By a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For

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COUPLES AT PLAY:

IMAGINATION, AFFECT, AND THE EMERGENCE OF HOPE

CLIFF STEVENS

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

PSYCHOLOGY

MERIDIAN UNIVERSITY 2018

CLIFF STEVENS

2018

COUPLES AT PLAY:

IMAGINATION, AFFECT, AND THE EMERGENCE OF HOPE

CLIFF STEVENS

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PSYCHOLOGY

MERIDIAN UNIVERSITY

2018

This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of

Meridian University by:

______Arthur C. Bohart, Ph.D. Dissertation Advisor

______Joy Meeker, Ph.D. Dissertation Chair

______Melissa Schwartz, Ph.D. Vice President of Academic Affairs

Thereupon I said to myself: ‘Since I know nothing at all, I shall simply do whatever occurs to me.’ Thus I consciously submitted to the impulses of the unconscious.

— C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

ABSTRACT

This study explored the experience of five couples to address a Research Problem that asked: in what ways might collaborative imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship? The Hypothesis stated that collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other might awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. Imaginal Transformation Praxis served as the theory-in-practice for this study.

The literature review explored topics including: Jungian, Imaginal, and feminist psychology, attachment theory, object relations, arts-based inquiry, and play theory. The literature reveals a lack of research focusing on creative collaboration, particularly in the context of adult play.

The research methodology used was Imaginal Inquiry, consisting of four phases:

Evoking, Expressing, Interpreting and Integrating Experience. The primary experience studied was hope, generated by collaborative imaginative play.

Six learnings and a cumulative learning emerged from the study. The cumulative learning states: the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others, rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. The first learning states: creative play enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with joy and interest/excitement. The second states: the group as a whole had a transformative effect

vi on each participant’s experience. The third states: the evocative nature of the mask- making methodology fostered emergence of a liminal, transformative state. The fourth states: issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally and interpersonally. The fifth states: gender informed the participants’ experience of control and vulnerability, and their permission to claim and express an “artistic self.” The sixth states: hope was expressed through images suggesting transformation and pathways toward future possibilities.

The mythic context for this inquiry is the Wounded Feminine, as personified in the tale of Persephone. The relationship between playful, creative collaboration and the affects of joy and interest/excitement demonstrated in the study could have a significant effect on our understanding of how hope is generated and maintained.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With love and gratitude to my mother, Elizabeth Dyer Stevens, whose curiosity and playfulness enlivened my imagination as a child. Blessed, indeed, was I! Gratitude as well to my father, Clifford E. Stevens, who provided me with the secure base on which this project rests and, ever and always, much to ponder.

Many thanks to Lori Richloff, whose unflinching honesty led me to question the meaning and direction of my life and set me on this path, and whose soulful creativity and depth have been a continuing source of inspiration. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies…

With appreciation to the members of Cohort 18, and my teachers and mentors at

Meridian University, who helped me prepare and tend the dark soil from which this vital green shoot emerged, and special acknowledgment to my co-researcher Robert Rowen-

Herzog for his insight, companionship, and ready humor.

Thanks as well to the members of my dissertation committee: Art Bohart, Melissa

Schwarz, and, especially, Joy Meeker, whose steadfast support and positive outlook were vital in bringing this project to fruition.

Finally, much gratitude and affection to Charles Asher, alchemist, analyst, guide and companion on the Way – a muddle, a night voyage, a circumnambulation of the self.

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………... v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………...…………... vii

ILLUSTRATIONS ………………………………………………………………...... xi

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………... 1

Research Topic

Relationship to the Topic

Theory-In-Practice

Research Problem and Hypothesis

Methodology and Research Design

Learnings

Significance and Implications of the Study

2. LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………………... 19

Introduction and Overview

Play

Relationship

Hope

The Mundus Imaginalis

Poïesis

3. METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………………...... 86

Introduction and Overview

Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry

4. LEARNINGS …………………………………………………………...... 108

Introduction and Overview

Cumulative Learning: “Music Heard So Deeply That It Is Not Heard At All”

Learning One: “So Now We Can Grow Up Again”

Learning Two: “The Right Mix of Vegetables, Meats and Spices”

Learning Three: “Mask Just Wants to Be Young Again”

Learning Four: “Shutting Me Up Was Really Good”

Learning Five: I'm Not an Artist, But I'm Married to One

Learning Six: Hope is the Opening Door

Conclusion

5. REFLECTIONS ………………………………………………………...... 161

Significance of the Learnings

Mythic and Archetypal Reflections

Reflections on Participants and Methodology

Implications of the Study

Areas of Future Research and Praxis

Conclusion

APPENDIX

1. ETHICS APPLICATION .……………………………………………..…... 183

2. CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE ..………………………………………………. 187

3. CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE …………………………………………... 189

4. INFORMED CONSENT FORM ………………………………………….. 193

5. FLYER …………………………………………………………………….. 196

6. PRINT/ONLINE ADVERTISEMENT ………………………………...... 197

7. SCRIPTS: INITIAL TELEPHONE SCREENING ………………………... 198

8. SCRIPTS: ACCEPTANCE/REJECTION PROCESS ……...……………... 199

9. MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS PRIOR TO DATA COLLECTION …………. 200

10. MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS, MORNING …………………………………. 203

11. MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS, AFTERNOON ……………………………… 207

12. POEMS: MEETINGS ONE AND TWO …………………………………... 210

13. PHOTOS: MASKS AND MASK MAKING ……………………………… 212

14. SUMMARY OF DATA………………………………………………...... 221

15. SUMMARY OF LEARNINGS ……………………………………………. 240

16. SIX TUTELARY SPIRITS ………………………………………………... 245

NOTES ……………………………………………………………………………….. 246

REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………….. 278

ILLUSTRATIONS

Dante and Virgil Leaving the Dark Wood – Gustave Doré ………………….… Epigraph

Persephone – Martinique Louise Fisher (by permission of artist) …………………... 166

INTRODUCTION

Research Topic

This study examined the capacity of creative, collaborative play to enliven and transform the relationship of adult couples, married or in a long-term committed relationship. Outreach for the study described it as an opportunity for “creative collaboration,” “creative play,” and “playful and imaginative collaboration.” The choice of language was predicated on an assumption that prospective participants would be more likely to give up a Saturday in their busy lives if the day promised to be novel and exciting. Whether or not the language posed a disincentive to other prospective participants is an unexplored possibility. In any event, play was and is the defining activity of the study.

In attempting to say something more definitive about the topic of play, we are immediately led in several directions, for play is a vast subject area. By proposing that play comprises seven “rhetorics,” or persuasive discourses, Brian Sutton-Smith does much to disentangle and clarify what play is, who does it, and why, by placing play in the context of more comprehensive value systems – learning, growth, imagination, and so forth.1 Importantly, Sutton Smith’s work lends theoretical support to the particular kind of play comprising the shared art-making methodology of this study. Sutton-Smith’s

“rhetoric of play as the imaginary” and “rhetoric of the self” are particularly relevant.

Through the lenses they provide, we can see play as a creative and imaginative activity, with a capacity to inform and transform, and ultimately, to lead to an expanded sense of

2 oneself, both alone and in relationship. The desire – one might safely say the need – to play is characteristic of humans and certain other higher animals. Although play may be at times solitary, it is for the most part a lifelong, relational activity. For a perspective on the importance of play in human development, I am indebted to the work of Donald W.

Winnicott, who argues, in Playing and Reality that play is at the heart of the early relationship between mother and child.2 Play occurs in a special, intermediary place that is different from the inner psychic reality of the child, a place that Winnicott describes as

“outside the individual, but…not [wholly] the external world.” 3 In this transitional space, Winnicott proposes that a child may “[gather] objects or phenomena from external reality,” and juxtapose them in novel arrangements with “some sample derived from inner or personal reality.” 4 In transitional space, we experience the limits – and the possibilities – of our own psychic reality, as well as our ability to control external objects.

Through play, we learn and grow, and experience both the joy of creativity, and the mystery of relationship.

Art making also takes place within a transitional or play space, where the imagination engages with the material world, and an image emerges. For a thorough and accessible articulation of this process, I am grateful to expressive art therapist and researcher Shaun McNiff, whose practical application of Imaginal Psychology underlies the research methodology of this study. Like C.G. Jung and James Hillman before him,

McNiff describes a creative process in which images are accorded a degree of autonomy, seen as “offspring,” with the artist-as-midwife assisting at the birth of a living entity rather than imposing his or her vision on static material.5 McNiff draws a parallel between the artist or art therapy practitioner, and the shamans of pre-industrial cultures,

3 where masks or other sacred objects were “considered to be alive, but incapable of speaking alone,” and dependent on human assistance to find their voices.6 The approach to mask making and performance used in this study would not have been possible without such a foundational understanding.

Participants in this study were asked to identify a self-aspect that had been neglected or marginalized in their relationship, and to represent it as a mask. James

Hillman’s work provided an indispensible theoretical structure in this regard. Granting that consciousness is located in “multiple figures and centers” rather than one unified self

– the notion of a multiplicity of selves – allows us to imagine that the “splinter psyches” that comprise our multiple selves have their own activating energies, not unlike the gods and goddesses of polytheism.7 Hillman builds upon Jung’s foundational writing on this subject, agreeing with him that the “true religion (of modern culture) is a monotheism of consciousness” in which the gods and goddesses, seemingly banished, have reappeared as neurotic symptoms.8 By adopting the perspective of multiplicity and granting our images the degree of autonomy they require to become available for personification and dialogue through Art-Based Research, those images become agents of healing, rather than merely something to observe.9

Jungian analyst James Hollis states that everything we do not know about ourselves, “and we cannot, ever, know much at all,” we will project onto the outer world.10 The reality of this makes interpersonal relationship a particularly rich field to explore. A shared commitment to a relationship of psychological growth offers the possibility of expanding one’s sense of self by engaging in conscious dialog, recognizing what has been disowned, and reclaiming it. It is not an easy process, and many have

4 turned aside from the challenge. Ann Belford Ulanov notes that the more each partner is willing to respond to “what is fished up from the unconscious in each separately and what gets dredged up between them,” the greater the possibility of each becoming his or her truest self.11 Polly Young-Eisendrath states that autonomy develops as one learns to take responsibility for his or her own subjective states, and compassion as one learns to accept the subjective states of one’s partner: “Accepting the ideals and failures of a partner can increase empathy for the entire opposite sex, for all of those others who are suffering and trapped (as we all are) in their limitations of body and gender.” 12

As adults, we may sometimes be overtaken by a vague feeling that something precious has been lost along the path from childhood. William Wordsworth muses on this experience in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” saying “Where’er I go…there has passed away a glory from the earth.” 13 Yearning for this dimly remembered feeling of unity and belonging, most of us may not recognize at first that the connection we seek is, and always has been, inside us. Consequently, we look outside, to new relationships, experiences, or possessions, unconsciously imagining we can return to the source through them. Hollis describes this as the “going home project”: a fantasy that through a “Magical Other,” one will be “healed, nurtured, protected, and spared the awful rigors of growing up.” 14 Christopher Bollas, in The

Shadow of the Object, states that we long for what he terms a transformational object: a person or experience that seems to promise the intense affective experience of self- transformation that occurred with mother in earliest childhood.15 With this in mind, the

Hypothesis of this dissertation study proposed that collaborative, imaginative play with a trusted other might awaken such implicit memories of such an earlier transformative

5 relationship, and that this, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. Hope, as we discover, is relational as well. In Childhood and

Society, Eric Erickson asserts that our foundation for hope and positive anticipation in life is established in infancy and is based on “early experiences of trust and security with an attachment figure.” 16 Bollas, too, notes that hope is implicit in the transformational objects to which we attribute our unconsciously felt longing – our hope – that they will transform us in the way that first relationship did.17

The affects, or emotions, of joy and interest/excitement are associated with both hope and play.18 In developing a conceptual overview for this study, as well as a framework for the study’s learnings, the Jungian analysts Louis Stewart and Joan

Chodorow have been significant influences. Stewart claims that the affects of joy and interest/excitement are fundamental motivators of play, and ensure that “young humans enter this world with joy in living and divine curiosity.” 19 A joyful engagement with life, or at least, a willingness to accept difficult situations without giving up, is fundamental to generating and maintaining a hopeful attitude. Chodorow’s merging of Jungian principles with Stewart’s exploration of affect and archetype in her clinical practice establishes a strong, practical foundation for using the expressive arts, in therapy as well as in research.

Relationship to the Topic

I began this journey in 2012 without a clear idea of where I wanted to end up, knowing only that the journey itself was innately appealing, and beckoned me forward.

Reflecting on this, I am reminded of Rilke’s poem “A Walk,” which describes how we

6 are “grasped by what we cannot grasp,” how a sensed, but unarticulated telos, a life- purpose “changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are.” 20 At this point, well along in that journey, I have no doubt that I was gripped by something larger than I could imagine at the time, and that much of the necessary work along the way was to develop the imaginative capacity itself. Now I have the language; now I have the concepts and more importantly, the experience, to hold a different image of my life in the world – an image that I was called to at a point when thoughts of “call” or “vocation’” were not at the forefront of my awareness. I only knew that I was lacking something, and I felt that this particular path might lead me toward it.21

It might be useful to introduce the concept of soul at this point, because it is most relevant to the enterprise of acquiring a PhD. in psychology at Meridian University.

Although Meridian’s catalog states that the school is philosophically grounded within

Imaginal Psychology, an approach that “reclaims soul as psychology’s primary concern,”

I had only a rudimentary understanding of what that meant when I started out; in fact, I had a certain amount of resistance to the whole notion. However, I was willing to undergo the experiences that were offered to me, and in time I came to appreciate that soul, rather than being an insubstantial thing, was the process itself – of deepening, elaborating, and refining those experiences into a very particular life, my life. Soul is both a place in which we grow and the growing itself, not something we possess. In that sense, the process of soul making is continually self-revealing, and never complete. As the poet

Antonio Machado said, “there is no path, the path is made by walking.” 22

I decided to take a backward glance, toward those “tracks of sea-foam” Machado describes at the end of his poem (for the complete poem, see Appendix 12). In my personal statement, submitted with my application to Meridian in 2012, I wrote:

I am drawn to the intention of this program to provide an experience in transformational learning, a kind of alchemical cauldron in which I hope to not only envision, but also embody the next phase of my life, in which the disparate interests and experiences I've described above will be distilled into a solution integrating heart and mind, action and reflection, the inner life and a life in the world.

Little did I know what I was inviting! Or better, little did I recognize what was grasping me, beckoning to me, how my unlived life was calling to me, the vocation whose distant call I had yearned to hear more clearly. As Mary Oliver tells us, “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.” 23 I was to discover that immersing myself in Imaginal psychology for the next four years would result in a deepened capacity to imagine, a faith that imagination is as real as the gravel in my driveway, and so, a healing both within me, and in relation to Life itself.

In the beginning, because I was asked what topic I thought I might research for my dissertation, and because I was, at the time, involved in a romantic relationship that was enlivened by shared art-making, I thought I might explore shared creativity as a spiritual path. Vera John-Steiner’s Creative Collaboration, was an early inspiration in this regard.24 Couples would be my study participants; they remained so, even though the woman who inspired the beginning of my journey is no longer my partner. Much else has changed. As the dissertation gained substance, its gravitational field began to draw in new elements. I recognized the importance of welcoming such changes, and heeded the advice I’d been given, that the dissertation would behave like this. In his poem “The

Guest House,” Rumi advises us to “Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has

8 been sent as a guide from beyond.” I went through a lengthy period in which I could not imagine how I could bear to study couples in committed relationships when my own relationship had turned out so differently than I had hoped. I questioned whether my internships – providing spiritual care in a local hospital, and facilitating men’s intimate partner violence groups – had any relevance to my dissertation topic. I continued, through my own personal therapy and my meditation practice, to expand my capacity to experience my life differently than I was accustomed, through feeling and intuition, and to be comfortable in the muddle of not-knowing how to proceed.

Momentum continued to gather. I discovered Attachment Theory – why had it taken so long, I wondered? For a few weeks, it became my Theory in Practice, offering a new lens through which to understand intimate relationships. Other elements that had been missing, books that I had not read or not appreciated appeared again, anew, in a different light. The men’s groups? Of course! The wounds of patriarchy, the Wounded

Feminine archetype, the devalued feeling function, the Wounded World, calling out for our attention – my dissertation topic was pointing a way forward, toward work that is inspiring and challenging, and continues to transform me. The dissertation was truly a liminal passage, my vehicle on the transformative journey. I had spoken of this in my

Research Problem statement, without understanding that such a journey demands an enactment of death and rebirth, a re-assimilation of Self, and a good deal of trust both in my guides and my developing capacity to navigate the path. Although I was not able to fully grasp this until I was ready, my intuition about the nature of the dissertation process was corroborated when I happened upon one of the few explicit explorations of this topic,

Deegan and Hill’s “Doctoral Dissertations as Liminal Journeys of the Self.” 25

Major elements of my original interest have survived, and over time, other elements have emerged that now constitute the scaffolding of this study: creative expression as a means of inquiry; play as both expression and exploration; relationship as starting place as well as path; and the imagination as a lens through which we regard both ourselves and the world “out there.” I am still interested in how art can reflect our deepest experiences, our inner life, but not out of some sense of myself as an “artist,” uniquely endowed to make art. Rather, I have come to see images themselves as the matter of prime concern, and am learning to attend to them as “angels” in the sense that McNiff uses the word, as “intimate guides…(empowered) with significance and mystery,” autonomous, at once transcendent and intimate, helpful even if they at first seem to be afflictions.26 And at the same time, I've learned to appreciate Mary Watkins warning:

“The Imaginal resists being known except on its own terms.” 27 In order to form a relationship with it, we are required to abandon our customary ego-driven mode of conscious thought and activity, and develop a new, and perhaps unfamiliar sensitivity for intuition. Carl G. Jung observes that the conscious mind is “forever interfering, helping, correcting and negating, and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic process in peace.” 28 The work that I had undertaken was more than research into the experience of a group of couples; it called for understanding and transforming something fundamental in the way I interact with my own experience.

Theory-In-Practice

Imaginal Transformation Praxis (ITP), a framework developed by Aftab Omer,

“consists of concepts, principles, and practices that constitute an integrative approach to

10 personal and cultural transformation.” 29 A number of these concepts are important to the conceptual framework of this study, both in theory and in practice. Omer defines

Imaginal Inquiry as “a methodology for participatory research that weaves together both inquiry and transformation.” 30 Reflecting this, the art-based methodology of the study led the participants to identify a particular self-aspect and personify it, which is to say, bring it into relationship with the participant’s consciousness by giving it a discrete and particular personality. This was done through activities that evoked an image that could then be elaborated and embodied in a mask.

Personifying an Imaginal being (in this case, a self-aspect) as a mask is a move grounded in the concept of psychological multiplicity, which Omer defines as “the existence of many distinct and often encapsulated centers of subjectivity within the experience of the same individual.” 31 In this context, a subjectivity may be understood as one of many possible non-dominant self-aspects or sub-personalities. Within the tradition of Imaginal Psychology, the interplay between subjectivity and multiplicity finds resonance in Hillman’s notion of splinter psyches (noted above), as well as in Jung’s image of our partial selves as the “little people” of the psyche.32

Omer defines Imaginal Structures as “assemblies of sensory, affective, and cognitive aspects of experiences constellated into images…the specifics [of which] are determined by an interaction of personal, cultural, and archetypal influences.” 33 An important component of Imaginal Inquiry is the identification of Imaginal Structures that may be coloring the researcher’s interpretation of data, and engaging with those

Structures through a process of Reflexive Dialogue, which Omer defines as a

“conversation engaging two or more centers of subjectivity within a field of suspended

11 identification.” 34 Reflexive Dialogue played an important role in the inquiry’s methodology as well, in the ongoing conversation between mask-maker and mask as the emergent self-aspect took concrete form.35

Omer defines Primal/Essential Trust as the “expectancy that we are related to all of existence,” a necessary ingredient for the emergence of hope and possibility.36

Beginning as an attachment dynamic in the early mother/child dyad, and continuing through the lifespan, hope is profoundly relational. The trust that manifests in that first relationship prefigures the later extrapolation of trust to an adult relationship, or even to the whole of existence. Within the larger domain of Trust, Omer differentiates Ritual

Trust, which is “engendered through participation in ritual that enables a temporary submerging of differences, ambivalences, and conflict, liberating a revitalized Eros within the relationship or group.” 37 The inspiring and enlivening group energy that emerged during this research study reflects the power of a creative ritual container to promote such trust.

Gatekeeping, and its personification in the form of Gatekeepers, is Omer’s term for the “individual and collective dynamics that “resist and restrict experience.” 38 In this study, Gatekeeping was primarily an individual process, expressed in the critical inner voices described by the study’s participants, and, implicitly, in the unacknowledged cultural messages pertaining to gender roles. Gatekeepers as inner critics were explicitly acknowledged at the beginning of the first meeting, when I invited each participant’s critic to take a seat by the door for the rest of the day. Another concept articulated by

Omer, Key Moments is essential in the process of Interpretation, the third step in Imaginal

Inquiry. Omer defines Key Moments as “the soul’s experience of a unit of time, [making]

12 time meaningful, the way grammar makes speech meaningful.” 39The identification of

Key Moments formed an analytical matrix leading to the learnings attributed to the study.

Research Problem and Hypothesis

The study’s research problem asks: In what ways might collaborative imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship?

The hypothesis states: Collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other may awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility.

Methodology and Research Design

Imaginal Inquiry, a component of Imaginal Transformation Praxis, is a distinct research methodology situated within the participatory research paradigm, and forms the structure of this study’s methodology. Imaginal Inquiry consists of four phases: Evoking

Experience, Expressing Experience, Interpreting Experience, and Integrating Experience.

The study group consisted of five white, heterosexual couples living in Sonoma County.

Every attempt was made to recruit a diverse population, given the demographic realities of the local area, and the types of people to whom keywords such as “long-term relationship,” “playful creativity,” and “making a unique mask with special significance” might be meaningful. The study consisted of two group meetings, six days apart; the first daylong meeting took place partly in an art-making room, and partly in a movement studio. The second meeting was three hours long, and took place the following Friday evening at a studio space in Santa Rosa shared by one of the study participants.

During the first meeting, the study’s principle evoking activity took place: the participants, working as couples, were invited to become aware of a self-aspect that had been marginalized or excluded from their relationship. Once the images had been evoked, through a face-touching activity, the research design led the participants to amplify, elaborate, and personify those images through a collaborative process using art-making and expressive movement. The first meeting included two mask-making sequences, and two movement activities, both with and without masks. The meeting culminated with an improvised duet by each couple, witnessed by the group, and followed by an interview in which the masks were invited to speak. Interpretation occurred during group check-ins after each evoking or expressing sequence, as well as during individual reflection and journaling. The first meeting ended with a final check-in, and a ritual of integration.

The second meeting was almost entirely given over to interpretation and integration, although there was also a brief evoking sequence at the beginning, to assist the participants in re-entering a space of playful curiosity. During this meeting, the three researchers took the opportunity to share some of their observations and insights with the participants. Rather that tightly scripting the conversation, I came prepared with a list of open-ended questions, observations, and tentative interpretations from the first meeting, and allowed the participants’ interest and engagement with my prompts to lead the conversation. As a result, the second meeting produced some novel insights, not only regarding the day of mask making, but also into the participants’ lives and relationships.

It was a lively discussion, in which the participants were still metabolizing the events of the previous week, and curious about what the long-term effects might be.

In addition to Imaginal Transformative Praxis, I have employed another qualitative methodology, Art-Based Research, as a second interpretive lens. Art-Based

Research uses art making as a primary research tool, both to generate and analyze data, as well as to present the results of that research.40 Rooted in Jungian psychology, Art-Based

Research holds as fundamental that the totality of psychic reality, especially the unconscious, can be reached and expressed only by symbols, images, and metaphors.41

Such images are presumed to have an inherent vitality that demands they be allowed to speak for themselves. This is facilitated through the process of personification, in which structural components of the psyche are imagined as partial personalities. Art-Based

Research acknowledges that the creative imagination realizes its fullest potential in collaboration with others.42 Consequently, the research design utilized collaborative activities to make the unconscious flow of energy between two people (and in this case, the group) more available for elaboration, personification, and dialogue.

Learnings

Six learnings emerged from this study, leading to a cumulative learning which states that the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others, rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. The cumulative learning largely substantiates the study’s Hypothesis that “Collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other …might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility,”

15 while acknowledging that the claim that this occurred through “awaken[ing] implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship” was not substantiated.

The first learning states that playful, creative collaboration, within an environment perceived as welcoming and safe enabled the participants to reconnect with an earlier stage of life (e.g. the beginnings of their current relationship, their childhood, or both), that is imbued with the affects of joy and interest/excitement associated with play, and so perceived as more spontaneous and authentic.

The second learning states that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant, both as an individual and as a member of his or her respective couple. Participants experienced the group as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. The powerful effect of the group was, for me, this study’s most unexpected result, and I observe, in the Reflections Chapter, how my own

Imaginal Structures may have prevented me from anticipating such an outcome.

The third learning claims that the paradoxical nature of masks – they both conceal and reveal, and are at the same time “me” and “not me” – as well as the evocative nature of the plaster gauze mask-making methodology itself, furthered the emergence of a liminal, transformative state in which the mask wearers felt more freedom to dis-identify from a dominant self-aspect and express another, less privileged aspect.

The fourth learning contends that issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally, in the form of critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts, and interpersonally, through the desire to direct or control another’s behavior, whether acted upon or not. To the extent that control was willingly surrendered, creative activity was experienced as playful and enjoyable.

The fifth learning proposes that gender informed and mediated the participants’ experience, especially during the first meeting. There was general recognition that control/strength and surrender/vulnerability are culturally perceived as gendered attributes, and that the research methodology “played around with” these perceptions, giving participants some opportunities to try on the other gender. Gender was also implicated in the relative degree of permission that participants felt to claim and express their creativity, with women more likely to self-identify as artistic, and men more likely to express longing for the lost liveliness and spontaneity of childhood.

The sixth learning states that hope is a liminal phenomenon, and as such, was not expressed directly, but rather through images that suggested transformation and pathways toward expanded future possibilities. While hope was primarily expressed for the relationship, in some cases it was also expressed as hope for the larger world. Learning six underscores the profoundly relational nature of hope.

Significance and Implications of the Study

The primary significance of this study lies in the interweaving of its various areas of interest: Imaginal/Archetypal Psychology, Play Theory, relationship, early childhood development, and Gender Studies. There are numerous studies that examine how any two areas intersect – for example, Imaginal Psychology and relationship, or play theory and early development – but an extensive review of the literature shows little if any research in which all the areas overlap. Play is for the most part, either associated with childhood, or considered as it manifests in adult content areas such as gambling or sex. Relationship is typically viewed either from

17 the perspective of Attachment or Self-Expansion theory, or as an Imaginal phenomenon in the context of, for example, Jungian/archetypal psychology.

Examining all this study’s areas of interest through the lens of an art-based methodology is not well documented.

This study extended an invitation to couples who consider their relationship to be a path toward spiritual and/or psychological growth, although this was implied rather than directly stated. The belief that the sacred or transcendent is to be found in a two-person relationship is for the most part a modern phenomenon; in the past, the longing for transcendence or contact with the divine was framed in a religious context, while relationship typically focused on practical activities such as shared work and procreation. Relationships reflected an economic or social agenda, in that one needed to form alliances with others to survive and raise a family, let alone prosper. For modern, Western people, as James Hollis tells us, romantic love may well be “the primary region of existential hunger in our century;” in fact, our search for love “has replaced the search for God.”43 If interpersonal relationship is the path toward self-knowledge, let alone knowledge of the sacred, then we had better know what we are up against. With this in mind, an inquiry into the unconscious dynamics of interpersonal relationship is both timely and relevant. A first step toward this is to put aside the cherished illusion that we are in conscious control of our lives and relationships, and to acknowledge the vast, dark currents of unconscious psychic life that carry us along willy-nilly.

Shining the light of curiosity into those currents may lead us to a greater awareness

18 of why we make the choices we do, and so to a larger sense of purpose and fulfillment.

In addition to its possible contribution to the larger world, this study had great personal significance, and has been an organizing structure of my own inner work over the past six years. To use an alchemical metaphor, I took the various interests and enthusiasms I brought to Meridian, acquired there, or which emerged once I had embarked on the were, placed them in a stout vessel, climbed in with them, sealed it and cooked everything well. Out of this, something new has emerged. In large part, the process itself was the learning, a practical application of the Feminine Principle which draws us down, into a dark, inner labyrinth where we may find ourselves, as Barbara Stevens Sullivan suggests, pondering, meditating,

“digest[ing] the whole of something, neglecting the masculine expertize which can sort situations out.” 44 Rather than being guided by the mind alone, the whole personality becomes involved “down to its animal and vegetable elements.” So it would be fair to say that the process of doing this work, which I assumed was taking place out there, to something else, was in fact contributing to a process of integration – of individuation – which was only partly apparent to my conscious mind.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction and Overview

The research problem posed in this inquiry asks: In what ways might collaborative imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship? The study’s hypothesis states: Collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other may awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. The review of literature is clustered around five broad topics: Relationship, Hope, Imagination, Play, and

Poïesis (the creative engagement of imagination and the material world).1 These topic areas reflect interests that emerged prior to and during the dissertation journey: commitment to relationship as a transformative path, researched through an arts-based mode of inquiry and viewed through the lens of Archetypal and

Imaginal psychology; the nature of hope, and its growth and nurturance in a relational context; the Imaginal perspective, fundamental to creativity, and the praxis of art as inquiry; play as an essential human preoccupation, in its manifestation through collaborative creativity; the special, non-ordinary nature of the play-space, nurtured in our earliest relationships and informing the later development of culture and ritual; and the process of artistic creation itself. The

20 lifelong significance of play offers theoretical justification for its use in therapy and research through the various expressive art modalities.

The first cluster demonstrates the centrality of play in human life. The play impulse is considered for its role in generating expressions of culture such as sacred ritual and theater, whose dramatic enactments can be informative, cathartic, or therapeutic. Following that, there is a discussion of play as a transitional phenomenon, shared with our primary caregiver, which bridges the conscious and unconscious minds and contains the seeds of creative transformation. The next section considers play’s crucial role in establishing a joyful engagement with life through expression of the affects, as those emotions both initiate and metabolize experience. Finally, the paradoxical nature of play is discussed, further locating play in the “betwixt and between,” Victor Turner’s expression for the liminal

“space of becoming” where the Imaginal and physical meet. 2 Finally, and foundational to the collaborative and creative research methodology employed in this study, art making is considered as an expression of Sutton-Smith’s “rhetoric of play as the imaginary,” a kind of imaginative play taking place between adults.3

In the second cluster, relationship is considered as a fundamental and necessary developmental step, and also as a path toward self-awareness, growth, and spiritual maturity. The discussion begins with the neurobiology of close relationship, and the role of the affects in early mother/infant attunement, and proceeds to an examination of relationship through the lens of Attachment Theory, especially the effects of early attachment experiences on relationship throughout the lifespan. Closely related to this, there is an overview of the pioneering work of

D.W. Winnicott, with special attention to his concept of transitional space – the intersubjective field between the developing infant and its mother. Next, there is a review of Aron and Aron’s self-expansion theory, which proposes a basic motivation for seeking to be in intimate relationships. The Cluster closes with an appreciation of committed relationship as a path of spiritual and psychological growth, primarily from a Jungian/archetypal perspective. Although Jung himself acknowledged that the individuation process did not exclude relationship, his focus was largely on the individual’s experience. Jung’s heirs have explored the topic in greater depth, and provide the bulk of references in this last section.

The third cluster considers hope, beginning with a discussion of its dimensions and paradoxical nature, as well as its importance in the domain of positive psychology. There is a review of theories concerning the origins of hope, with particular reference to developmental psychology and Attachment Theory. In addition, circumstances concerning the lack or loss of hope are noted. Another section considers the importance of meaningful relationship in developing and sustaining hope, as well as the assertion that hope, along with gratitude, can be approached as a spiritual practice. The transformational aspect of hope is discussed, with reference to Bollas’ theories of the transformational object. From there, the review examines the healing power of hope, and its central role in constituting and energizing the therapeutic relationship. Finally, hope is considered from an

Imaginal perspective, as phenomenon experienced in the present, while drawing us toward the future.

The primary concern of the fourth cluster is the Mundus Imaginalis, or the

World of the Imagination, as the source of images that express a psychic reality that cannot be captured in words alone. In section one, the primacy of images in human consciousness is considered from both a biological and psycho/philosophical perspective; there is also a brief examination of imaginative capacity as a developmental stage in the relationship between mother and infant. A second section turns to the roots of Imaginal Psychology in the works of Henri Corbin, Carl

G. Jung and James Hillman, and, more recently, Aftab Omer. Tracing these roots back in time, the reader is led to the medieval writings of Ibn ‘Arabī, as well as to the English Romantic poets John Keats, William Blake, and William Wordsworth.

Next, the technique of working with images by personifying them is described, along with the concept of multiplicity underlying this process. Further discussion explores gender as it is constructed in the imagination, as well as in society. Finally, the Mundus Imaginalis itself is considered as a liminal phenomenon, a third space that lies between the material world and the spiritual, or insubstantial.4 The practical application of an Imaginal perspective in expressive art therapy and art-based research is also considered.

The final major cluster, Poïesis, begins with an overview of art-based research, its roots, and its relationship to expressive art therapy, focusing on the modalities that are especially relevant to this research. This section also examines the relationship between expressive art therapy and shamanism, as well as some art- based therapeutic applications. Following this, the relationship between an art-based approach to working with Psyche and Imaginal Psychology is considered, with

23 particular attention to a Jungian approach to working with images. The historical context of this connection is discussed, along with Jung’s legacy, embodied as the foundational ideas underlying various expressive art modalities. The next section considers the special capacity of masks and dramatic enactment to evoke a liminal, or third space in which psychological transformation can occur. Another section looks at the power of role, not only in the context of theater but also in psychological inquiry. A final section considers some ways in which artistic expression may be used collaboratively, as a tool for insight and growth beyond the individual, both with individuals and couples.

Play

Play scholars may be found in diverse disciplines, and include “classicists, literati, historians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, biologists, [and] leisure theorists,” each with his or her particular agenda and set of implicit assumptions.5 Brian Sutton-Smith suggests that there are seven “rhetorics,” or persuasive discourses, that place play “in context within broader value systems.” 6

Sutton-Smith observes that these discourses are “assumed by the theorists of play rather than studied directly by them,” 7 The seven are: the rhetoric of play as progress; the rhetoric of play as fate; the rhetoric of play as power; the rhetoric of play as identity; the rhetoric of play as the imaginary; the rhetoric of the self; and the rhetoric of play as frivolous. Two of these – the rhetoric of play as the imaginary, and the rhetoric of the self – are particularly relevant to this inquiry.

However, each of the seven offers a fascinating window into human psychology,

24 culture, and history. In the end, Sutton-Smith concludes, “Almost anything can allow play to occur within its boundaries.” 8

The Biological Basis of Play

Humans and some other animals are biologically predisposed to play. Jaak

Panskepp and Douglas Watt suggest that an “urge to play was…not left to chance by evolution, but is built into the instinctual action apparatus of mammalian brains brain.” 9 Panskepp has identified play as one of seven basic or primary emotions

(the others are seeking, lust, care, fear, rage, and panic) that are not simply “created by our perceptual interfaces with the world but by the nature of emotion/motivation orchestrating brain systems we have inherited.” 10 Supporting the conclusion that the play urge originates in “lower” (i.e. ontogenetically earlier) levels of brain development than previously thought is the fact that “the behavior survives radical decortication; animals without any neocortex play vigorously.” 11 Stuart Brown, drawing on the work of Gerald Adelman, describes an evolutionary capacity to

“receive, integrate, and remember…’memory-charged scenes,’ a form of primary consciousness in ‘play-capable creatures’ – mammals and certain birds.” 12 These scenes form a bridge between the “affect laden survival messages” generated by the brain stem and limbic activities and the “highly varied, memory-laden experiential maps that have sequentially been stored in the cerebral cortex.” 13 Play activities are repeated again and again with subtle variations, helping to form “a basis for seeing the environment through adaptive, flexible, and pleasure laden scenes.” 14 Brown suggests that extensive play during youth leads to a wider repertoire of choices as

25 an adult, which is to say, an enhanced capacity to respond creatively within given biological constraints.

Play and Culture

In Homo Ludens, his study of play and human culture, Johan Huizinga characterizes play as “a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is ‘different’ from ‘ordinary life’.” 15 Huizinga asserts that in pre-industrial societies, adults played “unselfconsciously and with total absorption,” as children or animals do. In this world, there was no distinction the space delineated for a sacred purpose and that which was marked out for purposes of play. In both places, human consciousness of being “embedded in a sacred order of things finds its first, highest, and holiest expression.” 16 Huizinga further elaborates the parallel between play and archaic ritual in the consciousness of “only pretending”: to some extent, the element of ‘make-believe’ is characteristic of all primitive religions, so that “whether one is sorcerer or sorcerized one is always knower and dupe at once. But one chooses to be [the] dupe.” 17

Victor Turner proposes that the distinction between work and play was meaningless in a universe in which “the work of men is the work of the Gods.” 18 In such a world, the main distinction was not between work and leisure – which, as a concept, only came into being with the industrial age – but rather, between “sacred and profane work.” 19 Joffre Dumazedier, in a pioneering text on the sociology of

26 leisure, suggests that we moderns can only imagine such a world: “written in the very passage of the days and seasons…punctuated by rests, songs, games, and ceremonies…marked by a whole series of Sabbaths and feast days,” at one point more than 150 workless days per year!20 The celebrations of the pre-industrial world, which fit the agricultural calendar so well, had an implicit ceremonial or ritual aspect that defined them as sacred work. However, as industrial economies grew, they were increasingly felt as an intrusion into the urbanized, factory workweek.21

Sutton-Smith observes that religion and the concept of “play as fate” rest equally on a presumption that human life is largely controlled by destiny, “by the gods, by atoms or neurons, or by luck, but very little by ourselves, except perhaps through the skillful use of magic or astrology.” 22 Although modern games of chance and festivals have lost their link to religion, they still have the power to evoke an altered state, similar to that experienced during ritual or prayer. In both instances, we get lost in an experience that is apart from everyday concerns. This experience is reflected in Huizinga’s description of play space as world apart from ordinary life, where “what the others do outside is no concern of ours at the moment.” 23 Both religion and play suggest the possibility of transcendence – “one eternal and one mundane” – a transcendence that has the capacity to make life worth living and impart meaning to everyday activities.24

Practices of ritual creativity support the mourning of loss and acknowledgement of the sacred, and also give shape to less weighty life passages through expressions of playful celebration. Ronald Grimes characterizes celebration

27 as “expressive ritual play (which is) at once a root of ritual and a fruit of the same.”

25 The many forms of celebration – “carnivals, birthdays, feasting, pretending, gamboling, gaming, dancing, singing, music making” – are expressions of culture, and are linked to the expressive arts.26 Victor Turner concurs, saying that the breaking open of “the former integrity of the orchestrated religious gestalt that once constituted ritual” has seen the birth of many “specialized performance genres” into the secular or liminoid realm.27 One example, documented by Galina Lindquist’s study of neo-shamanic practices in Sweden, speaks of “the spirit of ‘as if’…intrinsic in play,” and in theatrical performance as well.28 Actors are seen as merging with their masks, and so invoking the existence of other worlds. Don Handelman, in his review of Lindquist’s book, refers to “the playfulness of fuzzy frames,” that is, the intentional blurring of the line between play and ritual that results in their

“overlapping [and] interpenetration,” and so, perhaps, makes our entire world-view

“fuzzy, loose, and less certain.” 29

Play and Relationship

Play is the defining activity in the early relationship between mother and child. It takes place in a special, intermediary place that is different from the inner psychic reality of the child. Winnicott observed that the psychological world of play is “outside the individual, but…not [wholly] the external world.” 30 He called this the transitional space, within which the child “gathers objects or phenomena from external reality,” and juxtaposes them in novel arrangements with “some sample derived from inner or personal reality.” 31 In this space, there is interplay between

28 one’s own psychic reality and one’s experience of controlling external objects.

Winnicott speaks of this as “the precariousness of magic itself, magic that arises in intimacy, in a relationship that is being found to be reliable.” 32 Reliability, or

“experience which leads to trust,” is essential to the infant’s the development first, in relationship to its mother, and later, to its family, its society and, ultimately, the world.33 The first transitional object – a precious blanket or toy that is, almost magically, both “invented” and discovered by the infant – acts as a bridge between the infant’s state of merger-with-mother and a developing sense of self. This object is charged with the sense of safety and well being afforded by mother, but it exists in a sort of “in between space” that is neither wholly mother nor infant. Creativity first makes itself known through the infant’s abovementioned “invention” of the transitional object.34 It is here that we develop templates for all future relationships

– the Internal Working Models proposed in Attachment Theory – as well as an implicit belief that relationship itself may be the source of meaning in our lives.

As we grow older, the extent to which early experiences of trust have nurtured the development of imagination is revealed. G. Spivack and M. Levine note that “kids who get into difficulties in school…show much less of an internal imaginative life;” they don’t have “a private set of games and fantasies that they have internalized in one way or another.” 35 If they want something, they lack the ability to try things out mentally before acting, which results in their getting into trouble, or getting caught. Alternatively, Jerome and Dorothy Singer tell us that

“greater daydreaming in childhood and having had imaginary companions” often lead to enhanced creativity in the arts or in science, or a “lively style of relating to

29 people.” 36 Another aspect of play is its capacity to compensate for negative experience. For Jean Piaget, play solves the fundamental conflict of childhood, between “obedience and individual liberty,” to which the only resolutions are

“submission, revolt, or cooperation.” 37 Because the ego “dominates the whole universe in play,” conflicts may be suppressed or solved imaginatively. 38 Play also assists in metabolizing negative affects. Joan Chodorow observes that through

“playful reenactment” of an upsetting situation and further development in imagination, “the overwhelming effects of the crisis emotions are modulated and transformed.” 39

In adulthood, the capacity for play correlates with optimal aliveness. Louis

Stewart observes that “marriage and family and the future generations depend upon a zest for life fully realized in imaginative playfulness and divine curiosity.” 40 It has been widely noted that modern life places too much emphasis on work. In response, Luciano L’Abate proposes that “Freud’s favored popular quote about functionality being derived from love and work should be expanded to include the abilities to play…to laugh as well as to cry.” 41 Winnicott describes play’s capacity to foster “growth and therefore health,” and speaks of its vital role in psychoanalysis, which he calls a “a highly specialized form of playing in the service of communication with oneself and others.” 42 If, as Ryan LaMothe proposes, the telos, or ultimate purpose, of psychotherapy is an increase in “vitality…the qualitative experience of feeling and being alive,” play offers a significant pathway to achieving this goal contribution.43 Jungian analyst Ellen Siegelman says,

“Psychological health requires the capacity to play,” or, more specifically, “the

30 capacity to fantasize and imagine.” 44 In the context of analytical psychology, this translates as the ability to play imaginatively with one’s own psychic material.

Finally, play offers the possibility of regaining some of the spontaneity associated with childhood, through renewal, and reconnection with our original creativity.

Musician and writer Stephen Nachmanovitch comments that the essence of play consists in getting out of one’s own way, and allowing the imaginative impulse to arise unimpeded.45

Play and the Affects

The affects, according to the pioneering research of psychologist Silvan

Tomkins, constitute “the strictly biological portion of emotion,” and can be characterized as positive, or life enhancing (Interest/Excitement; Enjoyment/Joy); neutral (Surprise/Startle); and negative, or crisis affects (Fear/Terror;

Distress/Anguish; Anger/Rage; Dissmell; Disgust; Shame/Humiliation).46 Louis

Stewart notes that the development of the affective system was an evolutionary milestone for our distant ancestors, forming a “more flexible system of instinctive response,” while evolving from and replacing “the more ancient system of programmed instincts.” 47 Both the life enhancing and crisis affects are intimately connected with play, Stewart continues, with the former motivating play, and the latter being transformed through play.48 In this way, play both nourishes and exercises the imagination. Each affect has a “prototypical behavior pattern,” or dynamic expression associated with it: in the case of Joy, it is play, and in the case of Interest/Excitement, it is curiosity.

