Trauma & Art

PART TWO                                                      The artwork has been uploaded

Narrative Therapy

“What’s your story about? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice… We tell ourselves stories that save us and stories that are the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown… Not a few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us… We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind. Often, too often, stories straddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning, The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them and then to become the storyteller” Rebecca Solnit

“In the layers and substrata of the past, there are not only personal moments, but also hidden truths. Facing the past takes courage. It is a conversation with yourself, with the environment and the relationships that have formed around you. This ongoing conversation reveals not only your path, but also how you influence and reshape the world around you. The continuous discovery and reconstruction of the past deepens the dialogue with the world and with oneself.” Alexis Stamatis

As I mentioned in the previous post I will be writing about Narrative Therapy in relation to two books, one by Michael White and one by David Denborough. White was the co-founder of narrative therapy and Dulwich Centre. With David Epston he developed narrative therapy, a non-pathologising,  respectful, empowering, and collaborative approach to counseling and community work , which recognizes that people do not only have problems, but they also have skills and expertise that can support change in their lives. It centres people as the experts in their own lives and views problems as separate from people, assuming that people have skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that can assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives. In today’s piece I will draw on Narrative Therapy Classics, a compilation of papers and interviews through which we become acquainted with Michael White’s work, political analysis and various principles of narrative therapy, as well as, samples of his work with people, and a variety of questions one might use to facilitate the process of change and re-authoring of a person’s story and life.

I have also included three pieces of this more recent series of drawing-collages.

Apart from the themes that I will touch upon today, the book contains a chapter on loss and grief, which presents the incorporation of the lost relationship in the resolution of grief and the process of re-membering. It also includes a discussion about children, trauma and subordinate storyline development, where subordinate storyline development provides an alternative territory of identity for children (and adults) to stand in as they begin to give voice to their experiences of trauma. There is also a paper on the importance of fostering collaboration between parents and children, and also, between child protection services and families. There’s also a very interesting chapter on narrative practices that facilitate the unpacking of identity conclusions. Finally, there’s an interview where White discusses ethics, personal accountability and spiritualities of the surface. He makes references to feminist ethics, bottom-up accountability, and ways of honouring the ‘sacraments of daily existence.’

As the book is so rich in material, I will inevitably refer to a few themes and basic principles in today’s piece. A lot of stories are also included that help us comprehend principles and practices. White writes that the stories [in the book] about therapy portray a number of interventions and practices, which he believes relate to what could be referred to as a deconstructive method. He suggests that “according to his rather loose definition” deconstruction has to do with procedures that “subvert taken-for-granted realities and practices; those so-called “truths” that are split off from the conditions and the context of their production, those disembodied ways of speaking that hide their biases and prejudices, and those familiar practices of self and of relationship that are subjugating of persons’ lives. Many of the methods of deconstruction render strange these familiar and everyday taken-for granted realities and practices by objectifying them.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is proposed that our lives are also shaped by the meaning that we ascribe to our experience, by our situation in social structures, and by the language and cultural practices of self and of relationship that these lives are recruited into. White explains that this constitutionalist perspective disagrees with the dominant structuralist perspective that supports that behaviour reflects the structure of the mind and the functionalist perspective that suggests that behaviour serves a purpose.

It is through the narratives / stories that we have about our own lives and the lives of others that we are able to make sense of our experience. White claims that these stories determine both the meaning that persons give to their experience, and which aspects of experience people select out for expression. And to the extent that our actions are prefigured on meaning-making, these stories also determine real effects in terms of the shaping of persons’ lives. This narrative metaphor proposes that “persons live their lives by stories – that these stories are shaping of life, and that they have real, not imagined, effects – and that these stories provide the structure of life.”

He explains that through the objectification of our familiar world, we can become more aware of the extent to which certain “modes of life and thought” shape our existence and we might then be able to choose to live by other “modes of life and thought.”  White also considers deconstruction in other senses. For instance, the deconstruction of : practices of self and self-narrative, and relationship that are dominantly cultural; the dominant cultural knowledges that people live by; and the deconstruction of modern practices of power and discourse.

