Thursday, 2 June 2011
Paper On: 'On Not Being Able To Paint' by Marion Milner
Marion Milner (1950) On Not Being Able to Paint Routledge; 2nd Edition (23 Sep 2010)
In Anna Freud’s introduction to 'On Not Being Able To Paint', she writes,
‘The legitimate result of analysis is the inner experience of formally unknown affects and impulses, which find their final outlet in the ego processes of verbalisation and deliberate action. The main achievement is, according to the author, a joining of that split between mind and body that can so easily result from trying to limit thinking only in words.’ P. xiv
Through the production of self-portrait photography, can one, through a constant unravelling and then reconstruction, find a version of the true self? Marion Milner uses her book, ‘On Not Being Able To Paint’, as a record of personal experience, ‘in order to understand becoming able to see’, and as a way of documenting her stages of process and discovery.
To engage with the world through photographic expression is, of course, a logical process for a photographer. As in a way of producing symbols of representation, conscious and unconscious, a way of verbalisation without words. This process of image production, when followed and perhaps seen as a series of growth, offer us a consensus, ‘another form of seeing’. Within this self-observation and discourse, just as in the analytical situation, the revealing of new insights into the photographers’ inner world are revealed. These comparisons with the representations of the inner reality provide awareness, allowing progression to more insight, which then lead to further creative expression. This creation and production of symbols of lost objects, running parallel with newly found awareness, can create not only the lost object but a replacement object that may never have been made available. It is this battle for free association and non-verbal expression, leading to the uncovering of the unconscious mind, which makes up the core of an analysts therapeutic work. One image informing another, as with one session with a client would reveal some underlying defence mechanisms, this, however, takes time, through dialogue and consistent availability, before an overall picture emerges. But over time one looks back and sees intuitive work practice and process being underpinned by theory. In photography, it is the representation of these objects in the internal world, shown in the external world that becomes part of this therapeutic dialogue.
Symbol Production
We have, of course, words to bridge this gap between our experience of the inner and outer realities, a way of inner ‘realities’ coming to terms with there ‘external’ surroundings. Perhaps as an image-maker, it is useful to distinguish between these two worlds by images and symbols, rather than words. These portraits can be like going back, not necessarily in retreat, but as a conscious search into the past, just as in psychoanalysis, a search for something lost which, if revealed, may be of value in the present or future knowledge.
My interplay between the inner and outer interpretation of reality, sheds light on a seemingly lack of presence of significant others, my search for lost objects, this is the key area of my concern.
‘Looked at in these terms the problem of the relation between the painter and his world then became basically a problem of ones need and the need of the ‘other’, a problem of reciprocity between ‘you’ and ‘me’: with ‘you’ and ‘me’ meaning originally mother and child’. P134
‘The definition pointed to the fact that their relationship of oneself to the external world is basically and originally a relationship of one person to another, even though it does become differentiated into relations to living beings and relations to things, inanimate in nature. In other words, in the beginning one’s mother is, literally, the whole world.’ P134
This transfiguration[1] of the object occurs in the light of ones dreams. There is no sharp line between daylight and darkness, there is only twilight and it is within this twilight of dream, memory and desire, where the search usually occurs. This underpins self-awareness and the photographer’s ability to bridge this gap, often with symbols.
As Milner states:
‘It is a tendency of the mind to make broad distinctions, to split problems viewed into two extremes, and that this splitting is necessary. Certainly one has to make the distinction between dreams and reality, for instance, or between outside and inside, body and mind, doing and thinking. But having done that it is necessary to bring the two halves together again, in a complex rhythmic interplay and exchange,’ p100
The placating of ones external reality and its reconciliation with ones internal experience has becomes my main preoccupation through my work in both image production and therapy. This discrepancy between what was seen and what was felt, this belief in the distorted view of the outside world, has become an incalculable feat to bridge, certainly just in a purely verbal sense.
The inner dream and memory is continually tested and compared with the experience of external reality. There seems great difficulty in these two worlds meeting; there is, perhaps, a profound fear of something being lost in the process. However, this process of loss is indeed of value, in the hope that a gain will be made during this experience.
Often the inner tension and frustrations can be intolerable in this situation. Perhaps it would be better to retreat to defence mechanisms after all, living things go on behaving as they behaved in the past. The capacity to change through production of photography, however, offers us an exciting new experience. As we produce work we break away from the reparation of routine hoping to perhaps ‘bump into’ the self. Using intuition, I am looking to plunge into the unknown. Similar to the delight we experience as children drawing, although this is not so much a plunge, ‘it delights children because they are used to this visual representation of communication’. p113 This underpinning of intuitively imagined ideas are how judgements are made in scientific theory of course. Starting initially with intuition, and then developed by logic. There seems little recognition of the documentation of this process within art, of lived experience combined with logical thought.
In Kleinian theory and as a way of restoring the split and bringing the subject and object together in a new kind of unity, is explained through her theories of the Paranoid Schizoid position to Depressive Position.[2] Through the revisiting of this theory and through the concept of projective identification[3], another Kleinian theory, artist’s can construct a new reality. But how can this enquiry into psychic creativeness be discussed? Perhaps the issue is the ability to make a symbol. As art is, as Marion Milner states ‘the capacity for making a symbol.’ p173 Ultimately the capacity for that symbol to be communicable to others, ‘thus creativeness in the arts is making a symbol for feeling, and creativeness in science is making a symbol for knowing. P173 Photography can be a way of creating symbols dreamed up in the internal world and through photography, make it an object in the world of reality. Just as a client, in the therapeutic session, has to communicate his feelings through, words, can photography use symbols to make the unknowable, real and knowable?
The Return of the Lost Object.
The function of this ‘psyche-photography’, can be seen as being the recreation or restoration of the lost object and well as its creation, through the re-enactment of the transition to the Depressive Position over and over again. The family album can also be seen as a way of this restoration. ‘In psychoanalytical terms this process of seeking to preserve these experiences and can certainly be described in terms of the unconscious, as “an attempt to preserve, recreate, restore the lost object; or rather, the lost relation with the object conceived of in terms of the object”’ p187
As children we are encouraged to daydream, play, invent and live in fantasy. This is our way of believing in the world and finding our place in it. We become lost in these worlds. As in therapy, we attempt to distinguish between the ‘me’ and ‘not me’, we replay our inner world, to distinguish between our own and perhaps our ‘others’ problems.
The importance of this process is the return of the lost object that this photographer re-creates. As with a patient, in the therapeutic space, or as Marion Milner puts it, ‘I think the essential point is the new thing that has been created, this new bit of the external world that he has made significant and “real”, through endowing it with form’. The photographic unmasking of these old symbols and the making of new ones, the continuous process of destroying and remaking and the constant integration of the exterior world with that of ones interior, is new knowledge.
There are, of course, two sets of happenings, in this dyad of communication, that of the producer and that of the viewer. During her production, Marion Milner writes of the interplay between the two partners, the partners of imagination and action, of dream and reality. But what of the viewer?
‘Such a setting, in which it is safe to divulge in reverie, is provided for the patient in analysis, and painting likewise provides such a setting. Both for the painter of the picture and for the person who looks art it’ p193
[1] a large change in appearance or form; a metamorphosis
[2] Melanie Klein describes the earliest stages of infantile psychic life in terms of a successful completion of development through certain positions. There are two major positions: the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position. The earlier more primitive position is the paranoid-schizoid position and if an individual's environment and up-bringing are satisfactory, she or he will progress through the depressive position.
