17 December 2011

Notes - dolphin and such / [Otto Rank] "active learning"

         Mid-morning and the Gulf is flat and blue, a darker blue than the sky presently. The moon is half, fifty some degrees in the sky. More people walking the beach this Saturday morning. With retirees it appears when walking as a couple the man allows the woman to lead by three paces; you think this is because the women are in better health or that by this time in their lives the men have given up any concept they are going to lead a woman anywhere, one of the two explanations is correct, that’s how you feel about the subject. And, wouldn’t you know coming into view is a woman one pace behind a man. No, she caught up with him – side by side like Milton’s Eve and Adam leaving – driven from perfection.
         You are good at perusing my mind on the keys, Amorella, and allowing my own thoughts to sound as near silent echoes of full spontaneous and original personal causal creativity. How is this possible – a déjà vu turned inside out. How do you do this? Where are you when you do this? Between unconsciousness and consciousness, pre-consciousness (as awakening from sleep), or where. You appear objective and present when doing this.
         Carol came to the balcony to tell you Kim, Paul and Owen are going to feed the birds then head to the pool. She is waiting on Linda to arrive first then they will also go to the pool. Enough for now. Post. – Amorella
         A pod of frolicking dolphin with a couple of youngsters in tow are heading north in and out of the blue – always fun to observe fellow mammals. I like to imagine them with human-like minds.
         However, boy, do they imagine your species with a dolphin-like mind? - Amorella



         Lunch at the Conch Republic, relaxation at the condo, a drive to the airport, then you stopped at Linda and Bill’s for supper out at PDQ, a new quick chicken place; a Five Guys and Fries with chicken instead. Good sandwiches. Kim, Paul and Owen are heading home to two or three inches of snow in their yard – one of the fun aspects of living on the east side of Cleveland. You are sitting at the bedroom table listening to Classical Jazz on jazzradio.com – relaxing in the controlled near quiet atmosphere.
         Daughter, son-in-law, and grandson brought joyful noise to the place all week. We miss them already. Christmas on the 31st when we are up their way to pick up the cat, whom we also miss. How we will survive this next week of more good weather, sand, Gulf and heated pool I don’t know, but we’ll find a way.

         Back to your question, boy, on where I am in your head. First, you looked up 'deja vu' online for a definition of sort from How Things Work.
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The term déjà vu is French and means, literally, "already seen." Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn't be familiar at all. Say, for example, you are traveling to England for the first time. You are touring a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing some current political topic, and you have the feeling that you've already experienced this very thing -- same friends, same dinner, same topic.

The phenomenon is rather complex, and there are many different theories as to why déjà vu happens. Swiss scholar Arthur Funkhouser suggests that there are several "déjà experiences" and asserts that in order to better study the phenomenon, the nuances between the experiences need to be noted. In the examples mentioned above, Funkhouser would describe the first incidence as déjà visite ("already visited") and the second as déjà vecu ("already experienced or lived through").

As much as 70 percent of the population reports having experienced some form of déjà vu. A higher number of incidents occurs in people 15 to 25 years old than in any other age group.

Déjà vu has been firmly associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy. Reportedly, déjà vu can occur just prior to a temporal-lobe seizure. People suffering a seizure of this kind can experience déjà vu during the actual seizure activity or in the moments between convulsions.

Since déjà vu occurs in individuals with and without a medical condition, there is much speculation as to how and why this phenomenon happens. Several psychoanalysts attribute déjà vu to simple fantasy or wish fulfillment, while some psychiatrists ascribe it to a mismatching in the brain that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past. Many parapsychologists believe it is related to a past-life experience. Obviously, there is more investigation to be done.
From: science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/question657.htm
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         While looking this up I came across the word “uncanny” which I will first show its     and then the article below from Wikipedia (which I have edited slightly).
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Etymology of Canny
Canny is from the Anglo-Saxon root ken: “knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken.” Thus the uncanny is something outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions.
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History
Ernst Jentsch

The state is first identified by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny. Jentsch defines the Uncanny as: being a product of "intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as it were, be something one does not know one’s way about in. The better orientated in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it.", and expands upon its use in fiction:
In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.

Jentsch identifies German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann as a writer who utilizes uncanny effects in his work, focusing specifically on Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" ("Der Sandmann"), which features a life-like doll, Olympia.
Sigmund Freud
The concept of the Uncanny was later elaborated on and developed by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay The Uncanny, which also draws on the work of Hoffmann (whom Freud refers to as the "unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature"). However, he criticizes Jentsch's belief that Olympia is the central uncanny element in the story:
I cannot think — and I hope most readers of the story will agree with me — that the theme of the doll Olympia, who is to all appearances a living being, is by any means the only, or indeed the most important, element that must be held responsible for the quite unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by the story.

