Already Coordinated Processes

Note: Everything I have written here is the fruit of many years of study and repeated readings of Eugene Gendlin’s book A Process Model. However, the text reflects my own learning and understanding. It does not necessarily express additional layers in Gendlin’s writing. It is meant to make complex and innovative ideas more accessible and to support understanding. Nonetheless, it is not a substitute for reading the original—Gendlin’s book.

One Wholeness

The body has, at the same time, many stoppages. There are many processes that stop and resume—each at a different time. Many processes have been stopped for different lengths of time. We are hungry, and also dealing with relationships. We are stuck with some problems at work, and also can't get the Doctor. And so on. All the processes are coordinated with one another.

The whole body, on all its processes as they are now, is one wholeness.

For example, we are on a journey in the mountains. Because of a miscalculation, we are left without water and food for several hours. We experience prolonged hunger and thirst. The body is weak, slow, the stomach aches. The whole body continues in a way that carries the stoppage in its weakness. At the same time, we are walking, looking at the landscape, and engaging in conversations.

We cannot separate the situation into walking, conversation, observing the landscape, and hunger. We cannot consider each of these processes by itself. All these processes operate together as one wholeness. Walking and conversation while hungry are what they are within this wholeness. One cannot separate and experience the walking as it appears on its own. The walking is a walking during which there is a conversation, there is landscape, and while being hungry. Therefore, it is a walking-with-conversation, with-landscape, and with-hunger, and it is experienced that way.

If the conversation stops, the walking will be different. If the walking stops and we look at the landscape, the conversation will be different. Our experience of hunger will also be different while walking or while standing still. Even if the conversation stops, we will experience our hunger differently. If we arrive at a place where we can receive water and food and become satiated, the walking and the conversation appear in a new way.

Processes are Interwoven

Every process appears together with all the other processes appearing at that time. It has no meaning as a single, isolated process. It does not appear as a unit, as a process in itself. Conversely, every processes is always together with the processes currently taking place in the body.

The exact way a process is in each of its phases implies how the others are (p. 22)

That is, the way the process of walking is in each of its phases (when a conversation is taking place, when it has ceased, when we are hungry, when we are full, when there is conversation and we are hungry, etc.) implies the phases of the other processes (hunger, conversation, observing the landscape).

This approach is different than what accepted in the scientific division of bodily systems and their interactions. In the prevailing approach, distinctions are made between processes even when they appear together with other processes. For example, one can distinguish between processes and systems such as the digestive system, the reproductive system, the respiratory system, and so on. The separation occurs even though they are not separate all the way through and there are mutual influences among them.

The same kinds of separations can be seen in the domain of social change. Changes in family patterns are treated separately from changes in health patterns, and still in economic patterns. In each separate branch, different concepts are developed, as if each line of development occurs independently. Actually, they express an inseparable wholeness in the events people live through. In any life event, one cannot truly separate family, health, economic, and other aspects. These aspects form one wholeness in that event.

Interaction First

The usual way of thinking about interaction between processes is this:

First, there are many processes, and then they interact with one another. All these many processes are separate and maintain their identity. They are units in themselves.

In Gendlin’s model, this is the opposite. The processes do not stand on their own; they are not units in their own right. First there is one wholeness, one interaction, which existed before the processes came to be.

Walking and conversation relate to each other in interaction-first.

The interaction takes place before the processes became differentiated. Their mutual influence preceded their becoming many, and it continues as they become many.

Walking, engaging in a conversation, observing the landscape, and being hungry were one—one whole process. They are one wholeness. There are relations of mutuality among them, out of which we can experience walking, conversation, observing the landscape, and hunger.

Coordinated Processes – What is their Relationship?

The concepts of “interaffecting” and “coordination” between processes belong to the older model in which things exist as themselves and only then form relations. We will work according to the principle of interaction first and characterize the relationship between processes. There are two types of relations between processes:

The processes are Originally Interaffecting. “They” interaffect each other before they are “they.” Walking, conversation, landscape, and hunger were one wholeness before we could speak of walking, conversation, landscape, and hunger.

We can also say that the processes are Coordinately Differentiated. They are distinct, yet coordinated, with their phases implying one another. That is, when we distinguish walking from engaging in a conversation, there is still coordination between them. For example, the walking may be more vigorous alongside the conversation, and the conversation may deepen alongside the walking.