Eu. Gendlin - PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD. A Critique of Medard Boss

PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD: A Critique of Medard

Boss on Dreams
Author(s): EUGENE T. GENDLIN
Source: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 60, No. 3, Approaches To Dreaming:
An Encunter With Medard Boss (Fall 1977), pp. 285-300
Published by: Penn State University Press
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PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD:
A Critique of Medard Boss on Dreams
EUGENE T. GENDLIN
this essay I wish to distinguish phenomenological meth-

od from phenomenological concepts. Boss interprets
dreams with phenomenological concepts, but the method with
which he applies these concepts to dreams and dreamers is open
to question. Boss imposes his scheme of ideas and also his per-
sonal values onto a dream with as little justification as is done in
the methods of interpretation he attacks.
My critique is both positive and negative. I will first discuss
Boss's great positive contribution. In what sense, exactly, is
Boss's dream interpretation phenomenological and valuable?
1 . During a lifetime of work Boss has helped us to break out of
a view of human beings (and of dreams) which translated human
experience into some other vocabulary. Behind or beneath
human experience, supposedly, there were other forces more
truly explanatory of us and of our dreams. The dream for Freud
is a result of certain events in energy mechanics, partial dis-
charges. Behind the dream, for Jung, the ancient pagan gods of
mythology have their coming and going. Boss rejects these con-
Mr. Gendlin is in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at The University of

Chicago. He combines interests in psychology and in philosophy in his teaching,
research, and writing. His principal work is Experience and the Creation of Meaning.
He is also author of A Theory of Personality Change. He has practiced
psychotherapy for twenty-five years. He has been especially concerned with the
relation between concepts and directly sensed experience.
285
286 SOUNDINGS
structions. Beyond the dream Boss considers only the actual

waking life of the dreamer.
In freeing us from these translations Boss has helped us move
beyond a great deal of violence done to human experience. It is
well known that many different interpretations can be con-
structed for any one dream within any one of these translational
theories. There never were criteria to decide among several
possible interpretations within any one theory. But this fact was
rarely taken account of as a caution. Rather, an appeal was made
to the public by a claim of "science." The dreamer was usually
offered only one interpretation by a given practitioner. The
supposed superiority or scientific validity of the translational
vocabulary gave prestige and credibility to such an interpreta-
tion. Later I will point out a method with which even these
translational dream interpretations can be used phenomenolog-
ically. But we are grateful to Boss for helping us break out of this
scientistic-reductive mode of interpretation.
2. Boss's interpretive concepts are interactional rather than
intrapsychic. Freud, Jung, (and others) interpret dreams in
terms of a subjectivity. The human is conceived of as being
within the skin envelope. Interactions with others are viewed as
results stemming from this internal personality structure. For
Boss, in contrast, humans are the interactional living. "We are
nothing other than receptive, alert world-disclosiveness" (1, p.
237).
The common sense view of humans in ordinary language (not
only in a theory like Freud's and Jung's) also considers humans
as individual and partly internal entities. Boss has helped us both
in our ordinary language and in our theories to avoid seeing
ourselves as isolated entities rather than as beings who are our
interactions with others.
Only if one explores phenomenologically one's seemingly
internal feelings, does one always discover their intentionality.
Our feelings are always about. . . . We are never just angry. We
are always angry at . . . , afraid of . . . , confused in regard
to. ... Always some at first opaque, odd feeling opens into com-
plex perceptions and sensings of ... our situations and the
other people in our situations, and how we are living at and with
them.
Boss says we "are never given to ourselves as ... box-like," or
as an "X-subject . . . which happens to possess . . . one property
PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT 287
among others" (p. 237). We are always "already 'out there' with
that which we encounter" (p. 237).
3. Boss's main interpretive concepts are themselves powerful,
and deserve to be adopted (among other concepts) as ways of
considering a dream. Boss chiefly uses two concepts: how one in
fact "bears" oneself toward others, toward the world and life;
one's as yet unlived "possibilities" of bearing oneself toward life
and others.
These concepts are not at all obvious. They deserve attention.
An ordinary person examining a dream might notice many
aspects of it without noticing, as such, the dreamer's bearing to-
wards others and the world. Similarly, an ordinary person might
not ask: is there in this dream something which is ahead of the
dreamer's present waking capacities, a possibility in life not yet
actualized?
Boss's contributions to dream interpretation, as I understand
them, are these three: the rejection of translations of dreams
into something other than human living; the interactional view
of humans; the two basic concepts themselves, "bearing" and
"possibility."
Now, what exactly makes these contributions phenomenolog-
ical? It is quite clear that they are. There is first the refusal to
reduce human experience, dreaming or being awake, to theoret-
ical constructs. There is, secondly, the phenomenological dis-
covery that we are always already in the world, thrown in situa-
tions with others, and not primarily subjectivities, like a thing
considered as a subject of traits. Thirdly, "bearing oneself to-
ward" and "possibilities" are Heideggerian concepts which point
to basic structural parameters of our actual living.
II
Let us now turn from phenomenological concepts to

