From individualistic to relational view of human condition
Frank Martela
1.4.2011
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 2
The modern western individual as a ‘bounded being’ ....................................................... 4
Towards a more relational self-understanding .................................................................. 9
Attunement and caregiving .............................................................................................. 20
Attunement ................................................................................................................... 20
Caregiving...................................................................................................................... 23
References ........................................................................................................................ 26
We do not begin our inquiries, especially metaphysical ones, except under certain
defining situations. Unless one has lived and interacted with others, learned a
language and participated in a culture with its stories and traditions, one cannot
even begin asking questions.” (Alexander, 1987, p. 88)
Introduction
A new, more relational view of human being is emerging within contemporary scientific
discourse. In fields as variable as neuroscience and neuroimagining (Hari & Kujala,
2009), personality psychology (Andersen & Chen, 2002), organizational research
(Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000), infant research (Stern, 1985), psychoanalytic theorizing
(Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2003; Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002b) and
philosophy (Buber, 1987; Levinas, 1979; Merleau-Ponty, 2002) there are contemporary
researchers that make the case for a more intersubjective understanding of their
subject matter. This new research has come to challenge many of the basic assumptions
taken as self-evident by modern western individuals both inside and outside of the
scholarly community.
In this chapter my attempt is to make sense of this more relational view of humanity
and contrast it with traditional individualism. I build up a picture of relational being in
which one understands oneself to be essentially connected and embedded within one’s
social relations rather than seeing oneself as a strictly separate entity. Relational
understanding expands both explanations of behavior and locus of control as well as
motivation, responsibility and self-sufficiency beyond the traditional individualistic
boundaries of the self. On a fundamental level, relational paradigm means that one
looks at oneself as not “separate from others” but has rather a sense of being
“connected with others” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 226).
At the outset it must be made clear on what level of abstraction the following discussion
will take place. My attempt is not to offer relationality as a full-fledged scientific theory
of human being that should come and replace the existing western paradigm. More
modestly, I attempt to make us aware of the existence of an alternate way of looking at
the world and human beings and demonstrate how our perception and understanding
of many fundamental issues of being human is dependent upon the chosen paradigm.
My aim is thus to offer a lens through which to understand human beings and their
relations to each other that contrasts with the view of human being that has dominated
western culture for the last couple of centuries. We are thus operating on a very deep
level, beyond what is expressed in our theories about human behavior. Individualism
and relationalism should be seen in Gadamerian terms as horizons of understanding
(Gadamer, 2004) or as what Charles Taylor calls social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002).
Gadamerian hermeneutics means acknowledging how our understanding always
emerges within a larger context of meaning – a ‘horizon’ – that is particular and by and
large determined by our historically determined situatedness. Social imaginary, in turn,
is “not a set of ideas; rather it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of
a society” (Taylor, 2002, p. 91). Third way to understand these paradigms is to say that
they represent the basic and culturally habituated ways of making sense of the world
around us (Weick, 1995). From now on, I will use the term paradigm of thought to refer
to these basic patterns of thought that provide for us a “context of understanding” that
involves “both matters that will probably have been explicitly formulated by almost
everyone” and some “which form the implicit, largely unfocussed background of this
experience and search, its ‘pre-ontology’, to use a Heideggerian term” (Taylor, 2007, p.
3).1 Put still in other way, they are the “repertoire of self-relevant schemata used to
evaluate, organize, and regulate one’s experience and action” (Markus & Kitayama,
1991, p. 229).2
These two paradigms – the individualistic and relational – should thus not be seen as
scientific theories about human being but rather as something that operate below such
theories – as largely implicit schemas through which we make sense of the world around
us. Such large-scale paradigms of thought “are neither true or false; they are simply
human constructions around which we organize our lives” (Gergen, 2009, p. xvi). So
when I contrast individualism with relationalism, I am not putting two scientific theories
against each other. Rather, I am offering an alternative paradigm through which to look
at the world and especially the human being. The relative merits of these two paradigms
is therefore not found in proofing either of them right or wrong but in trying to assess
their usefulness in understanding various forms of human behavior. Their major
contribution to the scientific process is that they highlight different aspects of reality
and human behavior for the researcher. They do not only affect what kind of
phenomenon we find important and interesting, they also affect what kind of
phenomena we see in the first place and how we come to draw the boundaries of these
phenomena. They determine what we lay our eyes upon and what kind of explanations
we seek. Thus the relational paradigm presented here does not challenge and make
obsolete the individualistic paradigm but rather complements it by helping us observe,
lay our focus on and make sense of such phenomena that have remained uncaptured by
the now dominant paradigm.
This review will be of necessity quite philosophical, simply because we have to dig
deeply into the basic and often unarticulated patterns of human sense-making in order
to really understand the essential differences between the two paradigms. The review
will also be multidisciplinary. To make the case for this relational view I borrow material
from a variety of different scientific disciplines including psychology, social psychology,
1
These paradigms of thought I am referring to operate simultaneously on both the cultural level and the
individual level. As Sampson notes: “indigenous psychology stands in a dual relationship to its surrounding
culture. On the one hand, an indigenous psychology (of either type) derives from the culture; on the
other, it plays an important role in reproducing the structures, values, and beliefs that mark the culture”
(Sampson, 1988, p. 18).
2
Despite some important differences in their detail, I take the Gadamerian horizon of understanding,
Taylorian social imaginaries and Weickian sensemaking as attempting to capture the same basic
phenomenon. Their differences are not relevant for the present discussion.
infant studies, therapeutic discourse as well as philosophy and anthropology. In order to
make a contrast, I start out by sketching a picture of the modern western individual; the
view of humanity that has dominated western countries for the last couple of centuries.
After that I show, how a new, more relational view of humanity is emerging within the
western scientific discourse and how it challenges the individualism’s basic assumptions
on many different fronts simultaneously. Having after that made a distinction between
individualism, relationalism and collectivism, I conclude by discussing attunement and
caregiving in more detail.
The modern western individual as a ‘bounded being’
We’ll start out by outlining in broad strokes how the western culture has come to view
human beings in modern times. I will concentrate on six essential features of the
western worldview that affect the way we look at and understand ours and others
humanity. My account will be interdisciplinary and based upon analyses of the western
subject in five different scientific disciplines – psychology and social psychology (Gergen,
2009; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai, & Lucca, 1988),
philosophy (Sartre, 1965; Taylor, 1989; 1991), sociology (Bellah, Sullivan, Tipton,
Swidler, & Madsen, 1985), anthropology (Geertz, 1974) and psychoanalytic theorizing
(Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005; Boston Change Process Study Group, 2010;
Stolorow et al., 2002b). Before breaking this western view of the individual into its
constitutive elements, we’ll first look how one central representative of each of these
five disciplines summarizes their own account in order to get a sense of the wholeness
of the issue at hand.
Within psychology, Markus and Kitayama have summarized “the so-called Western view
of the individual as an independent, self-contained, autonomous entity who (a)
comprises a unique configuration of internal attributes (e.g. traits, abilities, motives, and
values) and (b) behaves primarily as a consequence of these internal attributes” (Markus
& Kitayama, 1991, p. 224). The anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in turn, has famously
described the “Western conception of the person” as “a bounded, unique, more or less
integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness,
emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively
both against other such wholes and against a social and natural background” (Geertz,
1993, p. 59).
Turning to philosophy, Charles Taylor has provided a detailed analysis of the historical
developments that have lead to a “certain understanding of inwardness” to become
“peculiar to the modern West” (Taylor, 1994, p. 185). Modern inwardness means that
we have a “sense of ourselves as beings with inner depths, and the connected notion
that we are ‘selves’” (Taylor, 1989, p. x). This sense then provides an inescapable
framework or a moral horizon through which we look at our lives and that emphasizes
our autonomy and our duty towards being true to ourselves (Taylor, 1989). Sociologists
Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler and Tipton (1985) in their classical analysis of
individualism and commitment in American life noticed how the norm and moral
discourse of individualism has come to dominate American thinking to the point where
people “have difficulty articulating the richness of their commitments” (Bellah et al.,
1985, pp. 20-21) and instead the moral universe has flattened into the preferences of
isolated and self-interested individuals (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 76). For modern
Americans “the ultimate goals of a good life” are a “matter of personal choice” (Bellah
et al., 1985, p. 22).
