Both Gavin and At,
I hope Rick leaves my title 'wordo intacto' ; - ) because you will see I
have put you names alongside each other
[Host's Note: wordo intacto it is. ..Rick]
I am not going to even try to 'analyse' your contribution ; - ) though for
some years I too studied the great Viennese master of the mind and his old
sparring partner CG Jung and over the years have had a passing interest in
the other contributors to the subjects of psychology and psychoanalysis.
For me in recent years Carl Rogers is pre-eminent in his deep sanity and
humane compassion. Though further on down I have included a few ideas
stemming from Melanie Kleine and my own beloved Ehrenzweig, of whom I bet
a virtual dollar no-one else on the list has even heard of...; - )
First this interchange between you and At reminds me of an occasion a few
years ago in the company of some distinguished NLP practitioners. A senior
partner specialised in a fascinating aspect of 'mind' or 'group mind
dynamics' and such was his skill that he was often hired by multinational
corporations to negotiate the release of kidnapped personnel, such
negotiations taking place in sweltering African houses or hide-outs with
armed mercenaries or thugs in anxious attendance. (I do have first hand
experience of looking down the barrel of a gun, one was armed, the other
not as it turned out, in both cases it seemed prudent not to ask...Now
every body on this list knows Andrew is an artist ;-) which means I am an
ultra sensitive person. You only have to say 'Boo" to me and I run a
mile...so what I noticed as I sat playing with the wood logs on the fire
that I had in my own wisdom decided to take charge (care) of (At, you may
know the significance of such an act...NLP'er's did not it seemed) was an
underlying annoyance with his colleagues in the room. I will not go into
the why's and wherefore's. But I noticed they did not notice. So I thought
being a newbie as you all sometimes say, I got to ask a question of this
man. I asked him "Bert, (not his real name) what do you like to do by way
of relaxing?" Honestly both Gavin and At, you could see the blood vessels
pumping up on his forehead...Aha! I thought.Mmmm~~~~~~~~~~~
About six months later this man and I were sharing a drink after a
'personal mastery course' and he let me in on just how I nearly 'blew him
up' that day...he thought I was an idiot. Me-----an idiot----- ????...Did
I tell you what this man does for a living?
Gavin, I am going to ask you now, what are you doing to relax? What are
you prepared to do to relax? When you think about that do not trouble
yourself with my trifling searches for 'truth' and 'dreams' or
'salvation'.
May I humbly share with you and At and through you both share with all who
may read and learn here these notes I made, about twenty four or five
years ago in preparation for today...
Creative Dreaming
'Creative Art Practices Mirror Good Human Relationships and Promotes
Dialogue Between the Uncreative and Creative Mind.'
"It is astonishing to see how artists after finishing their work may begin to
study it in great detail as though it were the work of somebody else.
-Something happens that is like awakening from a dream, when we try to recall
our dreams with our gestalt faculties fully restored. (Gestalt means here our
organisational tendency, cleaning up, glossing over).
A measure of 'secondary revision' and projections of a better 'gestalt' is
then unavoidable. In scrutinising thus the artist (for artist read youself as
creator of anything original, even a fragmentary idea for some business
project or proposal) falsifies its true and objective structure in the same
way spectators do.
We (as observers) cannot help but solidifying (or 'verticalizing') its
objectively looser, more open (horizontal) structure.
(We become unable to even partially see both the truth of what we are and
what we have potentiality to make out of ourselves).
The truly creative artist, for his part, is in a happier position. He can
revert to 'creative dreaming' and to the less 'differentiated' (less
consciously organised, cleaned-up and glossed-over) near oceanic states of
consciousness, where the bulk of the creative work is carried out.
This phase is the known as re-introjection, when the independent work of art
(as object made from an inner self-existing in the world) is felt most
strongly. The work of art acts like another living person with whom we are
conversing.
The theory of projective identification as developed by Melanie Klein (artist
and psychoanalyst) suggests that all (forms of) human intercourse involve
'the projection of scattered parts of oneself into another person'. In a good
personal relationship the 'other' is willing to accept the projections and
makes them part of ones own self.
