Knowledge from Uncertainty?

John Cage and W.R. Bion: An Exercise in Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Adela Abdella (2011)

 ‘I was destroying something for them, and they where destroying something for me’ (Kostelanetz, 1988, p.131) said the musician John Cage, while working in collaboration with his orchestra.

The purpose of this paper is to gain some understanding of the nature of the concept of negative capability (coined by the poet John Keats in1817), and its relation to my project. Negative capability is the concept of the fostering of uncertainty, or having openness to the unknown and to embrace the value of an uncertainty of outcome while engaged in this collaborationist research project. The author converges psychoanalytical theory and practise with the production of self-portraits and their interpretation, this mimics the process in the consulting room and it is here where it is common for the analyst to tolerate this unknowing, holding both his own and clients anxieties while in search of new knowledge. During this process of thinking, new ways of experiencing are offered, a journey to more authentic experiences and of personal growth.

‘Creative people who possess the capacity for negative capability in high degree seem to conceive of themselves as part of the macrocosm and to lack that sense of opposition between their ego and both the outside world and their own unconscious which renders the majority resistive to their own imaginative potentialities. This enables them to allow themselves to make imaginative statements which have both private and universal meaning’ (Rycroft p,167)

The therapeutic exchange is a form of interdisciplinary dialogue, but describing it in terms of both comprehension and understanding is but a dangerous illusion. This is a thesis of both an artist and psychotherapist who seeks to enter into a dialogue between these two fields of knowledge, the holding of an auto-reflective attitude towards photography, which demands the freedom to use and recreate inherited knowledge in a personal and innovative way. It proposes also to use this creativeness in analytical thinking with that of the interpreted photographic self-portraits and their display.

In discussing two seemingly different practices, that of analytical practice and music composition, in her paper, John Cage and W.R. Bion: An Exercise in Interdisciplinary Dialogue (2011), Adela Abdella discusses some creative similarities,

 ‘…looking for meeting points, listening to other disciplines and to our own echo during this dialogue, putting our theories and models to work in such a way as to let them grow through contact with other fields of knowledge’ p475

In this paper, Abella draws comparisons with the work of the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion and John Cage, a composer of avant garde music. Abella argues that in both cases, they propose that spontaneity is an illusion while searching for a new and the unknown (p. 480), a disruptive state where physic pain is synonymous with creative and psychic growth. The contrary reluctance to face the unknown ’taking refuge in certainty’ (Bion 1967a p. 158) has a defensive, disruptive character without potential.

Cage states that the ‘changes that had taken place in this century… are such that art is not an escape from life but rather an introduction to it’ (Kostelanetz, 1988, p. 226).  

‘I want to give up the traditional view that art is a means of self expression for the view that art is a means of self-alteration, and what it alters is mind… We will change beautifully if we accept the uncertainties of change’ (p. 230)

In comparison, Bion’s view of psychoanalysis is 

‘In psychoanalytic methodology, the criterion cannot be whether a particular usage is right or wrong, meaningful or verifiable, but whether it does, or does not, promote development’ (Bion1962b p. ix)

Bion and Cage are advocating the suppression of the creativity of the artist to allow in that which is the creative in the reader; as also happens in the therapeutic exchange. Then the project becomes a collaborative project as the joint narrative unfolds.  Cage would acknowledge that the performer allows for the self expression of the audience, Bion would restrict the intervention of the analyst’s activity, a non-expression or silent attitude of the analyst, in order to leave as much space as possible for the patients personal worlds.

The function of the images produced and the documentation of their reception is not to seek awareness per se, but to change the mind so that they can be open to experience, to allow other possibilities; those that haven’t otherwise been considered. This is the nature of the search for new knowledge, to open our eyes to the complexity of personal imagery, to work in an environment that cannot be simply or quickly satisfied. Openness to the new and unknown, free of memory, although taking advantage of it. Images that are too emotional or too intentional try to dominate people, they try to engage the readers to such an extent that they cut off this unconscious interdisciplinary dialogue. Of course,  one of the problems with interdisciplinary comparisons is that there will be different results when realised among other fields; the same idea can have different destinies, depending on the creative personality of the one applying it and the one who reads, the medium of the field allowing different realisations of the same artwork.

In Cage’s thought provoking statement ‘The function of art is to hide beauty; that has to do with opening our minds, because the notion of beauty is just what we accept’ (p 85), highlights the importance of drawing conclusions too soon of a collaborative process. Bion would say the trying to search for the patient’s truth, instead of resting on the dangers of known truths. ‘We are incapable of learning if we are satisfied’, indicates Bion.

‘The verbal expression can be so formalised, so rigid, so filled with so many existing ideas, that the idea I want to express can have the life squeezed out of it’ Bion 1967a, p. 141) Although art production and awareness fosters curiosity, the problem for Bion is that the use of language impedes. ‘The over stifling nature of words can create there own illusions’. Cage says ‘when you succeed in defining and cutting things off from something, you thereby take the life out of them. It isn’t any longer as true as it was when it was incapable of being defined” p119

A disciplined attitude to the work, allowing discovery, uncertainty and being in unfamiliar territory will open up new opportunities, the need to avoid too quick, too superficial and thus too partial understandings is unhelpful, the paradox of mental discomfort keen to contribute, struggle to read, to frustrate the process of the revealing of knowledge or not. ‘The shaking up of certainties to reveal ready made truths enliven a blunt and stifled mind’.

The work of this thesis is to provide or underpin a piece of interdisciplinary dialogue, both enriching and also in this process limiting it. Questions raised will be, are there substantial convergence between the production of self-portraits and there interpretation and are these on a superficial level or do they, viewed through the lens of psychoanalytical theory, convey some fundamental aspects of thinking of both producer and reader?

Keats’s theory of negative capability, where the ability to allow oneself to be ‘in uncertainties of emotions in universal terms, distinguishing between the universal and the individual’, is the nature of this project and having negative capability as the intuitive process of being in an uncertain state, in that the hope that new meaning as outcome will emerge, is of value. where art meets life.

Spencer Rowell 2012

Creative Imaginings. The Objectivity of Dreams

Charles Rycroft. The Innocence of Dreams (1979)

As a society, we set such high value on verbal and written expression of language. Outside the artists environment of art and poetry, little attention is made to the interpretations of dreams or other forms of unconscious communication, seeing them perhaps on the one hand irrational, imagined symbols, against the other, the rational language, the world of the grounded and realistic. Of course we are all communicating in both these ways, creative interplay is rife, and as an artist and psychotherapist, it is I who wants to document this process of where image becomes language.

Our dreams, which I shall call creative imaginings that we present to the world, are free from conscious manipulation; they are where we wish to be, what we wish for or hope to be or not to be. They are places we once knew, or states we would want for are imagined, a place to share with people we love and warn against places we might find ourselves with those we wouldn’t want to be with. Imagination can be interpreted as an awake version of dreams experienced in sleep. We lose the ability too recognise the importance of these affective messages as images or symbols; these messages free from the veils of our defence.

Rather than sleeping dreams, this project consists of gaining insight from the visual representations of hypnagogia and hynopompic experience. It is the realisation of images that emerge from a dream-state, those images that might appear while falling asleep or images immediately accessed upon awakening. This ‘threshold consciousness’ as it is known, can be described as a point at which ego boundaries are loosened; it could be described as when one might have more openness to sensitivity or to be in a state of a more heightened suggestibility. It has long been thought that the hypnagogic state can provide insight into a problem. The best-known example being August Kekulé’s realisation that the structure of benzene was a closed ring while half-asleep in front of a fire and seeing molecules forming into snakes, one of which grabbed its tail in its mouth. Many other artists, writers, scientists and inventors—including Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Walter Scott, Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton, have credited hypnagogia and related states with enhancing their creativity.

These creative imaginings can be used to allude to ideas, narratives, recollections and feelings. During these transitional states, this semblance of undefended imagination, as they travel from unconscious to a pre-conscious state, loose the capacity for reality testing - they are initially seen as hallucinations, however there is within them an act of knowingness, a display with indifference that is uncontaminated by self conscious will.

The self-portrait is a way of observing these phenomena that we make for ourselves. These images, freely associate and to an extent are free from defence, (which may come into play to disown responsibility), they create an opportunity to get more of an objective look on our innermost feelings. To be, in the words of Rycroft,  ‘a momentary glimpses of the dreamers total imaginative fabric, glimpses into the fabric, where are woven all memories, expectations, wishes and fears’. (p. xi)

There is an aspect to these images that are alien to me, that they are my dream-self as someone other than myself. Initially there is no connection; they could not possibly reveal anything of myself. They are as aspects of myself that hasn’t yet been assimilated into myself. Jung, Calvin Hall and others have recommended that dreams should be studied not singly, but in a series.

These unassimilated parts of self are sent for assessment, a form of fractured objectivity about oneself. If these individual images have any meaning or message, then the way these messages are communicated must apply to the process as well.  A self-conception process begins; enhanced by making others witness these un-assimilated parts, (as we do in therapy), a way of discovering different aspects, or symbols, that are not initially understood.

Freud would describe dreaming more in terms of hallucinations, a mechanism to repress wishes. The symbols produced would be described as a neurotic symptom, created from this repressive agency. The two distinct types of mental functioning where Freud described as primary and secondary processes - the primary process being characterised by condensation, displacement and symbolisation, the secondary process being governed by logic, speech and language. These primary processes described by Freud are a mode of thinking very different from conscious thinking, they are the mechanisms of the unconscious mind; they are both primitive and archaic. The internal agency would distort, repress dream imagery into unrecognisable and generally unrecognisable parts, this agency he called the censor and later the super ego.

Condensation and displacement are the prime mechanisms of the primary process, these are no more than wish-fulfilment hallucinations and are, according to Freud, characteristic of unconscious thinking. Condensation is where two or more images are fused together to create effectively a composite, who’s meaning is from both. It is common for people to be fused, often with aspects of self and others. When an object or feeling is displaced on to something it symbolises or refers obliquely to something else, becoming a symbolic substitute. Displacement is the process of symbol formation; it can also represent creations of figures of speech such as a metaphor in language.

