ABSTRACT
We understand our patients when we locate their speech and conduct within suitable or fitting contexts. We understand ourselves the same way, by feeling our way into the contexts within which we feel that our own experience and behavior are most convincingly situated. Contexts, for this purpose, are enveloping atmospheres, at least as much matters of mood or affect as of content, within which some kinds of experience and interaction can take shape and others cannot. A fitting context is one that allows the meaning of the other’s speech and conduct, or our own experience, to unfurl: it enables the expansion of meaning, and it unlocks some significant portion of the capacity of experience to signify. A poorly suited context does not enable or potentiate in this way, but instead prevents, stunts, or inhibits the meanings that might emerge. A poorly fitting context ensures that new meaning remains locked away; it forces understanding down paths that lead only to familiar destinations.