For the deconstruction of the narratives and stories that persons live by, he and Epston have suggested the objectification of the problems for which persons seek help. This objectification engages persons in externalizing conversations in relation to what they find problematic, rather than internalizing conversations. Externalisation is the process of separating people from the problem, allowing them to get some distance from their issue and to see how it might be hindering, helping or protecting them. These externalizing conversations assist persons to unravel, across time, the constitution of their self and of their relationships, and they encourage people to identify the private stories and the cultural knowledges that they live by, that guide their lives and that speak to them of their identity.

Externalizing conversations are initiated by encouraging persons to provide an account of the effects of the problem on their emotional states, familial and peer relationships, social and work spheres, and lives in general, “with a special emphasis on how it has affected their “view” of themselves and of their relationships.” People are then invited to map the influence that these views have on their lives and interactions with others. This is often followed by some investigation of how people have been recruited into these views.  White writes and demonstrates in vignettes that as persons become engaged in these externalizing conversations, they experience a separation from these stories, and in the space established by this separation, they are free to explore alternative and preferred knowledges of who they might be and into which they might enter their lives.

He writes: “As persons separate from the dominant or “totalizing” stories  that are constitutive of their lives, it becomes more possible for them  to orient themselves to aspects of their experience that contradict these  knowledges. Such contradictions are ever present, and, as well, they are many and varied……” To facilitate this process which White  called “re-authoring”, the therapist can ask a variety of questions, including those that might be referred to as a) landscape of action questions, which encourage persons to situate unique outcomes in sequences of events that unfold across time according to particular plots, and b) landscape of consciousness questions, which encourage persons to reflect on and to determine the meaning of those developments that occur in the landscape of action.

The therapist can also encourage the participation of other people, like members of the community and family members, who have participated historically in the negotiation and distribution of the dominant story of the person’s life, in the generation or resurrection of alternative and preferred stories and landscapes of action.

This work requires some understanding of various forms and instruments of power. In his analysis White refers to Michel Foucault, as well as others. .He writes that a good part of Foucault’s work is devoted to the analysis of the “practices of power” through which the modern “subject” is constituted (Foucault, 1978, 1979).  He also points out that Foucault traced the history of the “art of the government of persons” from the seventeenth century, and detailed many of the practices of self and practices of relationship that people are incited to enter their lives into. These practices that persons shape their lives, according to dominant specifications for being, can be considered techniques of social control.  This form of constitutive power permeates and fabricates persons’ lives at the deepest levels, “including their gestures, desires, bodies, habits etc. – and he likened these practices to a form of “dressage” (Foucault, 1979).

White refers to the importance of understanding the operations of power at the micro-level and at the periphery of society [e.g. in schools, clinics, prisons, families etc.]. He refers to Foucault, who supported that it was at these local sites that the practices of power were perfected and that the workings of power were most evident.  It is because of this that power can have its global effects. Foucault believed that this modern system of power was decentred and “taken up”, rather than centralized and exercised from the top down.  Therefore, efforts to change power relations in a society must address these practices of power at the local level, “at the level of the every-day, taken-for-granted social practices.”

The mechanisms and structures of this system of power recruit individuals into collaborating in the subjugation of their own lives and in the objectification of their own bodies. They become “willing” participants in the disciplining or policing of their own lives. This collaboration is often not a conscious phenomenon, since the workings of this power are disguised or masked because it operates in relation to certain norms that are assigned a “truth” status. White writes that this power is exercised in relation to certain knowledges that construct  particular truths, “and is designed to bring about particular and “correct” outcomes, like a life considered to be “fulfilled”, “liberated “, “rational”,  “differentiated”, “individuated”, “self-possessed”, “self-contained,”,and  so on. The descriptions for these “desired” ways of being are in fact illusionary.” He points out that this analysis of power suggests that many of the aspects of our individual modes of behaviour that are assumed to be an expression of free will or are assumed to be transgressive are not what they might at first appear, and thus, many people find it difficult to entertain these ideas.