The affect system operates at an unconscious level to heighten environmental stimuli. Because we possess “the capacity for anticipating and enacting possibilities,” the affects energize and orient us toward both threats and opportunities, “whether they are frightening or promising.” 49 Stewart proposes that the affects of Joy and Interest in particular have evolved to “insure that young mammals, particularly young humans, enter this world with joy in living and divine curiosity.” 50 Curiosity, the dynamic expression of Interest/Excitement, motivates the child to explore and play with everything s/he becomes curious about. Winnicott notes that play and curiosity are both “innate functions of the psyche which have evolved with the mammalian species,” and reminds us that this does not happen in solitude: “These functions are developed with the mother in a dialogue of mutually induced playfulness.” 51 Chodorow, too, points out that the affects, as well as being an integral aspect of childhood play, continue to have relevance and practical application in active imagination and expressive art therapy.52

Play as Paradox

Our cultural understanding of play is paradoxical. Sutton-Smith wonders

“why play is seen largely as what children do but not what adults do; why children play but adults recreate; why play is said to be important for children’s growth but is merely a diversion for adults.” 53 In titling his seminal exploration The Ambiguity of Play, Sutton-Smith acknowledges the difficulty of pinning down exactly what play is, while raising the question of whether this is due to the various rhetorics, or paradigms in which play is placed, or to “the character of play itself.” 54

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson proposes that play is paradoxical because, at the same time, it both is and is not what it seems to be, as, for example, in “play fighting,” where we pretend to hurt each other, but in fact, pull our punches.55

Winnicott speaks of play’s liminal quality, noting that it is in fact “neither a matter of inner psychic reality nor a matter of external reality,” but occurring in an area that lies between external reality and the unconscious.56 Expressive art therapist

Penny Lewis notes the “experiential link” between Winnicott’s transitional space – the world of Imaginal play in childhood – and “the liminal phase in shamanic healing.” 57 This both/and, neither/nor quality is part of the paradox of play. Sutton-

Smith refers to play’s “otherness” or “alterity,” its capacity to create a state in which “one becomes ‘lost’ in the experience and thus transcends everyday cares and concerns.” 58 Ronald Grimes speaks of celebration as “ritualized play”: an activity in which we are, for the moment, “utterly disinterested and yet fully engaged in the act at hand.” 59 While engaged in ritual play, Grimes continues, “I am little interested in distinguishing what is merely fictional, playful, dramatic, and imaginative on the one hand, from what is metaphysical, real, and eternal on the other.” 60

Relationship

In the deepest sense, there is no “self” without others. As a newborn infant, one’s sense of self emerges within the first and most intimate relationship with mother or primary caregiver, and through the process of differentiating from her.

We are shaped by and responsive to interactions with those others who are most

33 significant in our early life, and form mental patterns based on these interactions.

These patterns become what John Bowlby called internal working models – templates that mediate and constrain our experience of ourselves, as well as our relationships with significant others throughout our lives.61 They are memorable and persistent because they are imbued with affect: the delight or terror we associate with the original experience. Many researchers in Adult Attachment suggest that, throughout our lives, we are drawn to relationships or react defensively to them based on these models.62 We are attracted to others or repelled, we feel like a fish out of water or right at home, we idealize or abhor characteristics of our partners, and for the most part, we have no idea why. As James Hollis notes,

“If there is a central law of the psyche, it is that what is unconscious will be projected.” 63 Because the memory tracks were laid down before we had words to describe our experience, the models based on them operate unconsciously, without words. Still, we make up stories that we tell ourselves, our friends and family, and our therapists, engaging in dialogues that, as Mary Watkins observes, intensify “the way in which language carries us toward what we are going to understand, but as yet have not.” 64

The Neurobiology of Close Relationship

Allan N. Schore has described affective communication as a “dialogue of ultra rapid bodily-based…attachment transactions (occurring) beneath levels of conscious awareness in both members of the dyad.” 65 Between mother and infant, the co-ordination of biological rhythms helps create and maintain a secure

34 attachment bond, and so allows the infant’s brain to develop in complexity and organizational coherence.66 Described variously as homeostatic regulation, dyadic co-regulation, or affect synchrony, the process has a major developmental function in infancy and is also a characteristic of intimate relationships throughout an individual’s lifespan. In the first relationship, secure attachment develops through the mother’s “sensitive psychobiological attunement to the infant’s dynamically shifting internal states of arousal,” which takes place in deeply felt, face-to-face encounters between mother and infant.67 Over time, the mother’s responsive soothing is internalized, becoming a capacity for self-soothing.68 Hopefully, by the time we reach adulthood, we have become capable of regulating our own affect.

Leslie S. Greenberg notes that relationships, with their capacity to help people feel joy, security, excitement, and confidence, are “primary regulators” of affect.69 He proposes that people are largely motivated by a desire to maximize positive affect and minimize negative affect, and that we seek interpersonal connection because it helps us with the regulation process. Self-regulation of affect is equally as important as co-regulation in adult couples; in fact, a significant source of relational difficulty can occur when partners are unable to regulate their own affect, especially when the other partner is absent. Greenberg notes that every relationship needs a balance between “good enough responsiveness and good enough self-regulation.” 70

Diana Fosha, in a study of adults suffering the effects of attachment trauma and abuse during childhood, acknowledges that dyadic co-regulation between adults is not a process of “perfect empathy and flawless mutual attunement.” 71 A

35 willingness to “maintain connection and communication even in the face of discord and difficulty” is required, rather than choosing to withdraw and close up or put up a wall.72 The “work” of relationship consists in staying engaged despite one’s very strong desire to lash out or abandon the field. Fosha suggests that if one wants more from a relationship than merely feeling good, one will sometimes tolerate short- term negative emotions in service of longer-term goals of happiness and contentment.73 In a study on couple forgiveness, Greenberg found a link between a healing resolution of couple injury, and the expression of shame and/or “empathic distress,” by which the injurer expresses both empathy for the pain caused to his partner and his or her own distress at having caused the pain.74 Here, the expression of empathy, which is nothing less than the application of one’s creative imagination to the experience of another, is the key factor. Louis Stewart makes a parallel claim for the transformative aspect of play, which he asserts results from the engagement of creative imagination with negative affect.75

Attachment Theory and Relationship

Attachment theory poses two fundamental questions: Will I receive a timely and adequate response to my expression of need? And, am I worth responding to?

These questions establish that the attachment process is both relational and reciprocal, and that, from our earliest days, the people who matter most to us affect our psychological development the most. At the time John Bowlby first published his theory of Attachment in the 1950’s, most mainstream (i.e. psychodynamic) psychologists believed that an infant’s relationship with its mother was largely

36 formed within its own fantasy life. According to the theory of secondary drives, we like to be with other members of our species “[as] a result of being fed by them.” 76

Consequently, the attachment we feel was seen to be purely utilitarian, rather than affectional. As Freud famously said, “Love has its origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment.” 77 In contrast, Bowlby argued that attachment behaviors were not “irrelevant, infantile characteristic(s),” as the proponents of secondary drives held, but part of a “safety regulating system” which was an innate and evolutionarily adaptive feature of the mother/child relationship.78

Mary Ainsworth and Silvia Bell noted variations in attachment behavior in the “Strange Situation” experiment, in which a child is separated from, then reunited with its mother, especially during the reunion phase. While some infants sought proximity to mother, others had ambivalent or rejecting responses.79 She described three broad and consistent patterns of attachment, which she called secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-ambivalent – later termed the “organized” patterns of attachment.80 Research by Mary Main, a student of Ainsworth’s, and

Judith Solomon added a fourth category: “insecure – disorganized/disoriented.” 81

These patterns were seen as developing out of early experiences between infant and caregiver, and highlighted the “import of recurring interactions in constructing social mind.” 82 Secure attachment was thought to develop through many repeated instances of “good enough mothering,” to borrow Winnicott’s phrase: mothering that makes “active adaptation to the infant’s needs,” providing an adequate amount of both security and responsiveness.83 Where these needs have not been met,

37 ambivalent or avoidant responses are seen to have a defensive function, “permitting a child to maintain control over…anger (or) distress.” 84

A fourth category, disorganized/disoriented, describes behaviors observed in the Strange Situation manifesting as “contradiction…lack of explicability in movement pattern, (or) lack of orientation to the present environment.” 85 Main and her co-researchers proposed that this pattern results when the individual who should be a “biologically channeled haven of safety” for the infant becomes a source of fright as well, placing the infant in an “irresolvable and disorganizing approach – flight paradox.” 86 This category in particular has been found to be independent of constitutional or temperamental characteristics, as well as predictive of developmental psychopathology.87 Main also conjectured that, even if the frightening behavior was not directed at the child, disorganized children might have experienced “conflictual frightening behavior” as a result of witnessing severe and chronic parental conflict.88

From the perspective of attachment theory, early caregiver experiences exert a significant influence on the development of personality. Bowlby, inspired by

Scottish psychologist and philosopher Kenneth Craik’s work, proposed that we construct internal working models that contain expectations and beliefs about the external world, and ourselves and are based upon our early caregiving experiences.

89 The models “tend to persist relatively unmodified at an unconscious level” and affect how we assess risk in the world, how we view ourselves, relationships, and significant others, and how we expect those to whom we might form attachments to behave.90 Although the attachment mechanism serves a somewhat different function

38 in adult pair bonds, where it serves to establish a reliable partnership to provide care to an infant, it is essentially the same psychobiological mechanism.91 The majority of adult attachment research has focused on adult romantic relationships, where we are most likely to re-experience the effects of the original parental attachment bond.

From the viewpoint of psychotherapy, the therapist/client relationship also can provide a context in which the affective component of attachment insecurity can be revisited and potentially healed.

Although it was expected that having a secure working model of attachment as an adult would necessarily reflect childhood secure status, this has not always proven to be the case. Louis Cozolino has observed that adult relationships

(including with a psychotherapist) that contribute to the development of self- awareness have the capacity to modify the “powerful shaping experiences of childhood,” leading to the reintegration and repair of early negative experience.92

This earned security, Cozolino continues, can take root in a relationship where the individual feels “cared for and important,” and where his or her thoughts and feelings are noticed and valued.93 Alice F. Lieberman suggests that a partner or therapist who provides a secure base may offer a “corrective attachment experience,” which can alter the individual’s working models of self and attachment.94 Main and Goldwyn also stress the crucial importance of self- reflection and the willingness to consider the long-term effects of early difficult experiences in effecting psychological change.95 Saunders et al. also conclude that

“high reflective function” with regard to one’s inner states offers an “important pathway to earned security for individuals with adverse childhood experiences.” 96

Relationship as Transitional Space

Winnicott famously said “There is no such thing as a baby…if you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship.” 97 From birth, our sense of self develops in relationship to others, beginning with our first caregiver, who is usually the mother, then extending to others within the family, and finally, if all goes well, to friends and significant others drawn from the world at large. Winnicott has observed, that mothering does not have to be perfect, but able to provide the infant with an environment that is good enough to enable it to thrive and grow.98

Initially, the infant is completely dependent on the mother to protect its going-on- being, which Winnicott describes as “a kind of blue-print for existentialism,” or state of being at-one with its experience while unaware of “maternal provision.” 99

Inevitably, there are disruptions to the infant’s going-on-being, which

Winnicott calls impingements.100 Winnicott cautions that if the pattern of an infant’s life becomes a continual reaction to impingements, then the natural tendency toward integration can be disrupted, and the infant rendered “[un]able to continue to have a self with a past, present, and future.” 101 However, if there are not too many reactions to impingements, “the infant's body-functions give a good basis for the building up of a body-ego.” 102 In this way, the foundation is laid for adult mental health. Winnicott draws an important distinction between true self (the state of going-on-being), and false self, which emerges in response to impingements in order to defend or care for the true self.103 In Imaginal psychology, the protective function of the false self is personified as the Gatekeeper, a dynamic that “resists

40 and restricts experience” in an effort to keep the true self safely out of danger.104

If there is a good enough facilitating environment, the true self can come alive. Then, Winnicott observes, the infant is free to enjoy “the illusion of omnipotent creating and controlling,” and, over time, come to recognize “the illusory element, the fact of playing and imagining.” 105 With this in mind,

Winnicott concludes that some disruptions of infant bliss are not only inevitable, but also necessary as the infant’s initial dependence gives way to relative dependence, and then to varying degrees of real and psychological independence.106

However, if the early environment is inadequate, the defensive function of the False

Self is engaged, in order to hide and protect the True Self.107 This process, which in

Imaginal Psychology is sometimes called loss of soul – affects one’s experience of being creatively alive, and capacity for relatedness.108 The ways in which an individual might be affected can vary considerably, but it is most often a sense of falseness or emptiness, of being out of touch with one’s true life, half-remembered from childhood, which initially brings an adult into psychotherapy. As James Hollis notes, “No one enters the therapist’s office whose adaptive strategies are still working.” 109

The concept of transitional phenomena is central to Winnicott’s theory of early development. He describes transitional space (Winnicott’s equivalent term for the third space) as the place where life is truly experienced, “in the exciting interweave of subjectivity and objective observation.” 110 This is an area that lies between an individual’s inner reality and the shared reality of the external world. It is the realm where imagination takes root and grows, nurtured through playing with

41 mother, and developed in the infant’s subsequent adoption of “the first not-me possession,” the beloved transitional object – a soft toy or blanket perhaps – that is imbued with the comforting associations with mother, but that is neither “part of the infant’s body [nor] fully recognized as belonging to external reality.111 Throughout this review, parallels between the ideas of transitional space, the third space, liminal space, play space, and the mundus imaginalis will be noted, as these various terms essentially describe the same phenomenon.

Self-Expansion Through Relationship

Elaine and Arthur Aron have proposed that there is a fundamental human motivation toward self-expansion. Beyond the desire to have physical influence over their surroundings, people also seek to expand their “cognitive complexity

(knowledge, insight), their social and bodily identity (by including as parts of themselves other individuals…), and their awareness of their position in the universe.” 112 Rather than the actual achievement of goals, the goal is seen to be

“attain[ing] the resources to be able to achieve goals,” with the most important resource being knowledge.113 Searching to expand the self, an individual may be motivated by the desire to initiate or maintain close relationships. While at first this may reflect a desire to “gain and enjoy the other’s perspectives and resources,” in time “what happens to yours, now ours, is as important to me as what happens to mine.” 114 In this manner, an altruistic motivation may emerge from one that was, at first, self-centered.

As previously noted, Christopher Bollas suggests that adults seek to replicate experiences with others that are identified with the “cumulative transformational experiences of the self…powerful metamorphoses of being” held in implicit memories of early, preverbal states.115 Similarly, Aron and Aron state:

“People seek situations and experiences that have become associated with experiences of expansion of the self.” 116 Self-expanding activities are recognized as exciting, that is, characterized by novelty and arousal (a “sense of mobilization and energy”).117 So, too, are the early stages of a new relationship, in which “the partners are expanding their selves at a rapid rate by virtue of the intense exchange.” 118 After the partners know each other fairly well, however, there are fewer opportunities for this type of rapid expansion. Aron and Aron propose that relationships follows a typical arc – from an initial “honeymoon period,” through a period of waning excitement during which there may be a loss of enjoyable emotion, perhaps even boredom and disappointment, which all too often may be attributed to the partner or the relationship.119

Aron and Aron predicted – and subsequent research has confirmed – that if couples in long-term relationship participated jointly in self-expanding activities, the result would be an overall increase in relationship satisfaction.120 The self- expansion model’s foundational premise – that people seek close relationships in order to expand the self by including others in the self – was corroborated, as was the assumption that romantic love may be perceived as a pathway toward very rapid expansion of this sort. The Arons proposed that “engaging as a couple (emphasis added) in self-expanding experiences” would increase relationship satisfaction.121

Positive attributes of those experiences then become associated with the relationship. The more that the relationship, and so the partner, is associated with experiences of self-expansion, the more likely it is that the couple will avoid the decline in satisfaction and love typical of long-term relationships.122 In order to test this hypothesis, a study was constructed in which married couples were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a pleasant-activities group, an exciting-activities group, and a no-activity control group. Supporting the study’s prediction, the exciting-activities group demonstrated a much higher increase in relationship satisfaction.123

Relationship as a Path of Individuation

Based on his own experience, Sigmund Freud viewed marriage as an institution in which both partners inevitably would experience “spiritual disillusionment and bodily deprivation;” not surprisingly, he preferred to work with individuals rather than couples.124 The relationships that most interested him were intrapsychic, between the patient and his or her introjected parents. Jung, too, was primarily interested in the individual inner landscape, but recognized that, if sufficient consciousness were brought to bear, marriage could develop into a

“psychological relationship.” 125 Stating that only in “relation [to others] do (our) projections become operative,” Jung acknowledges the potential contribution of such a relationship to the individuation process.126 However, Jung cautions, this is not an easy path: “Seldom or never does a marriage develop into an individual

44 relationship smoothly and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.” 127

James Hillman, one of Jung’s principle heirs, notes that the practice of archetypal psychology continued the “ritual procedures of classical analysis deriving from Freud and Jung,” in which “groups, couples, and children are generally eschewed.” 128 However, as Hillman concedes, “Personal relationships have become the place where the divine is to be found.” 129Adolf Guggenbühl-

Craig suggests that “the life-long dialectical encounter” between two individuals can provide “a special path for discovering the soul…a special form of individuation.” 130 At the same time, Guggenbühl-Craig echoes Jung’s warning that marriage is neither comfortable nor harmonious; rather, in the process of individuation, “a person rubs up against himself and against his partner, bumps up against him in love and in rejection, and in this fashion learns to know himself, the world, good and evil, the heights and the depths.” 131 Since, as Guggenbühl-Craig observes, the individuation process in marriage is best served when it “includes so far as possible all the parts of our soul,” we are cautioned that whatever we deny can cause sterility or boredom within the relationship.132

Reflecting Jung’s own biases, most Jungian writing on couples concerns heterosexual pairings. Polly Young-Eisendrath, who has written extensively in this area, states that “the intricacies of strange gender, projection of dream lovers, and power differences between the sexes are so difficult in themselves that I dare not add more complexity to my topic” by introducing same-sex pairings. In general, however, she proposes that all committed relationships can be “avenues for our

45 psychological development,” providing an opportunity for “taking on parts of the self, for seeing and experiencing wishes, fears, and ideals that we had unknowingly placed on the other.” 133 Young-Eisendrath disagrees with Jung’s theory that women and men are inherently different, each with their own natural specializations, but values his concept of “the opposite within…the characteristics, ideals, and fears that each of us connects with the opposite sex.” 134 She calls these

“internal others” our dream lovers, whom we imagine “to be members of the opposite sex, but [who] are aspects of ourselves that we reject because somehow they don’t fit the story of what we’re supposed to be.” 135 Young-Eisendrath observes that true intimacy between the sexes is challenging, because trust, the foundation upon which intimacy is built, “does not come naturally between people with unequal power” in a society that predisposes men and women to view each other from an adversarial perspective.136

Thomas Moore states that relationships offer us the opportunity to “enter, explore, and fulfill essential notions of who we are and who we can be.” 137 In relationship, we may discover a hidden, potential life that lies out of sight until

“evoked by the particular thoughts and feelings of marriage.” 138 As does

Guggenbühl-Craig, Moore cautions that the object of a relationship is not to make us feel good, but to lead us into “a profound alchemy of soul,” through which we may discover paths and doorways that are “the geography of our own destiny and potentiality.” 139 Moore speaks of relationship as an attempt to “reconcile…heaven and earth,” the former reflecting our desire for “simplicity, order, meaning, and freedom,” and the latter our need for “complexity, change, moodiness, rootedness,

46 and attachment.” 140 Moore distinguishes between spiritual practice, which can lead us in search of the “highest and most refined reaches of human potential,” and soul practice, which can send us “in pursuit of the juices and nutrients of life’s entanglements.” 141

Hope

Hope is a complex system of thought, emotion, motivation, and expectation, grounded in the present, but oriented and drawing us toward the future. Rick

Snyder, a psychologist and researcher in the fields of positive psychology and hope research, notes that hope is characterized by positive expectancy, based partly on feelings of self-efficacy – “a sense of successful determination in meeting goals in the past, present, and future” – and partly on the identification of pathways – “a sense of being able to generate successful plans to meet goals.” 142 Maria Miceli and

Cristiano Castelfranchi observe that hope is motivational, allowing us to act “in view of the desired event despite the negative forecast.” 143 Hope does not ignore probability, but continues to maintain a belief in possibility. Travis Lybbert and

Bruce Wydick point toward the adaptability of hope; when “high-hope” individuals are faced with obstacles, they are often able to conceive of several potential pathways, thus improving their probability of success.144 A personal faith system provides a foundation for hopefulness, although that faith does not have to be religious. Anthony Scioli et al. note that, in addition to belief in a higher power, faith in family and friends can also provide support for hope.145

From the perspective of positive psychology, which considers mental health as something more than the absence of morbidity, hope is a virtue: that is to say, a “human [strength] that act as buffers against mental illness” and as such, contributes to a healthy and meaningful life.146 Miceli and Castelfranchi place hope alongside other positive attitudes such as “persistence, patience, and readiness to take advantage of favorable conditions.” 147 Lybbert and Wydick note that an “overarching sense of hope that ‘in the end, things will turn out alright’…constitutes a key component of resilience in the face of negative shocks, and it is strongly associated with general mental wellness.” 148 From a spiritual perspective, the

Catholic Church considers hope, along with faith and charity, to be one of the three theological virtues, “infused by God into the souls of the faithful [and demonstrating] the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being.” 149 Hope requires the capacity to bear what is unresolved, trusting in its possibility. It consists of active waiting, and refrains from untimely activity. As the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Tielhard de Chardin points out, “the law of all progress

(is) that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time.” 150 With this in mind, he encourages us to “accept the anxiety of feeling [ourselves] in suspense and incomplete.” 151

The Origins of Hope

As John Bowlby has noted, hopelessness (despair) and helplessness in adulthood often stem from a childhood in which an individual’s “attempts to influence his parents to give him more time, affection, and understanding have met

48 with nothing but rebuff and punishment.” 152 Eric Erickson’s model of human development led Charlotte Stephenson to propose that “the foundation for hope and anticipation toward life” is established in infancy and is “based on early experiences of trust and security with an attachment figure.” 153 Stephenson further observes that the quality of our “early experiences of attachment and separation” directly affect

“later experiences of hope and anticipation or despair.” 154 Sue Wright notes that parents “can transmit hope or a lack of it through their own excitement or anxiety about future events [and] through the language they use about life and about the child.” 155 Hal Shorey et al. have described hope as “perhaps one of the most important gifts.” 156 Individuals whose baseline is hopeful (“high-hope persons”) are aware that they are successful, in large part, because of the “time and attention that other people (caregivers and mentors) have given to teach them to think hopefully.” 157

In a study on the origins of hope in early adolescence, Kristin L. Otis et al. draw parallels between Bowlby’s attachment theory and Snyder’s hope theory, particularly as the latter emphasizes the importance of the bond between caregiver and child bond in the development of a hopeful attitude.158 This bond is believed to

“foster the development of a child's agency [proven ability to meet goals] and pathways thinking.” 159 The study also affirms a positive correlation between hope and secure attachment styles, and a negative correlation with anxious and avoidant styles, observing: “Parents of securely attached children facilitate the development of effective emotion regulation skills, which may influence hope development.” 160

Otis et al. propose that, ideally, a positive or secure attachment relationship will

49 result in “adaptive internal working models that should promote hope.” 161 Without such a relationship, “maladaptive working models related to present and future experiences” may predominate, leading to a failure of hope to develop.162 Snyder observes that, just as hope is engendered in relationship, the loss of hope “typically involves other people.” 163 He proposes two categories of loss: those children who simply do not receive sufficient care and attention to learn to think hopefully, and those in whom hope has germinated, only to be suppressed by adverse experience.

With this in mind, Snyder distinguishes between physical neglect (a “passive killer” of hopeful thought) and physical abuse, which is a more active force: “The very caregiver to whom the child should be able to turn for nurturance and instruction in goal directed thinking becomes a source of fear.” 164

The Relational Nature of Hope

Karin Dufault and Benita Martocchio have studied hope in the context of nursing practices with the terminally ill. Their research focuses on the affiliative dimension of hope, which comprises feelings of relatedness and includes

“components of social interaction, mutuality, attachment and intimacy, other- directedness, and self-transcendence.” 165 An individual’s perception of agency, as well as identification of pathways towards his or her goals (both prerequisites of hope) can transcend the purely individual to include the collective in all its manifestations, beginning with a relationship with one other, and opening to the whole world and one’s relationship with the Divine. Lisa Aspinwall and Samantha

Leaf, among others, have criticized Snyder’s hope theory in particular as

“unnecessarily limiting” because it presents a “strongly individualistic view of hope.” 166 However, Snyder states unequivocally that we learn “hopeful, goal directed thinking” from and with other people.167 Hope is “inherently a way of thinking that occurs in social commerce. To not connect with others, in many ways, is not to hope.” 168 Carolyn Byrne et al. tell us that “a relationship (mutuality and affiliation) is an essential component of hope,” and that the “synergy within a relationship” can help nurture and develop hope.169

Michael E. McCullough compares hope and gratitude, suggesting that a common theme may be mindful awareness of “how one’s very life is held together through the benevolent actions of other people.” 170 In a study attempting to ascertain factors predisposing individuals toward gratitude, McCullough found a connection between hope and gratitude in “nonconventional measures” of spirituality, including a “sense of connectedness to nature, other people, and the universe as a whole.” 171 Both grateful and hopeful people seem to have the habit of

“savoring their life circumstances,” including the “very act of striving for goals to be realized in the future.” 172 James Griffith and Anjali DSouza also point to the value of mindfulness practice in “transform[ing] a sense of entrapment or subjective incompetence in ways that heighten hope and diminish demoralization.” 173 The

Dalai Lama has commented on the increasing number of people in contemporary society who feel alienated, superfluous, unneeded, and ultimately, hopeless, and suggests that the “need to be needed” is a fundamental human motivation. 174

Seeking opportunities to be of service to others, practicing gratitude, and asking

51 ourselves how we can better appreciate the gifts that others have to offer are practices that can increase one’s sense of belonging and purpose.

The Transformational Capacity of Hope

Hope is implicit in Bollas’ concept of the transformational object. Taking

Winnicott’s notion of transitional space as his starting place, Bollas proposes that certain objects – primarily mother herself – become “experientially identified” by the infant with the “alteration of self experience.” 175 Before the infant has differentiated sufficiently to experience the mother as an object distinct from itself, the mother is experienced as a process of transformation. A trace of this powerful experience persists throughout our life; Bollas calls this the shadow of the object.176

As adults, we seek objects, broadly understood to include such things as “a new job, a move to another country, a vacation, a change of relationship,” because of the unconsciously felt longing – the hope – that they will transform us in the way that first relationship did.177 Bollas names this experience the aesthetic moment: an instance of “deep rapport between subject and object…evoking an existential memory…conveyed not through visual or abstract thinking, but through the affects of being.” 178 Through resonance with the early experience of being handled and cared for by mother, we find that an “uncanny pleasure” is evoked in the experience of being held by a poem, a musical composition, a work of art – any experience that places us in “subjective rapport” with an object.179 Bollas characterizes the quest for a transformational object as “an endless memorial search for something in the future that resides in the past.” 180 To some extent, he says, “We believe in God, or

52 we fall in love…we look for that ideal home, or job, or car” in hope that we will be reunited with an object that will “transform our internal and external realities.” 181 It is the hope that, by participating in an aesthetic moment, what has not been integrated in the self will become integrated, and we will find ourselves once again in that original experience of wholeness that Omer has characterized as primal trust.182

The Healing Quality of Hope

Denise Larsen and Rachel Stege observe that most hope research has taken place in the field of health science, often in the context of nursing practice.183 Here, the importance of a caring and supportive relationship in evoking and sustaining hope is commonly addressed. This has become the case rather more recently in a review of psychotherapy literature. However, one must read between the lines. For example, Carl R. Rogers never specifically mentioned hope when enumerating

“The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change.” 184

Yet, without hope of an end to present suffering and of a better future, how would one develop the motivation to go on? Without the hope of success, why would one even begin the often challenging and painful work of psychotherapy? Perhaps there is a relationship, implicit and unstated, between hope, and the activation of inner resources experienced by the client when receiving, in Rogers’s words, the therapist’s “sensitive empathy and unconditional positive regard.” 185 Building on

Rogers’ necessary and sufficient conditions, subsequent researchers have identified four common factors in successful therapy: extra-therapeutic factors (relationships,

53 social support); the therapeutic relationship itself; the therapist’s theory of practice; and hope, or positive expectancy.186

Larsen and Stege cite John R. Cutliffe’s remark that “the essence of hope inspiration appears to reside in the caring, interpersonal relationship” that develops between therapist and client.187 Timothy Coppock et al. observe that therapists influence their clients’ hope both directly, through interventions that instill hope, as well as indirectly, through their therapeutic presence, positive reactions, etc.188 By holding a sense of hope for her client, a therapist simultaneously supports the emergence of the client’s power to harness “internal and external resources to promote change.” 189 Larsen and Stege point out that many common psychotherapeutic interventions, such as “relationship building, reframing, use of metaphor, focusing on client strength, and humor,” are implicitly used to support the development of hope, even if the word hope itself is never mentioned.190

The Imaginal Nature of Hope

Hope, by virtue of its relationship to an as-yet-unrealized future, is an

Imaginal event. As Sue Wright observes, when we hope, “we play with a vision of the possible, of the conceivable self…Imagination creates a future, and this creative aspect of seeing, fills up the space between what is and what is not.” 191 Like

Winnicott, she notes that creative imagination is nurtured in childhood play –

“imagination in action” – and through “being held imaginatively in the minds of others,” both of which foster the “capacity to dream dreams.” 192 The fantasies that parents have about their children, she suggests, can either limit or free that child in

54 exploring and expressing her full potential. Anne Alvarez describes play as having some elements that are grounded in the present, but also some that point toward a

“hopeful reality which does not exist, but which could come to pass in the future.”

193 The important factor, Alvarez continues, is having a capacity to play; no matter how dark the subject matter, the mere fact of playing at all “implies some degree of hope.” 194 Within hope’s affiliative dimension, Dufault and Martocchio find that the power of the imagination allows us to create “relationships with people, both living and dead, but also…with God (Higher Being or Power, Creative Force) and with other living things.” 195 As with all mental phenomena, relationships express themselves first to us as images; only later do we create the narratives that intertwine them with our sense of self.

Denis O’Hara tells us that hope resides in “liminal space, the experience of

“here but not yet,” where we are called to enter a mindful or contemplative consciousness in which the potential for transforming our personal worldviews may emerge.196 While grounded in present experience, hope has an attractive quality that

“draws us toward the future.” 197 Dufault and Martocchio concur, observing how it is only in “the now” that the future is given an opportunity to emerge: “Hope extends the present into the future.” 198 Hope’s liminal quality is also reflected in its relational aspect: engagement with others which Dale Jacobs speaks of as the

“radical intersubjectivity” of love, the quality that allows hope to persist in its vulnerability.199 This both “fuels our orientation toward the future and our belief that change can and will happen.” 200 Erich Fromm also speaks of the paradoxical nature of hope: “It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of

55 circumstances that cannot occur.” 201 Fromm notes that it makes no sense to hope for something that already exists, nor, equally for something that is impossible, and which can never be. Instead, we must be ready at all times “for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.” 202

The Mundus Imaginalis

Western civilization has long subscribed to a belief that mind and body exist in separate realms. As a result, it may not seem obvious at first – or at all – where to locate the imagination, or how to properly value it. Imagination can seem dis- embodied, intangible, and so, less reliable than the rational intellect, as generations of young children have been led to believe when reassured by well-meaning adults that “it’s only your imagination.” The English Romantics were careful to distinguish between this kind of mental imagination, which they called “fancy” or

“fantasy,” and Imagination, understood as a creative power uniting the heart and mind.203 David Ray Griffin has noted that the reductionistic philosophy that underlies modern science, with the exception of physics, demands that everything, including the human mind, be explained in quantitative and materialistic terms.204

The end result of this is a disenchanted world, in which “what is not vouchsafed by

‘science’ is not considered knowledge.” 205 As Mary Watkins points out, the contemporary “scientific” model of Psyche was developed from behavioral studies that disregarded introspection as a valid avenue of research, “severing and segregating images from the daily human life of meaning” where we naturally experience them.206 In the field of psychology, this has resulted in the dominance of

56 a cognitive/behavioral approach for a good part of the twentieth century. However, through the work of Jung and his successors, most notably Hillman, the imagination has begun to reassert its place and its power in psychology.

The Roots of Imaginal Psychology

Drawing on the writings of Ibn ‘Arabī, the Andalusian Sufi mystic, poet, and philosopher (1165 – 1240), Henri Corbin proposed the term mundus imaginalis to account for a third, intermediate way of knowing, capable of communicating between the “empirical world of the senses” and the “abstract world of the intellect.” 207 Corbin chose the Latin term in order to radically differentiate between the intermediate world of the Imagination and “the merely imaginary,” as well as to forestall “hazardous or arbitrary translations.” 208 Hillman refers to Corbin as “the second immediate father of archetypal psychology” after Jung, and credits Corbin’s work with the foundational proposition that the archetype is “accessible to the imagination first, and firsts presents itself as imagination.” 209 Thus, says Hillman, archetypal psychology is established as an Imaginal process, through “the development of a sense of soul, the middle ground of psychic realities, and the method of therapy [as] the cultivation of imagination.” 210 Because Corbin saw the mediating role of the imagination in mundus imaginalis as an active one, he referred to the faculty as “active Imagination.” 211 There is a parallel, or perhaps a synchronicity in Corbin’s use of the term, whose use by Jung predates Corbin’s by decades. Although the two men were acquainted, there is no record that they discussed the properties of active imagination.

Another equally rich root of Imaginal Psychology extends back in to 18th century German philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller, whose ideas on the psychological types – albeit in an era before the “discovery” of the unconscious – foreshadowed Jung’s. Of particular relevance to Jung, Schiller proposed that there is a third, “mediating function” between the “sensual world” (matter) and

“spirituality” (the world of form), which he termed the “play instinct.” 212 The purpose of the third function is to form a bridge between the conscious and unconscious aspects of psyche through the application of creative (active) imagination, the result of which is a “symbol in which the opposites are united.” 213

Jung states emphatically that “the third element, in which the opposites merge, is fantasy activity [the imagination], which is creative and receptive at once,” and stresses that, ultimately, the opposites cannot be united rationally, but only through living.214 The unique power of the creative arts lies in their capacity to generate symbols that embody the opposites, and that have the “power to take up their energies in equal measure as an expression of both and neither.” 215

A third source of Imaginal Psychology, particularly relevant to its interest in soul, may be found, as previously noted, in the work of 18th and early 19th century

English Romantic writers such as Keats, Blake, and Wordsworth. In a letter to his brother and sister-in-law, Keats framed his understanding of the imaginative faculty within a metaphor: the world as a “Vale of Soul-Making,” by which he means a place in which the spark of divinity that each of us possesses is shaped into a particularised existence.216 For Keats, this “World of Pains and troubles” is necessary in order to “school an Intelligence and make it soul…A Place where the

58 heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” 217 Through suffering, through human experience, a third thing is formed from the meeting of the divine and the worldly – an individual “Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.” 218

William Blake exemplifies the creative use of imagination, here describing its primary role in a letter dated August 23, 1799:

As a man is, so he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination.219

Blake’s trust in imagination developed early: as a child of eight or ten, he had one of his first visions, in which he saw a tree filled with angels, “bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.” 220 Returning home to tell his parents, he was initially met by his father’s stern disapproval, and the promise of a “thrashing.”

However, Blake’s mother intervened to forestall the punishment and, in so doing

“validated his extraordinary experience and especially his distinctive way of experiencing [emphasis in original].” 221 Blake told this story again as an adult, long after the initial incident, so it clearly had a great impact on his development as a visionary artist, with a unique creative expression.

Hillman observes that our rational minds have a tendency to create a chasm between the visible and the invisible, “heaven and earth, this life and the afterlife…mind and matter.” 222 Bridging that chasm – through music or poetry, through the arts, or through myth – is the function of imagination. Hillman proposes that we adopt a kind of “mythical thinking…that can receive and understand the

59 authentic tidings of invisible things.” 223 The receptive capacity is reflected in a passage from Wordsworth’s “Prelude”:

To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower, Even the loose stones that cover the highway, I gave a moral life: I saw them feel Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass Lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired in meaning.224

For anyone who has accompanied a small child on a walk, the reference to “loose stones that cover the highway” will have particular resonance: even an “ordinary” piece of gravel can shine with an inner light. Children, the fortunate ones, have not yet lost the capacity to see the invisible world within the visible.

The Biological Primacy of Imagination

Philosopher Susanne Langer argues that symbolizing is an activity of the human mind as fundamental as eating, or looking, or moving, and is both “essential to thought and prior to it.” 225 Considered through the lens of genetic evolution, symbolism “must spring from biological needs and justify itself as a practical asset.” 226 Qualities that make us uniquely human – “the love of magic, the high development of ritual, the seriousness of art, and the characteristic activity of dreams” – are certainly adaptive, yet more than the mere biological adaptations.227

Langer distinguishes between discursive symbols characteristic of spoken language, and what she terms presentational symbols, which “the mind reads in a flash, and preserves in a disposition or an attitude.” 228 This category of symbol cannot be understood in isolation, but only in the context of its relationship with other symbols that together comprise the meaning of the whole. With this in mind,

Langer expresses appreciation for the power of artistic expression to embody knowledge that language alone cannot express, especially that which is associated with feeling.

Neurobiologist Antonio Damasio suggests that beneath the constant verbal narrative that we experience as consciousness lies an “equally consistent nonverbal imaged narrative [emphasis in original],” a kind of pre-verbal picture book in which we tell the story of the world and place ourselves in it.229 An image, as Damasio uses the term, is a mental pattern of an object in any sensory modality, with all the associations of like and dislike it may hold for us, as well as the “web of relationship of that object among other objects,” with object referring to “entities as diverse a person, a place, a melody, a toothache, a state of bliss.” 230 Damasio tells us that images are constructed not only when we engage with an object outside of the brain, but also when we reconstruct objects in memory, although many images remain “subterranean underneath the conscious mind,” never fully reaching consciousness.231 He further suggests that almost every image, whether formed in response to present experience or memory, has an emotional association, although the connection may not be apparent to the conscious mind; if the image is “induced in an unconscious manner, [the emotion will] appear to the conscious self as seemingly unmotivated.” 232

“Blessed indeed is the child who has a playful and curious mother!” says

Louis Stewart.233 For when a baby, in collaboration with its mother, begins to imagine the world, it does so in “a third area, that of play, which expands into creative living and the whole cultural life of man” – what Winnicott called potential

61 space.234 It is a place neither entirely within our psyche, nor entirely “out there,” where known and unknown can be held in creative tension, where the result is uncertain, but where transformation is always a possibility. It arises whenever we are fully present and absorbed in an activity together – as in creative play and intimate conversation. This first relationship need not be perfect, but sufficient to the baby’s relational needs enough of the time so that the mother’s love leads to the development of a “built-up sense of trust matched with reliability,” and so to

“relaxed self-realization.” 235 Without trust, as Alfred Plaut has observed, the baby will fail to develop the “capacity to imagine constructively.” 236 Following Corbin’s distinction between just imagining, and the active imagination, Plaut differentiates between the “capacity to form images” and the capacity “to recombine them into new patterns.” 237 This latter capacity is essential in creative play, active imagination, and the expressive arts.

Multiplicity and Personification

Both Jung and Hillman observe that, paralleling the dominance of a monotheistic theology, the trend in (Western) psychology has been toward a model of unitary consciousness, and a pathologizing of the idea of “multiple selves.” 238 In response, they urge us to recognize that psychic reality is one of multiplicity, and so return us to a polytheistic psychology. Hillman distinguishes between “polytheism as psychology and as religion,” emphasizing that “the Gods of psychology are not believed in, not taken literally, not imagined theologically [but] approached through psychological methods of personifying, pathologizing, and psychologizing.” 239 In

62 his own personal inquiry, Jung discovered that “there are things in the psyche which

I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.” 240 By allowing the images that arose from his unconscious to become personified – fully developed Imaginal figures – and entering into dialogue with them, Jung both acknowledged and honored the “archetypes which form the structures of our consciousness with such force and such possession that we might, as we have in the past, call them Gods.” 241 Jung points out that “we are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians,” but in fact, the gods have not died – they have become our psychological diseases.242 Watkins has proposed a similar process of Imaginal dialogue, which she describes as the “deepening of characterization of many Imaginal others” through personification.243

Respect for images, and the recognition that the ego itself is an image, one player among many, are key qualities in developing a practice of working with images. Hillman advocates adopting a “mythic perspective” toward these symptoms by “taking Imaginal persons as seriously (if not as literalistically) as does someone with his delusions or hallucinations.” 244 He suggests that we benefit from recognizing that “the ego is not the whole psyche, only one member of a commune.” 245 Similarly, a key concept in Omer’s articulation of Imaginal

Psychology is what he calls psychological multiplicity, or “the existence of many distinct and often encapsulated centers of subjectivity within the experience of the same individual.” 246 Imaginal Transformative Praxis, this dissertation’s research methodology, provides a means of evoking and elaborating such images.

Hillman is quite specific about the meaning of “image” as used in

Archetypal Psychology: It “does not refer to an after-image, the result of sensations and perceptions,” nor does it mean “a mental construct that represents in symbolic form certain ideas and feelings which it expresses.” 247 Images make the psyche visible, but “need not…be visually seen.” They “come and go (as in dreams) at their own will, with their own rhythm…undetermined by personal psychodynamics.” 248

As Watkins observes, “One may sometimes find that personified images just do not want to talk to us when we are going around in our ‘heroic’ egos. Everything we say or do just annoys them, as if they were having to put up with the kitchen help eating at their table.” 249 Shaun McNiff, too, cautions against projecting our belief in a unitary, controlling ego onto the world as “certainty and diagnostic accuracy,” rather than seeing it as a “bias through which interaction with other perspectives occurs.” 250

Gender and Imagination

The Jungian analyst June Singer describes “an inherent psychological activity of the human species… an elemental inclination, beginning in very early childhood, to sort people and experiences into male and female categories.” 251 She goes on to point out that, although the qualities associated with each category are particular, depending on the culture, there is no culture without some concept of the masculine and feminine. Singer asserts that Jung’s articulation of psychic structure depends upon “the interaction between the sexes in people’s conscious and unconscious lives.” 252 According to Singer, Jung believed that three major factors

64 underlie the formation of the anima and animus: the archetypal, the developmental, and the social.253 The archetypal includes biological differences between the sexes that are universal across cultures, and underlie images and concepts that are based on these differences. We differ individually and by gender with regard to body chemistry: hormones in particular play a major role throughout the lifespan, helping to define the stages of life and our changing interests. For example, from an archetypal perspective, changes in hormone levels at midlife and beyond signal the psyche that it is time to become more interested in one’s contrasexual inner-other, the one who was set aside earlier in life, or projected onto a partner.254

From a developmental perspective, an individual’s personal experience of anima and animus is rooted in the parental imagos.255 These are images of parents or parental surrogates that have been “imprinted on the child’s consciousness from birth” – or much earlier, as current research on the developing embryo suggests – and inform one’s developing sense of what masculine and feminine mean.256 In a sense, parental imagos resemble the inner working models proposed in Bowlby’s

Attachment Theory – patterns formed in our earliest relationships that influence which types of people we are attracted to, our own attitudes and behaviors, and attitudes and behaviors we expect from others.257

Finally, the social factor includes “all interpersonal relations from the family through the intermediate structures from community to the world at large.” 258

There is, and has been considerable discussion of the changing roles, aspirations, and expectations of men and women in the contemporary Western world. However, there has been less attention paid to the system itself, the social construct which

65 defines what is masculine and what is feminine, and which feminist author bell hooks labels the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” 259 Many feminists claim that patriarchal norms are particularly important in shaping individual expression of so-called “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. As hooks says, addressing the Patriarchal wounding inflicted on boys: “Inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings.” 260 Likewise, girls are taught to deny or suppress masculine aspects of their psyche if they want to be loved and accepted. From these early experiences, we form the images that define our relationships – not only with an actual other, but with the “inner other” that Polly Young-Eisendrath calls our strange gender.261 Terrence Real speaks of

“psychological patriarchy” as a socially constructed dynamic between qualities held to be masculine and feminine, “in which half of our human traits are exalted while the other half is devalued.” 262

Despite her deep respect and gratitude to Jung, Singer allows that she has always struggled with the question of how much of Jung’s conception of anima and animus is essential to our understanding of gender differences, and how much “can only be read as historical relics of a time gone by.” 263 Polly Young-Eisendrath amplifies the latter point: “Very few current gender theorists cite Jung, probably because he was sexist.” 264 She suggests that Jung’s formulation of the types

(thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation) contained an assumption that women are inferior thinkers. Young-Eisendrath notes that many current gender theories contain

“an analogous insult to men, implying they cannot relate adequately.” 265 Rather

66 than viewing anima and animus as reflecting differences between actual men and women, Singer asks us to consider that a woman’s animus “is not so much the repressed Masculine as it is the repressed Other, the unconscious Other that she has been prevented from living out.” 266 Similarly, a man’s anima has a similar function, representing “the mysterious other which seems most desirable and yet most unattainable.” 267

The Mundus Imaginalis as Liminal Space

Victor Turner credited Dutch anthropologist Arnold van Gennep with developing the concept of liminality, or liminal space, to describe the middle stage of ritual processes in traditional societies.268 However, the term has proven to be broadly relevant in fields as diverse as theater, religious studies, art therapy, play studies, and psychology. Turner describes liminal space as a transformative, transitional period in ritual processes of initiation, occurring between two relatively fixed states. The liminal state is “ambiguous,” having “few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state;” it is “neither this nor that, but…both.” 269 Liminality is characterized as a time for reflection, where there is “a certain freedom to juggle with the factors of existence.” 270 In many respects, it is a “realm of pure possibility,” out of which new relationships between ideas and people may emerge.271 In fact, any transformative activity, including creativity in all its many forms, has a liminal period, during which the old order of things no longer suffices, but before a new order has been established.

