Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology © 2022 American Psychological Association ISSN: 1068-8471 2023, Vol. 43, No. 4, 185–196 https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000209 The Human Experiential Field Paulo Roberto Grangeiro Rodrigues This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Department of Psychology, University of Taubaté I propose a general metatheoretical model of the human psyche, which starts from the relationship of human consciousness within its space and time, and in terms of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. It is based on a temporal scheme of the psyche and the concept of “lifeworld” of phenomenology (Husserl and others) and its three components and respective phenomenological horizons, and complemented by the concept of communicative action (Habermas, Buber). From these, a three-dimensional model of the psyche is established, in which the three axes are as follows: subjective human time: PAST–PRESENT–FUTURE, intersubjective psychosocial space: ME–OTHERS, and objective biopsychological space: BODY–ENVIRONMENT. These axes, whose intersection represents the conscious presence, comprise the experiential field. Many theoretical fields of empirical psychology can be distinctly defined by the poles, always departing from the phenomenological experience of these regions. Also, from the graphic representation developed, the experiential field can be a model to be presented to scholars from other professional areas besides psychology, emphasizing the psychosocial space for applied social sciences and the biopsychological space for health sciences. Public Significance Statement This study offers a model of the human psyche with the experiential field, which expresses the regional ontologies of psychological phenomenology, with an human conscious presence at the center of the three “Worlds”: subjective (human time: PAST–PRESENT–FUTURE), intersubjective (psychosocial space: ME–OTHERS) and objective (biopsychological space: BODY–ENVIRONMENT). Also, from the graphic representation developed, the experiential field can be a model to be presented to scholars from other professional areas besides psychology. Keywords: consciousness, general psychology, metatheory, phenomenology, social psychology Temporal Scheme of the Human Psyche This article seeks to provide an answer to two interconnected questions, one related to general psychology and the other related to applied psychology: (a) Can there be a general metatheoretical model for the human psyche, toward a unified This article was published Online First July 14, 2022. Paulo Roberto Grangeiro Rodrigues https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-3919-3834 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paulo Roberto Grangeiro Rodrigues, Department of Psychology, University of Taubaté, Avenida Tiradentes, 500, Taubaté, São Paulo, CEP 12030-180, Brazil. Email: paulo.grangeiro@unitau.br 185 psychology? (b) How to represent the human psyche for students from other areas of professional training, such as health sciences and applied social sciences, without necessarily sticking to traditional schools in psychology, or the theoretical concepts belonging to different theoretical approaches? In search of a human psychological model that could be general, which departed from the relationship of human consciousness with its space and time, I initially met the scheme proposed by Moffatt (1983), in which the ME occupy a central place supported by two axes—that of time and culture—the latter is the dialectical pair: structures and links, as seen in Figure 1. 186 GRANGEIRO RODRIGUES Figure 1 Moffatt’s Temporal Scheme of Psyche CULTURE AXIS PAST TIME AXIS FUTURE (Subjectivity) (Space) This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Bonding (Mother) Structure (Father) We have that the axis of culture is formed by the maternal and paternal functions and thus explains Moffatt: “Formulated more synthetically, the cross expresses: I can jump from the past to the future sustained by bonds and structures.”1 (Moffatt, 1983, p. 29, my translation). This scheme was used by the author to describe psychopathologies, especially those of the type “depression” and “paranoia,” which relates to problems in the temporality of the psyche caused by disturbances in bonds and/or structures. We will not in this essay address the possible disturbances in the flow of the I by time, we will instead take advantage of the proposed scheme and expand it, because we understand that it can be associated with other theoretical formulations of models of the human psyche in which time is approached, as well as with others in which the possibilities of “psychic space” are explored. As we will explain below, the first focus, on time, belongs to the tradition of phenomenological psychology (Husserl, 1991; Gurwitsch, 1964; Wertz, 1993), and the spatial focus has been developed by proponents of a unified psychology (Henriques, 2011) or “integral” psychology (Wilber, 2000). Time as a Psychological Dimension Since Descartes, this issue of the psychic’s relationship with time has been addressed, and his proposal for a dualism of substances in the world—res extensa and res cogitans—leads him to also distinguish the forms of its existence: all res extensa exists in time, besides, by definition, exist in the space; however, res cogitans only exist in time: “Purely material are the things that we know exist