Do Events Have Effects? A Commentary on Polizzi and Draper

Polizzi and Draper offer an elegant application of a phenomenological approach to the practice of psychotherapy within the penal context. They describe how—even though faced with layers of sedimented meanings that pre-signify setting and participants—therapists and inmates may find ways to be open to each other and to genuine encounters that they, following Marion, conceptualize as “events.” A major concern of their analysis is the degree to which the institutional environment works against the occurrence of such encounters and the challenges therapists and inmates face in trying to free themselves from their “encrusted” roles to relate to each other as fellow human beings. I have little to add to their thoughtful analysis on this score, and based on this analysis I am left mostly to wonder how such genuine encounters ever become possible within institutional settings. And yet, as the example offered by Polizzi and Draper suggest, they nonetheless do.

The possibility of genuine human interaction within such an inhumane context speaks to the tremendous resilience of the human spirit, reminding me of poetry written in concentration camps. These also remind me of the everpresent possibility of transcendence that Husserl (1970) accorded transcendental intersubjectivity in his later works, most prominently in his last work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (hereafter referred to as The Crisis). As it happens, the “crisis” that Husserl was concerned with addressing was epitomized by the rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 1930s; the same power that, not so many years later, built these same concentration camps.

For Husserl, as for Marion, consciousness cannot be entirely contained or defined by the strata of sedimented meanings that it has constituted up to any certain point. It is always “more than” any specific situation or circumstance, no matter how “encrusted” they may have become by the residue of earlier acts of constitution. The essence of the human, they suggest, is that it is always already beyond any given set of historical facts that may appear to define or constrain it—which is why, according to Husserl, human sciences can never be, nor should they aspire to be, predictive (Davidson & Cosgrove, 2002). The world is constantly being created anew, and can change in unexpected, even unprecedented, ways at any time.

This framework helps to account for how inmates and psychotherapists can enter into genuine encounters even within the context of the prison. Polizzi and Draper have now mapped out for us, in very useful ways, the various possibilities that can arise between these two parties depending on whether one or both parties manage to open themselves up to an encounter (i.e., closed-closed, open-closed, closed-open, and open-open). But what does this framework suggest about the consequences of such encounters? What happened, I am left to wonder, to the client who was able to say, “Dave, I didn’t think I was an animal.” If, in fact, such events are transformative—which is what Polizzi and Draper suggest—how exactly did this deeply felt recognition transform Dave’s client? What happened next? And what implications does this possibility of transformation have for penal, and psychiatric, policy and practice?

Polizzi and Draper’s analysis, as rich and elegant as it is, remains incomplete if we do not consider the consequences of these events, if we do not ask the question of what happens next. I am driven to this question not so much out of intellectual curiosity or as a philosophical exercise, but rather as a result of very pressing pragmatic concerns I face in my roles as a mental health practitioner and policy maker. I will illustrate these concerns through the following clinical vignette, which occurred early in my training as a clinical psychologist.

During my internship year, I was placed on an acute psychiatric inpatient unit in a community hospital where I was to serve as a therapist for a small caseload of adults with serious mental illnesses. One of these patients was a 42-year-old man with schizophrenia who had had more than 50 hospitalizations previous to my meeting him on the unit. In addition to numerous acute admissions of 1 to 2 weeks duration, he had had several extended stays at the regional state hospital of several months up to a year or more. Simply stated, he had thus far been unsuccessful in establishing a solid, enduring foundation for a life in the community and, as a result, had spent most of the previous 20 years in and out of hospitals.

I believe that the challenges he and I faced in attempting to develop a genuine and trusting relationship were similar to those of the inmates and therapists in Polizzi and Draper’s analysis. Rather than a criminal, my patient was viewed as a “chronic paranoid schizophrenic,” designated in the clinical records of the day simply as a “CPS.” I was not to expect much of him. On my part, I was undoubtedly just the latest well-meaning, but nameless and faceless, mental health practitioner that he had had the unfortunate occasion to meet, and he had no reason to expect our relationship to be anything other than perfunctory and short-lived (like most of the other relationships in his life). Nonetheless, armed with the therapeutic ambition I had as an idealistic and inexperienced intern, along with the philosophical commitment I had derived from my reading of R. D. Laing’s work on the humanity of persons with psychosis, I went about the work of trying to “connect” with this man. And connect we did.