Finally, therapists Robert Stolorow, George Atwood and Donna Orange distinguish eight
features of what they call the Cartesian mind: Self-enclosed isolation, the ontological
division between mental and physical realities, mind as a container of subjective psychic
reality as contrasted to the objective outer reality, crave for clarity and distinctiveness,
the exclusive attention to conscious and cognitive thinking, the absence of temporality
of the self, ideas as mental representations of things in the ‘external’ world and finally,
mind as a substance, a thing that has an inside and causally interacts with other things
such as the body (Stolorow et al., 2002b, pp. 21-31)
Many labels have been used to describe this kind of understanding of subjectivity and
personality, including independent construal of the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991),
idiocentric personality (Triandis et al., 1988), Cartesian mind (Stolorow et al., 2002b) as
well as individualist, egocentric, separate, autonomous and self-contained (from Markus
& Kitayama, 1991, p. 226). This cultural individualism is simultaneously an account of
the western understanding of subjectivity, selfhood, mind, individual and personality.
One way to summarize all these accounts is to talk about the western subject as a
‘bounded being’ (Gergen, 2009), emphasizing the fact that these individualistic accounts
put a clear boundary around the self. This idea of strict boundaries comes clear for
example in Spence’s (1985, p. 1288) definition of individualism as “the belief that each
of us is an entity separate from every other and from the group” which leads to “a sense
of self with a sharp boundary that stops at one’s skin and clearly demarks self from
nonself.”
In order to synthesize these multidisciplinary accounts and understand more deeply
what is involved in the western view of the individual, I have distinguished six distinct
elements that are involved in this view of the subject. In actual terms these elements
are deeply intertwined and cannot be understood separated from one another, but
these analytic distinctions have nevertheless been made for reasons of clarity and
illustration.
Firstly, a strict separation is made between the mind and the outer reality. Mind is
conceived as an atomistic entity. As Charles Taylor (1989, p. 111) puts it: "In our
language of self-understanding, the opposition 'inside-outside' plays an important role.
We think of our thoughts, ideas, or feelings as being 'within' us, while the objects in the
world which these mental states bear on are 'without'." This may sound as self-evident
to the western reader of this text, but what must be remembered is that "strong as this
partitioning of the world appears to us, as solid as this localization may seem [- -] it is in
large part a feature of our world, the world of modern, Western people." It is not a
universal localization but rather a "function of a historically limited mode of self-
interpretation, one which has become dominant in the modern West [- -] but which had
a beginning in time and space and may have an end." (Taylor, 1989, p. 111)3.
This ontological split of the world into the subject and object – into the mental and
private on the one hand and to the objectively real that exists independently of any
knower on the other hand is sometimes referred to as ‘Cartesian ontology.’ What it
creates is a view of the mind in which it is deeply separated from the outer reality. The
mind is seen “in isolation, radically separated from an external reality that it either
accurately apprehends or distorts” (Orange et al. 1997: 41). The external world and the
mind are thus two separate and independent entities that interact with each other
through some interface but that are otherwise self-enclosed in their functioning. Mind
becomes an essentially atomistic and self-enclosed entity that is detached from the
external world (Stolorow et al., 2002b, pp. 21-23).
Secondly, we identify ourselves with our inner depths. Having discussed the split
between mind and the world, let's concentrate for a while on what is inside, what do we
understand by the mind. Here, the central characteristic of the modern western culture
is what Charles Taylor (1989, p. x) calls "modern inwardness, the sense of ourselves as
beings with inner depths." We feel that there is a great realm inside of us and what we
are and how we behave are expressions of these inner depths. Surely, all cultures
recognize there being some realm of thoughts and experiences that are in some sense
private to the person, but the emphasis we in the west place on these depths is
remarkable. We identify ourselves with these inner depths, feel that they are what we
as persons or selves truly are (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 226). For us, what a person
is truly about is not primarily determined by situational factors or the specific roles they
have but by the inner attributes of that person that are independent of any situational
factors. In other words, we define ourselves quite exclusively with these inner depths.
Thirdly, we are motivated by our inner selves. The notion of the bounded self emerges
also in understanding human motivation. In individualistic cultures the boundaries of
our motivating forces are often drawn strictly around the individual. When we ask why
people “initiate, terminate, and persist in specific actions in particular circumstances”
the answer in our culture “usually involves some type of internal, individually rooted
need or motive” that is “assumed to be part of the unique, internal core of a person’s
self-system” – for example the motive to enhance one’s self-esteem, the motive to
achieve, the motive to affiliate, the motive to avoid cognitive conflict, or the motive to
self-actualize (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 239).
Here again, what is considered to be normal becomes an ideal and a norm. It is common
place to hear western people state that people are exclusively motivated by their own,
3
In here, we have no space to review the extensive historical analysis of the birth and development of this
notion that Taylor offers (see Taylor, 1989 especially chapters 5-11), suffice it to say that new emphasis
on human action starting from Renaissance, the notion of man finding God from within themselves and
new forms of economical relations emphasizing contract and social mobility all played a role in this shift
towards an inner view of human beings.
inner benefits. Maximizing one’s own benefits and profits is considered to be proper
and rational behavior for a western citizen and deviation from this norm is easily viewed
as a sign of weakness. To put it bluntly, “the person who thinks in terms of the common
good is a ‘sucker’ in a situation where each individual is trying to pursue his or her own
interests” (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 16). This kind of idealization was already present in the
philosophy of John Stuart Mill who famously claimed that “pleasure, and freedom from
pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things [- -] are desirable
either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of
pleasure and the prevention of pain” (Mill, 1863, p. 10). It is also strengthened by the
modern science of economics which is much present in public discourses and which is
too often based on the view that the subject – the homo economicus (see e.g. Bowles &
Gintis, 1993) – is assumed to act in his or her own self-interest. All in all, western
individuals are seen to be motivated primarily by their inner preferences.
Fourthly, we have a moral responsibility towards our inner depths. The construal of
self and others within certain cultures is “tied to the implicit, normative tasks that
various cultures hold for what people should be doing in their lives” (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991, p. 224). As in so many cases, normality thus slips unnoticed into
normativity and attending to our inner depths becomes a moral duty that is very
characteristic of the western way of living. We have internalized as a basic constituent
of our moral outlook the sense that we are primarily responsible for our inner selves
and should always stay true to them, come what may (Bellah et al., 1985). Charles
Taylor calls this the ideal of authenticity (Taylor, 1991). In it “people are called upon to
be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment” (Taylor, 1991, p. 14).
Thus as much as the western individualism should be understood as a descriptive
account of human being it must also be understood as an ideal towards which we
should strive. It regulates our behavior by making some motivations seem acceptable,
normal and rational while other motivations are viewed as abnormal, unacceptable or
signs of weakness. We see ourselves as unique individuals and at the same time we see
attending to and cultivating this uniqueness as a basic duty of our lives. ‘Being true to
oneself’, ‘self-actualization’ and ‘realizing oneself’ are part of our moral ideal; our idea
of what a better or higher mode of life is about (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 226;
Taylor, 1991, p. 16). In addition to seeing ourselves as beings with inner depths we have
internalized a strong sense of obligation towards what we are internally.
Fifthly, there is a strong ideal of self-sufficiency. There is also a deep ideal of selfsufficiency inherent in the western individualism. ”Certainly, others are important for
social comparison, for reflected appraisal, and in their role as the targets of one’s
actions, yet at any given moment, the self is assumed to be a complete, whole,
autonomous entity, without the others” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 246). Pinnacle of
this ideology of self-sufficiency is perhaps found in the philosophy of Sartre, for whom a
human being is radically free and alone and able to define himself as he wants: “Man is
nothing else but that which he makes of himself” (Sartre, 1975, p. 349). Human being is
doomed to freedom and he is doomed there alone (Sartre, 1975, p. 353).