In therapy, the objectification of these familiar and taken-for-granted practices of power contributes significantly to their deconstruction.  As mentioned above, this is achieved by engaging persons in externalizing conversations about these practices, which allows for the unmasking of practices of power and the countering of their influence in their lives and relationships.  White writes that in these conversations special emphasis is given to what these practices have dictated to people about theft relationship with their own self and others. Through these externalizing conversations persons are among other things able to acknowledge the extent to which they have been recruited into the policing of their own lives, as well as, the nature of their participation in the policing of the lives of others.  He adds that as he has worked with people in the deconstruction of particular modes of life and thought by reviewing with them the effects of the situation of their lives in those fields of power that take the form of social structures, they are able to challenge these effects, as well as those structures that are considered to be inequitable.

What I have discussed and referred to so far can be understood more easily through briefly presenting some of the vignettes in the book. White provides the stories of Amy and Robert to clarify the processes of deconstruction of practices of self and of relationship that are dominantly cultural; of self-narrative and dominant cultural knowledges that people live by; and of modern practices of power.

Amy, for instance, had embraced certain “technologies of the self ” as a form of self-control, and as essential to the transformation of her life into “an acceptable shape – one which spoke to  her of fulfillment.” She had construed her activities of the subjugation of her own life as liberating activities. White writes that upon engaging Amy in an externalizing conversation about anorexia nervosa through the exploration of its real effects in her life, she began to see “the various practices of self-government – of  the disciplines of the body – and the specifications for self that were embodied in anorexia nervosa. Anorexia was no longer her saviour. The ruse was exposed, and the practices of power were unmasked. Instead of continuing to embrace these practices of the self, Amy experienced alienation in relation to them. Anorexia nervosa no longer spoke to her of her identity.”

As a result she was able to explore alternative and preferred practices of self and of relationship.  She was then encouraged  to identify people who might provide an appropriate audience to this different version of who  she might be, persons who might be willing to participate in the acknowledgement of  and the authentication of this version of identity. At this point, I should mention that White also discusses that there might be pushback in one’s environment when they decide to show up differently. For instance, in another sample he writes: “I was quick to share my prediction that it was unlikely that Elizabeth’s efforts to “reclaim her life” would be greeted at first with great enthusiasm by her children.”

Robert, on the other hand, had entered therapy for his abusive behaviour towards his family.  The unexamined and unquestioned knowledges, practices  or “technologies of power,” structures and conditions that provided  the context for his abusive behaviour were all part of a taken-for-granted  mode of life and thought that he had considered to be reflective of  the natural order of things. We observe  in the vignette how through engaging in externalizing conversations  about these knowledges, practices, structures and conditions, and through  mapping the real effects of these upon his own life and upon the  lives of his family, he experienced a separation from this mode of life and thought . White writes: “…this no longer spoke to him of the “nature” of men’s ways of being with women and children.   He writes that over time, Robert traded a neglectful and strategic life for one that he, and others, considered to be caring, open and direct.

In brief, White writes that during our early contact, discussion centred on Robert’s responsibility for perpetrating the abuse, the identification of the real short-term and possible long-term traumatic effects of this on the life of his family, and on determining what he might do to take responsibility to mend what  might be mended.  Following this work, Robert was asked whether he would be prepared to speculate about the conditions and the character of men’s abusive behaviour. They focused on questions like:

If a man desired to dominate or make someone their captive, particularly a woman or a child, what sort of attitudes would be necessary in order to justify this, and what sort of strategies and techniques of power would make this feasible?

During this speculation, particular knowledges about men’s ways of being that are subjugating of others were articulated, techniques and strategies that men might rely upon to institute this subjugation were identified, and various social structures and conditions that support abusive behaviour were discussed. Robert was then asked to consider which of the above were relevant to his life. They then discussed the historical processes through which Robert had been recruited into the life space that was fabricated of these attitudes, techniques and structures and he was invited to take a position on these attitudes, strategies and structures.