If in `Freud’s terms dreams are the product of a neurosis, then all daydreamers are neurotic. The question arises, what is it within the artist accesses these symbols is able to use artistic expression to act as such a representation of the human condition, without implying that it is simply the pathology of the creator. It is this lack of image integration of these un-integrated parts that in our imagination resembles our dreams.

So a dream to Freud was a repressed wish that was veiled, to produce manifest content from latent content, an interpretation was needed; to unscramble these bit-parts and distortions imposed on by the censor. Free association is the technique Freud used to access this latent content. By following the first line of communication or idea in the analytical situation the journey to manifest content begins. The translated content from this primarily visual content expressed in discourse Freud called secondary revision.

The Jungian term for secondary revision would be amplification. Jung placed more importance on dreams and considered them as much a product of the dreamer as of the collective unconscious. The fractured images re-combined, fragments from external images, along with universally occurring experience. He also considered us dreaming continually while awake, the chatter of consciousness simply drowning them out. More to do with psycho-physical rearrangements and integration, than with hallucinatory gratification and of repressed wishes that Freud believed. But what of the creative imagination of the viewer? These images create  transference between the image and the viewer and as a series, the part objects can be formed into a more rounded picture, they become part of the combined experience projected on to the photograph. This combined knowledge is a mental picture created of the intersubjective space between the object and viewer. By observing the narrative, over time, discerning meaning from previous work; this becomes the knowledge that underpins future interpretations.

Connection between creative imagination and dreaming long recognised by writers and artists themselves however legitimate to discuss the nature of this relationship. This project can seen as a fusion of concepts of images ideas, (condensation) replaced by language (displacement) and symbolising other representing another symbolisation in the presence of the viewer, observing the relationship between these two selves in dialogue, the unconscious revealing, the transition to consciousness, the narrative of primary processes becoming of communication to secondary processes.

The self-portraits I produce are not dreams, however they come from this place of half-light, as an intra-personal communication, a communication between two aspects of the same person. These could be seen as messages from one part - self to the other, symbolic messages. Interpretation could bring an intuitive understanding of these metaphors and symbols, a reflexive mental activity, one part observing, one of reflecting upon; an internal discussion with objectivity. To amplify or create a secondary revision, analysis of these images becomes text and this is used to make a set of statements about a combined narrative, a constructed metaphor, the project becomes an interpersonal communication when assessed. 

Biography imagined, becomes a shared biographical experience.


Spencer Rowell 2012

Self-Portrait as Phantastic Object

Much of psychoanalytic thinking has, as its starting point, the infantile sense of wishful thinking; omnipotence visualised through the medium of play as a way to reveal the relative awareness of the truths of experience. Freud speaks of this process in terms of a compromise, where ones capacities to express our place in the world are mediated, via language, to a sense of reality. This could also be said of art production, as generally the artist knows what is real and conscious, however during this state of production, there outcome can be seen initially as perhaps having a sense of unrealistic wishful thinking.

‘As people grow up, then, they cease to play, and seem to give up the yield of pleasure which they gained from playing. But whoever understands the human mind knows that hardly anything is harder for a man than to give up pleasure, which he has once experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another. What appears to be a renunciation is really the formation of a substitute or surrogate. In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies. He builds castles in the air and create what are called daydreams. I believe that most people construct phantasies at times in their lives. This is a fact which has been long been overlooked and whose importance has therefore not been sufficiently appreciated.’ (Freud 1908, p.144)

This thesis sets out to explore whether psychoanalytic thinking, based on interpretations of photography, expressed via language, can illuminate pre-verbal expression through the production of self-portraits.

Since standard psychoanalytic thinking significantly differs from other ways of the understanding of human psychology, (Tukett and Taffler 2007 p.389), it is suggested that this methodology may have a unique contribution to make to this area of research. The author suggests that with this psychoanalytic approach, language from interpretations can act as an interface between the image representation and affective knowledge; that it can also explain aspects unconscious functioning around art production, its realisation and appreciation.

I will introduce new ways of seeking to understand images psychoanalytically; and specifically within the realm of the self-portrait. A strength of this argument put forward is that it relies on widely accepted clinical thinking about the workings of the unconscious mind in clinical work; in both that of the artist and the viewer in this new dynamic.  It will examine the nature of unconscious phantasy and psychic reality, the relationship between these states of mind - the expression of the internal world of the artist and of the reader, the understanding of those internal worlds and how they interrelate. It has become an increasing area of interest, as the project has progressed, of the role of the viewers and interpretors in this process - the importance of an increasing understanding of this new intersubjective dynamic. The thesis will examine their role in detail, paralleling the relationship of the therapist/client in a therapeutic engagement, to enquire about the notion of what might be called a ‘blank screen’.

