Research Article
Psychopathology Received: January 11, 2019
DOI: 10.1159/000502098
The Interactive Phenomenal Field and
the Life Space: A Sketch of an Ecological
Concept of Psychotherapy
Thomas Fuchs
Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Keywords
Phenomenal field · Life space · Intercorporeality · Body
memory · Ecology
Abstract
Based on the phenomenology of the body and ecological
psychology, this paper introduces a series of concepts that
enable us to overcome the still prevailing idea of an inner
psyche and a corresponding individualistic view of psycho-
pathology. These concepts are the phenomenal field, lived
space, intercorporeality, and body memory; they correspond
to an embodied, enactive, and ecological view of the mind.
On their basis, psychiatric illnesses may be conceived as re-
lational disorders resulting in various restrictions and impair-
ments of the patient’s lived space. The main tasks of psycho-
therapy, then, are to use the interactive phenomenal field as
a means of restructuring the patient’s relational patterns and
to support his or her capacity to engage in more beneficial
interactions with others. In this way, phenomenology can
valuably contribute to a deeper understanding of the intri-
cate processes of the psychotherapeutic encounter.
© 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel
© 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel
E-Mail karger@karger.com
www.karger.com/psp
Accepted after revision: July 12, 2019
Published online: August 8, 2019
Introduction
A phenomenological approach to psychotherapy is
confronted with a fundamental conceptual challenge.
The very notion of the “psyche,” like all terms derived
from it, implies the idea of a disembodied and nonspatial
inner world, be it conscious or unconscious, which is lo-
cated inside of the individual, usually in the brain. Re-
gardless of whether we presuppose the drives, introjects,
or inner objects of psychoanalysis, whether we believe in
the memory storages, “theory of mind” or “self-modules”
of cognitive science, or whether we take the brain centers
and nuclei of a phrenological neurobiology to be the real
substrate of the psyche – in any case the dominant scien-
tific paradigms are still characterized by the fundamental
separation of the subject from the living body, from his or
her relations to the environment and from his or her con-
nections to others in the shared life world. However, such
a view seems inadequate to grasp what is happening in the
psychotherapeutic encounter.
Phenomenology is in principle opposed to any intro-
jection of psychic life into a disembodied inner space. It
regards the person not as a separate monad which repre-
sents the world inside but rather as an embodied being
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Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Fuchs
Klinik für Allgemeine Psychiatrie, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg
Vossstrasse 4
DE–69115 Heidelberg (Germany)
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E-Mail thomas.fuchs @ med.uni-heidelberg.de
enmeshed in and interacting with the world [1–3]. Em-
bodiment means the human experience of both having
and being a body; the term conceptualizes the body as “a
dynamic site of meaningful experience rather than as a
physical object distinct from the self or mind” [4]. Thus,
instead of being confined to the inside of the head, per-
sons inhabit their bodies, and by mediation of the body
they enact their lives, extended into space and engaged
with others. This corresponds to an embodied, enactive,
and ecological view of mind and brain [5].
Such a view of the person has far-reaching conse-
quences for our concepts of psychopathology and psy-
chotherapy. If psychic life extends into the world, then
psychiatric disorders should not be localized “within”
the individual, be it in the psyche or in the brain. They
should rather be regarded as disturbances of being in
the world, of responding to the demands of the environ-
ment in a self-determined way, and of interacting with
others in accordance with one’s needs for resonance
and response. In other words, psychopathology chang-
es from an individualistic to a relational, from an inter-
nalist to an (inter-)enactive, framework [6–8]. So-called
“mental” disorders are actually disturbances of bodily
and interbodily existence to which social dynamics
contribute in significant ways. Hence, the biomedical
view of mental illness has to be extended and integrated
into an overarching ecological concept [5]. Corre-
spondingly, the primary task of psychotherapy would
not be “to work on the patient” and treat his or her mal-
function but rather to use the therapeutic relationship
as an interactive field that enables and fosters more ad-
equate and beneficial interactions with others. The fo-
cus shifts from what happens inside of the patient to
what emerges from the in-between of patient and ther-
apist [9, 10].
In what follows, I will develop some concepts with the
aim of overcoming the introjection of the psyche and to
reconceptualize psychopathology and psychotherapy in
an embodied, relational, and ecological sense. These con-
cepts draw on the phenomenology of the lived body and
intercorporeality [11, 12] as well as on ecological psychol-
ogy, in particular the concepts of the phenomenal field
and the life space [13–15]. They will then be applied to
psychopathology and to the psychotherapeutic process,
leading to an ecological concept of psychic disorders and
their therapy. For reasons of space, this concept cannot
be justified and substantiated in greater detail in this pa-
per; it may only serve as a framework for further research
and, last but not least, for a relational and intercorporeal
understanding of psychotherapeutic practice.
