Category: Psyche

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Psychological Eclecticism and Nothing

I recall being advised by my then supervisor, about 30 years ago, to look around for a psychotherapy modality that grabbed me and then to learn it thoroughly and not become prematurely eclectic. I followed that advice. Psychodrama was that modality for me and I am steeped in its traditions and have practiced it for decades and hope to do that for a few more.

However I have more than a passing familiarity with a some other fields of practice, I have a grasp of Archetypal Psychology and I am qualified in Imago Relationship Therapy. I have grappled with my multiple perspectives, and have written a paper about my tension with Imago for the AANZPA Psychodrama Journal: The Imago Affair. I’ve been thinking about this more of late.

Continue reading “Psychological Eclecticism and Nothing”

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Dialogues and mirroring – Psychodrama and Imago

In an earlier post I tried to capture a thought I had about dialogues. I was pleased to know someone read it and emailed me to say they were a bit confused. No wonder, I just pour out something I think about late at night — when I should be fast asleep!

I will describe more clearly how I work with couples by unpacking what I think are important ideas in a snippet from the earlier post.

I like to distinguish the words of the initiator of the dialogue, the protagonist, from the response by the person who is listening, the receiver, who I encourage to think of themselves as an auxiliary.

The problem is that I’m using language from two psychotherapeutic modalities. I imagine this makes no sense to anyone really, as there are very few psychodramatists who are also Imago Relationship Therapists. Even to someone who has that background it is still a muddled sentence.

Let me start again. First I’ll use Imago terms and then I’ll describe the same work using psychodrama language.

Continue reading “Dialogues and mirroring – Psychodrama and Imago”

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States of consciousness

I’m interested in tagging.

I love the way that books can be on two shelves at once in cyberspace.

Pursuing this idea to see if I can tag better on the Mac has led me to

Default Folder x

Ironic software who make Deep & Leap — though I can’t tell which one I should use.

Noticing that Path Finder, that I already use has an option for OpenMeta tags (that all the above use as well)

And

More strangely to this site, which may or may not be related:

http://openmeta.livejournal.com/

Later — Sunday, 28 January, 2018 : https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2012/rational-thinking-and-its-conceptual-content/

But has some interesting stuff about Gurdjief and states of consciousness

NewImage

And that led to a lovely entry on Gurdjief in SkepDic

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I doubt there is a connection with Gurdjief in any way, but tagging does do something to your consciousness…

This is about straight tagging:

http://code.google.com/p/openmeta/

Just as well I can tag this post!

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Archetypal Tendencies

I’ve been reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. One of the central thesis of the book is that evolution is not only driven by adaptation. There are two other forces at work: structural forces, ie the laws of physics and contingency, luck. What if Beethoven did not have a piano?

I’ll post the picture that impressed me again:

Camera Roll-47

This is a central idea (from the book):

The progression of inventions is in many ways the march toward forms dictated by physics and chemistry in a sequence determined by the rules of complexity. We might call this technology’s imperative.

What is stirring me to write this post is that I listened to a podcast today on Tech Nation, Moira Gunn interviewing Adrian Bejan – details

Click to play & download Adrian Bejan

It is uncanny, and totally in line with the Kevin Kelly theory of what is inevitable that these tow come up with the same ideas. This is the time when we make a shift from classical darwinism, to incorporate something marx might have called dialectical materialism.

More about & by Adrian Bejan here:

 

His book on Amazon:

Design in Nature.

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This theory, Bejan calls it “Constructal Law” governs everything. From his book:

The constructal law is revolutionary because it is a law of physics—and not just of biology, hydrology, geology, geophysics, or engineering. It governs any system, any time, anywhere, encompassing inanimate (rivers and lightning bolts), animate (trees, animals), and engineered (technology) phenomena, as well as the evolving flows of social constructs such as knowledge, language, and culture. All designs arise and evolve according to the same law.

What excites me is that the same law – or rules of complexity, a law about change really, governs the psyche too. I think Jung was onto this with archetypes. These structures are universal across cultures.

Saturday, 02 July 2022

I’m reading his “The Physics of Life — The Evolution of Everything”. Its at odds with what I’m thinking now. It’s not remotly dialectical. It’s all billiard balls. Nevermind. One day I may sort this out. Just annoying right now.

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The C.G. Jung Page: Too Important to Leave to the Experts by Dolores E. Brien

Too Important to Leave to the Experts

by Dolores E. Brien

via The C.G. Jung Page: Too Important to Leave to the Experts by Dolores E. Brien.

Wonderful work, only in the Internet Archive – I won’t paste the whole lot here, just a teaser. I trust the Archive will be there as long as my site…

Continue reading “The C.G. Jung Page: Too Important to Leave to the Experts by Dolores E. Brien”

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Psychodrama Training for Couple Therapists

The workshop I will be running for counsellors and therapists this year has gone up on the CITP website. It is run under the auspices of the Psychodrama training institute, and I’m pleased that this workshop I ran for the first time in Blenheim in November has a niche in the psychodrama setting.

I will also be doing a 3 hr workshop at the Brisbane ANZPA Psychodrama Conference this month.

Details of the July Christchurch workshop follow:

Continue reading “Psychodrama Training for Couple Therapists”

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John Gottman – Science of Trust

Amazon

Amazon Kindle Edition

Enjoying this book because it is packed with little gems, and because I’m devouring anything to do with relationships as I translate it all into psychodrama language and enrich my psychodramatic approach to couples.

Some snippets follow, managing to cut and paste them via sharing with Twitter – I hate that I can’t cut and past from Kindle.

Continue reading “John Gottman – Science of Trust”

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Repetition compulsion

It is the core of the psyche, and psychodynamic psychotherapy and I’m impressed how well Freud nailed this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion

Sigmund Freud’s use of the concept was ‘articulated…for the first time, in the article of 1914, Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten (‘Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.'[2] Here he noted how ‘the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, he acts it out, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it….For instance, the patient does not say that he remembers that he used to be defiant and critical toward his parents’ authority; instead, he behaves in that way to the doctor’.[3]

I don’t think it is just bad things though. it is something about themes of any kind, patterns repeat. So often what we talk about unconsciously refers to the process of the conversation. Its in the nature of the universe.

My psychodrama thesis is essentially about the broader application of this phenomena. Group and the protagonist.

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