OK, back to blogging. I don’t say much in this blog about my life or family. Its a Journal of ideas. For better or worse. I don’t really know. I’ve had a phew phases in my life… this blog is about the ideas during my initial enthusiasm for the Internet. Then psychodrama and psychotherapy. Jung. Politics. All ideas. But a new phase is looming. I can’t write about anything new unless I become a bit more personal. I’m 10 weeks post op bypass surgery. I’m 75. Last year I stopped seeing clients. That was a big step! The focus early 2020 was on supervision and training. Here are Health Update emails in the order I sent them:
I have not finished with this blog. I don’t know what I’ll be doing from here on, but one thing is writing. One motivation for changing to WordPress.com is that I can’t maintain the vagaries of managing a server anymore. But that is not all. I could just delete the whole thing! I don’t want to do that. For one I think the whole saga from the 1990s on is interesting, for me and maybe others, family even? This blog is source to writing I have completed. It is a scrapbook for writing to come, and I have a few projects on the go.
Another link to Roger Eberts Journal. Advice to reviewers. Thought this might be of interest to anyone editing or marking written work as well. First bit of advice quoted here, plenty more on his site.
1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them.
2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems.
Moving Against People
3. The need for power; the ability to bend wills and achieve control over others—while most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate for it.
4. The need to exploit others; to get the better of them. To become manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be used.
5. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.
6. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities—to be valued.
7. The need for personal achievement; though virtually all persons wish to make achievements, as with No. 3, the neurotic may be desperate for achievement.
Moving Away from People
8. The need for self sufficiency and independence; while most desire some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other individuals entirely.
9. The need for perfection; while many are driven to perfect their lives in the form of well being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly flawed.
10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders; to live as inconspicuous a life as possible.
The medium is the message, and language is foul! Marshall Rosenberg calls it Jackal language. Cognitive Behaviour therapy and Rational Emotive therapy, Imago as well as Marshall Rosenberg’s NVC non violent Communication all focus on what I am calling Clean Speech. Both in sending & receiving.
Embedded in our language are the forces of domination! It makes sense. The power structures of domination build a system of ideology to support them and the place for thoise controls to hide are in the cultue in many ways – and almost invisibly in the language. Changing language is potent!
Being non-exclusive in language has made a difference. Look at how we had to deal with the way he meant she in English, I say had, but the fight is not over, but we have come a long way.
Not so with language of love… all day in my work as a relationship therapist I listen to language that attributes blame to the other. The dicipline of the Imago dialogue is great, it handles a lot of it, but there is lots more to develop. This is a science.
What I have not heard anyone say, though they may have, is that “clean speech” is another road to the unconscious. So often the CBT and RET schools deny the efficacy of the relationship as a tool for healing and of the power of the unconscious. Clean speech is essentially to speak from experience, and to uncover its layers. To make the unconscious conscious… in a relationship! Clean speech is a way of working with the transference & counter transference.
ANSWER: It’s the way of thinking, communicating and using power that helps us connect to one another in a way that we enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being. It’s an attempt to live in harmony with certain values. But since we’ve been educated for about 8,000 years in domination structures, that does not make contributing to one another’s well-being easy.
If I’m in conflict with people, I try to hear what needs they have. Now, “needs,” as we define the term, are universal; all human beings have the same needs. So if I connect to what people are needing, I’m one with them. I care about their needs. At the moment that they sense that I am as interested in their needs as my own, we can find a way to get everybody’s needs met.
So more concretely, what would that look like? This man might say, “Our work is not going to harm the environment. Our tests have demonstrated that this is not going to harm the environment.” So, this person shares the same needs that I have. I want to protect the environment. Apparently, he’s concerned about the environment also.
Now, where we might differ is in our ways of measuring whether something is harmful to the environment. But notice our needs are not in conflict. This person doesn’t want to destroy someone’s habitat, and he doesn’t want to be a menace. You see?
Here is a summary of J. L Moreno’s theory, the Canon of Creativity:
• Creativity is innate, universal, it is everywhere. We all have it.
• It is awoken by spontaneity, without spontaneity it is useless.
• Spontaneity can be trained.
• Spontaneity comes through warm-up, and warm-up is expressed through roles.
Is that a good summary?
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There are lots of roles needed to produce art. Ability to manage time, money, resources. Knowledge of the culture, networks, marketing, techniques, organisation. I think of these as functional roles, and they can be taught, coached and trained, and yes they will help, but there is more…
Question:
What are the roles involved, what is the warm-up, say, when Marcel Duchamp exhibits “Fountain”? Or Pollock drips for the first time? Or Warhol mass produces every-day objects as art in a Factory?
Are these moments of newness simply a product of being functional? Having lots of functional roles. Will inspiration come from perspiration?
I imagine great inspiration comes from another type of role… or states? Angst. Pain. Trauma, mania, love, hate, despair… attitude, belief.
Perhaps the central role is to be able to put ones madness to good use?
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So it is an age old question: Can art be taught? Or are we born with talent? Or is it circumstantial, luck, being in the right place at the right time?
Moreno, I am sure, believes we are all geniuses, and that we can train ourselves and others to be great innovators of our time. That is the sort of role training I want to see happen!
Apparently artists are supposed to have them. I am not sure why. I have never had one in my career as a psychotherapist, a Psychotherapist Statement. Never the less I can see the point. I like focus, commitment and direction, and not only that, I already have a lot of those, and a statement might help to convey that. I blog and so make heaps of statements, but now is the time for FOCUS.
I’ll work at it. Blog about it. Come up with a crisp statement, one that can last me a good while, or at least as long as it fits. Warming up: Those “how-to” links above don’t quite do it for me, though they are start. What about Lars von Trier, he might inspire. And De Stijl, or the Der Blaue Reiter, these people had statements. I’d like an artistic one, perhaps a Heraclitus quote, here a few I like:
You could not discover the limits of soul, even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning.
Soul is the vaporization out of which everything else is composed; more-over it is the least corporeal of things and is in ceaseless flux, for the moving world can only be known by what is in motion.
Soul has its own inner law of growth.
It is hard to fight against impulsive desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul.
It would not be better if things happened to people just as they wish.
Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than dung.
And a Bio is different from an artist statement, but I am gathering together what I have – so I can revise both.
I think line & wash is one of my favourite forms. It is on my mind as I plan to find some time to go away and do art. Who knows when! While these are all digital I have been doing some on paper and that is a mobile and realistic thing to do in the hills. These are a selection of landscapes & figurative ones. I often do abstract in this style too, will collect some of those later.
When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.
He puts it really well, he can see that there is a fundamental human right about neutrality of access.
One, it is holidays and I may have a bit more time.
Two, this tool (which I heard about from Scoble – interestingly) looks good: Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com
I am editing this post in a Blog This! type interface but nicer. Or is it? At first go, and this is it, it seems nice – what If I want to post an image?
Not bad!
and how about my quoting?
Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your WordPress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.
OK!
Let’s see how it looks?
Later, Not bad, and the HTML was easy to tweak later too.