Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective. By Eugene T. Gendlin.  The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962.

This book, about the relationship between felt experience and symbolizing processes, starts from the observation that epistemology can be divided into three dimensions. The operational objective area of things and the logical orders of the positivists are the two most frequently studied. The third, the feeling dimension, where experiencing occurs, while being the core of the first two, is the most neglected. The task of this book is the examination of the relationship of this last category to the formation of logical concepts. The author states: “The study of human behavior can be guided and aided if we learn what kind of concept can relate to felt experience and how concepts of this kind can in turn relate to objective concepts and measurements.”

The area of felt experience has certain characteristics. It is always changing and opening out to new possibilities. It has no discreteness and therefore we cannot isolate individual units. All processes are interdependent and interacting with other aspects.

This dimension of felt meaning functions in all cognition. There are fringes to what we say and mean which can never be captured in words. Dance, for instance, is an attempt to translate the felt experience into action. In observing a painting or any object we experience feelings unrevealed in discussion. In psychotherapy patient and therapist are always feeling many processes which they are trying to formulate adequately. Therapists attempt to help patients bring these experiences into clarity by using various symbols.

Gendlin denotes seven different modes in which feelings relate to symbols. Symbols here refer to anything which functions to embody feeling, such as persons, behaviors, actions, things, etc. Meaning and logical order are created as result of any of these modes. Experiencing without symbolizing is blind; symbolizing without experiencing is dead.

The seven modes are divided into two sets. The first is the parallel functional relationships of felt meaning and