phenomenological method. I will try to show that there is a great
problem in Boss's method: many different interpretations of the
same dream, using the same concepts of "bearing" and "possibil-
ity," can be made with any one dream. I will try to show this point
with some of Boss's examples. This problem besets other
methods of dream interpretation, too, as I have already said.
As we saw, the general concepts "bearing" and "possibility" are
288 SOUNDINGS
phenomenological, but the mere use of these concepts does not

assure the phenomenological groundedness of anything specific
we assert about a given person's bearing or unlived possibilities.
We can argue that a person is best characterized in these terms,
or that any person will have some characteristic bearing ana some
unlived possibilities. But from hearing a given dream, or from
observing the person in waking life, different interpreters will
arrive at different conclusions. They will choose different di-
mensions to look at, and they may also disagree about the person
on a given dimension.
This variety of opinions is somewhat analogous to the differ-
ent viewpoints in philosophy and in any other field. Let us ask
how phenomenology grounds its assertions in terms of method.
Let us then ask what would be an analogous method for dream
interpretation.
In a phenomenological method, as I shall elaborate it, each
step of conceptualization provides itself with its own ground by
lifting out an (until then hidden) phenomenal aspect. Once such
an aspect is focused as it shows itself, it is then more than simply
the conceptualization. If the phenomenon is not more than one's
language, if one has only an assertion no matter how clear it might
be, the approach and the language fail to lift out something that is
showing itself and thereby lose their grounds for their meaning.
In an analogous method for dreams, what might function as
the phenomenon to be lifted out by a successful interpretation
which other conflicting interpretations fail to lift out? How do
we find the phenomenon? For example, if we characterize the
dreamer's bearing in the dream-story as "passive and selfish," and
someone else calls it "willing to grow and courageous," what
exactly might be lifted out by some, but not all, of these interpreta-
tions?
When discussing a dream and hearing oneself and others
make various interpretive statements, quite often nothing be-
yond speculations happens in response. Then, suddenly, one
interpretive statement leads to some piece of waking experience
which becomes remarkably apparent, as though it pops in. Pur-
suing that occurrence, there may be a flood of aspects of living
which are unmistakably related and brought out by the dream-
plus-interpretation. New aspects or new imports may in addition
present themselves with impact. Many further steps may be
suggested and pursued. Each step of lifting out brings much
more than each interpretive statement itself says. Might such an