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Phenomenological Concepts
Phenomenal Field and Body Memory
As starting point for a phenomenological theory of psy-
chotherapy, I take the concept of the phenomenal field [1].
It denotes the spatially and temporally extended subjec-
tive experience at a given moment, referring both to the
center and to the margins of awareness, to what is explic-
itly or only implicitly given. The field is constituted by
bodily background feelings, which color and permeate the
environment, such as existential feelings, moods, or atmo-
spheres [16–18], as well as by the sensorimotor relations
between the body and the environment with its affordanc-
es and possibilities. More specifically, the phenomenal
field is shaped by current social interactions, which lead to
phenomena such as bodily resonance, intercorporeality,
and interaffectivity [19]. All of these phenomena have in
common that they may not be attributed to an inner
chamber of consciousness or the psyche but are extended
in body and space; to quote Merleau-Ponty [1]:
This phenomenal field is not an “inner world,” the phenome-
non is not a “state of consciousness” or a “mental fact,” and the
experience of phenomena is not an act of introspection.
The phenomenal field is thus centered in the lived
body, which functions as the background of all experi-
ence, and as the medium of one’s relations to the world.
The field is not only spatially but also temporally extend-
ed; it contains both the immediate future, i.e., the bodily
protentions or anticipations that correspond to the affor-
dances (“invitations”) of the environment, and the expe-
rienced past in the form of an implicit, embodied memo-
ry. This body memory designates the totality of bodily dis-
positions acquired in the course of one’s development
[15, 20, 21]. Through the repetition and superimposition
of experiences, a habit structure has been formed: well-
practiced motion sequences, forms of actions, and inter-
actions have become an implicit bodily knowledge and
skill.
The body is thus the ensemble of acquired predisposi-
tions and capacities to perceive, to act, but also to desire
and to communicate. Anchored in body memory, these
capacities extend over the environment like an invisible
network which relates us to things and to other people.
The body is our permanent means to actualize our past
and, with this, to make ourselves feel at home in situa-
tions. Importantly, what is mediated and enabled by
body memory is mostly forgotten in terms of explicit
memory; it becomes “unconscious.” An everyday exam-
ple may be seen in the capacity of typewriting, which is a
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memory “in the fingers” that is unavailable for explicit
knowledge.
Moreover, in the phenomenal field opened up by the
lived body the others are always already included; they are
prereflectively understood in their bodily expressions and
implicitly addressed by one’s own bodily behavior. From
early childhood on, patterns of interaction with others are
sedimented in the infant’s body memory, resulting in
what may be called an intercorporeal memory [19, 21].
This means an implicit, practical knowledge of how to
interact with others in face-to-face encounters [22]. In-
tercorporeality forms a superordinate system of extended
bodies which includes self and others, the conscious and
the unconscious; I do not have to search very far for oth-
ers: I find them in my experience, lodged in the hollows
that show what they see and what I fail to see. We are in
no way locked inside ourselves [23].
Hence, the intersubjective or relational dimension of
the phenomenal field is crucially influenced by both part-
ners’ intercorporeal memory, which formed over the
course of their respective history of interactions. It now
carries their implicit expectations of others, implied in
their manifest behavior mostly without their awareness.
Moreover, intercorporeal memory and its enactment ex-
press the basic attitudes toward self and others which
constitute one’s personality – as becomes obvious, for ex-
ample, in the submissive posture, inhibited gestures, and
shy facial expressions of a dependent person [19].
Life Space
On a wider scale, the currently experienced phenom-
enal field may be extended by the concept of the life space.
It traces back to the “topological” or “field psychology” of
Lewin [13] and was later revived by ecological psychology
[24–26]. The life space – or lived space1 – may be regard-
ed as the totality of the space that a person prereflectively
inhabits and experiences, with its situations, conditions,
and movements and its horizon of possibilities – i.e., the
environment and sphere of action of a bodily subject.
This space is not homogeneous but rather is centered
around the person and his or her body. It is characterized
by qualities such as vicinity or distance, wideness or nar-
rowness, and connection or separation, and it is struc-
1 Both terms are not clearly distinguished; in the phenomenological tra-
dition, “lived space” as introduced by Minkowski [27] is the more common
term. I use it in what follows for emphasizing the experienced or felt aspect
of the life space. For a history of the concept of “lived space,” see also Griffero
[28]. Another related notion is the “life world,” which I rather take to denote
the more general intersubjective and cultural background of life, including
shared assumptions, norms, rules of common sense, etc.