I will describe the artefacts in the context of them being ‘Phantastic Objects’, (coined by Tukkett and Taffler, 2003) and as such are the objects used in this process in an attempt to achieve a sense of perceived reality, derived from two psychoanalytical concepts. Object, which is used in the sense as in philosophy; as a mental representation, or a symbol of something that is not the thing in itself. This could also represent a part object or combination of internalised relationships. And the word Phantasy, as Freud speaks of in his quote above, as an imaginary scene in which the inventor represents the protagonist in the process of having latent (unconscious) content or wishes, fulfilled. (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973, p.314)

This project, as indeed therapy can be described as, is a documentation of the developmental struggle between the ‘reality principle’ and the ‘pleasure principle’. In the therapeutic engagement much is given to this interplay, the conflict between these two basic principles. The production of the photographs represent a negotiation of the resolution of (or partial resolution of) the conflicts of these two states of mind into which, in Freud’s words, ‘a new principle of mental functioning was thus introduced’ so that ‘what was presented in the mind was no longer what was agreeable, but what was real, even if it happened to be disagreeable’ Freud 1911, p219.

‘At the heart of the psychoanalytic understanding of reality is the assumption that individuals are always in some degree of unconscious conflict: in fact, we develop a sense of mature reality by finding an individual way to accommodate the ongoing and potentially creative conflict between our wishes and our real opportunities,’

Freud 1911, p.399

This series of self-portraits as Phantastic Objects, analysed, allows the artists deepest desires to be fulfilled. The artist in a state of infantile omnipotence, where the visualisation of conflicts and the inevitable display of antagonism between these two states that are reflected upon in the interpretations, offers insight and affective knowledge of internal worlds.

Spencer Rowell 2012

Self-appraisal of presentation made at the AMD/ASD PhD Student Conference 14th June 2012.

14th June 2012.

I was nervous, feeling I was trying to deliver too much information. The more successful presentations, in my view, were more simple and tried to keep focus on the research question and methodology. Generally I felt that I was having a difficulty defending my presentation. This was due to the fact that I am still unsure of my question and how it will add to future knowledge. Quite a drawback!

However, having talked to Stuart Evens and Nick after the presentation, I was led to believe that this was not so unusual and they seemed quite positive, Stuart explaining that the presentation was interesting, having lots of ‘bits’ that needed simplifying and that I just need to find the ‘glue’ and Nick suggesting that the outcome could be of value to other therapists working in the area of photo-therapy.

These where the questions posed in my presentation:

Research Question           

Can the documentation of image production through the use of the camera as a therapeutic tool, deepen our understanding of human functioning? By paralleling the therapeutic engagement in the consulting room, can it create a new narrative, its process documented through continued assessment and adaptation?

Research Method

Mixed. The reason for combining both quantitative and qualitative data, is to better understand this research problem by converging both quantitative images (broad theoretical trends) and qualitative data (detailed views), as with the language emerging from the images.

(John Creswell, Design research, 2009 p.135)

The intent of this concurrent mixed method study is to document the production of self-portraits alongside their interpretation by the author and other trained psychotherapists. Throughout this study, a third party collaborator (psychoanalytic reader) will be asked to measure the relationship between the analysts subjective comments and the artists self-portraits, over time.

Methodology

To achieve a higher level of abstraction, where patterns, themes and clusters of knowledge can be seen and documented. Psychoanalytic theory is used as a lens, through which to observe this data of both image and text. New images create interpretations which in turn creates a new narrative.

Aims and Outcomes

Through production of these photographs, I will give external form to inner states. My concern as an artist are with the ways in which the production of these photographs, their reception, analysis and relation to analytical theory, can be incorporated into an on-going art practice.

I offer this project as a way of introducing the reader to the concept of pre-verbal communication and its importance in both aesthetic production and art appreciation, how this is translated into language and documented.

My Assessment

To work towards the “making of an original and significant contribution to knowledge and understanding in the relevant field of study as judged by independent experts applying accepted contemporary international standards”.

And it is not:

"The degree is not awarded as an expression of the aesthetic value, social worth or cultural significance of particular achievements, i.e. for high professional competence and peer recognition alone." (Biggs, 2000).

And one of the statements made about it in the University of Queensland Doctor of Philosophy Handbook (page 1) reads:

“The doctoral thesis provides evidence of a contribution to knowledge with a level of originality consistent with 3-4 years of full-time study and supervised research training”.

A Few Key Questions

I would like to clarify the actual research question and whether its practice based or practice led. Why my methodology and not another, justify my methods? The contribution to knowledge, who takes this research on? What sorts of contribution are typically made in dissertations?

It can be seen as:

A re-contextualization of an existing technique, providing language, to gain awareness from content (images), as opposed to providing language and knowledge from a therapeutic engagement. Language that can be established as offering insight and new knowledge. The image offers affective meaning and affective communication from the artist.

Implementation of theoretical principle: showing how it can be applied in practice; making a physical representation of established psychoanalytical theories.

Empirically based (or language based) characterisation of a phenomenon of interest (therapeutic value of photographic production)

Well-founded critique of existing theory or evidence (e.g. correlating the results of a number of existing studies to show patterns, omissions or etc.)

'Art-practice-led' or 'Art-practice-based'

If a creative artifact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge, the research is practice-based. If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is practice-led.

"Research which is initiated in practice, where questions, problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice and practitioners; and, secondly,

‘That the research strategy is carried out through practice, using predominantly methodologies and specific methods familiar to us as practitioners in the visual arts and design." (CRIAD, 2000).

