Interpersonal Hermeneutics

In prior posts about Biblical exegesis we’ve addressed hermeneutical considerations. How should texts be interpreted? Can the reader discern the author’s intent? Can we identify the interpretive community in which the text is embedded? Does every reader impose his own meaning on the text? In comments on prior posts we’ve also alluded to the importance of trying to understand what people mean by what they say and do. What are their intentions? What is she trying to tell me? Am I missing something? Am I reading things into the situation? Are we talking past each other? Does anyone really understand me? Figuring out how to “read” social interaction can framed as a kind of interpersonal hermeneutics.

Donald Davidson asserts the indeterminacy of interpretation, such that multiple interpretations can make sense of the same behavior or utterance without there being any absolute basis for determining which of the alternative meanings is the right one. Interpretation occurs within a holistic framework that includes ideas, behaviors, language, attitudes, and relationships. The interpretive framework affects the way an individual maps ideas and words onto phenomena in the world. However, the phenomena do exist independent of interpretive frameworks, so interpretation cannot float free of contact with the world. Because there is correspondence between meaning and the world, interpretations can be evaluated in terms of the individual propositions about the world. What would it take to understand what someone else means? Davidson proposes a process of triangulation, by which two people orient themselves to the same phenomenon in the world. Through triangulation it becomes possible to arrive at knowledge about one’s own interpretive framework, the other’s framework, and the world. Language is the primary medium in which triangulation takes place. Self, other and the world are inextricably linked in frameworks of meaning; knowing any one of them entails also knowing the other two.

Gadamer likewise proposes that a person can know only from inside a particular interpretive framework, which establishes the “horizon” of what the person can understand. Whereas Davidson focuses on individual interpretive frameworks, Gadamer looks at cultural frameworks that shape the understanding of individual members of a culture. Stanley Fish refers to “interpretive communities,” groups of people with shared attitudes and beliefs who essentially “write” the ways in which behavior and speech are to be interpreted. While the shared framework of an interpretive community defines meaning, the framework itself is usually unstated and inaccessible to conscious awareness. For Gadamer, the interpretive framework can be detected and critiqued only through conversation with someone who comes from another community, who understands the world through a different interpretive framework. In conversation differences in the interpretive horizons of the two people emerge, resulting in misunderstanding. Through questioning one another it becomes possible for two individuals operating within different interpretive frameworks to converge, extending the horizon of understanding for both of them.

The client in a therapeutic relationship may have an inadequate interpretive framework for understanding himself, other people, and the world. Further, he may not interpret things the same way as other people around him do. Others may interpret his behavior in ways he does not intend or realize or grasp. These interpretive gaps can result in confusion, anger, failed expectations, and a sense of isolation. There is no way to know which interpretive framework is the right one, or even the best one. However, it is possible for people with different points of view to “fuse” their horizons. Through conversation and questioning the therapist can align his own interpretive framework with the client’s, in effect seeing the world the way the client sees it. He can thereby help clarify gaps between the client’s framework and other possible frameworks. Through triangulation the therapist can evaluate individual elements in the client’s evaluative framework. By comparing understandings of worldly phenomena, the therapist and client can jointly identify differences in the ways their ideas and expressions correspond with the world. Through this conversational process, alternating between community and individual levels and between the holistic framework and the individual elements of that framework, the therapist and the client can explore the client’s difficulties in interpreting himself, others, and the world.