The Poet Pencil

Once upon a time
a pencil wanted to write poetry
but it didn't have a point.
One day a boy put it into the sharpener
and instead of a point,
a river appeared.

by Jesus Carlos Soto Morfin
translated by Judith Infante

This is a poem appearing in The Tree is Older Than You Are, a bilingual anthology of poems and stories from Mexico by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Jesus Carlos Soto Morfin is the youngest poet in the anthology.

In reading about Adam and Eve and the story of Creation, I’m reflecting on our own artistic attempts or creations. From Zornberg’s perspective, this is how we are like God. We are creating something new, something that was not there before. This is the thrill of it.  Right now I am reading my favorite online info site Brain Pickings and absorbing its wisdom. One thing that struck me was a quote about writing from Hemmingway:
 
When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. 
 
This is how the Shange poem in my last blog post felt to me.  It "happened" to me. It touched me like cold water or a kiss.
 
Many of us who write have experienced blocks, where “nothing happens”, not to the writer let alone the reader.  I had been feeling this while struggling to complete a play with my collaborator Evie Rappoport. My means of working through blocks is dream work.
 
This is a particular kind of dream work called Embodied Imagination, created and developed by Robert Bosnak, a Jungian psychoanalyst and writer.  This work is done with a dream worker (a trained guide) who helps, to paraphrase Hemmingway, “something happen” to the dreamer.  In a hypnogogic state, she is led to “enter” or embody significant images in her dream.  From this, she develops what is called a composite, meaning the 3 or 4 significant images are practiced throughout the coming weeks.  Creating new patterns and perspectives, this dream work helps me get a project underway or work through times when I feel inert.
 
A few days ago, in the midst of this block, I worked a dream using this method with my colleague, Kevin Connerton.  And presto! The next morning I woke up with ideas for the final act of our play.  I then wrote the final act. This type of dream work shakes up the unconscious in some way that allows new ideas to emerge.  This dream work facilitates creation.

What Do You Believe a Poem Shd Do?

Nztoke Shange b. 1948

quite simply a
poem shd fill you
up with something/
cd make you swoon,
stop in yr tracks,
change yr mind,
or make it up.
a poem shd happen
to you like cold
water or a kiss.

Poetry in Motion
​seen 1/11/16 on the 6 train

​Zornberg, the biblical scholar, points out that as we each leave our own particular Eden and gain consciousness, we gradually become aware of the many inhibitions and pitfalls – traumatic memories, anxieties, disappointments -- that can come between us and our desire.  Life is now improvisational and unpredictable.  We are open to questions.  We can become unstable and at any moment lapse into one of two extremes: babbling (making no sense) or poetry (making inspirational sense). 
 
Before Adam leaves the Garden, God brings animals to him for naming.  Adam uses language that is concrete and specific, the language of pure naming.  However, after Adam eats the apple, his language breaks down. He equivocates. He blames Eve. He confesses yet he rationalizes. These breakdowns and mix-ups lead to the possibility of interpretation, that is, language as having more than one meaning.  Zornberg’s point is Adam learns to use flexibly tensed speech.  This allows meaning to be continuously transformed. (Speech and language in this context includes feeling states and depth of communication.)
 
Just as scholars such as Zornberg interpret many levels of meaning in biblical texts, so we in psychotherapy address the implicit underpinnings of our conversations.  We also want to transform speech so as to see the world in new perspectives.  This is a creative process that allows for free associations and new configurations of ideas. 
 
It is similar to an artist who wants to continuously press forward and not stay with old, comfortable patterns.  Currently, there is a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Frank Stella’s work.  He is seen as a minimalist painter yet he is not. Even in his so-called early minimalist days, there is vast depth to his work.  His oeuvre has progressed astronomically from his early black grid-like works to paintings that are more like sculptures, to full blown, complex sculptures such as his Indian bird series or his huge, silver metallic sculpture, Raft of the Medusa. This portrays the disastrous raft built after the wrecking of a French Royal Navy frigate, the Medusa, a tragedy in 1816 memorialized by the French painter Géricault.
 