adaption of phenomenological method to dreams solve the prob-
lem of arbitrary or ungrounded interpretations of dreams? Let
me illustrate the problem further.
In one patient's dream (published by a Jungian analyst), the
patient dreamt that the analyst is performing surgery on him.
Then an unknown white-haired man appears, cuts two pieces of
his own flesh out of himself and grafts them onto the dreamer's
abdomen. Thereby the dreamer's life is saved.
Boss rejects the Jungian interpretation that the white-haired
man is the "old wise man," a mythological "higher" figure said to
be found in many people's phantasies and dreams as well as in
myths. Boss rejects this "higher" spiritual dimension, as well as
the dreamer's experience of being helped, saved, and of gladly
accepting assistance. Boss's interpretation:
. . . the possibility of being a masculine, mature, selfless helpful
fellow-man dawns upon him while dreaming. The reason why the
good dream-man is unknown might lie in the fact that this most
mature way of being a human being is still very unfamiliar to the
dreamer. . . . this possibility for bearing himself in the world could
only appear as a stranger.
It is disconcerting [that] ... in the dream the saving of the patient's life
was brought about through a transplant from another person. . . .
The patient in surgery remains purely passive" (p. 242).
Boss selects the "selfless" giving of one's own flesh as "good,

mature" and a possible way of bearing oneself which would be
new for the dreamer. But many people have done too much of
that. How can Boss know to pick "selfless" as the right unrealized
possibility?
Boss selects "purely passive" as the bearing shown in the
dream, and decides that it is a bad thing. The Jungian analyst
thought it a good thing that the patient accepted aid. Boss views
the passivity in relation to life. The Jungian analyst thought of it
as accepting aid from a wider aspect of the patient than his ego.
But it might well be that the patient usually over-controls and is
not open to the wider living which he always already is. (One can
readily transpose many Jungian and Freudian conceptions into
the terms of "bearing" and "possibility" in the world, even
though Jungians and Freudians do not usually use them that
way.) How do we know whether active or receptive is good in this
290 SOUNDINGS
instance? And how does Boss light upon just this dimension, this
pair of opposites, this issue?
Boss also provides us with no warrant for selecting his charac-
terization of the old man as one who is "selfless" and "mas-
culine." It is not clear that just these adjectives would be more
significant than many others. First there is "old" and "white-
haired," which the dreamer himself used. But one could also call
the old man's bearing courageous, insensitive to pain, coming in
uninvitedly, powerful, fatherly, insistant. Much else could be
said to characterize his bearing.
The Jungian analyst who published this dream also offers no
grounds (except the Jungian theory) for selecting the "higher
power" characterization of the old man, and for ignoring "self-
less" and "masculine" which Boss chooses. Both interpretations
equally impose upon the dream and the dreamer's experience.
For neither method is the interpretation integral to a quest for
something new, directly experienced, which would emerge for
the dreamer as a result of an interpretation.
As they are discussed by Boss, dream interpretations are free
floating. They have no phenomenological ground. Equally good
alternatives could in the same terms easily be multiplied. Take,
for example, the patient's supposed "passive" bearing, which
Boss derives from the fact that the patient is passive in surgery.
But surgery can also be said to be painful, bloody, unusual,
expensive, dangerous, usually done by men, and constituting an
emergency. There is much else one could say. The grafting of
the flesh is a magical solution, perhaps, or a bloody one, or a
guilt-provoking one. Any of these things might be said.
If we saw an old man actually appear in a hospital and put his
own flesh on a patient, the first thing we might remark upon,
perhaps, would not be that the patient is passive. And we might
not always think of passivity as disconcerting or negative, given
such an instance.
Boss's selections for the dreamer's bearing, and the old man's
bearing, are as good as any others. So are some of my alternatives.
But if the method of interpretation were phenomenological,
then we would have to characterize not only the words, but what
occurs when something new is lifted out. What exactly happens
to a patient when there is this lifting out? When does one or
another of these interpretations achieve its ground, and just
what does such an achievement look like? How might we recog-

nize it? These questions are not asked.
Consider another dream Boss cites:
... he began to kiss and fondle me on the street and say he would
love to have intercourse. ... we started to take our clothes off in the
street - it was dark. . . . Then I realized how inappropriate it was to
be naked in the street. I tried desperately to get away from this
public place where I was totally naked. I awoke feeling anxious." (p.
248).
This is again a dream published by someone else, by Rollo May

