Across the depth-psychology corpus, ‘presence’ operates on at least three distinct but interlocking registers. In the ontological register, drawn from Heidegger and amplified by Derrida, presence names the foundational determination of Being as permanence — ousia as parousia, the ‘having’ of the always-now — a determination that Western metaphysics has never adequately interrogated and that Derrida reveals as self-undermining: presence is itself a trace of a trace, never simply itself. In the phenomenological-psychological register, Damasio locates a ‘quiet and subtle’ presence as the minimal condition for self-ownership of experience, the proto-selfhood that makes thought belong to a subject. Welwood translates this into therapeutic practice, arguing that shifting from experiencing a feeling to being in ‘unconditional presence’ with it unlocks transformative resources — strength, compassion, courage — understood as ‘differentiated qualities of being.’ In the mystical-cosmological register, Corbin’s reading of Ibn Arabi organizes the entire ontological hierarchy into five divine Presences (Hadarat), while Plotinus deploys omnipresence as the structural hallmark of immaterial power. Nhat Hanh, working from Buddhist interdependence, shows presence as relational disclosure: the presence of one thing reveals the presence of another in an infinite mutual arising. The tensions among these registers — deconstructive suspicion, phenomenological necessity, and contemplative affirmation — give the term its extraordinary richness in psychological literature.
Besides those images there is also this other presence that signifies you, as observer of the things imaged, owner of the things imaged, potential actor on the things imaged.
Damasio identifies presence as the minimal proto-self — the quiet, non-imagistic sense of being the subject behind all conscious content — without which no thought could be owned.
, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1999thesis
Out of presence with anger, strength often emerges; out of presence with sorrow, compassion; out of presence with fear, courage and groundedness; out of presence with emptiness, expansive spaciousness and peace.
Welwood argues that shifting awareness from a feeling as object to one’s state of presence with it transmutes suffering into differentiated qualities of being, constituting a core therapeutic and spiritual move.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000thesis
A further step on the path of awakening involves learning to be with our experience in an even more direct and penetrating way, which I call unconditional presence.
Welwood distinguishes ‘unconditional presence’ as a mode beyond mindful witnessing, in which the quality of being-with supersedes the content of what is experienced.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000thesis
consciousness offers itself to thought only as self-presence, as the perception of self in presence… the subject as consciousness has never manifested itself except as self-presence.
Derrida argues that Western metaphysics has systematically privileged presence by equating consciousness with self-presence, thereby granting the present moment unexamined authority over all other modes of being.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
‘Being’ is synonymous with permanence in presence… a being in the proper sense of the term is understood as ousia, parousia, i.e. basically as ‘presence’.
Derrida, reading Heidegger, shows that the entire metaphysical tradition has secretly understood Being as permanent presence, a temporal projection that remains unacknowledged.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
Presence, then, far from being, as is commonly thought, what the sign signifies, what a trace refers to, presence then, is the trace of the trace, the trace of the erasure of the trace.
Derrida reverses the classical semiological hierarchy: presence is not the origin that signs defer to, but is itself constituted by the trace-structure it was supposed to ground.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
the universal divine presences are five in number, the universal worlds encompassing all the others are likewise five in number.
Corbin presents Ibn Arabi’s hierarchy of five divine Presences (Hadarat) as the ontological framework ordering all levels of reality from absolute mystery to sensible manifestation.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
Hadrat al-Dhat (Presence of the Essence, of the Self)… Hadrat al-Sifat wa’l-Asma’ (Presence of the Attributes and Names)… Hadrat al-Afal (Presence of the Divine Acts).
Corbin details the Sufi cosmological schema in which each level of reality is a distinct divine Presence, translating metaphysical hierarchy into degrees of manifestation of the one Essence.
, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969supporting
The presence of the wood reveals the presence of the tree. The presence of the leaf reveals the presence of the sun. The presence of the apple blossom reveals the presence of the apple.