[3] Projective Identification (or PI) is a term first introduced by Melanie Klein of the object relations school of psychoanalytic thought in 1946. It is a concept 'more and more referred to in psychodynamic work', especially in circumstances 'where A experiences feelings that belong to B but that B is unable to access; and instead "projects" them into (not just onto) A'.[1]
Projective identification thus designates a psychological process in which a person engages in the ego defense mechanism projection in such a way that their behavior towards the object of projection invokes in that person precisely the thoughts, feelings or behaviors projected. It has become accepted that 'Projective identification may unconsciously aim to get rid of unmanageable feelings but it also serves to get help with feelings'.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Paper On: 'Art And Chaos' Marie-Christine Press
It does seem paradoxical that in order to make oneself whole, one should induce a sense of madness and disintegration.
Marie-Christine Press
Many would be interested in the role of the unconscious in regards expression of creativity and ideas in photography, letting new symbols of expression emerge, hoping to engage feeling with communication, believing in the power of the unconscious to nurture (and occasionally hinder) the creative effort.
My starting point is with a preoccupation with self-discovery and that relationship between my inner and outside world. Where does the feeling about my external world connect to the process of conflicts in my inner world? What is experienced outside is perhaps a mirror, or a door to the unconscious. In terms of healing, perhaps a way of reconnecting with parts of myself that predates language.
This journey seems to have been based on my intense feeling of disillusionment, in conjunction with, an inability to manage certain feelings around separateness and separation and more importantly, perhaps, an inability to convey, to communicate this disillusionment. Theory would suggest that this can be seen as a failure to negotiate fully, in Kleinian thought, the depressive position and, photographic expressionism, as with the therapeutic relationship, is all about reengaging with this concept.[1]
I was being denied access. The creation of serious defences where being constructed, defence mechanisms brought to the fore to inhibit by journey. When one is fumbling for words, photography can be part of that search for truth, trying to remain faithful to an folding process of knowledge and clarification.
As in the journey of psychoanalytical therapy, the creative process requires a framework, a space of trust and a place where chaos can be accepted as a temporary world. A place to mourn. The capacity to mourn loss is an important part of this process, as it can often be prerequisite for new life. During this process of internal and external reorganisation, there is with it, with the loss of something, what seems, very valuable,
[1] Klein saw the depressive position as an important developmental milestone that continues to mature throughout the life span. The splitting and part object relations that characterize the earlier phase are succeeded by the capacity to perceive that the other who frustrates is also the one who gratifies. Schizoid defenses are still in evidence, but feelings of guilt, grief, and the desire for reparation gain dominance in the developing mind.
In the depressive position, the infant is able to experience others as whole, which radically alters object relationships from the earlier phase.[10]:3 “Before the depressive position, a good object is not in any way the same thing as a bad object. It is only in the depressive position that polar qualities can be seen as different aspects of the same object.”[14]:37 Increasing nearness of good and bad brings a corresponding integration of ego.
Informal Interview with Terry Dennett 12/04/11
Terry Dennett knew Jo Spence for 36 years, living together for 13 of these from 1973-1986. Dennett, an accomplished photographer and writer collaborated or ‘co-currated’ (T. Dennett 12.04.11) a lot of work with Jo Spence, extensively published, throughout this period.
The social relevance of their work together has been documented widely, photographs of gypsies, the women’s movement etc, their relationship producing some very thought provoking material, a combination of Spence from a social-cultural stance and Terry Dennett as a more politically motivated image maker.
It is widely documented that the work emanates from a social and political viewpoint; little has been documented, however, about how Spence’s upbringing may have influenced her motivations in her work. Specifically her relationship with her parents, her mother particularly, which was described as ‘difficult’.
Well before she started collaborating with Rosie Martin in 19xx, it was evident that Spence was interested in the psychodynamics of non-verbal communication in the form of her self-portraits.
I am particularly interested in the psychoanalytical work they did together between 1980-1986 and how that impacts on my research into the role of the family album. Her early self-expressive work, described by Spence, as her ‘for self’ albums. (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
Spence’s Alternative Family Album
Spence’s parents died within three weeks of each other in 19xx, where upon she set about producing ‘recreations’ as the ‘truth’ to fill in the what she called ‘the gaps’, in her past, to create her impression of ‘the whole’. (T. Dennett 12.04.11) During this period of research Spence was interested in the psychological nature of this form of expression and how this impacted on her past.
