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Merleau-Ponty's Psychology

By Tone Roald, post. doc.

Objectives

The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a major philosophical force in the twentieth century, known first and foremost for developing an account of subjectivity firmly grounded in the body. He convincingly countered a long philosophical tradition which ignored corporality in favor of detached rationality, and his work has, as such, become a classic within the field (cf. Zahavi 2003). Lesser known, but no less important, is the fact that Merleau-Ponty also was a psychologist who developed a unique and comprehensive portrayal of the body-subject. Accordingly, the task of this postdoctoral project is to thoroughly review Merleau-Ponty's theory of the body-subject and make it systematically available for a present-day psychology.

Applicability and Research Questions

More than fifty years have passed since Merleau-Ponty's (1945/1976) main work, Phénoménologie de la Perception, was published, yet no one has, to date, explained and updated his psychological model. This is an important task as it can provide psychology with a general model for a complex subjectivity of deep structures, based upon a theory which concerns itself with the scientific and philosophical foundations of an empirical and theoretical psychology. It is also a model which will have direct applicability to the treatment of psychological problems and disorders with strong corporeal components, such as stress, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. This will be performed via an exegesis of his model of subjectivity, weighed against contemporary perception models as well as contemporary models of the body-subject as the basis for understanding subjectivity. The general questions this postdoctoral project centers around are therefore: How can Merleau-Ponty's model of subjectivity be portrayed psychologically? What are its merits and limitations for understanding subjectivity in psychology?

On a more specific level, pertinent questions are:

• How should Merleau-Ponty's model for subjectivity, as it appears in Phénoménologie de la Perception, be adjusted according to his earlier and later works? For instance, should the distinction between the concepts "body" and "flesh," the latter which he introduces in his later works, be incorporated into the model for subjectivity?
  
  
• How does Merleau-Ponty's model compare with contemporary perception theory? For instance, how does it contrast with the indirect model of subjectivity present in Marc Jeannerod's (2006) work Motor Cognition. What Actions Tell the Self, especially in relation to essential features such as representation, attention, and movement? How should Merleau-Ponty's model be adjusted in light of it?
  
  
• How does it compare with contemporary psychological theories of intersubjectivity and the body-subject? For instance, how does Merleau-Ponty's model compare with Phillippe Rochat's model for the development of intersubjectivity, especially to the role of affects and the relation to the Other?

Background

Merleau-Ponty's Phénoménologie de la Perception is a theoretical cornerstone of my PhD-thesis, The Subject of Aesthetics. In my thesis, I explain structures of subjectivity as described by him. His model reveals a significant critique of empiricism in psychology, and through its foundation in methodological and theoretical consistency, his model of subjectivity can have a profound impact upon the psychological understanding of the more general structures of "perception" and "intersubjectivity" as he provides an account of how these structures develop. His early critiques of Behaviorism and Gestalt Psychology are well known (cf. Giorgi 1974), but his layered model of the psyche as being fundamentally structured by the body has yet to find its psychological expression.

The model begins with the fundamental basis of all experience, namely perception. Merleau-Ponty argues that perception starts with the body and is continually constituted in relation to the world. He arrives not only at a description of the body-subject, but also at explanations of how it constitutes our subjective and intersubjective lives. This body-subject comprises the experiential center of the first-person's given-ness of experience, as well as the structures and processes of a subconscious: of sensing, gestures, affectivity, language, intentionality, sexuality, and self-reflection in a dynamic active/passive synthesis and action. Experience also partially constitutes a cogito, and all these diverse formations taken together form various configurations in experiences of the "world." Merleau-Ponty presents a layered model of subjectivity, from the relatively anonymous and general existence of pre-reflective being to the reflective cogito (Roald 2007; 2008; 2009).

Merleau-Ponty's model remains largely unexplored, but some work on his influence on psychology has been conducted. The anthology Merleau-Ponty & Psychology, edited by Keith Hoeller (1993), deals with Merleau-Ponty in relation to psychoanalysis and sexuality. By virtue of its anthological form, it gives many views on these topics, but, for the very same reason, does not present an account of his theory of subjectivity. Additionally, Merleau-Ponty's work has been used in a critique of cognitive psychology, e.g. through Gallagher's (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind. The meeting point between phenomenology and cognitive psychology is also explored in the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, and treatment of schizophrenia through phenomenological models of subjectivity (Husserlian) is currently taking place in Copenhagen.