My Art-practice involve the making of artwork (Practice based), and is a major part of the research process. Information is derived from the images (Practice led). This process is documented, however, in context of a narrative produced (the image informs the next) this part can be seen as a Practice-led project.

Practice-based Research is an original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. It includes artefacts in the form of photographic images, whilst the significance and context of the claims are described in words. A full understanding can only be obtained with direct reference to those outcomes. These outcomes from the research process will be included in the submission for examination and the claim for an original contribution to the field are held to be demonstrated through the original creative work.

The outcomes and primary focus of the research is not to advance knowledge about practice, or to advance knowledge within practice. So I conclude this is not a practice –led thesis.

Notes
Is everything practice led? May involve practice. The project will be enhanced and modified. The camera is used as a research tool. Practice based ... Theory led project. Practice informed…. Informed by knowledge of practice. Modify, practice based to theory led Practice feeds work Meaning comes from theory.

Conclusion (suggested in the form of an 'elevator pitch')

My research is a combination of my interest in the self-portrait photography and psychotherapy. How a lens-based artist might exhibit their internal world externally through the combination of photographic self-portraits and their interpretation, how this can be documented over time, thus paralleling the process in psychoanalysis.

Through collaboration with The Guild, I produce self-portraits that area interpreted as sessions, by two analysts, once monthly over two years. With these interpretations the images become represented as language. The documentation of this process (1)as individual encounters and 2) a narrative over time) is described through the lens of psychoanalytical theory.

Spencer Rowell 2012

Externalise Me, Internalise You.

Projection, Identification, Projective Identification. Edited by J. Sandler (1988)

As much as psychoanalysis is concerned with the interaction between the outer world and its relationship with an inner world (how we take in and make sense of external events and how we put our inner thoughts and understandings back out into the outer world), I am intrigued how this parallels photographic self-portraiture along with its assessment as a form of internal self-expression. This project and the production of self-portraits and their assessment offers an opportunity to build aspects of the self and observe how they relate to external objects from a more objective viewpoint.

Is this work simply a form of self-imposed fragmentation followed by reparation, or through the temporary loss of inner self, diffusion and re-identity? Do I display my images, because of my incapacity to differentiate subject (the photograph) and object (me), from reality (the print) and phantasy of the image, (what it is about?). Through what process do I, as the artist, discard unwanted parts of myself, in the form of photographs, and value taking in, in the form of language, interpretations. Also, what of the interpreter in this mêlée? In losing my state of independence, through dependence on the analysts’ responding to my work, how do I, in phantasy, transmit my thoughts into their minds; do they contain those thoughts and return them to me? As I ponder these reflections of theirs’ and I offer more images that in turn, have potential of more discoveries and awareness to my inner world, does an alternative picture emerge, a narrative of sorts, in me and also perhaps, a narrative of them?

The Guild becomes the container and the frame, where the image is scrutinised by the examiners. In an attempt to understand the complexities of the interactions between these internalisations and externalisations and the subsequent modification of the sequence of images produced, will the documentation and the final exhibition show by means of visual representation and use of text, a more accurate image of internal representation?

A sequence of these images over time offer perhaps, more of an opportunity for reflection, but how is this image really me, you may ask? Self-portrait photography as a method of communication can of course be the act of making more concrete that experience of our internal world, a way of putting undigested bit-parts of experience and other inner experiences into an object, the print to be viewed. Self-portrait photography can display that interchange of self and non-self, the act of creation, in picking up bits that are in existence and re-forming them into something original, a form of photographic communication, used as a way of getting these experiences understood and along with there interpretations, to have them returned in a more manageable and different form, that of language. Does this project give me the opportunity to discard affect into an ‘other’? Externalise it perhaps temporarily, and once outside of self, give me the capacity to think and reflect, does it becoming a de-toxifying process? The process of documenting this Projective-Introjective dance, the former as an image sent to The Guild, then re-introjected in the form of language as it returned from The Guild, along with the assessors projections could be one way.

Projection and Introjection are seen as representing opposite sides of the same coin, an unconscious form of communication and the basis of art appreciation and interpretation.  In this context I will suggest that Projection and Introjection, used in this mature way, is more than simply an opportunity to appreciate and gain another level of understanding, between the artist and the photograph, the photograph and the assessor, an opportunity to understand something of the viewer.

Projection and Introjection is the process by which we can describe interactions between the inner (including intra-relativeness) and outer worlds of artist and viewer, a place where they merge and interrelate. This communication of aspects of self is ‘a rapid oscillation of projection and introjections’, says Money-Kyrle (1988), ‘unconsciously acquiring affective experience’. This process has its roots in early infant/mother relations, the infant cannot say how he feels, he simply makes his mother experience the same feeling. This communication is seen as them connecting in a deep and unconscious way, the mother will react that will facilitate the infant's psychic growth; the same happens in the therapeutic setting between analyst and analysand. This project seeks to engage with the viewer in a similar way, to engage on this unconscious level through Projection and Introjection.

