More Than a Feeling: The Relevance of Core Affect for Humanistic Practitioners and Scholars
Description: When working with a client, a counselor might struggle with finding the right feeling words to describe the client's rich, complex experience. This webinar will contrast feelings, which are cultural categories, with affect, which is a dynamic, embodied, and pre-individual process. The presenters will present a working framework of affect that draws on psychological construction research, trauma studies, and the philosophy of Spinoza. Implications for humanistic research and practice will also be discussed.
Objectives
Attendees will gain an understanding of the differences between feelings and affect in the context of psychological construction research.
Attendees will learn how interoception and Gendlin's notion of felt sense awareness may be utilized to describe affective processes.
Attendees will gain knowledge of the relevance of Spinoza's philosophy of affect for humanistic theory, research, and practice.
Presenters:
Joel Givens, PhD, LPC; and Brett Wilkinson, PhD
Presenter Bio: Joel Givens and Brett Wilkinson are Assistant Professors in the Department of Counseling at Purdue University Fort Wayne. They presented on mood, Eugene Gendlin's felt sense, and humanism at the Association for Humanistic Counseling National Conference in Syracuse, NY. They have a shared interest in philosophy, phenomenology, and research on affect.