Movements of Feeling and Moments of Judgement: Towards an Ontological Social Constructionism

摘要

"What is involved, in practice, coming to a judgement? The Norwegianfamily therapist, Tom Andersen, characterized himself as “a wanderer andworrier,” he was constantly reflecting on his ways of ‘going on’, on hisown practice, to further develop and refine them. Each new way came tohim, he said, on reaching a ‘crossroads’, a point when he felt unable tocontinue any longer in the same way. But once he stopped doing what hehad come to see as ethically wrong, he found, he said, that the “alternativespopped up almost by themselves” (Anderson/Jensen, 2007: 159).What I want to discuss is the fact that, while we can say that we can quiteself-consciously and deliberately decide not to do something (perhapsnever again) at a particular moment, in a new and particular situation wecannot be said to decide at any particular instant in time, positively whatto do. New ways of acting cannot be planned; they have to emerge. AsLehrer (2009) suggests, coming to act in a way that seems to be for thebest in a particular situation is not something we can decide upon simplywithin ourselves – judgmental work, in which we go out bodily, to relateourselves imaginatively and feelingfully to various aspects of our currentcircumstances, aspect-by-aspect, sequentially, over time, seems to be required.It is what the nature of this imaginative judgmental work feelslike, looks like, and sounds like that I want to discuss in this paper." (author's abstract)