Projection takes aspects of one's internal world and puts them onto external subjects; an unconscious process of excretion and expulsion. In this project, we include the reverse enactment; where the internal world of the viewer is incorporated into the image being viewed, it is projected also. It is this 'output' from the viewers’ internal world into the report, the viewers’ own projections, which can be seen as 'input' into the final assessment. Projection and Introjection is an intercommunicative process of shared understanding, it is a creative interplay of shared experience.

The process as it occurs in child development can be dissected into three phases (Ogden, 1982):

1) The projector rids himself of unwanted bits;

2) Deposits them into (not just onto) the receiver;

3) Recovers a modified version of his projected bits.

Without this third phase, the process is not therapeutic or helpful to the projector.

The above therapeutic process parallels that which is undertaken by this project:

1) Where the photographer disposes into an image un-resolved, un-differentiated parts of his pre-verbal past;

2) These messages are placed via a print ‘into’ The Guild;

3) The artist recovers a modified version in the form of language.

From this third phase the photographer seeks more awareness from subsequent portraits.

So projection and introjection are a related process, the communication of relationships between internal objects and with that of the outside world and vice versa. It regulates the individual’s interaction with the outside world and the observations of which in the therapeutic situation, will build a picture of that internal space. In both analysis and in the viewers’ interpretation of my work, this is done by the process of formulating internal boundaries, it involves creating an image of self, of that self’s relationships and the interaction between the two. When confronted by this image, the viewer often is in an initial state of confusion; an unconscious personal representation is called for. A boundary is set; ‘this is I’ and ‘that is he’. This is a disidentification process, where the ego says, ‘I distinguish between self and object, I will create a boundary’. (Sandler, J. 1988) pxx. By instigating the notion of play alongside often intense concentration, the viewers’ boundaries become merged and temporally suspended with the image. Here the viewer brings life experience to the engagement, there is a sense of the artist analysing the viewer. This process is what Sandler calls ‘sorting out’, where ‘aspects of the object–representation are incorporated into the self-representation and vice-versa.’ (1988) p26. This process is the basis for empathy in the consulting room.

To look at Projection in its broadest terms we see it, along with Introjection, as an organizing structure, in constant interplay across shared boundaries. A bringing together of un-differentiated differences, it is the way the artist sees the world and that of how the viewer perceives the same world, that together they have the capacity to bring them together and ask questions. Through this process we describe the world in subjective terms, by testing, inherently organising an continually unconsciously reflecting on the individuals internal world. Projection without Introjection would be a pointless affair, no comparison, no feedback, even in phantasy. Creativity is inhabitating these cross borders, it is the art of playing in a combined experience, The creative development comes from the constant interplay of Projective and Introjective structures in this shared environment.

But in context of the analysts’ interpretation of these photographic images, it is the reaching beneath the surface into what is the subterranean world of the artist in combination with the viewer, that is this unconscious process. The ‘sorting out’ from which we want to gain knowledge of the internal space, this is the shared world of artist and viewer, it is this externalisation of the work and expectations of a response that could be described as creative interaction. As viewers, don’t we go to art galleries to give and to receive? The viewers experiences coupled with the ideas of the artist (often misunderstood, confused expressions) are locked in an unconscious conversation, in phantasy, enabling union and a level of understanding, this is a re-enactment of a pre-verbal, or early infant experience.

The artwork also acts as a temporary container, where this lack of initial understanding is held, my need to return to the artwork for further understanding, or to relate to it as being part of a sequence and through the reverie of the engagement with the assessments, gain access to a direct descendant of inner worlds, a pre-verbal state that I am attempting to disentangle. One role of the analyst is to simply hold on to the therapeutic content while the patient process it, a temporary container, enabling the client to maintain an ability to think.

The viewing of the work is a difficult process for the analysts’, it involves them getting caught up in the affectual nature of object relations. Many of the images will not ‘pierce’, to use Barthes term, they will dissolve, counter, overlap and often create ambivalence of the viewers’ experience of communication. Though this play and interaction, I am asking them to see something; a representation of my internal world and in it, how theirs intertwines with it.

The viewer therefore creates and crosses these boundaries set up by the artist and through internalisation and externalisation responds to the work. Projection and Introjection must be seen as a developmental and in a differentiating perspective on image engagement; it is this concept that is behind creative engagement.

‘The interplay of introjective and projective mechanisms weaves a pattern of relatedness’s to the world of objects and provides the fabric out of which the individual fashions his own self image’ … ‘Out of this interplay also develops his capacity to relate to and identify with the objects in his environment.’’ (Sandler, J. 1988) p35

Through interpretation, and over time however, as in therapy, from a combined narrative, awareness emerges. It is essential to acknowledge the importance of the observers’ projections in the formulation of conclusions for this project as it being of a shared experience. Art appreciation requires projection.

Spencer Rowell 2012

Trueprint 1978

Oedipal Struggles Expressed Through the Viewing of Larry Sultan

A Psychological investigation of the work of Larry Sultan ‘Pictures from Home’ (1982-92)

Larry Sultan, in an interview with Sheryl Conkelton (Flintridge Foundation Awards for Visual Arts 1999/2000) said,

‘When I was working on ‘Pictures from Home’, my parents’ voices – their stories as well as their arguments with my version of our shared history – were crucial to the book. They called into question the documentary truth the pictures seemed to carry. I wanted to subvert the sentimental home movies and snapshots with my more contentious images of suburban daily life, but at the same time I wished to subvert my images with my parents’ insights into my point of view’.

