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

We humans, unlike animals, do not think of petting a cat in a picture. Responding to a picture as a picture is not the same as behaving as if the cat were real, as Gendlin argues in “A Process Model” (Gendlin, 1997/2018). How does not behaving in the situation but processing it relates to the ability to see things as symbols—the human capacity for aboutness? I have explored this relationship with reference to his other philosophical paper, “Thinking beyond patterns” (Gendlin, 1991), and the work of his precursor, Susanne Langer (1895-1985), an American philosopher.

Pictures and animals

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, 1997/2018, 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)

Pictures for humans: “proportion of parts” and patterns

In the early 1970s, Gendlin argued that animals cannot respond to a picture as a picture, but he did not specifically or clearly discuss why we humans can respond to a picture as a picture. This point was revisited in a paper published in the early 1990s, “Thinking Beyond Patterns” (Gendlin, 1991), which again drew on Langer’s philosophy. This paper discussed 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, 1997/2018, p. 125)

What connects Langer’s discussion with Gendlin’s discussion of patterns in the 1990s is the “proportion of parts” property of pictures. First, let’s look at Langer’s specific discussion of what it means for humans to perceive 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... (Langer, 1942/1957, pp. 68-9)

What property must a picture have in order to represent its object? Must it really share the visual appearance of the object? Certainly not to any high degree. It ... may be much larger or much smaller than the object; it is certainly flat.... The reason for this latitude is that the picture is essentially a symbol, not a duplicate, of what it represents. It has certain salient features by virtue of which it can function as a symbol for its object. (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 68)

Gendlin also made 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; cf. 1992, p. 41)

That was all that Gendlin had in common with Langer.

Not petting the cat in the picture: separability and movability of patterns

Gendlin expanded from discussing patterns to his argument of “doubled perception.” He argued that when humans acquired the ability to see things as patterns, they could 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; cf. 1992, p. 42)

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; cf. 1992, p. 43)

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 argued, 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; cf. 1992, p. 40)

That is why, Gendlin pointed 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. This leads to the next assertion in APM:

A picture is of something that need not be present. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 125)

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 precisely meant by “To respond to a picture is different than to behave at the object pictured as if it were present” in APM.

Not bowing to the word “Napoleon”: “aboutness” in words

Furthermore, in the same book, Gendlin stated, “To respond to a picture as a picture is to live an aboutness.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 125). So, let us first overview Langer’s consideration of “aboutness” in the discursive use of symbols such as words (Tanaka, 2024, January) and then return to Gendlin’s assertion that “we respond to a picture as a picture.”

In Langer’s classic book “Philosophy in a New Key,” which I have already quoted, the preposition “about” appears casually:

...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 “not evoking action appropriate to the presence of its object” 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 we could say that a good example of “to process the situation” is to ask: “What about James?”

Langer contrasts the property of words as symbols with signals and argues as follows:

Most of our words are not signs in the sense of signals. They are used to talk about things, not to direct our eyes and ears and noses toward them ... They serve, rather, to let us develop a characteristic attitude toward objects in absentia, which is called “thinking of” … what is not here. “Signs” used in this capacity are … symbols. (Langer, 1942/1957, p. 31)

If words as signals simply direct animals’ eyes and ears and noses toward things, it is an attitude toward objects in existentia. According to Langer, however, words as symbols have the power to make us think of what is not here. This idea can be said to have been extended in later APM to “A picture is of something that need not be present.”

Not bowing to the picture of Napoleon: “aboutness” in visual patterns

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.”

Not climbing the look of a tree: an interpretation of ‘pause’ in “A Process Model”

Based on the concrete considerations above, it will be easier to understand that Gendlin discusses the following in APM, before the discursive use of symbols such as words begins.

Behavior space now includes some sequences with pauses (dance, gesturing) in them. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 127)

We could say that not bowing to the picture is one of these pauses. The pause corresponds to “without behaving,” “does not resume behavior,” and “a having, sequencing, in a way that is not behaving” in the following passages:

The object’s look is symbolic. ... One can now see an object as that kind of object (belonging to that behavior context) without behaving. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 128)

A seen is a pattern. It is not the food (say the object is food) but its look and sound. One cannot feed on a look or a sound. At first, a seen does not resume behavior.... The seen is (for example) the configuration of the food. A seen is of. It is about. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)

We can think of or think about food without behaving, such as eating it, by its look or configuration.

The purely visual, or the sound, the smell—these are symbolic products, are possible only after, and because of, a having, sequencing, in a way that is not behaving—just as we don’t behave with the mere look of a tree. We don’t climb the look of a tree. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 129)

The passages above could be said to describe more broadly how pauses can occur in situations other than looking at pictures, and how we can perceive things as symbols.

Conclusion

As Langer had already argued, the reason that animals do not respond to a picture as a picture is that they cannot perceive a picture as a symbol. However, her consideration of the properties of symbols, as typified by the usage of the prepositions “about” or “of,” was limited to the discursive use of symbols such as words. Gendlin, on the other hand, applied her consideration that symbols, unlike signals, “do not evoke actions appropriate to the presence of their object” or “let us develop a characteristic attitude toward objects in absentia, which is called thinking of what is not here” to non-discursive uses of symbols. In this way, he was able to point out that “aboutness” can already be seen at the point of “doubled perception,” which originates in proportional relations between parts in a picture. This enabled him to explain in more detail how symbolic perception develops gradually, rather than abruptly, from non-discursive to discursive use.

References

David, J.L. (1801). Bonaparte franchissant le Grand-Saint-Bernard.

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. (1992). Meaning prior to the separation of the five senses. In M. Stamenov (Ed.), Current advances in semantic theory (pp. 31-53). John Benjamins.

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). 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.

Tanaka, H. (2024, January). Words and visual patterns: in light of Gendlin and Langer’s discussions.