Stella is constantly finding new ways to use space, including incorporating state of the art technology, even now as he approaches his 80th birthday.  Regarding the artistic process, Stella sees the importance of boundaries that define but do not limit.  He writes:  “The essence of freedom… is something that is able to overcome its own boundaries. The question is not only to be able to define things, but also have the boundaries felt in the proper way – they are defining but not limiting.”  He could have been writing about psychotherapy.

​Eating the fruit in Eden represents for Zornberg the birth of human consciousness, the creation of a separate mind.  Adam and Eve are no longer as one.  Now each is alone. This new (self) consciousness delays desire. There is now the possibility of memory or disappointment coming between Adam and his beloved.  A state of arousal is now needed to work towards and create intimacy whereas before Adam and Eve had the innocence and unselfconsciousness of two animals copulating.  This new consciousness represents a healthy shifting between separateness and intimacy.
 
However, with the development of separate consciousness, a new problem can occur. While we spoke in the last post about the problem of not leaving Eden, this is the problem of not being able to return to Eden at all –that is, remaining isolated, remaining imprisoned in a separate mind.
 
One way this can happen is that eating the fruit -- ingesting intentionality and agency --can create an ambition that is limitless.  This person is reluctant to return to Eden, either to be intimate or to simply rest his body and mind.  The Sabbath can be viewed this way: a necessary return to a state of bliss to relax from the cares of being separate in the world.  Not to find a metaphorical Sabbath is to create an unhealthy isolation.
 
A parenting style can contribute to this situation – too much overscheduling and too much emphasis on achievement without helping the child articulate his or her genuine interests. This child can become a very driven adult but yet paradoxically not have genuine desire.  This person may “overwork” and “underplay” but with no real sense of satisfaction or achievement.  She or he is moving too fast and forgets what is meaningful.  In therapy, we can the patient slow down and remember.

Reflecting on the story of the Garden of Eden, we are brought into the world of desire and with that, the world of being human.   In her masterful work The Murmuring Deep, Zornberg writes that with desire comes vulnerability, a relinquishing of omnipotence, and the possibility of painful rejection.  This can be so difficult to bear that there are those who are cannot experience desire and, although impoverished, feel safe. 
 
I have worked with patients who cannot desire and therefore cannot act on their own behalf.  A goal of psychotherapy is to help them learn to want and then have the courage to become active to achieve what they want.  This takes identifying the goal and having the will to go for it.  Psychologists call this ability “agency”.  Having agency allows us to find satisfaction both because we have identified what is meaningful and we have pride in achieving it.
 
This includes wrestling with the shame of acknowledging something has power over you, that is, you want it so it drives you.  There is also the potential shame of failure, of not achieving whatever it is you desire.  Being able to tolerate this shame helps us relinquish feelings of grandiosity and develop realistic humility.
 
Interestingly, some parents are very reluctant to have their children develop desire. These parents continue to gratify beyond the time it is appropriate. The child remains in the same state as Adam before he ate the fruit, an unself-conscious state of simple gratification, a womb-like existence. These children do not learn to tolerate the frustration of wanting, of longing, and then the trial and error period that can precede achieving something meaningful.
 
Children start out in the Garden.  First they are in the womb, where hopefully everything is to their liking, with very little effort required.  Then as young infants, they have their needs met without much fuss.  They take the breast or the bottle and, ideally at least, do not experience much frustration or discomfort. 
 
Then the job of becoming human begins.  The child soon learns he or she has to wait, has to say please and thank you, that is, follow some basic rules.  By the time they reach school age, they are required to learn -- academically, emotionally, socially (not always easy).  When they do the wrong thing, they can become frightened and blame others, just like Adam and Eve tried to shift blame.  Further, to save face, they may not always tell the truth. Their various mistakes help them mature and develop the resilience needed throughout life.
 
Just remember the old Jewish joke: A five year old was sitting at the dinner table and said, “Please pass the bread”.  His astonished mother remarked, “Why, I didn’t know you could talk!”  The five year old retorted, “Up till now, I didn’t have to!”
 
 
 
 
 

One of the beautiful things about psychoanalytic thinking has always been that we need to look beneath the behavior to find the motivation, and then the meaning.  Multiple meanings are possible -- in fact, usually necessary. I have been reading Lewis Aron’s article on the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge and musing about duality. 
 