The family album is a visual record, but also a volume of inter-relational family experiences, generally constructed and presented as historical truth; a picture of, certainly to their owners, of both visual and emotional reality. This document bears witness to our connectedness with family, humanity and ourselves; for most of us it is often the only proof of our existence. It tells the viewer what there is and how it was, our own inventory of life. It creates a link with both the past and the future and eventually, it provides the one and only link between ‘us’ and ‘there’ or ‘them’ and ‘then’. Cameras go with family life; they escort us around so that we can prove that we where really here at all. A family’s photographic album is generally about us now, but becomes a historic document of the extended family and often, is all that remains of it. It seems you cannot claim to have seen anything, been anywhere or ‘belonged’ unless you have photographed it. It proves we had relationships.

The family album has its truths of course, but the justification that it show how it really was, is not so clear. It is a worthy document, however it also has a role as a defence against our anxieties. Family albums actively promote nostalgia; one could argue that photography, far from documenting the truth, succeeds more in hiding it, than it does the revealing of it. Larry Sultan states,

‘Photography is there to construct the idea of us as a great family and we go on vacations and take these pictures and then we look at them later and we say, ‘Isn’t this a great family?’ So photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.’  

I would like to discuss that photographer Larry Sultan and his series of images that he published in 1992, ‘Pictures from Home’ are his family photographs of his truth, outside the mythology of family. I attempt to disclose more about his relationship with his parents, to read into the images something of his inner world that initially the images don’t show to us. Sultan acknowledges that he is producing a document of family images from his point of view and that he shows, through them, how he gains awareness of the ‘mythology’ of the family document. We see also his need to ‘subvert [his] images with [his] parents’ insights into [his] point of view’.

Sultan was very aware of his involvement, of the fact that he was colluding and appearing symbolically, and not literally, in the pictures in which he produces. In his words, the images became a portrait of ‘us’. He goes on to say,

‘The daily practice of a photographer is to be distanced, to have a little bit of room between what you’re doing and how you see, what you look at. For me the biggest surprise was that the distance I thought I needed as a photographer slipped. It wasn’t about ‘these’ people it was about ‘us’.’

The words of Larry Sultan describing his production of this series of images photographed for a decade up to 1992 for me show so strongly, and certainly when viewed through the lens of psychoanalytical theory, an exhibition of a son attempting to force himself into the family portrait. This is his Oedipal struggle visualised through photography. Not the first attempt, one could imagine, but with photography, he shows us his need to gain insight into his Oedipal dilemma. Larry Sultan again,

‘What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than with sociology. With being a subject in the drama rather than a witness, and in the odd and jumbled process of working, everything shifts: the boundaries blur, my distance slips, the arrogance and illusion of immunity falters. I wake up on the middle of the night, stunned and anguished. These are my parents. From that simple fact, everything follows.’

Although he doesn’t appear in these images, his presence is felt. What we see is the son who was left out, who still remains outside, beyond the dyad of the overbearing father who disallows access to his protected mother. In Merriah Lambs essay on this series of pictures, entitled ‘Reconstructing family: Larry Sultan’s pictures from home’, provides an insight into the use of the camera to enquire into family dynamics and as the title suggests, a rebuilding of the family unit.

‘Sultan understands the camera’s function as the family’s primary instrument of self-knowledge and self-representation by which family memory perpetuates, using it to re-examine family, but also undermining any claim that photographs and their arrangements are necessarily an accurate form of documentation of family life’.

She goes on to say,

‘Pictures from home is the sons account, a representation of the trawling through of these memories and what we see is quite disturbing. Through the production of the family album, we want to idolised the image of our world and our place within it and more importantly our relationships throughout our existence’.

The first thing to note is that the traditional role of the family albums production is reversed here. The son photographs the parents. The story will be different, the social norm is for the parents to display their interpretation of history, their sense of power, edited and presented, to be used as an aid memoir but also it is the story of the compilers of this story, to corroborate one persons recollection. Sultan has an opportunity here, to engage with this album dynamic once again, but this time on his terms. On the surface, he gives his sitters a voice, literally and aesthetically, but the most present person is the photographer; in these portraits, he makes up his own experience of the events.

I would like to bring an Oedipal interpretation to these images, in association with a phantasy of my view of what Sultan is saying. There is a physical space he occupies in these pictures, between his parents; it is of an elevated status, his size and strength is noticed, there is an achievement of some kind. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of the Oedipal Struggle in his ‘Interpretation of Dreams’, (1899). It is his theory of relationships, gender assignment and sexuality. Although Freud believed this was a stage of psychosexual development to be negotiated during the Phallic stage (3-6), the psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, would place this stage at much earlier, as early as the oral stage (aged 1). What is seen, in the pictures, is a renegotiated Oedipal struggle, re-visited perhaps because of its failed resolution in early age or simply an illustration of his recollection of that experience; a photographic symbol of the echo from an earlier experiences of a difficult phase of development. Can this Oedipal concept be seen within the work of Larry Sultan? Are these images a visual metaphor describing a son’s competition for his mother? Does he view his father as a rival for her attentions and affections?

