Do Events Have Effects? A Commentary on Polizzi and Draper

Abstract

Polizzi and Draper offer an elegant application of a phenomenological approach to the practice of psychotherapy within the forensic context. They describe how—even though these contexts are constituted through layers of sedimented meanings that pre-signify setting and participants—therapists and inmates may find ways to be open to each other and to genuine encounters that they conceptualize as “events.” In this commentary, I raise a question that the authors did not appear to consider, which is that of whether these “events” have “effects” either for the participants themselves or for the broader context as well. I contrast a hermeneutic–Heideggerian approach, which does not necessarily concern itself with such effects—as they are considered irrelevant to the genuineness of the interpersonal encounter—and a transcendental Husserlian–Deleuzian approach, in which such events are thought to have profound effects for all parties involved, including the broader context.