Descriptions of the mundus imaginalis by Corbin and other Imaginal

67 thinkers identify it as a liminal state, located in the “betwixt and between.” Corbin proposes that the mundus imaginalis is where “pure concepts and sensory data meet and flower into personal figures prepared for the events of spiritual drama.” 272

Similarly, Gaston Bachelard speaks of the mundus imaginalis as a space in which

“the intimacy of our being which dreams” is united with “the intimacy of the beings which we dream.” 273 Jung’s transcendent function, which he defines as the application of consciousness to the unconscious contents of psyche, finds its true home in the mundus imaginalis as well.274 In his study on the transcendent function,

Jeffrey Miller suggests that the phenomenon may reflect a fundamental human urge to reconcile “ontological quandaries such as spirit and matter, subject and object, inner and outer, idea and thing, form and substance, thought and feeling.” 275

McNiff asserts that the interplay between the artist’s inner world, her “personal ideas, memories, themes, and inner-images,” and her expression of that world through physical media also takes place in the mundus imaginalis.276 This, as we will see, is the essence of poïesis as well, a kind of “creative midwifery,” by which we attend to the image, bring it into the world, and help it to realize its full potential.

Psychotherapy and the Mundus Imaginalis

Traditional cultures had rites of passage, which functioned to mark and honor major life transitions, such as birth, coming of age, or marriage. Robert L.

Moore notes the failure of our culture to recognize when an archetype of initiation is being invoked that demands a socially ritualized response – the creation of a

68 sacred space dedicated to transformation and healing. Lacking this, we may view life crises as “merely personal changes to the individual involved.” 277 In the absence of culturally sanctioned sacred spaces to facilitate and contain deep structural transformation, depth psychology has stepped in to fill the void.278

Psychotherapy has become an “unofficial culturally accepted framework providing ritual containment,” according to Jan and Murray Stein.279 They point to the so- called “midlife transition” experienced by many contemporary Westerners, a

“period of deep upheaval and personality change,” as such a life crisis. Its liminal phase may be heralded by “feelings of boredom, disillusionment with life, the fading away of youth’s dreams.” 280 In addition, one may experience disruption to the internal structures that once anchored “specific ambitions, duties and interests, as well as commitment to specific self-images and to other persons.” 281 The therapist’s task as ritual elder is to assist her client in maintaining an “open and fluid” consciousness through the liminal passage by encouraging a combination of psychological awareness, objectivity, and patience, as the new forms reveal themselves over time.282 The Steins use the metaphor of therapy as a kind of psychological midwifery, with the therapist being in the muddle as midwife, empathic companion, and guide, helping the patient “convert the experience of aimless wandering in liminality into a sense of actively exploring unfamiliar inner territories.” 283

According to Alfred Margulies, it is in the intersubjective field between therapist and client – the “betwixt and between” – that empathic imagination arises.

Here, we create a shared world in which memories are neither yours, nor mine but

69 are “empathically derived” and “elaborated into a relatively coherent form from someone else’s experience.” 284 Margulies suspects that we have the experience of such “projected empathic landscapes” more than we realize, giving the example of the surprise or disappointment we may feel when, viewing a movie made from a beloved book, we recognize its dissonance with our own Imaginal inscape.

Empathy is fundamentally “an act of thoughtful, heartfelt imagination,” notes

Rosalind Arnold, involving “attunement, decentering and introspection.” 285

Empathy is a response to how we imagine the other to be, suggests Lauren Wispé, and reflects the “peculiar capacity of human beings to ‘take the role of the other’.”

286 She points out that “empathy,” with its psychological connotations, is a fairly modern concept in English; the original German, Einfühlung (“feeling into”), suggested an aesthetic response to art or beauty. 287 The original sense of the word resonates with poïesis, a process that both evokes and speaks for the image.

Poïesis

The Western aesthetic tradition defines a work of art as something that is produced when an artist applies her vision and creative will to inert matter.

However, for the ancient Greeks, poïesis (generally understood as making or bringing something into existence through mental or physical activity) was a word shaded with nuance. Poïesis suggests both the evocation of a meaningful image, as well as the use of an expressive modality to bring it to life. Paolo Knill, an early and influential scholar of the expressive arts, along with Stephen and Ellen Levine, speaks of the artist’s role in practicing poïesis as “allowing the material to find its

70 own sense” through a process of dialogue or give-and-take, rather than imposing his or her will on “senseless matter.” 288 Derek H. Whitehead tells us that poïesis suggests “unveiling” a truth, or “bringing something from concealment into the full light and radiation of a created work.” 289 A new world is opened for us to enter, a place of “unitary multiplicity wherein the artist, the artwork, and the receiver enact themselves in…full complementarity.” 290 Howard McConeghey describes the liminality of this creative space: it is the realm of soul, where form and spirit meet, and where creative expression can help us find a way to connect psychic image to daily life.291 The Levines observe that poïesis establishes a bridge between “sensory expression originating in lived bodily experience” and “imagination as a creative source of meaning.” 292 If we learn to cultivate imagination “with a trust that a revitalized spirit will treat its own disorders,” as McNiff tells us, art can reveal, inform, and heal.293

The German word betrachten, discussed by Jung in a lecture given in 1930, conveys a meaning that is somewhat similar to poïesis. Jung suggests that, by looking at something with our “spiritual eye,” we can “evoke or activate the object,” in a sense, making it pregnant by giving it our attention.294 This is the basis from which an image can be coaxed forth and elaborated. Jung asserts that as we concentrate our attention on any fantasy image, we soon discover some difficulty in

“keeping the thing quiet, it gets restless, it shifts, something is added, or it multiplies itself; one fills it with living power and it becomes pregnant.” 295 For

Jung, betrachten is the starting point of active imagination – a process of concentrating on a disturbed or activated emotional state, “sinking [into] it without

71 reserve,” and making oneself as conscious as possible of all aspects, images, etc. that arise.296 Jung’s personal experience with active imagination, described in his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, began during a psychic crisis that occurred after his break with Freud. Having left his past behind, and with no clear vision of the future, Jung trusted that the images arising spontaneously in his inner world would guide him through the ambiguity of the liminal passage.297

Roots of Art-Based Inquiry

The use of the expressive arts in sacred ritual and as a means of inquiry is perhaps as old as human culture itself, visible in the animal images our ancestors painted on cave walls in many locations around the world. What rituals may have accompanied these paintings, some of which are 35,000 years old? According to

Joseph J. Moreno, there was quite likely the “holistic integration of music, art, dance, and drama” that still may be found in traditional cultures throughout the world.298 However, in the Western, industrialized world the connection between art and the sacred has largely been lost, along with the transmission of culture through art. Suzi Gablik observes that we no longer find a “mythic, transpersonal ground of meaning” through art. In addition, we lack a culturally unified vision of the universe and our place in it, such as existed in the Renaissance. 299 Gablik urges us toward a fundamental shift in direction, in which we reimagine the practice of art, and allow it the power to “reconfigure our intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual orientation to the world.” 300 In doing so, by making and sharing our creations, we can begin to reimagine the world.

Shaun McNiff traces the healing lineage of art-making back to the shaman/healers of preindustrial cultures, whose “struggle…to find meaning and order within the flux of experience is akin to the artistic process.” 301 McNiff notes other aspects of shamanism relevant to art therapy including its emphasis on expression rather than analysis, its use of imaginative metaphors including personification of psychic elements, and its recognition of the sacred, including the underworld.302 The shaman is described as practicing a kind of “group therapy” in which the whole community participates in an enactment of the “forces and life dramas that are disturbing the ‘patient’.” 303 Paolo Knill finds a close connection between play and dance in tribal shamanism, as well as in religious traditions.304 As additional examples, Knill cites the unity of dance and music in many religious practices, including medieval church plays, the dancing of dervishes, and other such

“repetitive enactments of…important spiritual events.” 305 Robert J. Landy notes a connection between contemporary psychodramatic approaches to healing and the sacred healing rituals of ancient societies: telling a story “in role” can create a safe distance for the actor from the source of psychic discomfort, and result in a

“natural, unselfconscious process of healing.” 306

In contemporary times, the shaman’s “scope of practice” is divided among the priest, the teacher, the medical doctor, and the psychologist. The ritual container afforded by pre-industrial cultures is most likely to be reconstituted in the psychotherapist’s office, although for the most part, therapists do not draw on the full range of expressive modalities available to the shaman. The expressive arts, whether as an adjunct to, or principle modality of psychotherapy, can be effective

73 tools for giving form to our inner landscape, in a way that circumvents or even subverts our customary verbal narrative about who we are. McNiff proposes that the disowned or rejected Shadow material that emerges through the arts offers us an opportunity to try out new ways of working with and integrating it.307 Evoking this shadow material can at the same time bring up resistance to confronting it, but “the creative transformation of resistance” may prove to be an essential gift of collaborative art making, as we learn to model and witness new ways of “being-in- the-world.” 308

Diane Austin and Michele Forinash define Art-Based Research as a form of inquiry that uses art making as a primary research methodology to generate and analyze data, and to present the results of research.309 As a first step in this practice, according to Stephen Levine, one must learn to trust in the “intelligence of the creative process,” and cultivate “a desire for relationships with the images that emerge from it.” 310 Art as inquiry is situated in the middle ground between internal reality and the physical world, a place that McNiff locates in the interplay between

“mental motivations and the physical ones that appear through contact with the medium.” 311 From a modern psychological perspective, Art as a form of inquiry is grounded in Jung’s assertion that the totality of psychic reality, especially the unconscious, can be reached and expressed only by symbols, images, and metaphors.312 Accordingly, McNiff agrees that giving visible shape to an emotion or “felt sense” is often more effective than intellectual analysis in accessing unconscious material.313 Mary Watkins tells us that images approached in this way

74 are understood as “the best possible way of representing meanings as yet unknown or not fully grasped.” 314

Since many of our early, significant experiences occurred before we had language or concepts to describe them or are buried deep in our unconscious, they are difficult to access by way of our rational, discursive mind. These experiences can form Imaginal Structures in the architecture of the psyche, which Omer defines as “assemblies of sensory, affective, and cognitive aspects of experience constellated into images (that) both mediate and constitute experience.” 315 Imaginal structures are similar to Jung’s feeling-toned complexes, and are the core of our subjectivities – “parts” or “subpersonalities” that have some degree of independent life and cohesion.316 Although we may not be able to express them directly and easily through words, they can often be captured in an image, or a gesture, or a verbal metaphor. Once the image has been embodied through an art-making process, we can continue the process of personifying it as an archetype, a god or goddess, or a purely personal character.317 The expressive arts offer various modalities within which we can dialogue with these personifications, including painting and sculpture, movement, drama, and poetry. As Watkins points out, “The visual image is only one possible form of imagination. All imagery is not imagination, and imagination is not all imagery.” 318

The Legacy of Jung

McNiff credits Jung with establishing “the psychological basis for viewing artistic expressions as independent entities…enabling them to act as ‘agencies’ of

75 transformation rather than simply as ‘illustrations’ of the psyches of their makers.”

319 As early as 1916, Jung wrote of the power of artistic expression in giving visible shape to an emotional disturbance, sometimes much more effectively than attempts at intellectual clarification.320 In an early paper on the transcendent function and later, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung describes his early experiments with the technique of active imagination, through which he first encountered subpersonalities, including Philemon, a wise old man, and Salome, an anima

(female) figure. 321 He recognized that they were, at the same time, “him” and “not him,” and possessed a great deal of autonomy. Jung discovered that by personifying these inner characters and giving them concrete form, he was then able to engage them in a dialogue that embodied “the striving of the unconscious for the light and the striving of the conscious for substance.” 322 Jung’s primacy in this praxis

(theory and practice) leads Michael Franklin and others to characterize him as “the earliest transpersonal art therapist.” 323 Robert Landy, too, notes that the field of drama therapy owes much to Jung’s “notion of psychological types…archetypes of the collective unconscious, and active imagination.” 324

Hillman proposes that adopting a “mythical consciousness” as our lens for viewing the world “brings with it Imaginal persons,” and suggests that “imagining things in a personal form” allows us to “find access to them with our hearts.” 325 So, too, Howard McConeghey defines the true discipline of art as making a connection with an inner image, so that we might see “ordinary things as animated personages.” 326 The relationship thus established with the image is “a reciprocal relationship of friends,” and creates the ground for a deeper dialogue.327 Through

76 the work of applying one’s experience and intelligence to the image, says Watkins, it becomes “an eye through which one perceives and senses.” 328 Because art-based research takes place in the third space where conscious and unconscious mind meet, there is much that must be taken on trust. Levine emphasizes the importance of developing a respect for the unknowable heart of creative expression, by relating to its “generative powers...with a corresponding consciousness which appreciates and keeps their mysteries.” 329

Post-Jungian practitioners have developed specific expressive modalities based on their particular interests and talents. Jung’s student and colleague Dora

Kalff developed sandplay, a therapeutic “symbolic play” based on the games that children have always played on the floor or in a sandbox.330 Kalff brought a host of

“miniature figures, cultural symbols, and natural objects” into her office, arranged on shelves around a shallow tray filled with sand. The client chooses objects (or perhaps, Kalff would say, the objects choose the client) and then arranges them on the tray to “elaborate and develop themes from the unconscious.” 331 Dance therapist and Jungian analyst Joan Chodorow developed a practice of psychotherapy that involves using the moving body to express the imagination, with the therapist serving as witness.332 Chodorow notes that one of the most direct ways we can access early experience is by recreating a situation “that is in many ways similar to that of an infant who swims in a sensory-motor world.” 333 The therapist is both participant and witness in reconstituting “the mirroring that is so fundamental to the parent-infant relationship.” 334 Daria Halprin, whose approach to movement-based expressive arts therapy draws inspiration from Jung, proposes that

“together, the unconscious and imagination form a bridge between our inner life and vision and our outer expression in the world.” 335 Halprin’s techniques include aesthetic response, a type of “mirroring” in which one participant speaks of how she was affected by witnessing another’s movement and what she imagines to be the inner reality of the mover, and then moves in response.

Masks and Liminal Space

In all human cultures, the magical roots of drama are found in the pretend play of children, and expressed in sacred rituals particular to their time and place. The representation of personal and transpersonal energies through masks is as ancient as humanity, and has the power to move us deeply. Before “self” and “other” have begun to be differentiated, a developing infant’s first object of contemplation is the face of its mother. As Winnicott puts it: “In individual emotional development, the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.” 336 So too, our first attempts at drawing are often the faces of loved ones, and then our own. Judi Young-Laughlin tells us that “transforming the face for symbolic purposes is virtually a cultural universal,” and that masking enables an ordinary human to “vivify cosmology” by taking on the aspect of a supernatural being.337 Ronald Grimes, citing an anonymous writer, puts it this way: “By masking, one unmasks a supernatural source.” 338 Within shamanic cultures, McNiff relates that masks or other sacred objects are “considered to be alive, but incapable of speaking alone;” they depend on human assistance to find their voices.339

There is a fundamental ambiguity to masks. As Roger Callois notes, “The mask disguises the conventional self and liberates the true personality.” 340

Hildegund Janzing tells us that they mediate “between humans and the spiritual world, between culture and nature, between conscious and unconscious, between psyche and soma.” 341 Masks allows for the embodiment of seemingly irreconcilable opposites in one form. At the level of personality, donning a mask allows the actor to be both herself and not herself at the same time; this allows the expression of non-dominant aspects of self, or non-self aspects, as Landy has observed.342 Such distancing allows an actor to tell her story with more safety, as the story is no longer entirely personal: “Healing through drama occurs in the transitional space between me (the actor) and not me (the role).” 343

The Power of Role

With or without masks, acting is ambiguous. Victor Turner suggests that, as a verb, “act” implies both truth and deception; acting is “both work and play, solemn and ludic, pretence [sic] or earnest, our mundane trafficking and commerce and what we do or behold in ritual or theatre.” 344 Making such conflicts visible through drama affords the opportunity of a dialectical engagement, and so a movement toward a third place, and a new resolution. Turner quotes William Blake’s dictum,

“Without Contraries is no Progression,” to highlight an essential paradox: only through the stimulating effect of opposite forces is human creativity engaged.345 In assessing the state of theatre in modern times, Turner observes that, even though there is little of its former ritual function, there is still a claim that what is presented

79 is a communication with “invisible spirits and ultimate reality.” 346 In fact, Turner says, since the advent of depth psychology, “theatre represents the reality behind the role-playing mask;” actors present a false face “in order to portray the possibility of a true face.” 347

As a technique in drama therapy, Jacob Moreno pioneered the use of encounter, in which role reversal and the adoption of another group member’s character are employed in order to comprehend what it might be like to be that other person.348 Calling this “an operationalizing of the Golden Rule,” Adam Blatner notes that this is, in fact, empathy, developed by learning about the uniqueness of another person and helping to give it form.349 In a sense, a kind of self-expansion takes place through encounter, as we learn to experience the world through the eyes and thoughts and senses of the other in a “mutually spontaneous” relationship. One type of encounter described by Blatner is spiritual dialogue, a “powerful means of contemplation” in which the actor encounters God “or some other image of a great, wise spiritual entity or higher power.” 350 Through engaging in a conversation that involves asking questions and reversing roles, the actor finds herself spontaneously producing “individualized and surprisingly meaningful answers to the questions posed.” 351 Blatner observes that the subtle skill in this work is learning to develop

“receptivity to the nonrational, intuitive dimensions of the mind,” and gradually integrating it into the more “rational and willed capacities,” in effect, producing reconciliation between masculine and feminine modes of knowing. This results in a change of perspective on the subconscious, which is no longer seen merely as “the

80 repository of the repressed, all those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings,” but truly as a “source of creativity, the ‘muse’ or ‘daimon’.” 352

Phil Jones comments that through the use of drama in therapy, an individual’s

“expressive range” can be expanded to include play, which can then be utilized in

“creating meaning, exploring difficulties, and achieving therapeutic change.” 353 In the liminal world of dramatic enactment, one can play with one’s image, or imagine alternatives to real-life situations without lasting consequences. Playfulness itself can be a vehicle for change, engendering liveliness or offering cathartic relief. By investigating what is personally and culturally permissible to play with, one’s boundaries are widened. The actor opens toward the possibility of playing with her relationship to reality as a new way of exploring experience. Dramatic play fosters the development of qualities such as “flexibility, expressivity, sensitivity, and the ability to communicate,” and enhances the client’s ability to “engage with self, others and life” with more spontaneity, and perhaps, to confront problem areas where s/he has felt stuck, in new and more creative ways.354

Creative Collaboration

The practice of art as a means of inquiry is not limited to individuals; there is a wider application with groups and communities. Shaun McNiff praises the creative imagination as “an intelligence that gathers and integrates varied resources,” and finds its fullest expression through experience with others.355 In his own life and work, he has found the flow of group energy – in his words, its

“slipstream” – has often provided the impetus for individuals to venture beyond the

81 limits of where they can go alone.356 McNiff points to the long history of “liberating the creative energies of healing” within groups, from the role of the shaman in pre- industrial communities, to the current use of the expressive arts in contemporary psychotherapy and personal growth work.357 Before creativity was considered to be something an individual could possess, it was seen as coming from inspiration, a gift from beyond, breathed into each of us by the transpersonal divine for the benefit of all. Shared creativity, in the joining of diverse interests and disciplines traditionally expressed through ritual enactment, may offer a way to reconnect with something greater than the sum of individuals involved.358

Relationship itself is creative. Hollis speaks of living the “symbolic life through relationship,” a path that leads toward “some knowledge, a little understanding, much suffering and a deeper capacity to love.” 359 An image of one’s partner, expressed through art or poetry, can become a divine image, of “the musician who plays us…this great musician in whom and by whom we are held.”

360 The relationship between two people can serve as a microcosm of community, in which its members have a “common transcendent experience, one that lifts each person out of his or her isolation to participate in the transformation.” 361 In shared art making or other forms of creative collaboration, Vera John-Steiner finds the possibility of finding a “balance between interdependence and individuality, between a trust in one’s own strengths and the supporting powers of connection.”

362

Conclusion

Abundant research suggests that the template for who we become as adults is established in our earliest relationships, including the partners to whom we are drawn and the relationships we are able to create with them. Attachment theory offers a simple and elegant proposition: that the capacity for adult hope grows out of an infant’s assurance that its cries for help will be heard and answered enough of the time. Our capacities to imagine, to play, and to live a creative life, are all formed in the crucible of the earliest relationship, from which we sally forth into the world. Aron and Aron’s research argues that we possess an innate desire to grow into our fullest potential, to expand our sense of self, and one of the primary ways we do this is through forming relationships with others, and so expanding ourselves by sharing resources. As part of the process of individuation, our encounters with others bring us into intimate contact with unconscious aspects of our own psyches, and offer the opportunity for growth, integration, and even transcendence. Lastly,

Winnicott, Bowlby, and others suggest that the special relationship constituted within the psychotherapist’s office offers a pathway to healing by establishing a shared environment of empathy and trust that may have been lacking in our early lives.

Research by Erickson, Bowlby, Winnicott and others argues strongly that a healthy attachment style, or perhaps, an adequate experience of healthy attachment experiences in infancy engenders a basically hopeful attitude. This stands in contrast to hopelessness, which supposes that the environment will not provide what is needed (because, ultimately, one is unworthy) and helplessness, which

83 supposes that one cannot influence the outcome anyway. The literature reviewed suggests that hope is quintessentially an Imaginal activity. We must be able to evoke and sustain an image of the future, to hold it in imagination, before we can articulate what we hope for. The liminal space between present and future is the domain of hope: it is experienced in the former, while orienting us toward the latter.

Hope is profoundly relational, and is nurtured in our first relationship with our primary caregiver and during our earliest encounters with other human beings, with whom we form attachments that engender trust, and the belief that we are valuable, and that our needs will be responded to. If that process is successful, we can face the future with a sense of positive anticipation, and the world with a belief that we have a place in it, and that our actions have meaning and consequence. Hope sustains our perennial search for transformative and self-expanding experiences, and is a vital factor in healing in psychotherapy and medicine.

Images are spontaneously generated, a biological necessity, and are the foundation of consciousness as we now understand it; language comes later, but does not supersede image. Practices of working with images underlie all the expressive arts, whether used in service of therapy, inquiry, or personal enjoyment; engagement with imagination through the expressive arts is fundamental to this dissertation inquiry. The concept of the mundus imaginalis suggests both a space in which that engagement may occur, as well as models of engagement: between mother and child, between artist and material, between therapist and client, and between an individual and other individuals, society, or the transpersonal. In the context of psychology and psychotherapy, this area is called, variously, transitional

84 space (Winnicott), the transcendent function (Jung), soul (Hillman), or in the context of psychoanalysis, the 3rd space. In each case, we are speaking of the overlapping space between therapist/analyst and patient, between conscious and unconscious, between who we are now, and who we might become.

Play is an integral part of who we are as human beings. In our earliest experience of playing with our primary caregiver, we begin to discover ourselves, and the extent and limits of our power. Play links us behaviorally to other intelligent animals, although our experience of it is certainly the most complex. Play, in the guise of “make believe,” underlies theater and sacred ritual; it can provide catharsis, promote group identity, or join communities together in a transcendent experience.

We are hard-wired to play, to express the Joy and Curiosity that inform a lively engagement with life. Sutton-Smith points at the fundamental distinction between play and work, which is usually perceived as “obligatory, sober, serious, and not fun.” 363 Even though play may well be fundamental to life, we play simply because we enjoy it. As adults, play can free us from socially and personally imposed obligations, and allow us to reconnect with what Buddhists might call our “original mind.”

Finally, Poïesis is the creative process viewed through an Imaginal lens, and is a special form of adult play. In the creative act of poïesis, the maker accords autonomy and respect to the images that arise from her unconscious, entering into dialogue with them to learn what they might have to teach her. She invites these images to reveal their meaning, but on their own terms. Poïesis, like hope, play, and the early developing self, is located in the “betwixt and between,” the realm of the

85 imagination, the place of becoming. Here, the artist can find an engagement between the conscious and the unconscious; she can learn to let go of the notion of heroic, ego-driven image making and let herself be led by the image as it emerges, following it where it takes her. Perhaps it will ask her to adopt a new and unfamiliar role, expressing an aspect of herself that has been disregarded, or opening her up to transpersonal energies. Perhaps it will suggest that she try on a mask, willing to be surprised when it reveals as much as it conceals. Poïesis can be both revelatory and informative, teaching the value of “not knowing,” and the importance of cultivating patience with a process that may seem, at times, to be pointless muddling.

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

Introduction and Overview

Participants in this research study were five heterosexual couples, who were married or in a committed, long-term relationship. The research problem asked the following question: in what ways might collaborative, imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship? The collaborative, imaginative play in question consisted of the following activities: making and decorating an individual plaster gauze mask that represented a marginalized subjectivity; further developing the character of that mask through movement activities; choosing costume elements to complement that character; and finally, improvising a duet witnessed by the other participant couples and the researchers. As a research hypothesis, I proposed that collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other might awaken implicit memories of an earlier, transformative relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility (the significance of “earlier, transformative relationship” is explored in the Review of Literature).

The research was grounded both practically and conceptually in Imaginal Inquiry, a methodology for participatory research developed by Aftab Omer that “weaves together both inquiry and transformation.” 1 Imaginal Inquiry consists of four phases: Evoking

Experience, Expressing Experience, Interpreting Experience, and Integrating Experience.

Although at first glance the four phases might seem to be both separate and sequential, it

87 is important to note that all four phases were woven in and out throughout the first meeting, and that there was overlap between them. This was true of activities that served to both interpret and integrate experience, as well activities that were intended to express experience, but proved to be quite evocative. The third learning contains a more complete discussion of the evocative effect of the plaster gauze mask-making technique. The group’s effect on individual experience was substantial, positive, and unanticipated, as I will discuss later in this chapter and in the second learning. Consequently, it was the most surprising learning, from a personal perspective, to emerge from the research.

The research took place in three stages: a day-long meeting (9:00 AM – 6:00 PM with a 60 minute lunch break); a two-hour meeting of the co-researchers five days later; and another three-hour meeting of the entire group, participants and researchers, the following evening. The first meeting began with a sequence of activities intended to foster trust and curiosity, to introduce an awareness of personification (the process of

“actively imagining the psyche into multiple persons”) in general, and to evoke an image of a marginalized or neglected self-aspect.2 This “character” was then embodied in the form of a plaster gauze mask that the participants painted and decorated with materials I provided. The initial forms were developed further through movement exploration and dialog with the group. The first day culminated in an improvised duet between the partners, followed by an interview that I conducted with each mask. All activities were video- and audiotaped. Additional data was generated during group check-ins after each activity, and through journaling.

In the second meeting, the researchers shared impressions and interpretations of the first day with each other (the participants were not present). This was the first time

88 that the three researchers had met since the first meeting, and set the stage for the second meeting, which everyone attended. During the interval between the first and second meetings, the participants were asked to continue reflecting in their journals. The second meeting produced a considerable amount of additional data, as well as the majority of interpretation and integration by the participants. The opening and closing of the first and second meetings were ritualized with sound, poetry, and spoken contributions by the participants.

Personal experience using drawing as a mindfulness tool, as well as the experiments in collaborative art making I have described in the Introduction, influenced my decision to employ an art-based research methodology for this study. Art has the power to embody aspects of psyche that are difficult to capture with words. Rather than talking about psychic phenomena that may be dimly perceived or partially blocked from conscious awareness, art allows those phenomena to express themselves directly as images – energetic expressions that are then available for dialog and inquiry.3

Personifying those images gives substance and dimensionality to what might otherwise remain conceptual. Through dialogue involving the image, its maker, and the researchers, the participants constructed a world that could be stepped into and inhabited, rather than observed from outside. This fundamental difference from traditional observer-oriented research places art-based research solidly within the participatory research paradigm.

The literature on art-based research is not extensive. Although the expressive arts have been used as a mode of inquiry in individual practitioner research, as well as with individuals and within groups in the domain of art therapy, their use with a group of couples was novel.4 Typically, interactions between two individuals have largely taken

89 place in individual couple’s therapy, rather than as a couple that is part of a group.

Interactions between individuals in a group context have been documented, including aesthetic response (used in the Tamalpa Life/Art Process®), in which an individual may respond non-verbally to the artwork of another, allowing that artwork to evoke sound or movement.5 Imaginal Transformation Praxis, the Theory in Practice guiding this study, offers similar opportunities for non-verbal expression in Focal Space, an activity in which individuals take turns speaking and/or moving from the perspective of a subjectivity that is not the personal identity.6 There is little documentation of the use of art-based research with couples, within the domain of psychotherapy or otherwise; consequently, this research offers the potential of exploring new ground within the field.

From the outset, I anticipated that it would be easier to find couples that had done psychological work together, but were new to collaborative art making, which proved to be the case. Although at least two of the couples had occasionally collaborated on creative projects, one partner (typically the female) was acknowledged as the leader in each case. This research strove for equality of leadership, although old, familiar roles did make an appearance. For a fuller discussion of this dynamic, see the fourth and fifth learnings.

Co-Researchers

I was assisted by two co-researchers, whom I selected based on their familiarity with the concepts informing the project, their familiarity with the methodology, and their capacity to respond appropriately to any level of affect that might be evoked. Robert

Rowen-Herzog was a classmate at Meridian University, where we collaborated many

90 times during our coursework years. I had, and have, great confidence in his skills in observation and interpretation, and his capacity to provide support for the project and containment for the participants. During the research, his primary responsibility was operating the video camera. Lori Richloff is a Meridian graduate with an M.A. in psychology, who has a deep interest in psyche and familiarity with Imaginal Inquiry.

Additionally, as an artist and graduate of the Tamalpa Institute, she brought a depth of knowledge and experience in expressive arts praxis, as well as considerable hands-on experience in the particular mask-making methodology employed in this study. This proved very helpful during the construction of the plaster gauze mask bases. In addition,

Lori served as timekeeper for the day’s activities. Both co-researchers were actively present during all phases of the research, assisting, observing, recording, or offering feedback, as needed. A primary focus for all three researchers was creating and maintaining the safe and supportive container necessary for this type of work.

Limitations and Delimitations

In my initial proposal, I identified several limitations that might possibly affect the experience of the participants. Art making in itself often evokes inhibitory, or self- critical gatekeeping messages that can interfere with spontaneous expression. These may stem from early and unsatisfying attempts at creativity (e.g. an insensitive or critical grade school art teacher), resulting in a perfectionistic orientation toward product rather than process (e.g. “getting it right”). However, I considered that such a reaction might also possibly provide useful data, since gatekeeping messages evoked during the collaborative art-making activities might also be present in other domains of the couple’s

91 relationship. All of this proved to be the case, as I describe in the fourth learning. Issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally, in the form of the abovementioned critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts, and interpersonally, through the desire to direct or control the partner’s behavior, whether acted upon or not.

I was initially concerned that the data available for capture might be limited by privacy considerations, and thus constrain the participants’ willingness to express sensitive relational dynamics in the presence of strangers, while being observed and videotaped by researchers. For this reason, I assessed the participants’ willingness to self- disclose during the interview process, and emphasized safety and mutual trust from the very beginning of the first research day. In fact, privacy proved to be a non-issue. The group as a whole was very willing, and a few participants in particular displayed very little inhibition in disclosing intimate details about their own and their partner’s inner process. In some situations, this might have been perceived as over-sharing, and hence, problematic; in this case, more permission was given to other participants, who might have been more reticent, under other circumstances, to openly share their experience.

Another limitation (discussed in the Learnings Chapter as well) was the composition of the study population: white, heterosexual couples from a similar socioeconomic background (middle class, educated). Although my outreach was inclusive and there were two lesbian couples among the initial applicants, the final group did not include them; one couple dropped out, and one partner in the other couple did not seem sufficiently invested in the project. As to the whiteness of the group, it is a reflection of the population in my immediate area, Sonoma County, CA. The nature of the study – a doctoral project in psychology advertised as self-exploration employing an

92 arts-based methodology – undoubtedly skewed the participant pool toward applicants who were more educated and psychologically sophisticated. However, this served as a delimitation as well, since I wanted participants with at least some awareness of, and familiarity with their inner life.

Additionally, four of the five couples attend the same spiritual practice place (the

Center for Spiritual Living, in Santa Rosa, CA), as do I on occasion. Although only two of the female partners had more than a passing acquaintance, I am confident that the shared spiritual orientation formed the basis for a common understanding of relationship as a spiritual path, and fostered a degree of intimacy from the outset. This shared orientation was never discussed among the participants during the first meeting, as far as

I know, and so its effect on the fifth couple is unknown. However, the Center promotes a spirit of welcome towards all, which was in alignment with my goal for the study. One of the participants raised the issue during the second meeting, speculating that the shared practice might have contributed to a more rapid development of group trust.

A final limitation was the amount of time (six days) between the first group meeting and the follow-up meeting. I would have preferred a longer interval, ideally including a weekend during which the couples could have revisited their relationships with the masks and each other. This would also have given me more time to reflect on the data and articulate preliminary learnings to share with the participants. However, scheduling conflicts (one couple was leaving on a long vacation a week after the first meeting) left us with no choice but the earlier time, as it seemed of primary importance to have full attendance at the follow-up meeting. As it was, that meeting proved to be a rich source of data, as well as producing a few surprises.

The study took place in two rooms at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts: an art- making room, in which the welcome and orientation, construction of the masks, and closing took place; and a small movement studio in which all the movement activities and the mask duets took place. The choice of venue for the first meeting, with its two contrasting spaces, was a delimitation that established a clear distinction between the day’s phases, and offered a clean, uncluttered, and more formal environment in which to present the duets. A second delimitation was the choice to end the first research day in the late afternoon, rather than extending into the evening after a dinner break as I had initially proposed. Given the extended and intensive focus involved in making the masks and working with them, it seemed likely that the participants would be tired at the end of the afternoon, and little useful data would be generated after dinner.

Participants

Advertising and outreach to attract prospective participants was extensive, and included: word of mouth to Meridian classmates and teachers; email and direct contact to therapists (some whom I knew personally, and some only by reputation as couples therapists); outreach through two spiritual centers where I practice; a presentation at the yearly meeting of the local association of Marriage and Family Therapists; flyers posted on selected billboards in my area; and online advertising in a local bulletin board and on

Craigslist. A total of seven couples applied to the study, of which one couple dropped out. From the remaining six, I chose the final five couples. Four of these were referred directly or indirectly by the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa. A Meridian classmate referred the fifth couple (the male partner was her therapy client). The question

94 of why it was so challenging to attract enough participants remains unanswered. Was it a question of the time commitment required? Did the words “playful and imaginative collaboration” trigger memories of the inhibitory, self-critical messages mentioned earlier?

In my outreach and advertising, I had indicated that I was looking for participants who self-assessed their relationship or marriage as “long-term” and “committed. In my initial telephone screening (See Appendix 7), I interviewed the partners separately, asking each what “commitment” meant in the context of their relationships. Although I had defined long-term as meaning seven or more years in the current relationship, I was forced to be flexible in order to reach my goal of five participating couples. Three of the five couples were in established marriages; the other two were not, but seemed committed to the relationship and interested in nurturing its growth and longevity.

Another, implicit goal in my initial screening process was to identify any applicants whom I suspected might drop out before the research event itself. This criterion was only applied to one couple, unfortunately the only same-sex couple out of the final group of six.

Since I initially anticipated that the study might evoke considerable affect, I screened prospective participants to assess their capacity in dealing with challenging inner states by asking about their experience in couples counseling, personal therapy, or other forms of personal growth work. I also asked whether they had a regular meditation practice or other spiritual practice, as further indications of an ability to observe and reflect on their inner states. My intention was to engage and activate the participants’ capacities at the beginning of the first meeting through activities that encouraged such

95 observation and reflection. Because of time constraints, some activities were eliminated as being more appropriate to a workshop than to a research project: while they might have promoted intimacy and bonding, they would not have generated data pointing toward the research problem. This was a distinction that I grappled with throughout the process of crafting and refining the activities of the first meeting.

Five couples seemed the ideal number to generate an adequate, but not overwhelming amount of data, although I thought that the research could be done with a minimum of four. I anticipated that the study’s orientation toward playful, creative interaction, and the inherent mystery and appeal of mask-making would prove attractive to potential participants, and the participant group corroborated this, identifying these elements as central in their decision to take part in the project. An additional inducement was the opportunity to learn something of benefit to the relationship. However, since the study was time-limited, I did not want to oversell the potential benefits, and told prospective participants that although they might well have helpful insights, deep transformation was unlikely.

On the advice of my dissertation committee, I added additional language during the screening process as well as the first meeting to reconfirm that this was to be a research study, and not psychotherapy. I also emphasized that it was important for the participants to understand and practice self-care within the study, and to recognize and respect personal limits regarding sharing sensitive material. The largest potential benefit was the opportunity for the partners to share an artistic collaboration, and even more important, to play together. For that reason, I intended to screen out, for example, artistic couples with considerable experience in this domain. However, all of the participants I

96 eventually chose had either interest or experience in the visual arts, particularly the female partners. The question of one’s having “artistic credentials” (or not) proved to be a source of useful data, as I describe in the fourth and fifth learnings.

As noted above, I anticipated that the opportunity to engage in a playful collaboration while making and exploring their masks would be an attractive element to the prospective participants. During the telephone screening process (see Appendix 7), as well as at the beginning of the first meeting, I shared some general information about my interest in couples’ dynamics, and something of my own story of exploration in art and relationship. It seemed more useful to emphasize the possibility of recovering an ability to play as an adult than to call attention to the more serious aspect of the research, as I had imagined it beforehand: the evoking and expressing of shadowy subjectivities that might prefer to remain hidden. In the nearly three years between the writing of my proposal and the actualization of the research project many things changed, and in the end, the question of the Shadow was addressed only indirectly. The focus of the first meeting was much more on reconnecting with childhood joy and spontaneity that on exploring the wounds that may have led to loss of that connection.

Four Phases of Imaginal Inquiry

Imaginal Inquiry is a participatory research methodology that consists of four phases: Evoking, Expressing, Interpreting, and Integrating experience. Activities in the first phase are intended to evoke the experience being studied, in this case the emergence of hope and possibility as a result of shared, collaborative activity between the partners.

Evoking activities occurred at several points during the day, and included: an opening

97 ritual; a face touching exercise between partners; making and decorating individual masks; movement activities, both alone and with others; and masked improvisations, both with the partner and with other participants. In addition, as I have mentioned, the mask making activity itself proved to be unexpectedly evocative.

Expressing activities are intended to give form to the experience that has been evoked. These included: journaling; group check-ins and discussion; movement activities; and mask work, both individually and in a duet with partner. In this research study, activities such as journaling and group check-ins had both an Expressing and

Interpreting function, and sometimes evoked further experience as well. Interpreting activities are those in which data is analyze in order to enable meanings to emerge.

Interpreting activities in this study included: group check-ins, interviews with the masks after the partner duets, journaling during the interim week, and extensive discussion during the follow-up meeting, which took place six days after the first meeting.

Integrating activities are those intended to help participants assimilate the experience that has been evoked during the study, and included: group check-ins; journaling; collaborative discussion with the participants during the follow-up meeting; and the eventual possibility of a more public sharing of the results of this study. An additional opportunity for integration will be provided later, in the form of a written

Summary of Learnings to be shared with the participants. In identifying and interpreting the learnings that emerged, I have examined the data through the lenses of art-based research, and Jungian and Imaginal Psychology.

Rather than introducing concepts particular to Imaginal Transformation Praxis directly, I chose to use terminology in more common usage. After all, the participants did

98 not need to be able to define “subjectivity” in order to describe an inner character with whom they were already familiar: an Inner Critic or Child, a Rebellious Teenager, and so forth. A more generalized prompt (“an aspect of yourself that you’ve been hesitant to fully express, that you feel your partner hasn’t truly seen”) was used, avoiding the problem of using jargon that then required explanation. In fact, the identities of the character each participant chose continued to emerge and coalesce throughout the day, in most cases remaining nameless while at the same time intimately familiar.

Evoking Experience

The design of the research was complex in that there were multiple sequences of

Evoking and Expressing. In addition, some Evoking activities had an Expressive aspect, and some Expressive activities proved to be unexpectedly evocative. I have drawn attention to the first point in both the Chronological and Conceptual Outlines

(Appendices 2 and 3), and discuss the second point at length in Chapter Four, and particularly, regarding the mask making activities, in the third learning. The first Evoking activity, immediately after welcoming and orienting the participants, was an opening ritual in which the participants were each invited to place a small stone in a bowl of water, while introducing themselves by name and expressing an intention for the day.

Following this, the initial proposal contained activities to promote and engage physical, mental and emotional awareness. These, as noted earlier, had to be eliminated because of time constraints and in consideration of the distinction between a workshop and a research study. After the opening ritual, I read Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” (see

Appendix 12), in order to indirectly introduce the concept of psychological multiplicity

99 and set an intention for the group to welcome whatever images or feelings arose.7 At the end of the day, I presented each participant with a copy of this poem and the closing poem (“Oceans,” by Juan Ramón Jiménez), and invited them to take the stone they had placed in the bowl as a remembrance of their experience.

In my initial proposal, I had intended the primary Evoking activity to be a collaborative drawing done by each couple, with the expectation that some relational dynamics active within the relationship would emerge, which could then be amplified and expressed through other media. However, in order to streamline and simplify the methodology, I eliminated the collaborative drawing and replaced it with a face-touching activity, which took place immediately after the opening ritual. This activity proved to be adequately evocative, and also provided a helpful foreshadowing of the mask-making activity that followed. Each couple sat knee-to-knee, with eyes closed and, in turn, explored the partner’s face with his or her fingertips. The receptive partner – the one being touched – was instructed to reflect on a self-aspect s/he felt had not been truly seen in the relationship, or that s/he had been hesitant to express. The active partner was instructed to imagine “extending a welcoming invitation,” and to communicate

“openness, receptivity, curiosity, safety.” From this activity emerged the first images of the subjectivity, or self-aspect, that the participants would subsequently personify in a mask. Participants later commented that doing this exercise together with the other couples in the same room contributed to feelings of vulnerability and shared intimacy. In this way, the group itself began to develop its capacity to contain the experience of the ten participants.

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Another Evoking series took place after the mask making sequence, and began with a solitary movement exploration (without masks) intended to promote further embodiment of the participants’ experience, and so contribute to the development of the characters that were emerging. Solo exploration led to random interactions between members of the group, and finally to specific collaboration between the partners. Since everyone was experimenting at the same time in a large room, there was ample opportunity to witness, and sometimes interact with others as they explored. This fostered a broader awareness of the group as a whole, and thus the creation of a more intimate, hence safer, container for the work. Although the second learning is devoted to this topic, it is worth pointing out here as well that the group itself had an evocative effect that I had not anticipated on the experience of each participant.

The couples’ playful exploration of their masks prior to their final duet also provided an opportunity to both evoke and express experience. Gestures particular to each mask emerged as the participants discovered a more complex embodiment of their characters. After each couple presented their improvised masked duet, witnessed by the group, I invited the watchers to respond with a spontaneous physical gesture. In two instances, the gestures had a synchronous quality, with the participants spontaneously responding in unison. After all the couples had presented, I invited each participant to speak as his or her mask, inviting the mask to answer three questions: what do you want, what do you need, and what qualities have you brought to the relationship? This activity was mirrored at the beginning of the second meeting, when each mask was invited to report on what the intervening six days had been like, how its maker had treated it, and what it (the mask) would like in the future.

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Expressing Experience

Nearly half the first day was comprised of two sequences, in which the masks were constructed and decorated. “Making” activities were punctuated by movement sequences, opportunities for reflection, and group sharing. In the first sequence, each participant constructed a plaster gauze mask structure directly on his or her partner’s face.

Although this had been scripted as an Expressive activity, it proved to be unexpectedly evocative and generated much useful data (further discussed in the third and fourth learnings) related to creativity, including negative self-messages and issues of power and control in the relationship. The most powerful images of transformation emerged from this activity as well, as the partially dried masks were peeled off the participants’ faces.

Common to every artistic endeavor, there was an interweaving of Evoking and

Expressing as the participants negotiated the unknown territory between an emerging mental/emotional image and its concrete embodiment. During the afternoon of the first day in particular, participants found themselves considering how much they did not yet know, and commenting on the challenge of trying to give tangible expression to was not yet a fully formed image.

Other Expressing activities involved in the mask making process included: decorating the masks using materials that I provided; experimenting individually with the masks in order to develop a personal movement vocabulary; and finally, improvising a duet in which the partners related to each other entirely in character through the masks.

For the last activity, I also provided an abundance of costume pieces – fabric, clothing, musical instruments, and other props. The participants were given a few moments to

102 choose objects that further defined the qualities they associated with their masks – enough time to form a first impression, but not enough to over-think the process – before making an entrance into the performance space. This was a different room than that in which the masks had been made, with mirrors and a more formalized seating arrangement between the actors and audience. In addition to their Expressive function, the duets evoked a deeper and more nuanced affective response as well, not only for the participants, but also for the researchers. In the second learning, I describe two of the synchronous events that occurred as the audience responded to the duets. After the fifth couple’s duet, the pairs of masks were called back to the stage, and in turn asked what they wanted, what they needed, and what they could offer the relationship.

