Abstract
Despite whatever academics say, international politics is not an intellectual enterprise and to intellectualize it is to misunderstand it. Instead international politics, at its most basic level, is a matter of how we, and the collectivities we have created for ourselves, find ourselves in the world. Finding ourselves in the world is first and foremost a task which our bodies solve. Eugene Gendlin’s phenomenological psychology, and his focus on the “felt sense,” provide ways of investigating the embodied nature of international politics. No one has so far analyzed international politics the way Gendlin’s psychology makes possible. The prospects are exciting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Gendlin, 2001, As presented in popular titles such as Gendlin, 2003b; See further “The International Focusing Institute,” n.d.; Gendlin was an occasional lecturer at the Ensalen Institute in Big Sur, California, a leading center for the New Age movement . A personal account is Weisel-Barth, 2008, p. 386.
References
Ash, T. G. (2006). Islam in Europe. The New York Review of Books, 53(15), 32–35.
Atran, S., & Hamid, N. (2015, November 16). Paris: The War ISIS Wants. New York Review of Books.
Birzer, M. L., & Smith-Mahdi, J. (2006). Does Race Matter? The Phenomenology of Discrimination Experienced Among African Americans. Journal of African American Studies, 10(2), 22–37.
Blair, T. (1998, April 7). Statement to the Press on Arriving at Hillsborough Castle for the Northern Ireland Talks, 7 April 1998. In Wikiquote. Retrieved from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Blair
Bleiker, R., & Hutchison, E. (2008). Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics. Review of International Studies, 34(Special Issue), 115–135.
Borger, J. (2003, July 17). The Spies Who Pushed for War. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa
Brown, C. (2013). “Human Nature”, Science and International Political Theory. Journal of International Relations and Development, 16(4), 435–454.
Crawford, N. C. (2000). The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships. International Security, 24(4), 116–156.
d’Orsogna, S. (2000). Eugene Gendlin Introduces Focusing (Vol. 1). Toronto. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7PEC5Mh5FY
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Penguin Books.
Ekman, P. (1992). An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6(3–4), 169–200.
Fierke, K. M. (2014). Political Self-Sacrifice: Agency, Body and Emotion in International Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Freedland, J. (2016a, June 25). From Brexit to Trump? The New York Review of Books.
Freedland, J. (2016b, July 29). Donald Trump Speaks to the Gut – And Progressives Need to Do the Same. The Guardian.
Friedman, N. (2003). Eugene Gendlin’s Theory and Practice of Psychotherapy: A Personal Account. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 2(1), 31–42.
Gallagher, S. (1986). Body Image and Body Schema: A Conceptual Clarification. Journal of Mind and Behaviour, 7(4), 541–554.
Gendlin, E. T. (1973). A Phenomenology of Emotions: Anger. In D. Carr & E. S. Casey (Eds.), Explorations in Phenomenology (pp. 367–398). Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1999-6_18.
Gendlin, E. T. (1978). Heidegger and the Philosophy of Psychology. Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, 16(1–3), 43–71.
Gendlin, E. T. (1988). Obituary: Carl Rogers (1902–1987). American Psychologist, 43(2), 127–128.
Gendlin, E. T. (1991). On Emotion in Therapy. Emotion, Psychotherapy, and Change, 15–29.
Gendlin, E. T. (1992a). The Primacy of the Body, Not the Primacy of Perception. Man and World, 25(3), 341–353.
Gendlin, E. T. (1992b). The Wider Role of Bodily Sense in Thought and Language. In M. Sheets-Johnstone (Ed.), Giving the Body Its Due (pp. 192–207). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Gendlin, E. T. (1995). Crossing and Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface Between Natural Understanding and Logical Formulation. Minds and Machines, 5(4), 547–560.
Gendlin, E. T. (2001). Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (Later Printing ed.). Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications.
Gendlin, E. T. (2003a). Beyond Postmodernism: From Concepts Through Experiencing. In R. Frie (Ed.), Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism (pp. 100–115). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Gendlin, E. T. (2003b). Focusing: How to Open Up Your Deeper Feelings and Intuition. London: Rider & Co.
Gendlin, E. T. (2004). The New Phenomenology of Carrying Forward. Continental Philosophy Review, 37(1), 127–151.
Gendlin, E. T. (2009). We Can Think with the Implicit, as Well as with Fully-Formed Concepts. In After Cognitivism (pp. 147–161). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Giorgi, A. (1970). Psychology as a Human Science: A Phenomenologically Based Approach. New York: Joanna Cotler Books.