only in bodies, such as the figure, the extension, the movement, : : : ” (Descartes, 1952, p. 420). Here, it speaks of existing things in the form of qualities and also defines those that belong to both extensive and thinking things (spirits): “ : : : those simples are to be termed ‘common’ which are ascribed indifferently, now to corporeal things, now to spirits— for instance, existence, unity, duration and the like.” (Descartes, 1952, p. 420). (emphasis added) 1 “Formulada mais sinteticamente, a cruz expressa: Posso saltar do passado para o futuro sustentado por vínculos e estruturas.” This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. THE HUMAN EXPERIENTIAL FIELD By addressing “duration,” Descartes brings the dimension “time,” without any idea of distinction between physical time and psychological time. The question of objectivity or subjectivity of time was revisited by I. Kant, in his proposal of the “transcendental subject” of knowledge, where he radically separates the world of phenomena of consciousness from the world of “noumena” of external reality (Kant, 1787/2008). In his critique of pure reason, Kant defines time and space with “forms” a priori of the intuition of the sensitive, that is, as part of the transcendental subject of knowledge, ordering the whole sensation of the world of “things themselves,” the noumena, coming from the senses even before any understanding. To these, we do not have direct access, because we only directly access the “phenomena” in consciousness, after the information of the senses pass through the a priori forms and are ordered according to the “a priori categories” of understanding: quantity, quality, relationship, modality (Kant, 1787/2008). Kant defines space as the form of the “external” sense and time as the form of the “internal” sense (Kant, 1787/2008). Thus, Kant affirms time and space as purely psychological realities, attributes of the epistemic subject, without physical objectivity. Let’s initially stick to the concept of time, as “ : : : the form of the internal senses, that is, intuition of ourselves and our internal state,” (Kant, 2008, p. 60) pointing more directly to the psychological, and reaching the distinction between psychological time and physical time. For this, we will resort to the contributions of Albert Einstein, which allowed us to definitively overcome Kant’s conclusions about the nature of time. For Einstein (1952), time and space are concepts of psychological origin, therefore related to subjective experiences. However, there is a transformation of concepts, according to the theory of general relativity, toward an objectification. In addressing time, Einstein states: This concept is undoubtedly associated with the fact of “calling to mind”, as well as with the differentiation between sense experiences and the recollection of these. This is a conceptual ordering principle for recollected experiences, and the possibility of its accomplishment gives rise to the subjective concept of time, i.e. that concept of time which refers to the arrangement of the experiences of the individual. (Einstein, 1916/1952, pp. 159–160) 187 Coherently, in Moffatt’s theory, we can seek this relationship between physical time and psychological time The “futuring-memories” (the prospective organization) organizes in us the historical succession because when this memory “launched” into the future comes to be present, we recognize ourselves as the same ones who launched it “over there” and we have, therefore, the feeling of continuity of the self, where the I-been (past) the I and the I-to-be (future) belong to the same core of the self that moves through “time”, a word to refer to this intangible transformative current that “pushes” reality forward.2 (Moffatt, 1980, p. 232, my translation) Einstein also devoted himself to describing the objectification of the concept of time (as he does with the concept of space), thus showing the difference between psychological and physical time: : : : “now” loses for the spatially extended world its objective meaning. It is because of this that space and time must be regarded as a four-dimensional continuum that is objectively unresolvable, if it is desired to express the purport of objective relations without unnecessary conventional arbitrariness. (Einstein, 1916/1952, p. 170) Therefore, let us devote ourselves here to describe this “psychological time,” from the concept of “now”: We can affirm that the “now” exists only in phenomenological consciousness,3 in the same way as “here.” It is one of those concepts relatable to the Cartesian “I think”: I exist, here and now. And from Einstein, speaking of the “experiences of the individual,” we move on to phenomenology: “ : : : in this respect ‘I’ is like the two other fundamental deictic expressions ‘here’ and ‘now’.” (Habermas, 1987, p. 103). Psychological time only coincides with physical time at the moment called PRESENT, where there is a conscious presence. Considering the FUTURE, it also gains purely psychological formulation, as it should turn: “It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four-dimensional4 2 O “futurar-recordações” (a organização prospectiva) organiza em nós a sucessão histórica, pois quando esta recordação “lançada” para o futuro chega a se tornar presente reconhecemo-nos como os mesmos que a lançamos “lá adiante” e temos, portanto, o sentimento de continuidade do eu, onde o eu-sido (passado) o eu e o eu-por-ser (futuro) pertencem ao mesmo núcleo do eu que se desloca pelo “tempo,” palavra para referir-se a esta intangível corrente transformadora que “empurra” a realidade. 