Merleau-Ponty and the riddle of the Einfühlung in the Clinical Psychology

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a philosopher who participated of the called "existentialist generation". As a successor of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Merleau-Ponty was dedicated on problematization of questions started by the phenomenology. Among the most common questions in his works we can quote the historical dichotomies found in the philosophical tradition such as the the "Soul versus Body", "Subject versus Object", "Physis versus Psiqué", "Empirism versus Intelectualism"; he was also concerned about, such as the last Husserl (1936/2008), with the arising of the positivist and technicist science and specially about the modern psychology. Regarding to the aesthetic question and the intersubjectivity theme, we can say that they both deal with fundamental points along the whole Merleau-Ponty work. 

  Though these themes often appear in the philosopher´s works, we discriminated some of his texts which deal specially with the aesthetic's subject such as “L´Oeil et L´Esprit” (1963); “Le Doute de Cézanne” published in "Sens et Non-Sens”(1965). These productions belong to the last phase of the Merleau-Ponty work, although since “Phénomenologie de La Perception” (1945) we can notice the philosopher's effort to preparing the way for an aesthetics theory that blooms as "Flesh"(La Chair). "Signes" (1960) shows the passage of phenomenological interest of Merleau-Ponty to a more ontological investigation.

  In “Phénomenologie de La Perception”, in  the chapter dedicated to the body, there is an emblematic passage where Merleau-Ponty (1945/1999) deal with the hands' example: "When I press my two hands together, it is not a matter of two sensations felt together as one perceives two objects placed side by side, but of an ambiguous set-up in which both hands can alternate the roles of ‘touching’ and being ‘touched’ "(p.106). In another words we could understand that Merleau-Ponty (1963/1975) is trying to advice about the fact that  the body has a reflexion power that people are able to feel  and people are able to makes feel each other. What we´ve got to remember is that there´s in us a perceptual incompleteness which we seek satisfies through look´s, touch´s and speech's other. Though it seems like an obviously assertion, the proposal of being "sensible-sentient" rectifies that we are not just sessile consciences, but we are humanity. We´re not just a society of consciousness, but we are humanity because we are corporeity, nay, we´re intercorporeality (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/2000). 

  In the notes of the courses taught at the Collège de France (1957-1960), Merleau-Ponty (1995/2000) builds the notion of aesthetics, for the first time founded from the "own body" especially in "Phénomenologie de La Perception ", toward an ontological and esthesiological co-existence of the "own body" with others' bodies. Until then Merleau-Ponty (1963/2007) emphasized the reflexivity of the body as logos of the aesthetic world, but now his investments gave rise to originality of a brute being and the  indivisibility between the bodies and the world, considering they are made of the same flesh, the same stuff (l'étoffe). If at the first time we found the presence of a theory of ambiguity permeating the style of structuring the Merleau-Ponty work, the radicalism spreaded in his philosophy emerged not only an aesthetic notion of man as a mirror of man, but an Ineinander between the bodies, in other words, the reversibility was not restricted to a more perceptual phenomenology, but embodies in a tangle of bodies, in a chiasm. 

  Usually, within the environment of clinical psychology, the quality of a certain therapist to being empathic is measured by his supposed ability to "put himself in another's position". But how can be this possible? How can be truly possible for me to put myself in the other´s position? Firstly, we understand that such a task is impossible because the other´s place is not made only of space, but it´s also made of time which is existential ground, it´s time lived (Erlebnissen). Secondly, if the psychotherapist works with a phenomenological perspective, he can´t keep his eyes looking for something that's only inside, empathy is not an epistemic method which I learn in the psychology graduation to investigate and understand the “inner man”, “or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2005). 

  Thus, we need to understand Empathy as Einfühlung, in other words, empathy is to feeling with the other; the reason why the transcendental intersubjectivity proposed by Husserl (1936/2008) is radically turned into an intercorporeality by Merleau-Ponty (1995/2000). The intercorporeality, in turn, is only possible owing to the so invested notion of Flesh (Chair) present since "Signes" (1960) untill the posthumous works like "Le Visible et L'Invisble" (1964) at the last Merleau-Ponty.

  The Ineinander of others in us and of us in them is because we are not pure substances and because of the non-constancy of a being always active.. My relationship with the world and with others is primarily esthesiological, after all, as noted by Merleau-Ponty (1960/1975) in "Le Philosophe et son Ombre": "The whole riddle of Einfühlung lies in its initial, esthesiological phase"(p.170). Finally, in clinical psychology, the ability of understanding people and their troubles is not the power of put yourself in other’s shoes, is not even a technical proceeding, but it´s provide conditions to an opening to feeling with other. It´s possible because we are all made of the same flesh such as the world is, and we could not think of a co-existence out of it.

  Neemyas K. Batalha Dos Santos - Federal University of Piauí, Brazil.
  neemyaskerr@gmail.com