THE CONTENT DIMENSIONS & PHENOMENOLOGY

Now for the five Content dimensions of the Matrix Model. I originally took these from Developmental Psychology as categories of experience. Each of these reveals different aspects of self. The self-world refers to one’s domain, realm, invented universe of meaning where you live. The term self refers to your sense of value and worth, your importance or what we call “self-esteem.” Others refers to the social self, you as sensed by and responded to by others. Power refers to what you can do, achieve, and accomplish and hence, you self-confidence. Time refers to you temporal self, self in time and how you experience your journey through time.

The World The world in Phenomenology is a context, environment, a set of references. Yet it is more. Gadmer said “man has both an environment and a world.” (p. 440). Actually, the concept of world stands opposed to the concept of environment. “All living beings in the world possess” an environment, but only man has a world (Gadmer, pp. 440-1). This is called the life-world that we inhabit. Arendt writes: “It is through work that humans come to find themselves in a world; “the human condition of work is worldliness” “within its borders each individual life is housed.” Work creates a human world as opposed to labor which struggles with nature. Work leads to reification and the instrumentalization of the world.” (311, italics added)

How then do we have a world in addition to an environment? In Neuro-Semantics, world stands for all of “the universes of meaning” we live in. And as human beings, there are so many worlds: the world of business, medicine, law, psychology, coaching, NLP, etc.

“The world as world exists for man as for no other creature that is in the world. But this world is verbal in nature.” (Gadmer, 440)

That any of the thousands of worlds, that we can know and live in, identifies the role of language in experience. Language is not just one of our possessions, the world we have is dependent on language. Phenomenology says, “Man’s being-in-the-world is primordially linguistic. It is a product of a constituting ego” (Husserl, p. 166). Language as a world-creating mechanism (283). No wonder Heidegger wrote, “Language is the house of being.”

Self Another central theme in Phenomenology is self. Paul Tillich, theologian and existential philosopher, writes that “The self is a zero point.” It is “a centre of reference and orientation.” (Ideas II, paragraph 41).

The self is a part of the world and simultaneously it also has itself as a world. The self is self only because it has a world, a structured universe, to which it belongs and from which it is separated at the same time. Self and world are correlated, and so are individualization and participation. For this is just what “participation” means: being a part of something from which one is, at the same time, separated” (p. 88, Tillich).

Power Part of our experience of ourselves given our meanings and intentions lies in our sense of what we can and cannot do— in other words, our essential powers. The power of one’s self is the power and vitality of living and responding. The self, as an ego, has a set of abilities, a sense of “I can...”

When we can do something, we experience confidence in ourselves to do, to achieve, and to accomplish. This is what we mean by “self-confidence.” Together this power-to-respond generates the gestalt state of responsibility which, in turn, distinguishes us as self-directed beings who can choose our “way of being” in the world.

Others We are also social beings. We are who we are, and experiences ourselves as we do, due to the way we represent and experience others. So not only do we have a self in the world, but in the world, there is the other. Our natural life is a life in community with others which, in turn, enables us to have shared language and shared meanings. Having that, we now have a community, a culture, a society. It also gives us a consciousness of the Other: “How does the other enter into my consciousness?” “The experience of the other is a natural and inextricable part of my consciousness.” (Dermot, 176)

The existence of others creates a context for all of us to respond — we respond to the other and from that arises society. In Phenomenology, the basic structure of life with others is caring (storge) (Dormet, p. 226). This also is the essential meaning of dasein (being). To be is to care. From that comes openness to the other which means listening to the other on the other’s terms.

Time We are time or temporal beings so much so that human existence occurs in time— in lived time between birth and death. So our consciousness which is the basis of all experience is inextricably linked to time. Our consciousness is a time consciousness. In fact, Heidegger’s thesis was that being itself is time, the theme of his book, Time and Being (Gadmer, Truth and Method, p. 248).

“Since consciousness is presupposed in all science and knowledge, then the proper approach to the study of consciousness itself must be a transcendental one, one which focuses on the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.” (144)

Our time consciousness makes us historical beings. We are oriented teleologically (Dermot, p. 179) to the end of things. So we run ahead (in time) in expectation, anticipation, worry, etc. Regarding future time, we also make promises in order “to create islands of security in the ocean of future uncertainty.”

“We live constantly in the future and in the past, in the distant and the transcendent, in the

unknown and the suspected, we do not live only in the world around us as it is given to the five senses.” (Soko, p. 37)

Similarly, our time consciousness orients us to the past. With the past, we can linger behind in memory. There is a historicity of our understanding so that we bring from our past experiences, learnings, ideas, understandings, etc. into our present. But the past is not all-determining. After all, we can forgive ourselves and others as a way to undo deeds of the past and stop them from influencing us now and in the future.

In Phenomenology, our singularity in time as a temporal being creates the contingent nature of human existence. In other words, we are limited in time. We are here now, later we will be not- here. Running ahead in time, we can anticipate an experience of non-being.

There are many kinds of times. An important experience of time is kairos which refers to the transfiguring moment, the “pregnant moment,” the moment of meaning and meaningfulness. As when “a woman’s time has come” to deliver a child, regardless of when that is (chronos), that moment is a kairos for her and the child.

Conclusion: Phenomenology and NLP Phenomenology informs NLP. While it was not directly quoted, it was in the background. For example, it informed Fritz Perls in his work of gestalt therapy. In The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy, Perls describes working on “the hot seat” as working “on the phenomenological basis.” (p. 128). This was the book that Bandler edited from the tapes of Perls. NLP is phenomenological in nature as it shares many of the same features with Phenomenology. And over the years, several trainers in NLP have describe NLP as a phenomenology. Both focus on and study the structure of experience although in vastly different ways. Yet each can enrich the other.