This means also that in western social imaginary, the individual is seen as prior to
society. As a result of this Lockean individualism, we see that society “comes into
existence only through the voluntary contract of individuals trying to maximize their
self-interest” (Bellah et al., 1985, p. 143). The western ideal is an autonomous individual
that has freely chosen his values and preferences and who interacts with other as an
independent and self-sufficient man. This man might need others instrumentally, for the
fulfillment of some projects, but is never in any deeper or more fundamental need for
the closeness or relatedness of another human being. Thus people are seen as atomistic
entities, sufficient in themselves.
Sixthly, interaction is perceived as causality between two atomistic entities. Finally,
having characterized the western individuals in separation, let’s now try to understand
how the interaction between two such atomistic and self-sufficient beings should be
understood. Stolorow et al. (2002b, p. 24) note how “the residues of subject-object
thinking persist most clearly in interpersonal theories, where a therapeutic relationship
[or any other relationship, we may add] becomes described as an ‘interaction’, and the
‘interaction’ is analyzed in terms of the causal effects that people, understood though
usually not acknowledged as essentially separate monads, are having on each other.” As
people are “fundamentally self-enclosed” (Stolorow et al., 2002b, p. 23) the interaction
is something that happens only between their surfaces, people are related to each other
“like the collision of billiard balls” (Gergen, 2009, p. xvi).
The process of interaction is thus depicted as linear. One entity as a wholeness affects
the other entity as a wholeness; the signal the first-mentioned sends out is perceived as
the cause and the reaction of the second-mentioned is perceived as the effect. Ongoing
interaction is imagined to be ping-pong-like turn-taking series of actions and reactions
(see Martela & Saarinen, 2008, p. 200). Participants are influencing each others from
the outside and as conscious entities. It is me as a conscious whole who is perceiving the
actions of the other and reacting to them accordingly.
Summary: the idealized view of the western individual
So in western cultures a strong ideology has developed during the last centuries that
evolves around the individuals conceived as bounded entities with clear separation
between their inner lives and the outside world that includes other human beings. This
strict boundary is drawn around the individuals when we attempt to understand their
relation to the outer world, when we ask what parts of themselves they identify
themselves with, when we try to explain the source of human behavior, when we
attempt to find where our fundamental moral responsibilities lie, when we attempt to
find what motivates individuals, when we ask what they fundamentally need in life or
when we attempt to understand how human beings interact with each other. In
addition, it might be noted that the elements within the mind – conscious and
unconscious mind – are also often idealized to be bounded, centrally controlled and
clearly defined entities (see Stolorow et al., 2002b, p. 28).
As already said, this should be viewed as highly idealized and robust model of the
western view of the individual. There are different tensions within western thinking
around the model as a whole and within different parts of it. One could readily argue
that no one lives up to the ideal that this model provides and we westerners are still
more embedded within the collectivistic and relational understanding of human being
than most of us would like to admit (see e.g. Bellah et al., 1985). Still, I believe that only
by providing such a model that concentrates on and exaggerates those modes of being
that distinguish the western individualistic culture from other world horizons can we get
a clear and distinct picture of what this western individualism is really about. And this
picture of the western individualism is not just a straw man but reveals much that is
indeed inherent and quite dominant in the self-understanding of the individualistic
cultures.
We must also remember that although this idealized view might not be as true as we
would like to think, it still has some very real consequences – and all of these
consequences are not positive. It has been argued that this individualism has lead to
chronic concern with self-worth through social comparison and competition, distrust in
others, calculation orientation to social life (Gergen, 2009, pp. 14-21), widespread sense
of isolation (Bellah et al., 1985) as well as to a flattening of our moral lives (Taylor,
1991)4. Triandis et al. (1988, p. 326), in turn, suggested that “extreme individualism may
be linked to several forms of social pathology, such as high crime, suicide, divorce, child
abuse, emotional stress and physical and mental illness rates.” Instead of viewing
morality and society as shared projects the isolated individualism has lead into an
attitude caricatured as follows: “If you don’t like what I do, well that’s your problem.
This is a free country.” (Gergen, 2009, p. 24.) Interesting are also the findings by Henry
and Stephens (1977; see also Triandis et al., 1988, p. 327) that showed how cultures
with higher social cohesion and accordingly more social support have significantly lower
heart attack rates compared to more individualistic communities and cultures.
Despite its problems, this model of individualism is deeply entrenched within our
cultures and it might be hard to imagine how we could come to a different outlook of
the world. But we must remember Clifford Geertz’s words: “However incorrigible it may
seem to us” the Western conception of a person is “a rather peculiar idea within the
context of the world’s cultures” (Geertz, 1974, p. 59). Perhaps it is time to look for
alternatives for this model.
Towards a more relational self-understanding
The individualistic conception of self can be questioned on many different accounts.
Firstly, it is worth noting that a historical and geographical analysis reveals how the
individualistic conception of the self is the exception and a more relational and
collectivistic notions are the norm among the cultures of the world. To put it very
roughly, individualistic culture is prevalent in North and West Europe, in North America,
4
One might also mention here Foucaltian critique of individualism according to which individualization
has not been the parade of freeing the individual from societal control but rather a change in the regime
of societal control but we do not have space to discuss this idea properly (see Sampson, 1988, p. 19).
and those cultures heavily influenced by Northern Europe such as Australia or New
Zealand. Forms of collectivism and relationalism are found quite much everywhere else
in the world. (Triandis et al., 1988, p. 329.) Often attributed to the ‘Eastern cultures’ in
China, Japan and other countries of the Far East, it has been said to be dominant also
among the Africans, Hindus, Islamic cultures, Mediterranean culture and Latin America
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 228; Sampson, 1988, p. 17; Triandis et al., 1988). This
already signals the fact that there are a number of living alternatives to the western
individualism.
Additionally, a historical analysis of the genealogy of the western individualism would
reveal how it is quite a recent innovation and has become the dominant form of selfunderstanding only through the rise of the middle class in last couple of centuries.
Although traces of individualism can be tracked back to such prominent thinkers as
Augustinus and Descartes, it began to be more articulated only during the
enlightenment when thinkers such as John Locke offered a picture of human beings as
autonomous and self-responsible subjects that are endowed to some rights based on
their humanity alone. And it took the changes in economic relations and political
systems that gave rise to a new bourgeouis middle class for this mode of thinking to
become the dominant form of thinking of the modern west (Taylor, 1989). Although
such a genealogy might reveal the struggles and structures of the past that have lead to
modern individualism and thus open our eyes to the blind spots of our thinking and for
alternatives I will not go deeper into this historical analysis of the birth of individualism
(see here e.g. Seigel, 2005; Taylor, 1989). I hope that it becomes clear already from this
that alternatives to the individualism can, in addition to different cultures, be found also
in our own past – for example in the self-understanding and moral universe of the
ancient Greeks (MacIntyre, 1966; see 1984).
Turning to more internal critique of the western subject we come to notice that even
within one of the strongest strongholds of western individualism – the institution of
science – more relational tendencies have started to emerge (see Gergen, 2009). The
account of relationalism given below will be much based on this stream of research.
Additionally, we find a number of modern western philosophers that have been
attempting to grasp what a more relational view of humanity would involve. Most
prominent among these are perhaps Martin Buber (1987), Emmanuel Levinas (1979)
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2002). I will start out by briefly describing their respective
philosophies.
Starting with Buber, his most famous work I and Thou (Buber, 1987) distinguishes
between meeting the other in a I-It relationship in which we regard the other as a thing
and a I-Thou relationship in which we genuinely meet the other as a full person that is
separate from me but ‘speaks into me’ (Buber, 1987, pp. 3-5; Orange, 2009, p. 18).