White writes: “As our work progressed, the identification of these unique  outcomes provided a point of entry for an “archeology” of alternative  and preferred knowledges of men’s ways of being, knowledges that Robert began to enter his life into….. Robert recalled an uncle who was quite unlike other men in his family; this was a man who was certainly compassionate and non-abusive.”

I will end this piece by mentioning how the therapeutic practices briefly described above, and which White refers to as “deconstructive” assist in establishing a sense of agency. This sense of agency, he writes, is derived from the experience of escaping “passengerhood” in life, and from the sense of being able to play an active role in the shaping of one’s own life.  It is derived through being able to influence developments in one’s life according to one’s purposes.  This sense of personal agency is established through the development of some awareness of the degree to which certain modes of life and thought shape our existence, and also, through the experience of some choice in relation to the modes of life and thought that we might live by.  He explains that the practices that he refers to as deconstructive “assist persons to separate from those modes of life and thought that they judge to be impoverishing their own lives and of the lives of others. And they provoke in therapists, and in the persons who seek therapy, a curiosity in regard to those alternative versions of who these persons might be.  This is not just any curiosity. It is a curiosity about how things might  be otherwise, a curiosity about that which falls outside of the totalizing  stories that persons have about their lives, and outside of those dominant  practices of self and of relationship.”

Finally, I’d like to mention that I will return to the book in the next post because there are some more ideas that I think are of value and interest.

Animal in stories, myths and metaphors, new artwork and books

“They are all beasts of burden in a sense,” Thoreau once remarked of animals, “made to carry some portion of our thoughts.” Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech. From A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

“If an elephant isn’t a very large bacterium, then an ocean can’t be a very large brain…..” From Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

I was recently on a walk, in the village where I live, when the barking of two big and rather overweight dogs broke the evening quiet. They were raising hell behind an iron gate.  A minute later they jumped onto the stone wall surrounding the property, where they continued barking their heads off.  And then there was silence. Like Humpty Dumpty, the white dog slipped off the wall and landed a meter away from me. I was concerned about its well being, due to its size and weight, so I waited a few minutes to see if all was well, but the shock seemed to have stunned the animal into immobility and silence.

Then a couple of days later walking on the same narrow dirt path I saw the black dog, sprawled across the path like a flokati rug outside the closed gate. I assumed it too had fallen off or jumped off the wall to freedom since the gate was shut. The difference was that this time, the dog stopped me in my tracks because he had seemed more menacing during our previous encounter. Should I walk by it? Would it become territorial if walked by the gate? As I got closer I hoped it would move or get out of my way, but it just lay there.  And then even though I kind of doubted it becoming aggressive, its mere size and the memory of its crazy barking nudged me to turn back and take another route, just in case.

During my walk a couple of dog stories came to my mind. First, something from the distant past came up. I remembered my friends’ dog, Caeser, a handsome dark Great Dane, “who”, as the story goes, jumped off their roof top and died. I wondered how common it is for dogs to jump off balconies, roof terraces and high walls. Then, a beautifully illustrated children’s book, entitled BLACK DOG, which I might have mentioned or written about in an older post, came up. The book is illustrated by an Australian artist, Levi Pinfold. Pinfold writes: “Have you ever heard the legend of the Black Dog? Some believe one glimpse of this fearful creature will set the most terrible events in motion, so when it visits the Hope family’s home who could blame them for being a little alarmed? This is a story about being scared. It’s also a story about not being scared. It depends on how you see things.” As is the case sometimes, it depends on one’s perspective of events. When Little Hope, the youngest and smallest member of the family, brings the creature inside, the fear is dispersed as the dog is neither spooky nor that big.