who is himself interpreting the dream of another analyst's pa-
tient! Neither May nor Boss feel the need for the dreamer's
wider present concrete experience from which to lift out some-
thing to ground their interpretations.
Boss says: "But in all these cases it is not a matter of anxiety [as
May had concluded], but rather of shame . . ." (p. 251). Thus
Boss rejects the one bit of post-dream experience the dreamer
herself is quoted as having expressed, namely that she was anx-
ious after the dream.
Boss denies that the man could stand for the patient's analyst,
as May had thought. Boss says "her relationship to the analyst is
by no means of such a personally close nature that he is able to
secure entrance into the dream-world as ... an erotically desir-
ous man" (pp. 250-251). It isn't clear how Boss knows what May's
colleague's patient's relation to her analyst is. Nor do I see how
anyone could know without the patient's experience from which
to lift out grounding aspects. Might this patient not find, for
example, seconds after May's interpretation, that indeed her
need to flee a sexual pull toward the analyst comes from how
inappropriate sexuality feels in an office? Perhaps it feels to her
as if it were in the street. But I do not know that, and I would not
maintain it unless such an aspect emerged in the patient's ex-
perience in response to such an interpretation attempt.
The man in the dream is a schoolmate whom the dreamer
described as not at all close to her at present. Boss values close-
ness with one's sexual partner, and so he picks out her non-
closeness as her "bearing." Since Boss does not like such non-
closeness in sexual activity, it cannot be a "possibility," and hence
it must be the patient's present bearing. Boss says he values
sexuality "... in the warm bed of his own room, together with
292 SOUNDINGS
a ... very close loved one." But Boss's values and his own good
fortune do not really offer a firm basis for interpreting May's
colleague's patient's issues or dream. Who knows, perhaps just
now she lacks a close loved one and also rejects impersonal
sexuality in her dream, just as Boss does. Or, a different vul-
nerability might be involved. Perhaps being more visible as a
sexual being might be an advance which she rejects in the dream.
Or, perhaps she has difficulty having love and sexuality with the
same man, or perhaps she is sexually trouble free and is using
sexual imagery to represent another issue, something she ex-
posed of herself in conversation or in some other interaction. Or
she might find that she longs to exhibit herself and show off, but
feels guilty about that. Or she may have a "bearing" of being
commanded, letting herself be ordered about, which she also
rejects. Perhaps she usually rejects all sexual overtures unless she
has herself initiated them, so that the dream might mark an
important unrealized possibility of responding, as a bearing. Or,
perhaps there is here a new possibility of getting herself out of
situations she has not chosen. All these alternatives, including
Boss's, are not really interpretations as much as they are at-
tempts. Only some phenomenological response from the
phenomenon could ground one or another of them.
Boss's way of using interpretive concepts is not different from
the ways used in other systems. Only the general concepts are
phenomenological; the interpretations are seemingly quite arbi-
trary. The general direction of looking (how one bears oneself in
life, or could bear oneself) is excellent and valuable. But no
methodological criteria are offered for establishing this or that
interpretation as the appropriate one. Boss's personal preoccu-
pations and values seem to be the guide.
Thus, in regard to method, Boss seems to operate like those he
criticizes. Again only one of the many alternative interpretations
possible in the system is given. Again the whole method of
interpretation consists of coming up with an interpretation.
There is no phenomenological showing of the phenomenon
itself.
Certainly we should consider Boss's examples in this paper as
mere illustrations of his general method. But if the patient were
present, Boss would still seem not to need a phenomenological
grounding. Certainly Boss could try his interpretations, and
when they fail to lift out anything new in the patient's experi-
ence, he could then try other alternatives. But this approach is

