Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) 1st Edition

I first read this book in 1974 (approximatly). I have reread it several times and continue to marvel and dispair at how little circulation or acknowledgement it has been given. Current work in areas of the philosophy of language, and philosophy and cognitive science, especially in their emphasis on metaphor, are anticipated by this work. I have been told by one of the leading authors in the above areas, that he was familiar with this book but could not reference it as it from a phenomenological line of thought and his audience would reject it (paraphrased). There are methods for the productive conduct of discourse, on any subject, contained in this work that are still not utilized anywhere execept for a small number of people. A pity if we really want to arrive at living truths rather than the sterile shells rendered buy logic or empiricism. This book is not an easy read for most (I'm guessing), as the ideas -- the point of viewing it explicates is so uncommon. So If you read it, it may take some work. And still I cannot recommend it highly enough. Thank you.

Gene Gendlin is best known as a psychologist, especially for his book,Focusing, which has achieved near-cult status. Focusing & Gene, a student of Carl Rogers, have also received broad respect within the psychology/psychotherapy community, too -- for many years he edited "Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice", and he received numerous awards, starting with the first Distinguished Psychologist award from the American Psychological Association to, most recently, the Viktor Frankl award. I came to this book, his first full statement of his philosophy, through Focusing, as my wife & I were trainers in Gene's Focusing workshops through the 1980's.

Gene, however, thinks of himself, first & foremost, as a philosopher, and with good reason. Yes, "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning" came, in part, from his many years of training and work with Carl Rogers. But even more, it came from his philosophy studies. Indeed, Focusing, itself, is an outgrowth of this philosophy. Anyone who knows Focusing can see, in this book, that his philosophy implies Focusing.

And therein lies the rub. What makes this book tough is that understanding it so often needs an ability to touch in with your own, everyday and personal experience of "the implicit" -- that rich source of bodily-felt meaning always within us. Rejecting a dichotomy of logical & illogical or chaos, Gene talks of an implicit dimension, which he calls "experiencing", and which is "more than logical" -- vague in the sense of not-yet-formed, yet capable of transcending all logics, while it also implies them, while it includes them implicitly. For all its being vague, felt meaning, "experiencing", is actually more precise than standard meanings. The interaction words/logic and "experiencing" or the felt sense creates all new & fresh meanings.

"Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning" isn't just a philosophy. It's about where philosophies come from.

To give you a brief taste of simple experiencing: Remember a time when you knew you'd forgotten something. Well, logically, how can you know what you've forgotten? But this feeling, this "experiencing of knowing" is very definite and very precise. While trying to remember, for example, you might recall something you've forgotten. But your bodily feel, your implicit experiencing, or as Gene calls it later, your felt sense (different from an emotion), can agree that, yes, you had forgotten that. But your felt sense lets you know that what you just remembered isn't the right "what I've forgoten".

"Experiencing" is not only "where" philosophers philosophize from. It's also where poets, composers and musicians create from. (I know, because I used to be a conductor & composer; I'm now a psychotherapist.) This is "where" all creativity and many other good things, such as the healing of psychotherapy, "come" or create from.

While "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning" does have many practical examples, it's an enormous help to be able to Focus. So you may want to read and do Focusing, even if you're a philosopher. (I've worked with philosophers who couldn't "get" what Gene was saying until they had done some Focusing.) Other lead-in introductions, making understanding this book easier, are some of his short on-line articles, freely available in the Gendlin Online Library at [...] In particular, read, "The Primacy of the Body, Not the Primacy of Perception," "The Responsive Order" and "Crossing and Dipping". There, too, is Gene's new "Introduction" to the 1997 edition of Experiencing -- well worth the read, and a much better introduction to his book than my review.

I don't invite, I don't even urge you to read this book and learn to Focus: I beg you. It takes work, even hard work. But you'll always be glad that you did.

As a visual artist, and not student of philosophy, it's difficult for me to put this work in a proper philosophical perspective, however I do have to say it's an amazing book! Gendlin refuses to get trapped in typical philosophical tail-chasing by using the creation of meaning through experiences as the ultimate goal. I read this just after I read John Dewey's "Art as Experience," which blew my mind. "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning" can be seen as a kind of follow-up to Dewey. I would highly recommend Gendlin's book to anyone who is interested in how symbols function in both art and everyday life. Not an easy read, but it oozes brilliant ideas.

In Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Gendlin shows how the interaction between symbols (understood very broadly) and experiencing (the flow of what's happening) IS the creation of meaning. This is deep - it goes to the root of the subject-object, mind-body dualisms that have marked Western civilization, and heals them.

Someone posted that the book is unclear. People who have spent the necessary time find it more than just clear, it has a breath-taking, crystalline clarity (I've done slow readings with several people, and that is the consensus). But it can take a few readings. Gendlin is pointing to aspects of everyday experiencing (i.e., new meanings) that we don't have words for. To take in new meaning requires a kind of mental stretching, analogous to the physical stretching in hatha yoga. You don't "get" a yoga asana all at once, you work with it and feel your way into it, gently.

When I began ECM, I was expecting a series of discursive arguments that I would accept or reject. But there's none of that. ECM goes to the place where discourse and meaning come from. Gendlin uses words to take us beyond words.

I first used this book as an important source in my research when writing my doctoral thesis. It is a comprehensive look at how psychological experience influences and is involved in the way we create meaning. I found it particularly helpful because it speakss to the issue of what happens when traumatic events affect meaning and how events are constructed during the search for meaning post trauma. Making sense of events is crucial to recovery. I am interested in how people go about making meaning out of their experience. And how experience interacts with meaning.

This is a profound and important book. It reveals the basis of all philosphical thinking. I don't understand why it is not more widely acclaimed.

Important work for anyone interested in the nature of human experience.

This book brillantly includes all of Post-Modernisms necessary insights while correcting its shortsights and transcending its possibilities.