Given his history of scores of prior hospitalizations, the attending psychiatrist and unit chief did not exert any pressure on me to discharge this man as quickly as was the typical pace of the unit (which at the time had an average length of stay of about 1 month). As long as I was reporting progress in his treatment and in setting up a discharge plan that had a reasonable chance of succeeding, and as long as the patient was not asking to be discharged (because he had nowhere to go), I was allowed the luxury of developing a relationship with him over a several-month period. Having persistent hallucinations and delusions on an everyday basis despite the medications he was given, there was no appreciable change in his psychiatric status during this period either, so few staff questioned his need for continued care on the unit. And so, over the course of several months, we got to know each other.

In addition to talking about the voices he heard and the thoughts he had, we discussed his interests, his past, his family, and his future. We explored discharge plans and found an apartment in the community not far from his mother and sisters, and he agreed that he would attend an intensive outpatient program at the hospital once he was discharged. He took a pass to spend the night in his new apartment and reported on his return that he had had 4 hrs of uninterrupted silence from his voices the evening before. A discharge date was set and a family meeting was held to solidify the plans, of which his family was fully supportive. And then all hell broke loose.

In the clinical vernacular of the day, the patient went about “sabotaging” this finely crafted discharge plan. He refused to take any further passes, refused the apartment that had been secured for him, refused the referral to the intensive outpatient program, tried to refuse taking medications, and, most significant to me, refused to talk to me. The “more experienced” clinicians stepped in to “clean up” what they considered the “mess” I had made due to my naiveté, which translated into their arranging for a transfer of the patient back to the regional state hospital where he had been numerous times before. While they hoped I had learned a lesson about CPSs, I felt hurt and deeply disappointed. On the day that the transfer was to take place, I tried yet again to talk to this man, but this time rather than simply ignoring me, which he had been doing by this time for days, he became agitated and walked away from me. When I followed him, he would continue to walk away, keeping at least about 12 feet between us. Finally, not to be deterred, I happened onto the unit at a time when he was at the end of a hallway sitting by a window. By the time he realized that I had approached him, I had him somewhat cornered at the end of the hallway, with nowhere else to go. This time, looking hurt and deeply disappointed himself, he responded to my apology (for whatever mistakes I had made during his stay) with an angry rebuff as he stormed past me back toward the center of the unit. All he said was, “Don’t you understand that you are not enough for me?!”

I was not enough, our relationship was not enough, to ensure that he would be able to manage living in the community after discharge. I imagine that Dave also would not have been enough, his relationship with his client would not have been enough, to ensure that the inmate who had been convicted of rape would be able to establish a new (and nonoffending) life in the community, once released from prison. What, then, is the function, or the consequence, of such encounters? Why do we strive to have them, and what do we hope they will achieve? From the perspective of the prison or hospital administration, why should we deploy therapists to try to connect with inmates or patients in this way? Is this simply a waste of money and human resources? Is it like teaching poetry to children in a concentration camp when we know they are going to die regardless? Or does it have some lasting effects that—while not sufficient of themselves—may still play key roles in initiating and sustaining a more substantive, and more complex, transformation process? I would like to know how Polizzi and Draper would answer this question.

For my part, I do not claim to know the answer. I believe, however, that there are at least two ways, within the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions, to attempt to answer this question. The first answer is the one suggested by Polizzi and Draper, largely by virtue of their not raising the question in the first place. This answer I associate with Heidegger and the hermeneutic tradition, as this is the tradition in which the question I am raising may itself be considered to be irrelevant.