Nhat Hanh renders presence as a relational, interdependent disclosure: each thing’s presence opens onto all other presences in the web of interbeing, making isolation impossible.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
The sign, in this sense, is deferred presence… the sign, which defers presence, is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers.
Derrida shows that the classical theory of the sign is structured around a lost originary presence toward which signification endlessly moves but never arrives.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
Entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence’; this means that they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time — the ‘Present’.
Heidegger diagnoses Greek ontology’s equation of Being with presence (ousia/parousia), which he reads as an understanding of Being solely through the temporal mode of the present.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
‘even in the present itself, there always plays a kind of approach and bringing about, that is, a kind of presencing.’ As though, paradoxically, there is a modality within the present itself.
Abram, reading Heidegger, identifies a dimension of dynamic ‘presencing’ within the present — an ongoing emergence rather than a static now — that reveals temporal depth in sensory experience.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
Must one make presence the fundamental nexus between being oneself and being-in-the-world? To be sure, presence must not be separated from concern.
Ricoeur interrogates whether Heideggerian presence can serve as the primary bond between selfhood and world, questioning whether facticity or energeia better captures this nexus.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
the sense of Being which, in fact, throughout its entire history, has never been separated from its determination as presence, beneath the excellent surveillance of the is.
Derrida argues that the copula ‘is’ has silently enforced the closure of presence throughout the history of philosophy, wedding ontology to a restricted temporal horizon.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
the complex unconscious presence of the researcher to his or her work… the presence of the unconscious and systematic ways of dealing with it is what differentiates a science of soul.
Romanyshyn re-frames presence in the research context as the unconscious presence of the researcher — a methodological constant that a genuine science of soul must acknowledge and systematically address.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
we are forced to admit the omnipresence of the one same power or at the least the presence — as in one and the same body — of some undivided identity integral at every point.
Plotinus argues that the presence of power throughout manifested being requires positing an undivided, omnipresent identity whose indivisibility is the condition of coherence in all particulars.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
By letting past and future dissolve into the present moment, I have opened the way for their gradual rediscovery — no longer as autonomous, mental realms, but now as aspects of the corporeal present.
Abram argues phenomenologically that genuine presence is not the exclusion of past and future but their embodied incorporation, available only through dissolution of abstract temporal categories.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
The past and the future are always determined as past presents or as future presents… the hidden passageway that makes the problem of presence communicate with the problem of the written trace.
Derrida identifies the structural confinement of time within the logic of presence and gestures toward the written trace as the locus where this closure can be interrupted.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
beingness (ousia) as presence. Ousia as energeia, in opposition to dynamis (movement, power), is presence.
Derrida traces Aristotle’s equation of ousia with energeia as a specific articulation of the metaphysics of presence, contrasting actualization with mere potential movement.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
statistically significant relationship and positive is observed between the experience of God’s presence (PG) and religious faith (WR) (r=.73, p<.001), morality (MR) (r=.72, p<.001), religious practices (PR) (r=.74, p<.001).
Glaz’s empirical study establishes that experienced divine presence correlates strongly with religious faith, practice, and moral self-identification, providing quantitative grounding for phenomenological claims about sacred encounter.
, Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience: The Construction of the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale (IRES), 2020supporting
all its content is in immediate concentration… not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval.
Plotinus describes Eternity as the supreme form of presence — a total, non-successive ‘always all’ — against which temporal presence appears as a deficient, interval-ridden imitation.
, The Six Enneads, 270aside
We are hunting for modes of absence which, by their very way of being absent, make themselves felt within the sensuous presence of the open landscape.
Abram shows that the open sensory present is constituted not by sheer givenness but by structuring absences — hidden dimensions whose concealment enables the visible world’s presence.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996aside
this scale is related to the Catholic religious experience… three factors: 1. Religious experience, 2. Experiencing God’s presence, and 3. Experiencing God’s absence.
Glaz’s instrument operationalizes divine presence as a measurable factor distinct from both general religious experience and its opposite, divine absence, enabling empirical study of sacred encounter.