According to William Stem, psychological phenomena are only understandable in relation to a living and experiencing person. Stem defines the person as an open system which is related to the external world. However, the question how this relation between person and world can be conceptualized, specifically how person and world co-construct each other, needs further elaboration. In this paper, feeling is understood as the critical mediating process of the person-world relationship. It is shown how the world constrains the flow of feeling through semiotic devices, as, for example, feeling concepts and circumvention strategies. Yet the world does not strictly determine feeling and other psychological functions. It is always the person who actively reconstructs the world's suggestions in ongoing time, rather than simply taking them over or selecting them.
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