Merleau-Ponty and psychotherapy

Merleau-Ponty and psychotherapy
Contents
Introduction 1
Science, objectivity and perception 1
The Body 4
Being in the World 5
Bibliography 6


Introduction
In this paper I will look at concepts from Merleau-Ponty’s (MP) writings that can aid in psychotherapy:
1. Science, objectivity and phenomena
2. The Body
3. Being in the World
Science, objectivity and perception
MP sees the worth and utility of the scientific view of the objective world, but doesn’t see this as primordial.
The common held scientific view is a combination of Newtonian physics , Cartesian dualism and Freud’s psychic topography.
Newtonian physics, sees a box called world which is spatial and in which there are objects. These objects are subject to cause and effect ,and this principle shows the temporality in which people move through this box. People access the world through perception and knowledge of objects, which are represented as ideas of sensations from these objects.
Rene Descartes book Meditations placed the mind in Newton’s world. He attempted to provide an indubitable position for knowledge. His position was the only thing that couldn’t be doubted was thought and through his attempt he established dichotomies: mind\ body and subject\object .The key aspect here is the res cogitans, the mind became a thing, and whilst he saw it as a non-material entity, that did not adhere to the laws of physics, this then led the way for Freud to apply physics to the mind.
Freud’s causal psychic apparatus saw that there are instinctive drives within humans coming from the id that have energy attached to them that must be discharged. Thus I am hungry, the ego is aware of this and interacts with the world to reduce this tension, which produces pleasure. Should the super ego, the internalised moral agent of society, object to this desire, then there will come repression that pushes the desire into the unconscious. The act of managing this repression will produce the symptoms that the client will then present with, and all the therapist needs do, is to ensure the clients ego is strong enough, reconciled with his super-ego and uncover the repressed desire. The patient is fixed like a car after a service, what Freud calls abreaction.
To view science as the ultimate truth is commonly held as is the client’s view that they can be fixed like a broken machine, by finding the causes of their distress, they can by changing their engagement with these causes (e.g. positive thinking and emotional catharsis) change their outcomes. Indeed CBT, REBT and NLP are testament to this approach.
MP whilst seeing the worth of a scientific view, didn’t see it as being able to fully explain human life. “A child perceives before it thinks” (Merleau-Ponty 1968 p27). Science draws universal laws that are derived from specific experience. There is experience first which is the raw data that science uses. It is this experience, or perception to use MP’s terminology that he seeks to investigate, as it is that which is the foundation of human experience.
What is perception for MP? Perception is our meaningful relation to the world. This isn’t the relation of subject to object, or idea to thing, but rather a relation that constitutes both sides. My perception is an embeddedness within the world, where my perception is of a world that is distinct from me. This world that I am aware of and embedded within, is one that I engage with meaningfully, and that supports or blocks my desires. Thus it is co-constituting, with each side dependent on the other. Thus mental phenomena are intentional, pointing out to objects within the world.
“Perception is precisely the kind of act for which there can be no question of distinguishing the act itself from the end to which it is directed...Perception and the perceived necessarily have the same existential modality..If I see an ashtray in the full sense of the word “see”, there must be an ashtray there...To see is to see something” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p435-436)
The nature of perception has several facets. It arises from a horizon which attention leaves to an object which it focuses on. The nature of this object, is related to and points to a united infinitude of objects which constitutes the world. Our engagement with it is by a unity of all of the senses, a perspective.
To explain this in more detail: when we perceive an apple then what we do is focus our attention on it, and the bowl in which it sits, has less attention, the desk on which the bowl sits less still, and we are not even aware of the floor on which the desk sits, although we know there is something there as we presume an infinite totality of relations. “I should realize it is necessary to put the surroundings in abeyance [...], to see the object, and to lose in background what one gains in focal figure” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p78)
The apple has meaning for me, it could satisfy my hunger, or should be avoided to protect my diet. My perception of it, is not purely visual, but rather through the entirety of the senses that the body has. As I see the apple, I can hear the noise as I push my teeth into its flesh, and taste and smell the sweet apple juice as I swallow, “the senses communicate in perception as the two eyes collaborate in vision” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p271-2)
What then can MP’s understanding of perception offer to psychotherapy? Firstly that causal objective explanations aren’t part of a client’s primal engagement with the world. Many clients want to be fixed by their therapist. This approach would always leave the client with an objective relationship with themselves, and not a more intimate one. Whilst this can have worth it is not the deepest and most significant relationship that can be had.