In this perspective, “events”—as described by Marion and Romano—are relatively ineffable breakthroughs or irruptions that leave little in the way of traces behind them. They are similar to the notion of “play” in Sartre’s early work (1956), which he likened to a skier sliding down a slope but without leaving tracks in the snow. Experiences that cannot be captured in terms of previously sedimented sense, these also are experiences that cannot contribute substantively to the creation of new sense either. They take place in the “beyond” of language and culture, and therefore cannot change language or culture either. Heidegger (1959) characterized the source of such experiences as BEING overlaid with an X (BEING) to indicate that language was incapable of conveying the meaning of BEING (as language objectifies, and BEING is itself the subjective).

The question I am raising in this commentary may not make sense within this perspective because the question of the consequences or functions of “events” is already an “ontic” concern that does not apply to the level or nature of BEING. Genuine encounters between people, as well as genuine encounters with the sacred—what Martin Buber (1970) wrote eloquently about as an “I-Thou” (as opposed to “I-It”) relationship—are manifestations of the good in and of itself. They need not lead to any “results” at the level of instrumentality or functionality; these concerns pertain solely to the realm of the “I-It.” In this sense, even to ask the question I am asking is a profane exercise that distorts the true nature of BEING. Within this perspective, it is not too much of a stretch to say that the function of psychotherapy, if it can even be said to serve a function, is akin to that of the Catholic confessional—as suggested by Foucault (1978). In the example offered by Polizzi and Draper, Dave’s client might just as well have remarked to a priest, “Father, I didn’t think I was an animal.” It is not clear how this would have led to anything different or other than making such a remark to a therapist, if in fact it leads to anything at all.

By virtue of the fact that I am raising this question, it should be evident that I am not totally satisfied with this perspective and the answer it offers. Heidegger, after all, was a member of the National Socialist Party, and he may well have had his own reasons for why he needed BEING to remain well outside of the ontic realm—equally inaccessible, but therefore also equally accessible, to all. But didn’t Husserl also conceptualize transcendental intersubjectivity as “beyond” or “outside” the realm of constituted sense? What alternative is there to understanding the nature of the genuine encounter and its transformative effects?

In contrast to a Heideggerian–hermeneutic perspective, I would like to propose, albeit tentatively, a Husserlian–Deleuzian perspective. Unfortunately, neither Husserl nor Deleuze addressed the question before us in any kind of direct way. It is therefore left up to us to try to discern what answers can be derived from their understanding of the issue at hand. With respect to Husserl, this can be understood in terms of the performance of the transcendental (phenomenological) reduction in which consciousness becomes aware of itself as the (inter) subjective source of the objects of its own awareness, including that of the one world we all share (thus the need for inter subjectivity). One important difference between Husserl and Heidegger on this score is that for Husserl, performance of the transcendental reduction does have effects in the world. In The Crisis, for example, Husserl (1970) writes,

With the break with naiveté brought about by the transcendental-phenomenological reorientation there occurs a significant transformation, significant for psychology itself. As a phenomenologist, I can, of course, at any time go back into the natural attitude, back to the straightforward pursuit of my theoretical or other life-interests; I can, as before, be active as a father, a citizen, an official, as a “good European,” etc. . . . that is, as a human being in my human community . . . As before—and yet not quite as before. For I can never again achieve the old naiveté; I can only understand it. My transcendental insights and purposes have become merely inactive, but they continue to be my own. (p. 210)

What does Husserl mean by “my transcendental insights and purposes have become merely inactive” but continue nonetheless “to be my own”? He is suggesting that, while the person cannot remain indefinitely within the transcendental frame of the reduction, the transcendental insights that come from performing the reduction transform those involved in such a way that they will never be able to return to the life they were leading prior to this experience. This transformation resembles the kind of personal transformation that Polizzi and Draper described in which the person comes to accept a new or deeper sense of responsibility than he or she had had prior to the encounter. How, though, does such an experience lead to a deeper sense of responsibility? When the experience is an interpersonal one, as in the therapist–client interaction, we might imagine that such a sense of responsibility would arise from recognition of the other as a fellow human being, worthy of respect (as suggested, for example, by Buber [1970] and Levinas [1969]). But Husserl (1970) suggests that the ramifications of these experiences are broader. He writes, again in The Crisis,