According to Buber “in this wholeness persons are still embedded like reliefs without
achieving the fully rounded independence of nouns or pronouns. What counts is not
these products of analysis and reflection but the genuine original unity, the lived
relationship” (Buber, 2003, p. 84). Although experiencing these moments is rare and
surprising in our everyday life, according to Buber they – rather than separateness - are
the original condition of us human beings. For Buber “in the beginning is relation”, this
“relation is mutual” and “all real living is meeting” (Buber, 1987, pp. 11, 15, 18).
Merleau-Ponty (2002), in turn, worked in the phenomenological tradition and his central
contribution within this tradition is the recognition of the embodied nature of human
being. The starting point of philosophical inquiry is not a pure subjectivity stripped away
of all preconceptions but rather a situated body-subject and its embodied
intersubjectivity (see Orange, 2009, p. 58). The embodied experience of such a subject is
never atomistic – reducible to its constitutive parts – but inescapably structured into
wholenesses. This lead Merleau-Ponty to embrace holism and to oppose every form of
dualism. At the same time he realized that the world in which our embodied subjectivity
is embedded is essentially social. We are collaborators in creating a common world
through “consummate reciprocity” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 413). In addition, others
are the mirrors through which I come to see myself. So we live in a mutually constructed
world and how we come to perceive it and ourselves is a result of a deeply
intersubjective process.
Moving to Emmanuel Levinas, his “big idea” is, according to Critchley (2002, p. 6; see
also Orange, 2009, p. 79) “that ethics is first philosophy, where ethics is understood as a
radically asymmetrical relation of infinite responsibility to the other person.” The
starting point for his elaboration is “the face of the Other” (Levinas, 1979, p. 24) that is
irreducible and precedes any recognition or “liaison contracted” (Levinas, 2009, p. 87).
Any attempt at systematizing, classifying or in other way reducing this experience with
infinity that the other calls upon us is for Levinas a form of violence – even murderous
(Levinas, 1979, pp. 24-25; see also Orange, 2009, pp. 80-81). The unconditionality of his
philosophy can be interpreted as a response to the horribleness of the holocaust,
especially the systematic deprivation of the humanity of the prisoners – as a jew Levinas
spent 5 years on a labor camp and many of his relatives and friends were murdered. Yet
his ethics that recognizes the irreducible value of the Other and the infinite
responsibility towards him or her as a constitutive part of our human condition has
spurred increased interest in recent years.
In general terms then, relational view of humanity is about loosening the boundaries
around the self-concept and exploring how other people are present in one’s selfhood
on many different levels. It is as much about understanding humans as relational as it is
about experiencing interdependence within one’s own life. As Markus and Kitayama
sum up: “experiencing interdependence entails seeing oneself as part of an
encompassing social relationship and recognizing that one’s behavior is determined,
contingent on, and, to a large extent organized by what the actor perceives to be the
thoughts, feelings, and actions of others in relationship” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p.
227). It must, however, from the outset be made clear that the form of relational self
that emerges in this discussion should not be understood to be the same as the classical
collectivism. In fact, some scholars make a distinction between collectivism and
relationalism (e.g. Kashima et al., 1995) and I will come back to this distinction after
having discussed the nature of relationality. Before that, I will present the eight central
shifts of mind that relational view of humanity is about.
1. The mind and the outer reality are seen as continuous. The central shift of mind that
a true understanding of relational being requires is a move from viewing the self as an
atomistic object with strict boundaries to seeing it as a more dispersed ‘center of
gravity’ within a systems –focused worldview. To put it more poetically, we need to
move to a view where “our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism”
(Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 235). This field or systems understanding of the person and
world thus involves not isolating the man from the world but seeing him and his actions
as embedded within the world. Instead of an object-theory of the self, we thus have a
field-theory or a system-theory of the self. The difference is on how the sources of one’s
actions, the motives of one’s actions, the parts of the world one can deliberately
control, that we can directly feel, that we see as vital to our self-concept or that we
consider as parts of ourselves are dispersed in the world. Object-based worldview insists
here on a clear separation line – usually it wants to locate all these inside the skin of a
person. The need for such clear separation is not an ontological necessity but rather a
strong psychological need produced by the thought-patterns of a specific culture (see
Nisbett, Peng, I. Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). According to a systems-based worldview
these different aspects of the self can be and seem to be all dispersed in a field the
center of which is the physical body and brain but that goes well beyond it.
To understand what this means, we may look at Bateson’s (2000, pp. 317-318) classical
example of a man felling a tree with an axe. One way to look at the situation is to see a
delimited agent, the ‘self’, that deliberately performs a purposive action upon a
delimited object. In explaining what takes place, our explanation limits itself within the
mind of this person, to his deliberate decision and following action that results in the
tree being cut. Another way to look at the situation is to see the whole process of treecutting embedded in the wider system in which it takes place. It is as correct to say that
the properties of the chosen tree and the particular axe used to cut it are what ‘decided’
how the man performed each stroke. Looked from another perspective, is it rather the
boss of the tree-cutter who ordered him to cut this particular tree that is ‘cause’ of the
particular tree-cutting? Or his children whose mouths to feed are the ultimate
motivation for him to carry through this harsh work? In the end, this whole issue of
being on a lookout for the ‘originator’ of the causal chain is a remnant of the linear and
objectivistic thinking characteristics of western thinking (see Nisbett et al., 2001).
Instead we should see that it is the dynamic relationship between the man and the tree
that explains how the next stroke hits the tree. Or more correctly, this self-corrective
process is brought about “by a total system, tree-eyes-brain-muscles-axe-stroke-tree”
(Bateson, 2000, p. 317). Abandoning the ideology of an original cause we come to
understand how it is a “combination of many forces from a variety of sources, some of
which indeed do involve individual desires and will, others of which extend well beyond
and are best seen as residing within the total field in which persons are located”
(Sampson, 1988, p. 20) that explain individual’s behavior.
2. We are embedded within a social world. In learning to live in the world, children by
and large adopt the worldview of the surrounding culture. This is quite evident. But we
must also realize that this co-creation of one’s worldview is not a process that happens
only during the childhood. We adults are as much making sense of the world around us
together. “To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to
respond, to agree, and so forth. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and
throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and
deeds.” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 293). We learn from the media what is happening in the
world and we discuss together with others these recent events to reach a shared
understanding of them. By and large, we make sense of the world together. Even in our
moments of solitary thinking the ways to make sense and the language and categories
one uses in one’s thinking are socially given. As Merleau-Ponty puts it: “We are
collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into
each other, and we co-exist through a common world” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 413).
3. Human behavior is primarily explained by interactive processes between the person
and the environment. Modern western psychology has more and more noticed how the
self we are changes shape depending on our present social context. As Markus &
Kitayama (1991, p. 227) note: “An interdependent self cannot be properly characterized
as a bounded whole, for it changes structure with the nature of the particular social
context.” So, if a salesperson asks you “Can I help you” you take the role of a customer
but when your child then screams “Mommy come quick” you transform into a mother
(Gergen, 2009, p. 38).
If we are to explain human behavior, then, we have to recognize that our relationships
must play a central role in such an explanation. More generally, we must acknowledge
that “most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions
and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of
the environment and that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance” (Bargh
John & Chartrand, 1999, p. 462). Bargh and Chartrand (1999, p. 492)acknowledge that
this thesis will be “a difficult one for people to accept” but the psychological evidence
they march forward to defend their thesis makes their case hard to refute. As social
environment makes up a significant proportion of our meaningful environment, our
social relationships are deeply explanatory in understanding our behavior. For example,
Fitzsimons and Bargh (2003) showed in a number of experiments how activating certain
relational schemas (e.g. relation to mother, friend or co-worker) through unconscious
priming affected “participants’ willingness to help an experimenter, the effort they put
into understanding the reasons behind a target person’s behavior, how they perceived
and interpreted the motives of a target person they read about, and how hard they
worked on a verbal task” (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p. 160).
