Responding to a picture as a picture: Susanne Langer and Eugene Gendlin

In the section ‘(g) pictures’ in Chapter VII-A of “A Process Model” (APM), it is discussed in detail that “Animals don’t respond to pictures of something” (Gendlin, 2018, p. 125), which was already addressed, albeit budding, in 1973. Before we go any further, let’s look at Susanne Langer’s prior work:

Beasts do not read symbols; that is why they do not see pictures. ... Dogs scorn our paintings because they see colored canvases, not pictures. A representation of a cat does not make them conceive one. (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 72)

Gendlin inherited Langer’s view and has persistently examined it since the 1970s.

Animals do not react to pictures. The cat will react to the picture of a cat as to a flat cardboard object. If it did respond to the cat aspect of the picture at all, it would respond to it as a real cat. Animals have no way of responding to pictures as pictures. (Gendlin, 1973, p. 374)

Only humans respond to pure looks, something purely visual. ... I respond to the picture as a picture and never lose track of being in the room, not in the mountains. (Gendlin et al., 1984, p. 261)

To see something and also take it as “only” visual is more complex than ordinary events. Seeing the mere image of the mountain involves seeing the mountain and that it is a piece of cardboard. (Gendlin, 1986, p. 151)

Since the early 1970s, Gendlin has discussed the inability of animals to respond to a picture as a picture, but he has not explicitly discussed why; on the contrary, we humans can respond to a picture as a picture. This point is revisited in a paper published in the early 1990s, “Thinking Beyond Patterns” (Gendlin, 1991), which again draws on Langer’s philosophy. This paper discusses in more detail the basis for the later conclusion in APM that “To respond to a picture is different than to behave at the object pictured as if it were present.” (Gendlin, 2018, p. 125)

What connects Langer’s discussion with Gendlin’s discussion of patterns in the 1990s is the “proportion of parts” characteristic of pictures. First, let’s look at Langer’s specific discussion of what it means for humans to respond to a picture as a picture before Gendlin:

(Langer, 1942/1957, p. 69)

For instance, the childish outline drawing (fig. 1) on page 69 is immediately recognized as a rabbit, yet it really looks so unlike one that even a person nearly blind could not for a moment be made to think that he saw a rabbit sitting on the open page of his book. All it shares with the “reality” is a certain proportion of parts—the position and relative length of “ears,” the dot where an “eye” belongs, the “head” and “body” in relation to each other, etc. Beside it is exactly the same figure with different ears and tail (fig. 2); any child will accept it as a cat. Yet cats don’t look like log-tailed, short-eared rabbits, in reality. Neither are they flat and white, with a papery texture and a black outline running round them. But all these traits of the pictured cat are irrelevant, because it is merely a symbol, not a pseudo-cat. (Langer, 1942/1957, pp. 68-9)

Gendlin also makes a similar argument to Langer, but only for the cat on the right.

How is it that a piece of cardboard can be the picture of a cat? The picture is flat and the cat is not. The picture is made of cardboard and the cat is not. Just a head is impossible alone. It can also be of any size. What makes it the picture of a cat? The answer is, of course, that it has the proportions of a cat. If not, it doesn't look alike a cat. Proportions are relations between many parts, for example the vertical length of the ears in relation to the curve between them, and both in relation to the eyes. Such a set of proportional relations between parts is a pattern. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 114)

That is all that Gendlin has in common with Langer. In what follows, Gendlin expands from discussing patterns to his argument of “doubled perception.”

Gendlin argues that when humans acquire the ability to see things as patterns, they can move and separate the cat’s features from their actual place.

Patterns (or proportional relations) are inherently separable from things. A pattern is what can be copied. Even if some pattern happens to exist only in one place in the universe, still, as a pattern it could exist in other places as well. What a pattern is, is separable. Being separable derives from this movability of patterns. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 115)

Something that can happen in more than one place is inherently independent of this or that place. Proportions are inherently independent of where they are. Here they are on flesh, there on cardboard. In the two places the lengths are also different, but this length is as much greater than that length, the same in both places. A pattern is inherently separable from the surroundings. The relations that make a picture are "spatial relations." A pattern can make the same relations regardless of what is there. (Gendlin, 1991, pp. 116-7)

The characteristics of the pattern make it possible to separate it from the real cat and respond as a picture to a picture of a cat with the same proportion in another place. This, Gendlin argues, is what distinguishes humans from animals.

