwelt is empty, when we feel no answering gaze, this is the situation in which the person loses any sense of own reality. Suicide is most likely when a person feels that it would make no difference to anyone else whether they live or die. For such a person, the world is already dead and to construe oneself as subject from a dead world is to be as dead already. Suicide is an acting out of what is already there in experience.
Since "reality" or realness is a quality of experiencing, it can be enhanced or diminished. In group therapy, for instance, a member might say that another member's emotion was "unreal". Later, when the two people have interacted in a number of ways, this unrealness may have disappeared and been replaced by empathy. We become real for each other by interacting in varied ways which make us meaningful to one another. Empathy is what happens when the experience of another person becomes real for us. We could say therefore that love is actually simply to experience the world as real. To really see a person is to love them. To love the world is to feel its answering gaze upon us.
Because perception is always an attempt to create meaning, everything which occurs to the client is part of the process of creating a world. Every perception is a mitwelt from which an eigenwelt is construed. Nothing in therapy, therefore, is meaningless. Everything is meaning-in-the-making. Whatever comes to mind is significant. The less significant it at first seems, the more significant it may later prove to have been. It is for this reason that phenomenological method includes the rule of "horizontalization" which means that we should listen to everything on the same level, as it were, not discarding the seemingly irrelevant details.
To experience mutuality in relation to the world is, of course, completely outside the natural attitude. In the natural attitude the world is largely made up of dead material. In the life-world, however, nothing is dead for perceiver and percept are a unity. If it is dead, so am I. If I am to live, the world will live for me too.
ADVANCE AND RETREAT
We have seen how when one tries to locate the consciousness which perceives one finds oneself trapped into an infinite regression, a retreat from the world. One loses the "empirical standpoint". The ego which one seeks can be accepted as transcendental but not experienced directly except as a quality of perceiving. In order to find oneself, therefore, it is necessary to "advance" rather than retreat. Going to a more forward vantage point means, paradoxically, no longer seeking the self but going toward "the things themselves" as Husserl would have said.
We can see that this phenomenological conclusion represents a reversal of the commonly held view. Commonly it is held that, as we see ourselves, so shall we see the world. What this analysis suggests, however, is that this works the other way around: as we see the world, so shall we be. We see the practical application of this in the fact that many people believe that they cannot do something until it feels right to them whereas, in fact, things do not generally begin to feel right until we do them, hence the slogan coined by Susan Jeffers "Feel the fear and do it anyway" (Jeffers 1987).
This, perhaps gives us a glimpse of the relationship between perception and courage. In order to become fully alive, authentic, we need the courage to go forward rather than retreat into a pursuit of the elusive self. Our essential self comes into being simultaneously with all things as we engage with them and it is not to be found in a retreat from the things themselves.
CONCLUSION
People are constructed to perceive the world. Our senses "point outwards". The mitwelt is thus prior to the eigenwelt. An eigenwelt is evoked by the conjuring of a mitwelt. All life is thus a drama in which scene setting plays a crucially important part. In therapy, clients spend a great deal of time scene setting and commonly expect the therapist to be able to divine what the client is like from knowledge of the scenes they experience themselves in. There is not, however, a one to one correspondence between life scripts and life circumstances. The eigenwelt can, however, be construed not so much from what the client's context is as from the manner in which the client perceives it. Generally, the direction in therapy is from a less toward a more real experience of life. This gain in realness (authenticity) is achieved not by a process akin to repairing a mechanism but by one of enrichment of the process of experiencing. Ultimately, authenticity is a state in which the mitwelt becomes fully real and a sense of mutuality is achieved in which the world comes to life for us. This is a never ending process since the mitwelt always has an open horizon. From this perspective, we can say that the goal of therapy is not simply that of providing empathy for the client but also that of creating a situation in which the client too comes to a deep appreciation of their context. As ye see, so shall ye be.
- Beneath blue clouds
On the branch of an aging pine.
Do you enjoy
The embroidery of rivers and mountains
Shining with autumn colour?
Let us bask together
In the subtle fragrance
Of the wild chrysanthemum.
(Kusan, quoted in Sunim 1985, p.127)
REFERENCES
ANGUS N.M., OSBORNE J.W. & KOZIEY P.W. 1991. Window to the soul: A phenomenological investigation of mutual gaze. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 22, (2), pp.142-162.#
BRAZIER D.J. 1992. Eigenwelt and gegenwelt. Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis 3. pp. 84-93.
HUSSERL E. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. (D.Carr, trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
JEFFERS S. 1987. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. London: Century Hutchinson.*
JUNG C.G. references are to the collected works published by Routledge.
SIMMEL G. 1921. Sociology of the senses: Visual interaction. In R.E. Park & E.W. Burgess (eds.), Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
SUNIM M.S. 1987. Thousand Peaks: Korean Zen tradition and teachers. Berkeley: Parallax Press.*
SUNIM K. 1985. The Way of Korean Zen. New York: Weatherhill.*
Dh.D.J. Brazier
1994