To come to appreciate this new perspective, we have to give up the dichotomy between
individually free and socially determined action: We do not do something “for reasons
of private origin, or because someone ‘makes us do it,’ but because we are participants
in a confluence of relationships in which these are intelligible actions” (Gergen, 2009, p.
56). It must also be remembered that “an interdependent view of self does not result in
a merging of self and other, nor does it imply that one must always be in the company
of others to function effectively, or that people do not have a sense of themselves as
agents who are the origins of their own actions. On the contrary, it takes a high degree
of self-control and agency to effectively adjust oneself to various interpersonal
contingencies.” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 228). What all this suggests is that we
have to adopt a more field based way of thinking in which different forces interact to
form our behavior – some of these forces being located more within our conscious
control, some of them more outside of it and most of them in the interaction between
the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. As Sampson puts it: “The overly simplistic categorization of
forces into internal locus of control (defined as freedom) and external locus of control
(defined as lack of freedom) conceals the actuality of the fields of forces that combine in
every action” (Sampson, 1988, p. 20).
4. We are motivated by our social relationships. Although individualism tends to
emphasize internal motivations, in actuality, other-regarding emotions form a large part
of our motivational structure. “Many of people’s most strongly held goals, fears, and
desires spring from their ongoing close relationships” (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p.
148). Because of our cultural upbringing we, however, tend to misinterpret them in a
self-emphasizing way. In fact, the western norm of inner motivation has gone so long
that even in situations in which people really are motivated by an other-regarding
consideration or sentiment western individuals easily tend to try to explain their
behavior in individualistic terms. Bellah et al. (1985, p. 21) report that many of the
American informants they interviewed seemed to lack a vocabulary to explain their
relational and communal commitments and as a result “their lives sound more isolated
and arbitrary than, as we have observed them, they actually are.” People “frequently
live out a fuller sense of purpose in life than they can justify in rational terms” (Bellah et
al., 1985, p. 6). In other words, their way of living is in actuality much more connected to
others than what their culture allows them to see and express.
We should thus come to understand that our motivational structure goes beyond the
boundaries of the closed individual. Fitzsimons and Bargh’s (2003, p. 150) research on
interpersonal goals – goals “to attain, maintain, or avoid a specific end state for the
partner or the relationship, such as to help the partner, maintain closeness, or avoid
rejection” – showed how mere psychological presence of specific partner activated on
an implicit level these interpersonal goals and affected the perception and behavior of
the participants.
It must, however, be remembered that our care for others is both a result of our
genetical make-up and a cultural achievement (see Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003). Our
cultural beliefs affect significantly our motivational structure; different cultures might
strengthen or downplay the self-regarding or other-regarding motivations in different
ways. Not surprisingly, there is evidence that people in collectivist cultures are on
average more motivated by other-regarding motives than people in individualistic
cultures (see Markus & Kitayama, 1991, pp. 239-245). In fact, there are many otherregarding emotions that are common knowledge in more collectivistic cultures such as
Japan but that cannot be translated into English because our vocabulary lacks a word
and conceptualization of such emotions (see Markus & Kitayama, 1991). In any case
abandoning the individualistic ideology we realize how our motivational structure is
derived as much from our social relationships as it is connected to our inner selves – and
these two are deeply interconnected.
5. The essence of what we are is embedded in social relationships. However, it can be
argued that relational being goes even beyond this recognition of the significant role of
others in organizing one’s experience and motivating one’s behavior (see Figure 1).
Relationality is not only about the isolated self being influenced to a large extent from
outside. We need to look afresh at what is included into a self in the first place. Here,
the relationality involves loosening the boundaries around one’s skin and taking one’s
social relations as partly constitutive of one’s individual selfhood. There is nothing
metaphysically queer in here. It is simply that “the sense of belongingness to a social
relation may become so strong that it makes better sense to think of the relationship as
the functional unit of conscious reflection” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 226). The
question is about “what is focal and objectified” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 227).
From the individualistic outlook, it is solely the inner self. From a relational point of
view, in addition to the inner self, also “the relationships of the person to other actors”
must be included (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 227).
Figure 1 Independent and interdependent view of self (adopted from Markus &
Kitayama, 1991, p. 226).
This primacy of human relationships is also revealed in the fact that in human
development, relationality and sense of belongingness predate a sense of selfhood. We
learn to recognize others and only through others recognition of ourselves do we find
ourselves as unique beings. Indeed, “it is from relational process that the very idea of an
‘inner world’ is created.” (Gergen, 2009, p. 61; see also Vygotsky, 1978). It is through
parents saying things such as ‘Oh, I see you are sad’ or ‘you must be very angry’ that we
learn to recognize, label and understand our inner states in the first place (Gergen,
2009, p. 70). In developing higher cognitive functions, the child first learns to do things
in a relational dyad and only through practice are these skills internalized (Vygotsky,
1978). Our way of recognizing, categorizing, labeling and putting emphasis on our inner
states is thus to a large extent culturally determined. According to Gergen (2009, p.
100), the whole word ‘feeling’ was not invented until roughly the 17 th century and it was
only during this time that people “began speaking at length about their inner life.” Thus
it is through relationships that we in our individualistic culture have learned to put such
a central emphasis on our inner depths and feelings. The relational alternative is to take
what already defines much of the self in practice – social relations – and identify them
as part of one’s understanding of the self.
6. What is morally significant for us goes beyond the boundaries of our individuality.
As we come to experience ourselves as less bounded beings, also the modern western
picture of morality connected to norms that are within the individual becomes obsolete.
Our primary responsibility is no longer towards our bounded inner self but is connected
to our role and place within our social group. Within classic collectivistic cultures this
often means that one is primarily defined by one’s social role and only secondarily by
one’s inner depths and one should stick to the confinements of one’s role. “A normative
imperative of these cultures is to maintain this interdepence among individuals”
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 227) and this often means down-playing the
independence of individual actors. These differing norms are illustrated in sayings.
While in America, ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ in Japan ‘the nail that stands out
gets pounded down’ (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 224).
The difference between the traditional collectivistic cultures and the picture of
relational being I am painting here is perhaps most clearly seen in this ethical
dimension. Relational ethics is not about sacrificing one’s individuality for the sake of
the collective. It is about abandoning the view of human being as strictly bounded unit
and replacing it with a field understanding of personality where the inner depths of a
person are at the center but where the selfhood goes beyond them. Applied to morality,
we must realize that the dichotomy between egoism and altruism is precisely caused by
the bounded view of being. Instead, we are by our very nature beings that care for the
well-being of other beings – especially our closed ones. Already Dewey warned against
falling victim to the atomistic model in which individuals are “supposed to be naturally
isolated” and in which we have an “exclusive regard for his own profit” (Dewey, 1998, p.
349). Taking such a view, the regard for others becomes something that must be
accounted for. Instead, “selfhood is not something which exists apart from association
and intercourse” (Dewey, 1998, p. 348), the metaphor of family much better describes
human life: “It is an enduring form of association in which the members of the group
stand from the beginning in relations to one another, and in which each member gets
direction for his conduct by thinking of the whole group and his place in it” (Dewey,
1998, p. 349). Attending to our inner depths we must realize that other-oriented
emotions such as empathy and moral emotions such as shame or guilt are part of the
fabric of our selfhood (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Therefore, attending to our
inner needs is already attending to our significant others. Relational ethics becomes a
question about finding the right balance of care within the field that we constitute
together with our social surroundings.
To fully explore the relational ethics is to go deeply into moral philosophy. It involves
realizing that morality itself is a collective cultural enterprise upheld by a social group
and influenced by its basic view of selfhood (see Dewey, 1998, p. 354). Thus behind
many of the leading writers of western moral philosophy, for example Locke, Mill and
Rawls, lies an atomistic view of humanity. Looked from the perspective of a relational
view of humanity, their attempts to find ingenious ways to bridge a gap between
atomistic, self-interested individuals and responsibility to care for others can be seen as
attempts to overcome a void their own self-understanding has created in the first place.
