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Zeitgeist

Have been listening to the audios and thinking about the sociodrama workshop I will be conducting at the Auckland Psychodrama Conference 2011 on the Zeitgeist. “Listening to the Spirit of the Times.”

Who shall survive and all of JL Moreno’s work looks to a future. Sociometry is the science of the future.

As I became socially and politically conscious, the future loomed large. “We shall overcome”, “Times are a changing” the counter-culture loomed large and it drove me forward (in the ’70s) into a utopian future that crashed both psychologically and socially.

Psychodrama arrived just at that moment in my life in in 1979. It filled my “me generation” needs as well as the counter-cultural needs. It was able to offer repair needed from the pain of the 70s but hooured the visions of the 60s.

And psychodrama did indeed flourish in the eighties in Australia and NZ. I think because Max and Lynnette Clayton of course but also because of the zeitgeist.

Psychodrama offered better social tools than yuppies and better psychological ones than traditional therapy.

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Feelings & Needs

I am constantly using the following ideas in my work with couples. I’ve made these notes from a Marshall Rosenberg page, book or lecture on YouTube.
I’ve integrated this thinking and it is very helpful in generating lead-lines as I coach people.

Here

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Role

Richard Bolstad & Annie Currie quote Antony Williams (Williams, A. The Passionate Technique Tavistock/Routledge, London, 1989) on role.  I have usually simply said thinking. feeling & action. 

NLP in Action – Transformations NLP:

In Psychodrama, a role is said to have five components: context, behaviour, belief, feeling, and consequences (Williams, 1989, p 58)

I still like the word thinking here, “the story I tell myself”

Context is needed, it gives the sense of a flow.

Consequences gives a sense of the role in flow. Reminds me of Marshall Rosenberg and deciding if a request was really a request or a demand. it depends on what happens when the request is refused, if threats follow etc then it was not really a request in the first place.

On the basis of that how about:

Components of a Role

  • Context
  • Action
  • Thinking (Belief)
  • Feeling
  • Consequences
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The Hopper Question – December 14, 2010

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article12141001.aspx

Is he a cliché? That’s the question you keep coming back to when you look at the paintings of Edward Hopper. On the face of it, the current show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time,” doesn’t help answer the question. The show gives us paintings like “Soir Bleu” from 1914. We’re at a café in France somewhere. Patrons sit at the tables. Right there in the middle, facing us, is a clown. He is wearing a white, frilly get-up and his face is painted white, too, with red lips and a couple of red stripes down the eyes. He is smoking a cigarette.

This may, in fact, be the sad clown we’ve all heard so much about. I’ve toyed with the idea that “Soir Bleu” is making fun of itself. Or maybe it is making fun of us, the viewer?

But, no. Hopper is a painter without any sense of humor, which is a troubling fact. He paints without wit, without self-awareness. We may have to accept the fact that Hopper painted the sad clown smoking a cigarette in the café because he felt it to be a poignant scene. He was so moved by the depressed clown that he went and painted one of the silliest paintings of the era.

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News about News

That news should evolve fast is not surpprising as our means of producing information evolve. I am noticing big developments.

Look at this one

Alive in Afghanistan

Alive in Afghanistan is an independent, non-partisan project, formed in response to the huge success of Alive in Baghdad and Alive in Gaza and the result of the hard work and collaboration of many partners and individuals. Alive in Afghanistan empowers Afghan citizens to participate in society by reporting on their political process. Alive in Afghanistan is launching in time for the August 20th presidential elections so that people across Afghanistan can report fairly on the elections and related events through SMS, email, and the web.

And this, globalpost.com/

Heard about this in an excellent podcast from NPR Fresh Air Listen to this for great insight into the war, (and its stupidity -Walter).

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Origins of Psybernet

I was searching for something and a Zine I wrote in 1994 popped up.

http://www.psybernet.co.nz/zine11.txt

Brings back a lot of memories and I see the origins of many of my current perspective on psyche & cyberspace were there right then.

             --++-=<*>****>>>>>0<<<<<****<*>=-++--



Text is evocative:



'With jaws the size of a truck, the dinosaur munched the man and

swallowed him.'



Did you see that!  It cost Spielberg millions to do that.



Text is cheap.



              --++-=<*>****>>>>>0<<<<<****<*>=-++--
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Mark Poster

I thought there would be someone doing something like this.  Dubious though I am of it.

Mark Poster – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Mark Poster (born 6 July 1941) is a Professor Emeritus of History, Film and Media Studies, and the Critical Theory Emphasis at UC Irvine. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1968, and his research interests include European Intellectual and Cultural History, Critical Theory, and Media Studies. He is known for applying the ideas of French theorists (including Althusser, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault) to the new media (including databases, hypertext and the internet). He seeks to politicize the issue of the use and development of the Internet by emphasizing the possibilities of the Internet for liberatory political change, while acknowledging the existence of a deep digital divide, as well as the interests of transnational corporations and national governments.[1]

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