How we know what our bodies look like (Symbolic process beginning with “animal gestures”—Gendlin and Mead: 5)

In the section “c) Representation” in “Chapter VII-A: Symbolic Process” of “A Process Model,” Gendlin discusses the difficult question of “how I can know what my body looks like” in the context of discussing “empathy” and argues that G. H. Mead reversed the conventional order:

Empathy is often talked about as if I naturally somehow know what my own body looks like when I feel a certain way. Then, when I see someone else looking that way, I assume that they feel as I do, when I look that way. This view fails to wonder how I can know what my body looks like, considering that I rarely see my own body from the outside. Since G. H. Mead, many others have also reversed this order. First others respond to how I look, and only thereby does my body feeling come to imply a look.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 119)

As far as I know, no section in his representative work “Mind, self, and society” (Mead, 1934) discusses this topic in depth. However, it seems that the topic is discussed in his earlier works.

The argument above would correspond to the following passage in Mead’s published paper:

One’s own gestures could not take on meaning directly. The gestures aroused by them in others would be that upon which attention is centered. ... It is only through the response that consciousness of meaning appears, a response which involves the consciousness of another self as the presupposition of the meaning in one's own attitude. Other selves in a social environment logically antedate the consciousness of self which introspection analyzes. They must be admitted as there, as given, in the same sense in which psychology accepts the given reality of physical organisms as a condition of individual consciousness.” (Mead, 1910, p. 179 [SW, 111-2])

Furthermore, Gendlin’s argument would correspond to the following passages in “1914 Class Lectures in Social Psychology” (Mead, 1982), which was published 50 years after Mead’s death:

We are not aware of how we look or of the general attitude of our body, though we react to these attitudes in others.” (Mead, 1982, p. 103)

In dealing with another person we are aware of little shifts of attention, How do I appear to him? ... In immediate intercourse we are normally aware of him, his gestures serve as a stimulus to us.” (Mead, 1982, p. 104)

References

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Mead, G.H. (1910). What social objects must psychology presuppose? The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7(7), 174-80.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. (edited by C.W. Morris). University of Chicago Press.

Mead, G.H. (1964/1981). Selected writings [Abbreviated as SW] (edited by A.J. Reck). University of Chicago Press.

Mead, G.H. (1982). 1914 class lectures in social psychology. In The individual and the social self: unpublished work of George Herbert Mead (edited by D.L. Miller) (pp. 27-105). University of Chicago Press.