3 I adopt here the definition of “consciousness” as the way of presenting the world that goes beyond sentience (impressions) and consequent apperception, encompassing these and an apprehension of oneself in this world. 4 Three dimensions of space plus that of time. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 188 GRANGEIRO RODRIGUES existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three-dimensional existence.” (Einstein, 1952, p. 171). And even this coincidence is not limited to the immediate physical present (impression), it has long been known and refined the phenomenological experience of THE PRESENT, since the proposal of the “temporal field” of Husserl (1991), in which the consciousness of time extends for a few seconds (one to three) and extends between the remembered past (retention) and the predicted future (protention) in a period of around 30 s (Kent & Wittmann, 2021). We can also evoke and adopt here the contribution of James: “These lingerings of old objects, these incomings of new, are the germs of memory and expectation, the retrospective and the prospective sense of time. They give that continuity to consciousness without which it could not be called a stream.” (James, 1890, as cited in Arvidson, 1992). Thus, having the psychological dimension of time as relating memories and expectations in human imaginative capacity, we will have the various possibilities of relating PRESENT, PAST, and FUTURE, as expressed in the verbal times of the Portuguese language, expressing certainties and possibilities, beyond the present, the past (perfect past) and the future of the present: “imperfect past,” “more-thanperfect past,” and the “future of the past.” There, where the conscious presence is, there is also the BODY, as an individual res extensa that is expressed in the action, so it is also established a relationship with SPACE, and so we must seek a description of the psychological concept of space. Space as a Psychological Dimension Also, the notion of space, despite its psychological origin, is not limited to a form of the “external” sense as proposed by Kant. Einstein recalls that: “The old geometers deal with conceptual objects (straight line, point, surface), but not really with space as such, as was done later in analytical geometry.”5 (Einstein, 1916/1952, pp. 156–157). Einstein demonstrated that, since Newton’s physics, space exists objectively, although from there a conceptual inaccuracy derived from thinking about the possibility of empty space, that is, without bodies. Descartes always related space to the extent of things, hence the concept of res extensa. This conception was the basis of Kant’s argument for denying the existence of objective space. The proper solution of this problem of empty space (which does not exist unless as “nothing”) had to wait for the theoretical advance brought by Einstein, who comments in a note: “Kant’s attempt to remove the embarrassment by denial of the objectivity of space can, however, hardly be taken seriously.” (Einstein, 1952, p. 157). What Einstein demonstrates is that: “It requires the idea of the field as the representative of reality, in combination with the general principle of relativity, to show the true kernel of Descartes’ idea; there exists no space ‘empty of field’.” (Einstein, 1952, p. 177). Einstein definitively separates physical space from the psychological space, which we will deal with here, based on the phenomenology of space, which begins with the deictic expression “here.” When we say so, we necessarily say “where I am,” and we are with our body with emotions and feelings (Burkitt, 2013), in the relationship with the world—as a center—and with others. In this way, we can say that there is no psychological space empty of environment where the body is, and consequently no empty of others where the self is. We will then describe these relationships, initially following the scheme developed by Moffatt, to meet phenomenological psychology and its “regional ontologies” (Massimi & Peres, 2019). Expanded Scheme of the Psychic Process I understood that Moffatt’s temporal scheme of psyche could be the basis of a more general model of the psyche, which would also express the psychic development from the beginning of life. Therefore, as the present moment is at the center, we will have the psychic past represented in the form of memories and the psychic future represented in the form of expectations and goals, considering human agency. I also broadened the axis of culture, placing the conscious presence at the central point and at the extremes the ME—corresponding to structure, and OTHERS—corresponding to Bonds, thus distinguishing consciousness in relation to the ME. To justify the choice of the term ME, I turn to Mead (1934), who in describing the social formation of MIND (“ego,” consciousness) demonstrates that “ : : : the process of socialization is at the same time one of individuation.” (Mead, 1934, as cited in Habermas, 1987, p. 58). In this way, in the scheme, the ME is in a dialectical relationship 5 Created by Descartes. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. THE HUMAN EXPERIENTIAL FIELD with OTHERS, and consciousness is placed at the center. I also rotated the scheme 90° so that time is on the vertical axis, as can be seen in Figure 2, and named it expanded scheme of the psychic process. I place conscious presence at the center, following the tradition of European psychology since Wundt, by defining human psychology as the “Science of immediate experience”6 (Araujo, 2015). In the proposal I present, not only the experience of the external world but also the experience of the “internal world” (Habermas, 1987, p. 127), that is, the awareness of both the external reality and the psychic reality. A pioneer in this proposal is C. G. Jung, who affirms the primacy of living consciousness (anima) in its imaginative activity, between ideas and things: Esse in intellectu lacks tangible reality, esse in re lacks mind. Idea and thing come together, however, in the human psyche, which holds the balance between them. What would the idea amount to if the psyche did not provide its living value? What would the thing be worth if the psyche withheld from it the determining force of the sense-impression? What indeed is reality if it is not a reality in ourselves, an esse in anima? Living reality is the product neither of the actual, objective behaviour of things nor of the formulated idea exclusively, but rather of the combination of both in the living psychological process, through esse in anima. The psyche creates reality every day. (Jung, 1976, p. 68) In phenomenology, the primacy of consciousness is admitted, and the fundamental characteristic of this experience is defined: Brentano, in Husserl’s view, identified the fundamental essence of all psychic life, the most universal essential feature which distinguishes the psychic from all other phenomena, in intentionality. It is important to note that this insight is “given quite immediately and prior to all theories” (Husserl, 1925/1977, p. 22). For Brentano, all consciousness is conscious of something other than the presenting consciousness itself. (Wertz, 1993, p. 11) I propose that this Scheme can help to understand—by placing the conscious presence at the center of human time and space—the place of the psychic between the biological and the social, as subjectivity. This formulation of human temporality related to consciousness was first described by Husserl (1991), and the possibility of representing it as a straight line was already described by Edith Stein (2005): The point of the “space” continuum is the point of space or place; the point of the “time” continuum is the moment. 189 From each continuum, points can be highlighted in an infinite number. It is completely impossible to compose a continuum based on points. On the other hand, it is quite possible to determine a continuum with the help of its points, that is, to fix it clearly. And that is what the mathematical treatment does. : : : time, considered from a moment—for example, the one designated as “now”—, extends in a single direction to both sides. (Stein, 2005, p. 707, my translation)7 In the same vein, she is followed by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Temporality is evidently an organized structure : : : . past, present, and future : : : structured moments of an original synthesis.” (Sartre, 1943/1993, p. 107). : : : as for the instantaneous present, everyone knows that this does not exist at all but is the limit of an infinite division, like a point without dimension. Thus the whole series is annihilated and doubly so since the future “now,” for example, is a nothingness qua future and will be realized in nothingness when it passes on to the state of a present “now.” The only possible method by which to study temporality is to approach it as a totality which dominates its secondary structures and which confers on them their meaning. (Sartre, 1943/1993, p. 107) So, the vertical axis is related to individual development over time, while the horizontal axis is related to social interactions. Therefore, we have two major fields of general psychology there: developmental psychology and social psychology. Although the horizontal axis always refers to the present of a consciousness, I assume that “ : : : social psychological research is primarily the systematic study of contemporary history.” (Gergen, 1973, p. 319). If we didactically isolate the axis of social psychology, the present forms of human interaction will be conditioned both by the historical–social present (“forms of sociability”) and by the person’s past social experience, in the form of memories evoked in the present and projected in expectations, conditioning the forms of “meaning attribution” (Spink & Spink, 2013). With this scheme, we are able to understand that consciousness is between the self and the others; 6 Erlebnis. El punto del continuum “espacio” es el punto del espacio o lugar; el punto del continuum “tiempo” es el momento. De cada continuum se pueden destacarse puntos en número infinito. Es completamente imposible componer un continuum a base de puntos. En cambio, es muy posible determinar un continuum con ayuda de sus puntos, es decir, fijarlo claramente. Y eso es lo que hace el tratamiento matemático. : : : el tiempo, considerado desde un momento—por ejemplo, el designado como “ahora”—, se extiende en una sola dirección hacia ambos lados. 