Photographer: Talkingdrum. Left, Talkingdrum's version. Right my reprocessed version.
Having different roles to perform is quite exhilarating. As a tutor I am asked for advice, as a student therapist I need advice. Then there are times when a continuum develops and I feel uncertain about my identity and yet galvanised by this uncertainty. There are also times when the questions my students ask me become my own questions or I find that they actually relate to something I am doing, and which is unconnected with them and their concerns.
To give an example. One of my students has been struggling with her essay topic. She is interested in the work of a particular designer who created sets for dance in the early part of the 20th century and is writing her term paper about him. She came for a tutorial. She wanted to know if there was any theory that could help her make sense of his artistic output. I was a little taken aback she should ask that, surely she might have heard of artistic movements such as Modernism? No, she had not. Even more miffed, I told her to get hold of a good art history book ( I suggested a few, that's what tutors do) and look at the artistic periodisation given for the 20th century. Design was something that developed in particular with the Modernist artists so she will find plenty of material in those books to help her to give a theoretical framework to her discussion.
Photographer: me. Model: me. Postprocessing by DG
At the moment my head is full of questions on the issue of transference and countertransference. I am currently working with individuals suffering from addiction, including alcoholism, and am having a tough time because of the aggression and occasional verbal abuse I encounter. In the hospital where I am doing my observation I am witnessing different ways of practising psychotherapy and I am wrestling with the issue of approach and context.
Back to my student. She wrote to thank me, saying that I had given her a wonderful idea. She is now going to look at depth psychology as a framework for her discussion.
I was a little disturbed by this. This girl is not approaching her essay the right way, that much I know, and I will soon see her for a tutorial to check on what argument she is constructing and give her proper advice. But even though her essay is not meant to be dealing with this question at all, I now find that knowing how people influence each other is actually fascinating. Social psychology is the discipline that studies such processes - how people influence each other's thoughts, feelings and behaviours. And of course transference and countertransference are the way a client and a therapist influence each other in their interaction...
...Just mulling over a few thoughts.
Funny how that works. You just got me mulling over things that were relatively fruitless, yet seemed to be related. I was thinking of Norman Bel Geddes and Jo Mielziner, which got me thinking of "Death of a Salesman", and in particular the (still to this day, I think) amazing transitions offered by the scrims and depth from the cyclorama. I tried to form connections between those transitions and how fleeting human thought is. All the while, I was trying to tie in how set design was and contiues to be influenced by those two. And then my brain broke. I realized I was nowhere near what set me off in the first place.
ReplyDeleteBut you got me thinking, anyway. Perhaps sometimes influence can be that direct.
I want to offer another idea. We actually create our own connections and take from others what is relevant to us in the moment. The universe is full of information, like puzzle pieces, and some people are good at piecing puzzles together.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that is an intellectual aptitude until a graduate school professor told me I have an expansive mind and see connections others don't see. It's the Einstein problem. He was given a D in physics in school because he could not explain how he came up with an answer. It just came to him, with the connecting pieces invisible even to him.
Minds hungry to learn, i.e. comfortable with change as you point out, Alex, will be influenced in ways others would not. I've come to see there are various types of intelligence, and making seemingly unconnected connections is one type.
In his book "Dream Thief," author Stephen Lawhead portrays a hypothetical academic specialty he calls "Spark Plug." Spark Plugs are people who have been highly educated in several disciplines in order to see connections that specialists might miss and thus stimulate discovery and innovation. I've always liked that idea. In fact, I would say that one of the highest manifestations of wisdom (as opposed to simple intelligence) is this ability to see connections.
ReplyDeleteAnd those who believe in God or a Higher Intelligence, as I do, tend to think that there is no such thing as coincidence; that everything happens for a purpose. It can be a very comforting belief, especially in hard times. :)