Data was gathered after each Expressing activity, in this case by interviewing the participants’ masks. Other sources of data included: audio- and videotapes of all meetings with the participants; my reflections and those of my co-researchers; the participants’ experiences as recorded in their journals; and from a complete photographic record of the masks in portrait form. In this way, I attempted to capture the full scope of expression from as many perspectives as possible. Prior to the first meeting, I had anticipated that an important source of data would be the response of members of the larger group as they witnessed the partner duets, but in fact, the fullness of that response came in the follow- up meeting a week later. Throughout the first meeting, as well as during the interval between the first and second meetings, I asked the participants to jot down impressions of the activities they had just finished in their journals. In retrospect, these journals did not yield a significant amount of useful data, especially since most of the participants did minimal journaling between the two meetings.

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Interpreting Experience

My research hypothesis proposed that collaborative imaginative play might awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, imbuing the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. I felt it would be important to capture the participants’ sense of their affective inscape as fully and accurately as possible by offering them frequent opportunities to reflect on their experience and to share those reflections with others. During group check-ins the first day, I allowed insights to emerge spontaneously, with little prompting on my part, anticipating that additional data would be generated by individual responses to the interactive movement activities, to the dramatic enactments of other couples, and to the verbal reflections of others in the group. In the second group meeting, both participants and co-researchers were invited to contribute insights and learnings that had occurred to them, and to identify significant moments in the first meeting.

Another level of interpretation involved the application of theoretical lenses to the data gathered. Art-based research proposes that the totality of psychic reality can only be expressed through images, that these images have an inherent vitality and must be granted autonomy and allowed to speak for themselves, and that the creative imagination realizes its fullest potential in collaboration with others. These propositions confirm art- based research as a methodology congruent with both Jungian and Imaginal psychology, and make a claim for the use of collaborative creative activities in future research.

Viewing the research through a Jungian/Imaginal perspective lends additional support to the notion of the self as a collection of subjectivities or “little people,” to use Jung’s poetic phrase, available to be personified through art making.8 In developing the learnings

104 from this study, I have relied on these theoretical orientations for interpretative perspectives to supplement the Theory in Practice, Imaginal Transformative Praxis.

For the participants, the most useful interpretations came during the give-and-take of the group check-ins, and during the second group meeting. By this time, they had had nearly a week to assimilate the experience of the first meeting and to live with the mask they had made. I had asked them to put their masks in a place of honor in their homes; whether and how they carried out this assignment evoked additional material for discussion and interpretation. Most of the masks – which is to say, the neglected subjectivity they embodied – expressed some longing for the kind of sustained recognition and attention they had felt during the first meeting, and for more inclusion in their makers’ daily lives.

Much of my attention during the first meeting had been focused on managing time. At the point when I met with my co-researchers, I had not yet had an opportunity to transcribe the extensive recordings of that meeting, and, of course, the second group meeting was yet to come. Later, as I pored over the transcripts from both meetings, deeper patterns and meanings began to reveal themselves. I followed an intuitive approach to analyzing and interpreting the data, highlighting comments that struck me as particularly observant or insightful, and then noting themes in the content of those comments, based on the repeated use of similar words and phrases, or on the energy of agreement amongst the participants. In this manner, a picture of the shared experience of the group began to emerge, coalescing into patterns that became the learnings.

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Integrating Experience

The intent of the research methodology was to evoke and personify a subjectivity

(a non-dominant self-aspect of each participant) that was perceived as neglected or marginalized within his or her relationship. Although my hope was that, beyond providing data for a research project, the experience might actually be of some benefit in my participants’ lives, I was careful to emphasize the important distinction between research and psychotherapy, both in the initial screening interview as well as during orientation at the first meeting. Aware of my obligation to provide a safe container throughout the project, I provided ample opportunity for the participants to express and interpret what had been evoked for them, and to imagine what relevance their own learnings might have to their life ongoing, thus beginning the process of integration. My intention from the beginning of the first meeting was to both embody and foster a playful and non-judgmental attitude, and to design the various activities to promote trust, curiosity, and openness to experience. Based on the feedback of both participants and co- researchers, this goal was realized.

I had originally proposed prefacing the first evoking/expressing sequence with

“physical warm up activities that would promote safety, trust, and collaborativity; to playfully engage both body and imagination; and to lead the participants toward a closer observation of thoughts, feelings, and sensations.” In moving from the initial proposal to the study itself, I came to understand the important distinction between a workshop and a research study. As a result, I truncated or jettisoned activities that did not seem likely to generate useful data. The absence of team building activities at the beginning of the first meeting was noted by one participant, who wondered why we had not had more.

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However, other participants observed that sharing activities in the same room for an entire day created significant non-verbal intimacy. I noted that the structural demands of the research methodology were certainly a factor: the mask making process was complicated and lengthy, and I needed to ensure adequate time for the masks to dry so that they could be decorated. Other Integrating activities included: individual reflection and journaling; group check-ins; identification and discussion of key moments and learnings during the follow-up meeting; and a closing circle at the end of each meeting.

When the participants arrived at the first meeting, I encouraged them to adopt an attitude of non-judgmental curiosity and empathy for self and others, encapsulated in the phrase “All are welcome here.” I imagined that it would be important to develop and end the project with a conceptual overview in which the participants saw the personified self-aspect, however they had identified it, as one part of a greater whole

– a single god in their inner pantheon, if you will. However, since the concept of personification was addressed only indirectly, I am not certain to what extent this was achieved. In my dissertation proposal, I had imagined that the masks themselves would assume “a place of honor on a home altar, as artifacts from a personal or cultural myth that has yet to be told, and held in an ongoing practice of imaginative inquiry, hoping that what was perhaps approached with initial apprehension would be taken home with an increased sense of affection and familiarity.” The interim between the first and second group meetings allowed for a partial realization of this vision. As well, the two mask

“interviews” – at the end of the first meeting and the beginning of the second – allowed opportunities for the neglected subjectivities to express their longing for future inclusion, although in the first interview the participants did not reliably distinguish between want

107 and need, and sometimes used the two interchangeably. To what extent will the energy of the masks be further integrated into the lives of their makers? Will the masks gather dust in a corner of a bookshelf, or will they remain living reminders of an enlivening experience of reconnection with the primal flow of life? These are questions that remain to be answered.

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CHAPTER FOUR

LEARNINGS

Introduction and Overview

This dissertation study explored the experience of five heterosexual couples in order to address the question of how collaborative imaginative play might affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship. The process of data collection was guided by the hypothesis that collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other might awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility.

Data was gathered from the participants’ words, images, and embodied (non-verbal) expression, as recorded in their writing and artwork, and by audio- and videotape.

Additional data was gathered from my own observations and that of my two co- researchers.

Cumulative Learning: “Music Heard So Deeply That It Is Not Heard At All”

The cumulative learning of this inquiry states that the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others, rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. As the subtitle (from “The Dry Salvages,” one of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets) suggests, our souls

109 are shaped by experiences, which though unremembered, permeate us to the core.

Although the powerful, preverbal memories that Bollas alludes to in his theory of the transformational object may have been interwoven through the participants’ experience, those memories ultimately remained unexpressed and perhaps unrecognized. As a result, the theory itself finds its place as a beautiful, poetic metaphor. There simply was no data

– at least, in terms of direct expression by the participants – to support it, or to substantiate its relevance to the Hypothesis. Regardless, the cumulative learning speaks to the power of the imagination, play, and relationship in generating and sustaining hope, and to the essential mystery at the core of our being.

Stemming from key moments during the research process, six learnings were identified by the participants and the three researchers. The first learning states that playful, creative collaboration within an environment perceived as welcoming and safe enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with the affects joy and interest/excitement. That earlier stage, whether it was the beginnings of the current relationship or the individual’s childhood, was perceived as more spontaneous and authentic.

The second learning states that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant. Both individually and as a member of his or her respective couple, each participant experienced the group as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. At the same time, this learning underscores the profoundly relational nature of hope

The third learning states that the paradoxical nature of masks and the evocative nature of the mask-making methodology encouraged the emergence of a liminal, transformative state. Masks have the capacity to both conceal and reveal; they are at the

110 same time “me” and “not me.” In the resulting liminal state, identity becomes more fluid, and mask wearers can feel more freedom to dis-identify from a dominant self-aspect and express another, less privileged aspect.1

The fourth learning states that during the first meeting, issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally and interpersonally. In the former case, participants reported critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts; in the latter, they recognized a desire to direct or control the partner’s behavior, whether or not that desire was acted upon. To the extent that control was willingly surrendered, creative activity was experienced as playful and enjoyable.

The fifth learning states that the participants’ experience of control/strength and surrender/vulnerability was informed by cultural assumptions about gender, as was the degree of permission they allowed themselves to claim and express their “artistic self.” In addition, participant comments suggested that men and women express themselves differently in mixed gender, versus single gender groups.

In order to protect the participants’ privacy, each has been given a pseudonym, both in this chapter and in the Appendices. In addition, personal details that might serve to identify an individual participant have been altered, or omitted from the transcripts, as well as from the photographs included in Appendix 13.

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Learning One: “So Now We Can Un-Grow Up Again”

The first learning states that playful, creative collaboration within an environment perceived as welcoming and safe enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with the affects of joy and interest/excitement. That earlier stage, whether it was the beginnings of the current relationship or the individual’s childhood, was perceived as more spontaneous and authentic. This claim is based on the reported experience of the participants in this study, their interpretations of the masks they made, and observations by the three co-researchers.

What Happened

Themes of recognition of loss and longing to reconnect with an earlier time emerged during group check-ins during the first meeting, in further reflections by the participants in their journals, and during the second meeting. At the end of the first meeting, each couple presented an improvised duet, masked and costumed, after which I interviewed the masks. Bruce’s mask, in response to the question, “What do you want?” replied, “Mask says he just wants to be young again. He doesn't want to be so serious all the time.” Later, Bruce wrote in his journal that his mask had become “a revelation of where in the past, I lost my childhood and life became serious. The most difficult part was trying to make a dual statement. Where I was, and where it has led me.” In his journal, Tom observed that his “mask was so child like, spontaneous,” and contrasted that spontaneity with his present, adult life, saying, “I think turning 65 is more of a stress than

I thought it might be. The mask is telling me to wake up and take each day as it comes.

Worry less about the future - just enjoy each moment day to day.” When I interviewed

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Tom’s mask at the end of the first day, asking what it brought to his relationship, it told me that it was “aspiring to bringing more lightness and fun and whimsy.”

Play and spontaneity were themes associated with the early days of the current relationship, as well as with childhood. Tom’s partner Ellen commented in her journal that “it was fun seeing [his] fun side…the little play we did & he let himself really go.

That is truly a part I miss.” During the closing circle at the end of the first day, Rebecca spoke of her yearning to reconnect with a part of herself, and “to learn to be more authentic and intimate.” She noted how the movements in her duet with Charlie reflected this – it had been his idea “to come separately and move around, then reconnect.” She welcomed the re-emergence of “the passion and the excitement” that she associated with the early days of her relationship with Charlie. This had been buried under a work life of

“12 hour days, and what’s left? I could see the joy. It’s so rare.”

Throughout the first meeting, and particularly during and after the improvised masked duets, the researchers noticed a shift in the participants’ physical energy, facial expressions, and conversational interactions – spontaneity, lightness, and playfulness were increasingly evident. Bruce felt some release from the responsibilities of adult life, commenting that “there is a real artistic side that needs to come out...and it takes away from the heaviness, because it was enjoyable, it was exciting.” Lars noticed a correspondence between the nature of the day’s activities, and a deeper awareness of his emotional life, saying that “the whole experience was kind of a lesson in present-ness.

What we were doing literally kind of paralleled the emotional experience of it as well.”

Stacy, reminded of what she was like as a child, said, “The point is to learn from others...we're just open to learning and not judging and not comparing.” She found

113 herself inspired by witnessing others in the group, and thinking, “I want a little of that...and a little bit of that, a little bit of that.”

How I Was Affected

Since my primary focus throughout the first meeting was on managing time and monitoring my participants’ experience, it was only later that I was able to reflect on the effect that everyone had on each other and how both researchers and participants were changed during the day. As I observed my sense of anticipation developing into a more relaxed feeling of trust, I felt safer in allowing my playful self to come out and take the lead. In my journal, I mused on how my experience had changed during that day: “I spoke off script more and more, and brought more of my own desire to engage through play. Was that as a result of the (participants’) shift, or did the two co-create each other?

The latter, I think, leading to a mutual reinforcement and acceptance.” Lori echoed this, observing that at the beginning of the day I was “reading from the script, and by the end of the day you were just totally off the script...just embodying the work, doing it. You just relaxed into your role.” In the context of this study, being affected was an experience of mutuality – what affected the participants affected me, which affected them, and so on

– corroborating one of the fundamental principles of the participatory research paradigm:

There was no outside.

My Interpretations of What Happened

During the first phase of mask making, the participants’ wore plastic bags over their heads to protect them from the wet plaster, as did I, while modeling the mask making process. Lori suggested that my “willingness to be messy in demonstrating how

114 to do it…opened up the door for some playfulness…when you really seemed engaged in the playfulness… it offered that permission, even more permission to the group.” During our researchers’ follow-up meeting, which took place between the first day and the group follow-up meeting, Robert commented on the element of trust that was quickly created,

“just by your presence.” My own assessment, corroborated by the co-researchers, suggests that my willingness to take the same risks – stepping into the unknown, looking ridiculous – that I was asking the participants to take promoted the rapid development of a relaxed and playful environment.

The day after the first meeting, I wrote in my journal that I had seen “a palpable shift in body language and demeanor, from a hesitant, in some cases guarded beginning, to a younger, more playful presentation.” This observation is in alignment with the participants’ own reflections, indicating an increased connection to the remembered spontaneity and freedom of childhood and permission to express the joy and interest/excitement associated with that age. By the end of the day, through individual exploration and mutual reinforcement, the participants were playing together like kids, with my experience of joy and interest/excitement mirroring theirs. I noted in my journal that they had “individually and in pairs and in the group discovered and explored that secret part of their lives, that part where the creative life still lives, tapped into it and brought it into the play-space…[and] engaged their interest and excitement.” In the follow-up meeting, Stacy put it this way: “It was so playful…It was just all about play for itself…It was like back to being a kid again.” In response, Rebecca commented, “We were allowed to have some fun.”

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Imaginal Structures In Use

The Imaginal Structure of The Divine Child embodies the romantic notion that there was a time of original innocence in each of our lives before we fell from grace, before the effects of family and society shaped, or perhaps, deformed us. As well as pointing toward a Paradise lost, The Divine Child offers the promise of recovery or healing. The Divine Child is an Imaginal Structure common to many in the cultural milieu in which I live, and is hardly new in the Western mind. Expressing the sensibility of the Romantic period, Wordsworth tells us that we come “trailing clouds of glory…/From God, who is our home:/Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” 2 When I look at photographs from my childhood, I can see reflected in posture and facial expression the moment when my child began to fall asleep beneath a blanket of

Experience. As Blake says, when “Soon my Angel came again; I was armed, he came in vain.” 3 Observing the participants’ experience through the lens of The Divine Child, I was moved by their expressions of joy as they reconnected with the remembered source of their playfulness and creativity.

Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

Winnicott suggests that even though our experience as children of forced compliance with the demands of others may have resulted in the establishment of a false personality, “hidden away somewhere there exists a secret life [emphasis added] that is satisfactory because of its being creative or original.” 4 Through play, we discover our ability to be creative and to use the whole personality, and “it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” 5. The methodology for this study was based on the

116 hypothesis that, through an experience of creative play with a trusted other, the participants might be able to reconnect with that secret life. Christopher Bollas’ metaphor of the transformational object suggests that we are unconsciously predisposed to seek out experiences, relationships, objects, spiritual practices, etc. that awaken in us an implicit memory of when that secret life, our creative life, was not yet a secret.6 My hypothesis proposed that imaginative play with a trusted other might be enough to awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, and that evidence of this would be the appearance of expressions of hope and possibility.

Play can be understood in a number of ways. However, in the context of this study, Brian Sutton-Smith’s “rhetoric of play as the imaginary,” which comprises

“playful improvisation of all kinds” and “idealizes the imagination, flexibility, and creativity,” is most relevant.7 Winnicott proposes that play takes place in potential space, an intermediary realm between our inner life and the external world where we experience the “precariousness of the interplay of personal psychic reality and the experience of control of actual objects.” 8 The methodology of this study was an attempt to reverse engineer this phenomenon, by employing playful shared creativity to replicate the affective tone of those original experiences. In so doing, I hoped to see if the participants might be able to loosen the grip of the false self, and so to peer behind their everyday mask and catch a glimpse of the secret life.

Since implicit memories of our original joy are preverbal, they often lie deeply buried, and unavailable to the conscious mind. However, they are embodied (held in the body), but available, as Joan Chodorow observes, to be experienced as “a stream of bodily felt sensations and images” that can be expressed through art, or creative movement.9 Louis Stewart’s pioneering work on the relationship between play and the

117 affects of joy and interest/excitement suggest that play itself, especially play that engages the whole person, is a doorway to re-engaging with those memories.10 Undertaking this playful exploration with a trusted partner might further amplify the connection with those early memories, now tinged, as Bollas suggests, with the sacred. The connection between play and the sacred is not an idle one: Sutton-Smith asserts that “both religion and play…make life worth living and make everyday activities meaningful, because of the transcendence they propose, one eternal and one mundane.” 11

Validity Considerations

Four of the five couples had a connection through their shared spiritual practice.

To an extent, they were familiar with each other, and although none were close friends, they had some important common ground. In fact, Ellen noted during the follow-up meeting that unlike the experience of going to a party with other couples, everyone was

“committed to each other in a spiritual way.” Although I did not know any of them prior to the first meeting, I also am quite familiar with that spiritual practice. On occasion, I attend the same practice center, and was put in touch with some of the participants by the minister. Our shared practice was never a topic of discussion, except in the one instance where a couple ended their duet with a phrase that is familiar to anyone who shares that practice (“And so it is”), and the others spontaneously answered in kind. It is quite possible that this shared spiritual orientation facilitated the rapid evolution of a cohesive, trusting group environment, and that the absence of such a shared orientation would have required more trust-building activities, and consequently, more time. However, the fact that the fifth couple had a complementary experience although they were not part of the

118 same spiritual practice suggests that, while the spiritual connection was a factor, it was not the only factor in promoting group affiliation.

The relative age of the participants may have been a factor influencing the emergence of longing for the lost spontaneity and creativity of childhood. Lars and Tina were significantly younger than the other couples; perhaps they felt closer to the time of life Wordsworth describes, still partly immersed in the timeless creative, and so perhaps more able, to “(behold) the light and whence it flows.” 12 It is possible that the younger participants were not having the same experience – that is, looking back toward something that had been lost or set aside – since some of their comments seem to reflect anticipation of adventures yet to be experienced more than yearning for a return to childhood glory.

Learning Two: “The Right Mix of Vegetables, Meats, and Spices”

The second learning claims that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant. Both individually and as a member of his or her respective couple, each participant experienced the group as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. This assertion is based on the recorded words of the participants, as well as the researchers’ observations of the participants’ non-verbal communication: body language and facial expression.

What Happened

Six days after the first meeting, participants and researchers gathered again, to discuss their experience during the first meeting and in the intervening week. Despite some initial concern on my part, it was remarkably easy to get full attendance. I noticed a

119 feeling of anticipation and excitement in the group as everyone settled in. Charlie commented: “I usually…go to engagements and I’ll not go again, cause I’ll avoid whatever it is, but I wanted to come here tonight. It would've been easy for me to just not come…I'm good at it. Anyway, that’s what’s different for me.” I shared my perception of the group’s journey, commenting that at the beginning of the first day, “everybody was…checking it out, seeing how do I fit into this? Who's everybody else?” but that there was a “transformation between the beginning and the end (that) was just palpable. You guys were playing with each other, without the usual holding back that we do as adults.”

Stacy, a self-described “foodie,” was partial to cooking metaphors; in fact, the title of this learning is taken from a comment she made about the mix of participants. She described the first meeting as “a sharing. It was almost like cooking together. But having come together, that we were being vulnerable to each other also opened up our vulnerability to everybody else.” Ellen questioned why we had spent relatively little time on explicit group-building activities. “That was a little awkward to me…that we didn’t have…more times to remember each others’ names.” Rebecca responded that, although

“there wasn’t a lot of talking connecting…there was more dancing and moving,” which helped her to feel “connected in a visceral, humanity way.” Stacy observed that “by making the masks (together), we got more intimate in front of each other, and so that when we started doing the group thing, we were all similarly vulnerable.” I added that I had not really anticipated the group coalescing in the way that it did, because “in my imagination it was an exercise for the couples.” I told them that, to a certain extent, “I put the group activities in because I thought it would be weird to do this whole thing where you were with a group, but you weren't relating to everybody else.”

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Other participants described how the group had affected them: Larry admired “the courage [of the other participants] to be so authentic, and I felt like it made a space for me to be authentic.” Stacy noted that the decorating and costume choices made by her neighbors gave her inspiration and permission to expand her own choices: “Even though we came with our partners and were working with our partners…you had us dance together…and even though we were couples doing…the costuming, there was still a sense of collaboration among us…that sense of ‘What did they use? What else can we use?’” Tom noticed a shift that was “more profound because of the interaction and the dynamics between us as a couple, and also between all of the couples together. Yeah, I feel definitely changed.” Stacy told the group that they had “shattered” her heart open

“with such joy” and added that the group’s “willingness to be so vulnerable in front of us was just beautiful…from each one of you I took a feather, or a piece of clay, and we’re weaving into our relationship.” Lars found it “ encouraging and hopeful to be with people that I’d never met that are all very cool, kind people… it was uplifting.” In response to the participants’ sharing, Robert reflected on the “freedom that’s allowed in this group process…the weight of that world isn’t on us as individuals, or us as a couple…”

How I Was Affected

Although I had a set of clearly defined responsibilities as Lead Researcher, I also felt myself increasingly a part of a creative and playful group. On one hand, I was the person who had imagined and embodied this unique experience for a particular group of people. But from another perspective, I was just one more ingredient in “the right mix of vegetables and meats and spices.” Throughout the day, the group “cooked” – a mysterious process unfolding in time, and enfolding each of us within it. This particular

121 assortment of people was exactly mix that was needed for the study, and these three researchers exactly the right facilitators for the event. As facilitator, I felt seen and valued by everyone in the room, and I expanded into my role with confidence in myself and trust in the group process.

My Interpretations of What Happened

My habit of seeing myself as a solo actor constrained how I interpreted the events of the first day. Although the creative play between partners informed everyone’s experience that first day, an equal influence was the group environment, in which other couples were seen to be playful, creative, and worthy of respect and emulation. In a very real sense, the collaboration was between and amongst everyone in the room. By the power of its non-judgmental witnessing, the group created a shared space in which each couple could risk exploration and intimacy of a novel kind. Observing the risk-taking and vulnerability of others encouraged greater risk taking and vulnerability on the part of the witnesses. Several participants (Stacy, Ellen, and Bruce) described as the results of this as

“transformative.”

As much as the partners supported each other, the group supported each individual to more fully recognize and embody a neglected or marginalized aspect of self.

The group helped engender and sustain an atmosphere of playful exploration, and offered each participant novel and perhaps unimagined possibilities. The end result was an increase in hope and possibility experienced principally within each individual’s primary relationship, but in some cases, including his or her relationship with the world. Lars, for example, noted how the group process had encouraged him to hope that different types of people could learn to cooperate.

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I noticed how aligned the physical responses of the participants had become after a day of working together and individually, side by side and face to face, their laughter and expressions of release flowing together easily. The three researchers observed several instances of group synchrony (moving together): as Lars and Tina’s duet came to an end, the entire group spontaneously picked up the drumbeat she had been using throughout the piece; also unprompted, the group echoed the (spoken) closing phrase of Rebecca and

Charlie’s duet. There was a general lightness and humor in the group’s conversation during the last group check-in.

The researchers observed overlapping and fluid turn taking and an overall tone of playful banter, and a noticeable relaxation in both physical posture and facial expressions.

In the closing circle, at the end of the first day, I noted, “Another spontaneous group exhalation.” The researchers also noted how quickly the shared mood had developed; at our researcher follow-up meeting, Lori commented, “It happened so fast. So there was a safe container created apparently so quickly...really quite amazing. And I was surprised by everyone's willingness to engage in the process from an authentic place. It was really astounding.”

Imaginal Structures In Use

My ambivalent feelings about belonging to groups are reflected in an Imaginal

Structure that appears to have two faces. The first, I Can Do It Myself, is turned away from the group, expressing a tendency by inclination and habit to go it alone, and a preference not to ask for help if I can avoid it. As the study loomed ever closer, I was challenged to step outside my comfort zone and enlist the support, assistance, and participation of others. That experience was both humbling and affirming. The second

123 face, I’d Like to Be Part of That is turned toward the group, and expresses my longing to meld into something greater than myself – the affectionate communal feeling that developed during the first research day and was still very much in evidence a week later at the follow-up meeting. The two faces of my “relationship to relationship” are always involved in a little dance, sometimes leaning in, risking more, sometimes stepping back and observing the flow of group energy. Will the others accept me? Can I allow myself to rely on them? Recognizing the love and mutuality that spontaneously arose during the day was a revelation, and quite moving.

Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

In her discussion of hope Carolyn Byrne asserts: “The ‘sense of the possible’ expands when two individuals in a trusting relationship can work together.” 13 The importance of witness – in this case, mirroring by the infant’s primary caregiver – on the development of self-identity, leads Winnicott to observe: “When I look I am seen, so I exist.” 14 Victor Turner offers the concept of communitas, "an unmediated relationship between historical, idiosyncratic, concrete individuals,” taking place within a ritualized context, and facilitating transformative experience.15 As Shaun McNiff puts it: “A creative atmosphere…is itself the agent of therapeutic transformation.” 16 Current research in neurobiology has given us more insight into the development of the self in relationship. The mirroring that takes place between mother and infant suggests that the desire to be witnessed originates very early in life. Allan Schore describes the phenomenon of interactive regulation as “the ability to flexibly regulate psychobiological states of emotions with other humans in interconnected contexts.” 17 In an examination of synchrony and communication, the anthropologist Edward T. Hall observes: “What we

124 know as dance is really a slowed-down, stylized version of what human beings do whenever they interact.” 18 With this in mind, the emergence and amplification of affects of joy and interest/excitement from within the group itself is truly an embodied phenomenon: we affected each other deeply simply by being in proximity to each other, and by sharing activities.

Validity Considerations

In a qualitative research study, validity may be defined as “how accurately the account represents participants’ realities of the social phenomena and is credible to them.” 19 There was nearly unanimous agreement amongst the participants that the group itself was influential in the experience of its individual members, an assessment corroborated by the observations of the three researchers. The fact that I was not looking for data related to the effect the group might have on its individual members strengthens the claim of this learning, for it was not until I was immersed in the review of the data that I began to see the group’s overall effect. On the other hand, if I had been more of a collaborative team player I might have found more expansive roles for my co- researchers, thus increasing the likelihood of generating and capturing more data. In this case, the Imaginal Structure I Can Do It Alone may have constrained the development of an even thicker account.

Learning Three: “Mask Just Wants to Be Young Again”

The third learning claims that both the inherently paradoxical nature of masks – they both conceal and reveal, they are at the same time “me” and “not me” – and the evocative nature of the mask-making methodology itself furthered the emergence of a

125 liminal state. As a result, identity became more fluid and the mask wearers felt more freedom to dis-identify from a dominant self-aspect and express another, less privileged aspect.

What Happened

Early in the first meeting, the plaster gauze mask making process – which consisted of each partner applying the wet gauze to his or her partner’s face, waiting a few minutes for it to dry, then peeling off the still damp imprint – prompted associations with childhood. Charlie thought that the messy process brought out “that freedom of don’t worry about it, you’re an artist…that’s part of the art thing.” For Stacy, it offered an opportunity to return to “that kid thing of when you’re playing in the mud.” In addition, the mask-making process evoked images of birth and transformation. When asked how they felt when the gauze was removed, semi-hardened but still wet and clinging, the participants responded with similar images: Charlie said he felt “like I was coming out…it was weird.” For Tina, “it did feel a little bit like I was being born.” Stacy used the image of “a snake shedding skin…I was so…peaceful.” And for Larry, it was

“like a cocoon…yeah, that was fun…wiggling my face all over the place…coming out of the cocoon.”

After lunch on the first day, I suggested that each participant begin the process of embodying an emergent aspect of him- or herself by experimenting with movement.

Later, during the group check-in, they commented on the ambiguity of the images they were working with. Lars said, “It was difficult to physically manifest the state of mind or emotion I was trying to represent. A lot of the things that aren’t present in our relationship are things that I haven’t made present because I don’t know how to.” Charlie

126 reported that he “knew what the final results were supposed to be, so I was trying to bring those out. I wasn’t actually there, so some of it was kind of acting, hoping to feel it.” Tina expressed her sense of not-knowing through an image: “I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to take up as much space as I could, or as little space as I could. So I kind of tried to go in between.” Ellen noted the same ambiguity reflected in making her mask, commenting in her journal: “Mask - vital energy, life & fun, passion. Eyes closed - don't feel it yet.” The paradoxical question in each case was how to know or express or be something that was only just then emerging into the mask-maker’s conscious mind.

At the end of the first meeting, Ellen commented on the transformation that had taken place “for all those within the experience. So that's what I viewed from the performances and the interviews, that there had been transformation.” In the follow up meeting, Stacy observed that there had been “a real transformation” for her, “just to surrender, to let him put the stuff all over my face and not be trying to tell him...any better way to do it.” Her partner, Bruce, commented on trust issues he had had in the past, saying, “It's nice to drop those and know that there's nothing but good, and nothing but love, so it's safe, and OK. And that's really what I got out of last week. It was really transformational for me.”

During the second meeting, there was a lively discussion regarding the transformative power of their masks. For Larry, “the mask focuses on something other than [your face]. You reflect off the mask…it draws the attention.” Stacy described her mask as “…almost like a shield…protection.” Tom noted, “It was easier with the mask on. I would never have put on a costume and gone out and acted in front of people without the mask…or done any of that movement without the mask. So…the mask…helped me be more free, maybe hid me, so I could do whatever behind the mask.”

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Among the ten participants, only Charlie decorated the inside of his mask as well as the outside. By expressing both an inner and outer aspect to the character embodied in his mask, Charlie said that he “really got to know more about myself…Those are my feelings on the inside.” Although I was familiar with this technique, I had not suggested it as a possibility in my instructions, and so was both surprised and curious when Charlie chose to use it.

How I Was Affected

Throughout the first meeting, I was moved by the participants’ willingness to be in the “betwixt and between” – not knowing, moment to moment, where they were going, but trusting their intuitive choices as they decorated their masks and costumed themselves. Initially, there was some risk in revealing their inner world to this group that started out the day as near-strangers, but by the end, they had been transformed into a lively group of good friends. At times, I felt some tension between my responsibility to my role, and my desire to join in more fully. At first I held back, but, by the end of the day, I was considerably looser and pushing the limits of my role as a serious-but-playful- researcher. Robert commented on this when the three researchers met a few days later, noting that “later in the day, when I think you were more comfortable, when you were off script, you got a little cheeky, and you entered into it, you entered not quite as participant, not quite researcher, and some of the comments that were playful, or that were meant to be playful, kind of made me go "Oh! Hmmm...Interesting. That's a choice." The group’s full-on atmosphere of play was irresistible, energizing and engaging my own playful, younger self. At other moments – for example, in the duets at the end of the first day – I

128 was moved to tears by the solemn beauty and raw emotion being expressed, and the willingness of the participants to enter new and unexplored territory together.

My Interpretations of What Happened

The primary claim of the third learning is that the nature of masks is inherently paradoxical: they both conceal and reveal; they are at the same time “me” and “not me.”

This ambiguous quality furthered the development of a liminal, transformative state in which the mask wearer’s dominant self-aspect lost some of its tenacious grip and another, less privileged aspect asserted itself. Additionally, the particular mask-making process used in this dissertation study (see “What Happened, above) supported the emergence of this liminal state by evoking images of birth and transformation.

Although my intention had been to lead the participants toward an early recognition and embodiment of a neglected aspect of self, which they then could express through their masks, the actual process was not so linear. For one thing, I did not anticipate how many steps on the way to full personification would prove to be evocative; a character did not emerge all at once, but incrementally throughout the day. The participants needed to summon up a tolerance for ambiguity and incompleteness, and a willingness to know what they did not yet know and still continue. The sequence of activities – making the plaster gauze foundation, decorating it, playing alone in front of the mirror then with others, and finally, with the partner in an improvised duet – had the participants moving from engagement with their inner process, to engagement with their partners, then to engagement with the group. This process deepened each individual’s relationship to his or her mask, and elaborated the web of connections with partner and group.

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The masks continued to grow and develop during the week between our two meetings as the participants, following my instructions, took their masks home and put them in their homes. At the follow-up meeting, I asked the masks how their weeks had been. Stacy’s said, “I’m not finished growing.” Charlie’s felt “lost in the mess...not acknowledged,” while Lars’ mask “would have liked some more views of the house as well, or maybe a more...deliberate location.” Rebecca’s mask observed that her maker

“was really busy taking care of other people. I'm ok with it, but what I really would have liked was more attention, and moved around.” Ellen’s mask went to a “group healing…and got to be a part of that,” along with Marianne’s mask, reporting that it “was really nice.”

Imaginal Structures In Use

One Imaginal structure active for me throughout the day was The Researcher. He reflected the responsibility of my position, as well as my need to keep myself a little removed in order to maintain the necessary overview. The Researcher was a relatively low-key Gatekeeper who kept me from engaging in chitchat with the participants, and kept my attention on the agenda, and the clock.20 Within this Imaginal Structure, I was conscious of the role I was playing, and the need to differentiate between “friend” and

“friendly researcher.” Another, parallel Imaginal Structure was at work alongside The

Researcher. His presence was reflected in Robert’s comment about my ‘cheekiness’ and also in the journal entry (quoted in the sixth learning) in which I contrast my father's

“rigid, Saturnian, rule bound authority” with my “Trickster kind of authority… playing around the role but also holding it at the same time.” Perhaps he should be acknowledged for who he is: Trickster, “Lord of in-between…boundary-crosser…whose function is to

130 disrupt the very things that culture is based on.” 21 In my Imaginal world, Trickster is the playful aspect of the Rebel, recognizing that there is an appropriate moment for creative transgression, risk-taking, and holding the reins of authority in a loose grip.

Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

Winnicott asserts that paradox, and the acceptance of paradox is a fundamental step in human development. There is an intermediate area of experience where play occurs in an intermediate area – the third, or potential space; the paradox is that this area does not completely belong to either inner or external (shared) reality.22 So, the child’s first act of creation (“I made this”) is also an act of discovery (“I found this”). With reference to the artistic process, Stephen Nachmanovitch tells us: “In art we face the…gap between our half-intuited feelings and imaginings and our capacity to know them and frame them.” 23 In describing the uses of masks in drama therapy, Robert J.

Landy asserts, “Healing through drama occurs in the transitional space between me (the actor) and not me (the role).” 24 Victor Turner discusses the three stages of a transformative journey, or rite of passage. The middle (liminal) phase is ambiguous; the journeyer finds herself “betwixt and between” who she once was and who she is not yet.25 Jung, describing the individuation process states that “There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumnambulation of the self.” 26 Each step in the circumnambulation offers a different perspective. With this in mind, “reality,” is a fluid series of events, a moment-to-moment construction arising out of ever-changing causes and conditions.

James Hillman describes personification as a “process of actively imagining the psyche into multiple persons,” and so turning “an affect, a symptom, an obsession (into) a figure with whom I can talk.” 27 Shaun McNiff describes the value of the expressive arts

131 in accomplishing this work: “Personifying images, gestures, and other artistic expressions enables them to act as ‘agencies’ of transformation rather than simply as ‘illustrations’ of the psyches of their makers.” 28 With this in mind, I chose an art-based methodology as the most effective method of bringing these “persons” into more conscious relationship with each other. An overall emphasis on play throughout the first meeting offered the best possibility of doing this in a non-threatening manner. As Joan Chodorow states,

“Imagination is play, that is play with images. Play and imagination function as the dynamic source of mythic consciousness.” 29

There has been much written on the transformational power of masks. Roger

Callois proposes, “The mask disguises the conventional self and liberates the true personality.” 30 Sue Jennings and Åsa Minde assert that masks “enable feelings or perceptions that otherwise would not be able to be expressed by other means.” 31 As representations of the human face, masks are particularly evocative. In this dissertation study, personifying the neglected self-aspects as masks facilitated “Imaginal dialogues,” through which, Mary Watkins tells us, we can develop “imaginative sympathy…beyond the limits of our own corporeality and range of life experiences.” 32

Validity Considerations

In a discussion of postmodernist approaches to validity, Patti Lather asks, “How can we…know more than we are able to know, to write toward what we don’t understand.” 33 The learnings of this study have emerged from a process of reverie, of brooding over the data in the days and weeks following the two meetings, and allowing patterns to emerge and surprising results to reveal themselves. In the group discussions, could I have asked more follow up questions? Undoubtedly, but as I have noted before, I

132 was constrained by time, the fact that this was a research study rather than psychotherapy, and by my own Imaginal Structures. Had I been wearing a different hat (Spiritual

Caregiver, Psychotherapist), perhaps I would have pursued different lines of questioning.

Throughout the study, I tried to strike a balance between leaning back and leaning in: helping the participants engage more deeply with their experience, remaining engaged and alert to what was emerging, but not leading them toward any preordained conclusions. I also wanted to avoid rescuing them from the “betwixt and between” state in which they found themselves, and let them muddle through on their own. In this regard, my own self-restraint – which I have earlier characterized as that of a Gatekeeper

– may be seen as more of a virtue: the capacity to hold space for another’s experience without “falling into” it. The participants’ responses suggest that the sense of safety and trust that emerged in the group allowed them to bear the tension of the liminal phase without undue anxiety, even with some measure of excitement.

Learning Four: “Shutting Me Up Was Really Good”

The fourth learning contends that during the study’s first meeting, issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally and interpersonally. In the former case, participants reported critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts; in the latter, they recognized a desire to direct or control the partner’s behavior, whether or not that desire was acted upon. In addition, this learning notes that creative activity was experienced as playful and enjoyable to the extent that control was willingly surrendered.

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What Happened

I have described the evocative power of the initial mask-making activity, during which each participant in turn applied plaster gauze to his or her partner’s face. This activity also produced the most reported instances of attempted interpersonal control, which several of the couples acknowledged as familiar aspects of their relationships.

During a group check-in after the plaster gauze activity on the first meeting day, Larry said:

Marianne did my face, and I’m just like, okay, do what you do...I don’t know anything about this...never done this before. Whereas when I was doing hers, she kept directing me, “Now do this, do that...come on...blah, blah, blah. I can’t see what I’m doing! Let go of that steering wheel - I’m driving the car!” Let’s just play with it...have fun with it.

To which Marianne responded, “I found that very indicative of how we work together.

Sometimes it’s really hard to do projects together.” Ellen described her desire to control

Tom’s actions, saying, “Don’t cover my mouth yet; I need to tell you how to do this.”

Other participants reported a sense of relief that came in surrendering to the process. Rebecca told us that when Charlie was making her mask, “it was a lot for me, cause I am a control freak … I knew, when he was doing me, that there was a point at which he wanted to just…cover my mouth. …So I said, “You want to cover my mouth?”

And he said, “Oh, yeah!” And it became playful then [she makes muffled sounds]. It was good. Shutting me up was really good.” Stacy described her experience as “truly nice, a real sharing, a real transformation, for me just to surrender, to let him put the stuff all over my face and not be trying to tell him...any better way to do it.”

The participants also reflected on what it means to be an “artist,” and noted the tension between simply enjoying the flow of the creative process, and concerns that the

134 end result might not be perfect. After the first mask making activity, Bruce reported that he had struggled “with being a perfectionist – ‘It’s gotta be perfect!’ It was tough. It was like, ‘Alright, it doesn’t have to be perfect.’” In response, Lars agreed that he “totally identified with the perfectionistic tendencies,” but dealt with this by modeling the plaster gauze on Tina first, knowing that “she’s super artistically inclined…hers is gonna be gorgeous, so my precedent won’t be anything she can’t surpass, as opposed to the other way around.” Charlie noted that, at first, he “didn’t want to do it wrong…” but then he

“actually started creating her in a whole different way. I was enjoying it…” During the follow-up meeting, Tom declared that he had “never been real good at being the perfectionist artist, but…I could just let myself go and be whatever I wanted. It was fun to express that out.” Stacy commented on how letting go of expectation and just playing had changed her understanding of what art should mean or accomplish: she had started

“doing arty stuff, lately” but justified it “because I'm going to sell the stuff. This is the first thing I have actually made for myself…it was just all about play for itself...it was like back to being a kid again...art for the sake of art.”

Ellen, who was used to leading her own expressive art groups, found there was

“something more powerful about it when it was facilitated for us…the element of surprise…I didn’t have control, I didn’t have expectations. I had trust, and allowance.”

Rebecca, too, found an opportunity to let go of control: “The perfectionist in me started coming out in the beginning, and then I just let it go …I knew intuitively that whatever I did, he would be happy with, and that was really meaningful for me to recognize that.”

As I have mentioned, the messiness of the process was itself liberating, and evoked pleasant associations with childhood. Charlie commented, “[I] really like having stuff on me, cause it brings out that freedom of don’t worry about it, you’re an artist…that’s part

135 of the art thing.” Stacy appreciated getting dirty together with her partner, saying, “It brings you back to that kid thing of when you’re playing in the mud. And then just gluing this there and that…as a couple playing, or even…like a play, love, fight, wrestle in the mud.”

How I Was Affected

As issues of control played out in the group, I noticed my own reactions in response. I was very familiar with the struggle that some participants had in overcoming or setting aside the perfectionistic messages that wanted to stop them before they had even begun, and felt a vicarious sense of satisfaction and accomplishment as they – particularly the men – moved past these barriers. I was also aware of my judging or critical thoughts, especially while observing the male participants being directed by their partners, or listening to their reflections during group check-ins. As the day wore on, however, and the participants became more relaxed and playful, I noticed that I became more relaxed, playful, and tolerant in return. If a minor instance of control arose between participants, I no longer felt reactive, even toward those individuals towards whom I had noticed the most judgmental thoughts earlier in the day.

My Interpretations of What Happened

At the beginning of the first meeting, I read Rumi’s poem “The Guest House,” and identified the Inner Critic as a “visitor who can speak to us with a judgmental, even a harsh and critical voice.” I suggested that we “bring him or her to mind for a moment, and then invite them to have a seat on that bench along the farther wall.” Not surprisingly, the Critics were less than fully compliant, and tried to reassert their

136 authority at various points. However, my sense is that, because a playful and tolerant atmosphere had established itself early and become stronger throughout the day, the effect of these critical voices was diminished. In other contexts, and especially without the support of the group, they might have proved more daunting.

To some extent, there was a division in the group between those people who identified as artists or were described as such by their partners (most of the women), and those who did not, or experienced their creativity in a less tactile realm, such as music or poetry (most of the men). For the latter group, it was important to recognize that creativity – being an “artist” – was more a matter of spontaneity and of being in the moment than it was about perfection. Surrender, for the “non-artists,” was to the creative process itself, and all its messiness, and to a special kind of “not knowing” that Zen

Buddhism calls beginner mind.34 As the participants reported, the willingness to “just play” aided them in letting go of adult preoccupations, more fully entering the creative process, and so, reconnecting with a childlike sense of joy and interest/excitement.

The structure of the study upended some of the habitual patterns within the couples by establishing a context (e.g. in the movement activities) in which both partners were beginners, engaging in a mutual exploration of new territory, and on more or less equal footing. Also (I will explore this more fully in the fifth learning), the fact that there was balance and mutuality in activities that might be perceived as having a “male” or

“female” style may have had an effect on the participants’ overall sense of competence.

The end result was that everyone had areas in which they felt unsure, and areas in which they were clearly competent. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin encourages the spiritual aspirant to “accept the anxiety of feeling [her]self in suspense and incomplete… on the way to something unknown, something new.” 35 It was the participants’ willingness to bear this

137 anxiety that enabled the creation of an environment in which their true creativity could emerge.

Imaginal Structures In Use

My own issues of power and control are reflected in an Imaginal Structure I will call The Rebel. One of its manifestations is a tendency to chafe inwardly, or sometimes to actively rebel – sometimes to my detriment – against what I perceive to be the unjust imposition of authority. Another aspect of The Rebel is some ambivalence about fully claiming my own authority. The fact that I could both relax and play while fully inhabiting my role as Lead Researcher was very gratifying; there have been other situations in which, less sure of my role, I have been more rigid and reactive. I locate the development of this Imaginal Structure in my personal history to the challenge of growing up with an authoritarian father, who resisted my efforts to step out of his deep shadow and express my own, authentic experience, independent of what he thought best.

The Rebel reflects my desire to have my own experience, without explanation from anyone else who may claim to know better, and without help until if and when I ask for it.

An Imaginal Structure that I will call The Dark Mother reflects my reactivity to women who are physically and/or energetically big, loud, or assertive. The Dark Mother reflects the Shadow side of the nurturing Feminine: the Mother who devours her offspring. I believe this Imaginal Structure may originate in early experiences in which my mother’s needs were paramount, and mine were relegated to the background. Even though she was neither large nor loud, her chronic illness and the family’s pattern of denial claimed a great deal of psychic space. My fear of being invaded and overwhelmed

138 results in a belief that I can negotiate better for what I need from behind a secure wall.

