The Present Moment as a Critical Moment

The process of negotiating and the process of psychotherapy seem to be at polar opposites. In negotiations, to get the best results one does not show their complete hand, neither in the beginning nor at the end. Also, one does not reveal their strategy. In psychotherapy, the idea is to show your hand as completely and rapidly as possible, using a shared strategy. Nonetheless, in a negotiation one’s hand must be progressively revealed, at least partially. If not, there is nothing to negotiate. And in psychotherapy, there are obstacles to revealing one’s “hand” or life experiences: defenses, fears, inhibitions, shame, guilt, and disapprobation, among others. So, in effect, the patient’s “hand” gets revealed only progressively, along with emotional risks and compromises.

There is another similarity that will occupy us even more. In both processes, one does not know the final form that the process moves toward. It is discovered en route. Nor does one know in advance the exact course (and strategy) that will get you there. In spite of the best plans, one does not know in detail where one is going or how to get there. It is this similarity that I will explore.

Most changes in the life of humans are relatively sudden, occurring in qualitative leaps. Changes in development of people, institutions, relationships, and emotional atmosphere, for example, are quite discontinuous, compared to growth. And even growth has its spurts. This reality forces us to consider the time frame of experiences during which the larger trajectory starts to bend. When and how does change appear on the scene all of a sudden, and how? After all, a critical moment is not an infinitely thin slice of time. It is a moment that has a duration wherein something happens, even if it lasts only seconds. Let us look at this moment.

The duration of a present or critical moment depends on how we conceive of the passage of time. The ancient Greek concept of “chronos” is the vision of time that we use in the natural sciences, and in most of psychology. In this view, the present instant is a moving point in time headed only toward a future; it does not matter whether the course of time is viewed as a straight line or a circle or a spiral, the present instant is always moving, inexorably and evenly. As it moves, it eats up the future and leaves in its wake the past. The present instant itself is very short; too short for anything to take place without immediately becoming the past. Effectively, there is no present. There is no “now” in which something could unfold heralding a change.

Both the natural sciences and psychology have mostly been able to live with the view of the present described by chronos. However, common experience — our subjective sense of life as lived from moment to moment — does not sit well with the idea that the present has no temporal thickness. The experience of listening to music, watching dance, or interacting with someone could not tolerate it. Life, at the local level of moments in sequence, simply doesn’t feel that way.

Present moments (and critical moments that effectuate change) must have both a duration in which something happens and, at the same time, take place during a subjective “now.” Examples make this apparent contradiction clear.

A short musical phrase is the basic process unit of the experience of hearing music. A phrase is the musical analog of a present moment in ordinary life. A musical phrase is intuitively grasped as a global unit with boundaries. It has a duration that is sensed (usually in the range between two and eight seconds). And most interestingly, the musical phrase, as heard, is felt to occur during a moment that is not instantaneous, but also not parceled out in time into sequential bits like the written notes. Rather it is a continuous, enduring, single, flowing whole, occurring during a “now.”

A musical phrase stands as a global entity that cannot be divided up without losing its gestalt. You cannot take the equivalent of a photograph of a heard musical phase as it passes. It is not a summary of the notes that make it up. It takes its form only over time. The mind imposes a form on the phrase as it unfolds. The melodic and/or rhythmic line is grasped while it passes. In fact, its possible endings are intuited before the phrase is completed, while it is still unfolding. That is to say, the future (as well as the immediate past which is still echoing) is implied at each instant of the phrase’s journey through the present moment. It is an example of the philosopher Edmund Husserl’s tri-partate present: the past of the present (retention); the present instant; and the future of the present (protention), all occurring in a subjectively coherent “now.”

The same happens during interactions. The moves of the interaction are the phrases, making up each present moment. The same will apply to interactions that are composed of phrase-like groupings in verbal and nonverbal behavior seen in ordinary life, psychotherapy, and any negotiation, dyadic or with a group.

To view the present moment, a different sense of the flow of time is needed. The ancient Greeks conceived of a subjective stretch of time in which events demanded action or were propitious for action. They called this “kairos.” Kairos is a moment in which events come together and meet, and the meeting comes into awareness as a coherent aggregate such that intentional action must be taken now to alter your destiny. If no action is taken, your destiny will be changed anyway, but differently, because you did not act. It is a small time window of opportunity for action or inaction relative to a situation. Kairos also means the coming into being of a new state of things. One of the origins of the word comes from shepherds watching the stars. As the night progresses and the stars turn in the sky, they appear to rise and then fall against the horizon. The moment during the night when a star has reached its apogee and appears to change direction from ascending to descending — that is its kairos.

Every present moment is a “critical moment;” some more, some less so. And every critical moment is a moment of kairos. This is because every moment creates the context in which the next moment will take place. And the immediate context is crucial in determining the direction and final form of what will happen. In other words, each present moment influences the destiny of where things will go next. And the next moment will serve as the context for the moment that follows, and so on. Perhaps what determines how “critical” a moment is, is how far into the future its context will remain active in influencing the moments that follow. There are moments of kairos with a big K or a small one.

