The Child's Relation with Others, Merleau-Ponty & Langdridge:

Contents
The Child's Relation with Others, Merleau-Ponty & Langdridge: Rob Thomson Lifespan presentation    1
What the papers says    1

Justification for our agency in perception    1

Childs relation with others    2

Relevance to existential-phenomenological therapists    3

Langridge    4

What it was like to read and present it    4

Discussion about the paper    4


 

What the papers says

MP sees the relation with others as being what constitutes our affective life. He sites our affective life as not being subordinate to that of understanding, i.e. causal, scientific thinking. Rather both arise on the basis of our pre-reflective embodied relation with the world, that constitutes our situation that enables our perception which in turn enables affect and perception. Thus it is central to MP's position to show how we create our environment our situation and how it is not objectively given in the way science would like us to believe.

Justification for our agency in perception

Tests were made on psychologically rigid people, i.e. people who think in black and white, e.g. someone is good or bad, there's a right and a wrong way to do something, and they showed that psychologically rigid people were also perceptually rigid. This was shown with a series of tests which implied a certain method of solving them, then a similar test to the previous ones which was best solved with a new method was shown. The rigid people always went to the previous method to solve this new test, as they were reluctant to see the newness of the situation. MP sees that the way we are open to the world is a factor in its construction, but it is one aspect amongst others. These others would the fact that perception has a received component and that we are born into a pre-existing world of language, society and custom. Thus there is a relation between self and environment, where the self takes a position on what is environmentally given, which both constitutes the environment and the self.
Our perception is heavily entwined with language, some would argue that language demarcates perception. When we perceive we have words for everything we perceive. MP shows that one of the factors of language acquisition is our affective relations with others. Thus if a child has no relation with language speakers during the first 2 years of their life they never fully acquire language. Likewise there is a strong correlation between the understanding of the imperfect tense and a child's experience of change. When a child experiences the birth of a new sibling their position in the family order changes. When this happens several things can be seen. Firstly a regression to previous modes of behaviour as the child identifies with the neonate. Secondly there can be the acquisition of the imperfect tense as the child starts to understand how the present changes into the past and what they were in absolute terms, the only child now changes into the eldest.

Childs relation with others

Classical psychology posits the psyche as private thing, only I can know my psyche and I have to infer the psyche of the others through comparing their behaviour, linguistic or motoric and mine to understand what is in their psyche.
A small child is sensitive to a smile, and responds to it as a benevolent feeling but how could they perform the complicated operation that classical psychology requires? Indeed a small child has an insignificant appreciation of their body as a visual object in comparison to the introceptive and cenasthesic experience of it.
Classical psychology can't explain a child's mimicry or his understanding of the behaviour of his care givers. MP sees consciousness as a way of comporting yourself towards the world, the actions of others have meaning because they represent possible ways of me to behave. Thus as an adult smile and is benevolent the child learns about benevolent behaviour. The child therefore doesn't separate between himself and that of the other. There are faces that do certain things and there is a link between his behaviour and the faces. Thus a child mimics as he sees his smile in the smile of the other.
MP sees that introceptive and extroceptive experiences are reciprocal experiences that form a meaningful system, what I experience internally is entwined with what I experience externally. Likewise the conduct that I have in the world forms a system with the behaviour of the other. In the early stages of life my possible conduct is learnt by the conduct of the other.
For MP then child development happens first by an original indistinction between self and others, an anonymous collective group life. The indistinction between self and others is known as syncretism, i.e. combination of different aspect and can be seen with infants, where one will cry another will cry. The idea being here that my intentions span the other, and the others intentions span me. So if there is crying in a room it is mine as well so I cry. It is only later that subjectivity and alterity develops. This happens through an objectification of the body, the difference with others and the mirror stage.
The child feels that he is in the others body as much as he is in the specular image. It is this syncretism between self and others that is the basis for projection and introjection. Thus there is a system which establishes itself within the child between their visual body, the other and their introceptive body. As adults you can still see the personal investment that we have in images, the painting of a person's face that moves us, our personal image, and the way in which if there is a picture of a face on the floor we would always move around it and not step on it, unless we are aggressively inclined then we might step on it.
As soon as the child learns to identify with the specular image he learns that a view can be taken on him. It is this that forms the basis of the collection of futural projections for the person, their ideality, their or shoulds and wants. It is also the basis of his view of what other people think of him, so his self-consciousness, his confidence, his nervousness.