Method

I will continue with the task that I began in my PhD-thesis where I delineated the most basic of Merleau-Ponty's concepts as he uses them throughout Phénoménologie de la Perception, such as the meaning he assigned to "sensing," "movement," "gestures," "projection," "affect," and so on; I investigated the various ways he used these concepts in order to look at how they contribute to a description and explanation of the more complex structures, such as the body-subject, sub-consciousness, pre-reflection, consciousness, reflection, and self-reflection. In the post-doctoral project, I will continue to nuance these structures, and this analysis will include the way he uses the concepts at the beginning of the work and the transformation they undergo throughout it. That would lead me to a model of the body-subject in perception. The main weight will be placed upon Phénoménologie de la Perception, but it will be supplemented by his earlier and later writings (e.g., Merleau-Ponty 1942; 1948; 1964; 1968; 1973). In his earlier writings, he has not yet arrived at the important insights of the dynamic body-subject, and in his later writings, he becomes more prosaic than scientific.

In order to investigate and adjust the model to contemporary psychology, as well as to assess the model and its various forms throughout Merleau-Ponty's authorship, essential features will be evaluated against current perception theories and psychological theories of the body-subject. First it will be evaluated against Marc Jeannerod's (2005, 2006, 2008) works with focus on the book Motor Cognition: What Actions Tell the Self. In it, Jeannerod provides perhaps the most detailed discussion of how motor movement is represented in the brain. Although Merleau-Ponty explicitly denies representations a role in the understanding of movement, I show in my PhD-thesis that he implicitly operates with representations and body-schemata as essential features of action perception. Thus, a comparison will be conducted between Merleau-Ponty's model for subjectivity and the indirect model of subjectivity present in Jeannerod's work. The hypothesis is that the two models are compatible on essential points such as on the role of representation, attention, and movement, and together can supplement each other to form a more comprehensive theory of perception. As such, a main goal is to investigate the meeting point between a broad theory of perception such as Merleau-Ponty's and a more narrow and specialized one as Jeannerod's to investigate their compatibility and relative merits. This work will be finalized in the article Object Perception.

Other aspects of Merleau-Ponty's model for subjectivity will be evaluated against Phillippe Rochat's (e.g. 2008, 2009) model for the development of intersubjectivity. Both Merleau-Ponty and Rochat detail how intersubjectivity is developed in relation to the Other with a focus on affection and interaction. Merleau-Ponty does it within a stringent epistemological framework while Rochat does it in a much more concrete and specific, yet, at times, inconsistent manner. Here again is the meeting place between a general, but not so detailed, theory (Merleau-Ponty's) with the more specific, but less comprehensive theory assumed to reveal the relative merits and limits of Merleau-Ponty's theory of subjectivity for psychology.

References

Gallagher, S. (2003). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford University Press.

Giorgi, A. (1974). The Meta-Psychology of Merleau-Ponty as a Possible Basis for Unity in Psychology. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology. 5(1): 53-74

Jeannerod, M (2006). Motor Cognition. What Actions Tell the Self. Oxford Psychology Series.

Jeannerod, M. (2008). Putting oneself in the perspective of the other: A framework for self-other differentiation. Social Neuroscience, 3, 356-367

Jeannerod, M., and Jacob, P. (2005). The motor theory of social cognition: a critique. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 21-25.

Merleau-Ponty, M (1942). La Structure du comportement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

• (1945/1975) Phénoménologie de la perception. Gallimard.
• (1958/2004). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge and Keagan Paul.
• (1948/1964) Sense and Non-Sense. Northwestern University Press.
• (1973) Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language. Northwestern University Press.
• (1964) Signs. Northwestern University Press.
• (1968) The Visible and the Invisible. Northwestern University Press.

Roald, T. (2007). Cognition in Emotion: An Investigation through Experiences with Art. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi.

Roald, T. (2008). Toward a Phenomenology of Art Appreciation. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology. 39: 189-212

Roald, T. (2009). The Subject of Aesthetic. PhD-thesis. Copenhagen University.

Rochat, P. (2009). Others in Mind - Social Origins of Self-Consciousness. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.

Rochat, P. (2008). Mutual recognition as foundation of sociality and social comfort. In Striano, T. & Reid, V. (Eds). Social Cognition: Development, Neuroscience and Autism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

Rochat, P. & Passos-Ferreira, C. (2009). Three levels of intersubjectivity in early development. In A. Carassa, F. Morganti, & G. Riva (Eds). Enacting Intersubjectivity: Paving the way for a dialogue between Cognitive Sciences. Switzerland: Lugano 2/13-14, 2009.

Zahavi, D. (2003). Fænomenologi. In Collin, F. and Køppe, S. Humanistisk Videnskabsteori. (pp. 122-138). DR Multimedie.