not part of his method. To see this point, consider Boss's way of
asking the patient "questions":
Based on the phenomenological dream-understanding, something
like the following questions would be posed to the reawakened
patient in the next hour of analysis:
". . . does it not seem obvious to you how little you know
about . . .? how much on the contrary are you . . . in all your actions?
Can you now perhaps see . . . how you not only do not know ... as
in the dream, but that you do not know . . . while awake ... ?" (pp.
251-252)
Only if the patient were very hardy could she brush off such
"questions" should they happen to lift out nothing new, and be
able to attempt other statements that might lift out relevant and
important aspects of her living. But phenomenology in a
therapeutic context is difficult to learn, and she is unlikely to
know of it. Without looking for new aspects to be lifted out, she is
likely to impose some interpretation on her dreams, Boss's or
some other. My point is the same whether a merely imposed
interpretation were her own or Boss's.
Boss continues: "With these questions, the patient would
perhaps, for the first time in her life, become aware of the
possibility for an entirely different bearing. . ." (p. 252). As we
just saw, many different new possible bearings could be deduced
from the dream, and pushed on her. It is difficult not to con-
clude that Boss might push the same - to him desirable - ways of
being on the patient, dream or no dream. Certainly one cannot
claim that it is the dream itself which unequivocally poses just
these values and changed bearings. They far exceed the dream.
Boss wishes to stay with the dream itself. He does not even
wish to use associations, and almost never mentions them either
here or in his book on dreams (cf. 2). But it is one thing not to
"re-interpret" a dream, "transforming the dream into our sym-
bols" (p. 247), something Boss rightly eschews. It is quite another
thing to exclude from consideration the dreamer's own associa-
tions and further experiences in response to interpretive at-
tempts. This approach makes the dreamer's phenomenological
responses "extraneous," as if they were an alien addition to the
dream; yet it treats Boss's additions and interpolations as if they
were just the dream itself.
If we are to consider this a phenomenological method, we
294 SOUNDINGS
would have to think that when Boss interprets a dream, the

phenomenon that shows itself in response is what Boss then
notices in the dream. Even then, the phenomenon in its particu-
lar appropriateness would be some further aspect of the dream
which fits or suddenly stands out, lifted up by the interpre-
tation. Boss, however, says nothing like that. There is no
phenomenological method here to ground the changes in mode
of living which the therapist selects and reads into the dream.
But let us take this lack upon ourselves as a further step that is
needed. Boss has contributed so much already. Let us consider
his approach further and more deeply, and also, let us move
toward a method which would use all concepts phenomenologi-
cally, each step grounding itself in some way by lifting out
something.
Ill
Boss says that beyond the dream is only the dreamer's waking
life. We must therefore put the dream into contact with that
waking life. There something new is shown. Boss also says that we
are dealing not only with how the dreamer now lives life, but also
with unrealized possibilities. We must therefore think of human
life and experience not as finite things, factors, entities, finished
defined patternings, but as containing unseen possibilities. It
follows that Boss asks us to put the dream into contact with the
dreamer's waking life, considered not as a collection of facts but
as a complex of implicit possibilities. And this account hints that
such possibilities could emerge for the dreamer much as in any
hermeneutic: what was implicit suddenly stands out. Boss wants
to move from the dream not to an internal realm down and back
from the dream, but forward into the dreamer's life considered
as capable of further possibilities and as capable of having as-
pects lifted out in it which are as yet unseen. Boss does not want
to add something, but to find what is there, not yet seen.
Heidegger wrote: " 'Behind' the phenomenon of phe-
nomenology essentially nothing else stands, however that
which is to become phenomenon may be hidden. And just there-
fore, because the phenomena are at first mostly not given, there
is need for phenomenology." (5, p. 36). The statement from
Heidegger concerns ontology, but the method of phenomenology,
if applied to dreams, could similarly require lifting out some-
thing which then becomes phenomenon, as a result of the state-