The Dark Mother was activated as I heard my male participants talk about wanting to express their own creativity while, at the same time, partnered with an “artist” who sometimes wanted to direct their experience. The Dark Mother represents another face of the Feminine (contrary to The Healing Muse, discussed in the sixth learning); she tells me, “You’re not a real artist; only by partnering with a creative woman can you connect with your own creativity.” I noticed with interest that my male participants were not reacting like me, or at least, not expressing it. I wondered to what extent they shared similar Imaginal Structures of the Feminine, and how those might resemble mine.

Sometimes, I found myself wondering at their ability to seemingly laugh off their partners’ efforts to direct them, while I was indignant on their behalf. What I interpreted as unwarranted meddling was perceived as only mildly annoying, just part of the give- and-take of relationship.

Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

Participants, especially the men, reported some moderate degree of internal tension between a perfectionistic aspect of themselves – their Inner Critic – and a younger, playful aspect. Howard Sasportas describes the Critic as “someone sitting on your shoulders commenting on everything you do. His favorite phrase is, ‘I’m sorry, but that is just not good enough’.” 36 Countering the Critic requires a willingness to embrace beginner mind, and so to reconnect with a childlike enjoyment of play. Lars description of his experience as “a lesson in present-ness” could be understood as being in the moment, and something more: the capacity to recognize this critical voice as it first begins to speak, before it can gain a solid foothold in one’s mind. Mihayli

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Csikszentmihayli describes a flow state as one in which “attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against.” 37 Entering this state of radical possibility can be facilitated by technical expertise, but also by simple “present-ness.” Shunryu Suzuki explains it this way: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." 38 As I have noted earlier, the Gatekeeper’s function is to limit experience; by recognizing his voice when it appears, we open the door to a deeper experience of life, but to do so, we must be willing to tolerate ambiguity and a sense of incompleteness.

The instances of control and surrender that occurred between the partners might be understood as typical dynamics in any long-term relationship: the process of accommodation to another person that develops over a period of years. Adolf

Guggenbühl-Craig describes marriage as a “life-long dialectical encounter between two partners…a special path for discovering the soul…a special form of individuation.” 39 He goes on to say that a marriage only works if the partners open to “exactly that which

[they] would never ask for otherwise.” 40 Jung writes that a marriage seldom develops

“smoothly and without crises. There is no birth of consciousness without pain.” 41 Ann

Belford Ulanov speaks of “fight[ing] through to the truth of each other.” 42 We must not, she counsels, “whittle ourselves down…so that we will not threaten, intimidate, overwhelm, or hurt each other.” 43 In part, the initial screening process sought to identify each couple’s commitment to this work.

Validity Considerations

Since the dynamic of control and surrender was admittedly a long-term pattern in the relationships, I wondered how the partners had adjusted to it. How much agreement –

140 or collusion – was there between the partners in agreeing who got to be competent, and in what area? Were there compensatory areas in which the roles of leader and follower were switched? I could not know to what extent they were truly able to welcome or, at least, accommodate to their partners’ efforts to direct them. As I noted above, the structure of the study itself attempted to establish a context in which both partners were beginners, engaged in a mutual exploration of new territory on more or less equal footing, and so, perhaps, upending some of their habitual ways of relating. Although this seemed to happen, and was alluded to in various discussions, there was not time to explore it in depth; the topic was simply beyond the scope of this study to answer. However, the amount of data regarding control and surrender in the creative process supports the validity of this learning.

Learning Five: I'm Not an Artist, But I'm Married to One

What Happened

Participants reported challenges with perfectionism, with representing themselves as “artists,” and with a feeling of longing for the spontaneity of childhood. My perception was that this was more characteristic of the male participants, and I was curious whether the group in general agreed. In the second meeting, I prompted them by recalling points

141 during the day when I thought that there might have been a difference in the way the men and the women gave themselves permission to be creative. I observed that I had heard some of the men express a desire for more of that permission, or to feel more connected with their creativity. Initially, no one answered that question directly, but a few moments later, Rebecca observed that women “are very different with our sisters than we are with our men. That's just how it is.” This set a lively discussion in motion. Ellen commented,

“If it were all just women, I would have been sharing totally different things, just organically. I mean, I'm not gonna share these things because I have men in the room.”

She went on to say that, in a group of only women, she might have made a very different mask. “It's different when I'm with my partner,” added Marianne, “Because there's this...caretaking thing that goes on, where they're 'special.' And when I'm in a group of all women, or people that I'm not invested in, it's a lot freer, it's a lot more open, because I don't care, really, as much.”

Also in the follow-up meeting, Larry commented that, although he had felt like his focus was supposed to be his relationship, there were also “five other couples in the room that are doing the same thing, so I felt in a way that it was very much blurring the lines between this male and female thing.” I responded that the participants had had both

“male” and “female” activities on Saturday: “You had the side by side working on your project, and you had the face to face, in the touch activities.” Larry replied that, “As a man, you can kind of let your softer side out, your feminine side, and the women can be more assertive and stronger. So it kind of blurs those lines a little bit. You get to really play, and not necessarily be blocked into some kind of a dichotomy, who you're supposed to be right now.” Stacy’s perspective on gender also reflected an awareness of its internal dynamic. She told us how, at an earlier time in her life, she had learned to “ be the man

142 that I needed to protect the woman that I am,” then commented on her partner, Bruce:

“He's allowing himself to be vulnerable [so that] my true vulnerability can allow itself to show, not just my cultivated, or protective vulnerability.”

How I Was Affected

I was curious and excited to hear the participants reflect on their experience of gender roles, in particular Larry’s comments on the blurring of perceived boundaries of those roles. Although I had moved away from addressing the Feminine Principle directly in my hypothesis or research problem, She had nevertheless emerged as an influence in the research itself. I have described the permission I felt to be relaxed, spontaneous, and playful – qualities that I associate with the Feminine. Stacy’s thoughts about her inner

Masculine and Feminine resonated with me, confirming my hunch that this might be a fertile area to explore. In addition, I was surprised to hear several participants acknowledge the effect that a mixed-gender group – or in this case, a group in which they were participating with their partner – had on their self-expression, since I had not asked this question directly. Also, I was pleased that my intuitive choice of activities proved to have such evocative power.

My Interpretation of What Happened

Although I had not consciously planned it, the first day’s activities offered a balance of masculine and feminine styles of relating. The face touching activity with which we began the day, the process of modeling plaster gauze on each others’ faces, and the improvised duets at the end of the day were all done face-to-face, typically considered a feminine orientation. Other activities were done side-by-side – a masculine orientation

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– including decorating the masks, and the “parallel play” that evolved during the movement exploration. This offered the participants an opportunity to re-imagine strength and vulnerability as non-gendered attributes, available to all. The participants reported that witnessing others’ vulnerability gave them more permission to express their own.

The male participants reported reconnecting with a sense of freedom and spontaneity associated with their childhood to a greater extent than their partners. This may reflect the fact that women have more cultural permission to explore their creative side, whereas men feel more pressure to grow up and have a job that then defines who they are. Where the men were more apt to characterize the presence of their partners as offering some access to creativity, the women commented on how the presence of men, in general, constrained their experience. Ellen and Marianne echoed Rebecca’s comment that women “are very different with our sisters than we are with our men,” indicating that the women were well aware of how differently they express themselves in mixed gender groups, perhaps more so than the men. This may reflect the fact that in any social situation, the less-privileged actors – in this case the women – are more likely to perceive subtleties of power and privilege. Although this topic is beyond the scope of the present study, it is of more than mere personal interest. Issues of gender equality affect everyone in this society, and it is important for men, more privileged as a group, to recognize and acknowledge that privilege.

Imaginal Structures in Use

The Man Box – a term used in Men’s Studies to denote the limited range of culturally sanctioned expression and experience allowed to men – is an Imaginal

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Structure relevant to this learning.44 In my family, my sister and I each experienced some permission in expressing our creativity; however, she became an artist, while I became a carpenter, which reflected my creative impulse channeled into a practical form, a form that made sense for a man, and especially, to other men. Apparently my Man Box was not large enough at that time to consider “artist” as a legitimate vocation. As I have mentioned, there were times when I found myself carrying on a silent, inner struggle in solidarity with the men in my group, thinking, “You can learn to do this yourself! You can be an artist too – you don’t have to let your partner live out that part of you.”

I thought about my recent experience working with groups of abusive men and began to notice the extent to which our – that is, men’s – ability to be tender, receptive, and relational had been crippled by the hard lessons of a patriarchal culture. The

Wounded Feminine is an Imaginal Structure that reflects the inner wounding that many feel – men as well as women. Early in the process of defining this research study, I mused on what might happen if the study were structured to evoke an experience of the

Wounded Feminine. A year before the research inquiry, I wrote in my research journal that perhaps She was the Guiding Archetype of the dissertation:

Maybe she’ll appear in one of the masks. Maybe there will be other contrasexual archetypes that appear. Maybe she’ll be acknowledged, along with the effects of the patriarchy, as contributors to my interest in the topic. I'm going to hold on to her loosely – not that I think I could hold on any other way – and let her make the decision about whether or not she shows up.

At another point, I wondered if the Research problem should focus primarily on the male partner’s experience in relationship, and how his felt sense of safety and secure attachment would be affected by increased familiarity with the Wounded Feminine in himself.

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Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

Masculine and feminine consciousness are different, but complementary ways of knowing; however, our society privileges the masculine mode. Barbara Stevens Sullivan describes feminine consciousness as that which “enters into the experience of any one of life’s given elements and swims around in it,” a knowledge that comes via “images, metaphors, parables, paintings, poems, or stories.” 45 For men, the feminine is often rejected, disowned or projected on to female partners. Polly Young-Eisendrath speaks of the “strange gender” within each of us as the way we imagine the opposite sex, the

“specific images of those Others we fear and desire because we imagine they are different from us.” 46 Thomas Moore writes that relationship reflects “the eternal struggle to reconcile nothing less than heaven and earth.” 47 Jung describes a “psychological marriage,” offering the possibility of an “inner integration, which before (each partner) had always sought outside (themselves).” 48

Brian Heilman et al. describe the Man Box as “a set of beliefs, communicated by parents, families, the media, peers, and other members of society, that place pressure on men to be a certain way.” 49 Virtues such as self-sufficiency, toughness, adherence to strict gender roles, heterosexuality, and the use of aggression to resolve conflicts are esteemed. The Man Box does not come without a price: it is imposed through patriarchal wounding, which has a disruptive effect on the developing self in men. Sullivan cautions,

“Whenever either a man or a woman is saddled with a gender-based stereotype, his or her humanness suffers.” 50 Marion Woodman states, “To disarm the masculine of its patriarchal fear of the feminine is thus crucial to releasing the creative dynamics of partnership.” 51 bell hooks describes early childhood experiences of “emotional

146 exuberance, of unrepressed joy, of feeling connected to life and to other people” felt by many men, before “a rupture happened, a disconnect;” patriarchal norms demand that this is never spoken of, and never grieved. 52 A primary assumption of this study was that the participants would re-connect with those early feelings of joy. Because that is in some cases a longer journey for men, it may begin with a deeper expression of longing for what has been lost.

Validity Considerations

Even though the participants did not, for the most part, directly answer my question regarding gender and the expression of creativity, something unanticipated emerged as the women articulated the effect that being in a mixed gender group had on them, and on women in general. Their consensus suggests that there is something here worthy of further research, but beyond the scope of this study. Generally, the male participants reported more feelings of longing for lost childhood joy than did their female partners, which raised several questions: Do women in our culture generally experience more permission to stay in touch with their creative “inner child?” Or does that experience reflect the makeup of this particular group, in which most of the participants were middle-aged, and at least three of the women self-identified as artists? Furthermore, do men who long for (re)connection with their creative selves tend to become involved with women who act out that part?

Although I had hoped for a broader representation of the many possible gender pairings, and had worded my advertising accordingly, my participant group ended up being all heterosexual couples. For that reason, this learning can only speak to the experience of control (strength) and surrender (vulnerability) in this particular group, and

147 not claim to speak to the experience of all American couples and all gender pairings. My study population was also fairly homogeneous with regard to age. In my outreach, I had indicated I was looking for couples in long-term relationship, which may have skewed the study population toward an older group. In the end, four of the five couples were in their 50’s and 60’s; Lars and Tina were both 23. How might their generation and mine understand ourselves differently as gendered beings? Lars addressed the question only tangentially: “I feel like I can identify…less so with regards to gender, but more so with just the dynamic of coming in as a couple, versus if it had been just a group of men, or if

I came as an individual.” The study on the Man Box cited in this section suggests that young men still feel the effects of society’s expectations concerning male behavior, so I cannot assume that Lars’ perspective is representative of all men of his generation.

Learning Six: Hope is the Opening Door

The primary claim of the sixth learning is that hope, as a liminal phenomenon, was not expressed directly, but rather through images that suggested transformation and pathways toward expanded future possibilities. While hope was primarily expressed for the relationship, in some cases it was also expressed as hope for the larger world. This claim is based on the participants’ recorded comments as well as on the researchers’ observations.

What Happened

There were a number of evoking or expressing activity during the first meeting, including: the face touching exercise, making and decorating the masks, and several

148 movement exercises and mask improvisations, both with partners and with the group as a whole. After each activity, the participants were invited to reflect on their experience and then share those reflections with the researchers and the group. They did this both during the first meeting and, in greater depth, at the second. Several participants used images of opening doors to indicate the development of trust, or as portals leading to hoped-for future states. Immediately after the face-touching activity, Lars reported feeling a

“deepening of trust, that I can trust, and there's no hidden rooms, there's no doors that are shut, that I can be completely transparent.” At the follow-up meeting, Marianne imagined that the day’s playful collaboration had “open[ed] the door for us to play some more, and to communicate some more, and to create some more intimacy.” Later, she observed, “To play with other couples was a really interesting experience. I think that kind of opened up some doors.” Using masks as a metaphor for our habitual, everyday selves, Stacy looked back and noted: “Some of us were able to set down our masks and be safe together, and have fun together, and open up doors that…had never opened…before.”

During the first day’s final activity, each couple presented a brief, improvised duet wearing their masks and costume pieces they had selected from an assortment of fabrics, clothing, and other props the researchers had brought. After each duet, I interviewed the masks, imagining them as living beings and asking what qualities they brought to the relationship. Tina answered, “optimism, and hope.” Charlie’s talked of its

“need to accept change.” Larry’s mask expressed a longing for “integrat[ion], so all that dark can be harnessed for good, and expressed as love…[and] whatever I leave behind me will have been an influence for positivity, an example of love, and example of compassion, and example of awareness.” When Bruce’s mask was asked what it brought

149 to the relationship, it answered “Faith.” Ellen’s spoke of “aspiration” and the need for

“rest and nurturing and time to get there.”

Although all the participants described what they hoped the masks would bring to their lives and relationships, Lars and Tina’s masks made the most explicit references to nature, and embodied the hope of a more harmonious relationship with the planet. At the follow up meeting, Lars commented that his mask was “symbolic of nature, and freedom…a reminder…of how I want more of that in my life.” In her journal, Tina spoke of her mask as being:

…Like a sunset…bright yellow at the bottom going all the way to the dark blue at the top with golden stars in the night sky. The gradation of colors represents how I change, how I am not just one thing that meets the eye. And then around the top [is] a crown of feathers - they make me feel wild, with the passion and spirit of my Native American heritage.

In the closing circle, at the end of the day, I asked the participants to each offer a word that encapsulated their experience. Their responses include “hope,” “growth” and

“journey.” At the follow-up meeting Tina noted her sense of expanded possibility, saying, “We went and did something that we don't normally do together, so I feel like that opens, like a...well now we've done this unique thing, we can do other crazy things.”

At the follow-up meeting, both Lars and Tina observed that they felt increased hope not only for themselves, but also for the world in general. Tina referred to the current political situation in making a connection between “hope for the future, and hope for things going on…a lot of scientists are talking about hope.” She observed that she had been focusing more on “hope for my own personal future, and hope for our [hers and

Lars’] future” until this point. Lars acknowledged similar feelings, commenting that he tended to think, “I know how the world works, but when you actually sit down in a room

150 with a bunch of strangers and do something you’ve never done before, that can totally change your perspective.”

How I Was Affected

I was largely unaware that hope and possibility might have emerged during the first meeting since they were expressed indirectly and through images, and much of my attention was taken up in managing the flow of activities. However, as the day wore on, I was increasingly affected by the spontaneity and playfulness that emerged in the group. I felt more and more comfortable in holding the reins loosely, inhabiting my leadership role with a sense of playfulness that both mirrored and supported the participants’ experience. Discussing this a few days later with my co-researchers, I reflected:

I couldn't really say whether I gave them permission to be playful by being playful myself, or that their playfulness encouraged me to step more into that part of myself, and kind of claim a sense of authority that is not my father's authority…rigid, Saturnian, rule bound authority, but it's much more the Trickster kind of authority of playing around the role but also holding it at the same time…

But, what about hope and possibility? As much as my attitude may have contributed to the development of the group’s welcoming energy, it was only after the fact, as I transcribed the audio recordings of the two days, that I was able to be truly present, attentive to nuance, and able to identify the themes that were woven through the two days. It was then that hope and possibility emerged.

My Interpretations of What Happened

In an earlier version of this research, I had hypothesized that the day’s activities would evoke the affects of joy and interest/excitement. However, I later shifted the focus of my hypothesis to “experience of hope and possibility.” In doing so, I took a step away

151 from the immediacy of the moment and into a sort of second-generation experience. I have come to recognize that it was only the participants’ feelings of joy and excitement in the present that allowed for the emergence of hope with regard to the future. As far as hope is concerned, it seems that we first feel joy and interest/excitement within ourselves, and then, turning our gaze toward our relationships – and perhaps, as Lars and Tina suggested, toward the world – we sense the emergence of hope and possibility.

Playful, creative collaboration – which I had anticipated being a process contained within each couple’s relationship – was, in fact, generated by the whole group, while at the same time affecting each member within his or her relationship. The resulting give- and-take reinforced each participant’s experience of joy and interest/excitement, the affects that are associated with play. From that foundational experience, the participants could look toward the future with an increased sense of hope and possibility. As noted, the participants associated this with their primary relationship; in some cases, however, hope was extrapolated to the group, or to the world as a whole.

In preparation for the mask making activities, I had encouraged the participants to become aware of a subjectivity that wanted to be more visible and active in their relationships. The participants were able to express their awareness of this emerging-but- still-unknown future state much more effectively through images (opening doors, etc.) than directly through concepts such as “hope” or “possibility.” Aware that I was asking them to express something in a concrete form that was only just emerging into consciousness, several participants described the leap of faith it took to continue without a clear sense of where they were going. The images they used suggest that their experience was felt as transformative and leading toward something new, consistent with the future orientation of hope. A fundamental premise of the arts-based methodology I

152 employed is that images are often our only means of describing such emergent experiences, which cannot yet be captured in words.

Imaginal Structures In Use

It is somewhat ironic that I chose hope and possibility as core elements of this study, since I have myself struggled with doubt and lack of faith. Or perhaps – if one believes that the process of individuation leads toward exactly those people and experiences needed for growth and healing – the choice was perfectly appropriate. In my case, individuation has involved the recognition and transformation of an Imaginal

Structure in which I am young, and faced with an impossible dilemma: those who should be containing my anxiety about an unknown future are overwhelmed by their own

Imaginal Structures, and I am too young to do the job myself. I must succeed or fail on my own efforts, but lack the capacity I have not yet developed, one that will only emerge during the course of adult life. I will call this Imaginal Structure Helpless, Hopeless.

“Why bother?” the voice of Helpless, Hopeless says, “It won’t make any difference anyway. Why hope? You’ll only be disappointed. You can’t win. You can’t fight City

Hall.” It is an impossible dilemma.

Tracing the roots of Helpless, Hopeless in my personal history, I arrive at early experiences associated with my mother’s multiple sclerosis, and the impact this mysterious and devastating chronic disease had on my family. The future, both hers and ours, was unknown and frightening. Beyond any age-appropriate responsibility for helping with simple daily tasks, I was her window to the world, her friend and confidant.

Any doors to hope and possibility that might have opened for her had been closed when the disease first appeared. The family soldiered on, intimately connected in denial of the

153 long-term prognosis of the disease, and so, unable to imagine or share a vision of the future. How could I not be fascinated by and long for hope? How understandable, too, my difficulty in seeing it as it emerged.

Another Imaginal Structure, which I call The Healing Muse, embodies the transformation I have imagined a significant relationship might provide: healing on a deep and personal level, recovery of something essential that has been lost, transcendence, even contact with the Divine. Where Helpless, Hopeless points toward an absence of hope, The Healing Muse offers the possibility of re-connection with the feelings that I was not invited to express as a child, and the safety of a holding environment my wounded mother could not provide. I have imagined finding a real-life

Healing Muse, a woman who might initiate me into my feelings, or guide me to my creative life. Viewing the study through the lens of this Imaginal Structure, I wondered if and to what extent the men in my study had similar Imaginal Structures active in their relationships. Of course I chose couples as my study population! Where better to imagine the emergence of hope and possibility than within that intimate bond?

Theoretical Concepts Upon Which Interpretations Are Based

Hope is shaped by the articulation of a goal, and by the realization that we have, simultaneously, a path to reach that goal and the capacity to undertake the journey toward it. Rick Snyder proposes two aspects of hope: self-efficacy, or the ability to act positively on one’s own behalf, in combination with the recognition of pathways, or means and strategies that lead toward realizing one’s goals.53 Hope has a paradoxical quality: it pulls us toward the future, although can only be experienced in the present. Charlotte

Stephenson describes hope’s “element of anticipation,” associated with what is just below

154 the dawning horizon.54 Sue Wright speaks of hope’s involvement with liminal space, “the experience of ‘here but not yet’…which potentially transforms our personal worldviews.”

55 Hope can include novel images of openings or expanded possibilities in the future.

Karin Dufault and Benita Martocchio associate novelty, growth, change, and a feeling of expansion with hope, as well as a sense of possibility that “predisposes individuals to take their own forms of occupational or interpersonal therapy.” 56

Hope also has an aspect of re-connection with something that is very familiar – dormant or neglected capacities for transformation, or perhaps, as suggested by

Christopher Bollas’ metaphor of the transformational object, the promise of a reconnection with deeply familiar early, transformative relationship with our first caregiver.57 Implicit memories of that transformational object can impel us on a lifelong search for a Healing Muse to replicate it. Robert Johnson notes that, in our times,

“Romantic love…has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning, transcendence, wholeness, and ecstasy.” 58

Louis Stewart associates the affect of joy with the familiar (we feel joy when we recognize something as belonging to us) and interest/excitement with the novel (the prospect of incorporating something new into our sense of self is exciting).59 These affects prompt us to engage with the world when we first come into it, to discover what it has to offer us and how our actions may affect it. As we play and learn, our capacities develop and possibilities emerge. Brian Sutton-Smith characterizes play as “the envisagement of possibility…adaptive potentiation. It makes many alternatives possible, even though none are necessary.” 60 C.G. Jung describes the transcendent function as a process in which active imagination engages with the images that arise through dreams, fantasy, and artistic expression with curiosity and respect, and so, through creative play,

155 brings them into a relationship with consciousness.61 This was the work of the first meeting, in which the participants allowed an image to emerge into consciousness, assisted it in personifying itself as a mask through an intuitive creative process, and then helped that mask to speak to its maker, and in dialogue with its maker’s partner.

Validity Considerations

The Research Problem posed the question: In what ways might collaborative imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship? Given that I had hypothesized that expressions of hope and possibility would emerge directly from my participants’ experience, I was a little worried when, during the first meeting, they had not seemed to. I told my co-researcher, Robert, a few days after the study that what I saw emerge during the day was joy and interest. There was nothing about hope and optimism, at least not voiced. Throughout the day, there was

“an increasing sense of interest and excitement and joy and play…going back to that younger, unconstrained phase of life.” Robert agreed, saying, “Hope…doesn't resonate with me at all. Hope has this futuristic sensibility...it was less about what was going to happen after they left the room, versus what was happening in that lovely, full moment.

Which, to me, is the epitome of interest and joy.”

Later, while transcribing the extensive audio recordings we had made during the two meetings, I was able to a more focused attention to what the participants had said, and a new pattern began to emerge. I began to see that hope had been expressed implicitly in comments about trust and faith, and through images of doors opening toward future possibilities. The fact that none of the researchers had noticed this at first strengthens the validity of this learning’s claim that the playful, creative activities shared

156 by the couples did support the emergence of hope and possibility. Once the data was analyzed and the pattern distinguished, and despite the well-known “proclivity [of researchers] to find confirming rather than disconfirming evidence,” nothing emerged to disconfirm that pattern.62

Questions remain. To what extent did the participants’ expressions of positive anticipation about the future indicate a reconnection with “earlier, positive attachment feelings of trust”? Was there, as Bollas suggests, an awakening of implicit memories associated with the participants’ first transformational object? Did those positive feelings predate the current relationship, or hearken back to its beginning, or were they a product of the novelty and excitement of the first meeting itself? Although the words “hope” or

“hopeful” were used by several of the participants, I cannot know for certain what they were hopeful about. Was it a vague, general feeling about the future with their partners?

Was it the prospect of reconnecting with the early, romantic stages of their relationship?

Did they feel some small shift in a sense of being stuck at a certain point in their life journey? Without more specific data, it is difficult to know for sure.

Conclusion

The cumulative learning of this study states that the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others, rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. The cumulative learning speaks to the power of the imagination, of play, and especially, of relationship in generating and sustaining hope, while at the same time, acknowledging an aspect of the Hypothesis that was not supported by the data. In his theory of the

157 transformational object, Christopher Bollas suggests that powerful, preverbal memories, imbued with an almost-divine sense of hope and possibility, inform our yearnings in adult life. While such memories may have been interwoven through the participants’ experience, no evidence emerged – in terms of direct expression by the participants – to support that theory; ultimately, it remains a beautiful, but perhaps unprovable, metaphor.

The first learning states that playful, creative collaboration within an environment perceived as welcoming and safe enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with the affects joy and interest/excitement. That earlier stage, whether it was the beginnings of the current relationship or the individual’s childhood, was perceived as more spontaneous and authentic. As I have observed in the cumulative learning, the emergence of these affects was the necessary precursor for expressions of hope and possibility.

The second learning states that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant, both individually and as a member of his or her respective couple. Participants experienced the group as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. Another way of stating this is that the process of creative collaboration – shared with one’s primary partner and, importantly, witnessed by a group of trusted others – allowed each individual to more fully realize and embody an aspirational aspect of self. Ultimately, this resulted in an increase in hope and possibility experienced within that individual’s primary relationship, and to some extent, beyond.

The third learning confirms not only the power of an arts-based methodology to elicit and give form to unconscious feelings and images, but also the evocative and transformative power of mask work. My assumption that one or two activities early in the first meeting would evoke images that could then be personified as masks was too

158 limited; in fact, the process happened continually and organically throughout the day. The participants’ meandering journey, as noted in their comments, confirms this. As I have observed, the mask-making technique itself, by evoking associations with childhood joy and spontaneity, helped to establish an atmosphere in which play for the sake of play became the norm. The use of masks, with their “betwixt and between” quality, further supported the emergence of an ambiguous, liminal space, the intersubjective area that is home to play and creativity.

The first meeting began with a reading of Rumi’s poem, “The Guest House,” intended to set a welcoming intention for whatever arose. Both the fourth and fifth learnings consider what gets in the way of experiencing life directly, as a process of continual, moment-to-moment creativity. To live life in this way necessitates letting go of perfectionistic thoughts (e.g. “I should be having a ‘better’ experience”), allowing images to arise without censoring them, and treating all “visitors” with curiosity and respect.

Issues of control and surrender manifesting within in the group led me to reflect on my own Imaginal Structures related to power dynamics in relationship – fear of being controlled or overwhelmed, and yearning to be enfolded – and to wonder whether or if similar Imaginal Structures were at play in the experience of the participants. Archetypes of the Feminine informed my Imaginal Structures in the fourth and fifth learnings, perhaps more than in any of the other learnings.

In formulating the fifth learning, I came to suspect that the Feminine had been leading all the while, even though I thought she had disappeared. An image of a river in the desert comes to mind as I write this: sometimes the water is visible on the surface, sometimes it flows beneath the earth, out of sight but still living, moving. Despite the first day’s overarching goal – to evoke and embody a neglected aspect of self – getting there

159 was not so direct. There was a lot of “messing about,” reflecting the influence of the

Feminine, which leads without being directive. This learning also brought me new insight into the methodology I had intuitively crafted – the balance of face-to-face and side-by- side activities that blurred the lines between male and female styles of relating and offered the participants an opportunity to step out of their habitual patterns.

The sixth learning proposes that that hope, as a liminal phenomenon that bridges present and future, was not expressed directly, but rather through images that suggested transformation and pathways toward expanded future possibilities. While hope was primarily expressed for the relationship, in some cases it was also expressed as hope for the larger world. The experience of hope has qualities that are both novel and familiar; so, too, do the affects of joy and interest/excitement. Stewart tells that joy arises when we reconnect with something that is deeply familiar, and interest, when we are anticipating something new. With this in mind, expressions of hope and possibility were a kind of

“second generation” experience, dependent upon or resulting from the emergence of joy and interest/excitement as the participants’ primary experience.

Some aspects of the learnings have affirmed intuitions I had in the process of preparation. Some reflect theories that interested me, and that I thought might prove relevant. Some were unexpected and unplanned for – particularly the group’s capacity to nurture and shape individual, transformative experience. Here, I was initially constrained both by my focus on individual experience within the couple, and my own Imaginal

Structures, for anything that is difficult to see in oneself is difficult to see in others.

However, my growing trust in the Feminine and willingness to be led without knowing the exact destination left me open to surprise. This study has been and is a reflection of my life’s journey, and like life itself, these learnings are interdependent, and woven

160 through by the affects of joy and interest/excitement, a common thread, informing the playful interaction between partners from the beginning of the first meeting, and enlivening the life of the group throughout the study. Stewart tells us that without joy and interest/excitement we lack the motivating force to engage with the world; with them, we

“will enter the world with joie de vivre and divine curiosity.” 63 Joy and interest/excitement were the “shared food” of the participants, and nourished the emergence of hope and possibility in the lives of everyone who partook of them.

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CHAPTER FIVE

REFLECTIONS

Significance of the Learnings

The cumulative learning of this study asserts that the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others, rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. The first learning claims that playful, creative collaboration enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with joy and interest/excitement. That earlier stage, whether it was the beginning of the current relationship, the individual’s childhood, or both, was perceived as more spontaneous and authentic. The second learning asserts that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant. Both individually and as a member of his or her respective couple, each participant experienced the group as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. The third learning observes that the inherently paradoxical nature of masks and the evocative nature of the mask-making methodology furthered the emergence of a liminal state. Masks have the capacity to both conceal and reveal; they are at the same time “me” and “not me.” In the resulting liminal state, identity becomes more fluid, and mask wearers can feel more freedom to dis-identify from a dominant self-aspect and express another, less privileged aspect. The fourth learning contends that during the first meeting, issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally and

162 interpersonally. In the former case, participants reported critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts; in the latter, they recognized a desire to direct or control the partner’s behavior, whether or not that desire was acted upon. To the extent that control was willingly surrendered, creative activity was experienced as playful and enjoyable.

The fifth learning proposes that the participants’ experience of control/strength and surrender/vulnerability was informed by cultural assumptions about gender, as was the degree of permission they allowed themselves to claim and express their “artistic self.” In addition, participant comments suggested that men and women express themselves differently in mixed gender, versus single gender groups. The sixth learning states that hope, as a liminal phenomenon, was not expressed directly, but rather through images that suggested transformation and pathways toward expanded future possibilities. While hope was primarily expressed for the relationship, in some cases it was also expressed as hope for the larger world.

The study’s Research Problem asked: In what ways might collaborative imaginative play affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship? The Hypothesis stated: Collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other may awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. The learnings and data, consisting of researcher observations and transcripts of audio recordings from the two data collection sessions and the researcher debriefing, broadly support both Hypothesis and Research Problem. However, they also reveal the omission of an important intermediary step in the Hypothesis: before hope was expressed, its first quickening was to be found in expressions of joy and interest/excitement. The

163 participants had to have direct, sensory experience of those affects – for the affects are first and foremost embodied phenomena – before they were able to apply conceptual frames such as “hope” or “possibility” to the immediacy of their non-verbal, affective experience.

It was not possible to substantiate the claim regarding a connection between the participants’ evoked states and implicit memories of a transformational object, as there were neither statements nor images that clearly pointed in that direction (e.g. “Oh! I remember how joyful I used to feel as an infant playing with my mother!”). However, there were recollections of earlier times of life – childhood, in particular, but also the beginning stages of the current relationship – when joy and excitement were more readily available. These recollections tend to confirm Bollas’ theory – if not in fact, then surely in its power as a poetic image – that the origins of our yearning for a transformational object may be found in our earliest, preverbal experience.

I did not anticipate an effect – certainly not an effect of such significance – from the group as a whole on the experience of the participants, both as individuals and as members of a couple. While perhaps well known to experienced practitioners of couples therapy, the power of the group’s effect produced a personal ‘aha!’ moment for this researcher. In the Learnings Chapter, I have considered why this might be so, and find that my initial lack of recognition of the group’s influence reflects both an individual bias

(Imaginal Structures such as I Can Do It Myself, discussed in the first learning) as well as a cultural bias implicit in the field of Western psychology. Since Freud’s time, there has been a presumption that psychological reality is primarily an internal, individual experience, and so our field of study has largely been the individual. Group phenomena

164 of the type that I am suggesting happened within this inquiry – forces generated within the intersubjective field and their effects on the experience of individual participants in that field – have until fairly recently not been taken seriously or studied extensively by clinical researchers. However, recent advances in neuroscience have added scientific support to the intuitions of pioneers such as Winnicott that, from our earliest days, we are formed in and through relationship to others.

The choice of words framing the Research Problem – how collaborative, imaginative play might affect the perception of hope and possibility within an individual’s relationship – was intuitive, even though with hindsight, I wondered what might have happened had I asked a more general, open-ended question. For example, what if I had left out the reference to hope and possibility, and simply asked how collaborative, imaginative play might affect a couple’s relationship? The data illuminated a blank spot on the map leading to hope and possibility: the emergence of joy and interest/excitement. If I had reflected on the powerful immediacy of affective experience,

I might have predicted this, as I did in an earlier iteration of the methodology. After all,

Imaginal Inquiry, the methodology employed in this study, emphasizes the immediacy of evoked experience as its principle concern.1 However, just as the participants struggled with the recognition that they could not describe what they did not yet know, so I, the researcher, had to work my way through the dark wood of my own transformational passage. Indeed, as Deegan and Hill assert, the mystery and uncertainty that one encounters in the process of writing a dissertation are “essential aspects of a liminal process that transforms the self.” 2 I am left to conclude that, in the end, there were no mistakes, only revelations that, necessarily, I could not anticipate.

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Mythic and Archetypal Reflections

As I first approached writing this section, I found myself in that same, familiar dark wood. How to begin? Which way to proceed from here? Just as Beatrice inspired and guided Dante on his journey to the Afterlife, the Feminine principle, in Her various guises, has informed and guided my dissertation journey over the last several years. Her way of knowing and leading has become intimately familiar, different from but complementing the Masculine mode. As Barbara Stevens Sullivan tells us, “Feminine knowledge proceeds in the dark much like the organic process of conception, out of sight, imperfectly imagined by the intellect, announcing its advent through hints and intuitions.” 3 I found echoes of it in in my deeper resonance with certain poems – the phrase ‘all are welcome here,’ inspired by Rumi’s “The Guest House,” became, for a while, the working title of this project. I found resonance as well in the work I had been doing in my personal therapy, in allowing myself to be led along that “downward-going road, into the dark, into the roots of earth, into the unconscious” that Ulanov describes.4

She might have been referring to Persephone, an image of the Wounded Feminine who first emerged into my consciousness during the two years I worked facilitating groups of abusive men. Her rape and abduction to the underworld came to represent for me something in the experience not only of women but also men: the damage that the

Patriarchy – the cultural institutions of male privilege and feminine disempowerment – has done to all of us, men and women alike.5 For a while, I thought she might be the

Patroness of this dissertation, and that her image would occupy a central position.

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The image of Persephone, the wounded feminine, represented an initiatory wound, a descent into the dark, a painful but necessary movement toward psychological growth that ultimately may lead to a marriage between innocence and experience. Who would invite it? Who would welcome it? The image resonated so deeply for me, in my own wounding. She pulled me in…she was sexual, vulnerable, wounded. She had the qualities that I am drawn to in women, that Scorpio something, brightness gone underground, buried for now, ripening, healing. I began to wonder if this was part of my dissertation journey as well: Healing the wound in our contra-sexual other? Recognizing and healing wounded innocence?

For a while, Persephone led as I explored the effects of Patriarchal wounding in my own life and those of the men with whom I was working to access our feeling lives,

167 and to make and sustain relationships with real depth. I wondered if my research should focus more on men’s experience of the Wounded Feminine. Although there might be rewards in taking this path, there were risks as well, for as Terrence Real tells us, “Men who reject masculine values pose an elemental challenge to the importance of heroism – performance, production – over relationship.” 6 Was it fair to ask the male participants to take on this task? Would that choice marginalize their female partners, giving them a

“less-than” experience by comparison? In the end, the image of the Wounded Feminine did lead, but in typical Feminine fashion, indirectly.

I recognized that all the bits and pieces I needed to attend to required the application of “discrimination, judgment, insight, and relation to non-personal truth” as well, in Ulanov’s characterization of the masculine mode of consciousness. In time, I would need to allow both aspects of psyche to contribute to this process equally. With that in mind, let us imagine a dialogue between the Masculine and the Feminine, as they negotiate issues of leadership and receptivity:

Feminine: You always want to be the star. You don’t trust me to lead the way!

Masculine: That’s because I am the star, honey. Time and history have proven that to be

true. I’ve been running this show for a long time, and I’m not going to relinquish

the reins to a girl, at least not without a struggle.

Feminine: Why must it always be a struggle? Why must we battle for control? We could

help each other. I'm a really good collaborator, and it makes me happy when

everyone is happy, because we each contribute something special, something

particular.

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Masculine: That’s way too granular for me. I like the bird’s eye view, from my puppet

master perch. You look really tiny from up here. Small. What is it you think you

can contribute?

Feminine: A rich tapestry of experience. An appreciation for diversity. Valuing the

undervalued. Remember when we were going to call this dissertation “All Are

Welcome Here?” I still think that’s a good title, and a good guiding philosophy.

All are welcome here, in my world. Can I ask you a question?

Masculine: All right, I guess. What is it?

Feminine: Are you afraid something bad might happen if you consider me your equal?

Masculine: Thinking about that makes my head hurt. No, makes my heart hurt. Makes me

feel really sad, like I'm almost remembering something that’ll tear me up if I

really remember it. So I don’t want to. Really remember it…

Feminine: I wonder if you're touching a place where you feel wounded, or like you're

missing something?

Masculine: Maybe, yes. It does get lonely being me, flying around up here all by myself. I

just remembered that angel in “Wings of Desire.” You know, the one that

decides to give up being an angel, with all its fabulous perks, because he wants

to experience human love. So he does – gives up immortality, all his special

powers, so he can live on the earth and love a woman and become whole in a

way that angels aren’t…that I'm not. So yes, I guess I am lonely, and I'm longing

for some remembered experience of belonging, of union with that missing piece

of me.

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Feminine: I thought that might be it. Well, you know…I might be able to help you out

there. If we play together on this, you might get a little closer to that experience

you’re longing for…

Images of “house” and “home” have come and gone in my musings about this study since I defended my dissertation proposal in June 2014. In research notes from that time, I wrote of a feeling of “coming home to one another,” or of “going home to the couple.” I imagined building a “simple house structure for conversation between masked sub-personalities,” or of each partner “speaking for the house from behind a scrim,” before a final improvisation “at the end, taking place within the house.” A year later, I found myself wondering whether bringing “our disowned parts/sub-personalities…into relationship within the “play space” (a structure suggesting house/home)

[would]…enhance the overall sense of love and belonging on the part of each partner to the relationship itself.” By this time, I was immersed in reading Attachment Theory; images of “secure base” and “safe harbor” had begun to intermingle with “house” and

“home.” I considered asking my participants to “choose one character to portray with a mask, and…inviting them [into] the home-structure…experiencing [the] relationship as a

‘community of selves’ in which all are welcome [would] enhance a sense of the relationship as a safe haven.”

The research methodology was designed to lead each participant to an awareness and personification of a neglected or marginalized subjectivity, or self-aspect, then to embody that aspect through a mask-making project, and finally, to relate to their partner through the character they had brought forth and put on. A line from Rumi’s poem –

“This being human is like a guest house” – offered the guiding image for the first day. I

170 imagined these visitors as residents of each participant’s shadow, waiting to be invited to the banquet table, to a feast at which each of them would be a welcome visitor. What a dinner that might be! Rumi’s tone, of friendly curiosity, of acceptance of both what we know and what we do not yet – and may never – know, was exactly the tone I wanted to set at the outset of the study.

Jung speaks of the task of withdrawing one’s projections, of acknowledging and becoming intimate with these shadow-selves, as giving up a certain kind of power, as illusory as that power may be. As a result, we are “unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against.” 7 When we do this work, Jung says, we find ourselves living in the “House of the Gathering,” an image from a dream brought to him by one of his patients. Perhaps, as Robert Espiau suggests, it is the House “where various men who all [have] different psychological qualities come to be with the one who personifies compassion and acceptance [emphasis added],” a presence that, in Imaginal

Transformative Praxis, is referred to as the Friend.8 That image, the House of the

Gathering, suggested so much, and came to fascinate me. With my co-researcher Lori

Richloff, I gave a workshop to test the mask-making methodology I would use in the research study, and called it “The House of the Gathering.” For a while, as this image rose into prominence, I thought perhaps it would be the title of the dissertation.

Implications of the Study

Gertrude Miller Nelson asserts that feminine values, such as “waiting, the interior, receptivity, the ambiguous, the poetic,” must be considered as being equal to masculine values, which include “the active, exterior, productive, goal-oriented.” 9 Each dissertation

171 journey reflects both aspects. There is the planning, recruiting, and conceptualizing, and the physical act of writing, editing, formatting. But there is an inner aspect as well, dependent on paying attention, with some sense of interest and curiosity, to what arises in one’s consciousness unexpectedly and without invitation. In order to get the task accomplished, in whole and in part, these two aspects needed to be in balance: the desire to direct the process, and the willingness to surrender to that process, to just let it happen, not knowing the outcome and willing to be surprised. Appreciating the Feminine

Principle allowed me to attend more to the intuitions and images that arose, and to my sudden, inexplicable enthusiasms. Guided through my inner landscape by Imaginal and

Jungian psychology and my own Jungian psychotherapy, I was encouraged to let myself be led by the subtle movements of psyche, revealed through dreams, intuition, and imagination. So, perhaps, it simply became more natural to trust the Feminine as my guide. My choice of Play as the topic for this project was an invocation of the Feminine as well, for as Sullivan notes, “The dynamic side of the feminine principle is the basis of play and playfulness, the main element in the creative process.” 10

I have noted my surprise that the group had such a profound effect on each individual’s experience, despite the fact that my methodology did not include much team building activity. In part, that surprise reflects my own temperament, and predisposition, reflected in Imaginal Structures in which I believe I am a lone and independent actor. In part, it results from my lack of knowledge and experience in working with groups. My misperception of the group effect also reflects an historic belief within Western psychology that each individual’s psychic reality is largely constructed internally; all those seeming “others” are merely actors in my play. Recent developments in

172 neurobiology disconfirm this atomistic world-view, as we begin to see how profoundly we influence each other through mutual electrochemical effects, and the interpenetration of our emotional lives.11 Seen through this lens, this research supports the development of a truly embodied psychology, as well as a more systems-oriented approach in the field of psychotherapy.

The shape of my own future in this field is still emerging. Deegan and Hill describe the dissertation process as a “transition ritual,” a rite of passage that alters one’s relationship to the mundane world through a process of inward transformation.12 We leave the mundane world and enter into the middle, liminal phase, where we are neither who we were, or who we will become. However, each liminal journey, traveled to completion, also has a third phase: reentry into the ordinary world with a new status, a new sense of authority, and a new voice. From my vantage point here, well along in the middle phase, I can see the distant horizon but not make out its details. The metaphor of the dissertation as a transformational journey summons these lines from Rilke’s poem “A

Walk”:

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its inner light, even from a distance – and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are.13

Clearly, there is no way to hurry the process. There is only the day-by-day practice of stepping into the muddle and allowing the Feminine to lead, trusting that as Antonio

Machado tells us, “You make your own path as you walk.” 14

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Reflections on Participants and Methodology

The work the couples did together in identifying and developing the images embodied in their masks was constrained both by the amount of time available, and considerations of what was ethical within a dissertation inquiry as opposed to psychotherapy. Working with one couple at a time in a therapeutic setting, it might have been possible to evoke a deeper level of experience for each partner, and to carry on a more extended conversation with and about the images that arose for them – something more like dream work or active imagination. On the other hand, this sort of inquiry done with a group of couples, while perhaps familiar to practitioners of couples’ therapy, was novel both in my experience and that of my participants, and offered some very tangible benefits. In this case, the playful and creative energy of the methodology was amplified by the group, which, in return, had a vitalizing effect on the individuals and their dyads.

