Page 64 - Contribution To Phenomenology

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CLINICAL EVENT 57

55-56). They are rather encountered situationally by anyone who takes the
time to observe, or who makes the effort to become involved, and in this
feelings are quite as objective as any of the scientific, financial, political,
or other "facts" ([17], pp. 3-54).
Every clinical encounter thus invites a crucial question: what is it about
just this particular situation that evokes, directs, and aims just these
specific feelings and serves to orient the discussions, decisions, and actions
of the situational participants in just the ways they observably do? More
briefly: why was the woman angry and what does that suggest about
what, for her, is *Svorthwhile" and "desirable"? To notice, focus on, and
probe clinically presented feelings is to gain access to what moral notions
are at work giving the situation its particular issues and urgency.
The fact is, of course, that in daily life we do indeed experience
another person's emotive responses as well as our own, though not in the
same ways. However I may realize that I am angry or sad, I clearly do
not realize this in the same ways as I became aware of that couple's
anger, or those physicians' dismay. While the range of possible error
about my own feelings, or what I thought about the couple, will obviously
differ, it is just as obviously the case that we do experience other
people's emotive feelings. How we accomplish this is a fascinating theme
([39], pp. 181-241); that we do so is unquestionable.
In the case mentioned, thus, it was evident that the woman was deeply
worried, angry, distressed, although it turned out that the physician was
mistaken about the object of their anger (as they quickly emphasized).
But how was her *Vorry" presented or experienced? How do we
experience other persons? Max Scheler's study of such issues is helpful.
He emphasizes that the other person is experienced as "an integral
whole" and with considerable depth:

For we certainly believe ourselves to be directly acquainted with another
person's joy in his laughter, with his sorrow and pain in his tears, with
his shame in his blushing, with his entreaty in his outstretched hands,
with his love in his look of affection, with his rage in the gnashing of
his teeth, with his threats in the clenching of his fist, and with the tenor
.
of his thoughts in the sound of his words . . . I do not merely see the
other person's eyes, for example; I also see that "he is looking at me"
and even that "he is looking at me as though he wished to avoid my
seeing that he is looking at me." So too do I perceive that he is only
pretending to feel what he does not feel at all, that he is severing the
familiar bond between his experience and its natural expression, and is