DOCSLIB.ORG

The Inheritance of This Moment: an Exploration of Temporality

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Inheritance of This Moment: an Exploration of Temporality Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 12-21-2018 The nheI ritance of this Moment: An Exploration of Temporality, Subjectivity, and Liberation in Non- Dual Contemplative Practice and Psychotherapy Jeremy Axelrad Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Part of the Clinical Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Axelrad, J. (2018). The nheI ritance of this Moment: An Exploration of Temporality, Subjectivity, and Liberation in Non-Dual Contemplative Practice and Psychotherapy (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/ 1728 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. THE INHERITANCE OF THIS MOMENT: AN EXPLORATION OF TEMPORALITY, SUBJECTIVITY, AND LIBERATION IN NON-DUAL CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE AND PSYCHOTHERAPY A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Jeremy Axelrad, MA December 2018 Copyright by Jeremy Axelrad, MA 2018 THE INHERITANCE OF THIS MOMENT: AN EXPLORATION OF TEMPORALITY, SUBJECTIVITY, AND LIBERATION IN NON-DUAL CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE AND PSYCHOTHERAPY By Jeremy Axelrad, MA Approved November 16th, 2018 ________________________________ ________________________________ Will Adams, Ph.D. Anthony Barton, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Professor of Psychology (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Alex Kranjec, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal, Ph.D. Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College Chair, Psychology Department Professor of Philosophy Professor of Psychology iii ABSTRACT THE INHERITANCE OF THIS MOMENT: AN EXPLORATION OF TEMPORALITY, SUBJECTIVITY, AND LIBERATION IN NON-DUAL CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE AND PSYCHOTHERAPY By Jeremy Axelrad, MA December 2018 Dissertation supervised by Will Adams, Ph.D. This dissertation considers the meaning of “present-moment awareness” and its role in psychological healing and transformation. The current conversation around mindfulness, a secularized practice with roots in Buddhist contemplative traditions, has largely unfolded within a dualistic framework in which subject and object are separate from one another as well as from a discrete entity called a moment. While widely appreciated for its capacity to foster well-being and insight, mindfulness as construed above remains disconnected from Buddhist psychology’s non-dualistic view of experience, which radically challenges our ordinary understandings of subjectivity and temporality. In the current project, I sought to explore this non-dualistic perspective phenomenologically, and to highlight its potential intersection with psychotherapeutic iv theory and practice. To this end, I worked with Peter Fenner, Ph.D., a non-dual teacher and former Buddhist monk, exploring contemplative instructions from a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as Dzogchen. These so-called pointing-out instructions involve a teacher “pointing-out” to their student “the nature of mind,” the non-dual reality held to be already present but habitually unrecognized in their experience. Over 11 meetings, I worked with Peter as he abided within the recognition of non-dual awareness, reading and commenting on five different pointing-out instructions from masters in the Dzogchen lineage and spontaneously engaging me in conversation regarding my own understandings. I wrote phenomenological descriptions of what it was like to work with Peter and the instructions, and then analyzed the different texts in terms of what they might suggest about subjectivity, temporality, suffering and healing. From this analysis emerged four themes that cohere as a single way of being: Immediacy, Letting Go, Not Knowing, and Relating Intimately. I then explored how these might already be implicit within the psychotherapy process. Through a consideration of psychotherapy in terms of the relational context, the client’s experiencing, and shifts in understanding, I suggested various ways that effective psychotherapy can be understood as an attenuated expression of non-duality. Insofar as we realize that the gap between ourselves, experience, and time is in fact imagined, and we can never truly be separate from “this moment,” we might discover novel possibilities for psychotherapeutic theory and practice. v DEDICATION May any good that comes of this work go towards the benefit of all beings everywhere. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Warm thanks and deep gratitude to Dr. Peter Fenner, for your unfailing generosity, kindness, and wisdom, without which this project would not have been possible. I have felt your good heart, integrity, and sheer presence guiding me throughout the dissertation process, and I hope in some way to have expressed what it is like to share “this” with you. Thank you for the blessing of these profound teachings, which continue to change the course of my life. Heartfelt thanks as well to my dissertation committee, especially my dissertation chair, Dr. Will Adams. Thank you, Will, for your dedication to this project from day one to the last minute, and for your patient, loving, and incisive relationship to my thinking and writing. Your voice throughout this conversation has been as supportive as it is impassioned, and attests to the way that your practice is so central to your heart and vice versa. When I reflect on the wisdom of your welcoming through the years, I am grateful and touched. Thank you to Dr. Anthony Barton, for your winking, whistling, laughing, nodding, knowing and not knowing way, which has helped me to trust in the process, go with my hunches, and connect the dots; somewhere between a poem and a trance is where our conversations live, I think, and I enjoy that a lot. Thank you Dr. Alex Kranjec, for your willingness to venture outside of your comfort zone and to bring your critical intellect, common sense, and dry, good-natured humor to this project. You have always struck me as someone who not only wonders, but vii experiences wonderment at the possibilities of psychological understanding, and I’m glad to have you as a reader. Thank you, always, Mom and Dad, for more than I can say. But with respect to this project, thank you for listening, for reminding me that this is about helping people, for always rooting for me and for telling me to “just finish it already!” Ditto, Aka and Ev. Specifically, Eric: thank you for your insightful comments about … technology. Evan, please refer to the tattoo of hands. I love you guys! Grandpa, I hope you know what an inspiration you have been to me throughout my life. Thank you for celebrating me and helping me to become myself, thank you for “the listener,” thank you for our long talks with ţuică about the past, the future, and tikkun olam in between. I have been thinking lately that maybe another way to say “Dzogchen” is elohai neshama shenatata bi tehorah - my G-d, the soul that you have given me is pure. My Flavi, you are sleeping next to me as I write these words, and I can only shake my head at the love I feel. Thank you for being my best friend and for really helping me out through every deadline, every outline, all of the places I’ve had to bring my laptop and all of the conversations that ended with “glazing!” Thank you for always believing in me. I can save you a couple hundred pages: you are the meaning of this; every moment with you is a gift. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 The Depths of Presence ............................................................................................................... 1 The Movement Through, and Beyond, Mindfulness ................................................................... 5 The Non-Duality of Dzogchen .................................................................................................... 9 Non-Duality and Temporality ................................................................................................... 13 Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 21 Psychoanalysis and the Present Moment ................................................................................... 21 Humanistic Psychotherapy and the Present Moment ................................................................ 26 Psychotherapy and Mindfulness ................................................................................................ 32 Critiques and Potentials of Contemporary Mindfulness ............................................................ 35 Method .............................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Racial Justice in Engineering the Road Ahead for Mckelvey Engineering
    mckelvey engineering Across Disciplines. Across the World® // spring 2021 Racial justice in Engineering The road ahead for McKelvey Engineering inside Neal Patwari 18 // Virtual becomes reality 22 // Libby Allman 26 From the dean // The Long Road Ahead I write this letter as we are wrapping up what will be remembered as the most unusual academic year in living memory. The COVID-19 pandemic, which last spring was a crisis requiring an immediate response to launch online learning, grew into an ever-present constraint that impacted teaching, research and all aspects of operations across the university. For the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, McKelvey Engineering needed to embrace new paradigms of teaching and learning, to develop new modes of managing and sharing research spaces, and to conduct business operations almost exclusively through remote interactions. In the pages of this issue of Engineering Momentum, you will read about some of the efforts it took to rise to the occasion. Given the enormity of the task, one might expect responding to COVID-19 to be the cover story of this issue of the magazine. It is not. Instead, the summer of last year saw the emergence of an awareness of a challenge that has been with us for centuries and whose destructive power is not amenable to being controlled by a vaccine. While the most visible event of the summer was the video-captured death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers, there was a washu photo litany of such tragedies and travesties. These incidents energized a Black Lives Matter Aaron F.