Fortunately, many of the leading moral philosophers of our time are in effect
attempting to deconstruct the individualism of the modern subjectivity that they see as
the source of much harm and look for alternative conceptualizations of ethics that are
better able to capture our basic relational nature (MacIntyre, 1984; Taylor, 1989; 1991).
On the normative level, relationality thus means transcending the ethics of bounded
being and replacing it with an ethics better suited for relational and social animals such
as human beings.
7. We are dependent beings. At this point of our discussion it should be clear that the
western ideal of self-sufficiency paints quite a narrow picture of the human reality.
Viewing individual as prior to society is to take causality backwards. Man’s sense of
individualism is the result of a social process; it is a form of self-understanding peculiar
to certain cultures – a cultural achievement in other words. Our sense of individualism is
carved within a cultural landscape, through mediums provided by that culture.
Modern psychology has acknowledged that we are not self-sufficient, the desire for
interpersonal attachments is understood to be a fundamental human motivation
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Merleau-Ponty takes issue with and turns around Sartre’s
famous dictum that ”hell is other people”: ”If other people are the instruments of our
torture, it is first and foremost because they are indispensable to our salvation. We are
so intermingled with them that we must make what order we can out of this chaos.
Sartre [in No Exit] put Garcin in Hell not for being a coward but for having made his wife
suffer” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 41). Research on human happiness have revealed the
central role of relationships in determining our amount of happiness (see e.g. Haidt,
2006). All in all, our lives are fragile, our happiness much dependent on our surrounding
social world. Abandoning the illusion of self-sufficiency and admitting one’s dependency
on others is an important step towards a more realistic and relational view of oneself.
8. Interaction is perceived as happening within a co-constructed system. Finally, the
relational view of human beings leads to a new way of understanding human
interaction. I will explore this dimension in more detail after having summarized the
relational paradigm reviewed so far. Suffice it to say here that given the relational
perspective, interaction should not be seen as happening between two atomistic and
self-sufficient beings in a billiard-ball fashion. Instead, human beings tune in to each
other on multiple – and for the most part implicit – levels simultaneously leading to a
situation where a relational field or system is co-constructed between them.
Summary of the relational self-understanding
We have thus arrived at a picture of relational being that transforms the boundaries of
atomistic self-understanding to view human selfhood as embedded within a social field.
Whether we look at the source of our behavior, the motivation of our behavior, what
we identify ourselves with or the way we come to perceive things, we come to
understand how they are influenced to a large degree by social forces outside of our
immediate control and outside of our particular physical body. To put it grandly, we
could say that the relational view of human condition is what could be called a
Copernican revolution in explaining human behavior. With Copernicus we moved from
an earth-centered cosmology to a cosmology where planets are circulating the sun. In
here we move from self-centered and atomistic self-understanding into systemscentered understanding of human being. Our inner self is still at the center of influences
but it stands there not as an isolated and independent core but rather as a hub for
parallel processes. The central differences between individualistic and relational selfunderstanding are summarized in table 2.
====================== Table 2 ==================================
Individualism
Relationalism
Self-other boundary
Firm
Fluid
Control
Personal
Field
Conception of Person/Self
Excluding
Including
Relationship
Causal interaction between
Within mutually
Atomistic units
constructed system
Self
Partly adapted from (Sampson, 1988, p. 16).
==================================================================
The account of relationalism that I have presented here should not be seen as a return
to the traditional collectivistic world-view. The development of a sense of inner
autonomy that is characteristic of the western subject cannot be undone. Once we have
found from within ourselves vast realms of desires, values and wants and cultivated and
identified with them, the possibility of ignoring them and identifying fully with the roles
that are expected of us is not a genuine one. And most of us would not be willing to
return to such a self-understanding. Charles Taylor (1991, p. 2) reminds that because of
individualism “we live in a world where people have a right to choose for themselves
their own pattern of life, to decide in conscience what convictions to espouse, to
determine the shape of their lives in a whole host of ways that their ancestors couldn’t
control. [- -] Very few people want to go back on this achievement.” Traditional
collectivism is also quite strongly associated with hierarchical societies and large power
distances between individuals (see Triandis et al., 1988, pp. 323-324). In such societies
social relations are quite stable and one might have little chance oneself to influence
what kind of course one’s life will take. In that kind of societies one also tends to be
compassionate and seek harmony within one’s in-group, but this in-group is usually
quite narrow (one’s extended family, for example). As the rest of the society is seen as
part of the out-group one has little loyalty on the societal level. Therefore those in
power might be primarily interested in benefiting their own in-group and give less
attention to the public good. (Triandis et al., 1988, pp. 326, 328.)5. Thus – despite their
attractiveness in some respects compared to isolated western individualism – we should
not romanticize the interdependent self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 229) or
traditional collectivistic cultures.
Luckily, traditional individualism and collectivism are not the only possibilities. Kashima
et al. (1995) distinguish between collective and relational understanding of the self.
They understand collectivism here as the subordination of individual desires and goals
to the collective goals. Relationalism, in turn, is about seeing oneself not as separate but
rather as self-in-relationship. Their empirical work revealed that while differences
between different cultures are captured mostly by the individualism-collectivism –
dimension “gender differences are best summarized by the extent to which people
regard themselves as emotionally related to others” (Kashima et al., 1995, p. 925). In
other words, women on average held more relational self-construals than men. It thus
becomes evident that although collectivism and relationalism might have some similar
elements – especially when contrasted with strict individualism – they are two
independent dimensions; one doesn’t necessarily lead into the other. In focusing on the
development of a more relational self-understanding, the present work thus continues
the tradition of challenging the dominant masculine perspectives of self-understanding
and replacing them with perspectives that more readily acknowledge ‘feminine’
perspectives and virtues such as care, empathy and human fragility (see e.g. Gilligan
1982).6
================== Figure =======================================
Individualism
Individual goals
Bounded selfhood
Emphasis on inner aspects
Relationalism
Collectivism
Mutual and individual goals Subordination to
Collective goals
Relational selfhood
Relational selfhood
Balance between
Emphasis on relational
individual and relational
aspects
aspects
5
Here, as elsewhere, it must be remembered that the generalizations made here are indeed very much
generalizations and do not reflect the reality of many collectivistic cultures. While some cultures seem to
be more reminiscent of the ‘every ingroup for themselves’ attitude, some others have better mediated
the balance between showing ingroup loyalty and being caring and empathic also on a wider level.
6
Of course, whether we should make such ‘traditional’ distinctions between masculine and feminine
points of view is contested. Whether such labeling is empowering or stereotyping goes well beyond the
scope of this work. It is possible to interpret the present work as a contribution to a fight against the
dominant masculine discourse but I will not enter into this masculine-feminine discussions otherwise in
this work.
Individualism, relationalism and collectivism compared
===============================================================
What I have tried to describe here is thus relationalism that recognizes the autonomic
individual but argues that such an individual will find and should find from within
oneself the relational connectedness to other people. In a way this kind of relationalism
can be understood as an attempt to build a new balance between traditional
collectivism and modern individualism. Or rather than a balance7, a novel way of
attempting to combine the best parts of both of them: helping us western subjects
attached to our inner depths and our authenticity to find from within ourselves a deeper
sense of our connectedness to other human beings. If individualism is the anti-thesis of
traditional collectivism then the move of thought towards relationalism is not a return
to the collectivism but rather a synthesis that attempts to move beyond both
individualism and collectivism. In Gadamerian terms we could say that both traditional
collectivism and individualism represent different but narrow horizons of understanding
that idealize certain aspects of human condition and here the attempt is made to widen
our horizons to encompass both of these perspectives simultaneously to come up with a
worldview that recognizes and takes seriously both our inner depths and autonomy and
our inherent connectedness to others around us. Instead of traditional collectivism we
could therefore call this something akin to post-individualistic relationalism or
relationalism-from-within. So this relational self-understanding is not about discarding
the inner realm. We can maintain the sense of ourselves as individual and independent
agencies while recognizing that our selfhood is dispersed into the social field around
ourselves and while we find from within ourselves our emotional connectedness to
those significant to us.
Attunement and caregiving
Having given the basic building blocks for a relational understanding of human nature
we need to enrich and deepen our sense of what this relationalistic worldview entails in
terms of interaction. This is done through concentrating on two phenomena relevant to
our further discussions: attunement and caregiving. In what follows I will first discuss
attunement concentrating especially on a rich description of the relational dyad that is
formed between the caregiver and the infant as it exemplifies our natural ability for
attunement especially well. After that follows a discussion around care and caregiving in
which nursing literature plays a prominent role.
Attunement
Consider the interaction of young infants with their primary caregivers. As human
beings we have a natural ability to attune to our surroundings – especially to our social
7
Sampson (1988, p. 21) argues that it is wrong to argue for a balance between individualism and
relationalism because “one is not dealing with two opposing tendencies that can balance each other, but
two incommensurate systems of belief and understanding.” They are not different points of the same
scale but different outlooks on the world.
environment. This ability is most clearly demonstrated by studying how such infants
relate to their primary caregivers – usually their mothers or fathers. Research on the
subject has revealed what Bruner calls “extraordinary syncronicity” in the actions of an
infant and her caregiver (Bruner, 1997, p. 175). The bidirectional exchange between the
infant and the caregiver shows how the infant is playing an active role in co-coordinating
the interaction pattern by attuning herself to the rhythmic patterns of interaction and
by anticipating the behavior of the caregiver (Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005).
In split-second microanalyses through videotaped interactions of babies and their
caregivers it has been revealed that there are coordinated facial and vocal exchanges
(Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005). The synchrony of these exchanges are only
explainable by assuming that both partners in the dyad are anticipating each others
actions on an implicit level instead of the baby simply mimicking her caregiver. These
split-second exchanges have also been documented in the facial exchanges of monkeys
(Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005, p. 26 referring to Chevalnier-Skolnikoff 1976) as
well as on the faces of flirting couples on park-benches (Eibl-Eibersfeldt 1970) making a
convincing case that this is a skill human beings are equipped with through evolution.
Infants thus exhibit agency in their relationship with their social surrounding. There is in
infants a “readiness to find or invent systematic ways of dealing with social
requirements and linguistic forms” (Bruner, 1983, p. 28). Infants are naturally inclined to
engage in playful and rhythmic proto-dialogues with their parents (Trevarthen, 2007,
pp. 16-17). In fact, infant agency as a whole has been conceptualized as a “systems
competence” (Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005, p. 31; Sander, 1985; 1995).
In modern infant research, infants are thus no longer depicted as the passive receivers
of care. Instead it is understood that from very early on, the relationship of the infant
with the caregiver is “fully bidirectional” both participants are contributing “to the
organization of the dyad” (Beatrice Beebe & Lachmann, 2005, p. 25). The dyadic systems
model in infant research (Beatrice Beebe, Jaffe, & Lachmann, 1992; Sander, 1977; 1985)
sees “the dyadic system to be the basic unit of interest, within which both interactive
regulation and self-regulation can de defined, each affecting the other” (Beatrice Beebe,
Knoblauch, Rustin, & Sorter, 2003, p. 752). From very early on, the baby is making her
active contribution to this dyad coordinating her action to the rhythm of behavior of the
caregiver. As Martela and Saarinen (2010) argue “recent infant research provides strong
evidence for a fundamental human ability to read social systems preverbally and
unconsciously.”
Additionally, through this infant-caregiver “attunement” (Stern, 1985) children are able
to respond not only to the physical world around them but to the world as represented
in the mind of the caregiver (Bruner, 1997, p. 165). Their actions towards external
objects are thus strongly shaped by the meanings their caregivers give to these objects
even though the infants themselves do not need to be aware of these meanings.
Through this adaptation to the meaning-structures of their caregivers children are
initiated into the cultural knowledge of their tribe, giving them vital means to navigate
their way in the world around them. Their ability to interact functionally with their
environment is thus more dependent on their attunement to their social surroundings
than on their individual understanding of that environment. They exhibit agency
towards the surrounding world through the world-view of their significant others.
What this infant agency amounts to is a fundamental human ability to be in relation to
others, to attune oneself to the social systems one is surrounded with. It is clear that
this attunement happens on a preverbal and non-cognitive level (Beebe & Lachmann,
2005; Bruner, 1983; Stern, 1985). The infant is attuned to the changing environment
directly, without the mediating effect of the analytic mind. This attunement must be
fundamentally seen as an attunement to the wholeness of the social situation, a process
of being with the systemic environment in a holistic fashion. As Sander (quoted in
Nahum, 2000, p. 34; 1991) has put it, infants have an “innate capacity for experiencing
the complexity of the organism as a whole.” It is clear that early on in life the infant is
reacting to the gestalt of the whole situation itself without the ability to consciously split
it into parts but is still able to react to it in meaningful ways. According to Sander
(quoted in Nahum, 2000, p. 34; 1991) this kind of gestalt perception is “basic to the way
our brains function, to our developmental origins, and to the process of recognition.”
Infants are thus able to attune to their environment as a wholeness, they possess an
inherent capacity to relate to their surrounding systems in a holistic way.
Having come to appreciate the infants’ tremendous capability to attune and exhibit
agency with their social surroundings we must acknowledge that as grown-ups we still
possess this same capability. As Gallese et al. (2007, p. 145) suggest, “this
intersubjective process that begins in infancy normally continues in elaborated and
developed ways throughout the life span of the individual in his or her interpersonal
interactions.” It is just the case that in looking at the interaction of adults this
attunement is often overshadowed by our more cognitive skills and ways of interacting
– verbal communication especially – and thus is lost from sight.
Recent advances in neuroscience have found one explanation for this capability in the
form of mirror neurons (see Gallese et al., 2007; Iacoboni, 2009). Mirror neurons
generate a “mandatory, nonconscious, and prereflective” embodied simulation in the
observer “of actions, emotions, and sensations carried out and experienced by the
observed” and thus amounts to a “fundamental biological basis for understanding
another’s mind” (Gallese et al., 2007, pp. 131, 143). The facial expression of another
person leads us automatically “to experience that expression as a particular affective
state” (Gallese et al., 2007, p. 144)8. Thus we can conclude that “in virtually any
interpersonal interaction there is an automatic unconscious ‘induction’ in each
participant of what the other is feeling” (Gallese et al., 2007, p. 149).
8
It is worth noting that Gallese et al. (2007, p. 144) quote here Merleau-Ponty’s writings from year 1945
who seemed to grasp the idea of embodied simulation long before their research findings: “The
communication or comprehension of gestures come about through the reciprocity of my intentions and
the gestures of others, of my gestures and intentions discernible in the conduct of other people. It is as if
the other person’s intention inhabited my body and mine his” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 215).
Caregiving
Caring and caregiving are activities that sustain life (Benner & Gordon, 1996). In our
society that shuns away from any concept of interdependence and instead views
individuals as “independent, self-determined, and self-created” (Gordon, Benner, &
Noddings, 1996, p. ix) these activities often suffer a legitimation crisis; people are
unwilling to accept the vulnerability and loss of control that being cared for unveils
(Gordon et al., 1996b, p. xv). Seen as lesser valued feminine work and taking place
largely in private sphere or within specific institutions, these activities have not received
the research attention they would deserve (Waerness, 1996). Yet we are more
vulnerable than our culture allows us to see and from cradle to grave – and especially
when the person is close to either of these – acts of caregiving and receiving care
constitute a significant part of human life. Thus it is important to make “caregivers’
invisible work visible” (Gordon et al., 1996b, p. xv). In essence, caring is about an
interpersonal process that is characterized by interpersonal sensitivity, reciprocity and
the mastering of an appropriate set of practices from the part of the caregiver (FinfgeldConnett, 2008a; Gordon et al., 1996; Mayeroff, 1990).