Instead, Freud draws on a wholly different element of the story, namely, "the idea of being robbed of one's eyes," as the "more striking instance of uncanniness" in the tale.
Freud goes on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of "repetition of the same thing," including incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one's steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity). He also discusses the uncanny nature of Otto Rank’s concept of the "double."
Freud specifically relates an aspect of the Uncanny derived from German etymology. By contrasting the German adjective unheimlich with its base word heimlich ("concealed, hidden, in secret"), he proposes that social taboo often yields an aura not only of pious reverence but even more so of horror and even disgust, as the taboo state of an item gives rise to the commonplace assumption that that which is hidden from public eye (cf. the eye or sight metaphor) must be a dangerous threat and even an abomination - especially if the concealed item is obviously or presumingly sexual in nature. Basically, the Uncanny is what unconsciously reminds us of our own Id, our forbidden and thus repressed impulses perceived as a threatening force by our super-ego ridden with oedipal guilt as it fears symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from societal norms. Thus, the items and individuals that we project our own repressed impulses upon become a most uncanny threat to us, uncanny monsters and freaks akin to fairy-tale folk-devils, and subsequently often become scapegoats we blame for all sorts of perceived miseries, calamities, and maladies.
What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word heimlich exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, unheimlich. What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich. [...] In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. Unheimlich is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich, and not of the second. [...] On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the Unheimlich, for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.
[...]
A study of dreams, phantasies and myths has taught us that anxiety about one's eyes, the fear of going blind [as used as a central theme in The Sandmann], is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated. The self-blinding of the mythical criminal, Oedipus, was simply a mitigated form of the punishment of castration — the only punishment that was adequate for him by the lex talionis. [...] All further doubts are removed when we learn the details of their 'castration complex' from the analysis of neurotic patients, and realize its immense importance in their mental life.
[...]
Moreover, I would not recommend any opponent of the psycho-analytic view to select this particular story of the Sand-Man with which to support his argument that anxiety about the eyes has nothing to do with the castration complex. For why does Hoffmann bring the anxiety about eyes into such intimate connection with the father's death? And why does the Sand-Man always appear as a disturber of love?

After Freud, Jacques Lacan, in his seminar 1962–1963 "L'angoisse" ("Anxiety"), utilized the Unheimlich "via regia" to enter into the territory of Angst. Lacan showed in a very clear manner how, the same image which seduces the subject trapping him in the narcissistic impasse, may suddenly, by a contingency, show that it is dependent on something, some hidden object, and so the subject may grasp at the same time that he is not autonomous (5 December 1962). For example and paradigm, Guy de Maupassant, in his story "L'horla", describes a man who suddenly may see his own back in the mirror. His back is there, but it is deprived of the gaze of the subject. It appears as a strange object, until he feels it is his own. There is no cognitive dissonance here, we rather cross all possible cognition, to find ourselves in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure. And this is the signal of anxiety: the signal of the real, as irreducible to any signifier. Hitchcock was the master in the art of conducing art into the world of Unheimlich. He used simple, everyday objects who may suddenly lose their familiar side, and become the messenger of beyond narcissism.
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         You are not sure how to respond but selections of the above you can and have related to mentally.
         I cannot help but think you, Amorella, are my ‘uncanny’ element, my ‘superego’ as it were, at a witty battle with my ego. I cannot remember such a thought before, but this does have a plausibility to it – much more plausible than you as a real ‘spirit’ from beyond this physical universe. Synchronicity, the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection [Oxford-American], is an event I have experienced first-hand several times throughout my life. Below is one of my poems of 1984 that expresses this:

SYNCHRONICITY

By R. H. Orndorff ©1984

                           My tired eyes focus from the edge of road
                           into the white stones distant framed with grass,
                           and I think I cannot stay by the stones.
                                    I must walk to stay alive,
                           for my enemy, looms down from the east,
                           and the starless shroud  climbs at my back.
                                    So, I must walk fast to stay alive.

                           To duck away from the swarthy cloak
                           I walk newly scattered beams,
                           a planking curiously constructed,
                           stretching across nothing seen --
                                    and below, between the breaks, I see only air
                                    where water and earth should be.
                                    So, I walk on fast to stay alive.

                           The eyes run on ahead like wild car lights
                           to crash into the soft, dark hair
                           on the singular woman in the crowd.
                           From behind, I come upon her, like the dark enemy.
                                    And, into her ear I whisper.
                                           “There is, from the place I come,
                                             one who loves you very much.”
                                    I am spent out, and my walking is done.

