.............. by Stanley
...Alfred North Whitehead, who died in 1947, was an upmarket Harvard philosopher who wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics and education. He co-authored the epoch making Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell. Quite an influential joker.
...Whitehead said there are two different ways we perceive things, two different ‘modes of perception’. The first is simple raw data, how things just seem to the immediate senses, what he called ‘presentational immediacy’ – ‘a barren display’ of things, where everything is just as it presents itself: a chair is just a chair, a mountain is just a mountain, a telegraphy pole is just a telegraph pole. The second is more primitive. It is our feeling of connection with the whole, of the interconnectedness of everything, past and present. It doesn’t have the clarity and definition of presentational immediacy. It is vague, undifferentiated and fuzzy. Whitehead said, it is ‘heavy with the contact of things gone by, which lay their grip on our immediate selves’.
...This more basic mode perception you will recognise as describing exactly what Gendlin refers to as the ‘felt-sense’. Gendlin’s original contribution is his emphasis that this sense can be directly accessed in therapy.
... How Whitehead’s more primitive mode of perception can work in therapy, Neville Bernie writes:
'Causal efficacy is an immediate, direct, non-sensory connection with our client in a universe in which all things are interconnected. The whole past experience of the universe flows into us in each moment. We may recognise this in our gut feelings, in our intuition, in emotions which do not seem to be related to anything we can observe in the present moment, in occasional experiences of knowing more than our senses can tell us, in premonitions of what our client is about to say, in instinctive behavior which responds to a moment of crisis without time for reflection. Through this mode of perception, which has been seriously undervalued and denied by modern science, we experience our client directly and internally, and acknowledge that vague tugs on our awareness may be meaningful.'
...One consequence of this primal mode of perception is that the distinction between past and present becomes fuzzy. It alters the simple way the past seems to effect the present. To common sense it seems as though the past stamps its mark indelibly upon the present, as when a person has something in their life they can ‘never get over’.
...Whitehead had something interesting to say about the whole problem of ‘time’ and ‘causation’. Put simply, there is a sense in which the present ‘causes’ the past. He said that the active ingredient in our experience cannot be the past. The past is dead, it’s gone. It is over and done with. It cannot be active or creative in itself. It has done its dash. It’s inert. ‘What is active is not the past, but the present actuality which is in the process of becoming’.
...Our present experiencing is where it all happens, where the action is. Although the past seems unalterable, this does not mean that it irretrievably shapes the present. There is a sense in which the past is passive and indeterminate; we can only view it from the present, a present that is always dynamic and actively changing. The past is like a piece of clay that can be moulded. I can tell stories about my past. I can say that my father died when I was three years old, and that my marriage broke up when I was thirty-five. But these facts are the bare bones, they have the quality of raw data – incidents that happened – full stop. All the consequences and infinite ramification are hidden, they radiate out into the cosmos, yet they are no less real than the bare events themselves, each considered as singularity.
...The past only has meaning in that it lives in the present with me, changing colour as I change. Shift viewpoint a little and you have a different past, a different story. The stories I tell about my past are much more determinative of my future than the singular facts upon which I weave my story.
...But the bare bones of my past I must never neglect because somehow they will always feature one way or another as my life goes forward. In fact, without them I can never be truly creative. Without the details of my past I would be lost in space. They are the materials of my imagination. Without them I have nothing to reflect upon, no stepping stones to my depths. And sometimes in my best moments the bare bones of my past come alive and flesh out with a life I never knew they had.
...Only such ideas, or something like them, makes therapy possible. How else could I ‘rewrite my childhood’ as Bachelard suggests. It is my present ‘becoming’ that shapes things. But the essential materials of my art-work are those ephemeral ghosts of the past. However gruesome, I depend upon them. I grow directly out of them. I need them like a plant needs compost. I know I cannot shape my life just as I fancy, so that I never get carried away too far by my creative abilities.
...Looking deeply, there is always more to the a past than one thought – always more to it. The past is not simply a set of facts like the pebbles on a beach. What we call our past is a slanted story that somehow got fixed; and it all depends on who spins the story and what mood we are in when we tell it.
...When a person has been in therapy for a while we realise there is a certain situation in the past they regularly return to. Each time they revisited it the story changes, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly – but enough to gradually make a difference as their assessment of past people and situations change.
...Let’s say that way back there was an event that has always haunted me. I was hurt and it seems like an immovable fixture. There is no changing what happened or the effect it had on me – and still has. In therapy I find myself revisiting it as I have done many times. But I notice that each time it changes slightly. It is never the same twice – not exactly the same. I’m surprised that my story begins to involve other things I never suspected. And the more times I revisit it the more it changes, as though someone had revised the play when I wasn’t looking. New slants appear that throw a different light. This seems to be the process we are talking about – rewriting the past – the process of becoming.
...In therapy it’s not just my present possibilities that unfold; you could equally say my present unfolds my past. In that sense, the present, which is always in the process of becoming, is like an act of digestion that chews up the past and reconstitutes it for my present needs and purposes.
[1] Neville, Bernie. ‘What Kind of Universe? Rogers, Whitehead and Transformational Process. In Person Centred & Experiential Psychotherapies. Vol, 6. No 4. Winter 2007
[2] Maclachlan, D.L.C. Whitehead’s Theory of Perception. http://www.religion- online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2839
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