During my long walk I also thought about Winston Churchill’s Black Dog myth or metaphor. When I returned home I went online and read a bit on the topic. The Black Dog as a metaphor for depression is thought to have originated with Churchill, but it was actually first coined by the Roman poet Horace, and appears in older Anglo-Saxon writing. The symbolism is that of a sullen dog that a person is struggling to get off their backs, and has been derived from the myths of dogs guarding the afterlife.  In 2011 the Black Dog Campaign, founded by Marjorie Wallace,, began in the United Kingdom to raise awareness and resources for people living with depression or at risk. Churchill was probably one of the people who brought the concept of the Black Dog to public perception, but there now seem to be conflicting views on whether Churchill actually suffered from severe clinical depression or bipolar disorder.

There are historians and psychologists, who believe that the myth of the “Black Dog,” as Churchill’s metaphor for a severe clinical mood disorder is only a myth and does not reflect his reality.  One of Churchill’s biographers, Andrew Roberts, a historian, rejects claims that Churchill was manic depressive or bipolar and believes that he would not have been able to lead Britain during the Second World War. Others have also suggested that he would not have accomplished as much as he did in all areas of his life, had he suffered from prolonged and serious conditions.

In one of the articles I read at: https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-155/the-myth-of-the-black-dog/, Carol Breckenridge, a practicing art therapist for over twenty years and now Adjunct Professor at Ursuline College, Ohio, claims that “Churchill would be surprised to know that his many references to his innocent childhood phrase “Black Dog,” an expression of Victorian nannies to connote bad moods, would be used after his death to declare him mentally ill.” She notes that there are those who believe he had Manic Depression (known as Bipolar Disorder) and those who believe he suffered from Major Depression, and that the literature on this topic is of two types. The first is by those who are qualified to make a diagnosis, but have superficial knowledge of Churchill, and the second, is by writers who are knowledgeable about Churchill’s life, but have a superficial understanding of clinical psychology and mental illness. She has explored her thesis that the young Churchill had ADD-H, and continued to cope with many of those traits in his adult life. She also does not claim that he never suffered from milder forms of depression or that he had to deal with loss and grief, but she objects to his alleged Bipolar Disorder. She goes on to examine the DSM’s nine criteria for major depression and the criteria for a Manic Episode.

Major depression is heavy, complicated and debilitating if not treated, and the cause of a range of factors. Research suggests that depression is not brought about by brain chemical imbalances alone, but is rather the result of the interaction of many possible causes, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life circumstances and events, trauma, medical problems, and various medications. In the DSM there are nine criteria, which Breckenridge explores to suggest that Churchill did not suffer from Major Depression. She also looks at the criteria for Bipolar Disorder. She writes: “Manic symptoms 3-7 are also indicative of Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity. It is possible too that the young Churchill could have been diagnosed with ADD-H as it is known now—and that its very traits became his strengths as an adult. The DSM, noting this congruity of symptoms, states that ADD-H can only be diagnosed in place of a Manic Episode if the symptoms have been present since childhood—Churchill’s case.”

Breckenridge continues: “His teachers found him easily distracted. But like most bright children with ADD-H, he excelled when his interest was engaged. He was so full of energy that his mother found him difficult to manage without the aid of his nanny; his energy had an impulsive nature and he enjoyed situations with an element of danger.” Finally, in relation to the current prevalent pathologising of human emotions, she mentions that even in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) it is stated that “periods of sadness are inherent aspects of the human experience.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The elephant is another animal that has been used as a metaphor for a variety of things, and is part of myths, legends, in various cultures and religions. This majestic animal is also in danger of becoming extinct, especially the African forest elephants, which are a critically endangered species and have declined by an estimated 86% over 31 years.

There are religions and cultures, in which the elephant is considered a good omen and is linked to myths, gods and cosmologies, and where it represents values like wisdom, prosperity and power. The white or albino elephant, which is not a snow white elephant, but rather a light kind of brownish pink, has also been considered sacred in Eastern cultures. To possess a white elephant is still regarded in Thailand, which is considered the land of white elephants, Burma and other places, as a symbol of wealth, good fortune, and power. In Myanmar there are white elephants kept in captivity because they are considered “political lucky charms.” However, this has given rise to concern and criticisms because they are kept isolated and chained in small concrete covered areas.

