The Manifold Function of Singular Words

In my discussion of this elegantly written, notably useful, and engagingly illustrated paper, I bring attention to Eugene Gendlin’s work on the Focusing process that connects words to a felt bodily referent; Donnel Stern’s contributions to our understanding of the articulation of unformulated experience; and Barbara Pizer’s key concept of “Body Words.” I invoke Hans Loewald’s valuable metaphor of a manifold: a connector that separates and a separator that connects, an essential paradox that can bridge delineation and linking. And, appreciating Heiman and Carmeli’s use of my early writing on negotiation of paradox, I end with the clinical vignette (never previously published) that accompanied my first presentation of that paper at a Division 39 Conference in 1990.