In addition, based on the participants’ reports, there was considerable cross-pollination within the group – a sharing of attitudes and strategies that generated extensive discussion during the second meeting. Given the participants’ comments about the seriousness and hard work of adult life and relationships, similar sorts of immersion events might be a welcome respite for other adult couples, allowing for the emergence of some growth and reconnection between partners.

The core intention of this dissertation inquiry was to identify a marginalized or neglected aspect of self, and to embody and give it voice through an arts-based methodology. Although I was particularly interested in exploring how committed partners might be affected, there are many other contexts in which close relationship occurs: families, communities, workplaces and other organizations, to name but a few.

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There is also something powerful in the way that the research methodology, with its mixture of play, creativity, self-expression, and collaboration evoked expressions of hope and possibility. The methodology might be adapted to other situations, such as health care, community building, or restorative justice. Another important element in the inquiry was the range its of activities. I have commented on the differentiation between

“masculine” and “feminine” activities; in addition, each partner had the opportunity to be, at times, the competent one, feeling in her element, or a beginner, a bit at sea, exploring a new world by trying on someone else’s style. All of this promoted group cohesion, as well as an appreciation for the many differences in style and habit.

Implications of Study

As regards the profession of psychotherapy, this study supports the development of a truly embodied practice, allowing for different pathways toward knowing and expressing our truths, and acknowledging the effect of community (partner, group, family, team) on the mental health and well being of each individual. The arts offer a means of discovery as well as expression, with creative collaboration giving tangible shape and form to the third space called into being whenever two people are in relationship. The process of working with images can connect us with our deepest hopes and fears, often inaccessible to the intellectual faculty. The function of the imagination, as Robert Johnson states is to “draw up the material from the unconscious, clothe it in images, and transmit it to the conscious mind.” 15 The joy and excitement that arose within this group of participants transformed this serious-sounding process into child’s play, and so offered a return to the creative possibilities inherent in beginner’s mind.

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The principle benefit of this inquiry to the discipline of psychology in general is in reconfirming art’s power to evoke and embody experiences that are difficult to access or express directly by language. The methodology, which included making masks and using them in a personally meaningful ritual, strengthened the connection, between contemporary psychology and its earliest roots in shamanic practices that McNiff has articulated.16 Personifying subjectivities (self-aspects, sub-personalities, little people, etc.) is aligned with both Imaginal Transformative Praxis as articulated by Omer, and to the polytheistic model of the psyche articulated by Jung and Hillman. Personification represents a movement toward autonomy of images on the one hand, and toward a kind of radical equality amongst parts or selves on the other.

Marion Woodman tells us that, through the poetic language of metaphor, we are

“present[ed]…with a world in which matter and spirit are intimately linked.” 17 Rather than locating psychology as one separate modality within our current, dis-integrated approach to healing, this study grounds the discipline in bodily experience, intuition, and poetic expression. Poetic metaphor has the capacity to evoke experience, while at the same time enabling us to grasp the reality of an intermediate world where spirit and matter are joined. Omer defines this as the realm of soul, whose reclaiming, he asserts, is the primary concern of Imaginal psychology.18 The soulful nature of this inquiry further substantiates its distinctly Imaginal perspective.

Implications for society are suggested as well, particularly the institution of marriage. Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig describes marriage as a “life-long dialectical encounter,” a “special path for discovering the soul…a special form of individuation.” 19

In the Learnings Chapter, I have described the many ways in which the couples in this

176 dissertation inquiry were affected, and felt a renewed sense of hope and possibility in their relationships. The participants had some awareness of the ways in which their adult experience was constrained by their implicit beliefs – what was permissible within their gender roles – as well as a desire to step outside of those limitations. This indicates a potential application of this methodology in healing the wounds of patriarchy, which bell hooks describes as “the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting…body and spirit in our nation.” 20

Areas of Future Research and Praxis

In considering possible areas of future research, I need only peer down one of the numerous roads not taken during the process of inquiry and development that shaped this study. To begin, there is the question of gender wounding and healing, within each individual, amongst the community of men, and between men and women. Rebecca’s observation, recorded during the follow-up meeting, that women “are very different with our sisters than we are with our men,” led me to wonder what do they do in the harem, after all? What fascinates many of us, both men and women, is what Polly Young-

Eisendrath calls our strange gender: “The way we imagine the opposite sex and all that goes with it.” 21 At one point, more than a year before this writing, I was taken by the concept of gender reconciliation, and considered using it in the title for this study, which

I imagined calling “Gender Reconciliation and the Imaginal Life of the Couple.” Such a topic could be addressed more explicitly in research seeking to evoke participants’ contrasexual self-aspects, or strange gender. This possibility is also suggested in Stacy’s observation (in the fifth learning) that she learned to “be the man that I needed to protect

177 the woman that I am.” I imagined my image of the Wounded Feminine leading the way in this area, but in the end, she revealed herself only indirectly, seen in sidelong glances.

Attachment Theory became of considerable interest for a while during my research process, as I wondered if – by inviting those marginalized “little people” of the self to the table – the creative collaboration might nurture a more secure attachment. At that point, I was calling the project “All Are Welcome Here,” and imagining that attachment wounding might be healed in the play-space. In truth, this is not so far from the Hypothesis, with its suggestion that imaginative play might awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformative relationship – the first relationship – which promised to build a world but perhaps left it only partially completed or worse, broken and frightening. However, time constraints and ethical considerations did not allow for such a deep exploration of the participants’ personal histories. Whether or how that could be accomplished in future workshops or private practice is a question of interest.

Certainly, it is almost impossible to consider adult relationships apart from the attachment styles of the partners, and how those styles promote or hinder the emergence of hope and possibility.

In general, adult play is underrepresented in the literature, considered with an emphasis on fun and novelty (related to the affects of joy and interest/excitement) in domains such as sports, gambling, and, by no means least, sex. As I developed and realized this study, I relied on Sutton-Smith’s “Seven Rhetorics of Play” to articulate a somewhat different understanding. In the rhetoric of play as the imaginary, particular attention is given to “playful improvisation of all kinds.” 22 The imagination is idealized, as are flexibility, and creativity. Creative play may also be understood as taking place in

178 the area of overlap between the subjective realities of the players, a zone that corresponds to the mundus imaginalis, to Winnicott’s third, or transitional space, and to Jung’s transcendent function. Here, the rhetoric of play as the self emphasizes play’s contribution to growth and knowledge. One very particular manifestation of this is reflected in Winnicott’s description of psychoanalysis as a “highly specialized form of playing in the service of communication with oneself and others,” and his suggestion that, only when we are playing are we truly alive and creative.23 The realm of play offers much scope for research and exploration.

The energy of the group, which was safe, inclusive, and non-judgmental, supported the emergence of joy and interest/excitement, and, perhaps, allowed the participants to reconnect with earlier positive attachment experiences. Feelings of trust were revealed in participant’s willingness to take more risks with their partners, and in their expressions of appreciation for, and affiliation with the group. Erik Erikson believed that the foundation of hope and positive anticipation toward life is established in infancy, in our early experiences of trust and security with an attachment figure; the participants’ experience may indicate some degree of reconnection with these earlier, positive attachment experiences.24 Evoking of joy and interest/excitement during the first meeting may have served as a powerful tool in reconnecting with those early experiences of hope and possibility. Although validating these assertions was outside the scope of this dissertation inquiry, they suggest directions in which future research might proceed.

Sutton-Smith asserts that from the “idealistic play theorizing of Schiller to the phenomenological play theorizing of Csikszentmihayli” nearly all play theory is based on

“individualistic philosophical premises.” 25 As a result, in the bulk of play scholarship,

179 play is considered as a solitary activity. A novel aspect of this research study was the recognition that collaborative play connected individuals beyond their individual boundaries, engaging them in a group phenomenon, which, in turn, affected the experience of each of the group’s members. What leads us away from an appreciation of the group or the couples as a suitable context for play research? Sutton-Smith argues that there is class bias at work, since play is usually understood to be that kind of play that is

“available to children of upper status parents,” and which is studied, for the most part, by solitary researchers.26 Here, there is an opportunity for a new type of play research by participant researchers with groups of adults.

Masks are a powerful tool for personal exploration and story telling, and have been used as a therapeutic modality with individuals, and in psychodrama groups. The use of masks in the creation of personally and socially meaningful rituals is as old as human culture, yet still vital and relevant. Had time and other constraints allowed, I could have imagined a deeper, and potentially very fruitful dialogue with and between the masks. They had really only begun to tell their stories, which will continue to unroll widely in the imagination of their makers, outside the scope of this study. Finally, my own practice of art making as personal inquiry continues to be meaningful, as I have described in the Introduction, and will, I am sure, continue to develop and deepen over time, illuminating my path as a psychologist.

Conclusion

Collaborative, imaginative play has had a real and positive effect on the couples in this research study. Data collected by observation and recording, and from the

180 participants’ reflections all demonstrate an increase in the affects of joy and interest/excitement experienced in present time, as well as the emergence of hope and possibility with regard to the future. In broad strokes, the results of the study supported both the Hypothesis and the Research Problem, although the question of whether the participants reconnected with implicit memories of an early, transformational relationship was not substantiated. Perhaps this is as it should be, in a research paradigm that relies on narrative (storytelling) and image making, for the beauty of a metaphor, in this case,

Bollas’ theory of the transformational object, can be marred by an overzealous effort to nail its feet to the ground.

From a personal standpoint the most unexpected learning from this study concerns the alchemical effect the group had on everyone, participants and researchers alike. Although I have since come to learn that this effect is well known to at least some practitioners of couples’ therapy, I had not anticipated it, and had not conceived of this study as “a group of couples” in the sense that a couples’ therapist might have. In fact, I was unaware that such groups existed until my dissertation committee pointed this out.

Inadvertently, it seems that this study has corroborated the powerful effect such groups can have on the experience of each couple in them. A subsequent search of the literature showed very little research that focused specifically on “couples groups,” and so suggests that this could be a rich area for further exploration.

In addition, I did not foresee the evocative power of certain parts of the research methodology, especially the plaster gauze mask-making technique, nor did I anticipate the extent to which “not knowing” would be a shaping force in the participants’ experience. To borrow Stacy’s cooking metaphor, whatever one puts into the cauldron of

181 the research inquiry – either intentionally or “accidentally” –adds flavor and texture to the resulting soup. As much as any other personal learning from this study, I have learned to trust my intuitive choices.

As to the scope of the learnings themselves, Creswell and Miller suggest that a study’s participants could “add credibility to the qualitative study by having a chance to react to both the data and the final narrative.” 27 Unfortunately, my only meeting with the participants after the first research day came six days later, when I had not yet transcribed the recordings from the first day, and before the abundant and rich data gleaned from the follow-up meeting. I had barely begun to identify those learnings and, at this writing, have yet to share them with the participants. How much richer and more complex would the soup be if it were possible to obtain and fold in their reactions! In a sense, this type of research study is like a short story, a segment of time with a presumed “before” and

“after” that we can guess at, but never fully know. Much is suggested by what is not said, and by the pathways not taken. As Rilke invites us to imagine, “a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave…but what we feel is the wind in our faces.”

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APPENDIX

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APPENDIX 1

ETHICS APPLICATION FOR THE USE OF HUMAN PARTICIPANTS

1. Individuals who participate in this research study will self-assess their relationship (or marriage) as “committed;” will have been in their current relationship for at least seven years; and will believe that relationship is an important part of their spiritual, psychological, and/or emotional development. Since there is a possibility that this study may evoke psychological distress or discomfort, prospective participants will be screened for their capacity in dealing with challenging emotions – at a minimum, some experience in couples counseling, personal therapy, and/or other forms of personal growth work. Although Jung himself equates “couple” with “man + woman,” as does much of the Jungian literature, the research will not be limited to heterosexual pairings. With this in mind, my outreach will employ gender-neutral language, allowing the pool of participants to emerge as it will. Screening for a belief in “relationship as path” will demonstrate that prospective participants have an interest in, and capacity for self- reflection. This capacity will be engaged at the beginning of the research activity through activities that encourage watching, noting, etc. Also, the language used in the interview and introduction segments of the research will suggest the importance of noticing and welcoming everything that arises. For this reason, it will also be useful to screen for some experience in meditation or mindfulness practice.

2. Five couples will be an ideal number, although the research could be done with a minimum of four. The focus of the study on playful, creative interaction, and the inherent mystery and appeal of mask-making should prove attractive to potential participants, along with the opportunity to learn something of benefit to both the individual and the relationship. Because there will only be two meetings (a full day from 9:00-5:00, and a 3- hour evening follow up meeting one week later), I am cautious about overselling the potential benefits of the experience. There may well be insights, but deep transformation is unlikely in such a limited timeframe. The largest benefit may be the possibly novel experience of artistic collaboration with one’s partner. During the screening process, participants will receive some general information about my interest in couples’ dynamics, and background in art-based inquiry. It will be most useful to emphasize the value of recovering an ability to play as an adult, rather than calling attention to the potentially more serious aspect of the research, the identification and embodiment of shadowy self-aspects that might prefer to remain hidden. Ideally, those will emerge organically as a result of the evoking activities. Therein lie both the risks and the rewards of this study.

3. There are no activities that involve physical contact between participants and researchers. The initial evoking sequence involves the partners touching each other’s

184 faces; however, since the research participants are married or in a long-term relationship, a greater degree of comfort and intimacy with this process may be presumed than one would find in a group of strangers. However, to further nurture a safe and welcoming environment, I will prepare the participants by fully describing and demonstrating that activity beforehand with a co-researcher. The participants will be encouraged to let one of the researchers know immediately should any uncomfortable feelings be evoked, and the three co-researchers prepared for such an eventuality. The participants will also be encouraged to reach out to me during the following week, should anything unanticipated come up.

4. First contact with prospective participants will be via email. Prior to the first research day, and prior to meeting the couples, I will email each participant an Informed Consent form. During a follow-up phone call, I will go over the form and answer any questions that may have arisen, and interview each participant individually. Participants will be warned of possible risks during the informed consent process. This will be initiated during the telephone interview, and reinforced at the beginning of the first meeting, and particularly when introducing the evoking (Face touch) activity. Informed consent will include informing the participants of potential risks or discomforts that might occur both during and/or after their participation in the study.

5. Since there is a risk that couples or individuals who are not chosen will feel that this reflects on them personally, my rejection letter will be positive and non-specific, emphasizing the qualifications that all applicants had without mentioning that I deemed some to be less-qualified, and avoiding mention of whatever specific attributes resulted in a particular couple being disqualified.

6. During the interview phase, I will establish rapport by being friendly, empathetic, and transparent. At the beginning of the first day, I will address issues of safety, confidentiality, and inclusion, and prepare the participants with a general, non-specific overview of the day’s activities, so that they arrive at each sequence with minimal preconceptions. There will be an opening ritual of introduction and greeting, intended to create an environment of safety and mutual respect, and awaken a sense of playful curiosity. Throughout the day, there will be activities that encourage interaction and collaboration, and opportunities to share individual experience with the group, contributing to an atmosphere of curiosity and ease. Each meeting will end with a closing ritual intended to contain and integrate feelings that have been evoked. In addition, I will have a small gift for each participant at the end of the first day.

7. My mindfulness practice will be of primary importance in tracking my own reactions through the two meetings. The workshop my co-researcher Lori Richloff offered in October 2016 has also been useful preparation, since it employed important elements of the dissertation methodology. Increased familiarity with the mask-making activities in particular will help ensure that I am more able to track my participants and my reactions, by being less focused on the mechanics of the study.

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8. Of primary benefit to the participant group, which consists of couples who identify their relationship as an important part of their spiritual/personal growth work, is the opportunity to experience and reflect on an aspect of their relationship that may have been previously unknown, or at least, underappreciated. Perhaps just as important, the study is designed to engage the participants’ curiosity and playfulness, both of which could potentially enliven the relationship. Although the focus of the study is on the couple relationship, the methodology employed emphasizes what might be called a Feminine approach to research. The recognition of the Wounded Feminine archetype in my life, and by extension, in the lives of men generally, has been an important aspect of my own journey in developing this research study. Accordingly, its results may prove to be particularly relevant to the five male participants, and the world in general, as we attend to that aspect of psyche (the Feminine) most neglected and most in need of healing, both personally and collectively. There may also be benefits from this research for the broader psychological community. Aspects that have been of particular interest in this project include: the expressive arts as a way of knowing, relationship, attachment theory, and Jungian/archetypal psychology. An extensive investigation of the literature has revealed very little that bridges these domains. In addition, the arts-based methodology employed in the research will demonstrate a practical application of Imaginal Psychology.

9. During the follow-up meeting, the participants will be given an opportunity to reflect on the first meeting and the week between the two meetings. In addition, the three researchers will share their preliminary learnings. I will offer to share a written Summary of Learnings with them after my Dissertation Defense, which will present the learnings in broad strokes and more general language. The narrative aspect of the learnings (including their archetypal underpinnings and “succinct, poetic, or metaphorical title(s)” will be stressed, rather than their theoretical underpinnings, with the intention of evoking the flavor of the learning journey (including my personal journey) in descriptive language, and with appreciation of my participants’ contributions.

10. Potential sources of participants for this study include: members of my cohort at Meridian University; Meridian faculty; couples therapists in Sonoma County; other therapists I know, or with whom I’ve worked; leaders, teachers and pastors in spiritual communities to which I belong (including San Francisco Zen Center, the Community for Spiritual Living, Memorial Hospice, and the Memorial Hospital Spiritual Care office); friends from other local communities in which I participate; and the local MFT professional association, RECAMFT. In addition, fliers will be posted in suitable locations, and notices placed in weekly newspapers and online bulletin boards (Craigslist, WACCO-BB, the North Bay Bohemian), and on Facebook.

11. All activities involving the participants, including activities prior to data collection, as well as all data collection activities are covered in the following appendices:

Appendix 5……………….Flyer Appendix 6……………….Print/online media advertisement

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Appendix 7……………….Initial telephone screening Appendix 8……………….Scripts: Acceptance/rejection process Appendix 9……………….Meeting One: Scripts prior to data collection Appendix 10……………..Meeting One: Scripts, morning Appendix 11……………..Meeting One: Scripts, afternoon Appendix 12……………..Poems used in Meetings One and Two Appendix 13……………..Selected photos of masks and mask making Appendix 14……………..Summary of data Appendix 15……………..Summary of Learnings

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APPENDIX 2

CONCEPTUAL OUTLINE

Evoking Experience

Meeting One: Morning • Placement and arrangement of altar in center of room • Arrangement of chairs in a circle • Reading of Rumi’s “Guest House,” suggesting “all are welcome here” • Invitation to place “inner critic” on a bench by the door • Ritual entry, placing a stone in a bowl of water • Face-touching activity • Mask making activities I and II

Meeting One: Afternoon • Movement exploration in character (without masks) • Mask making III: Decorating the masks • Movement exploration in character (with masks) • Masked duet with partner • Group non-verbal response to mask duets • Interview with masks after masked duet

Meeting Two • Opening ritual • Inviting the masks to speak, describing their week

Expressing Experience

Meeting One: Morning • Mask making I and II: Making the plaster gauze foundation

Meeting One: Afternoon • Movement exploration in character (without masks) • Mask-making III: Decorating the masks • Movement exploration in character (with masks) • Individuals invited to share a pose/gesture with group

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• Masked duet with partner • Group non-verbal response to mask duet

Meeting Two • Extended group check-in

Interpreting Experience

Meeting One: Morning • Journaling after face-touching activity • Group check-in after face-touching activity • Individual and group check-in after mask-making I and II

Meeting One: Afternoon • Journaling after movement exploration • Group check-in after Mask Making III activity • Interview with masks after masked duet • Journaling after masked duets

Meeting Two • Extended group check-in and discussion

Integrating Experience

Meeting One: Morning • Journaling after face-touching activity • Individual and group check-in after mask-making I and II

Meeting One: Afternoon • Interview with masks after masked duet • Closing circle • Reading Jimenez’s “Oceans”

Meeting Two • Reading Whyte’s “Everything is Waiting for You • Closing circle

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APPENDIX 3

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

Meeting One 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM

1. Participants arrive – (9:00 – 9:15) a. Welcome each participant at the door. b. Obtain signed consent form c. Indicate where the rest rooms and refreshments are and that we will start at 9:00. d. Ask participants to remove shoes/socks (if comfortable so doing) and leave them in designated place; also cell phones, watches

2. Welcome and Orientation (9:15 – 9:30) a. Thank participants for their participation b. Introduce co-researchers c. Review confidentiality guidelines i. Confidentiality applies to researchers and participants both ii. Remind participants that at all times participation is voluntary d. Review space – bathrooms, refreshments, exit locations, and so forth i. Include information regarding schedule of breaks and lunch e. Review safety and self-care guidelines f. Describe nature and purpose of study

3. Transition to first activity (9:30 – 9:50) a. Introductory remarks, reading of “The Guest House” b. Invite participants to place their “inner critic” on a bench near the entryway, to rejoin them after the day’s activities c. A bowl of beautiful stones: each participant takes one drops it into a bowl of water, saying their name, and a word that captures their intention for the day

4. Evoking Sequence – First face-touching activity (9:50 – 10:00) a. Preparation: 5 min. i. Two roles: touch-receiver (A); touch-giver (B) ii. Participants are directed to find a comfortable position within easy reach of their partner b. With eyes closed, B’s silently explored partner’s face with fingers (3 min.) i. At the same time, A’s imagine bringing something to the surface that s/he wants B to know, be aware of, realize about him/her, some unacknowledged part

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ii. While touching, B imagines creating a safe and welcoming space for the unacknowledged part to inhabit c. Partners switch roles: A’s touch, B’s receive (3 – 5 min. ea.)

5. Interpreting Sequence – Journaling (10:00 – 10:10) Pass out journals and prompt participants to reflect on experience during evoking sequence. Participants may keep journaling during break.

6. Evoking Sequence – Second face-touching activity (10:10 – 10:13) Same as above

7. Interpreting Sequence – Journaling (10:13 – 10:20)

8. Interpreting Sequence – Group check-in (10:20 - 10:30) Brief opportunity for sharing

9. Bio break/snack (10:30 - 10:45)

10. Expressing Sequence - Mask making, part I (10:45 - 11:15) a. Preparation: Overview of plaster gauze process i. Show example masks in varying stages of completion ii. Model mask making technique on mannequin b. Mask-making: i. Partners decide who will be first mask-maker; facilitators assist as needed ii. Assist participants as needed with technical questions iii. After mask is removed, place in drying box to speed drying process

11. Interpreting Sequence (11:15 – 11:25) - While mask recipients are cleaning up, mask makers gather with researchers to describe their experience

12. Expressing Sequence - Mask making, part II (11:25 - 11:55) Partners switch roles; same as activity 10, above

13. Interpreting Sequence - (11:55 – 12:05) Same as activity 11, above

14. Interpreting/integrating Sequence – Group check-in (12:05 - 12:30)

15. Morning wrap-up/Instructions for lunch (12:20 - 12:30) a. Encourage participants to maintain an inner focus during lunch; don’t talk about the morning b. Practice good self-care - take a walk, do some yoga, etc. 16. Lunch – (12:40 – 1:40) Facilitators set out materials/supplies for decorating masks

17. Evoking/expressing Sequence – Movement exploration (1:40 – 2:10)

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a. Movement activity in character i. To re-energize and awaken the body after lunch ii. To connect with physical/emotional/mental qualities of character that is emerging as mask

18. Interpreting Sequence – Journaling (2:10 – 2:20)

19. Expressing Sequence – Mask-making, Part III (2:20 – 3:05) a. Explain intention of mask making – to continue creating a representation of the “neglected self” they identified in the morning b. Invite participants to embody the energy of that character in the mask, using the various materials on the work tables

20. Interpreting Sequence - Group check-in (3:05 – 3:20) Participants show masks, and share how the process is affecting them with a word, a sound, or a gesture

21. Expressing/Interpreting Sequence - Movement (3:20 – 3:30) a. Suggest that participants experiment with movement in front of mirror, developing a vocabulary of gestures particular to the mask b. End with pose or movement sequence that expresses the essential nature of the character, at this moment in time

22. Interpreting Sequence - Group check-in (3:30 – 3:35) Invite each participant to share their pose/gesture with the group

23. Bio break/snack (3:35 – 3:50) Facilitators set stage for presentation of partner vignettes: place additional props, set up entry screen, adjust lighting (if possible)

24. Expressing Sequence – Mask duets (3:50 – 5:00) a. At the beginning of each duet, invite participants to choose costume elements – fabric, ritual items – that enhance/amplify their “character” b. Invite each couple to present an improvised vignette ending in freeze-frame that expresses the relationship between those two characters (7 minutes each) c. After each vignette: i. Invite other participants to offer a gesture expressing their response/appreciation – all at once ii. Interview the characters, asking the three questions: “What do you want? What do you need? What do you offer to our relationship?”

25. Interpreting/integrating Sequence – Journaling (5:00 – 5:15)

26. Interpreting/integrating Sequence – Group check-in (5:15 – 5:25) a. Invite participants to share with the group anything that’s come up during the previous mask-making and movement activities

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b. Where are you now, at the end of the day? What has emerged since the character first appeared? c. Explain that the researchers will share their impressions on the second day

27. Closing circle - Instructions (5:25 – 5:35) a. Emphasize good self-care - noticing what comes up, anything out of the ordinary. If there are concerns during the week, call me. Make a few journal entries during the week, if possible b. Jimenez poem, “Oceans” c. Brief closing ritual

Meeting Two (6:30 – 9:30 PM)

1. Participants arrive (6:30 – 6:45) a. Welcome each participant at the door. b. Indicate where the rest rooms and refreshments are c. Collect journals

2. Welcome and Orientation (6:45 – 7:00) a. Thank participants for their participation b. Re-introduce co-researchers c. Review confidentiality guidelines d. Review space – bathrooms, refreshments, exit locations, and so forth e. Include information regarding scheduled break f. Review safety and self-care guidelines

3. Evoking Sequence (7:00 – 7:30) Invite the masks to speak, describing their week

4. Interpreting/Integrating Sequence (7:30 – 8:00) a. Invite participants to share key moments/learnings b.Research team shares key moments/learnings c. Tell participants how/when learnings will be shared with them

5. Bio break/snack (8:00 – 8:15)

6. Interpreting/Integrating Sequence (8:15 – 9:15) Further discussion, questions, prospects for the future

7. Closing circle (9:15 – 9:30) a. Heart meditation/bringing in voice of the Friend b. Closing circle – one word, image, or gesture that captures the essence of the experience

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APPENDIX 4

INFORMED CONSENT FORM

To the Participant in this Research:

You are invited to participate in a study on Couples in Long-Term Relationship. The study’s purpose is to better understand how shared creative activity may affect each partner’s sense of being an active and engaged participant within his/her/their relationship.

The study will include the following activities: guided meditation, movement, journal writing, drawing and mask making, dramatic enactment, dialogues with partner and other individuals, and group discussion. This will take place at ______from 8:45 AM until 5:30 PM on ______, with a follow up meeting from 8:45 to 12:30 on ______. There will be two one-hour breaks for lunch and dinner and other breaks for snacks and biological necessities. I will provide lunch and snacks; please let me know if you have any dietary restrictions.

Each meeting will be audio/videotaped and will later be transcribed. For the protection of your privacy, all tapes and transcripts will be kept confidential; only myself and my co-researchers and a professional transcriber (should I employ one) will have access to them. In the reporting of information in published material, any information that might identify you will be altered to ensure your anonymity.

This is purely a research study, and may offer no direct benefit to you. The published findings and any subsequent publications, however, may be useful to other couples, and to the broader psychological community. I have designed this study to minimize potential risks to you; however, some of the procedures (such as guided meditation and interactive activities with partner/group) may touch sensitive areas for some people. Known risks include: psychological distress or discomfort; anxiety; grief; fear; exacerbation of preexisting symptoms, etc. If at any time you develop any concerns or questions, I will make every effort to discuss these with you. I, the researcher, cannot provide psychotherapy; however, should such need arise, I will facilitate referrals to an appropriate mental health professional at your request or using my personal judgment.

If you decide to participate in this research, you may withdraw your consent and discontinue your participation at any time and for any reason. Please note as well that I, the researcher, may need to terminate your participation in the study at any point and for any reason.

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If you have any questions or concerns, you may call me at ——— (h) or ——— (m). If I am unable to take your call, I will respond as soon as possible. You may also contact the Dissertation Director at Meridian University, 47 Sixth St., Petaluma, CA 94952, telephone: 707.765.1836. Meridian University assumes no responsibility for any psychological or physical injury resulting from this research.

Thank you for your interest and support. Sincerely,

Cliff Stevens, MAT, PhD candidate

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Cliff Stevens Doctoral Research Project

INFORMED CONSENT FORM

Please check box

I confirm that I have read and understand the information sheet for ☐ this research study, and have had the opportunity to ask questions.

I understand the potential risks and benefits of this study. ☐

I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to ☐ withdraw at any time, without giving reason.

I agree to the study being audio/video recorded; I understand that these ☐ recordings are for the researcher’s use only, and will not be published.

______Name of Participant Signature Date

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APPENDIX 5

FLYER

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APPENDIX 6

PRINT/ONLINE ADVERTISEMENT

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APPENDIX 7

SCRIPTS: INITIAL TELEPHONE SCREENING

Introduction to Study

This study is part of a doctoral research project on the topic of couples, and is comprised of a series of individual and shared creative activities, culminating in a presentation witnessed by the entire group. The study’s purpose is to understand what effect(s) such creative collaboration have on each partner’s felt sense of their relationship. I’d like to be quite clear at the outset that this is a study; it is not psychotherapy, nor is it a workshop, although its structure may resemble one. As far as the creative activities are concerned, you don’t have to have any prior experience; everything you’ll need to know, you either know already, or will easily learn. In fact, all you really need is some openness and curiosity toward what you will encounter. I’m looking for couples who have some sense that their relationship is part of their ‘path,’ and provides an opportunity for exploration and growth. It is helpful if you’ve had some experience in psychotherapy or other personal growth discipline.

Questionnaire

1. How old are you? 2. Tell me a little about your marriage/relationship - how long have you two been together? 3. Do you consider yourself to be committed to your relationship? Describe what that means to you. 4. What’s your prior experience in couples counseling and/or individual psychotherapy? 5. Are you currently seeing a therapist or counselor? 6. Do you have a regular meditation practice or other spiritual practice? 7. What got you interested in this study? Why do you want to be part of it? 8. How would you assess your overall health and vitality? Do you have any physical limitations or other health issues I should know about? 9. Is there anything else you think I should know about you?

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APPENDIX 8

SCRIPTS: ACCEPTANCE/REJECTION PROCESS

Acceptance Script

I am pleased to inform you that I’ve chosen you from among a final pool of very qualified couples to take part in my research study. Your willingness to devote a significant amount of your time and energy to this project is evidence of a commitment to personal growth, to the health and vitality of your relationship, and to your support for the process of inquiry and learning. The study will take place at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts (see attachment), on Saturday, February 11, beginning at 8:45 AM and ending at 5:30 PM. I will provide a vegetarian lunch and snacks, with a gluten-free option. I believe I asked everyone about any dietary restrictions/preferences, but do please let me know if you think I may have missed you. There will also be a follow-up morning meeting two weeks later, on Saturday, February 25 (location TBD). This is an important part of my data collection process, so I am hopeful that everyone will be able to attend. Please also find attached a statement of Informed Consent; you should print a copy of page two for each of you. I will be contacting you by phone during the week prior to our first meeting to go over this statement with you, and answer any questions. Please bring the signed statement to our meeting; I will collect it at the beginning of the day. Also, please let me know as soon as possible if anything comes up that might prevent you from participating in the study. It's comprised of just five couples, so your participation matters very much. Again, thank you so much for your involvement in my study. I couldn't do this without you, and am looking forward to meeting you in person, and sharing a day of collaborative creativity!

Rejection Script

You were among a final pool of very qualified couples, but as this is a small study, I could not accommodate everyone that expressed interest. After much consideration, I have finished the selection process, and it is with regret that I must tell you that I am unable to offer you a place. This has not been an easy decision, especially in consideration of your qualifications and experience. Your willingness to consider participating in this study is evidence of a commitment to personal growth, to the health and vitality of your relationship, and to your support for the process of inquiry and learning. These are invaluable qualities, and undoubtedly will lead to other rewarding experiences in the future. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me. If you would like, I can put your names on a waiting list, and in the event that anyone drops out, I will let you know.

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APPENDIX 9

MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS

Prior to Data Collection

As Participants Arrive

Good morning! So nice to see you again. Have you brought your consent form? (If not, blank consent forms will be available). You can leave your shoes (and socks if you like), and your bag/backpack right over there. I’d also like to invite you to leave any timekeeping or communication devices, in silent mode, in the basket we’ve provided. It’s important for this kind of work that we preserve the sense of a space free from outside intrusion, so everyone can settle in and attend to their inner process. We’ll be using these chimes (demonstrate) to signal the beginning and end of activities, so I encourage you to let go of monitoring time and leave it up to us.

Welcoming Statement

Let’s all gather in a circle around the table in the center of the room. I’ve got some housekeeping business to take care of, and then we can begin. As you all know, my name is Cliff Stevens, and I am a doctoral student in psychology at Meridian University. Among my particular interests are: intimate relationship as spiritual path, and the expressive arts. Once again, I want to thank you all for your willingness to take part in this research project. My hope is that it will be of value to each of you, to men and women generally, and to the psychological community as a whole. Not least, your participation is a gift to me personally, enabling my progress towards a doctorate in psychology. Before we begin, I’d like to reiterate that this is a study; it is not psychotherapy nor is it a personal growth workshop. Although it’s possible and even likely that some growth will occur, simply from the effects of undertaking a novel activity, that result is not presumed.

Introduction of Researchers

I’m sure everyone’s wondering who everyone else is. Once we begin, we’ll have lots of opportunity to get to know each other, but for now, I’d like to introduce my two co-researchers: Robert Rowen-Herzog, a classmate and friend at Meridian, and Lori

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Richloff, a Meridian graduate as well. All three of us share the intention of making this day safe, exciting, and memorable for you. We are grateful for your participation. An important part of any study is data collection, something that all three of us will be doing throughout the day. We’ll do this primarily through observation, taking notes and audio- or video recording various activities. We’ll try to be as unobtrusive as possible, so as not to interfere with your experience. The journaling you will do from time to time, as well as the ways that you participate in group check-ins, are also important sources of data. I encourage you to be as honest and self-revealing as you feel comfortable being. Your task is not to guess what I want to hear, but to provide me with your authentic experience – even if you think that’s not what I want to hear! Sometimes the richest learnings come from having one’s expectations confounded. In addition, we will on occasion be demonstrating or modeling something that I’m going to ask you to do. The idea with this is to give you an example, and not to say ‘do it this way.’ If at any time you have any questions or concerns, you’re welcome to approach whichever of us is nearest to you.

Reminder of Confidentiality

In order for all of us to derive the most benefit from the work we are undertaking, we need to feel secure in expressing whatever arises without self-censoring. To facilitate this process, we make a commitment to confidentiality – that apart from later discussions with your partner or therapist, whatever happens, is spoken or displayed during this study, will remain within the walls of this room. As researchers, we make that commitment as well, so I will repeat the confidentiality agreement contained in the Informed Consent form that you read and signed: “Only myself and my co-researchers and a professional transcriber (should I employ one) will have access to (the data gathered during this study). In the reporting of information in published material, any information that might identify you will be altered to ensure your anonymity.”

Description of Practicalities, Safety and Self-Care Guidelines

There’s a refreshment table ______, and the bathrooms are ______. We’ll have a 15-minute break in the morning and the afternoon, and an hour break for lunch and dinner. We encourage you to take good care of yourself throughout the day. The various activities are designed to be safe, simple, and enlivening, but if at any time you feel uncomfortable with one of them, please let one of the researchers know. Remember that all participation is voluntary, and you are entirely free to terminate your participation at any time, for any reason. Likewise, if you are experiencing any psychological distress or discomfort, let one of us know. We’ve scheduled bathroom breaks, but feel free to leave the room at any time, if you need to. Make sure you stay hydrated, and if you need a snack outside of the scheduled break times, feel free to help yourself.

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Description of Nature and Purpose of Study

This study is comprised of a series of individual and shared creative activities, culminating in a presentation witnessed by the entire group. We intend the tone to be one of playful inquiry, although it is possible that a range of emotions may be evoked. The study’s purpose is to understand what effect(s) such creative collaboration have on each partner’s felt sense of their relationship. For our mutual benefits, I’d like to point out again that this is a study, and not psychotherapy or a personal growth workshop. During the various activities, we’ll refer at times to ‘images.’ I want to encourage you at the outset that there’s no right or wrong way to do any of this; ‘image’ can cover a broad range of experience – sensory, auditory, emotional, visual – so set aside whatever judgments or expectations you may have, and attend to any images that arise, however small or insignificant they may seem.

Transition to First Activity

As we embark on today’s journey of discovery, we do so with an attitude of active receptivity, a willingness to be surprised, and an intention to set aside judgment and welcome whatever arises. While our culture privileges values such as initiative and action, we’re going to take another tack; this involves just messing around, being open to whatever comes up, allowing ourselves to be affected by events, and responding to the unexpected. It’s common to talk about our “self” as if we were the same person in all situations, but common sense and past experience tells us that actually, the self we experience depends on context - who we’re with, where we are, what we had for breakfast. Of course, we have a range of feelings toward these selves as they appear - if we even let them appear - depending on whether they seem to be helpful, protective, or interfering. Some of our selves may work together for the common good, another or others may seem to undermine our best efforts. No matter. Part of what we’re doing here today is recognizing and letting ourselves be curious about this host of “little people” within us, and for that, we take inspiration from Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” [Reads poem – see Appendix 12] I mentioned that visitor who can speak to us with a judgmental, even a harsh and critical voice. Let’s bring him or her to mind for a moment, and then invite them to have a seat on that bench along the farther wall; we’ve provided it as a place for all of those critical voices to hang out – not banished, but having a time out for the day. And in disinviting the critic, we invite the rest of us to set aside worries about “getting it right”: right is what feels right to you. To formalize the beginning of our day, I’d like to invite you to approach the table in the center of the room, choose a stone, and place it in the bowl of water while saying your name. As you do so, allow an intention for the day to arise in your mind.

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APPENDIX 10

MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS

Morning

Evoking Sequence: Face Touching Activity

This first activity is with your partner. You can do it either standing or sitting; whichever is most comfortable for you. If you’re sitting, you should be close enough that you can easily reach out and touch your partner. (Wait for everyone to get settled). Before we begin, Robert and Lori will pass out a journal and a pen to each of you. Please write your name on the cover, and put it near where you’re sitting or standing. Now, this activity involves allowing your partner to touch your face, with your eyes closed. Is there anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable with any part of that - eyes closed, touching, or being touched? Let me know, because we want this activity to feel safe and comfortable. We’ll take turns, and in each turn, one of you will be active - the toucher - and the other receptive - the receiver of touch. We’ll do the whole activity in silence, and after each turn, you’ll have an opportunity to compare notes. At the end, we’ll spend a little time journaling, to give you an opportunity to reflect on the process, and anything that comes up for you. First, decide who’ll be the first receiver (call this person A) and who the first toucher (person B). Ready? Making sure you’re in a comfortable position, I’d like both partners to close their eyes. A’s: allow yourself to turn your attention inward, noticing any thoughts, feelings or sensations that arise - about this activity in general, or specifically, as your partner touches your face. And don’t worry about remembering all these directions, because I’ll repeat them again as we go deeper into the process. As you settle into your quiet inner space, I’d like you to reflect on a part of yourself that you want your partner to know more about, a part that you perhaps have been hesitant to fully express in your relationship, even if you’ve been in that relationship for years. There may be any number of reasons for this, but you needn’t focus on them – just allow yourself to notice what that part is. As you reflect on it, that part may express itself as an image, or a thought, or a feeling. Allow your awareness of it to grow, until it fills every part of your body, especially, your face. Imagine that you are able to communicate the knowledge of this part directly to your partner, through your face and into his or her fingertips. You may feel like making a face, or remaining still – it’s up to you. B’s: As you gently touch your partner’s face, imagine that you are extending an invitation to them, to bring forward and reveal that part of themselves they most would like to have you recognize. This is your contribution - to welcome this visitor, even though you don’t really know who it is yet. It’s less important that you know than that you communicate through your touch that you’re making space to receive them, that

204 you’re curious, that it’s safe. Notice any thoughts or images arise for you as you do this. A’s: Let your sense of relaxed presence deepen, as you become aware of the invitation that your partner’s touch is extending to you. You are feeling more and more confident in your ability to allow yourself to express that part which is longing for recognition and attention.

Interpreting Sequence: Journaling

Good! For the next few minutes, I’d like you to reflect on the experience you’ve just had, and in doing so, consider the following questions. In particular, say something about the part that you were working with (“my unacknowledged part is…). Is this a part of yourself that your partner already is familiar with, or something you’ve kept hidden? How did it feel to express this silently? What was it like to be the touch-giver? Were there any images that came up for you? What did you imagine that your partner was communicating to you? We’ll take about twenty minutes for this. Remember to allow any thoughts or impressions that arise to lead you. There’s no right way to do this - follow your intuition!

Interpreting Sequence: Group Check-In

Let’s pull our chairs into a circle. Before we break, let’s go around the room and briefly check-in. I’m interested in your experience doing this activity, especially any thoughts, feelings, or images that came up for you. How did the process affect you? Tell us something that surprised you, or moved you, if you like. You don’t need to talk about your ‘unacknowledged part’ right now - we’ve left time for that later. Focus more on the feelings or images that came up as we did the last activity.

Bio break/snack: At End of Journaling Sequence

We’re going to take a break now; please make sure you take care of any needs before the next chime in 15 minutes. Please maintain silence and focus during the break. If you find yourself with some extra time, feel free to add to your journal.

Expressing Sequence: Mask Making, Part I

We’re going to begin the first part of our mask making activity now, a method that uses plaster gauze modeled directly on the face. Because the blank masks take a little while to dry enough to decorate, we’re starting them this morning, and continuing in the afternoon. I’ve brought along some examples of what you might do (show example masks: full and half mask, expressionless, eyes closed/open, etc.). As you can see, you

205 have a lot of choices. (If there are individuals with facial hair, explain that they may choose to make a half-mask). You’ll each be applying the gauze on your partner’s face, so decide who wants to be the first model, and who the first maker. As you’ll see, this is a safe and painless procedure, and you’ll be able to breathe throughout. If you’ve never done this before, there will be some new sensations, particularly as the gauze begins to set up, but don’t worry. The whole process will only take about fifteen minutes for each of you. OK? Good. Here’s how it’s done: First models: If you’ve got long hair, best to pin it back; we’ve got bobby pins and hair ties here. I’ve brought some plastic bags with a hole cut out for your face. You put them on like this, and secure them with gaffer tape (demonstrate). Take some lotion and apply it liberally to your skin; work some Vaseline into your eyebrows (and facial hair). Now you’re ready to go! You may want to reflect on the previous activity while your partner is applying the gauze - if there’s a facial expression that you used, consider using it again and embodying it in the mask. There’s a fair amount of variation possible. You may want your mask to be blank...neutral. Makers: Your goal is to cover the entire face with a layer of gauze, overlapping the pieces a little bit where they meet (demonstrate). Of course, ask your models what they would like the end result to look like, more or less. You’ll need pieces of varying sizes; we’ve got a selection in your mask kit, and also some extra tape should you need more pieces, or different sizes. Dip the plaster gauze in the container of water, and rub it lightly between your fingers to activate the plaster (demonstrate). Shake out any extra water and put it on your models face, rubbing it lightly to create a creamy consistency in the plaster. When one piece is smooth, go on to the next, not hurrying but moving deliberately, steadily. Use the biggest piece for the forehead, the long, wide piece to wrap along the side of the face under the chin, and so on. Use a long, thin piece to cover the nose from the upper lip to the forehead (demonstrate). Use smaller pieces to model the lips, around the eyes, etc. Don’t put too many layers on at once - we’re going for a fast-drying, lightweight mask, a little fragile, but you can reinforce it later at home. We’ll show you how later. You’re probably noticing that the mask has begun to harden by the time you get to the detailed areas; finish up, and wait for a few moments. Now, models: begin to wiggle your face slightly beneath the plaster, until you feel it loosen its hold. At this point, the makers can carefully cut the plastic bag up the back of the head, allowing the models to continue wiggling the mask off, grasping it gently around the edges, beneath the plastic. When the mask is completely free, gently pull the plastic out from inside, and set the mask aside to dry. Great! We’ll put your masks in the drying box so they’ll be ready to decorate this afternoon. Now, some of you have Vaseline and plaster all over your faces! I bet you’d like to clean up. While you’re doing that, I’d like the mask makers to gather round in a circle.

Interpreting Sequence: After Each Turn

Now you’ve had another opportunity to work intimately and in silence, touching your partner’s face. What feelings or images came up for you? How was it similar to, or different than the first face-touching activity?