ment (as logos) lifting it out.
Human experience is fundamentally capable of such lifting
out. At bottom human experience is our relating in the world
and to others, it is possibility through and through. Therefore it
cannot be captured and circumscribed by definitions, even using
concepts such as "bearing" and "possibility" (or any other con-
cepts). Rather it can be conceptually contacted only by a lifting
out role for concepts. (3)
How may we describe exactly and recognizably what it is like
when an interpretive statement regarding a dream lifts out an as
yet unexamined aspect or an as yet unlived possibility?
Elsewhere (3, 4, p. 304) I have offered recognizable characteris-
tics of such lifting out. Among them is the fact that when some-
thing is lifted out by a statement, it is then often capable of
leading further, to further aspects which could not be inferred
from the statement alone. Secondly, such a directly lifted out
aspect is often capable of leading us to change the very statement
itself which at first lifted it out. Thirdly, the steps of such lifting
out continue; many steps ensue which leave the first statement
quite far behind. Fourthly, the progression is non-logical. It is
not illogical - in fact one can fill logical units in, so that in retro-
spect it can be made to seem as if the steps came by logic. But the
original series of statements do not bear logical relations, one to
the previous. Each statement will be said to be important in the
progression, despite the fact that it may be denied at the next
step. That is another recognizable feature. All these characteris-
tics stem from the fact that the individual has access to something
other than the words only. What is said makes sense not only
conceptually but in reference to something directly experienced
as well, something now lifted out which can talk back, which can
show itself as other and more than the words which lifted it out.
Of course, in practice many statements in relation to a dream
lift out nothing new at all. But when at last one statement does,
the above described sequence of steps ensues. By the time a
number of such steps have been taken, the "rightness" of the
interpretation is beyond question. This rightness is not depen-
dent upon either the therapist's judgment or the patient's; it
rests upon what is lifted out. But as far as it goes, it is beyond
question. Experts could appear and unanimously question the
interpretation; nevertheless, the patient has what the interpreta-
296 SOUNDINGS
tion pointed to, and the further steps that ensued. These are
now not just ideas, but experience. They are not just descrip-
tions, but are themselves livings, "bearings" which have already
changed the way in which the patient lives in the situations
dreamt about. If the experts have other interpretations, perhaps
these too can lift out something, but it would be something else,
and additional.
This relation of lifting out can be described in Heidegger's
terms: Befindlichkeit (the sense of how one is situated), Verste-
hen (understanding), and Rede (speech). These notions are
implicit in each other such that the hermeneutical talk lays out
that understanding which was already implicit in Befindlichkeit.
The continuity is that which holds between something implicit
and its explication, and it is retrospective in time: one feels that
what is now said explicitly was already there in how one felt one's
being-in a situation, although one had not yet reflected upon it.
In this part of my paper I do not insist that what I am saying
explicates what Boss really means, or what Heidegger really
meant in the statements I cited. But I do believe that if we take
what they have said along the lines of a phenomenological
method (or way of using concepts) and apply it to dreams, we lift
out some experience of our living, and in a way which permits
new aspects and possibilities to emerge from this living. Dream
interpretations could be grounded by this approach.
When dreaming and waking experiences come together in
this way and an interpretation is successful with a dream, there is
a distinct and impactful emergence. Outwardly one can see the
person's face come alive. There may be a large breath. As ex-
perienced by oneself with a dream of one's own, there is a flood,
an opening and unfolding, an emergence. This distinct experi-
ence diffères markedly from the merely cognitive sense that
some interpretation "could fit," or "is interesting," or gives one
some glimmer of sense, or intrigues one. The difference is the
emergence of (or lifting out of) what is then a concrete aspect of
one's living which cannot be made to disappear again (though
it will lead to various further differentiations).
Such an emergence may occur right after awakening. Or it
may occur as one tells one's associations to the dream. Or it may
occur later on, in answer to the many questions which can be
asked of the dreamer in regard to the dream. Once it occurs, one
knows beyond any question what the dream is about, or at least
one knows one aspect of life that it is about. Sometimes one such
emergence is not sufficient and still leaves much of the dream
puzzling. Another is required. Sometimes such an emergence
leaves one in no doubt at all concerning what the dream is about,
but one has not learned anything new. The dream seems to be a
metaphor for what one knew already. Further questions may
lead to a further emergence which does let something new leap
out.
If the lifting out is made the basic criterion, then the more
different ways in which one can illuminate a dream, the more the
likelihood of an emergence. While Boss's concepts of "bearing"
and "possibility" are excellent, and directly connect the dream
with waking life, Jungian and Freudian concepts too can be used
in the same way. Every aspect of the dream can be taken up with
the question: "What in your life is like that?" The feelings in the
dream can be pursued: "What in your life feels like that?" The
plot structure can be phrased in various ways, not once but
several times: "first you let yourself in for it, then it doesn't feel
appropriate and you run away. What in your life is like that?"
And then, perhaps, "You expose yourself in public, then it feels
wrong. What in your life is like that?" the figures can be taken
externally: "This man, what was he like? . . . Who is like that?"
They can be taken as part of the dreamer: "Is there a way in
which you are, perhaps not with much awareness, that is like
that?" (In this last question I have translated Jung's notion of
part-souls within into aspects of our living. If used
phenomenologically, it comes to the same thing because what is
lifted out will determine what we make of it, not the initial
statement and its logical implications.) The place also can be
examined: "What was that spot on the street like, have you ever
been there?" One can even ask her: "Stand up and pretend for a
moment that you are this man. What does he feel and act like?"
With any of these questions, or none, something may emerge for
the dreamer, more than just a thought or an interpretation, but a
directly experienced aspect of living which can ground interpre-
tation.
I am not here talking about a feeling of conviction, or any
other affective accompaniment of some interpretation. I am
talking about the aspects of living which may emerge. Only the
latter ground an interpretation phenomenologically. Thus a
phenomenological method cannot interpret a dream in one
298 SOUNDINGS
step. There would be no opportunity for the phenomenon to