A group of psychotherapists, calling ourselves the Boston Change Process Study Group (Boston CPSG), study the process of change in psychotherapy. This change process may provide some parallels with many kinds of interaction, some negotiations included, where two or more people are trying to arrive at a goal, but where the goal cannot be precisely known in advance. Only some of its boundaries are preconceived. The actual final goal (not the desired goal) is to be created not discovered, because it does not yet exist a priori. And the process for getting to the goal is created as they proceed, within certain boundaries.

To conduct our study we focused on what we call the “local level.” This is the scale of small events that last only seconds, but act as the critical points of change. Thus the importance of the present moment and critical moment as the stage on which change will show itself.

The goal in psychotherapy is to share similar mental landscapes so that one can understand and be understood. We call this sharing of subjective experience “intersubjectivity.” It includes both the explicit (verbal) meaning of what one says and the implicit meaning, which is nonverbal and more concerned with feelings. Sometimes the more important action is in the implicit, sometimes in the explicit. The mix is crucial. In any event, “intersubjective sharing” is the primary goal. It occurs verbally and nonverbally at the local level. The units of interaction at this level are called relational moves. The immediate goal of relational moves is to adjust or regulate the “intersubjective field,” that is, the shared mental/feeling landscape. These moves can consist of a spoken phrase, a silence, a gesture, or shift in posture, or a facial expression — no different from what makes up a negotiation.

We call the process of arriving at these goals “moving along.” This term is meant to capture the forward movement, relational move by relational move, as well as its frequent wanderings, wrong turns, and surprising shifts in direction. We view these wanderings as “sloppiness” in the negotiating process. “Sloppiness” results from the interaction of two or more minds working in a “hit-miss-repair-elaborate” fashion to cocreate and share similar worlds. Because the process of chaining relational moves together (sometimes very loosely) is largely spontaneous and unpredictable from one move to the next, there are many mismatches, derailments, misunderstandings, and indeterminacies. These “mistakes” require a process of repair.

Nonetheless, sloppiness is not an error or noise in the system but rather an inherent feature of interactions. The sloppiness of the process throws novel, unexpected often messy elements into the dialogue or group discussion. But these can be used to create new possibilities. Sloppiness is not to be avoided or regretted but rather is necessary to understand the almost unlimited cocreativity of the moving along process (or the negotiating process).

Sloppiness would be of little value if it did not occur within a cocreative process. Both the sloppiness and its repair or unexpected usage are the product of minds working together to maximize coherence. (If moving along or negotiating could follow a straight predictable line there would be no need to negotiate.) Along with other unplanned emergent events, sloppiness and cocreation bring into being the surprise discoveries that push the negotiation to its uniqueness. Potentially, they are among its most creative elements. These elements had no previous existence even in a latent form. They arise from the negotiating process. This is why in a psychotherapeutic dialogue, sloppiness creates something that needs to be lived through and used rather than understood and analyzed. Its psychodynamic relevance may be minimal because it is mainly a product of the present interaction, and less the result of a reactivated past. Similarly, in a negotiation each step is more the result of the immediately prior interactive moment than of the original negotiating strategy.

Moving along can lead to sudden dramatic therapeutic changes (or shifts in a negotiation) by way of “now moments” and “moments of meeting.” The intersubjective field gets suddenly reorganized at key present moments. This occurs when the current state of implicit relational knowledge is sharply thrown into question and basic implicit assumptions about the relationship are placed at stake.

These moments capture the essence of kairos. A new state is coming into being or threatening to do so, with consequences for the future. There is novelty and an “upset,” as well as a mounting emotional charge. The situation emerges unexpectedly and something must be done (including the option of doing nothing). This confluence of elements results in the emergence of a “now moment.”

Suppose that a patient has been in psychoanalytic therapy on the couch for a few years and has expressed concern from time to time that she does not know what the therapist is doing back there — sleeping, knitting, making faces. Then one morning without warning the patient lying on the couch says, “I want to sit up and see your face.” And with no further ado, she sits up and turns around. The patient and therapist find themselves staring at each other in startled silence.

That is a now moment. The patient did not know she was going to do it; certainly not that day, that moment, in that way. It was a spontaneous eruption. Nor did the therapist anticipate it, just then, in that way. However, now they find themselves in a novel interpersonal and intersubjective situation. Kairos hangs heavy.

When such a major emergent property declares itself, it immediately occupies the center stage. A now moment is so called because there is an immediate sense that the existing intersubjective field is threatened, that an important change in the relationship is possible (for good or ill), and that the pre-existing nature of the relationship has been put on the table for renegotiation. These realizations (most often felt rather than cognized) make the atmosphere highly charged. The therapist feels disarmed and the level of anxiety rises because he or she really does not know what to do. Usual technique is not up to the job. Also, in such moments the participants are pulled fully into the present moment that is staring them in the face, now. Often in therapy, one is not fully “there” in the present. One is evenly hovering in the past, present, and future. But as soon as a now moment arrives, all else is dropped and each partner stands with both feet in the present. Presentness fills the time and space. There is only now. Usually the ongoing present is a nonsensory, implicit aspect of experience. In a now moment, it becomes felt and explicit.