The white elephant is also a metaphor for a useless gift or a gift that has become a burden or property requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit. It derives from the story of the kings of Siam, who gifted subjects who displeased them or had fallen out of favor, a white elephant, which was protected by laws from labor. So, receiving a white elephant as a gift from a monarch could be both a blessing and a curse, since its maintenance required a fortune, and thus, would often lead one to financial ruin.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story in 1927, entitled “Hills Like White Elephants.  In 2002 the story was adapted for a short film, with the same title, in which British actor Greg Wise played the American.  The story focuses mainly on a conversation between an American man and a young woman, described as a “girl,” at a Spanish train station while waiting for a train. The woman compares the nearby hills to white elephants. In this story Hemingway uses various symbols to convey meaning, including: the white elephant metaphor, that represent how the man views the pregnancy as an unwanted gift, and also, how like the expression ‘the elephant in the room’, it is something he is not comfortable talking about.

Also, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, uses the elephant and the rider as a metaphor to represent how humans think. In this analogy the elephant represents our emotional side, which is vast, powerful and often driven by instinct, and the much smaller rider symbolizes our rational, analytical, planning mind.  In other words the elephant portrays uncontrolled, intuitive and emotional thought processes, and the rider represents more logical, controlled and analytical thinking.  Our emotional brain is much bigger and more powerful than the rider, the rational brain. One could also say that the elephant reflects our unconscious mind and the rider the small conscious part of our mind. When the elephant is not feeling calm and centered, but is angry, upset, frightened, stressed or anxious, then the rider may not be able to easily control the elephant or lead it to its desired destination.

In relation to the common phrase, the elephant in the room, the writer Stephen King has said: “There’s a phrase, “the elephant in the living room”, which purports to describe what it’s like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, “How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn’t you see the elephant in the living room?” And it’s so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth; “I’m sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn’t know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture.” There comes an aha-moment for some folks – the lucky ones – when they suddenly recognize the difference.”

There is a (work) book for children and adolescents, entitled: “The Elephant in the Living Room, first published in 1984, by Jill Hostings , MS, and Marion Typpo, PhD, illustrated by Mimi Noland. I first came across it while I was doing a course on addiction about 14 years ago. Its focus is on assisting children and teenagers (and adults) in understanding and dealing with alcoholism, drug addiction or (and) abuse.

An excerpt from the first pages of the book:

“Imagine also the people that live in this house…. People have to go through the living room many times a day and you watch as they walk through it very carefully….  around the ELEPHANT. No one ever says anything about the ELEPHANT. They avoid the swinging trunk and just walk around it. Since no one ever talks about the ELEPHANT, you know that you’re not supposed to talk about it either. And you don’t.”

I will end this piece with something that Rebecca Solnit writes in her book as she considers the rapid rhythms of animal extinctions around the world:

“They are all beasts of burden in a sense,” Thoreau once remarked of animals, “made to carry some portion of our thoughts.” Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.

Finally, I have included some new artwork and a reference to one more book connected to the theme of the previous post:

I acquired a book with 142 free drawings by Yiannoulis Halepas, with an introduction by Ντένη Ζαχαρόπουλο and prologue by Μύρων Μπικάκη (Published by ΥΨΙΛΟΝ in 2007), whom I referred to in the previous post. I was happy to find this collection of quick sketches and drawings by the artist. Most people know about his sculptures, the fact that he is considered the Greek Rodin, and they also know about his tormented life, but his drawings are less known.

“Through the drawings, all his concerns are revealed and all the subjects that interested him from time to time are highlighted. The few works that have been lost come back to life through these pencil strokes, while the works, which he did not have time to execute, take on flesh and bones and are added to the body of his total creation.”