The Interactive Phenomenal Field and the
Life Space
tured by physical or symbolic boundaries that put up a
resistance to movement. This results in more or less dis-
tinct domains such as one’s peripersonal or intimate
space, one’s territory or property, and a person’s sphere
of influence but also domains of restriction, prohibition
or taboo, etc.
The life space is further permeated by felt field forces
or “vectors” [13], in the first place those which attract and
repel. They emanate from attractive or aversive valences
or affordances offered by the environment, which corre-
spond to the basic needs of a human being, be they bio-
logical or social. Competing attractive or repulsive forces
in the life space lead to typical conflicts such as attraction
versus aversion, attraction versus attraction, etc. They can
be considered as conflicting directions of movement or
possibilities which are offered to a person in a given situ-
ation. Moreover, the life space is characterized by effects
of “gravitation” and “radiation” or by “curvatures of
space” [14].
A good example of conflicting field forces and curva-
tures is offered by the situation of a small child who is torn
between his bond to his mother and curiosity [29]. The
mother is first of all the “safe haven,” the center of gravity,
so to speak, which curves the child’s experienced space in
such a way that he or she remains in her vicinity. The phe-
nomenal field thus acquires a gradient: the further the
child moves away from the mother, the emptier or lone-
lier the space becomes. Little by little, the child’s explor-
atory drive diminishes the tie to his or her mother so that
it becomes possible to increase the distance against the
gradient – only until the bond is stretched too much and
the child runs back to his or her mother in the end.
This example also illustrates the fact that the respective
field structures are based on body memory, in this case
the history of the experiences the child has had in close-
ness and security with his or her mother – attachment
research has shown this in detail. Another proverbial ex-
ample lies in the saying: “a burnt child dreads the fire,” or
“once bitten, twice shy,” which illustrate the aversive ef-
fect of body memory: as a result of negative experiences,
objects or zones of danger will be avoided intuitively. A
third example is given by the zones of prohibition which
restrict the child’s movements so that his or her spontane-
ous impulses interfere with parental imperatives inas-
much as these have left a negative gradient on his life
space.
The life space of an individual in his or her environ-
ment may also be conceived as his or her “ecological niche”
[14]. In analogy to the biological niche, it signifies the
physical and social environment that corresponds to the
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dispositions, needs, and intentions of a person. The eco-
logical niche may be differentiated in the form of concen-
tric spheres, such as partnership, family, home, neighbor-
hood, workplace, community, and homeland. Inhabiting
one’s niche is an essential aspect of lived space [30]. We
may assume that the person basically seeks and shapes an
environment that responds to his or her actions and of-
fers the valences for his or her potentialities, enabling
feedback cycles of “responded activity” [31]. Accordingly,
the capacity of a person to adequately respond to the af-
fordances and requirements of his or her environment,
especially to the demands of others, may be called “re-
sponsivity.”
The Psychopathological Field
As we can see, the concepts of the phenomenal field
and the life space are suitable to overcome the dualistic
introjection. They shift what we usually regard as inner
conditions and processes of the psyche back into the ex-
perienced world, where they appear as bodily disposi-
tions, action tendencies, field forces, and affordances. As
a consequence, phenomenological psychopathology is no
longer restricted to detecting hidden mental states but be-
comes an ecological or field psychopathology. So-called
mental disorders are then conceived as disturbances of
one’s bodily and intercorporeal existence and of one’s re-
sponded activity in the life space. In this sense, the illness
is not “in the patient” but rather the patient is “in the ill-
ness” – i.e., in an altered world that no longer meets his
or her basic needs and expectancies. It lacks the social
resonance, recognition, and affirmation on which human
beings are intrinsically dependent.
Rather than locating the suffering within the patient or
his brain, we should therefore regard it as an emergent
phenomenon of the relational space in which he is living
[32]. The psychopathological field may then be conceived
as a specific alteration of the phenomenal field character-
ized by a tendency to enact and experience patterns of
stressful, painful, impaired, or failing interactions and re-
lationships. Correspondingly, psychopathology presents
various restrictions or deformations of the life space, such
as the taboo zones of obsessive patients or the implicit
avoidance zones of phobic or posttraumatic patients. As
a result, the degrees of freedom to behave and act accord-
ing to one’s needs are significantly reduced. Of course,
interactive dynamics shape the field to a significant de-
gree; a relational psychopathology may not be restricted
to the individual.