Engaging phenomenologically, to move to the things in themselves by using an atheoretical description of how clients experience their world as a meaningful place, is to move to the primal relation of perception that a client has. To look at the relations between things and events in a client’s world, instead of atomistically looking at parts, again moves towards this primal experience. MP would see the worth in psychotherapy of a deepening description of client’s distress and engagement with experience as being one that enriches and invigorates a person’s life.
MP’s belief in our embodied being in the world, means that he doesn’t believe in ideas, or emotions that are representetative of something else, i.e. idea with an object, or idea as symbolising a repressed desire in the unconscious.
In the example in the Phenomenology of Perception p186, a girl who has been prohibited by her parents from seeing her lover who loses her speech, this loss of speech is not seen to be an action that symbolises her unconscious repression, but rather it directly expresses emotion, “in so far as the emotion elects to find its expression in loss of speech” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186) “Loss of speech, then stands for the refusal of co-existence. “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). The girl also loses her appetite. “the swallowing symbolises the movement of existence which carries them [...] the patient is literally unable to ‘swallow’ the prohibition” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186)
What we see here is twofold. Firstly the act of the emotional is embodied action. When a client is depressed, they may eschew interaction with things and people, and solitarily comfort themselves with food or alcohol. This action is meaningful to them; they want to draw away from relation people and things for a reason. Emotional expression is often seen as an affective mental state e.g. my relationship ended and I became depressed; explained as my heart has been broken and the pain felt was the result of this. Emotions are seen as the product of the initial action and the thought being when I come to terms with them then the pain will go away.
MP sees emotion as an embodied way of being in the world. In depression this can be the withdrawal from the activities and people. MP would see depression as embodied action, and see how it serves you. You may well find out beliefs and values such as I feel shame as my relationship has ended and therefore I don’t want to be seen by people, everything goes wrong when I do it, so I don’t want to be active or maybe I can’t trust myself to do things so I can’t trust myself to be active or be in relation with people. So in psychotherapy MP would take us towards a combination of REBT, existentialist and logotherapy approaches. Emotion is embodied action, embodied beliefs and values, so to work with people in distress would be to understand that action in terms of beliefs and values through description, and then to hold that up to the client to see if that works for them.
The second thing to come out of this is the notion of symbolism. MP sees perception and emotion as embodied in the world and whilst fully given, not always obvious:” The body does not constantly express the modalities of existence in the way that stripes indicate rank” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p186). In the example above, the girl couldn’t swallow food which represented her inability to swallow the prohibition. Here we see the interpretation that is needed when working with clients, which the therapist can lead, but the client must always be the final arbiter of. This runs counter to the standard existential psychotherapeutic work, which is non directive and highly client led as they see everyone’s life as unique. However MP would take a different view. We are embodied beings within the world, we come to a world already existing and to a language that has meaning that is shared with others, thus interpretation is not purely subjective.

The Body
The body is a powerful phenomena, I see my body as an object in front of me and whilst changeable in form, permanent in presentation. It has a strong effect of me seeing myself as an object in the world and supports the scientific view of the world.
However it’s very different from other objects which I can look at from a variety of angles, but my body I cannot. The body is that which takes a perspective on the world, it sees from a certain angle, feels from a certain position. Thus there is proprioception, immediate self awareness of the senses that engage with the world. When I see I have immediate awareness of sight, if I feel hot or cold, I don’t need to look to see where I am hot or cold, I am immediately aware of it. Exterioception is the awareness of external things in the world. “External perception and the perception of one’s own body vary together because they are two sides of one and the same act” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p237)
When I look at myself in the mirror, listen to my voice in recording, I am not looking at my body from the proprioceptive angle but rather as an exterioceptive one. I see not my bodily being in the world, but see myself as an object.