All the new sorts of apperception which are exclusively tied to the . . . reduction, together with the new sort of language (new even if I use ordinary language, as is unavoidable, though its meanings are also unavoidably transformed)—all this, which before was completely hidden and inexpressible . . . now flows into the self-objectification, into my psychic life, and becomes apperceived as its newly revealed intentional background of constitutive accomplishments. (p. 210)

Husserl appears to be less concerned about the inadequacy of language to capture the nature of the transformation than he is with the nature of the transformation itself. What the transformation involves is coming to understand that human experience, and the world in which it takes place, are “constitutive accomplishments” of transcendental intersubjectivity. I am not only responsible to my fellow human beings for how I treat them, but I am also, along with my fellow human beings, responsible for the shared world we have created and continue, each and every minute, to create through our actions.

In my transcendental naiveté, I took the world to be given as complete and predetermined, as existing independently of human experience; in our examples, this would consist of prisons and hospitals that are punitive, inhumane institutions that make genuine human encounters extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The reduction does not question the fact that this is what these particular institutions are at the present time. But once the reduction is performed, we understand the human world of social, cultural, and political institutions and enterprises to be an artifact of previous human actions and to be constantly in a state of becoming, that is, to be changeable, rather than as an extension of the “definite manifold” that is the world of Nature. Again, Husserl (1970) writes,

Nature can be thought as definite manifold, and we can take this idea as a basis hypothetically. But in so far as the world is a world of knowledge, a world of consciousness, a world with human beings, such an idea is absurd for it to an unsurpassable degree. (p. 265)

Polizzi and Draper most likely would agree that penal institutions have been made by humans and can be changed by humans, just as we likely would all agree that the world of Nature is also constantly changing. And it is quite possible that this point simply lies outside the scope of their analysis. But their analysis, on the surface, seemed to accept the punitive and inhumane nature of the prison as a given. They did not discuss, that is, how Dave’s experience with his client might effect broader changes in that very same institutional culture, not only through Dave’s actions but also through his client’s actions as well.

This is where Deleuze (1983) enters the picture, in his characterization of what Marion calls “events” as “effects.” In other words, Deleuze would suggest that “events” have “effects,” not only for the two people who may be involved in the encounter but for the world at large. If transcendental intersubjectivity, as manifest through human beings, is what is responsible for the constituted meanings we encounter in our experiences, then each and every act of constitution must be understood also as an “effect,” as contributing in one way or another to the perpetuation or transformation of the human world in which we live. To be concrete, every time a forensic psychotherapist treats an inmate as other-than-human, he or she confirms and strengthens the nature of the prison as an inhumane, punitive institution. Conversely, and more to the point, each time a forensic psychotherapist treats an inmate as a fellow human being with compassion and respect, he or she begins to change the nature of the prison, to reduce its pernicious effects on all parties.

In this sense, it is not sufficient to focus on being open to another person within the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship. One must also take into account, and address, the nature of the setting in which the psychotherapy is conducted. Presumably, Dave’s relationship with his client is different from that of priest and confessor, as Dave’s focus is on his client’s rehabilitation and enhanced ability to live a prosocial life in the community once his time has been served. But that means that Dave’s sphere of responsibility goes beyond his relationship with his client, beyond their encountering each other in an open and humane fashion within the context of an inhumane institution. The transformation that needs to occur is not just of Dave and his client, but of the institution as a whole. This is the lesson my patient taught me. Dave cannot be enough for his client anymore than I could be enough for my patient. The world in which we all live, including its various institutions, has to change as well. Such change is the broader, deeper, and more profound effect of the encounters that Polizzi and Draper describe.