”To care for another person, in the most significant
sense, is to help him grow and actualize himself.”
(Mayeroff, 1990, p. 1).
Caregiving as “a set of relational practices that foster
mutual recognition and realization, growth,
development, protection, empowerment, and human
community, culture, and possibility.”
(Gordon et al., 1996, p.
xiii)
Caregiving as “a witnessing of others’ journeys such
that they experience themselves as joined, as seen and
felt, as known, and as not alone, which are the core
experiences of feeling cared for.”
(Kahn, 1993, p. 544)
Caring is a context-specific interpersonal process that is
characterized by expert nursing practice, interpersonal
sensitivity and intimate relationships
(Finfgeld-Connett,
2008a, p. 196)
Caring is a concept encompassing that range of human
experiences that has to do with feeling concern for and
taking care of the well-being of others
(Waerness, 1996, p. 234)
Table 1 Definitions of caring and caregiving
In coming to understand what we mean by caregiving, it is important to distinguish
“abstract caring intentions from the practice of caregiving” (Benner & Gordon, 1996, p.
41). A person can have generalized feelings of benevolence towards others and express
these feelings through statements such as ‘I really do care about them’ but these
sentiments alone do not amount to caregiving as it is understood here. Researchers
specialized in caregiving rather see it as a special form of behavior (e.g. Gordon et al.,
1996; Mayeroff, 1990; Kahn, 1993) and thus only when these sentiments are
transformed into concrete acts will they become caregiving in the proper sense. As
Tarlow (1996, p. 73) points out in her empirical research about the meaning of caring
“the dominant conclusion to be drawn from this research is that caring means doing for
others.”
Caring is essentially a “particular kind of relation between people” that involves a
caregiver and the one cared for (Noddings, 1996a, p. 160). This relation can be
understood as an interpersonal process that takes place between the participants
(Finfgeld-Connett, 2008a) and is defined by a set of relational practices on the part of
the caregiver and the appropriate response to these practices on the part of the cared
for. The participants have different roles – the one cares and the other is care for – but
nevertheless both participants’ active contribution is needed for the relation to be a
caring relation. In coming to understand what this means, a distinction between
caretaking and caregiving might be appropriate (Kahn, 1993, p. 544). In caretaking, the
receiver of care is depicted as a passive object that needs to be taken care of.
Caretaking has its time and place, for example doctors doing surgery on a patient usually
seek not the participation of the patient in the process and might have to objectify the
patient to be able to conduct the necessary operations. In caregiving, however, the
one’s taken cared of are seen as full participants and collaborators in their own process
of healing and growth (Kahn, 1993, p. 544; Mayeroff, 1990). As Waerness argues, “good
caring should be performed in a way that, as far as possible, reinforces the selfsufficiency and independence of the receiver” (Waerness, 1996, p. 235). In caregiving
the recipients of care are thus seen as subjects and the caregiver meets them as full
human beings.
From the point of view of the caregiver, caregiving is a way of relating to someone in
which one aims to contribute to the others healing and growth (Mayeroff, 1990, p. 1).
The caregiver interacts with the cared-for through a number of relational practices that
“foster mutual recognition and realization, growth, development, protection,
empowerment, and human community, culture, and possibility” (Gordon et al., 1996b,
p. xiii). These behaviors enable the care-seekers “to feel cared for and about” (Kahn,
1993, p. 544). Caregiving is in the end a holistic way of relating to the other in which the
different behavioral as well as attitudinal dimensions are woven together in a way that
makes them indistinguishable in the daily interactions. Nevertheless, one way to make
theoretical sense of this holistic practice is to distinguish between attitudinal and
practical characteristics of it. As Benner and Gordon (1996, p. 44) note, proper caring
requires both “sentiment and skills of connection and involvement” as well as
“caregiving knowledge and skills.”
First of all, it is clear that without the right kind of attitude, acts that aim at taking care
of the other do not amount to caregiving in the proper sense. Citing research about
accepting and rejecting parents in child rearing, Noddings (1996b, p. 29) notes that their
attitudes contributed to behavioral differences in children. Although on the behavioral
level few notable differences were found between accepting and rejecting parents their
attitudes alone somehow communicated themselves to the children and affected their
process of growth. Thus he claims that “attitude is crucial to an analysis of caring” and
proper caregiving is characterized by an attitude of acceptance, embracement and
sympathizing (Noddings, 1996b, p. 29). The ‘cared-for’ needs to perceive that the ‘onecaring’ is offering an attitude of inclusion and confirmation. This attitude is about seeing
the cared-for “as he is and as he might be” (Noddings, 1996b, p. 28). Through his
analysis of the caregiving literature, Kahn (1993, p. 544) offers eight dimensions of
caregiving that seem to be mostly about attitude: accessibility, inquiry, attention,
validation, empathy, support, compassion, and consistency. Caregiving thus is about
devotion, “commiting myself to the other and to a largely unforeseeable future”
(Mayeroff, 1990, p. 8). It is about being sensitive to the other as a unique being. It is
about validating and being empathic towards the perspective of the other. It is also
simply about ‘being there’; giving time to the other, being attentive and accessible to
the other (Tarlow, 1996, p. 61).
Mere right kind of attitude is not enough for caregiving, however. Benner and Gordon
(1996, p. 43) point out that without an adequate “set of caregiving skills and practices”
with which to embody one’s attitude of concern for the other one fails the task of being
a caregiver. According to them, the knowledge and skills required of a caregiver are
embodied in a caregiving practice, in which practice is understood as a “culturally
constituted, socially embedded way of being in a situation and with others” (Benner &
Gordon, 1996, pp. 43-44). One learns to be a caregiver – to master the practice of
caregiving – through extensive training and experience. Because every human context
and caregiving relation is unique these practices need to be flexible and sensitive to the
unfolding situation. They need to be “situated, particular and responsive to another
human being” (Benner & Gordon, 1996, p. 46). Therefore practices “cannot be
completely objectified or formalized”; they are more than mere isolated techniques or
mechanical manufacturing processes (Benner & Gordon, 1996, pp. 45-46). Instead they
are much about implicit know-how or embodied practice-based understanding of how
to be in a certain situation. It must also be acknowledged that caregiving is not only
about doing something for the other, oftentimes it is about simply being with that other
(Gordon et al., 1996, p. xiv). Sometimes “the most liberating, effective caring is based on
letting the other be, letting go or allowing the other to show up” (Benner & Gordon,
1996, p. 47).
Turning to look at the role of the care-receiver, it must be acknowledged that having
granted the care-receiver an active role we need to recognize some form of reciprocity
as a necessary condition in the caregiving process (Noddings, 1996a, p. 161). Naturally,
the one caring and the one cared for are not in equal roles but nevertheless the caredfor needs to recognize and reciprocate the care he or she receives in some way –
otherwise it would not be a caregiving relation. Accordingly, Nodding argues that “the
recognition of caring by the cared-for is necessary to the caring relation” (Noddings,
1996b, p. 32). The recipient of care “contributes to the relationship by responding in
some positive way to the efforts of the carer” (Noddings, 1996a, p. 161). These positive
responses validate the caring efforts of the caregiver and makes it easier for him or her
to care. Thus the responsiveness of the cared-for can have a significant role in how the
caregiving moment unfolds.
In these accounts of caregiving it becomes clear that they are connected to the
relational view of human being depicted above. For example, Mayeroff (1990, pp. 5-6)
states that I experience the one I care for “as an extension of myself and at the same
time as something separate from me that I respect in its own right” and that the worth
of the other for me is “something over and above any value it may have for me because
of its ability to satisfy my own needs.” Noddings, in turn, points out how in caregiving
“we are, at least momentarily, engrossed in the other’s plans, pains, and hopes, not our
own” (Noddings, 1996a, p. 161). These statements capture precisely the expansion of
the concept of myself and the source of my motivational basis characteristics of the
relational self-understanding.
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