4 Psychopathology
DOI: 10.1159/000502098
This may be illustrated by the example of depression:
it can first be described as an overall constriction of the
lived body (psychomotor inhibition, lack of drive, op-
pression, and anxiety) and a resulting loss of the emo-
tional resonance with others that is normally mediated by
the body. This leads to a disturbance of the patient’s re-
sponsivity and exchange with the social environment.
Depression thus becomes a disorder of intercorporeality
and interaffectivity, resulting in a more or less severe re-
striction of the life space [33, 34]. Generally, symptoms of
a psychic disorder may directly manifest an alteration of
embodiment, such as the bodily constriction (“hyperem-
bodiment”) in depression, or the “disembodiment” and
loss of attunement in schizophrenia [6, 35]. Other symp-
toms may rather be considered secondary reactions of the
patient, with the goal of maintaining at least a reduced
control, such as self-harm, eating disorders, and hypo-
chondriac or compulsory behavior.
Importantly, a crucial part of the psychopathological
field escapes the patient’s own awareness and remains un-
conscious. From a phenomenological point of view, the
unconscious is not a hidden intrapsychic entity located in
some depth “below consciousness” or in a vertical dimen-
sion. It rather manifests itself in the horizontal dimension
of the phenomenal field as Merleau-Ponty [11] remarked:
This unconscious is to be sought not at the bottom of ourselves
or behind our “consciousness” but rather in front of us, as articula-
tions in our field. It is “unconscious” by not being an object but by
being that through which objects are possible; it is the constellation
from which our future may be read (own transl.).
Hence, unconscious fixations resemble distortions or
restrictions in a person’s lived space, caused by a past that
continues to be implicitly present in the memory and dis-
positions of the body. Its traces can be noticed in the
“blind spots,” gaps, recesses or curvatures of a patient’s
lived space: in the actions or objects that he or she avoids
or in the interactive patterns into which he or she falls
even against his or her conscious intentions. The patient’s
conduct of life itself manifests a reverse side, an alterity
hidden to him- or herself [10, 15].
Thus, an emotional trauma causes zones of avoidance
in the life space: one unconsciously avoids entering simi-
lar situations or coming close to possibly threatening per-
sons. The avoidance has become a part of body memory;
it is enacted without explicit awareness. The opposite pat-
tern may be found in the psychodynamic concept of “rep-
etition compulsion.” Here, the individual is entrapped
time and again in the same dysfunctional patterns of be-
havior and relationships, even though he or she may try
to avoid this by all means on the conscious level. The life
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space is positively curved around such areas, as it were,
and they have become “attracting zones.” At the same
time, others take part in these relational patterns, result-
ing in maladaptive collusive dynamics through which
both partners do not see, as for example in couples or
other dyadic relationships [36, 37].
In this way, the unconscious is extended in social space
as a horizontal or relational unconscious which emerges
from the history of individuals and influences their be-
havior. It manifests itself in the interactive phenomenal
field such that it draws both partners into its preset dy-
namics, often through the slightest bodily signals such as
a moment of hesitation, an averted gaze, a lowered voice,
etc. In this way, early patterns of attachment are implic-
itly reactualized and enacted, which happens in particular
in intimate relationships and, last but not least, in psycho-
therapy [38, 39].
The Phenomenal Field in Psychotherapy
On the basis of the concepts developed so far, the main
task of psychotherapy is to modify and restructure the
patient’s lived space so as to increase her degrees of free-
dom, to extend her horizon of possibilities, and to enable
more satisfactory relationships with others. How is this
restructuring brought about? The traditional aim of psy-
chotherapy is to produce change primarily in the patient
and thus to treat his or her malfunctions. In contrast, the
phenomenological approach shifts the focus from what
happens inside of the patient to what emerges in the in-
teractive phenomenal field which becomes the major
agent of change. Such a perspective is in line with the re-
lational and intersubjective turn taken by psychoanalysis
[40, 41] and psychotherapy in general, not least under the
influence of infant and attachment research [42, 43]. Fur-
ther valuable contributions have been put forward by the
ecological approach of Willi [31] and by the PHD method
of Stanghellini [44].
