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In formulating his concept of participant observation, Sullivan must have had in mind the ubiquitous human tendency to experience things in a clear and organized way. Actual participation and observation follow one another closely in ordinary life. So much so, in fact, that it is often difficult to distinguish one from the other. Psychoanalysis is concerned with those instances in which participation, understood here in experiential form as the experience which persons undergo as a part of their immediate context, deviates from observation, or one's experience of an ordered world, a reality. But as Levenson (1972), in his writings on homologous events, has shown, these two different modes of engaging life retain the same common structure, even in their divergence from one another. A model that suggests itself is that of participation and observation as two semicircles revolving around a common center. The semicircles remain independent of one another but are on the same track. The center itself is unknowable but is responsible for keeping participation and observation in close proximity to one another, and in motion.
The metaphor of such a center is a way of trying to account for the stable and consistent character of life, and it is a metaphor that is taken seriously. For it is only through a shared sense of reality that we are able to function effectively, and to establish a common ground from which to communicate intelligibly about life with one another.
The concept of participant observation provides an interesting perspective as to why life assumes this character. It suggests that things appear stable to us because we make them so-in addition to the commonly held view that this is simply the way that things in reality are, which we then observe as something external to ourselves. “Reality,” then, not only sustains us, but we also support it.
For example, time may exist because we create it by actions that require time to complete. A context for the creation of tim