Saying What We Mean: Implicit Precision and the Responsive Order

The first collection of Eugene T. Gendlin’s groundbreaking essays in philosophical psychology, Saying What We Mean casts familiar areas of human experience, such as language and feeling, in a radically different light. Instead of the familiar scientific emphasis on what is conceptually explicit, Gendlin shows that the implicit also comprises a structure that can be made available for recognition and analysis.

Developing the traditions of phenomenology, existentialism, and pragmatism, Gendlin forges a new path that synthesizes contemporary evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology, and philosophical linguistics.

EUGENE T. GENDLIN (1926–2017) received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1964 to 1995. He was honored four times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was awarded the 2007 Viktor Frankl prize by the city of Vienna and the Viktor Frankl Family Foundation. He is the author of a number of books, including Focusing, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.

EDWARD S. CASEY is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Stony Brook University and the author of The World on Edge; The World at a Glance; The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History; Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World; and Remembering: A Phenomenological Study.

DONATA M. SCHOELLER is an associate professor at the University of Koblenz, Germany, and a visiting professor at DePaul University in Chicago. She is the author of “Close Talking” and coeditor of Thinking Thinking.