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Interpreting/Integrating Sequence: Group Check-In Before Lunch

I’m very curious about what the morning has been like for you, and particularly what it was like working creatively with your partner? What familiar dynamics emerged? What was new, unexpected? What thoughts or feelings came up concerning the process itself? What challenges or insights did you have? How would you characterize your emotional state at the beginning of the morning? At the end? If you’re comfortable doing so, you may also choose to talk about your “unacknowledged part,” but only if you’re comfortable. Please remember that part of good self-care today is recognizing your personal limits in sharing. As the day progresses, I’m sure you’ll feel more trust in the group as a whole, but there’s no need to push yourself to disclose more than you’re ready to.

Closing: Instructions for Lunch Break

We’re going to break for lunch. There’s a natural tendency to want to talk about your experience of the morning, but I’m going to encourage you to maintain silence, and an inward focus. You might want to take a meditative walk, or do some yoga. Notice any thoughts or feelings that may be arising, allowing them to distill without verbalizing them. You might want to continue with your journaling. If you’re a visual type, we have some pastels you can use to draw. We’ll come back together at ______.

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APPENDIX 11

MEETING ONE: SCRIPTS

Afternoon

Movement Exploration in Character

Okay...now that we’re all back from lunch, we’re going to do a little physical warm up to get us in the mood for the afternoon. This will help your body be present, and your mind as well. It’s simple, and it goes like this: • Walk around the room as your normal self, staying aware of your body. • Now, feel into the physical quality of the character you’ve been developing. Notice any changes in your walking, breathing, or posture. Are you heavier? Lighter? Quicker or slower? • Begin to notice the others, and how they’re moving. • Stop and turn to the person nearest you – not necessarily your actual partner. We’re going to do a mirroring exercise, which you may be familiar with [demonstrate with Lori]. In character, make a gesture, to which your partner will respond. Then reverse roles. • Continue walking, this time focusing on the emotional quality of your character. • Stop, turn to a new partner, and repeat the mirroring exercise. • Once again, begin walking, this time focusing on any thoughts, images, stories, or judgments that you notice in relation to your character. • This time, come together with your actual partner. Repeat the mirroring exercise, but now allow the initial gesture to morph into a conversation. • Find an ending pose [Invites everyone to look around the room].

Expressing Sequence: Mask Making, Part I

We’re going to continue developing our masks to create a representation of the “self” you identified this morning, that aspect of you that wants to reveal itself and be seen. This is his or her moment! You might think of this as a kind of birthing process, a collaboration between you and some new, emerging being who depends on your assistance, your care and insight, to take shape in the world. So, holding the energy and activity of the morning in gentle awareness, allow the mask to speak to you, telling you what it needs. We’ve provided a range of materials to work with – paint, fabric, string, various natural and manmade items you can attach to your masks – and tools – wire, hot glue guns – to attach them with. You’re sharing a table with your partner, so feel free to ask for feedback or suggestions; it’s up to you how much or how little interaction you have during this part of the process. Let your imagination lead you. If you run into

208 technical problems, the researchers will be available to ask. Be careful with the glue guns, as the hot glue can burn!

Interpreting Sequence: Check-In

We’ve got a few moments before we transition to the movement room. Let’s do a quick share so everyone can see where the others are. Hold up your masks so we can see what you’ve got going (participants display masks). You might make a sound or gesture that reflects the mask’s energy, as it is right now. Now, on our way to the movement room, please take the opportunity of having a bathroom break if you need one. There will be another, longer break in about an hour.

Expressing Sequence: Movement With Masks (Solo)

In this room, we’ll continue getting to know our masks, inhabiting them with our energy, and so helping them come more fully to life. In the mirror, begin a dialog with your mask. You’ll find that just like each of us, your mask will express itself in very characteristic ways, using your body and your physical energy. Stay within your own experience, allowing your mask to develop the unique ‘movement vocabulary’ you began with a simple expression in the other room. Explore various tempos. See what it’s like to stand up, to crawl on the floor. How does your new head move? What do your arms want to contribute? I’ll give you a little warning as this phase comes to an end, and ask you at that point to find a pose or sequence of movements that most fully expresses who the mask has become.

Interpreting Sequence: Group Check-In

Let’s just take a moment before we break to share where we are. We’ll go around the room, and when it’s your turn, I’d like you to share your pose or movement sequence with the rest of the group.

Bio Break/Snack

We’re going to take a break now. Please make sure you take care of any needs before the next chime in 15 minutes. As we’ve done during our other breaks, please keep conversation to a minimum.

Expressing Sequence: Movement With Masks (Partner Duets)

I'm sure you’ve had a sense of all the various relationships being played out around the room, and that you're curious to see what everyone’s been up to. So we’re going to have a little ‘recital,’ if you will. We’ve brought along some additional props - hats, shawls, wigs, etc. - for you to choose from, at the beginning of your turn. Don’t think about it too much – if something catches your eye, go with it. When you’ve chosen your props, musical instruments, etc. decide on how you’re going to enter the room, alone or together. From that point, imagine your way into a

209 conversation in which you take turns initiating and responding. Just as in a real conversation, your goal is reciprocity – both listening and being heard. Notice how that feels, and any thoughts, judgments, or emotions that are arising. With one minute remaining in each turn, Lori will sound the chimes; bring things to a close, ending in a freeze-frame pose that expresses, as you did earlier, your experience of your relationship at this moment. As for the witnesses, your role is similar to this morning: simply pay attention to any thoughts or feelings or images that arise as you watch. At the end of each turn, I’ll ask you to offer a silent gesture [models some possibilities] given all at once. Then we’ll take a moment to interview each mask, asking it: What do you want? What do you need? What do you offer to our relationship? For that part, I’ll ask you to take your mask off and set it on a chair, then stand behind it, speaking for it, but not through it. Let’s begin!

Interpreting Sequence: Group Check-In

We’ve had a long and full day, a very rich experience for all, I hope. Before we end, would you consider your many impressions, and offer the group one which stands out as memorable, for any reason.

Integrating Sequence: Closing Circle

Now, let’s gather in a circle. This has been a day full of many experiences. I encourage you to make as much space as you can to reflect on them. Do whatever you need to take good care of yourselves until we meet again. If anything comes up, if for any reason you have a concern arising from your experiences here today, please don’t hesitate to call me. You may be wondering what impressions the three of us co-researchers have had during the day, and we look forward to sharing them with you during our next meeting. For now, I invite you to hold your own impressions, and those of your co-participants, and let them simmer over the intervening week. During that week, take note of anything that comes up with regard to the work we’ve done here today, any changes you notice in the quality of your relationship, any thoughts or feelings that seem significant - and do trust your intuition on that. Sometimes the smallest voices bring the most important messages. Please write them in your journals, which I would like you to bring to our next meeting. There is a voice within each of us that speaks to us from a place of wholeness, of integration, the One of our inner characters that only wants what is best for us, the keeper of Rumi’s “Guest House,” who welcomes all visitors. As we close for the day, may each of us invoke that part of us who is our Guardian, Guide, or Friend within, to protect and nurture that which is new in us, tentative, still forming. Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poem “Oceans” offers us this to reflect on [Reads poem – see Appendix 12]. May we be kind to ourselves and to our partners, and welcoming these newcomers, visitors to the Guest House of our relationship, perhaps still only dimly senses. Before you leave, I invite you to take a stone from the water bowl as a token of today’s journey. I’ve also made copies of the two poems we’ve used, which are on the table by the door.

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APPENDIX 12

POEMS USED IN MEETINGS ONE AND TWO

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

— Rumi

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Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves… Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

— Juan Ramón Jiménez

Everything is Waiting For You

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

— David Whyte

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APPENDIX 13

PHOTOS: MASKS AND MASK MAKING (By permission of participants)

Marianne Larry

Tom

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Ellen

Tina

Charlie – outside Charlie – inside

214

Lars

Bruce

Rebecca Stacy

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Making the plaster gauze base

216

Face-touching exercise In the drying box

217

In the movement room

Lars and Tina

218

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Marianne and Larry

Tom and Ellen

220

Charlie and Rebecca

Bruce and Stacy

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APPENDIX 14

SUMMARY OF DATA

Meeting One: Group check-in at end of morning

(Stacy) I think it was cool you had us do the interactive face-touching thing. I didn’t know what that was about, but then sitting there and receiving it was just to re-familiarize ourselves, and to use the word “desensitize,” more just desensitize in the sense that...the first time your face is being palpated...the second...within an hour, it’s like ‘oh, okay, my face is already not...defenseless. Go for it.’

(Cliff) So there was a kind of familiarity?

(Stacy) Yeah! Now I know why you had us do that.

(Cliff) What else?

(Larry) This was a very different experience for me, from the first one. The first one was much more...easier, in a sense. Marianne did my face, and I’m just like, okay, do what you do...I don’t know anything about this...never done this before. Whereas when I was doing hers, she kept directing me, “Now do this, do that...come on...blah, blah, blah. I can’t see what I’m doing! Let go of that steering wheel - I’m driving the car!” Let’s just play with it...have fun with it.

(Marianne) I found that very indicative of how we work together. Sometimes it’s really hard to do projects together. I keep bumping into him, and it frustrates him, cause I'm in the way. And he’s actually very competent. So…it was interesting to experience that. I've done it before, and he just hasn’t…

(Larry) I like to do things…just jump in anything…”yeah!”

(Marianne) It was nice for us to do that together. (Ellen) Ours was similar…it was like, “Don’t cover my mouth yet – I need to tell you how to do this.”

(Bruce) And the thing that I struggled with, having never really – I’m a painting contractor, but I don’t really consider myself an artist. So I never really had an outlet to be just creative. Stacy and I do some of this together, but I found myself immediately struggling with being a perfectionist – “It’s gotta be perfect!” It was tough. It was like “Alright, it doesn’t have to be perfect…”

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(Tina) The first activity, I was a little self conscious, cause I couldn’t look at his face…I couldn’t look at him looking at my face. But the second one, I could look him in the eye, I could see what he was doing, and I could…couldn’t really talk too much, cause I had a thing on my face. But I could talk a little bit, I could giggle, and I could…I felt more a part of it. I thought that was really nice.

(Lars) I totally identify with the perfectionist tendencies, so I deliberately went first, and deliberately didn’t try too hard, cause I've never done this before, and I realize in a limited time I couldn’t make something perfect…I could spend hours doing this, probably, have done something prettier, but I kinda wanted to…not, get it out of the way…but if I go first – she’s super artistically inclined…hers is gonna be gorgeous, so my precedent won’t be anything she can’t surpass, as opposed to the other way around, but I can’t follow up what I know she’s gonna do…so, that was my take on it.

(Charlie) When Rebecca was masking me, then I was getting covered up, and then I was actually getting shut down – it was weird – and I was sort of going away…it felt like leaving. But the part I was liking was is that at the end, I get to see this like, artistic creation, or a statue of myself. I didn’t know what it was until it came off, and all of a sudden I came awake again. It was really kind of cool, to go away and then come back. And then when I was doing Rebecca’s mask I – of course – didn’t want to do it wrong. But then it started actually creating her in a whole different way. I was enjoying it…like, “this is weird”…whatever’s happening happened…it was pretty good. And I really like having stuff on me, cause it brings out that freedom of don’t worry about it, you’re an artist…that’s part of the art thing.

(Cliff) Anybody have any impressions of the moment when the mask came off?

(Charlie) I guess I felt like I was coming out…it was weird. (Tina) It did feel a little bit like I was being born.

(Stacy) Like a snake shedding skin. Like you were saying, I was so…peaceful

(Larry) Like a cocoon…yeah, that was fun…wiggling my face all over the place…coming out of the cocoon.

(Rebecca) When I was masking Charlie, I realized that…came out in writing…that he just totally surrendered and let me do my art, let me do my…and that is representative of our relationship, that Charlie just gives me (breaking up a little) the freedom to totally express myself. He doesn’t try to control me, he just totally surrenders and trusts that whether it’s my cooking, or massaging him, or pleasuring him…that I just, you know…And the perfectionist in me started coming out in the beginning, and then I just let it go and just did…I think I asked you if wanted your mouth open…I knew intuitively that whatever I did, he would be happy with, and that was really meaningful for me to recognize that. And the other part was when he was doing me…it was a lot for me, cause I am a control freak around…cause of my perfectionism, which I'm really working on,

223 having a 15 year old slob daughter…they’re really good teachers! Just let it go. I knew, when he was doing me, that there was a point at which he wanted to just…cover my mouth. I just intuitively knew that, like “shut the fuck up, woman!” that kind of thing. Not that I was…it was just a sense…he didn’t ask me, and he didn’t say “I want to cover your mouth.” I intuitively knew that he wanted to, so I said “you want to cover my mouth?” And he said, “Oh, yeah!” And it became playful then (makes muffled sounds). It was good. Shutting me up was really good.

Meeting One: Group check-in after movement activity

(Cliff)… Did you feel yourself inhabiting your body in a different way? What was it like to relate to other people through that lens, and especially what was it like to relate to your partner, imagining that you were that…somewhat hidden part of yourself, wanting to come forward?

(Rebecca) The thing that was most significant for me is, again…even though we both love each other, we’re not touching, and we have this…chasm. There was reverence…it was this…I brought out my reverent self, which has been more challenging in my life, in partnership, but also being a mother with a teenager who’s crazy right now. There was the respect and the honoring, but there was this big separation. I looked around and everybody was touching, and I went “Uuh! Really?” and it became really clear. We weren’t touching; the intimacy wasn’t there.

(Lars) I found it was difficult to find a posture, walking style…found it was difficult to physically manifest the state of mind or emotion I was trying to represent. Not to the degree that it was frustrating, but, yeah, I found that interesting. That’s very reflective of, dynamically, the stuff that we’re talking about…a lot of the things that aren’t present in our relationship are things that I haven’t made present because I don’t know how to, and it was physically reflected in that, which was interesting.

(Larry) I just let myself be in my body, so I wasn’t really worried about who I was, or who I wasn’t. But as I'm walking around, I'm looking at the people that are walking around, and each person that I'm looking at changing as I'm looking at them, they’re changing the way that I'm feeling. I'm kind of like feeling their feelings, but kind of like I'm still in my body but feeling their feelings. And then, when we got together, at first our conversation was a little awkward, but then we got in sync, and it’s like we knew exactly where each other was coming from…exactly what each other wanted.

(Marianne) Well, I found it somewhat difficult to really get connected into the character…I've got some back pain going on, so…but, aside from that, I just feel like it was hard to relate to, to link that back to whatever space I was thinking about this morning. It seemed like it was too far away. It was kind of fun and interesting to engage with other people, and then…getting to the place to be with Larry was really nice…it felt like a really nice conclusion.

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(Ellen) It was hard to be something that I wasn’t yet, you know? So, like, to personify this…I'm not there yet. So, I have to figure out how, within where I am right now, how to do a projection of that.

(Tom) I'm not a big fan of movement exercises. I’ll tell you right off, I just don’t…because I become too self-conscious, and I don’t really get much out of it. I thought the mirroring stuff was fun; I've done that before. And when we were together at the end, that was very fun…we were kind of comical with each other and dancing…enjoying that. That was enjoyable, too, but the…movement, I just…doesn’t do anything for me

(Stacy) It’s an interesting introspection for me, cause pretty much my whole life I spent being a chameleon, and wearing masks, and doing whatever to be other than me. Now I'm in this place where I don’t know how to be anything other than me – I'm me – so when you said “Hold on to a character,” it’s like, I'm not finished polishing all my facets, but I feel like I'm finally ok with who I am. And in that, it’s hard to shatter that to pick up a piece…that sounds so…I'm not complete…I'm still morphing, I'm still changing, but I'm finally in a place where I can feel…grounded…I know I'm flowering, (puts on a “pretend” voice) I like who I am!

(Charlie) Let’s see…what I was hearing was to tap into that thing…was a lot like yours (to Ellen). I knew what the final results were supposed to be, so I was trying to bring those out. I wasn’t actually there, so some of it was kind of acting, hoping to feel it.

(Tina) I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to take up as much space as I could, or as little space as I could. So I kind of tried to go in between.

Meeting One: Interviewing masks after duets,

Tom and Ellen

(Cliff) You two have had a full and rich day...coming into being, learning how to move, playing with each other. So, I'd like to ask you: What do you need?

(Ellen) What I need is rest time. I'm the aspiration, and I need to get my energy to get there. I still need rest and nurturing and time to get there.

(Cliff) So, my second question to you: What do you want?

(Tom) What do I want? I think that, just some time to be playful and fun is what I really need...and I look like it, don't I? Some sleep...less coffee...

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(Cliff) Thank you. And I have one more question for you: what have you brought for this relationship? What do you offer?

(Ellen) Oh...I bring the bright and the light and the sparkle.

(Tom) Yeah, that's true. And I'm aspiring to bringing more lightness and fun and whimsy. That's what this is about.

Stacy and Bruce

(Cliff) So, I'll start with the same question for you two: what do you need?

(Stacy) OK, ummm...more. I want to keep growing and adding to what I've faced in myself. (Bruce) Mask says he just wants to be young again. He doesn't want to be so serious all the time.

(Cliff) So, masks, you've done a wonderful job answering the question of what you want. What do you need? What do you need from your people?

(Stacy, to Bruce) - I need you to not be afraid of me, no matter how big and strong I am.

(Bruce) Mask says...he just needs the chance to be young again, as he said before, and that...learning that life is not so serious, and that it's OK to be vulnerable...he wants to be...he needs to be able to be vulnerable, and to learn to trust.

(Cliff) OK, and the last question: what does each of you bring to this relationship? What's your contribution?

(Bruce) Tough answer.

(Cliff) Just come up with one word. Whatever comes into your mind first.

(Bruce) Faith

Rebecca and Charlie

(Cliff) So, I'll start with the same question again: what do you each need?

(Rebecca) I need to be seen, and I need to be heard, and I need to be met. In my heart...in my soul...in my body.

(R) What do I need? What does this need? To accept change.

(Cliff) And, what is it that you want, mask?

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(Charlie) This mask wants this, what's going on inside (points to inside of mask), to be understood as this (pointing to mouth) comes out, and this (points to frog image on forehead), is what the joy, the spontaneity needs

(Rebecca) What does the mask want? Is that the question? To be fully in my power, to express myself, to sing, to dance, to feel at home in my mask and my skin

(Cliff) And the last question: what is it that you can bring to this relationship? What is it that you offer?

(Charlie) Trying to be truthful to who I am? (They both start laughing)

(Rebecca) I bring beauty, and color, and joy, and celebration, and aliveness, and wildness...and power. Soft, gentle power...and exotic power (teases him with feather). And so it is... (Group responds: “And so it is.”)

Marianne and Larry

(Cliff) Ah, masks...welcome back, welcome back again. So good to see you both. Tell me, tell us all, please: what is it that you need?

(Marianne) I just need to be noticed, and watered and loved, and just to share my face with the world.

(Larry) I have two natures. I have a very dark side. It's very powerful; it's very destructive. I have a light side; it's creative, it's wise...it's compassionate. I want to integrate, so all that dark can be harnessed for good, and expressed as love.

(Cliff) So, the second question: if you answered what you needed, what do you want? And if you answered what you want, what do you need?

(Marianne) I just want to be able to share, and speak love. I want to be able to see myself in the mirror in a higher way. I want to be sparkly, and to bring joy

(Larry) What I need, is for my life to have purpose...that I will not have lived in vain, that whatever I leave behind me will have been an influence for positivity, an example of love, and example of compassion, and example of awareness. And, overcoming the obstacles that seem to be the purpose of life, so that these fruits may come through.

(Cliff) Then the third question for you both: what is it that you bring? What is your special gift for this relationship?

(Marianne) I bring the glitter. I bring fun, and joy, and...I bring growth.

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(Larry) I agree. What I bring is my attention, my love, my sense of humor, my ability to listen and respond appropriately. (Points) that is a filter on the mouth - being careful and wise with my words, because you can't take them back.

Lars and Tina

(Cliff) Our last two honored guests of the day, these be-feathered masks. And we ask you, beginning with the same question: what is it that you need, to fulfill your purpose masks?

(Lars) Patience...maybe a little grooming

(Tina) I need sunshine, and adventure

(Lars) To experience truth, and beauty naturally, and in the little things

(Tina) I want to express passion, and spirit, and confidence.

(Cliff) and lastly, but certainly not least, what is your unique gift to this relationship? What have you brought for these two people?

(Lars) I bring a unique perspective, and a unique sort of groundedness that comes with that.

(Tina) I bring optimism, and hope, and...optimistic hope!

Meeting One, Closing Circle

(Cliff) I'm not going to ask you to do any more journaling right now, but I will ask you to take your journals with you and to try to make some time in your busy week to reflect on this experience, and to write a little bit about it, any moments that were particularly memorable for you, any shift in your feeling of relationship that occurred in any activities, or throughout the day...just to kind of get a global sense of what this was like for you, what you're taking away from it…And maybe we could take a few minutes now, and share any particular vivid impressions of the day, a moment that stands out for you, for whatever reason.

(Rebecca, to Charlie) Well, I feel the chasm...in terms of feeling separate, I feel closer to you. Especially that...I feel the culmination in that last process...it was Ron's idea to come separately and move around, then reconnect. It was very emotional for me...it really is representative of our separateness...we really both are very separate, independent people, and when we come together, we need...I need to learn to be more authentic and intimate

228 when we are together. It brought a lot of emotion for me, that was deep, that was very poignant.

(Ellen) I felt that the last process was - well, not the interview but the performance - and the interview too...I think that those were...obviously, it was the culmination that was good, meaningful, and watching...witnessing...not sure, but it felt like there was transformation, for all those within the experience. So that's what I viewed from the performances and the interviews, that there had been transformation.

(Tina) Lars and I are both very creative people, but it's not very often that our creativities meet up, or that we get to do creative things together. It was definitely very interesting to be able to participate together, but also separately at the same time

(Marianne) I just really enjoyed the whole play of it, the nature of playing...Larry and I rarely play together, and I've even been not in the spirit of play, so I think it's kind of reintroduced some play for us, which really feels good.

(Larry) I would like to say that I just admire the courage, to be so authentic, and I felt like it made a space for me to be authentic. There've been things that have been bubbling up in my existence, and it helped to bring them a bit more in focus - while these are my goals, these are my ideals, what do I need to do to focus in on them better...how to pay them attention, listen to them, and to take the time to stop and listen. (Charlie) I enjoyed the unexpected opportunity to just walk over and create something...it was really wonderful.

(Lars) Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that. Like she said, we're both creative people in our own ways, and so I'm creating my own music and art and different things all the time, but this, as far as mediums are concerned, is totally...I've never done any...I'm not a hands on artistic...I'll write a poem, or you know, cerebral stuff, but doing something like this, where it was, within a brief period of time, so I couldn't care that much, but still have to put energy into it, just as a creative process, was different and unique, and emotionally kind of eye-opening, I guess, because of it...

(Tom) I think there was something about the - like Robin mentioned - the play aspect of it, because of the fact that I – that my work is not...well it should be - it doesn't seem to be that playful...it seems very busy and playful sometimes, and so the opportunity for us to be together and be creative and playful, and...was a great break in that myriad of life...

(Rebecca) Yeah, I agree...I have a lot of fun in my own...we sometimes get to have fun, but this, we were allowed to have some fun...

(Cliff) Encouraged.

(Rebecca) It helped me move out of the heavier space that I was in in our relationship...lighten up!...who we really are, we're both really goofy, silly people, but we

229 just haven't been lately, and the injury last Saturday, that didn't help. We're pretty goofy and silly most of the time.

(Cliff) Has everyone spoken?

(Bruce) We haven't spoken. I found myself really enjoying the opportunity we've had today...continue processing, to learn to be creative with this woman, who's very creative, and my creativity, other than what I do for a living, was never encouraged, and it's nice to be free, and learn to just trust creativity. My sense of trust in her has been deepened today, in the opportunity to make masks and wear the masks.

(Cliff) Any last thoughts, before we end?

(Ellen) How about from you guys?

(Cliff) That'll be our next meeting. We'll have an opportunity to share our impressions and experiences of today with you. (Stacy) It's also nice for me...you go out with other couples, but you either know them or you don't, and you have to make a choice...I really like her - or him - whatever. But this was an opportunity to be couples, but we're not gonna...hang out again

(Larry) We're not? (Much laughter)

(Stacy) ...to get to know each other, because there's no obligation...

(C) So what I'd encourage you to do with your masks is to take them home and to put them someplace where you'll see them through the week, and just notice, when you see the mask, what comes up for you in response. What thoughts or feelings about today, or anything...what images continue to arise, or what part of your mask says, "I really want you to put something right here on me." And that's fine. Like our lives are works in progress, the masks reflect that too. So, they may want to change during the week, or they may say, "I like myself just the way I am. Thank you." So, it's really up to you. Allow the dialogue to continue. Please make some time to journal a little bit, even if it's just writing down a thought, or a word...it doesn't have to be a big deal. And, I will send you a reminder email about that. So, to close, I have another poem for you. It's by a Spanish poet named Juan Ramón Jiménez called "Oceans"...

(Reads poem, group murmurs, and then a kind of spontaneous out breathing sigh of...contentment? Pleasure? Relief?)

Okay, so that brings us to the end of our day...maybe we could stand and take hands, and perhaps everyone could say one word that they're leaving with. And also, I invite you to - if you like - retrieve your stone from the pond and take that with you as a memento...from the tiny ocean...take that with you as a memento for the day. So, whatever word comes first to mind, that encapsulates this day for you. And I would invite the researchers also to contribute their words.

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Gratitude...creativity...hope...joy...growth...refreshment...connection...journey...freedom... surprise...gratitude...hoping...desire

(Another spontaneous group exhalation)

Meeting Two: Reflections

(Larry) I would like to say that, what I noticed was that, at the beginning of the day, we were a room full of primarily strangers. We didn't really know each other at all. We were probably really more concentrated on ourself and our partner than we were on pretty much anyone else in the room. And then as I watched the extroverts and the introverts approach these various exercises, I thought it was really interesting, because...I got quite a few surprises. I was looking at different people and sort of thinking "what are they going to do, and how are they going to be and how are they going to show up?" I had a lot of surprises. Some of the very quiet ones became very powerful, and some of the louder ones sat back a little bit. By the end of the day I felt like...you know, I've been to a lot of meetings, and sometimes you go away from a whole day's meeting and you feel pretty much the same way you did when you got there: " I don't know anybody here, and I don't care about anybody here." But at the end of this day, I felt like, oh these are such nice people. What a nice group of people this is, and knowing some of the very touching things that were shared. I mean, it was something that doesn't really happen often.

(Cliff) I just wanted to share that, one of my favorite moments of the day was right at the end, when we came back into the final gathering, and there was that very animated discussion about Yertl the turtle, and Tudor the turtle, and everybody was just in it, in that conversation without anything holding back, and it was so much fun…for me the transformation between the beginning and the end, in that respect, was just palpable. You guys were playing with each other, without the usual holding back that we do as adults.

(Stacy) You did a good job picking the right mix of vegetables and meats and spices...

(Cliff) Did anybody want to say anything more about changes from the beginning to the end of the day? Anything that you noticed?

(Marianne) it was really nice to be able to play with Larry. And, to play, like...I play with my girlfriends, but for us to play with other couples was a really interesting experience. I think that kind of opened up some doors.

(Stacy) I agree about the playing with other couples, cause you think...I don't know...how often do you go to events where you get to know other couples, and everyone's on the same level playing field. But also too it was really cool to see this young couple, and all this potential, to see this couple that's been together a long time, and it just seems like they have this deep river of connection, no matter how often you might piss each other

231 off, you keep coming back together. And all these different things, and being able to take a little sniff and OK, bring this into our recipe. So thank all of you for all your pieces you gave us, cause we talked about you guys later! The point is to learn from others...I mean when we're children, we're just open to learning and not judging and not comparing, more like I want a little of that...and a little bit of that, a little bit of that. That's what it felt like being so creative, it's like I want a little bit of her, and I want a little bit of him, and I love that shirt she's wearing, and he's so calm, and she's so cool, and she hooked me up with an office...

(Ellen) For me it was like...we've been married 28 years, or 27...somewhere in there...long time. And our son is gone, off to college, and then...both of our parents died last year, and, my mom's still alive, but his mom and my dad died three days apart, in January last year. It's kind of like we haven't settled in together of like what this new relationship is like without them, all three of them. We both did a lot of care taking of our parents, and of our son, and life just kept happening...a lot of this was, just to see the playful him. He's just so serious all the time, it was just so nice to see that old familiar playfulness come out, and, just kind of beginning, and that's a lot of what our conversation was about...wow! This is a whole new space for us, and what do we want it to look like, and what's working and what's not?

(Cliff) So, was that playfulness something that's familiar in Tom, but you just hadn't seen it in a long time?

(Ellen) Oh yeah! But it's just been gone a long time. I think probably since I said, "You're a parent." You know what he said when I told him - cause our son's adopted - I went and picked him up from work and I said, "Guess what? You're a dad!" And I had a little bubblegum cigar to give him and everything...handed it to him and he said, "Oh my God! I guess I have to grow up now." So now, we can un-grow up again.

(Cliff) There were some things that people expressed at different points of the day that kind of led me to think that there might be a difference in the way that the men in the group and the women in the group - and we have all sort of gender-normal couples...that's just kind of how it worked out. But there was a difference in the way that the men and the women were holding the permission to be creative. And I heard some of the men express wanting more of that permission, or more freedom to create, to be more in touch with that part of themselves. Is that accurate? Was that going on?

(Lars) I would say so. For myself, at least, I often in my own head tend to think that, artistically speaking, I don't ever think that I've arrived, but I have an idea of what my expression is or ought to be, or should be...and doing stuff like this, particularly making the mask, really kind of challenged that in a good way - there's a lot of things, most experiences, that you haven't had yet, and things artistically and not artistically that you haven't tried. It was a good refreshing reminder that there's potential for new things and exploration...it was cool.

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(Tom) I think I wrote this in my book too. To be able to do this...I mean, I've done masks before at other workshops and things, but this was more of a, it was kind of a release to be able to do something like this. I'm not an artist, but I'm married to an artist, who’s a very good artist, so I've always felt like, I've never been real good at being the perfectionist artist, but something like this is something that I could just let myself go and just be whatever I wanted...obviously, if you look at the mask, so it was fun to be able to express that out...do in the freedom. That's what it felt like...real freedom to be able to do that.

(Rebecca) I know that when Charlie is creating like this, I notice that he doesn't...that you don't spend a huge amount of time when you have project, you do it, you just like do it and you get it done, but I see the passion and the excitement, because it's so far and few in between in his life, being the owner of a shop...12 hour days...and what's left? You want to take a shower and eat and go to sleep. It was so wonderful to see him, cause I could see the joy. It's so rare.

(Bruce) I can relate with Larry. Life became – as I found out last Saturday, life became very serious for me at a very early age. I was in a relationship for 33 years where I did bear the weight of the world, and never really felt that I had anything to offer artistically...I didn't have time. I was just always carrying the weight. And even though what I do is very artistic, I never looked at it this way...it was just about carrying the weight. With Stacy it's been a really good experience, in some of the art stuff that we've been able to share, and then...other classes too, but then coming to the work, this experience last Saturday, was just a reminder that there is a real artistic side that needs to come out...and it takes away from the heaviness, because it was enjoyable, it was exciting...it was nice. I enjoyed it.

(Cliff) How do you all imagine this event you participated in carrying forward in you lives? What do you...what effect do you think it might have on your, or would you like it to have on you, or...that you’re seeing now, that you want to nurture and grow?

(Ellen) I think the communication between us is...something that...I figured it had to happen sometime, we had to switch gears...it was the catalyst for that.

(Tina) I think that it was probably one of the most unique experiences that I've ever had. Maybe I've just had a boring life so far. But when Lars and I do things, we do normal things. We eat together; we sit on the couch and watch movies together. But we went and did something that we don't normally do together, so I feel like that opens, like a...well now we've done this unique thing, we can do other crazy things.

(Stacy) I was just beating up on him for being a 'value workaholic,' but even though I've started doing arty stuff, lately, in the back of my mind of justified it because I'm going to sell the stuff. This is the first thing I've actually made for myself. So that's been really cool. Even though I was encouraging him to make jewelry for himself, it was still a

233 productive thing. Get in touch with your feminine side...wear a bracelet. Not that I was dictating that, but just saying, would you like to, but it still had to have a 'ding' of value. Not that this didn't have value, but it was so decadently personal. And it was so playful, that even like your mask...that it was just all about play for itself...and yours, the 'what the fuck?' It was really nice...it was like back to being a kid again...art for the sake of art.

(Marianne) I imagine that it's opening the door for us to play some more, and to communicate some more, and to create some more intimacy.

(Rebecca) We are very different with our sisters than we are with our men. That's just how it is.

(Cliff) Why do you think that is?

(Rebecca) Well, for one thing, when I'm with Charlie, I go into the mode of wanting to please so my protector will take care of me. Where when I'm with my girlfriends, it's like we take care of each other. It's like the circle pee, when you're going to the bathroom you automatically take a girl with you to the bathroom. We do don't even go pee alone, it's part of our DNA. I don't go, "Oh, honey...I'm going to pee, would you come with me?" It's the sister...we moon together, we birth together...it's such an old brain thing, and with my girlfriends, I say things to them that, not that I wouldn't want you to know, I just don't have those conversations with you. It's just not something that I want to or feel like you need to. It's a whole different...it's an energy field that's so different. When a group of women are together, a single male, a boy or a man, walks in the space, it changes the entire energy. And I know that it's the same for men, that we create a totally different energy.

(Cliff) So how does that relate to your experience on Saturday of working in a mixed gender group? Did that mess with that sort of distinction between men and women?

(Ellen) I wouldn't use the word “messed with,” but I would definitely say changed it. I mean, if it were all just women, I would have been sharing totally different things. Just organically. I mean, I'm not gonna share these things because I have men in the room, it's how I was...

(Marianne) It would've been a different mask...

(Ellen) It may have been a very different mask

(Stacy) So, it would be a whole different thing coming together in a group of women. My focus was in our relationship. It was nice to meet other people, but it really was about our relationship.

(Cliff) You articulated such a clear distinction between male...not behaviors, but maybe values...and female values, and I'm just wondering did that shift at all during the day? Did that feel more fluid? It kind of goes back to the question I asked earlier to the men, about

234 more permission to be in their creative, feeling side. Did the women feel something that was different for them, that they wouldn't ordinarily have felt in a mixed group?

(Marianne) I think I've been in a mixed group before, doing activities, but it's different when I'm with my partner, because there's this...care taking thing that goes on, where they're 'special.' And when I'm in a group of all women, or people that I'm not invested in, it's a lot freer, it's a lot more open, because I don't care, really, as much. It's fun, but I don't feel I'm gonna be judged or...there's different standards. We have enough space. And we kind of got to be more friends, and I think that helps. But the whole “lover” thing makes things kind of murky and difficult.

(Larry) I find that, as a member of one of those long standing relationships, it's like, if I'm in any kind of a situation by myself, I behave very differently than I do when I'm with her, because I'm more aware of her...more paying attention to her needs, as well as whatever else it is I'm doing. In this particular thing I felt like this was supposed to be my focus...our relationship. And by the way, there's also five other couples in the room that are doing the same thing, do I felt in a way that it was very much blurring the lines between this male and female thing.

(Cliff) It strikes me that you had both activities on Saturday. You had the side-by-side working on your project, and you had the face to face, in the touch activities....

(Larry) Yeah, and that's where I say, it kind of blurred those lines a little bit more, because, she mentioned, as a man, you can kind of let your softer side out, your feminine side, and the women can be more assertive and stronger. So it kind of blurs those lines a little bit. You get to really play, and not necessarily be blocked into some kind of a dichotomy, who you're supposed to be right now.

(Lars) I feel like I can identify with that on a broader level...less so with regards to gender, but more so with just the dynamic of coming in as a couple, versus if it had been just a group of men, or if I came as an individual. I'd consider myself a pretty confident person, and if it were different I could have gone through those activities by myself. But being with Addie, there's a level of comfort...it kind of disarmed the whole thing, especially off the bat at the beginning...none of you are particularly intimidating or anything, but we came in completely blind, you're all strangers to us, I kind of had some assumptions and hunches I was making...not really sure what to expect, so, she was really the only grounding point that I had, aside from knowing a little bit of information I'd gotten in an email. That was a unique dynamic relationally, I guess, I don't usually experience...

(Stacy) I'm having a really interesting experience right now, because different things you guys have said have brought up some interesting stuff, because, real brief...I was on my own since I was 13...lot of reasons, and then I joined the military and became quite a masculine, butch warrior, so that I could be the man that I needed to protect the woman that I am. And so, it's really coming into the group when you guys were talking about if it

235 was all women, there's this longing in me to know what it would be like to just be in a bunch of chickens, just clucking around and talking...cause I know it intellectually, but not experientially. And yet, being among a group of men, there's that same dynamic of trying to be a chameleon, and then outing myself for a minute…But also, too, trying to figure out where I fit, and I think my encouraging of him to become more artistic, jewelry and stuff, is to awaken…his feminine side, not to dishonor his masculinity, but more to raise his masculinity and his femininity to match my confused masculine/feminine sides for a partnership, cause I think the reason the gentleman who died, the one I was with for 15 years, the reason we had such a wonderful relationship was...he was very much a guy, builder, things like that, but he also had a very feminine side because, being born with a genetic disease, you're facing death all the time. It's not that that feminizes you; it just profoundly opens you. And Bruce's amazing, because he's very much a man's man, and yet now he's awakening to his feminine side. It's really kind of cool, because he is allowing himself to be vulnerable. And then if he's allowing himself to be vulnerable, then my true vulnerability can allow itself to show, not just my cultivated, or protective vulnerability. Like, I can do this, cause if you do this I'll only lose my fingers, instead of jumping in and like "I could lose everything!" Anyway, there's a lot of stuff coming up for me.

(Cliff) In my imagination, the big unknown thing was the experience that we had that we shared on Saturday. I felt when I left...something just happened, and I feel different. But I can't really articulate yet how I feel different, but I know that something's changed.

(Tom) Well I see there's always a shift...you were talking about how the group was always together...it was always ready to be together in this setting, in this inquiry, and the couples were all out there, you just had to let it go to get them to come...you had to open up for them to come. But in the same way, any time you go in, whenever you have an experience, like this experience, it does cause a change, because we've all been in this same experience together, and we've gotten to know other people in this experience, we've had some deep interactions between us as a couple...and anytime that there's a different thing happening every day, then there's always this big...it may not be that big of a shift, but this one was more profound because of the interaction and the dynamics between us as a couple, and also between all of the couples together. Yeah, I feel definitely changed. Two weeks ago I didn't know any of these – you – people. But now, after a week, there's this whole new dynamic.

(Stacy) But it also reflects back on coming together in this group – some of us were able to set down our masks, and be safe together, and have fun together, and open up doors that, before you had never opened these doors before, and now you have all these new rooms you didn’t even know you had, that you could couldn’t really as couples go into and say…it’s funny, your poem for me, I was visualizing a boat traveling through the water, having a net, but not realizing the net was actually continuing to stretch, this whole big bundle of stuff had stopped the boat, just before shore, and there was this, half cut bait and half pull it up and it’ll become flotsam…

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(Charlie) I think that I know I've run aground here…I usually, or I can go to engagements and I’ll not go again, cause I’ll avoid whatever it is, but I wanted to come here tonight. It would've been easy for me to just not come…I'm good at it. Anyway, that’s what’s different for me.

(Ellen) And I think a component of what you were looking for…people who were in relationships that were…that the spiritual component was really important to them. I know that’s always been a foundation of our relationship. And I think that’s different in this room than just going to a party of couples. Everybody was committed to each other in a spiritual way.

(Stacy) I really liked your dance, and what went on. I mean, you just shattered my heart open with such joy, and also too, the willingness to be so vulnerable in front of us was just beautiful. Both of you. Thank you for that gift. Cause it also brought us vulnerability when we came home and talked about it behind your back. Like a foodie…when you come home from a great meal, and you’re like, how can we bring that? What ingredients…what smells…the bravery…for the compassionate with you guys, from each…I'm gonna start crying…from each one of you I took a feather, or a piece of clay, and we’re weaving into our relationship. So thank you. Cause you don’t get that, like she said, when you go to a party with other couples.

(Cliff) Robert said that one of the points that he noticed was when everybody put their costumes on, right? Everybody had their moment out there, you put your costumes on and you came through the door…it kind of raised the energy and the investment that everybody had in that moment. It was like “now we’re really…this is game time! We’ve got our whole suit on! Let’s go in there and do it!” You could see, looking at the video…you could see little bits of that earlier when you had the masks on and everybody was moving around…there were some neat interactions. There was a moment when Tom and Bruce did a little tango together against the side of the room, and just spontaneous moments of people relating to each other.

(Ellen) Actually, I think it was Tom and Larry.

(Cliff) Was it Tom and Larry? OK…just stuff like that popping up. But when you did the duets, it really condensed all that into…

(Tom) I was going to say that it was easier with the mask on. I would never have put on a costume and gone out and acted in front of people, without the mask at first…or done any of that movement without the mask. I don’t like being in front of people, even though I'm a recreation director, it’s really difficult for me to go out in front of groups and do things sometimes, especially an acting kind of thing. So with the mask, it helped me be more free…maybe hid me, so I could do whatever behind the mask…it was the mask.

(Stacy) The mask did it.

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(Tom) The mask did it, yeah.

(Cliff) Well, one side is hidden, but the other side is revealed. So, they give you permission to be…cause, I mean, it’s sort of a dual awareness, right? You’re still you, but yet you have permission to bring something into the room that you wouldn’t do with your ordinary mask

(Larry) It focuses on something other than this (gestures toward face). You don’t reflect off of this…you reflect off the mask.

(Stacy) Almost like a shield…protection.

(Larry) It draws the attention, instead of this.

(Tina) Not to bring politics into this, but I know that a lot of people have been talking about hope for the future, and hope for things going on. I am a biology major, so I consider myself a scientist, and a lot of scientists are talking about hope. I think that I've been focusing on hope for my own personal future, and hope for our future, so I think that’s been a present thing in my mind, at least.

(Lars) I definitely feel similarly. I thought the whole experience was very encouraging in a lot of ways. I've talked a bit about the artistic inspiration that it stirred up for me, but on a totally different level, like I said before, I tend to think I know how the world works or how I think the world works, but when you actually sit down in a room with a bunch of strangers and do something that you’ve never done before, that can totally change your perspective a bit. So on a lot of really broad levels about humanity at large, it was encouraging and hopeful to be with people that I’d never met that are all very cool, kind people…I don’t dislike any of you, not that that matters…it was uplifting, I guess.

(Larry) I would have to say that what happened last Saturday is the fruit of…the evolution of…the entire arc of our life, and the kind of world view that we individually have developed, and have developed together with our significant others, and how those relationships change our worldview from what we brought to that, and then what we bring together then changes it even more. It’s like every one of those interactions is changing us, and changing the way I view myself, the way I view other people, the way I view my partner…

(Stacy) But this collaboration that we did, cause even though we came with our partners and were working with our partners…that you had us dance together, you had us do things, and even though we were couples doing even the costuming, there was still a sense of collaboration among us on the costuming, just because I know, for us, coming in after you guys, it was just that sense of ‘what did they use? What else can we use?’ It was a sharing; it was almost like cooking together. But having come together, that we were being vulnerable to each other also opened up our vulnerability to everybody else. So it

238 was… we each were bringing things and actually allowing it all to go in the same soup bowl.

(Stacy) What I realized is that, by making the masks, we got more intimate in front of each other, and so that when we started doing the group thing, we were all similarly vulnerable. So I think it worked out well.

(Cliff) My assumption was that, over the course of the day, you would get to know each other very well. Was that accurate? Aside from the name piece, do you have a felt sense of everybody in the group, pretty much?

(Rebecca) There wasn’t a lot of talking connecting…there was more the dancing and moving. Yeah, I feel connected in a kind of visceral, humanity way. We talked during the break, a couple of us talked. But when I connected like that I would say yes I got to know more but. In the actual inquiry time frame, it really was more about us, which was good.

(Charlie) I’d say it was more about this (holding mask). I really got to know more about myself.

(Cliff) I thought it was so interesting that you did the inside of the mask, which…nobody else did that.

(Charlie) Those are my feelings on the inside.

(Cliff) I've seen that done with masks before, but I totally didn’t expect it. It was really a surprise.

(Stacy) I was afraid we’d be decorating each other’s masks…I was like, Omigod! Cut this Virgo judge! Whatever he does to your mask, let it be OK! So I was really glad that I get to…

(Cliff) Yeah, so, surprises. Another moment that really stood out for me – that Lori pointed out – was when Ryan and Addie did their piece, and Addie had that drumbeat, and then they went off and they came back, and everybody picked up that drumbeat. It was just a spontaneous group bonding that…I couldn’t have planned for it, because I had no idea who was going to pick up what. There were a couple of other moments that…oh! When you guys (to Rebecca and Charlie) did your duet, and then at the end you said “and so it is,” and then everybody who’s ever been to the Center said “and so it is.” And it felt like that was exactly the right thing to happen there. It was sort of a reverential end to a piece that had a lot of soul in it. And then, at the end of the day, when we were in the circle, and everybody spontaneously sighed out with a “Aaaah!” So I think, energetically we get to know each other in a situation like that, working together, moving around each other. In some way, we’re used to using our intellect and our voices to communicate, but somehow our bodies communicate in ways that we can only hope to get out of the way of

239 and just let it unfold. And I think that will probably be part of my learnings, because it was such a surprise to me – the group dynamic that happens.