If this stage is not negotiated, or only part negotiated then, a continual struggle ensues. Repressed feelings from failed attempts form conflicts and throughout life an attempt is made to seek out its resolution. In the case of these series of images, Sultan attempts again to negotiate its resolution. The Oedipal dilemma can be seen simply as a realisation of the dynamics within a triadic relationship moving from a dyadic one, or can be a more dramatic visualisation of a painful process of reconciliation of a conflict, essentially, in wrestling power from dad and gaining access to mum. In other words, from the state of ‘me’ to realisation of the ‘other’, or a more dramatic outburst of repressed resentments held back from earlier failures of it’s negotiation.

As initially conceived by Sultan, the project was to be about ‘what happens when – as I interpreted my father’s fate – corporations discard their no-longer-young employees, and how the resulting frustrations and feelings of powerlessness find their way into family relations.’

These pictures, have been taken at a time when his father was forced into retirement; his patriarchal power is on the wane, an ideal opportunity for such an unconscious attack, for the son to gain access to his mother previously denied. To gain access to a mother denied for so long. The situation of the weakened father coincides with mother’s newfound power (her business was in the ascendancy).

The images are of the everyday, located in their home, however there is a sense of a wedge being forced between the main protagonists, is it simply the wedge of the obtrusive lens? No, it is the presence of Sultan Jr. we see, and this is what interests me in this series. It is more than a document of his parents, his background; the photographs show an interaction between them which indicate more that what we see on the surface. The boy is present in these images and it is a boy who wants access.

While describing the series for the Independent Michael Collins 2010 says,

‘The most magical and redeeming quality of photography, especially given the vulgar and superficial way it is so often employed, is that a photograph will reveal, subtly or otherwise, how the photographer was engaging with the subject. Our reading of family pictures is the most sophisticated of all, because our familial relationships are the most complicated, critical and contrary of all.’

The infant attempts an understanding of his relationship with that of his parents and his position in that dyad, at many stages of his life. Upon the realisation of the existence of the other, which may be manifested in his father’s rage and jealousy, he negotiates this place. These images are Sultans need to get between the two main protagonists, a photographic illustration of the attempt to engage with them both after the original ousting from the primal scene. Now is another chance, through photography, of making sense of his position of power in this triad. We are looking at Sultans Oedipal conflict revisited, for it will be his only opportunity, as Sultan Jr. was to die of cancer in 2009 in his 63^rd year. As we stare into this world of his parents Sultan reveals the psychological concept, that of the Oedipal dilemma. One that Collins alludes to, but does not name as such;

‘And yet, this was his parents’ home, the site where all those fraught hopes, understandings and misunderstandings, securities and insecurities, would be encountered over and over again, in an endless search, a longing, for a resolution of family and home.’

In this following statement Sultan admits to the inability to name what he is trying to do, the exchange below also illustrates clearly that father is still very much the patriarch, maintaining his authoritarian and dismissive tone.

Sultan Jr.

‘A lot of the time it doesn’t make sense to me either. All I know is that every time I try to make a photograph, you give me the steely-eyed look. You know it: penetrating but impenetrable, tough and in control. Or you shove your hands in your pockets and gaze off into some mythical future, which for some reason is about 45 degrees to my left. It’s like you’re acting the role of the heroic executive in an annual report, or in a diorama on success. Maybe you’re looking for a public image of yourself and I’m interested in something more private, in what happens between events – that brief moment between thoughts when you forget yourself.’

Sultan Snr.

‘That sounds good but I think it’s a load of crap. If anything, the picture shows how strained and artificial the situation was that you set up.’

In phantasy, I am suggesting that early attempts of access to mother are swiftly put down by Sultan Snr. The boy is humiliated and shamed, not let in, resentment builds and I am suggesting that the work is a visual representation of these struggles. In Freudian theory the father will metaphorically castrate the boy as punishment for his attempt on desires for mother, so these unsuccessful attacks on father will harbour resentment, he will pick his time more carefully next time. There is a temporary resolution, in the form of identification with father and his super ego is developed further, perhaps as a punishing and more critical inner moral authority. Resentment is repressed until such time the son can mount another attack. These lost battles with father foster more resentment and his need to kill off his father and gain access to his mother are again delayed.

The underlying resentment and wish for revenge in Jr. and the illusion of power within the patriarchal Snr. is maintained. It finds itself peacefully and subtly embedded into the work, unnoticed by his parents, perhaps not fully resolved by the boy. Sultans Oedipal struggle is part-resolved, his strength to repel against parental authority without identification, is his ultimate goal of his art. This anger towards his father is now directed at both parents, he has gained a contact with reality through peaceful means. He has entered the primal scene at last, on his terms, producing the family photograph he wants to present to the world. He has confronted to a degree, the relationship between the three of them, resolving a certain amount of the anxiety.

Here we see a visual representation of the conflict approaching resolution, a form of figurative emasculation. Here, photography is used as the therapeutic tool in the resolution of the Oedipal Dilemma.

Spencer Rowell 2012