 
In the moment that the specular image both enables and symbolises, then we get the split between the lived me and the imaginary me. It is the movement from subject to object. It is also the paradigm for our adult relations with others where we relate our objectified self to the other, i.e. to relate to them as the objectified other.
The living relation with others, its reciprocity is the support the stimulus for what we call intelligence. It is through others that we learn about our world and ourselves. It is through others that we learn to objectify, reflect that forms the basis of intelligence.

 

Relevance to existential-phenomenological therapists

If we accept MP's position that our primordial state is an indistinction with the other and that the difference that is subjectivity only develops later then several things can happen.
Firstly as existential therapists we are taught phenomenology and to bracket our own thoughts\feelings\values to allow the others to show. However there is the sense that I am my client are one, we form a system and in the room I see my intentions in them and they see their intentions in me. So I would wonder whether bracketing makes most sense as opposed to an articulation of this unity. Bracketing presupposes the absolute difference I have with the other, whereas MP suggest the original unity of me and the other.
How would this articulation work in practice? Well firstly there is the articulation of the emotions of the other. In psychoanalysis they call it transference when I feel the emotions of the other. MP might call this syncretic sociability, so when a client tells a story that makes me feel sad there is a sense that I am articulating the sadness of the other.
Secondly there is the articulation of the relationship. To make explicit the feelings that are going on between therapist and client. Thus if the client seems angry with the therapist then this should be named. Contrariwise, whilst I feel this is slightly dangerous territory as my feelings for the client my be precipitated by my feelings for other people and not just them, then the therapist should do likewise.
As the client talks about other people then they really are talking about themselves. If they talk about how their girlfriend is needy and they just cant stand it, then there is the projective sense that they are needy themselves they cant own this and it is projected into the other, thus there is a description that can be made of their own relation to neediness, how it functions in their life.
The final point in this space is that empathy is possible. The other is not a hidden psyche from me, but rather someone I emerged through. Thus the ability to feel the other is possible and shouldn't be shied away from. The ability for a true intimacy, a deep connection between client and therapist is possible as it is our primal state.
The other major thing for therapists that we should look at is the distinction between the felt life of the subject and the objective life of ideality. As soon as we talk about what we want to do, should do etc etc, then we are looking through the eyes of the other. There seems mileage to also describe what the life of the subject is like, the felt experience of being, the pre-reflective engagement with the world, where you are totally absorbed within your situation.

Langridge

Langridges paper sees MP's mimicry as the primal enabler as meaning that we can then use non linguistic ways of doing therapy. Whilst he doesn't want to encroach on the area of Gestalt, he sees role play as being a way to use the body schema and its mimicking ability as a useful way to get a client to understand themselves in a non-linguistic way.

What it was like to read and present it

The paper was inspiring to read but I struggled to know whether or not to put in all the stuff about child development and the mirror stage. I didn't but wonder if it is an omission. I felt slightly constrained to have to read 50 pages and pull out a precey of only 3 pages. Some of MP's justifications I didn't find conclusive, I'm still not sure on the primordial syncretic sociability, I want to believe it but don't fully feel justified. Indeed to put theory onto child development always feels slightly awkward as you can't fully test it in a way that I can do a phenomenological reduction on my own perception and feel safe in that knowledge as I can feel it, taste it and touch it

Discussion about the paper

• Do we really have an original indistinction with the other
• As adults should our primal connection with others be our prime understanding of the other, or do we treat the others as others, we after all learnt from our immediate society constructed our worldview, then take this with us when we meet the new other
• Is the subjective\objective self-justified, is our objective self-viewed through the eyes of the other
• Can the mimicry ability of neonates be justified by their intersubjectivity. For a child to imitate a smile how can that be when they must relate the lips on the position of the others face to their face which they cannot see
• Has role play a place in therapy