Operative Intentionality: : Notes on Merleau-Ponty's Approach to Mental Activities That Are Not the Exclusive Product of the Conscious Mind

Abstract

AbstractThis article is meant to give psychotherapists a glimpse of the clinical implications of Merleau-Ponty's approach to unconscious thought and insight. Freud found evidence of consciousness and intentionality in processes that were understood in terms of coincidence or biological automata. Phenomenology has demonstrated that intentionality is an attribute of the entire embodied subjectivity. Both approaches point to the fact that the sphere of lived intentions is much larger than that of conscious thought. The article includes clinical examples.