The good personal relationship fully corresponds to the artist's (good and
fruitful) relationship with his own work. (For 'artist' read one-self).
In the first phase of creativity the artist's unconscious projections are
felt as fragmented, accidental, alienating and worthless.
In the second phase the artist experiences the work of art as a receiving
womb, it contains, integrating the fragments into a whole then forming a
matrix in the unconscious.
The third phase is that of re-introjection, of a higher phase where
perception occurs at a near conscious level (pre-conscious).
This enriches and strengthens the surface ego. Through this process so called
and felt 'inarticulate forms' (those with no easily 'apparent' meaning) from
the unconscious set up a 'dialogue' with the conscious mind. A fuller
exchange then occurs both as creator and recipient.
The creative unconscious serves then the further utility of becoming a womb
(safe growing place) to receive split off and repressed parts of the
conscious self.
"The internalising and externalising processes of integration are just
different aspects of the same indivisible process that is creativity."
"-One could say that all good personal relationships contain an element of
creativeness. This entails a measure of open generosity, humility and a lack
of envy. We must not only be able to give away parts of ourselves to a loved
person, but must be willing to take them back into ourselves enriched by the
accretions stemming from the other's independent personality."
Andrew Campbell, Anton Ehrenzweig and Melanie Klein. C 1978/9
I cannot claim to have helped thousands of people like undoubtedly you can
and At also in his many forms and contents but I will if I may share with you
a tremendous gift sent to me quite by chance last week. They are just a few
words spoken in an interview after the event in which I 'cared' with someone
nearly two years ago for just a few hours. "...took a pitcure of me painting
this. I was amazed when I saw the photo because my body was totally aligned
with the curve of the painting. (Her body was in fact taking a spiral from
her back right into her fingers..., echoing the spiral form of her painting)
I never realised just how aligned you could be with what you are doing until
I saw that...a bomb could have gone off and I wouldn't have know." ..... " I
hadn't intended that (outcome) it was just there and I realised how creative
you can be through simplicity. I realised creativity is something that I have
in me." ..... "-yes, there was a seminal moment, we were asked to hand it (a
picture) to another member of our team for them to add to it. I didn't want
to hand it to someone else to mess up. I was in 'flow' at that time. He
commented on this and I realised that I had this creativity in me and that I
was proud of it. I also learned that I should share it with others." .....
other things are expressed but let me bring it into closer focus. This was a
time for transformation, this young vibrant woman was in a kind of chaos,
being reformed or regenerated like At's description of a butterfly, out of
her own 'inner strivings' as Rogers might say it.
Gavin, not for no reason did I ask you what you were 'prepared to do about it
(the storm I sensed upon your horizon.) In every storm there is the eye, and
in the eye I simply saw a rainbow.
"Observe the rays of the sun in the composition of the rainbow, the colours
of which are generated by the falling rain, when each drop in its descent
takes every colour of the bow."
Leonardo da Vinci. Treatise on Painting.
"The steadfast rainbow in the fast-moving, fast-hurrying hail-mist. What a
congregation of images and feelings, of fantastic permanence amidts the rapid
change of tempest - quietness the daughter of storm."
Coleridge. Anima Poeta, 1895
"Meanwhile, by what strange chance I cannot tell,
What combination of the wind and clouds,
A large unmutilated rainbow stood
Immovable in heaven."
Wordsworth. The Prelude, 1815
It is nearly Easter with all that means to many people. I have beside me a
picture which is like a tiny Mark Rothko, huge black cloud above a huge red
earth form, light emanating between, very diffuse. Hardly there. When I
listen to it I can hear a Blackbird, that which sings loudest in the darkness
just before dawn. I see the sweating blood droplets of Christ in his greatest
doubt and torment despite all his wisdom, love and compassion stain the very
garden's ground. Above the image I have recently written, "This is my
commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."
I have painted a picture with words, you are both joined in it for ever - you
live in its continual embrace.
Love to you both,
Andrew Campbell
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