                           The secret woman with the soft, dark hair
                           stands, as she always does, independent;
                           she cocks her head slight left,
                           like she is hearing me from inside out.
                                    I wonder that I should know her so well --
                                    for when this young, dark-eyed woman turns,
                                    I think remembrances warm, like Spring.
                                    I stand still, feeling my heart stop.

                           Into those wonderfully wet eyes I peer,
                           wizard-like, without reflection, and see the water below a bridge
                           running through her quiet, passionate earth
                                    It is though I touch her unseen,
                                    yet, she seems to sense seeing me again;
                                    then, though invisible, I melt further still
                                    and silent flow, returning to her heart --

                           later, to be reborn within an old soul and a newly pumping heart --
                           so we will know one another when both of us are free
                           and born again to be lovers.        

From the unpublished book of poetry Take Two by Robert Pringle and Richard Orndorff

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         According to the Wikipedia article on Otto Rank (one of whom Joseph Campbell discussed at length if I remember right) moved further than Freud’s strongly suppressed sexual desires in human behavior to a more here and now existential approach as seen in this selection from Wikipedia:
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Otto Rank (Wikipedia)
. . . The New York writer Paul Goodman, who was co-founder with Fritz Peris of the Gestalt method of psychotherapy, one of the most popular in the world today, and one that makes Otto Rank's "here-and-now" central to its approach, described Rank’s post-Freudian ideas on art and creativity as “beyond praise” in Gestalt Therapy (Perls, Goodman and Hefferline, 1951, p. 395). According to Ervin Polster (1968), a pre-eminent Gestalt therapist, "Rank brought the human relationship directly into his office. He influenced analysts to take seriously the actual present interaction between therapist and patient, rather than maintain the fixed, distant, 'as though' relationship that had given previous analysts an emotional buffer for examining the intensities of therapeutic sensation and wish. Rank's contributions opened the way for encounter to become accepted as a deep therapeutic agent" (p. 6).
Rank also affected the practice of action-oriented and reflective therapies such as dramatic role-playing and psychodrama. "Although there is no evidence of a direct influence, Rank's ideas found new life in the work of such action psychotherapists as Moreno, who developed a psychodrama technique of doubling ... and Landy [director of the drama therapy program at New York University], who attempted to conceptualize balance as an integration of role and counterrole" (Landy, 2008, p. 29).
Rank was the first to see therapy as a learning and unlearning experience. The therapeutic relationship allows the patient to: (1) learn more creative ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now; and (2) unlearn self-destructive ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now. Patterns of self-destruction ("neurosis") represent a failure of creativity not, as Freud assumed, a retreat from sexuality.
Rank's psychology of creativity has recently been applied to action learning, an inquiry-based process of group problem solving, team building, leadership development and organizational learning (Kramer 2007; 2008). The heart of action learning is asking wicked questions to promote the unlearning or letting go of taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs. Questions allow group members to “step out of the frame of the prevailing ideology,” as Rank wrote in Art and Artist (1932/1989, p. 70), reflect on their assumptions and beliefs, and reframe their choices. The process of “stepping out” of a frame, out of a form of knowing – a prevailing ideology – is analogous to the work of artists as they struggle to give birth to fresh ways of seeing the world, perspectives that allow them to see aspects of the world that no artists, including themselves, have ever seen before.
The most creative artists, such as Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Leonardo, know how to separate even from their own greatest public successes, from earlier artistic incarnations of themselves. Their “greatness consists precisely in this reaching out beyond themselves, beyond the ideology which they have themselves fostered,” according to Art and Artist (Rank, 1932/1989, p. 368). Through the lens of Otto Rank’s work on understanding art and artists, action learning can be seen as the never-completed process of learning how to “step out of the frame” of the ruling mindset, whether one’s own or the culture’s – in other words, of learning how to unlearn.
Comparing the process of unlearning to the “breaking out” process of birth, Rank was the first psychologist to suggest that a continual capacity to separate from “internal mental objects” – from internalized institutions, beliefs and neuroses; from the restrictions of culture, social conformity and received wisdom – is the sine qua non for life-long creativity. . . .
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         The above is rather embarrassing to include – in no way am I referring myself to the likes of great creative artists of the world, but I understand the association Otto Rank is using in his sense of “active learning”. I can see evidence of this in my notes throughout the first three Merlyn series books and in this blog as a whole.
            Stop here for the night, boy, and continue this tomorrow now that you have developed a background to think and respond from. Post. – Amorella (Title this selection “active learning”)

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