The picture is visually a cat, but it is also a piece of cardboard. We humans can have this doubled perception: We react to both at once—we see the cat, but as a picture, we would not think of petting the picture. (Gendlin, 1991, p. 113)

That is why, Gendlin points out, “You expect the cardboard to make a noise if you tap it, but you would be shocked if the cat meowed instead” (Gendlin, 1991, p. 114). This is because we believe the cat is only in the picture and not real.

A characteristic of “doubled perception” that only humans possess, but not animals, is the ability to see a picture of a cat but not pet it as if it were a real cat. The human ability to respond to visual patterns, Gendlin in the ’70s argued, “involves a new type of process, one in which in one way the situation is not changed, not behaved in, and yet in which in another way allows one to process the situation” (Gendlin, 1973, pp. 374-5). Precisely, “not petting the picture” corresponds to “not changing the situation and not behaving in the situation.” This is what is precisely meant by “To respond to a picture is different than to behave at the object pictured as if it were present” in APM. Furthermore, in the same book, Gendlin states, “To respond to a picture as a picture is to live an aboutness.” (Gendlin, 2018, p. 125). So, let us first overview Langer’s consideration of “aboutness” in the discursive use of symbols and then return to Gendlin’s assertion that we respond to a picture as a picture.”

In Langer’s classic work “Philosophy in a New Key,” which I have already quoted, the preposition “about” appears casually. For example, “we are able to think about the object without reacting to it overtly at all” (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 64). The following are specific examples of “without reacting to it overtly at all”:

If you say “James” to a dog whose master bears that name, the dog will interpret the sound as a sign [signal], and look for James. Say it to a person who knows someone called thus, and he will ask: “What about James?” That simple question is forever beyond the dog... (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 62)

A term which is used symbolically and not signally does not evoke action appropriate to the presence of its object. If I say: “Napoleon,” you do not bow to the conqueror of Europe as though I had introduced him, but merely think of him. (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 60)

In other words, we humans are able to think about James without the overt behavior of looking for him at all, and we are able to think about Napoleon without the overt behavior of bowing to him at all. This is the “aboutness” on the discursive use of what Gendlin once said in his discussion of the picture, “in one way the situation is not changed, not behaved in, and yet in which in another way allows one to process the situation.”

In Langer’s example above, when one says the word “Napoleon”, “we are able to think about the object without reacting to it overtly at all”. However, this is not limited to the discursive use of symbols such as words; it also applies to the non-discursive use of symbols such as pictures. In other words, although Langer did not say it, I consider it can be applied to the non-discursive use as well: “When I show you a picture of Napoleon, you do not bow to this European conqueror as if you had been introduced to him, but only think of him.”

(David, 1801)

I interpret this as the meaning of “To respond to a picture as a picture is to live an aboutness.”

References:

David, J.L. (1801). Napoleon Crossing the Alps

Gendlin, E.T. (1973). A phenomenology of emotions: anger. In D. Carr & E.S. Casey (Eds.), Explorations in phenomenology (pp. 367-98). Martinus Nijhoff.

Gendlin, E.T. (1986). Let your body interpret your dreams. Chiron.

Gendlin, E. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden, & M. Moen (Eds.), The Presence of Feeling in Thought (pp. 21–151). Peter Lang.

Gendlin, E. T. (2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Gendlin, E.T., Grindler, D. & McGuire, M. (1984). Imagery, body, and space in focusing. In A.A. Sheikh (Ed.), Imagination and healing (pp. 259-86). Baywood.

Langer, S.K. (1942/1957). Philosophy in a new key: a study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art (3rd ed.). Harvard University Press.