7 190 GRANGEIRO RODRIGUES Figure 2 Expanded Scheme of the Psychic Process THE FUTURE CONSCIOUS PRESENCE HUMAN TIME This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. EXPECTATIONS, GOALS THE PRESENT ME (STRUCTURE) COGNITION AND HUMAN SPACE COMMUNICATION MEMORIES that is, it is not reducible to the self, since it also involves bodily aspects, which can only partially be perceived by consciousness itself. Here, we also do justice to the formulation that was expressed by George Herbert Mead when describing the formation of the mind (here related to the conscious presence) through the relationship of society (here related to the OTHERS pole) with the ME, which in development is formed before mind. The “I” is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the “me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes. The attitudes of the others constitute the organized “me,” and then one reacts toward that as an “I.” (Mead, 1934, p. 175) Thus, let’s assume phenomenology (Husserl, 1970) as the study related to the central “point,” the phenomenological consciousness (Vernon, 2005). And let’s assume phenomenological psychology as the study of the relationship between this consciousness and its world, based on the conscious presence. In the tradition started by Husserl, we have the contribution of Gurwitsch (1964), who described a “field of consciousness”: The phenomenologist and psychologist Aron Gurwitsch defined the field of consciousness as a “totality of copresent data” (Gurwitsch, 1964, p. 2). In contemporary terms a field of consciousness is a phenomenal OTHERS (BONDS) THE PAST conscious state (Block, 1995) at an instant or over a brief duration. (Yoshimi & Vinson, 2015, p. 1) Gurwitsch worked on integrating phenomenology and psychology, in the same way that Schutz and Luckmann (1979) worked on integrating phenomenology with sociology, and we will use their theories for an integral view of human psychology. With this approach, we will be able, with Mead and Habermas, to escape from the “ : : : problem on which Husserl shipwrecked in the cartesian meditations, namely, the problem of monadological production of the intersubjectivity of the lifeworld.” (Habermas, 1987, p. 129). Intersubjectivity has been in place since the beginning of human life. Further on, Habermas justifies the need to adopt the theory of communicative action: “ : : : basic features of the constituted lifeworld can be easily explained if we treat ‘lifeworld’ as a complementary concept to ‘communicative action’.” (Habermas, 1987, p. 130). I will assume, considering the contributions of Habermas, the phenomenological psychology as being a priori psychology, therefore “pure” psychology, which means the phenomenological experience of an individual, without any mediation and before any communication. For this we need, first, to add to the HUMAN SPACE axis THE HUMAN EXPERIENTIAL FIELD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. another spatial axis, considering the conscious relationships with things in the physical world, then following conclusions arising from the study of regional ontologies. Phenomenological psychology theorists define the fundamental characteristics of human experience: : : : phenomenological analyses suggest that human psychological processes, by virtue of their essential structure, are not fully specifiable in formal terms; they require existential concepts. Such characteristics as presentational intentionality, implicit meaning, worldliness, embodiment, temporality, and sociality require concrete concepts which often admit vagueness and nonspecificity, not as a defect but as a positive truth of the subject matter. (Wertz, 1993, pp. 17–18) Such characteristics were also described by Hersch (2011): Following such existential–phenomenological philosophers as Heidegger (1927/1962), Sartre (1943/1993), and Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962), I have described a set of six crucial features of human experience (Hersch, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, as cited in Hersch, 2011). They are as follows: 1. Relatedness to a world: Human experience is always experienced as taking place within the context of already being in a world, 2. Temporality: Human experience is always experienced as part of an ongoing, necessarily incomplete process of becoming; one which is situated in time, in the full multidimensional sense of time where past, present, and future co-imply each other as a totality, 3. Interpretiveness and perspective: Human experience (including perception) is always actively interpretive; that is, it is always interpreting and reinterpreting its previously interpreted situations, at a variety of levels of awareness at any given time, and doing so at all times from its own unique spatial, temporal, and above all, meaningfull (care-full) perspective, 4. Care-fullness: Human experience is always filled with, and organized in accordance with our cares (or that which we care about). Thus, the presence of some degree of emotion, imagination, and anticipation is an essential feature of every act of human perception, 5. Embodiment: All human perception is phenomenologically experienced from within 191 an embodied perspective, that of “the lived body,” and 6. Being-with-others: The world is experienced as essentially social, that is, as being always/ already peopled with others. Furthermore, all human experience is necessarily embedded within an interpersonal, cultural, and social– historical context.” (Hersch, 2011, p. 4). With this, I propose the existence of a human experiential field, defined by the fundamental dimensions of the relationship of a consciousness with its world, where it acts with its body and obtains phenomenological experiences. Scheme