Eternal sunshine of the unconscious mind – CultureLab – New Scientist
Phronesis – knowing through performance, action
A few years ago I printed out this article to read! Today I began reading it. Wonderful.
Art as action or art as object? the embodiment of knowledge in practice as research
Dr Anna Pakes, Roehampton University of Surrey, England
<A.Pakes@roehampton.ac.uk>
If I can make a short summary: Through action we know stuff.
This is right on the topic of my science & Psychodrama paper, and goes back again to Aristotle: Phronesis (see earlier post of mine) I have highlighted a bit in the quote below that may as well describe a Psychodrama session. She relates the knowing to dance, but and I am sure it applies equally if not more so to Psychodrama which is a conscious form of experimentation in addition to all that she describes.
Quote follows.
Continue reading “Phronesis – knowing through performance, action”
Jung and Pauli – The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.
Through collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg, Jung intuitively sought to establish a parallelism between psychic processes and the physical world by applying emerging theoretical concepts of quantum physics to his analytical psychology. Wolfgang Pauli, a prominent co-founder of quantum physics, first met Jung in 1930, and for the following twenty-six years they corresponded with each other exploring the relationship that they believed existed between analytical psychology and quantum physics. In 1952, Jung and Pauli published their initial findings in a book entitled The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.
Donald H. Wolfraim Ph.D. The Unity of Psyche and World
Psyberspace
The psyche, like love is not to be defined. We know a few things about it & even that is presumptuous. There is no science of soul, or love.
So poetry is one way to speak about these things.
To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.
This passage from Blake touches on my central experience of psyche. I have often quoted it.
Little Picture <-> Big picture
This is on my mind as I reflect on the parallel process in groups and is supervision in psychotherapy. Patterns repeat within the sessions, and within the psyche. In groups we all learn as one person explores a story in depth. We learn as that story relates to our own srories and we move beyond content to process. Once the process is understood then it is as if we tune in with a law of human nature. (I shle bring in an example but they are hard to describe. I have on in my paper: The Future of Knowing. Also in my Psychodrama thesis The group and the Protagonist.
This phenomena must have been at the heart of astrology. As above so below… yet (for all the value astrology may have) this is not credible to me in the way parallel process is, which is simply experienced, known, self evident.
Plato also saw the connection between the psyche and the larger picture, he related it to our knowledge of social justice.
The Isomorphism Between Social and Psychic Justice
… to construct the definition of psychic justice, he relics on (1) the full definition of social justice he constructed earlier, and the unusual idea that (2) a just city and a just man do not differ at all with respect to justice.
Gerasimos Xenophon Santas Goodness and justice: Plato, Aristotle, and the moderns
Plato makes all sorts of strange arguments based on isoprphy, however the phrase “a just city and a just man do not differ at all with respect to justice.” with respect to process rings true. Almost tautologically. Justice is an abstract idea that know no holon so to speak.
All this is of interest after watching Tom Atlee on a TED talk.
Tom Atlee, the author of “The Tao of Democracy,” gave a TEDx talk in Warwick in England on “Collective Intelligence in a Time of Global Crisis.”
The small group process is seen as a better representation of the peoples will than individual expressions of opinion. This is central to decision making about such things as climate change etc.
It becomes interesting when we see the holons line up:
Individual psyche <-> dialogue <-> Group Process <-> social justice
Understanding & making a shift in any one of these can impact the others. None of it is mystical or automatic. Some ways of working with process are better than others. Facilitation of process is essential.
This image from the N.Y. Times is to the point.
Universal participation in action – a principle for the science of the virtual.
I spoke of Conscious experience in the last post… this is what I was thinking of. A quote from Moreno in Who Shall Survive? follows.
Continue reading “Universal participation in action – a principle for the science of the virtual.”
Zootechnique
Ideas on cyberspace and psyche follow, with reference to social networks, science, psychodrama and sociometry. I conclude with a quote from Moreno that led to this reflection.
On the evolution of science.
I have just listened to a spectacular podcast. From 2006 – I missed it till I changed my system of managing podcasts – giving in to the iTunes default way.
Kevin Kelly – The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in the Scientific Method.
Download: iTunes — Direct download
The textual summary is here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly06/kelly06_index.html
I continue to discuss the podcast and relate themes to my own writing.
The Locus of Therapy – Moreno
When I was a social worker in the early ’80s and a person was waiting in the waiting room to see me, the receptionist would ring me and jokingly say your client system is here to see you.
Social Work has had a strong sense for a long time that the individual is always part of a system. This same systems theory was taught to me as being central to Psychodrama, specifically through an article by Lynette Clayton.
Recently I have read some good material in Imago Relationship Therapy : Perspectives on Theory, particularly by Randall C. Mason, Ph.D. who talks about the Relational Paradigm, and sees it as distinct from systems thinking.
I have been wanting to tie all this together, and Moreno’s contribution is significant. I love the way he sees the origin of our thinking of individual psyche ties in with the body as being the locus of treatment in medicine. What a fallacy it has been to continue to think like that in psychotherapy!
The opening of the Chapter on Sociometry in Psychodrama Volume one follows.
I’ve also added more notes on Sunday, 29 November 2015
Dr. Rory Remer
Homepage
I am delighted to have discovered Rory Remer’s site. A Psychodramatist, TEP. Now more focussed on Chaos theory and how it leads to other psychotherapeutic modalities.
Of particular interest are these papers:
An Introduction to Chaos Theory for Psychodramatists
The interesting thing is that here, for the first time I have seen someone make the same point I have in my Psychodrama Thesis and in my Moreno & Scientific Method paper. The fractal nature of the systems.
Blinded By The Light
A critique of “evidence based” practice.
Gender Issues
Has a link to a good article “Did I Hear You? What Are You Really Saying?” (not by him but Denise Twohey and Antoinette L. James University of North Dakota)
And an interesting couple of pages on supervision.
I want to read more some of this carefully!
Schrödinger’s Cat
Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics being applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement).