Discussion

Jan Ehrenwald, M.D., New York: While listening to Dr. Kelman's presentation, I had the distinct feeling: this is more than a mere presentation of a paper. It is more than a detached scientific discourse on a particular aspect of communication. It is an invitation for a meeting of minds. It seeks to get something across to the listener which calls for something more than cold, logical analysis of a clinical statement or of a philosophical point of view. I felt: this is in itself an invitation to relating and communing.

But let me say at the outset that the assignment to discuss Dr. Kelman's presentation is not an easy one. Dr. Kelman has described to us the basic cleavage which exists between the highly abstract, conceptualized, and intellectualized ways of communication characteristic of our western world, and the reaching out for direct contact and continuity with one's fellow man—and with the world at large—characteristic of eastern tradition.

You will note that we are faced here with a paradoxical situation. We are made aware of the shortcomings of our customary dualistic, discursive methods of thinking and exchanging ideas. The ideal of self-surrender, of intellectual innocence, of inspired spontaneity—in short, of communing—is held out before us. We are told that the process of communing pertains to an extra-scientific level of experience, that it occurs “prior to and without reflecting”; that it is virtually “ineffable and inexpressible.” In effect, Dr. Kelman indicates that whenever we try to communicate about communing on the level of ordinary scientific discourse, we nip it in the bud, we destroy whatever meaningful experience it holds for those involved in the process. Yet at the same time I am supposed to discuss his thesis in the light of detached analytic scrutiny, to map out whatever areas of agreement (or disagreement) exists between us—and to do all that without violating the integrity of what we are talking about.

How has Dr. Kelman tried to resolve th