This ‘constructed truth’ would have been undertaken to engage with that relationship with mother and of asking herself different questions. Stories, for instance, ‘that one wouldn’t tell the neighbours’, as Dennett explains, ‘Jo realised she had to be her own person’ (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
Her expression of early her experiences of being evacuated during the war, her difficult relationship with her mother and demanding father impacted greatly on her imagery.
Experience with psychotherapy
Although clearly interested in the power of the therapeutic nature of this work, Spence’s experience of therapy as a talking cure, was mixed. The belief that she was in an engagement with the therapist as a companion rather than being a business transaction damaged this relationship. This exchange, is understood today as just part of the therapeutic relationship and integral to ‘setting of the therapeutic frame’ and seen as very much emotionally and experientially part of the process. Spence was charged for her first therapy session and never returned. She turned to ‘self therapy, usually within like minded groups, often feminists groups, without supervision and continued on her therapeutic journey.
‘Family albums’, stated Spence, ‘intrigues me by what they don’t show’ (T. Dennett 12.04.11) and that she believed that ultimatly ‘the photographs would make concrete the intellectual parts of her past’. (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
Methodology
Spence was influenced by the work of writer and theatre theoretician Kenneth Burkes’ ideas of dramatism.[1] Could these techniques be used to rebuild her damaged relationship with mother? Would the scripting that she was interested in, be made to work in her hour of need, this was to be answered, as her diagnosis of her suffering from cancer, became evident in 19xx.
Mirror work, was important, which enabled her to be able to stage how she felt. Restructuring her version of family portraits in a staged narrative form and looking, through scripting, at her self image from her roots in photo theatre and mirror work,
While working with mirrors Spence was staging the encounter with ‘another’, the therapist or healer within. Spence was communicating with her ‘other self.’ (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
Dennett recounts the environment being ‘made highly charged’ while undergoing this ‘Social acting out’. The therapy was working in an explosive manner, the atmosphere in the flat, while working in such a way, was palpable. This therapeutic staging progressed to scripting, based on method acting and the work of (William Reich)[2] , was being very cathartic, charged with sexual energy. (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
Fig.3 shows an outcome of work. Spence is really crying in this image. She holds the bear that she took away with her when she was evacuated during the war.
Process
Spence and Dennett worked together as co-authors during this stage of production, developing ideas together, as co-curators, often shooting ‘snaps as reference’ and going through a period of ‘waiting’, returning to restage the event, often on a 5x4 camera. Dennett would operate the camera.
One interesting area of process that intrigued me was, as with traditional process of the time, a ‘waiting time’, was necessary. Coined by Spence and Dennett, this was the time required for film to come back from the lab, this time enabled them to ‘become divorced from’ the image and allowed more ‘objectivity’. (T. Dennett 12.04.11)
[1] Dramatism, introduced by rhetorician Kenneth Burke, made its way into the field of communication in the early 1950s as a method for understanding the social uses of language and how to encounter the social and symbolic world of a drama (Brock, Burke, Burgess, Parke, and Simons 1985). Dramatism is the belief that language is a strategic, motivated response to a specific situation (Griffin 2006). It views language as a mode of symbolic action rather than a mode of knowledge (Burke 1978). Kenneth Burke's view was not that life is like a drama, but that life is a drama: that humans by nature see and interpret situations as drama. Dramatism theory has the layout of a play, complete with agents (actors), acts (plots), scenes (settings), agencies (tools, instruments, or means) and purposes. These five elements form the dramatistic "pentad." Dramatism comprises identification, dramatistic pentad, and the guilt-redemption cycle.