talk back, to show itself as not simply what an interpretive state-
ment says or posits. The phenomenon is not just flatly in the
dream, else no interpretation would be needed. At first it does
not show itself. Then it does. The words disclose it, but it must
then speak in its own way, not just as the words.
Boss, too, says that the new aspects are not in the dream: he says
they are in the waking person's experience. The awakened
dreamer fills these new aspects in. ". . . the givens . . . are laid
before him as a waking person." Boss speaks of "the clearer
perceptivity of his waking state . . ." (p. 260). The words "clearer
perceptivity" imply that something new is lifted out, and in life,
not in the dream.
In my view, what is lifted out phenomenologically was already
there implicitly for such lifting out. It cannot be just a new
addition or imposition. The continuity between "was there im-
plicitly," and a now "shows itself is not an inference, not an
addition by inference. It is emergence out of hiddenness.
Whereas at first it seemed that Boss uses only the dream and
his own values and interpretations, if we go more deeply we find
him saying that in the dreamer's life there must be an
emergence, and this, as I propose, is the real grounding for the
dream interpretation.
How does this grounding differ from an unconscious? Is there
not now a hidden basement from which "repressed" (Boss says
"avoided") material emerges? Boss writes:
"That which gives, which sends the givens of my dream-worlds ... is
the event of Being as such, which enjoys a predisposing sway vis-à-vis
all individual beings" (p. 262). The dream givens ". . . are laid before
him ... as something with which he must come to terms" (p. 261).
". . . it is not/ who produce something out of myself and give it forth
when I dream, but rather . . . something is given and sent to me" (p.
262).
Is this not again an archetype-like being, against the backdrop

of which we are shown how we are lacking? Boss does seem here
to laud exactly the kind of bearing he rejected in the Jungian
dream example: allowing oneself to be presented to, not from
"I," but from something that stands "vis-a-vis all individual be-
ings."
We may think that the only difference, again, is the choice of
concepts: not intra-psychic agencies, but "a giving 'Es' . . . out of
whose hiddeness everything which presences comes . . ." (p.