The interactive field unfolds between the patient and
the therapist, emerging from their bodily presence in the
situation, their posture, facial and gestural expressions,
breathing, and voices. This generates an interbodily reso-
nance, which may also be described as a mutual extension
and superposition of the body schemes [19, 45]. It in-
cludes components such as imitative movements, syn-
chronized behavior, and rhythmic covariation of expres-
sions [46–48]. As could be shown in psychotherapy stud-
ies, the extent of interactive coordination between the
patient and the therapist is connected with the quality of
The Interactive Phenomenal Field and the
Life Space
relationship, empathy, attachment and positive outcomes
as measured in symptom reduction and self-efficacy
[49, 50].
The phenomenological field engages and influences
both partners, to a large extent without their awareness.
It creates a shared affective space, which is also manifest-
ed as an interpersonal atmosphere – e.g., the typical atmo-
sphere of depression, in which both the patient and the
therapist may experience a sense of heaviness, resigna-
tion, and futility, or the atmosphere of schizophrenic
alienation, well known as the “praecox feeling” [51, 52].
These qualities of the field already convey important di-
agnostic information. Moreover, as pointed out above,
the field also reactualizes both partners’ embodied mem-
ories and relational patterns which are reenacted in the
encounter.
In this way, the attractive or avoidance zones, the blind
spots or gaps in the patient’s lived space may become vis-
ible by the special illumination of the interactive field.
However, the unconscious manifests itself less in the ob-
vious behavior than in its hidden or reverse side. When a
patient shows a labored smile that conceals an uncon-
scious fear of devastating shame, this may only be under-
stood if the expression is taken as a “negative” (i.e., like a
negative film). This presupposes, however, looking for
the repressed not in the “depths of the psyche” but rather
already in the seemingly superficial bodily expression and
behavior.
In order to change such implicit relational patterns,
they have to be activated as enactments in the therapeutic
process. Only then can they be replaced by corrective ex-
periences, above all in special moments of empathic cor-
respondence between the patient and the therapist (“mo-
ments of meeting” [22]). This requires the therapist to be
sensitive to his or her own intercorporeal resonance (tra-
ditionally called countertransference), using it as a kind
of seismograph for subtle changes in the field [10, 32].
The interactive field not only actualizes the past but also
projects potential routes towards the future. With in-
creasing intuition, the therapist may develop a sense of
openness and curiosity for the implicit possibilities of the
phenomenal field and modulate it through slight reac-
tions in a moment-to-moment way, without attempting
to control the process.
Certainly, empathic understanding and interaction
alone are not helpful in all cases. To avoid the pitfalls of
the patient’s relational patterns, the therapist should be
well aware of the interpersonal process in which he or she
is involved. Otherwise, he or she will risk being drawn
into the patient’s “attracting spaces” or, on the other
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hand, unwillingly take part in his or her avoidances [53].
If a patient, for instance, avoids a shameful experience or
an embarrassing view of himself, it would not be helpful
to unwittingly share his anxiety and carefully move
around this delicate zone. The therapist should rather de-
velop an intuitive sense of the avoided regions in the re-
lational field in order to neutralize them as much as pos-
sible with corrective experiences in the secure space of
therapy. In this way the patient’s lived space may be
cleared and its possibilities expanded, which can then be
transferred to his or her everyday relationships.
This sensitivity for the phenomenal field may also be
acquired by the patients themselves. A central skill they
learn through training and repetition is the ability to no-
tice bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts as they arise
in their immediacy. The therapist should instruct the pa-
tient to discriminate, to express, and to verbalize these
feelings, if possible with an accepting attitude, i.e., with-
out evaluating or rejecting them. The underlying assump-
tion is that the lack of awareness and discrimination of
bodily feelings is a major drawback for psychiatric pa-
tients, in particular for those with alexithymia, somato-
form, and eating disorders [54, 55]. Improving their body
awareness may yield important material and further hints
for the therapeutic process.
On a similar phenomenological background, Gendlin
[56] developed the Focusing method, instructing patients
to carefully attend to their bodily “felt sense” or “gut feel-
ings” vis a vis a given or imagined situation as a means of
clarification. By moving back and forth between verbal-
ization of the felt sense and comparison of the content
with one’s feelings, the vague bodily background feelings
are differentiated and referred to the intentional context,
thus stimulating further development. This shows once
more that the phenomenal field, permeated by body
memory and unconscious tendencies, has a protentional
or future-directed meaning, which is a major presupposi-
tion for a creative therapeutic process.