[2] Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897 – November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry. He was the author of several notable books, including The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Character Analysis, both published in 1933.[1]
Reich worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s and was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[2] He tried to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis, arguing that neurosis is rooted in the physical, sexual, economic, and social conditions of the patient, and promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives, abortion, and divorce, and the importance for women of economic independence. His work influenced a generation of intellectuals, including Saul Bellow, William S. Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Norman Mailer, and A. S. Neill, and shaped innovations such as Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic analysis, and Arthur Janov's primal therapy.[3]
Text: 'The Purge'
Lutz, in his review of the catharsis state (1999), says,
"The emotions we feel as we relive past experiences are simply a coming to consciousness of one's desires. We cannot feel the same emotions because they are long gone. Emotions cannot be stored for years in our bodies, waiting to reappear, like a virus or bottled up carbonation. We might cry, of course, in a way very similar to the way we cried when our desires were first frustrated, but not because the tears have been waiting somewhere inside us during the intervening years. We cry because the events or the desires still invoke powerful feelings when they are remembered or recognised, in part because our understanding of the events has not evolved."
Can the process of such image-making be of psychological benefit to the creator? Is it possible to adequately visualise repressed, or otherwise inadequately emotionally and un-processed material? The production of such art may be a cathartic experience, an act of venting. By accessing the ‘true self’, perhaps one can express oneself through the process.
Pascal's law states that when there is an increase in pressure at any point in a confined fluid, there is an equal increase at every other point in the container. This hydraulic metaphor is often attributed to Freud’s use of the word catharsis, the release of energy, or of ‘spurting out’, effectively reducing the pressure of the 'bottled up' emotions.
Patients’ talk, therapists listen. Purging the affects of our deeply rooted experiences are the basis of the therapeutic process. From Breuer’s conversations with Freud in the late 1800’s, where he had identified symptoms of paralysis, fits and states of mental confusion in ‘hysterical women’. Their studies and treatment began the mechanism of the ‘talking cure’. This method was also referred to in their day as the ‘Cathartic Method”.
Catharsis is described as the act of expression, or more accurately as the experiencing of deep-rooted experiences, events in ones past that have been repressed or ignored. This can, in the therapeutic setting, be a slow or gradual ‘letting off steam’ or can be, often, an uncontrollable dramatic outburst. This cathartic aggression, as it can be named, is a way of reducing psychological stress.
As infants, we express these conflicts easily, involuntarily discharging these affects from emotion stimulus. As we grow, we learn to control these outbursts, as, in the west particularly, they are often associated with anger. We learn to suppress these dramatic outbursts. Our career’s might remind us of the inappropriateness of these outbursts and we learn to bottle them up. The unearthing of these repressed emotions in the therapeutic situation could also be interpreted as the revealing of ‘symbols of memories’ SR and their visualisation of such could be seen as the representation of such emotions. These unearthed visual memories may not be literally real, they can be seen, perhaps more accurately the process of there construction can be seen, as vehicles for re-constructing a two dimensional representation of the emotion associated with the repressed feeling. These are significant relived events, experienced with their associated emotions.
Venting is seen as a more immediate expression of emotional stimuli rather than catharsis`, which once accessed could be from events and memories previously been suppressed, not dealt with, or inadequately processed, probably over a period of year.
It has been, perhaps, the inability to access these affectual experiences rather than the literal-ness of there expression through an image. With further exploration as the patient returns from the regressed state, resolution can be found.
Says Eugene Gendlin (1996)
"One relives the past in catharsis just as it actually happened but with the great difference that one expresses and finally feels emotions that were blocked at the time. To some extent this happens in all therapy."
There is a generally held belief that the expression of these ‘held’ emotions is better for our health than bottling them up. However it is the emotion attached to the event that eventually materialises, unless there is a verbalization, or working through, of the suppressed event then some believe that this venting is of little use and can actually heighten tension. ‘The venting hypothesis’ proposed in 'Expressing Emotions', 1999 Kennedy-Moore & Watson argues that in the therapists room, any dramatic outburst or venting can take several sessions to discuss before any relief or partial resolution found.
The inadequate processing of past trauma eventually must be expressed. Eugene Gendlin (1996) says,
"One relives the past in catharsis" "just as it actually happened but with the great difference that one expresses and finally feels emotions that were blocked at the time. To some extent this happens in all therapy."
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