of the Human Experiential Field For the proper theoretical foundation of the proposal that the axis of HUMAN SPACE already described should be added another spatial axis, I will rely on the concept of “lifeworld,” as proposed by Husserl and amplified by Jürgen Habermas: Like the phenomenological lifeworld analysis of the late Husserl, or the late Wittgenstein’s analysis of forms of life (which were not, to be sure, carried out with a systematic intent), formal-pragmatic analysis aims at structures that in contrast to the historical shapes of particular lifeworlds and life-forms, are put forward as invariant. (Habermas, 1987, p. 119) To express what for Habermas are the “ : : : structures of the lifeworld in general : : : ” (1987, p. 119), we will first have to complement the HUMAN SPACE axis, generating a relational plan of two of the three “modes of actor-world relationship”: distinguishing the “social world”: “totality of all interpersonal relations that are recognized by members as legitimate.,” from the “objective world”: “the totality of facts, where ‘fact’ signifies that a statement about the existence of a corresponding state of affairs, p, can count as true.” (Habermas, 1984, p. 52). In order to express the social (intersubjective) world, we redefine here the axis of HUMAN SPACE, already presented above, as PSYCHOSOCIAL SPACE. To express the objective world, I define here the axis of the BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE. This is defined, then, by the poles body and environment, not forgetting that the body is in the environment; however, the environment is also in the body, just as in the other axis there is the dialogic interaction between the ME and the 192 GRANGEIRO RODRIGUES This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. OTHER (Rodrigues, 2018). This is also about the felt body, “the lived body” (Wertz, 1993, p. 15), in a conscious relationship with its environment. According to Gurwitsch, we always have some awareness of (1) our own inner thoughts or psychic ego, (2) our body or embodied existence, and (3) some aspect of the perceptual world. This implies that any field of consciousness contains contents of each of these three kinds. As Gurwitsch says: these “three privileged orders of existence together constituting reality are permanently present to consciousness.” (Gurwitsch, 1964, pp. 418, as cited in Yoshimi & Vinson, 2015, p. 119) Both axes intersect at the central point, of conscious presence, where the “subjective world” takes place: “ : : : totality of experiences to which, in each instance, only one individual has privileged access.” (Habermas, 1984, p. 52), in the encounter of the axis of HUMAN TIME, in a present moment. It is in this subjective world that the continuous process of “futuring memories” described by Moffatt takes place, allowing for the “sense of continuity of the self” (1980, p. 232), that is, an “I am being” among the “I-been” and the “I-to-be.” We can also bring here Martin Buber’s proposal about the two worlds for the human being: “The world as experience concerns the wordprinciple I-That. The word I–Thou principle underlies the world of relationship.” (Buber, 2006, p. 55). Even though we can virtually have “experiences” with people and “relationships” with things, I do not experience the man to whom I say You. I enter into relationship with him in the sanctuary of the wordprinciple. Only when I leave there can I experience it again. The experience is a distancing from You. (Buber, 2006, p. 57) In the scheme I propose, the ME–OTHER polarity does not only coincide with the I–Thou principle-word; however, also with the I–You relationships. We can understand the axis of HUMAN TIME as the continued expression of this plane of relations—axes of PSYCHOSOCIAL SPACE and BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE, from the point of view of subjective experience. In the tradition of Descartes (res cogitans only exists in time) and Kant (time is the “pure internal intuition, in which the phenomena of the soul must be constituted” (1786/1989. pp. 32–33)), however seeking to solve the problems that left unanswered, Habermas integrates phenomenological time and space: My experience of the lifeworld is also temporally arranged: inner duration is a flow of lived experience arising from present, retentive, and protentive phases, as also from memories and expectations. It is intersected by world time, biological time, and social time, and is sedimented in the unique sequence of an articulated biography. (Schutz & Luckmann, 1979, p. 103, as cited in Habermas, 1987, p. 128) For this reason, we can didactically isolate the vertical axis, of human time, as the axis of individual psychological development. Therefore, I propose that the HUMAN TIME axis represents that unique world (Eigenwelt), in which impressions, perceptions, apperceptions, cognitions, ideas, theories, recovered memories, internal dialogues, beliefs, attributions, cogitations, plans, intentions, goals, fantasies, imaginary creations, insights, daydreams, hypnagogic daydreams, dreams, visions/“mirações,” delusions and hallucinations are expressed as consciousness for the human being, here and now. The central “sphere” in the meeting of the three axes represents an internal world, with permeable borders between subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity, in the conscious presence, around the central point of phenomenological