Experiential knowledge is knowledge gained through experience, as opposed to a prior (before experience) knowledge: it can also be contrasted both with propositional (textbook) knowledge, and with practical knowledge.
What is Experiential knowledge?
Experiential knowledge is cognate to Michael Polanyi's personal knowledge, as well as to Bertrand Russell's contrast of Knowledge by Acquaintance and by Description.
Carl Rogers stressed the importance of experiential knowledge both for the therapist formulating his or her theories, and for the client in therap both things with which most counsellors would agree.
As defined by Thomasina Borkman (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, George Mason University) experiential knowledge is the cornerstone of therapy in self-help groups, as opposed to both lay (general) and professional knowledge.
Sharing in such groups is the narration of significant life experiences in a process through which the knowledge derived thereof is validated by the group and transformed into a corpus that becomes their fundamental resource and product.
Neville Symington has argued that one of the central features of the narcissist is a shying away from experiential knowledge, in favour of adopting wholesale a ready-made way of living drawn from other people's experience.
