Set and setting

What “Set and setting” means in Eugene Seaich’s The Far-Off Land (1959), with a 2026 annotation note.

Updated November 10, 2026

In the book’s terms: “Set” (mindset: expectation, mood, intention) and “setting” (environment: place, company, circumstance) — the two variables Seaich attends to across his nine sessions, noting what changes with them. The phrase became standard in the 1960s; attention to both is already here in 1959–60, most explicitly in Session VIII (March 5, 1960).

2026 annotation note

The annotations note where Seaich’s informal attention to these conditions parallels later formal practice — and where they don’t: nine sessions by one investigator is a philosophical record, not a trial, and the edition never presents it as one.

Where it appears

Tracked journal by journal in Laboratory of the Self. See the methodology page on what the edition claims and doesn’t.

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