There are many types of now moments, within, outside of, or at the edges of the therapeutic frame. However, a clear frame is necessary for this process to take on meaning. In brief, the essence of the now moment is that the established nature of the ongoing relationship and the usual way of being with each other (or doing business) is implicitly called into question. Because it is an emergent property its appearance cannot be predicted. It cannot be prepared for. And the usual techniques or ways of handling the interaction are not necessarily applicable. Something else is needed to resolve the condition of suspense that has been created by the now moment. The something else is a “moment of meeting.” It is the moment that resolves the crisis of the now moment.

The moment of meeting seeks to use the disorganization of the now moment to enlarge the intersubjective field in ways not thought of before. Intersubjective “fittedness” is sought, where both partners share an experience and they know it, implicitly. A moment of meeting requires an authentic response finely matched to the momentary local situation. It must be spontaneous and carry the therapist’s personal signature, so to speak. In that way, it reaches beyond a technical, neutral response and becomes a specific fit to a specific situation.

Take for example the patient who suddenly sat up to look at her therapist. Right after the patient sat up, the two found themselves looking at each other intently. A silence prevailed. The therapist, without knowing exactly what she was going to do (here comes the moment of meeting), softened her face slowly and let the suggestion of a smile form around her mouth. She then leaned her head forward slightly and said, “Hello.” The patient continued to look at her. They remained locked in a mutual gaze for several seconds. After a moment, the patient lay down again and continued her work on the couch, but more profoundly and in a new key, which opened up new material. The change was dramatic in their therapeutic work together. It was a nodal point when a “quantal” change in the intersubjective field was achieved. In dynamic systems theory it represents an irreversible shift into a new state. After a successful moment of meeting, the therapy resumes its process of moving along, but does so in a newly expanded intersubjective field that allows for different possibilities.

It is essential to add that this moment of meeting, in the previous example, was never fully discussed until years later when the patient said in passing that the “Hello” was a nodal point in her therapy. It made her realize at some implicit level that her analyst was “on her side” and “truly open to her.” For her, it changed their relationship. However, this moment was not verbalized at the time, nor was it ever interpreted during the treatment. It had worked its magic implicitly.

The moment of meeting is one of the key events in bringing about change. A moment of meeting creates an experience with another that is personally undergone, that is, actually lived through in the present. When this is done by two or more people, I call the experience a “shared feeling voyage.” It is a kind of journey, lasting seconds, taken by two or more people, roughly together, through time and space.

During a shared feeling voyage (which is the moment of meeting) two people traverse together through a feeling landscape as it unfolds in real time. The present moment is also a lived emotional story with a beginning, middle, and end. During this several-second journey, the participants ride the crest of the present instant as it crosses the span of the present moment, from its horizon of the past to its horizon of its future. As they move, they pass through a microemotional narrative-like landscape with its hills and valleys of affects, along its river of intentionality, which runs throughout, and over its peak of dramatic crisis. It is a voyage taken as the present unfolds. A passing subjective landscape is created that makes up a world in a grain of sand.

Although this shared voyage lasts only for the seconds of a moment of meeting, that is enough. It has been lived through together. The participants have created a shared private world. And having entered that world, they find that when they leave it, their relationship is changed. There has been a discontinuous leap. The border between order and chaos has been redrawn. Coherence and complexity have been enlarged. They have created an expanded intersubjective field that opens up new possibilities of ways of being with one another. They are changed and they are linked differently from having changed one another.

Shared feeling voyages are so simple and natural, yet very hard to explain or even talk about. We need another language that is steeped in temporal dynamics. This is paradoxical because these experiences provide the nodal moments in our lives. Shared feeling voyages are one of life’s most startling yet normal events, when our interpersonal world is changed in either a small step or a leap. In psychotherapy they are often the moments most remembered years later, those that most changed the course of therapy.

What we are talking about is basically as simple as “doing something together.” A moment of meeting is a particular case of doing something together. It has some special features. The minds of the participants must be partially permeable to each other so as to enhance intersubjectivity in the sense of affectively participating in another’s experience. Thus, they can maximally share the same mental and feeling landscape for a short while. The emergent issue that arises must have some consequence and thus be charged with affect. It must qualify as a moment of kairos so as to get elevated as a sort of peak amidst the other surrounding moves and present moments. The something done together must include a shared time voyage of riding the feeling shapes of a present moment across its short span. When all these conditions are met, a nodal event occurs that can change a life — and presumably the course of a negotiation.

Practically speaking, how can this be useful; and, given that it involves spontaneity and authenticity, can it be taught? Yes and no. Once the general idea about change processes presented here has been taught and assimilated, one gains a different perspective or vision about the process one is engaged in. It is this shift in perspective that makes the difference. One becomes more ready to identify, and even expect, key moments of change in an ongoing process. With that, one becomes more ready to alter strategy in midstream. And one becomes better able to tolerate the anxiety that inevitably accompanies these moments of shift. In addition, one is given greater “permission” to use themselves, their spontaneity and authenticity, at key moments when something beyond strategy and technique is called for to move the process along.