    [Show full text]
  • Focusing Is a Way of Being-With Eugene Gendlin Is an Existential
    Focusing is a way of Being-with Eugene Gendlin is an existential philosopher who wants to point us back to our lived experience. He invites us to stand in our experience and then to ask from there, ‘What kind of world is this?’ ‘What is a human being if this kind of experience is possible?’ He wants to return the human being to a central place in our various ways of understanding life. Since the 1950s, Gendlin’s interests have lead him from the writings of Dilthey, Heidegger, Merleau- Ponty, etc. into collaboration with imminent psychotherapists and psychological researchers. Gendlin saw therapy as a unique place where the process of symbolising experience could be explored. According to Gendlin, A person struggles with and finds words and other expressions for unclear – but lived – experience…What was felt but undefined by the client was thought to be unmeasurable and incomprehensible and it made people uncomfortable to talk about such a variable… When it correlated with success in therapy while other variables did not, people began to try to understand it more seriously (personal communication, c.f. Friedman, 2000:47). This ability to stay with an unclear (but clearly felt) bodily experience constitutes a natural form of self-reflection called ‘Focusing1’. Gendlin and others found that they could help people re-gain and value this awareness of how we experience our life situations. Focusing is a way of paying attention to one’s being-in-the-world, one’s interaction as it is experienced through the individual (but not separate) body. A felt sense is a temporary wave from the sea of being - it is understood as on-going process, not ‘internal content’.
    [Show full text]
  • Stories of Minjung Theology
    International Voices in Biblical Studies STORIES OF MINJUNG THEOLOGY STORIES This translation of Asian theologian Ahn Byung-Mu’s autobiography combines his personal story with the history of the Korean nation in light of the dramatic social, political, and cultural upheavals of the STORIES OF 1970s. The book records the history of minjung (the people’s) theology that emerged in Asia and Ahn’s involvement in it. Conversations MINJUNG THEOLOGY between Ahn and his students reveal his interpretations of major Christian doctrines such as God, sin, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit from The Theological Journey of Ahn Byung‑Mu the minjung perspective. The volume also contains an introductory essay that situates Ahn’s work in its context and discusses the place in His Own Words and purpose of minjung hermeneutics in a vastly different Korea. (1922–1996) was professor at Hanshin University, South Korea, and one of the pioneers of minjung theology. He was imprisonedAHN BYUNG-MU twice for his political views by the Korean military government. He published more than twenty books and contributed more than a thousand articles and essays in Korean. His extended work in English is Jesus of Galilee (2004). In/Park Electronic open access edition (ISBN 978-0-88414-410-6) available at http://ivbs.sbl-site.org/home.aspx Translated and edited by Hanna In and Wongi Park STORIES OF MINJUNG THEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL VOICES IN BIBLICAL STUDIES Jione Havea, General Editor Editorial Board: Jin Young Choi Musa W. Dube David Joy Aliou C. Niang Nasili Vaka’uta Gerald O. West Number 11 STORIES OF MINJUNG THEOLOGY The Theological Journey of Ahn Byung-Mu in His Own Words Translated by Hanna In.
    [Show full text]
  • A Buddhist Inspiration for a Contemporary Psychotherapy
    1 A BUDDHIST INSPIRATION FOR A CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOTHERAPY Gay Watson Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. 1996 ProQuest Number: 10731695 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731695 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT It is almost exactly one hundred years since the popular and not merely academic dissemination of Buddhism in the West began. During this time a dialogue has grown up between Buddhism and the Western discipline of psychotherapy. It is the contention of this work that Buddhist philosophy and praxis have much to offer a contemporary psychotherapy. Firstly, in general, for its long history of the experiential exploration of mind and for the practices of cultivation based thereon, and secondly, more specifically, for the relevance and resonance of specific Buddhist doctrines to contemporary problematics. Thus, this work attempts, on the basis of a three-way conversation between Buddhism, psychotherapy and various themes from contemporary discourse, to suggest a psychotherapy that may be helpful and relevant to the current horizons of thought and contemporary psychopathologies which are substantially different from those prevalent at the time of psychotherapy's early years.