He writes about ‘radically ambiguous knowledge’; we need to be aware of the opposites inherent in the world.  The blissful garden may be both good and bad -- good because it is so soothing, bad because we are not yet aware.  The snake can be good or bad. He encourages learning and awareness but brings forth great suffering for mankind.  
 
The psychoanalyst Eric Fromm interpreted the creation story as ‘good’, the symbol of mankind’s emerging from embeddedness to freedom. The esteemed Rabbi Soloveitchik, writing about the same time, saw it as more  ‘bad’ -- as sinfulness involving lack of reciprocity and lack of limits. 

Aron describes the story as both, and these complementary views can be held at the same time. We need to leave Eden and become free but in the context of limits and mutual respect for each other.  One view balances the other so we don’t fall with a thud from the seesaw of life. Of course, we do fall constantly but hopefully can heal ruptures with this dual awareness.
 
As Aron points out, Martin Buber stated that knowledge of good and evil means an awareness of duality, of opposites inherent in all being in the world.  This seems to me one of the bases of wisdom.
 
Aron, L. (2005).   The tree of knowledge: Good and evil interpretations. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15:681- 207.
 

​I am starting to read the psychological and midrashic interpretations of the Bible by Avivah Zornberg and am excited to see how connections are being made to psychoanalytic thinking.  She takes the hints in the stories in the Bible and then expands and elaborates, developing interpretations that allow us to feel in between and underneath the words.  The sometimes flat stories of the Bible we learned as a child come alive with rich, nuanced meaning.
 
For example, Zornberg discusses the Flood, the swell of water that destroyed most of the world except for the protected animals and people on the “floating prison” (her phrase), the arc that Noah built.  She points out the subtleties of Noah’s personality.  He is able to be very strong and stoic -- no conversation, no sexual relations, no sleep while on the arc -- for a year of Biblical time. He just feeds everyone, all the animals and people that are left.  This feeding takes all of his time.
 
However, when God tells him to leave the Arc and return to the world, God implies that now, good human communication and relations should resume.  Noah is not able to return to normal life and take joy in the world.  Although Noah physically leaves the arc, he remains silent and does not communicate.  Zornberg calls this the “exile of the word”.  The word is much more than speech; it is the living and alive communication and intercourse between people. 
 
Two things: the notion that we may have to have a near total destruction before rebirth can begin, which many of our patients fear but some actually do experience -- both the near destruction and the rebirth.  Some people, like Noah, cannot go through the rebirth but help others do so.  It may be that those who have the power to lead others through the destruction cannot live in the actual world again. Secondly, this myth reminds us of the importance of communication, in the deep meaningful sense of the word.  This seems to be what God was trying to encourage, in creating the destruction that made the world formless so it could be built again.
 
More to follow….

Creativity with a small “c” is an adaptive, flexible approach to the world.  Challenges may be difficult but can be met with confidence and imagination.  This is my aim in therapy.

Many times actual creative attempts can be not only fun and rewarding but also increase mental and emotional flexibility.  Whether it is enjoying the arts or attempting something yourself, this is mind-expanding and enriching.  Each of us has a predilection, whether it is writing, dance, visual arts, crafts, music, humor and so on.

I’ll give a little of my story.  I have always loved writing and poetry in particular.  Off and on, I have attempted poetry. Once I took a poetry-writing course and, unfortunately, had a professor who totally discouraged me.  Now I am back at it.  I am taking an online poetry-writing course given by the University of Iowa and am thoroughly enjoying it.  

I also recently wrote a play, a loosely autobiographical story in which five generations of matriarchs from my family meet.  At first they display and even inflict their conflicts on the others but then through a series of dream tellings, begin to understand each other and, in some cases, even forgive.  

We had one performance in April 2015 and have another in July.  Not only was this thrilling to perform, but I was very gratified that the audience in the “talk back” afterwards was so open. The visual above is from the original art in the play.  Each of the eight dreams had art projected behind the character talking.  The above image is from a dream of a character that gave birth to a child who, amazingly, could walk and talk at birth.  It is meant to symbolize the emotional rebirth of some of the characters in the play. My daughter, also a character in the play, Rachel Paula Shapiro, created this piece.

I want to encourage my patients to develop flexibility and creativity so as to facilitate their greater adaptability, problem-solving skills and enjoyment of meaningful activities.