Hatab, L. J. (1994). Human Nature in a Postmodern World: Reflections on the Work of Eugene Gendlin. Human Studies, 17(3), 363–371.
Heuman, L. (2011). Focusing: An Interview with Philosopher/Psychologist Eugene Gendlin. Tricycle Magazine, (Fall), 40-46-109.
Hutchison, E., & Bleiker, R. (2014). Theorizing Emotions in World Politics. International Theory, 6(3), 491–514.
Ikemi, A. (2005). Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin on the Bodily Felt Sense: What They Share and Where They Differ. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 4(1), 31–42.
In His Own Words: The Inspiring Speeches of Nelson Mandela. (2013, December 6). Express.co.uk. Retrieved from http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/447158/In-his-own-words-The-inspiring-speeches-of-Nelson-Mandela
Jager, B. (1989). Transformation of the Passions: Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Perspectives. In Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology (pp. 217–231). Dordrecht: Springer.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1). New York: H. Holt & Co.
James, W. (1994). The Physical Basis of Emotion. Psychological Review, 101(2), 205–210.
Johnson, M. (1997). Embodied Meaning and Cognitive Science. In D. M. Levin (Ed.), Language Beyond Postmodernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin’s Philosophy (pp. 148–175). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Johnson, M. (2008). The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnstone, A. A. (2012). The Deep Bodily Roots of Emotion. Husserl Studies, 28(3), 179–200.
Lange, C. G. (1922). The Emotions. In K. Dunlap (Ed.), The Emotions (Vol. 1, pp. 33–92). New York: Williams & Wilkins Company.
Levin, D. M. (1994). Making Sense: The Work of Eugene Gendlin. Human Studies, 17(3), 343–353.
Levin, D. M. (Ed.). (1997). Language Beyond Postmodernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin’s Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Lewis, M. D., & Todd, R. M. (2005). Getting Emotional: A Neural Perspective on Emotion, Intention, and Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(8–9), 210–235.
Mao, Z. (1949, September 21). The Chinese People Have Stood Up! Retrieved June 24, 2010, from https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_01.htm
Neumann, I. B. (2014). International Relations as a Social Science. Millennium, 43(1), 330–350.
Noë, A. (2009). Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang.
Owen, D., & Davidson, J. (2009). Hubris Syndrome: An Acquired Personality Disorder? A Study of US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers over the Last 100 Years. Brain, 132(5), 1396–1406.
Panksepp, J., & Watt, D. (2011). What Is Basic About Basic Emotions? Lasting Lessons from Affective Neuroscience. Emotion Review, 3(4), 387–396.
Prinz, J. J. (2006). Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ringmar, E. (2007). The Power of Metaphor: Consent, Dissent & Revolution. In R. C. M. Mole (Ed.), Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ringmar, E. (2016). How the World Stage Makes Its Subjects: An Embodied Critique of Constructivist IR Theory. Journal of International Relations and Development, 19(1), 101–125.
Ringmar, E. (2017a). Heidegger on Willpower and the Mood of Modernity. In A. Cerella & L. Odysseos (Eds.), Heidegger and the Global Age. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ringmar, E. (2017b). Outline of a Non-deliberative, Mood-Based, Theory of Action. Philosophia, 78(2).
Rosen, S. M. (2000). Focusing on the Flesh: Merleau-Ponty, Gendlin, and Lived Subjectivity. Lifwynn Correspondence, 5(1), 1–14.
Russell, J. A. (1991). Culture and the Categorization of Emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110(3), 426–450.
Sartre, J.-P. (1949). Iron in the Soul. London: Penguin.
Stanghellini, G., & Rosfort, R. (2013). Emotions and Personhood: Exploring Fragility, Making Sense of Vulnerability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Suskind, R. (2004, October 17). Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. New York Times.
The International Focusing Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved July 25, 2016, from http://www.focusing.org
Weisel-Barth, J. (2008). A Response to Lynn Preston’s Explication of Implicit Experience in the Work of Eugene Gendlin: An Appreciation. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 3(4), 386–397.
Wertz, F. J. (2009). Phenomenological Currents in Twentieth-Century Psychology. In H. L. Dreyfus & M. A. Wrathall (Eds.), A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (pp. 394–411). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Wright, E. (2004). Generation Kill: The True Story of Bravo Company in Iraq – Marines Who Deal in Bullets, Bombs and Ultraviolence. New York: Bantam Press.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ross Crisp, Artie Egendorf and to the editors for comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ringmar, E. (2018). Eugene Gendlin and the Feel of International Politics. In: Clément, M., Sangar, E. (eds) Researching Emotions in International Relations. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65575-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65575-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65574-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65575-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)