The body then in its pre-objective sense, is that which enables us perceptions, but is not a direct object of perception. It is the dynamic condition of experience “my body appears to me as a posture with view to a certain actual or possible task” (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p114-5)
Seeing the bodies initial relationship with the world as intentionally proprioceptive opens up possibilities for therapy. The body has sense and is intentionally directional in the world. This leads to interventions such as Gendlin’s Focusing, where the felt sense of the body is explored. This is a process of letting the body speak, of focussing internally on the felt experience and allowing it to name itself, not rationalising, or using emotions with it, but letting it name itself.
The sense of the body as a dynamic transcendental condition of experience again opens the way to altering a client’s engagement in the world. The work here could develop through looking at a client’s current perspective in the world, from their physical deportment, through their functional and conceptual directedness. Comparing their current conceivably distressed engagement with the world, to one where they have not been so, might show them how they can re-orientate. This can be seen in the recognition in NLP of how depressed people standardly look down, and that one way to change this, is to look up.
Being in the World
Being in the world is the primal, pre objective state of our engagement in the world. For MP “memory, emotion and the phantom limb are equivalent in regards to being in the world“ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p99).
1. Proprioceptive
a. We are immediately aware of the world, via our bodily senses and perspective
2. Memory
a. Our memories which are actively chosen provide the horizon from which the present emerges
3. Emotion
a. We engage with the world emotionally in a primordial manner
4. Body Schema
a. The phantom limb example, where the limb is still felt though absent, highlights our body schema, how our body engages in the world, which is not purely physical but an intentional engagement.
All of the above are subsumed underneath the axis of intentionality and alterity, in that we are purposively directed to the world, and the world is other from us.
The impact that being in the world can have on therapy is the MPian notion of time. Time for MP is not succession of the events of now, the past being now no longer, the future being now to come and now being now. The subjective time for MP is an intentional flow that “projects around the present a double horizon of past and future “ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 p278) . Memory is the horizon from which the past flows out, and the future is that which flows out from the present. The flow is of the client’s intentionality. Past events are not defining, in that childhood trauma causes present distress, but rather, the past functions as the opening for the future and present. Looking at temporality this way enables investigation with clients where they can see how the past events form a path that lead to current action, belief and value. This means you can work with clients by making explicit the beliefs and values that have been part of their path, and the possible path to the desired position. The novelty of this can be understood in the following example.
I can drink too much alcohol. There has been a succession of choices that have led me to this which has involved beliefs such as I need comfort when in discomfort and that to do it myself is a dependable solution. There are a variety of approaches taken to dealing with substance misuse. The cognitive behavioural disciplines may well look at the activating events and beliefs and look to change these. Existential therpaists will look to get the client to a deeper understanding of their drinking such that they can see what values are contained there, then they can change if their current actions if they see that they are as a result of a now redundant values. Freudians will look to deal with the repressed desire that has its symptoms in drinking. These three approaches take a static approach to the problem, and either fix the beliefs, values or repression of the problem. MP thinks of the past and the future as horizons for the present.Then to use the path analogy, the movement from a client’s distress can be out of forging a path from where they are to where they want to be.
This could be seen as trivial, but for me this is a new way of looking at clients problems. The client emerges from their distress taking one small step that will implicate the next. In my case with drinking too much, the steps would be to start generally living more healthily, so for instance start always having breakfast in the morning. As this becomes a way that I engage in the world, then the next step comes where you start valuing having a clear head in the morning, so the drinking in the evening becomes less appealing. I have also noticed when I have thought to improve my life, I will buy and use some meditation cds, that even whilst I didn’t use them immediately, the act of buying them, then opened me up to other possibilities, so that I started to get involved say with a philosophy group down here, that I had always wanted to, but never got around to doing.
This path approach, can be used in whatever way the client feels capable of doing, so if they feel entirely hemmed in by their problem, even the smallest gesture, can start to provide the way to freeing themselves from their prison. Thus it is not a case of solving problems, but rather changing the emergent horizon such that problems don’t emerge.

Bibliography
1. Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception published 1945 reprinted 2008 Translation by Routledge and Kegan Paul
2. Merleau-Ponty Visible and Invisible 1968 translated A Lingis