consciousness. Therefore, from there, the “communicative action” also takes place, so that the intersubjective bridge is formed, through symbolic language. As defined by Habermas, “The dimensions in which communicative action extends comprise the semantic field of symbolic contents, social space, and historical time.” (1987, p. 138). In the central “sphere,” the three worlds (intersubjective, objective, and subjective) are united in the subjective temporal experience, forming a mental field of cognition and communication. It follows from this structure that: “ : : : finally, my experience is socially arranged. All experiences have a social dimension, just as the temporal and spatial arrangement of my experiences is also ‘socialized.’” (Schutz & Luckmann, 1979, p. 104, as cited in Habermas, 1987, p. 128). So, the psyche’s scheme becomes “threedimensional,” and when we include the phenomenological concept of “horizon”8 according to the limits of each situation experienced, in each of the three worlds, what we can call the experiential 8 Situations have boundaries that can be overstepped at any time—thus Husserl introduced the image of the horizon that shifts according to one’s position and that can expand and shrink as one moves through the rough countryside. (Habermas, 1987, p. 123). field is formed, whose schematization (Figure 3) places the three axes representing the three “worlds” you experience, limited by a sphere that represents the phenomenological horizon. In the experiential field, all the poles of the axes coexist in the same experiential moment, although the energy of conscious attention can focus differently on each of them, actively or passively. I consider this formulation sufficient to answer the question posed by Yoshimi and Vinson: “While we agree that mind, body, and world are all typically present in the conscious field, it is not clear that they are necessarily present.” (2015, p. 119). Indeed, “ : : : it seems possible in principle that someone could have a conscious experience in which they had (1) no inner thoughts at all, (2) no sense of their body, or (3) no sense of the physical world.” (Yoshimi & Vinson, 2015, p. 119). Two other issues not addressed by Gurwitsch are expectations and intersubjectivity. Although Gurwitsch addressed this issue of the “theme,” the “thematic field” and the “margin” of the field of consciousness, he did not include the dimension of expectation in his studies, talking only about “relevance”: “What Gurwitsch should have done, on our account, is use the concept of expectation to develop yet another concept of relevance, 193 what we will call “predictive relevance.” (Yoshimi & Vinson, 2015, p. 117). As for intersubjectivity, Schutz’s contributions, brought by Habermas (1987), complete Gurwitsch’s propositions. This scheme here developed also becomes a metatheoretical organizer for psychology, if we think about the specializations of researchers. The first major division is that brought about by the behavioral versus the phenomenological perspective (Watanabe, 2010). Using the scheme, if we are at the central point of the experiential field, we assume the perspective of the consciousness of a human being, then the central place of the scheme is occupied by the cognitive subject and his phenomenology, within the experiential field; however, if we adopt the behavioral perspective, the analysis of behavior, the central place is occupied by the scientist with her/his experiential field, from which he seeks to obtain the most objective perspective possible on others. The central point is that of the “observer experience.” However, the criticisms of behaviorism are based on the idea that it seeks not the I–Thou relationship, but the objectifying I–It relationship (with Him or Her) with other people. When seeking “scientific objectivity” for psychology, behavioral schools run the risk of not understanding Figure 3 Experiential Field THE FUTURE ENVIRONMENT EXPECTATIONS, GOALS ME CONSCIOUS PRESENCE HUMAN TIME This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. THE HUMAN EXPERIENTIAL FIELD COGNITION AND COMMUNICATION THE PRESENT PSYCHOSOCIAL SPACE OTHERS BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE MEMORIES BODY THE PAST This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 194 GRANGEIRO RODRIGUES the relationship according to the “I–Thou” “generating-word” that I consider among the possible relationships in the self–other axis. Behaviorism was even named in 1921 by Max Meyer, one of its initiators, as “The Psychology of the Other One” (Farr, 1996, p. 99). At this point, we move away from behaviorism, as we are in search of an integral psychology (Wilber, 2000) that also integrates the perspectives of “I” and of “You,” overcoming the “flatness” that reduces everything and everyone to “Them,” “objects.” For this, I resort to phenomenological psychology and the cognitive schools that are based on it. Thus, both the scientist’s awareness of others and the scientist’s awareness of herself should be the starting point of the science of human mind and behavior, or, according to Henriques, “science of mental behavior” (Henriques, 2011, p. 34). With this proposal, I understand that I have offered an answer to the initial questions of the article, in order to establish, with the structure and dynamics of the experiential field, a metatheoretical basis for a general model of the human psyche. Also, from the graphic representation developed, I understand