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In the last several years there has been an upsurge of ideas about the implicit dimension of experience—that which is in some sense known, but not yet available to reflective thought or verbalization. Terms such as “implicit relational knowing,” “unformulated experience,” “sub-symbolic process,” and “the unthought known” are emerging from virtually every school of thought in the fields of psychoanalysis, cognitive science, and infant research. Each of these concepts contributes its own unique perspective to our increasing understanding of this vital domain of experience. Explorations of the implicit offer new, less-reified metaphors—a different path of thinking about central clinical themes. The concept of empathy understood as sensing into the implicit rather than putting oneself in the other's shoes gives us a nonlinear, process-oriented expansion of Kohut's central contribution.
This article highlights a conceptualization of the implicit as “the edge of awareness.” It focuses on Eugene Gendlin's idea of “felt sense” as it adds to and informs this timely investigation. This felt sense concept takes us into the specificity and minute detail of the therapeutic process of midwiving the emergent and of facilitating new experience. Gendlin's explication sheds new light on the micro-moments of our project of articulating, unfolding, and transforming experiential worlds.