My view on Phenomenology
A consequence of this position is that meaning is not given "in itself," rather meaning is interpreted hermeneutically. The narrative process is an active process of interpreting the meanings) of one's present lived experience in relation to one's future and past, and expressing it in some form, whether it be language, gesture, art, or some other way. Narration is a meaning making process of interpretation.16 It is an ordering and structuring of our experience. Because this process of discovering or interpreting meaning is not fixed (i.e. is hermeneutic), the interpretation is subject to change as is the narrative. Change is possible because our future possibilities are not determined. As therapists we can assist a client in re-interpreting their past, re-narrate their experience, and attend to the 'ghosts' ofm fear that haunt the symptomatic body.
To narrate is to interpret. More specifically to interpret one's experience in light of the inherent ambiguity of existence. The value of a narrative lay not in some universal, non-contextual, atemporal correspondence between a person's past experience and the narrative, but rather it lay in the thematic articulation of the meaning of an experience. It is the symbolic naming of a human truth of lived experience, one that is subject to change. But what is ambiguity and how does it arise? Ambiguity arises when we try and reflect on what we do naturally, which is experience life. In discussing our relationship to the questions of space and time we can notes that We use our body as if we are this body; we move, we bathe, we lie in the sun. Without thinking we shake hands, we talk. We have no trouble living the answer to these questions. As soon as we start thinking about them, however, as soon as we try and examine them, the difficulties are incalculable. Matters which, prereflectively, were clear, become obscure after reflection. Ambiguity arises when we try to interpret, reflect, understand what is lived, pre-reflective, bodied-forth existence. We try and make sense of our experience, hence interpretation is what makes the world - nothing else.
Moreover, our experience is always ongoing, ever-moving, and never still. It is born, lives, and dies like every passing moment. With the flowing of time our experience moves from the present into the past. Our words should flow with them. In this sense our past is dead and we can not reclaim it, for no voice can reach us from the land of the dead. The truth lay in the passing, not in building narrative monuments that will last for all of time. Not even the song of Orpheus, whose voice had "the power to tame radical otherness," could bring Eurydice, the meaning of his life, back from the land of the dead. In order to live in the present, where the birth of meaning lay, or to be open to future possibilities, we must name and give voice to our past experience. Then we must let it go to live in the past, the land of the dead, where it belongs, just as Orpheus had to let Eurydice go.
The upshot of my view is thus: time is one dimensional and all the same at once; space is interpretation.
Any comments on this?