262). Boss says this "Es" is like the "powers of nature, which
stand above and beyond man, [and] give the rain" (p. 262). We
thus think this being as the source of presencing anything, and
differ conceptually from Jung. But what difference is there in how
we bear ourselves in regard to this being "which sends . . .?" The
difference lies, I believe, in the directly accessible, experienced
relation of lifting out. The unconscious is only "un-," only infer-
red. So long as we remain without the lifting out, remain only
with the dream and an interpretation, we cannot explain the
difference between the unconscious of the other theories and
"Being as such" in this one. The difference in the result is only a
difference between imposed value choices. What is the differ-
ence between the Jungian interpretation which views the old
man in the dream as standing for a higher power sent by the
unconscious to lead the patient toward more receptivity and
away from his over-controlling ego, and Boss's interpretation of
the old man as the presencing of a possible bearing sent by Being
as such, sent to lead the patient toward a more masculine and less
passive bearing? There is a difference in value choice, but no
difference in method. There is here no practical difference
between how the unconscious sends its signals, and how Being as
such does it. Both of them get their message through by means
of the therapist's insights.
I propose instead that there is a real difference between mere
inference (or merely lighting upon one interpretation and value
choice or another) and . . . emerging into unhiddenness. What
corresponds here to that phrase is not only the dream itself, but
also the aspects of living which emerge, which were already im-
plicit and are now lifted out. This kind of emerging, always very
striking in the case of dreams, can make possible a type of
phenomenological method of dream-interpretation, often mov-
ing through many steps. Each step is grounded by something
newly emergent.
In such a method there is no question of staying on the surface
by rejecting an unconscious and by claiming that our interpreta-
tion adds nothing. Instead, the distinctive way in which what-
is-not-at-first-surface/wwctaons, is that it shows itself (rather than
remaining inferred or verbal only) as aspects of life experience
at every step. When it does, it is always more and different than
the very statement which helped to lift it out.
300 SOUNDINGS
REFERENCES
1. Boss, M. "Dreaming and the Dreamed in the Daseinsanalytical Way of

Seeing," tr. by Tom Cook.
2. Boss, M. The Analysis of Dreams. Tr. by A. J. Pomerans, New York:
Philosophical Library, 1958.
3. Gendlin, E.T '. Experienäng and the Creation of Meaning. New York: The Free
Press, 1962.
4. Gendlin, E. T. "Experiential Phenomenology." Chapter in Natanson, M.,
Ed. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Evanston: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1973.
5. Heidegger, M. Sein and Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1960.

Eu. Gendlin - PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD. A Critique of Medard Boss

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Eu. Gendlin - PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD. A Critique of Medard Boss

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD: A Critique of Medard

A Critique of Medard Boss on Dreams

this essay I wish to distinguish phenomenological meth-

Mr. Gendlin is in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at The University of

structions. Beyond the dream Boss considers only the actual

Let us now turn from phenomenological concepts to

phenomenological, but the mere use of these concepts does not

more than each interpretive statement itself says. Might such an

Boss selects the "selfless" giving of one's own flesh as "good,

what does such an achievement look like? How might we recog-

This is again a dream published by someone else, by Rollo May

ence, he could then try other alternatives. But this approach is

would have to think that when Boss interprets a dream, the

thing which then becomes phenomenon, as a result of the state-

step. There would be no opportunity for the phenomenon to

Is this not again an archetype-like being, against the backdrop

whose hiddeness everything which presences comes . . ." (p.

1. Boss, M. "Dreaming and the Dreamed in the Daseinsanalytical Way of

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