CONSCIOUSNESS

198 5. Experiential Approaches
knowing that creates a conversation between the explicit and implicit. Felt sense consciousness
can be languaged or given interpretive meaning, thereby influencing cognition, but only
after the experiencing. In turn, the languaged and interpreted experience in the now can be
given back to the felt sense for validation, which in turn functions as a platform from which
the next step of felt sensing can come. This dialog between the implicit and explicit is critical
for the moving forward process of change. The phenomenal sense of certain knowing and
scripted action, the characteristic thoughtfulness of explicit consciousness, meets the (mindful)
awareness of being-in-the-world in the current moment and the characteristic emotionality
of implicit consciousness, and at this intersection exists the potential for change - in the
emotion’s thoughts and in the thought’s emotions. The role of the therapist is to assist in making
this encounter safe, negotiable and accessible in conscious awareness. P11
299 The Consciousness of Bodily Felt Sense in Focusing (Gendlin): An Adaptive
Resonance Theory (Grossberg) Account with Application to Experiential
Psychotherapy P David Glanzer, Annmarie Early (Eastern
Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA)
Gendlin’s (1998) method of Focusing works to enhance the consciousness of bodily felt
sense at the ‘edge’ between implicit and explicit consciousness. Focusing has been taught
widely as one path of consciousness training and has also been empirically validated as effective
in its applications within experiential psychotherapies. Focusing works toward conscious
encounter at the interface between the unformed ‘bottom-up’ and the formed ‘top-down’
processes - at this ‘edge’ is the possibility of new awareness. Adaptive Resonance Theory
(Grossberg, 1980) is a conceptually derived (from apriori psychological givens) system for
unsupervised arbitrary pattern learning that, in an extensive series of computer implementations
(cf. Glanzer, 2006, 2008) allows exploration of the microprocesses of learning. The
theory generalizes as a useful model of how bottom-up and top-down processes interleave to
create flexible and stable learning. Much of the work in this system is done at the intersection
of top-down and bottom-up process where patterns coming from both directions meet, and,
if matching to a given attentional criterion, create resonant dynamics, but, if mismatching,
create the potential for new pattern learning. The primary system parameter is the degree
of arousal or vigilance at this match/mismatch intersection between memory (the historical
record) and current inputs. The concepts and dynamics of this ART system generalize well to
an account of these dynamics in phenomenological language that is used to describe change
processes in experiential psychotherapies. In particular, Gendlin’s felt sense of working at
the ‘edge’ between implicit and explicit processes maps well to the ART model. Emotion
focused therapy, an experiential psychotherapy, also maps well to the model, with respect to
the management of arousal and other microprocesses of establishing new patterns to override
maladaptive scripts (Greenberg, 2002; Fosha, 2000). Utilizing the systems perspectives
in adaptive resonance theory suggests new ways of conceptualizing the process of ‘thinking
at the edge’ (Gendlin, 2004) and the micro-processes and strategies within the experiential
therapies. Within experiential therapies, these resonant processes emerge not only intrapersonally,
but also interpersonally in the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client,
and in couples therapy, between partners. The ART model, originally applied to modeling
the interface between external bottom-up and internal top-down patterns, also applies to the
interface between any two systems capable of establishing mutually informed resonant patterns
of activation. This theoretical perspective can be used to help understand what makes the
therapist-client relationship ‘therapeutic’, and how well established but maladaptive resonant
patterns between persons can be supplanted by more functional resonant patterns. P5
300 Origin and Function of Fantasy in Freud’s Works Carlos Alberto Mattos Ferreira
(Independent, Carlos Alberto de Mattos Ferreira by WAK Editora
- Rio de Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
The objective of this study was to investigate the origin and function of fantasy based on
the Works of Sigmund Freud by means of performance in the constitution of human psychism
and its importance in producing the sense of life. The bibliographical research was undertaken