(Charlie) This part of my mask, I just realized it now, this whole piece is about play. This is a colorful, dancing frog thing…I put that up there because that’s what I want. That’s weird! Now what we’re talking about is the idea of more play. Now I get it! (Laughter) It’s written on your forehead. But you can’t see it cause it’s written on your forehead!)

(Stacy) We do send messages to ourselves, if we’re listening.

(Ellen) I'm trying to think if what was different about this process as opposed to all of the rest of that…and it’s really interesting…even the trip I went to with my son, where I wasn’t the leader. There’s something more powerful about it when it was facilitated for us, rather than, “oh, let’s sit down and have a talk, or let’s go and play, or let’s do this.” There was something…cause it’s like the element of surprise. Somebody just gave me one of those things that tickle your head like that, but you can’t do it on yourself, cause you expect it. You have to do it on somebody else, so they feel it. And I think that’s what I mostly got out of this: I didn’t have control. I didn’t have expectations. I had trust, and allowance, as opposed to us always having to do it or make it. And it was a nice thing. And there’s not a lot for couples to do that. We make our own.

(Cliff) I was impressed that you could set aside your own experience and just allow yourself to have the experience you had, that you could trust yourself to be led through that experience…

(Lars) It felt like, at least for me, the whole experience was kind of a lesson in presentness. I pride myself in at least attempting to be somebody who’s very present…if anything, to the degree that I'm not thinking about what’s happening next. But I also struggle with that at the same time. So like I said before, being with her was very grounding, but also doing a physical, creative, artistic activity, with my hands…you have to be present for that. Whereas, most stuff that I do artistically, it’s musical, or I'm writing, and it’s more abstract. So in a way…I don’t know quite how to articulate it…but what we were doing literally kind of paralleled the emotional experience of it as well, if that makes any sense.

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APPENDIX 15

SUMMARY OF LEARNINGS

This dissertation inquiry explored the experience of five couples in order to address the question of how collaborative imaginative play might affect each partner’s perception of hope and possibility within their relationship. The process of data collection was guided by a hypothesis that collaborative imaginative play with a trusted other might awaken implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship, which, in turn, might imbue the current, adult relationship with a sense of hope and possibility. To clarify, implicit memories are general rules formed from early interactions with the external world; these are deeply held although consciously inaccessible, and influence our beliefs and actions as adults. The transformational relationship in question is with one’s mother or first caregiver, the cauldron from which one’s sense of self-identity first emerged. Christopher Bollas’ theory of the transformational object proposes that a trace of this early, preverbal transformational experience lingers throughout the lifespan, and that we are drawn to people, events, or things that evoke the intense affect (emotion) associated with it.

Data was gathered from the participants’ words, images, and non-verbal expression, as recorded in their writing and artwork, and in transcripts of audio and video recordings from the two data collection sessions and the researcher debriefing. Additional data was gathered from my own observations and that of my two co-researchers. The study’s data and learnings, or research outcomes, broadly support both the Hypothesis

241 and Research Problem. However, they also reveal the omission of an important intermediary step: before hope was expressed, its first quickening was to be found in expressions of joy and interest/excitement. The participants had to have direct, sensory experience of those affects – for the affects are first and foremost embodied phenomena – before they were able to apply conceptual frames such as “hope” or “possibility” to the immediacy of their non-verbal, affective experience.

As a result, the cumulative learning of this inquiry states that the positive affects of joy and interest/excitement generated during collaborative, imaginative play with trusted others – rather than the reawakening of implicit memories of an earlier transformational relationship – were the necessary precursors to expressions of hope and possibility. In addition, there were six learnings that emerged from key moments during

Meeting One, from the collaborative process of interpretation and integration that took place in Meeting Two, and during the lengthy process of transcribing the audio and video recordings that documented the research sessions. It should be noted that the order in which the learnings are presented does not necessarily reflect their order of emergence, nor does it establish or diminish the relative importance of each.

The first of the six learnings states that playful, creative collaboration within an environment perceived as welcoming and safe enabled reconnection with an earlier stage of life, imbued with the affects joy and interest/excitement. That earlier stage, whether it was the beginnings of the current relationship or the individual’s childhood, was perceived as more spontaneous and authentic. As I observe in the cumulative learning, the emergence of these positive affects was the necessary precursor for expressions of hope and possibility.

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The second learning states that the group as a whole had a transformative effect on the experience of each participant, both individually and as a member of his or her respective couple. Other couples were seen to be playful, creative, and worthy of respect and emulation. The group helped to engender and sustain an atmosphere of playful exploration, and was seen as positive, inspiring, and a source of novel, alternative possibilities. The playful, creative collaboration, which I had anticipated being a process contained within each couple’s relationship, became, in fact, a group phenomenon, affecting each member within his or her relationship. This resulted in the mutual reinforcement, amongst the group as a whole, of each individual’s experience of joy and interest/excitement, and underscores the profoundly relational nature of hope.

The third learning states that the nature of masks is inherently paradoxical: they both conceal and reveal; they are at the same time “me” and “not me.” This ambiguous quality furthered the development of a liminal state (a transitional, transformative period) in which the mask wearer’s dominant self-aspect lost some of its tenacious grip and another, less privileged aspect asserted itself. Additionally, the particular mask-making process used in this dissertation inquiry (plaster gauze) supported the emergence of this liminal state by evoking images of birth and transformation. At the outset, my intention had been to lead the participants toward an early recognition and embodiment of a neglected aspect of self, which they then could express through their masks. However, since I had not anticipated how many steps in the mask making process would prove to be evocative, the actual process was not so linear. A character did not emerge all at once, but incrementally throughout the day. In response, the participants needed to summon up

243 a tolerance for ambiguity and incompleteness: a willingness to recognize what they did not yet know, but still continue.

The fourth learning states that during Meeting One, issues of authority and control were experienced both intrapersonally, in the form of critical inner voices and perfectionistic thoughts, and interpersonally, through the desire to direct or control another’s behavior, whether acted upon or not. In addition, this learning notes that creative activity was experienced as playful and enjoyable to the extent that control was willingly surrendered. To some extent, there was a division in the group between those people who self-identified as “artists” or were described as such by their partners, and those who did not, or experienced their creativity in a less tactile realm, such as music or poetry. For the latter group, it was important to recognize that creativity – being an artist

– was more a matter of spontaneity and of being in the moment, than it was about perfection. Surrender, for the non-artists, was to the creative process itself, and all its messiness, and to a kind of not-knowing, or beginner mind. As the participants reported, their willingness to drop their adult preoccupations and simply enter into play aided them in more fully entering the creative process, and so, reconnecting with a childlike sense of joy and interest/excitement.

The fifth learning states that gender informed the participants’ experience in the following ways: through their perception of control/strength and surrender/vulnerability as culturally gendered attributes; in the degree of permission they felt to claim and express an artistic aspect of themselves; and in comments suggesting that men and women express themselves differently in mixed gender, versus single gender groups.

Although I had not consciously planned it, the first day’s activities offered a balance of

244 masculine and feminine styles of relating. This offered the participants an opportunity to re-imagine strength and vulnerability as non-gendered attributes, available to all. They further reported that witnessing others’ vulnerability gave them more permission to express their own.

The sixth learning states that hope is a liminal phenomenon, and as such, was not expressed directly, but rather through images that suggested transformation and pathways toward expanded future possibilities. While hope was primarily expressed for the relationship, in some cases it was also expressed as hope for the larger world. Learning six further underscores the profoundly relational nature of hope.

In his theory of the transformational object, Bollas suggests that powerful, preverbal memories, imbued with an almost-divine sense of hope and possibility, inform our yearnings in adult life. While such memories may have been interwoven through the participants’ experience, no direct expression emerged to support that theory. Ultimately,

Bollas’ theory, a beautiful metaphor and poetically “true,” remained unprovable. Perhaps this is appropriate in an inquiry such as this, grounded as it was in Imaginal psychology.

With this in mind, the cumulative learning speaks to the power of the imagination, of play, and especially, of relationship in generating and sustaining hope, while at the same time, acknowledging an aspect of the Hypothesis that was not supported by the data.

245

APPENDIX 16

SIX TUTELARY SPIRITS

My dissertation committee asked me to design an experiential activity that would impart to them (and others attending the defense) something of the flavor of the learnings generated by, and the methodology employed in this project. To that end, I made six masks, modeled on a positive image of my face. Each mask represents an Imaginal Structure associated with one of the learnings. From left to right, they are: The Healing Muse, The Dark Mother, Trickster, I Can Do It Myself, The Divine Child, and The Wounded Feminine.

246

NOTES

Chapter 1

1. Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3, 8.

2. Likewise, I am indebted to my Dissertation Advisor, Art Bohart, who gave me the opportunity to role play Winnicott during a course he taught on the history of psychology, and so explore the man and his work deeply for the first time.

3. Donald Woods Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London, UK: Routledge Classics, 2005), 51.

4. Ibid.

5. Shaun McNiff, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2004), 84.

6. McNiff, “Ethics and the Autonomy of Images,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 18 (1991): 282.

7. James Hillman, A Blue Fire: Selected Writings by James Hillman, ed. Thomas Moore (New York: HarperCollins, 1989), 44.

8. C.G. Jung, quoted in Hillman, above, from “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,” in Collected Works 13: Alchemical Studies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), §54.

9. McNiff, Art Heals, 85.

10. Hollis, 45.

11. Ann Belford Ulanov, “Coniunctio and Marriage,” Psyche and Family: Jungian Applications to Family Therapy, ed. Laura S. Dodson and Terrill L. Gibson (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1996), 118.

12. Polly Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected: Love After the Romance Has Ended (New York, NY: Fromm International, 1997), 71.

247

13. William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood,” in The Complete Poetical Works (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999).

14. James Hollis, The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other (Toronto, CAN: Inner City Books, 1998), 48.

15. Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), 17.

16. Charlotte Stephenson, “The Concept of Hope Revisited for Nursing,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 16 (1991): 1456-1461.

17. Bollas, 16.

18. Jung, “Psychological Types,” in Collected Works 6, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), §681. Jung says, “I use emotion as synonymous with affect.” Affect/emotion can be understood as the function mediating body and psyche.

19. Louis H. Stewart, “A Brief Report: Affect and Archetype,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 32 (1987): 40.

20. Rainer Maria Rilke, “A Walk,” in Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke: A Translation From the German and Commentary, trans. Robert Bly (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1981).

21. Marion Woodman, in The Ravaged Bridegroom (Toronto, CAN: Inner City Books, 1990) says this about that: “It is as if life, when it is truly being lived, were a series of birth canals. We go along for a period of time, then suddenly or gradually we are no longer satisfied. Our job is no longer challenging, our partner is no longer exciting, the old ways no longer suffice. If we relate to the natural rhythms of the psyche, we find ourselves in a womb, withdrawn from the world, no longer who we are or where we are going. If we can stay with the pain of the death of the old, and bear the crucifixion of the transition, eventually we are born anew. We may enjoy the new plateau for a few years, then the opposites begin to break apart again, forcing us to new levels of consciousness. Sometimes we feel we are moving up, sometimes down – whichever way is both up and down. The lotus flower that opens to the sun has its roots deep in the nourishing mud.”

22. Antonio Machado, “Traveler, your footprints,” in There Is No Road, trans. Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2003) http://www.whitepine.org/noroad.pdf (accessed June 12, 2017).

248

23. Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” in New and Selected Poems (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992), 110.

24. Vera John-Steiner, Creative Collaboration (Oxford, UK/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000).

25. Mary Jo Deegan and Michael R. Hill, “Doctoral Dissertations as Liminal Journeys of the Self: Betwixt and Between in Graduate Sociology Programs,” Teaching Sociology 19, no. 3 (July, 1991).

26. McNiff, Art Heals, 71-72

27. Mary Watkins, Waking Dreams (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1984), 101-103.

28. C.G. Jung, “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,” in Alchemical Studies: The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 13, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), §93.

29. Aftab Omer, “Quotes and Definitions,” personal communication from author (July 2017).

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York: Harper Collins, 1977), 22.

33. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Diane Austin and Michelle Forinash, “Arts-Based Inquiry,” in Music Therapy Research, (2nd ed.), ed. B. Wheeler (Gilsum, NH: Barcelona, 2005), 461.

249

41. Jung, Golden Flower, §44.

42. McNiff, Art Heals, 5.

43. Hollis, 43.

44. Barbara Stevens Sullivan, Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle (Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1990) 23.

Chapter 2

1. Stephen K. Levine and Ellen G. Levine, Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy: Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives (London, UK: Jessica Kingsley, 1999), 11.

2. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 1969), 95.

3. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 127.

4. Jeffrey Miller, The Transcendent Function: Jung’s Model of Psychological Growth Through Dialogue With the Unconscious (Albany, NY: State University of New York, NY Press, 2004), 129. With reference to the work of Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Miller defines this as “a space where distinctions between subject/object and inner/outer disappear, where the unconscious can be experienced and transformation achieved.”

5. Sutton-Smith, “Recapitulation Redressed,” in Conceptual Social-Cognitive and Contextual Issues in the Fields of Play, ed. Jaipaul L. Roopnarine (Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, 2002), 3.

6. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 8.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 3.

9. Jaak Panskepp and Douglas Watt, “What is Basic About Basic Emotions? Lasting Lessons From Affective Neuroscience,” Emotion Review 3, no. 4 (October 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1754073911410741

250

10. Panskepp, “Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans,” Consciousness and Cognition 14, no.1 (March 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2004.10.004

11. Ibid., 33.

12. Stuart Brown, “Through the Lens of Play,” ReVision 17, no. 4 (Spring 1995): 8.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1950), 13, 14, 28.

16. Ibid., 17, 20.

17. Ibid., 22-23.

18. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York, NY: PAJ Publications, 1982), 31.

19. Ibid.

20. Joffre Dumazedier, “Leisure,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David Sills (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1968): 248-249. Quoted in Turner, 35.

21. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 202.

22. Ibid., 10, 67, 18.

23. Huizinga, 11-12.

24. Sutton-Smith, 67.

25. Ronald L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 2nd ed. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 54.

26. Ibid.

27. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 85-86.

251

28. Galina Lindquist, “Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene: Neo- Shamanism in Contemporary Sweden” (PhD diss., Stockholm University, 1997), 255.

29. Don Handelman, “The Playful Seductions of Neo-Shamanic Ritual.” History of Religions 39, no. 1 (August, 1999): 71.

30. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 51.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 47.

33. Ibid., 103.

34. Ibid.

35. G. Spivack and M. Levine, “Self-Regulation and Acting-Out in Normal Adolescence,” in Progress Report for National Institute of Mental Health Grant M-4531 (Devon, PA: Devereaux Foundation, 1964), 214.

36. Jerome Singer and Dorothy Singer, “The Values of the Imagination,” in Play and Learning: The Johnson and Johnson Pediatric Round Table 111. (New York, NY: Gardner, 1979), 211.

37. Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood, trans. C. Gattegno and F.M. Hodgson (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1962), 149.

38. Ibid.

39. Joan Chodorow, Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology: The Moving Imagination (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), 73.

40. Stewart, “Kinship Libido: Shadow in Marriage and Family,” in The Archetype of Shadow in a Split World, ed. M.A. Mattoon (Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 1987), 387. Cited in Chodorow, Dance Therapy, 79.

41. Luciano L’Abate, The Praeger Handbook of Play Across the Life Cycle: Fun from Infancy to Old Age (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC/CLIO, 2009), 244.

42. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 41.

43. Ryan LaMothe, “Vitalizing Objects and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 18, no. 2 (2001): 324.

252

44. Ellen Y. Siegelman, “Playing With the Opposites: Symbolization and Transitional Space,” in Liminality and Transitional Phenomena, ed. Nathan Schwartz- Salant and Murray Stein (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1991), 152.

45. Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art (New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1990), 47.

46. Donald L. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (New York, NY: WW Norton & Co., 1994), 49, 136.

47. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 38.

48. Stewart, “Affect and Archetype,” in The Body in Analysis, ed. Nathan Schwartz-Salant and Murray Stein (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1986), 190.

49. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 32.

50. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 40.

51. Ibid., 37-38.

52. Chodorow, Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, 75.

53. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 7.

54. Ibid., 17.

55. Gregory Bateson, “The Message: ‘This is Play,’” in Group Processes, ed. B. Shaffner (New York, NY: Josiah Macy, 1956), cited in Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 1.

56. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 96.

57. Penny Lewis, “The Transformative Process Within the Imaginal Realm,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 15 (1998): 310.

58. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 67.

59. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 55.

60. Ibid.

61. John Bowlby, A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development (London, UK: Routledge, 1988), 164.

253

62. See, for example, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, “Attachment and Other Affectional Bonds Across the Life Cycle,” in Attachment Across the Life Cycle, ed. Colin Murray Parkes, Joan Stevenson-Hinde, and Peter Marris (London/New York: Routledge, 2006).

63. Hollis, 35.

64. Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2000), 56.

65. Allan N. Schore, “Right-Brain Affect Regulation: An Essential Mechanism of Development, Trauma, Dissociation, and Psychotherapy,” in The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development, and Clinical Practice, ed. Diana Fosha, Daniel J. Siegel, and Marion F. Solomon (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), 115.

66. Schore, “Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health,” Infant Mental Health Journal 22, no. 1-2 (2001): 13.

67. Schore, “Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship,” 18.

68. Leslie S. Greenberg and Rhonda N. Goldman, Emotion-Focused Therapy: The Dynamics of Emotion, Love, and Power (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2008), 43.

69. Ibid., 41.

70. Ibid., 45.

71. Diana Fosha, “The Dyadic Regulation of Affect,” Journal of Clinical Psychology/In Session 57, no. 2 (2001): 2.

72. Ibid.

73. Greenberg and Goldman, Emotion-Focused Therapy, 43.

74. Catalina Woldarsky and Leslie S. Greenberg, “The Construction of a Model of the Process of Couples’ Forgiveness in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Couples,” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 37, no. 4 (2011): 498.

254

75. Stewart, “Affect and Archetype in Analysis,” in Archetypal Processes in Psychotherapy, ed. Nathan Schwartz-Salant and Murray Stein (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1987), 133.

76. Bowlby, Attachment, vol. 1 of Attachment and Loss, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1982), 209.

77. Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, ed./trans. James Strachey (New York, NY: WW Norton & Co., 1949), 70.

78. Bowlby, Attachment, 375.

79. Mary D. Salter Ainsworth and Silvia M. Bell, “Attachment, Exploration, and Separation: Illustrated by the Behavior of One-Year-Olds in a Strange Situation,” Child Development 41, no. 1 (1970): 62.

80. Mary Main, Erik Hesse, and Nancy Kaplan, “Predictability of Attachment Behavior and Representational Processes at 1, 6, and 19 Years of Age,” in Attachment From Infancy to Adulthood: The Major Longitudinal Studies, ed. Klaus E. Grossman, Karin Grossman, and Everett Waters (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2005), 246.

81. Mary Main and Judith Solomon, “Procedures for Identifying Infants as Disorganized/Disoriented During the Ainsworth Strange Situation.” In Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention, ed. M.T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, and E.M. Cummings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 121.

82. Main et al. “Predictability of Attachment Behavior,” 247.

83. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 13.

84. Main et al. “Procedures,” 274.

85. Ibid., 280.

86. Ibid,. 281.

87. Marinus H. Van IJzendoorn, Carlo Schuengel, and Marian J. Bakermans- Kranenburg, “Disorganized Attachment in Early Childhood: Meta-Analysis of Precursors, Concomitants, and Sequelae,” Development and Psychopathology 11 (1999): 240-242.

88. Ibid., 244.

255

89. Bowlby, A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988), 64.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid., 523.

92. Louis Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain, 2nd Edition (Scranton, PA: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), 335.

93. Ibid., 210-213.

94. Alicia F. Lieberman, “Attachment Theory and Infant-Parent Psychotherapy: Some Conceptual, Clinical, and Research Considerations.” In Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology Vol. 3: Models and Integrations, ed. Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1991), 272.

95. Mary Main and Ruth Goldwyn, “Adult attachment classification system, draft 6.2.” (1998). Unpublished manuscript, University of California at Berkeley.

96. Rachel Saunders, Deborah Jacobvitz, Maria Zaccagnino, Laruen M. Beverung, and Nancy Hazen, “Pathways to Earned Security: The Role of Alternative Support Figures,” Attachment and Human Development 13, no. 4 (2011): 407.

97. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1978), 88.

98. Winnicott, “The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development,” The International Psycho-Analytical Library, 64 (London, UK: The Hogarth Press, 1965), 64.

99. Ibid., 87.

100. Ibid., 59.

101. Ibid., 86.

102. Ibid., 87.

103. Ibid., 141.

104. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

256

105. Winnicott, 145.

106. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, (London, UK: Routledge, 1999), 11.

107. Ibid., 68.

108. Karen Jaenke, “Soul and Soullessness,” Re-Vision 31, no. 1 (2010): 9.

109. Hollis, 31.

110. Winnicott, 64.

111. Ibid., 1, 2.

112. Elaine N. Aron and Arthur Aron, “Love and Expansion of the Self: The State of the Model,” Personal Relationships 3 (1996): 47.

113. Arthur Aron, Elaine N. Aron, and Christina Norman, “Self-expansion Model of Motivation and Cognition in Close Relationships and Beyond,” in Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes, ed. Garth J. O. Fletcher and Margaret S. Clark (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2003), 478.

114. Aron and Aron, “Love and Expansion of the Self,” 48.

115. Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), 17.

116. Aron and Aron, “Love and Expansion of the Self,” 49.

117. James A. Russell, “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion,” Psychological Review 110, no. 1(2003): 148.

118. Aron and Aron, “Romantic Relationships from the Perspectives of the Self- Expansion Model and Attachment Theory: Partially Overlapping Circles,” in Dynamics of Romantic Love: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex, ed. Mario Mikulincer and Gail S. Goodman (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2006), 363.

119. Aron and Aron, “Love and Expansion of the Self,” 54.

120. Aron and Aron, “Romantic Relationships,” 363.

121. Aron and Aron, “Love and Expansion of the Self,” 49.

122. Ibid., 54.

257

123. Ibid. 55.

124. Freud, “’Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness,” quoted in Breger, A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2009), 15.

125. Jung, “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship,” in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 17, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), §331.

126. Jung, “Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self,” in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 9, part 2, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), §42.

127. Jung, “Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 8, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), §131.

128. James Hillman, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 1997), 52.

129. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1976/1992), 47.

130. Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, Marriage: Dead or Alive, trans. Murray Stein (Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1977), 41.

131. Ibid., 61.

132. Ibid., 104.

133. Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected, 70-71.

134. Ibid., 18.

135. Ibid., 19-20.

136. Ibid., 26.

137. Thomas Moore, Soul Mates (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994), 49.

138. Ibid., 50.

258

139. Ibid., 256.

140. Ibid., 15, 16.

141. Ibid., 16.

142. C. R Snyder, Cheri Harris, John R Anderson, Sharon A. Holleran, Lori M. Irving, Sandra T. Sigmon, Lauren Yoshinobu, June Gibb, Charyle Langelle, and Pat Harney, “The Will and the Ways: Development and Validation of an Individual- Differences Measure of Hope,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60, no. 4 (1991): 570-585.

143. Maria Miceli and Cristiano Castelfranchi, “Hope: The Power of Wish and Possibility,” Theory and Psychology 20, no. 2 (2010): 268.

144. Travis J. Lybbert and Bruce Wydick, “Poverty, Aspirations, and the Economy of Hope: A Framework for Study with Preliminary Results from the Oaxaca Hope Project” (paper presented at Feed the Future Innovation Labs: Engaging Universities to End Global Poverty and Hunger, Davis, CA, October 17, 2016), 10.

145. Anthony Scioli, Michael Ricci, Than Nyugen, Erica R. Scioli, “Hope: Its Nature and Measurement,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 3, no. 2 (2011): 79.

146. Martin E.P. Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi, “Positive Psychology: An Introduction,” American Psychologist 55, no.1 (2000): 7.

147. Miceli and Castelfranchi, 269.

148. Lybbert and Wydick, 4.

149. St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Three/Section One/Chapter One/Article Seven: The Virtues,” http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a7.htm (accessed July 25, 2017.

150. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, “Trust in the Slow Work,” in Hearts on Fire: Praying With Jesuits, ed. Michael Harter (Chicago, Ill: Loyola Press, 2005).

151. Ibid.

152. Bowlby, “The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds: II. Some Principles of Psychotherapy,” British Journal of Psychiatry (1977): 429.

153. Stephenson, “The Concept of Hope Revisited for Nursing,” 1456-1461.

259

154. Ibid.

155. Sue Wright, Dancing Between Hope and Despair: Trauma, Attachment, and the Therapeutic Relationship (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 174.

156. Hal S. Shorey, C.R. Snyder, Kevin L. Rand, Jill Hockemeyer, and David B. Feldman, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Hope Theory Weathers Its First Decade,” Psychological Inquiry 13, no. 4 (2002): 326.

157. Ibid.

158. Kristin L. Otis, E. Scott Huebner, and Kimberly J. Hills, “Origins of Early Adolescents' Hope: Personality, Parental Attachment, and Stressful Life Events,” Canadian Journal of School Psychology 3, no. 2 (2016): 105.

159. Ibid.

160. Ibid., 116.

161. Ibid., 105.

162. Ibid.

163. C.R. Snyder, “Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind,” Psychological Inquiry 13, no.4 (2002): 263.

164. Ibid.

165. Karin Dufault and Benita C. Martocchio, “Hope: Its Spheres and Dimensions,” The Nursing Clinics of North America 20, no. 2 (June, 1985): 386.

166. Lisa G. Aspinwall and Samantha L. Leaf, “In Search of the Unique Aspects of Hope: Pinning Our Hopes on Positive Emotions, Future-Oriented Thinking, Hard Times, and Other People,” Psychological Inquiry 13, no. 4 (2002): 284.

167. Snyder, “Hope Theory,” 263.

168. Ibid, 264.

169. Carolyn M. Byrne, Harriet Woodside, Janet Landeen, Helen Kirkpatrick, Anna Bernardo, Julie Pawlick, “The Importance of Relationships in Fostering Hope,” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services 32, no. 9 (1994): 33.

260

170. Michael E. McCullough, “Savoring Life, Past and Present: Explaining What Hope and Gratitude Share in Common,” Psychological Inquiry 13, no.4 (2002): 303.

171. Ibid.

172. Ibid., 302.

173. James L. Griffith and Anjali DSouza, “Demoralization and Hope in Clinical Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,” in The Psychotherapy of Hope, ed. Renato D. Alarcón and Julia B. Frank (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 172.

174. Dalai Lama and Arthur C. Brooks, “Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded,” New York Times, November 4, 2016, https://nyti.ms/2jDu71L

175. Bollas, “The Transformational Object,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 60 (1979): 97.

176. Bollas, The Shadow of the Object, 16.

177. Ibid.

178. Bollas, “The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation,” in Transitional Objects and Potential Spaces: Literary Uses of D.W. Winnicott, ed. Peter L. Rudnytsky (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993), 40.

179. Ibid.

180. Ibid., 46.

181. Ibid.

182. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

183. Denise J. Larsen and Rachel Stege, “Hope-Focused Practices During Early Psychotherapy Sessions: Part I: Implicit Approaches,” Journal of Psychotherapy Integration 20, no. 3 (2010): 277.

184. Carl R. Rogers, “The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 60, no. 6 (1992).

185. Ibid., 11.

186. Jerome D. Frank and Julia B. Frank, Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991),

261

cited in Denis O’Hara, “Hope: The Neglected Common Factor,” Therapy Today 21, no.9 (2010): 2.

187 . Larsen and Stege, 284.

188. Timothy E. Coppock, Jesse J. Owen, Elena Zagarskas, and Melissa Schmidt, “The Relationship Between Therapist and Client Hope With Therapy Outcomes,” Psychotherapy Research 20, no. 6 (2010): 620.

189. Ibid.

190. Larsen and Stege, 284.

191. Wright, 55.

192. Ibid., 57.

193. Anne Alvarez, Live Company: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children (London, UK: Routledge, 1991), 176.

194. Ibid., 150.

195. Dufault and Martocchio, 386.

196 . Denis O’Hara, “Three Spheres of Hope: Generalised, Particularised, and Transformative,” in Phoenix Rising From the Contemporary Global Society, ed. Lisa Ortiz and Denis J. O’Hara, (Oxford, UK: Interdisciplinary Press, 2014), 1.

197. Ibid., 5.

198. Dufault and Martocchio, 388.

199. Dale Jacobs, “What’s Hope Got to Do With It? Toward a Theory of Hope and Pedagogy,” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 25, no. 4 (2005): 797.

200. Ibid.

201. Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (Riverdale, NY: American Mental Health Foundation Books, 1970): 22.

202. Ibid.

203. Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, 16.

262

204. David Ray Griffin, “Introduction: The Reenchantment of Science,” in The Reenchantment of Science, ed. David Ray Griffin (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988), 5.

205. Ibid., 6.

206. Mary Watkins, Waking Dreams (Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1984), 74.

207. Henri Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran to Shī’ite Iran, 2nd edition, trans. Nancy Pearson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, (1977), vii.

208. Ibid.

209. Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, 12.

210. Ibid., 15.

211. Corbin, ix.

212. Jung, “Psychological Types, §171.

213. Ibid., §169.

214. Ibid.

215. Ibid., §171.

216. John Keats, “Vale of Soul-Making,” from a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated April 21, 1810.

217. Ibid.

218. Ibid.

219. William Blake, The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), 702.

220. A. Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, vol. I (New York, NY: Phaeton Press, 1969), cited in Will W. Adams, “Love, Open Awareness, and Authenticity: A Conversation with William Blake and D.W. Winnicott,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 46, no. 9 (2006): 13.

221. Ibid.

263

222. Hillman, The Soul’s Code (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1997), 94.

223. Ibid.

224. Wordsworth, “The Prelude, Book Third: Residence at Cambridge,” in The Complete Poetical Works (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888; Bartleby.com, 1999).

225. Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 41.

226. Ibid., 29.

227. Ibid., 38.

228. Ibid., 98.

229. Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York, NY: Harcourt Inc., 1999), 186.

230. Ibid., 9.

231. Ibid., 319.

232. Ibid., 47-48.

233. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 37-38.

234. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 102.

235. Ibid., 108.

236. Alfred Plaut, “Reflections About Not Being Able to Imagine,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 11 (1966): 113.

237. Ibid., 116-117.

238. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, 30.

239. Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, 45.

240. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 183.

241. Ibid.

264

242. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, 41, 129.

243. Watkins, Invisible Guests, 89.

244. Jung, “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,” in Alchemical Studies: The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 13, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), §54.

245. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, 31.

246. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

247. Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, 14.

248. Ibid.

249. Watkins, Waking Dreams, 117.

250. McNiff, “Ethics and the Autonomy of Images,” 277.

251. Barbara Stevens Sullivan, Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1990), 2.

252. June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1994), 180.

253. Singer, 186.

254. Ibid.

255. Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1991), 64. Sharp defines imagos as: “The consequence of personal experience combined with archetypal images in the collective unconscious.” In the International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, ed. Alain de Mijolla (Detroit, MI: Thomsen Gale, 2005), 800, Jung is quoted as situating the imago “between the unconscious and consciousness, in a sense, as if in chiaroscuro.”

256. Singer, 186.

257. Bowlby, A Secure Base, 64.

258. Singer, 191.

265

259. bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 2004), 17.

260. hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York, NY: Perennial, 2001), 49.

261. Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected, 66.

262. Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women (New York, NY: Scribner, 2002), 20.

263. Singer, 178.

264. Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected, 100-101.

265. Ibid.

266. Singer, 193.

267. Ibid., 194.

268. Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage,” in Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Louis Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster, and Meredith Little (La Salle, Ill: Open Court Publishing Co., 1987), 4, 9.

269. Ibid., 9.

270. Ibid.

271. Ibid, 7, 14, 15.

272. Henry Corbin, Alone With the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sūfism of Ibn’Arabī (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969/1997), 189.

273. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 162.

274. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” in Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, §82.

275. Miller, The Transcendent Function, 5.

276. McNiff, Art-Based Research (London, UK/Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998), 56.

266

277. Robert L. Moore, “Ritual Process, Initiation, and Contemporary Religion,” in Jung’s Challenge to Contemporary Religion, ed. Murray Stein and Robert L. Moore (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1987), 151.

278. Moore, “Ministry, Sacred Space, and Theological Education: The Legacy of Victor Turner,” Theological Education (1984): 95.

279. Jan O. Stein and Murray Stein, “Psychotherapy, Initiation, and the Midlife Transition,” in Betwixt and Between, 293.

280. Ibid.

281. Ibid, 297.

282. Ibid, 299.

283. Stein and Stein, 300.

284. Alfred Margulies, The Empathic Imagination (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1989), 54-55.

285. Roslyn Arnold, Empathic Intelligence: Teaching, Learning, Relating (Sydney, AU: University of New South Wales Press, 2005), 23.

286. Lauren Wispé, “History of the Concept of Empathy,” in Empathy and Its Development, ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 18.

287. Ibid.

288. Paolo J. Knill, Ellen G. Levine, and Stephen K. Levine, Principles and Practices of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics (London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005), 40-41.

289. Derek Whitehead, “Poiesis and Art-Making: A Way of Letting-Be,” Contemporary Aesthetics 1 (2003), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7523862.0001.0005

290. Ibid.

291. Howard McConeghey, Art and Soul (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2003), 19.

292. Levine and Levine, 11.

267

293. McNiff, Art Heals, 104.

294. Jung, “Interpretation of Visions,” privately mimeographed seminar notes of Mary Foote (1941), cited in Jung on Active Imagination, ed. Chodorow (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 7.

295. Ibid.

296. Ibid.

297. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 170 ff.

298. Joseph J. Moreno, “The Music Therapist: Creative Arts Therapist and Contemporary Shaman.” The Arts in Psychotherapy 15 (1988): 273.

299. Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art (New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 30, 31, 93.

300. Ibid.

301. McNiff, “From Shamanism to Art Therapy,” Art Psychotherapy 6, no. 3 (1979): 156.

302. McNiff, “The Shaman Within,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 15 (1988): 288- 289.

303. McNiff, “From Shamanism to Art Therapy,” 156.

304. Paolo J. Knill, “Multiplicity as a Tradition: Theories for Interdisciplinary Arts Therapies – An Overview,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 21, no. 5 (1994): 321.

305. Ibid., 327.

306. Robert J. Landy, “Drama Therapy With Adults,” in Play Therapy With Adults, ed. Charles E. Schaefer (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 17-18.

307. McNiff, “Empathy With the Shadow: Engaging and Transforming Difficulties Through Art,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 47, vol. 3 (2007): 394.

308. Ibid.

268

309. Diane Austin and Michele Forinash, “Arts-Based Inquiry,” in Music Therapy Research, 2nd ed., ed. B. Wheeler (Gilsum, NH: Barcelona, 2005), 461.

310. Levine, Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy, 83.

311. McNiff, Art-Based Research, 56-57.

312. Jung, “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,” §44.

313. McNiff, Art Heals, 389.

314. Watkins, “Six Approaches to the Image in Art Therapy,” in Working With Images: The Theoretical Base of Archetypal Psychology, Benjamin Sells, ed. (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 2000), 198.

315. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

316. Ibid.

317. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, 41.

318. Watkins, Waking Dreams, 98.

319. McNiff, 85.

320. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” §82.

321. Chodorow, Jung on Active Imagination, 18.

322. Jung, §168

323. Michael Franklin, Mimi Farelly-Hansen, Bernie Marek, Nora Swan-Foster, and Sue Wallingford, “Transpersonal Art Therapy Education.” Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 17, no. 2 (2000): 101-110.

324. Landy. The Couch and the Stage: Integrating Words and Action in Psychotherapy (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2008), 23.

325. Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, 14, 17.

326. McConeghey, Art and Soul, 47.

327. Ibid., 34.

269

328. Watkins, “Six Approaches,” 198.

329. Levine, Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy, 74.

330. Chodorow, Jung on Active Imagination, 8.

331. Ibid.

332. Chodorow, “Marian Chace Annual Lecture: The Moving Imagination,” American Journal of Dance Therapy 22, no. 1 (2000): 8.

333. Chodorow, Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, 139.

334. Ibid., 144.

335. Daria Halprin, The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy: Working with Movement, Metaphor and Meaning (London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2003), 87.

336. Winnicott, 111.

337. Judi Young-Laughlin and Charles D. Laughlin, “How Masks Work, Or Masks Work How?” Journal of Ritual Studies 2, vol. 1 (1988): 63.

338. Anonymous, “Image and Identity: the Role of Masks in Various Cultures.” Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History Galleries, UCLA, 1972. Quoted in Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 80.

339. McNiff, “Ethics and the Autonomy of Images,” 282.

340. Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 21.

341. Hildegund Janzing, “The Use of the Mask in Psychotherapy,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 25, no. 3 (1998): 156.

342. Landy, “The Dramatic Basis of Role Theory,” The Arts in Psychotherapy 18, vol. 1 (1991): 33.

343. Landy, “Drama Therapy With Adults,” 18.

344. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, 102.

345. Ibid., 105.

270

346. Ibid., 115.

347. Ibid.

348. Jacob L. Moreno, The Essential Moreno: Writings on Psychodrama, Group Method, and Spontaneity, ed. Jonathan Fox (New York, NY: Springer Publishing, 1987), 131.

349. Adam Blatner, Foundations of Psychodrama: History, Theory, and Practice, 4th ed. (New York, NY: Springer Publishing Co., 2000), 15.

350. Ibid., 70.

351. Ibid., 70.

352. Ibid., 84.

353. Phil Jones, Drama as Therapy: Theory, Practice and Research, 2nd ed. (London, UK: Routledge, 2007), 161.

354. Ibid., 35.

355. McNiff, Art Heals, 5.

356. Ibid.

357. Ibid., 6.

358. Ibid., 272.

359. James Hollis, The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other (Toronto, CAN: Inner City Books, 1998), 65.

360. Ibid.

361. Ibid., 101.

362. Vera John-Steiner, Creative Collaboration (Oxford, UK/New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 37.

363. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 202.

271

Chapter 3

1. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

2. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1977), 31-34.

3. McNiff, Art Heals, 85.

4. McNiff, Art-Based Research, 157.

5. Daria Halprin, The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy: Working With Movement, Metaphor and Meaning (London, UK and Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004), 116-118.

6. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

7. Ibid.

8. Jung, “Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” §209.

Chapter 4

1. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 94-95. Turner defines liminality as the middle phase of a transformational journey, a “realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state…likened to death, to being in the womb…to the wilderness.”

2. Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality.”

3. William Blake, “The Angel,” from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (Urbana, ILL: Project Gutenberg, 2008). Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm#page35.

4. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 68.

5. Ibid., 54.

6. Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1987), 46.

272

7. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 11.

8. Winnicott, 47.

9. Chodorow, Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology, 113.

10. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 44.

11. Sutton-Smith, 67.

12. Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.”

13. Carolyn M. Byrne et al, “The Importance of Relationships in Fostering Hope,” in Journal of Psychosocial Nursing 32, no. 9 (1994).

14. Winnicott, 114.

15. Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” Theme issue, “The Anthropological Study of Human Play,” ed. Edward Norbeck, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 77.

16. McNiff, Art Heals, 155.

17. Allan N. Schore, “Right-Brain Affect Regulation: An Essential Mechanism of Development, Trauma, Dissociation, and Psychotherapy,” in The Healing power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development, & Clinical Practice, ed. Diane Fosha, Daniel Siegel, and Marion Solomon (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2009), 117.

18. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1981), 72.

19. John W. Creswell and Dana L. Miller, “Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry,” Theory Into Practice 39, no. 3 (2000): 124.

20. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

21. Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), 6-9.

22. Winnicott, 14, 89.

23. Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play (New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1990), 154.

273

24. Robert J. Landy, “Drama Therapy With Adults,” in Play Therapy With Adults, ed. Charles E. Schaefer (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 18.

25. Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage,” in Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Fowler, and Meredith Little (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1988), 5.

26. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 196.

27. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1977), 31-34.

28. McNiff, 85.

29. Chodorow, 72.

30. Roger Callois, Man, Play, and Games (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 21.

31. Sue Jennings and Åsa Minde, Art Therapy and Dramatherapy: Masks of the Soul (London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1993), 188.

32. Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2000), 86-87.

33. Patti Lather, “The Validity of Angels: Interpretive and Textual Strategies in Researching the Lives of Women With HIV/AIDS,” Qualitative Inquiry 1, no. 1 (1995): 59.

34. Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York, NY, Weatherhill, 1993), 21.

35. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, “Trust in the Slow Work,” in Hearts on Fire: Praying With Jesuits, ed. Michael Harter (Chicago, Ill: Loyola Press, 2005), 102.

36. Howard Sasportas, “Subpersonalities and Psychological Conflicts,” in The Development of the Personality, ed. Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1987), 216.

37. Mihaly Csikszentmihayli, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1991), 40.

38. Suzuki, 21.

274

39. Guggenbühl-Craig, Marriage Dead or Alive, 41.

40. Ibid.

41. Jung, “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship,” in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 17, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), §331.

42. Ann Belford Ulanov, “Coniunctio and Marriage,” in Psyche and Family: Jungian Applications to Family Therapy, ed. Laura Dodson and Terrill Gibson (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1997), 121-123.

43. Ibid.

44. Brian Heilman, Gary Barker, and Alexander Harrison, “The Man Box: A Study on Being a Young Man in the US, UK, and Mexico. (Washington, DC and London: Promundo-US and Unilever, 2017) http://mankindproject.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/04/TheManBox-Full-EN-Final-29.03.2017-POSTPRINT.v2.pdf (Accessed June 17, 2017).

45. Barbara Stevens Sullivan, Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle (Wilmette, IL: Chiron, 1990), 23.

46. Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected, 24.

47. Thomas Moore, Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), 15.

48. Jung, “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship,” §336.

49. Heilman et al.

50. Sullivan, 15.

51. Woodman, The Ravaged Bridegroom, 16.

52. bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 2004), 15.

53. C.R. Snyder, Cheri Harris, John R Anderson, Sharon A. Holleran, Lori M. Irving, Sandra T. Sigmon, Lauren Yoshinobu, June Gibb, Charyle Langelle, and Pat Harney, “The Will and the Ways: Development and Validation of an Individual-

275

Differences Measure of Hope,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 60 no.4, (1991): 570-585.

54. Stephenson, “The Concept of Hope Revisited for Nursing,” 1456-1461.

55. Wright, Dancing Between Hope and Despair, 55.

56. Dufault and Martocchio, “Hope: Its Spheres and Dimensions,” 380.

57. Bollas, 17.

58. Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (New York: HarperCollins, 1983), xi.

59. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 44.

60. Sutton-Smith, Play and Learning (New York, NY: Gardner Press, 1979), 315.

61. Jung, “Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” §131.

62. Creswell and Miller, 127.

63. Stewart, “A Brief Report,” 40.

Chapter 5

1. Omer, “Quotes and Definitions.”

2. Mary Jo Deegan and Michael R. Hill, “Doctoral Dissertations as Liminal Journeys of the Self: Betwixt and Between in Graduate Sociology Programs,” Teaching Sociology 19, no. 3 (July, 1991): 322.

3. Barbara Stevens Sullivan, Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle, (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1990), 22.

4. Ann Belford Ulanov, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971), 328.

5. bell hooks, “Understanding Patriarchy,” Louisville Anarchist Federation Federation, http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf (accessed June 13, 2017).

276

6. Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through To You? Reconnecting Men and Women (New York, NY: Scribner, 2002), 159.

7. Jung, “Psychology and Religion,” in Psychology of Religion, East and West: The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol.11, ed. and trans. Gerhard Adler and R.F.C Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), §140.

8. Robert Espiau, “Dante’s Divine Comedy through a Jungian Perspective,” Academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/7434368/Dantes_Divine_Comedy_through_a_Jungian_Perspe ctive (accessed June 12, 2017).

9. Gertrud Mueller Nelson, Here All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999), 45.

10. Sullivan, 18.

11. Among others, note Allan N. Schore, “Right-Brain Affect Regulation: An Essential Mechanism of Development, Trauma, Dissociation, and Psychotherapy,” in Diane Fosha, Daniel Siegel, and Marion Solomon (Eds.), The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development, & Clinical Practice (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 117.

12. Deegan and Hill, 324.

13. Rilke, “A Walk.”

14. Antonio Machado, “Traveler, your footprints,” in There Is No Road, trans. Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2003) http://www.whitepine.org/noroad.pdf (accessed June 12, 2017).

15. Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986), 150.

16. McNiff, “From Shamanism to Art Therapy,” 181-208.

17. Woodman, The Ravaged Bridegroom, 24.

18. Omer and Jürgen Kramer, “Between Columbine and the Twin Towers,” ReVision 26, no. 2 (2003): 37-40.

19. Guggenbühl-Craig, Marriage Dead or Alive, 41.

20. hooks, 1.

277

21. Young-Eisendrath, You’re Not What I Expected, 24.

22. Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 11.

23. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 41, 54.

24. Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (London, UK: WW Norton & Co., 1963), 274.

25. Sutton-Smith, Play and Learning, 296.

26. Ibid.

27. John W. Creswell and Dana L. Miller, “Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry,” Theory Into Practice, 39, no. 3 (2000): 127.

278

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