that the experiential field can be a model to be presented to scholars from other professional areas besides psychology, emphasizing the psychosocial space for applied social sciences and the biopsychological space for health sciences. The Question of Intersubjectivity Another question that arises from this proposal of an experiential field: In the interaction of a human dyad, how do the experiential field s couple? Based on Mead, in his critique of the “psychophysical parallelism” between organism and individual mind, proposed by Wundt, we can approach this complexity, taking into account the psychological interaction between two people. Considering only one person: “The required parallelism is not, in fact, complete in the psychic part, since only the sensory phase of the physiological process of the experience, and not the motor phase, has a psychic correspondent.” (Mead, 1934, p. 42, n. 1, as cited in Farr, 1996, p. 109). Thus, considering the interaction with another: “The external phase of the act, however, is present in the psyche of the observer even though it is not present in the consciousness of the psyche itself.” (Farr, 1996, p. 109). So, a complete “psychophysical parallelism” between the sensory and the motor only takes place in the psychic interaction between two people, if we take into account that Mead’s psychic correspondence refers to a conscious, perceptual experience. That conduct that is not visually conscious in one becomes visually conscious in the other. Considering the psychic interaction between two people, if we relate this to the ME–OTHER and BODY–ENVIRONMENT axes, two experiential field s are coupled from the OTHER pole of each at a given moment of coexistence (the other is perceived as a speaker and listener, from his communicative action, the symbolic verbal expression). The interaction also takes place from the BODY pole (which will be perceived by the other, predominantly visually, with the interaction through body language). Thus, through this sensory-motor interaction, however, guided by rules and symbolic language, there can be intentional and conscious human interaction and communication (Burkitt, 2013; Farr, 1996). We must remember that this intersubjectivity occurs predominantly through verbal behavior and auditory interaction, since in this social situation : : : where one does respond to that which he addresses to another and where that response of his own becomes a part of his conduct, where he not only bears himself but responds [i.e., answers—J.H.] to himself, talks and replies to himself as truly as the other person replies to him.” (Mead, 1934, p. 139, as cited by Habermas, 1987, p. 14) It is also necessary to reaffirm that the joint action of people is only possible because there is a shared lifeworld: “In order to develop a richer phenomenology of joint agency, embeddedness in the all-encompassing horizon of the life-world has to be factored in.” (Moran, 2021, p. 24). After this proposal of a metatheoretical organizer for psychology, we can go on to an analysis of the fields of empirical psychological science in its various aspects, always considering the interaction of consciousness with the poles of its experiential field, that is, relating phenomenological psychology as a central theory, with other “psychologies” related to the three worlds: subjective, intersubjective, and objective, according to regional ontologies. This theorization will be the focus of an upcoming essay relating the fields of empirical psychology with the three dimensions of the experiential field, for example, “Future” with prospective theories, “Others” with social cognition theory, “Body” with self-regulation theory, and so on. THE HUMAN EXPERIENTIAL FIELD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 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Consciousness and Cognition, 34, 104–123. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.concog.2015.03.017 Received December 23, 2021 Revision received June 14, 2022 Accepted June 20, 2022 ▪ Call for Nominations The Publications and Communications (P&C) Board of the American Psychological Association has opened nominations for the editorships of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Neuropsychology, and Psychological Methods. Andrew R. Delamater, PhD, Keith Owen Yeates, PhD, and Douglas L. Steinley, PhD, respectively, are the incumbent editors. Candidates should be members of APA and should be available to start receiving manuscripts in early 2025 to prepare for issues published in 2026. The APA Journals program values equity, diversity, and inclusion and encourages the application of members of all groups, including women, people of color, LGBTQ psychologists, and those with disabilities, as well as candidates across all stages of their careers. Self-nominations are also encouraged. Search chairs have been appointed as follows: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Chair: Mo Wang, PhD Neuropsychology, Chair: Hortensia Amaro, PhD Psychological Methods, Chair: Mo Wang, PhD Nominate candidates through APA’s Editor Search website (https://editorsearch.apa.org). Prepared statements of one page or less in support of a nominee can also be submitted by email to Jen Chase, Journal Services Associate (jchase@apa.org). The deadline for accepting nominations is Monday, January 8, 2024, after which the first phase of vetting will begin.
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