Looking at the life space beyond the therapeutic dyad,
a phenomenological approach may also serve to better
understand and conceptualize the relational field in
which the patient lives – families, communities, organiza-
tions, etc. Of course, to recognize and treat disturbances
of those fields is the core of systemic family therapy (see,
e.g., Palazzoli [57]). A phenomenological and ecological
approach will also pursue this goal without, however, dis-
solving psychopathology and the individual suffering
into dysfunctional mechanisms of systems. A phenome-
nological method to make the social field visible has been
developed in the so-called “family constellations” [58,
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59]. Here the client arranges other members of the thera-
peutic group in a spatial constellation as representatives
of his family – standing close or distant, being turned to-
ward or away from each other, and so on. The representa-
tives have little or no factual knowledge about those they
represent. Nevertheless, on the mere basis of their posi-
tion within the constellation, they usually experience feel-
ings, bodily sensations, or movement tendencies, which
come very close to the experiences within the real family.
Their statements then inform the further process of ex-
ploring the position, role, and feelings of the family mem-
bers as well as the family dynamics as a whole. Thus, the
chosen configuration represents a constellation of felt re-
lations that have sedimented in the client’s bodily and
spatial memory as an extract of uncountable experiences
with his or her family. This invisible network of interrela-
tions is made visible through the family constellation.
Finally, a phenomenological approach to the life space
may also serve as a conceptual basis for social psychiatry
[30, 60]. Regarding the patients’ life space as their “eco-
logical niche” formed by the concentric spheres of part-
nership, family, home, neighborhood, workplace, com-
munity, and homeland leads to an understanding of the
wider relational field that conditions and influences their
illness. On this basis, social and family therapy will seek
to further the patients’ attunement to social space and the
responsiveness of others to their needs. Approaches like
assertive community treatment and open dialogue focus
on the patients’ experience of their private and commu-
nity space outside of institutional confines [61, 62]. Their
aim is to establish a dialog between the members of these
spaces and the individual, potentially helping to prevent,
for instance, the reemergence of schizophrenic episodes.
Conclusion
Phenomenal field, life space, intercorporeality, and
body memory may be regarded as concepts that enable us
to overcome the prevailing idea of an inner psyche and a
corresponding individualistic view of psychopathology.
Internal personality structures are replaced by embodied
dispositions which are enacted in the world; isolated
mental states are replaced by interactive and relational
processes, and cognitivist concepts such as theory of
mind or “mentalizing” are replaced by, or at least found-
ed on, intercorporeality and interaffectivity [19].
The life space implies a unity of bodily, sensorimotor,
affective, and intersubjective processes which are experi-
enced and enacted in a prereflective, spatial mode. As
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such they also constitute the implicit layer of the psycho-
therapeutic process. From a phenomenological point of
view, the unconscious is then no longer located in an in-
ner mental sphere but rather in the interactive field that
emerges from the encounter of patient and therapist.
Their body memories form a historical structure of past
relational experiences which are reenacted in the thera-
peutic process, resulting in what may be termed bodily
transference and countertransference. A phenomenolog-
ical approach may enable the therapist to increase his
awareness of the related phenomena, such as posture, ex-
pression, resonance, synchronicity, presence, distance,
and atmosphere. Using this scenic information for diag-
nosis and therapy requires in particular the therapist’s
bodily presence and authentic interaction.
Hence, from a phenomenological view point, the pro-
cess of psychotherapy is experiential and embodied rath-
er than cognitive, insight oriented, or “archaeological.”
The patient’s habitual or implicit ways of relating to oth-
ers are reenacted in the “here and now” of the therapeutic
relationship and may be changed through new experi-
ences. In such a view, it is not so much the explicit past
that is in the focus of the therapeutic process but rather
the implicit past which organizes and structures the pa-
tient’s phenomenal field of relating to others. As we have
seen, however, it is frequently not a concordant but rath-
er precisely a nonexpected behavior of the therapist which
allows the patient to make a corrective relational experi-
ence and to break out of ingrained behavior patterns.
On the basis of a phenomenological, embodied, and
enactive view of psychiatric disorders, various psycho-
therapeutic approaches and methods may be applied, of
which I have named only a few examples. Of course, oth-
ers could be mentioned such as gestalt and body-oriented
therapies, which have a particular affinity to the phenom-
enology of the body [63]. In any case, their common aim
is to use the interactive phenomenal field to further or
restore the patient’s capacity to engage in more adequate
and beneficial interactions with others. On this route,
phenomenology can valuably contribute to a deeper un-
derstanding of the intricate processes of the psychothera-
peutic encounter.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful for 2 anonymous reviews who helped me to im-
prove this paper.
Disclosure Statement
The authors have no conflict of interests to declare.

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