    [Show full text]
  • Nutrition Learning Basket
    Nutrition Learning Basket Promoting Person Centered Approach, and Focusing Oriented Nutrition Counseling This five session learning opportunity will introduce a person centered counseling approach; relevant to nutrition counseling. Each session will incorporate participatory facilitation methods to promote collaborative capacity that shifts passive involvement to active participation. The training is designed as a cumulative learning experience, running October 31st to November 5th. All ninety-minute sessions will begin at 12:00PM PST. Each session will be recorded, and available for viewing prior to the next session in case circumstances prevent participating in one of the five weeks. Advance materials will be provided prior to each session to enhance learning, augment presented information and foster participation. This opportunity aims to support registered dietitian nutritionist, who are considered an essential component of comprehensive health care, and who contribute to improved outcomes, quality of life and lower health-care costs. Learning Objectives Overall: Develop foundational understanding of the person centered approach, by concentrating on nutrition counseling applications of the Focusing process. Explore through experiences and exercises, beginning to integrate the basic attitudes of unconditional positive regard, congruence, and empathy. Experience, practice, and reflect on the differences between listening to understand versus listening to support feeling heard. Discuss similarities and differences between others nutrition counseling methods and a Focusing oriented process centered on a partnership attitude, pausing to understand on- going situations, and creating space for new possibilities that carry forward. Session Dates & Objectives: #1 (10/31) Person centered origins, core conditions, Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin. Introduce and orient the online learning environment. Discuss person centered communication to supports positive change.
    [Show full text]
  • The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Birth of Funk Culture
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2013 Funk My Soul: The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And the Birth of Funk Culture Domenico Rocco Ferri Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Ferri, Domenico Rocco, "Funk My Soul: The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And the Birth of Funk Culture" (2013). Dissertations. 664. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/664 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2013 Domenico Rocco Ferri LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO FUNK MY SOUL: THE ASSASSINATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND THE BIRTH OF FUNK CULTURE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN HISTORY BY DOMENICO R. FERRI CHICAGO, IL AUGUST 2013 Copyright by Domenico R. Ferri, 2013 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Painstakingly created over the course of several difficult and extraordinarily hectic years, this dissertation is the result of a sustained commitment to better grasping the cultural impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and death. That said, my ongoing appreciation for contemporary American music, film, and television served as an ideal starting point for evaluating Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Lookbook
    WE FEEL YOUR INFLUENCE SPRING SUMMER 18 THE WORLD NEEDS ORIGINALS SS18 “IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT COLOUR YOU ARE OR WHAT KIND OF CULTURE YOU'RE IN, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO MEAN SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT AND DO IT HONESTLY.” WHEELERCARON ON CREATIVITY It usually starts from me, from a feeling of something, either to put into musical form. That’s how I usually make my discontent or something I want to fix. I turned to songwriting songs. I have to feel what the story is. I always try and make because I like writing down ideas. Sometimes I don’t completely stories sit well, and also uplift people a bit, because the whole finish songs, but if I keep going I might get the real thing. world is going crazy! It’s not until you’ve actually tweaked it enough to the point If you feel it’s not working, lay back and sometimes it just where it sounds like something that somebody would want comes to you all at once. I can’t explain it exactly but it just to listen to. starts to happen, and when it does happen and it feels right, I like doing music that can be very, not cathartic, but like it’s time to jump on that feeling and move with it. emotions that you can’t see but you feel. That’s what you’re trying Try to, basically, infuse the air with what you’re feeling. CARON WHEELER ON WRITING HIT SONGS ON FAME At first I didn’t know I’d make a hit, ever.
    [Show full text]
  • Lo Transpersonal E Integral En Psicoterapia John Rowan
    Transpersonal and Integral in Psychotherapy John Rowan Transpersonal and Integral in Psychotherapy Lo Transpersonal e Integral en Psicoterapia John Rowan* British Psychological Society London, UK Abstract This paper delineates the Ken Wilber (2006) model of approaches to the world, including therapy. He calls it the All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) approach, which includes the whole world in its boundaries. This means that we can now do justice to the whole of the client and all the connections that may be relevant. What I have done is to spell out the relevance of all this for therapy, and to add two levels which Wilber does not include in the model, even though he has described them in detail elsewhere. The result is a fuller model which is even more relevant to therapists, and particularly to transpersonal therapists. Key Words Transpersonal, Wilber, Quadrants, Levels, Therapy Resumen Este artículo describe el modelo descriptivo del mundo descrito por Ken Wilber (2006), incluyendo la terapia. Él lo llama Modelo de los Cuadrantes “Omnicuadrante, Omninivel” (AQAL), el cual comprende al mundo entero y sus límites. Esto significa que ahora podemos atender integralmente a todos los estados y conexiones que pueden ser relevantes en la persona. Lo que en este artículo desarrollo es una descripción minuciosa de la importancia que todo esto tiene, para la terapia. Además he añadido dos niveles, los cuales Wilber no incluye en el modelo, aunque los ha descrito en detalle en otro lugar. La conclusión es el resultado de un modelo más completo y relevante para terapeutas, especialmente para terapeutas transpersonales. Palabras Clave Transpersonal, Wilber, Cuadrantes, Niveles, Terapia Received: April 30, 2009 Accepted: May 14, 2009 © Journal of Transpersonal Research, 2009, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Iptvelopment, San Francisco, Calif
    , _ DOCUilla RiSONS \ . ,, xED 186 618 . -CE 024 '640 ) C , AUTHOR. Banathy, Bela H.; indlOthers 4 , . .T,.TLE Implementing Career Education fot. Native American k Students. 4 Guide. Native American Career Education Demonstration, Project. INSTITODIuN , Far West Lab. tor Eddcational Research and .iptvelopment, San Francisco, Calif. sPi./NS AGENCY Office ot Faducatimn (DHEW),.Washingion, D.C.. PMB DATE GRANT GOU7802031 NOTE . 146p.; Some pages with small type will not r,eproducq ' well'. For related dOcuments see CE 024 650-652,ED. , \ .147 59176_04 ED 16,3_ 226, aad ED_ 167 77_5...'. EDRS PRICE 8F01/PC06 Plus postage. .%. DESCRIPTORS Adpinistrator:Guides: *American Indian EducatiOn: *American Indians; *Career Educationi Demonstration , Programs: Program Descriptions; Program.Design; 4:Program Development;Program Gud.des; *Program 1, ImplementatiA; Surveys IdENTIFIZRS Education Amendments 1474 / , ,...,..-. ABSTR'ACT, ,, . This sluide..is inte,nded to serve as aresqurce for 'School, project, and/or community people in implementinga career eddcati9n program to:. their Indien sudents. The (Aideis divided' -into four chapters, qrllowed byan annotated bibliographyl, The first . chapter describes the conditions and resources needed to starts . developiAg a program and hokto acg1iire them. In the secondoilapter, the activities involved in designing and imp,lementinga pilot project ( are.discussed. Tjae third chapter.talks about program expansion, ' including formative evaluation, while the. fourth chapteeis , concerned with how to maintain and dissamiaatea fully-developed program. Each . flapter- begins yith an analysis of the basic activities and procedures Ulat take place during thatp)iase, follows witha , e discussion of each step (illustrated by examples, and conclucles''.witV.- a review of essential points. Native American career educiation - , :surveys for the 'community and tor studefits.are appended.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: the Therapeutic Relationship
    Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy The unique relationship between patient and therapist is the main healing factor in psychotherapy. Following C.G.Jung’s pioneering views on the complexity of conscious and unconscious interactions in the therapy process, this book explains the Jungian approach to the therapeutic relationship and the treatment process. Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship shows how taking a Jungian perspective can help deal with the complicated paradoxes of psychotherapy. David Sedgwick outlines a modern Jungian approach to psychotherapy, always with reference to the patient-therapist relationship itself. He considers and criticises key aspects of Jungian and other theoretical perspectives, synthesizing approaches and ideas from across the therapeutic spectrum. This meditation on Jungian therapy will be invaluable to both Jungian and non-Jungian students and practitioners. David Sedgwick is a Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of The Wounded Healer: Countertransference from a Jungian Perspective (1994) and Jung and Searles: A Comparative Study (1993), and numerous articles and book reviews. Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship David Sedgwick First published 2001 by Brunner-Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Brunner-Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2001 David Sedgwick All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
    [Show full text]
  • Improvisation Provides – a Dilogue with Eugene Gendlin
    1 IMPROVISATION PROVIDES A WINDOW INTO IMPLICIT PROCESSES: THOUGHTS ON PHILIP RINGSTROM’S WORK, IN DIALOGUE WITH PHILOSOPHER EUGENE GENDLIN Email Lynn Preston for a longer version of this paper, which includes a case example. [email protected] This paper examines the intersection of Philip Ringstrom’s clinical ideas about improvisation, and philosopher Eugene Gendlin’s use of improvisation as illustrative of his meta-theory. Both of these theorists are drawing vitally useful analogies to the nature of the psychotherapeutic process from strikingly different but wonderfully mutually enriching perspectives. My article seeks to embody something of the freshness of my live conversation with Gendlin and also demonstrate the larger interplay of philosophy, theory, and clinical practice. I am hoping that the dialogic structure of the paper will bring the reader into the flow of improvisational experimentation. Introduction In recent years the psychoanalytic conversation has been brimming with new meanings, models, and metaphors. It is as if our new paradigm sensibility, which challenges us to speak and write with a less reified and more multidimensional consciousness has spawned a growing body of images, ideas and models. Along with multiple perspectives on implicit experience, and references to chaos and complexity theory, an interest in improvisation is part of this contemporary movement. The influx of these innovations is, I believe, a creative effort to conceptualize human interaction with non-linear, non-dualistic and non-reified constructs. The improvisational arts - theatre, music, dance and writing – offer new, grounding, experience-near images which can help as wrap our minds around the complexities of non-linear systems thinking.
    [Show full text]
  • New Review of Normal Life
    reviews Start Something Fierce ling questions, and turn regular people into activists. So it makes sense that they would use the rabble-rousing potential of a zine format to help inform others. Zines tend to tackle subjects that are out of the mainstream, and in keeping with this tradition the strongest part of this zine is the how-to section. Toward the end there is a series of guidelines and tips for grassroots organizing, where the authors bring in their own experience to help demystify the basics of fundraising, media rela- tions, communications, campaign strategizing, evaluation and even self-care to avoid burnout. These sections are warm and energizing, 2nd Edition clean and straightforward. The tips will help anyone take a cam- A Young Woman’s Guide paign from vague idea to real-world action. to Grassroots Organizing Another time-tested function of a zine is to challenge convention. The authors do this by introducing cutting-edge tools and concepts that can help in campaigning: “grow-gan-izing,” art therapy, the importance of an anti-oppression framework, and economic empow- erment, all important considerations for activists who don’t want to Start SoMEThINg FIERcE (2ND EDITIoN) reinforce the structures they are trying to fight. Edited by Courtney Montour The messy, DIY style of zines means that anyone can make one http://girlsactionfoundation.ca/files/start_something_fierce_ with stuff found around the house, and when you read one you zine_2ndedition.pdf expect to hear the personal views of real people, not someone with a corporate agenda. Start Something Fierce does this by including When I sat down to read Start Something Fierce, I expected to get personal stories written by Indigenous women.
    [Show full text]