Posted on by

PART ONE                                                       Edited 21/07/2024

A brief introduction to Narrative Therapy and some artwork

“During the buildup to the recent war on Iraq, whose two great central rivers come as close as anything on earth to the biblical paradise with four rivers flowing out of it, one of the vultures making the case for bombing Baghdad’s civilians said, “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” This third category would prove crucial in the spasms and catastrophes of the war. And the philosopher Slavoj Zizek added that he had left out a fourth term, “the ‘unknown knowns,’ things we don’t know that we know, which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the ‘knowledge that doesn’t know itself,’ as Lacan used to say,” and he went on to say that “the real dangers are in the disavowed beliefs, suppositions, and obscene practices we pretend not to know about.” The terra incognita spaces on maps say that knowledge too is an island surrounded by oceans of the unknown, but whether we are on land or water is another story.” From A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

“A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that’s impossible, since a person who isn’t brought up among people cannot become a person.” From Solaris by Stanisław Lem

Today’s post is an introduction to the topic of the next few posts.

Two books I am currently reading are: Narrative Therapy Classics (Dulwich Centre Publications) by Michael White and. Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience (W. W. Norton & Company) by David Denborough. This is a topic I have been wishing to write about for a long time. Buying these two books recently brought the intention to the foreground.

My first encounter with Narrative Therapy was about fourteen years ago, as part of a Masters’ programme. I think it was during an introductory course on the different therapy schools and approaches. What is known as “narrative therapy” was introduced to us briefly through an old YouTube video of a therapeutic session with Michael White and a family. [White was the co-founder of narrative therapy and Dulwich Centre. With David Epston he developed narrative therapy, a non-pathologising, empowering, and collaborative approach, which recognizes that people do not only have problems, but they also have skills and expertise that can support change in their lives.] The quality of the video was so poor that we could hardly understand what was going on.  Subsequently, there were jokes in class and this was kind of it. I don’t think there was ever any reference to Michael White’s work again. In retrospect, I understood that this indirect discouragement of our getting interested in this work  was due to his socio-political analyses, ideas and approach to therapy and counseling, which to some extent challenge the establishment of the world of psychology and psychiatry.

Returning to this material currently I realized that it could be of great benefit to anyone studying or working in the fields of mental health or social and community work, as well as, education and other areas. I know for certain that in that specific educational context, it could have complemented and broadened the discussion and understanding of human experience, of the process of diagnosis and what we call psychopathology, and also, it could have enriched students’ experience of ways of being in the helping professions. It could have opened new ways of being in relation with another, the client, in this case, and it would have brought compassion and the importance of fostering personal agency to the foreground.  But this would have required space for critical evaluation of theories and practices, and course material. It would also have required an emphasis on contextualization and the psychosociobiological nature of every experience.

So to begin with, Narrative Therapy (from the Dulwich Center website) “seeks to be a respectful, non-blaming approach to counseling and community work, which centres people as the experts in their own lives. It views problems as separate from people and assumes people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives” (Alice Morgan / from the Dulwich Center website). It utilises the concept of externalisation as one of its key components. Externalisation is the process of separating the person from the problem, allowing them to get some distance from their issue and to see how it might be hindering, helping or protecting them.

In her introduction, – What is Narrative Therapy? – Alice Morgan, explains that there are many different themes that make up what has come to be known as ‘narrative therapy,’ and that every therapist or counselor might engage with these ideas somewhat differently. She writes: “When you hear someone refer to ‘narrative therapy’ they might be referring to particular ways of understanding people’s identities. Alternatively, they might be referring to certain ways of understanding problems and their effects on people’s lives. They might also be speaking about particular ways of talking with people about their lives and problems they may be experiencing, or particular ways of understanding therapeutic relationships and the ethics or politics of therapy.” Morgan adds that in her opinion, even though there are various principles that inform narrative ways of working, the two most significant ones are: always maintaining a stance of curiosity, and always asking questions to which you genuinely do not know the answers.

The book, I will be referring to in the next post, includes a series of papers and interviews by Michael White, which the people that have put this volume together believe “have transformed conventional notions of therapy, reshaped understandings of psychosis, provided new ways of responding to grief, and that continue to profoundly challenge the hegemony of psychiatric knowledges. Simultaneously moving and inspiring, these chapters convey a rare combination of political analysis and compassion.” The book includes vignettes from White’s own experience of a great variety of presenting problems, which contribute to the better understanding of the princples and practices. Because the book is so rich in ideas and material, since each chapter  / paper introduces something different, I will inevitably focus only on some themes or chapters.

I’ve also included six more recent drawing-collages.

 

 

Posted on by

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.”

Posted on by

Postcards                                           The English translation is now available

PART 2

“The world will always continue to march forward, sometimes with a limp, sometimes falling and rising with one-legged skits, stumbling, or with cancerous steps. And woe to those who have grown old and tired and are unable to follow.” Alexandros Papadiamantis

“If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women.” Mary Beard

“They didn’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.  That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird.” Harper Lee

Today’s post features eight new ink and collage drawings, which are part of the series of artwork that I uploaded in the previous post.

Some of today’s artwork is related to the important Greek sculptor, Yiannoulis Halepas and some of his works. The inspiration or need to create an image or set of images is usually accompanied by a little research and exposure to relevant material that interests me. The online search about the artist led to the purchase and reading of the graphic novel by Thanasis Petrou and Dimitris Vanellis with the title Yian Chalepas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This book by Petros and Vanellis is the second illustrated novel I bought recently. The first was Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird originally published in 1960, beautifully illustrated by Fred Fordham and translated by Tasos Nikoyiannis. This classic work won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was made into a film in 1962 directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Gregory Peck. I bought this mainly for my son, as I already have a nice old edition published by Heinemann: New Windmills.

To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into 40 languages or so and has sold millions of copies worldwide. It takes place in a fictional town of Alabama, during the Great Depression. An intelligent and unconventional girl that ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel is raised with her brother by their widowed father, Atticus, a prominent lawyer, who encourages his children to be empathetic and just. When one of the town’s Black residents, Tom, is falsely accused of raping a white woman, their father defends him despite threats from the community. At one point he faces a mob intent on lynching his client, but refuses to abandon him. Despite his efforts in the end Tom is convicted and then killed while trying to escape custody. His death is compared to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” paralleling Atticus’s saying about mockingbirds: “They didn’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird.”

As I mentioned, when I paint, and because I spend several hours bent over a drawing, I sometimes choose to combine the process with something else, like listening to a literature audio or a podcast, and sometimes cooking. If I have something on the stove or in the oven I draw at the kitchen table. So, some of today’s artwork was created with the sound background of the reading of short stories by Alexandros Papadiamantis. I first became acquainted with Papadiamantis’ work, like most people, at school when I was about 15. Around then I also first read his important and popular novel The Murderess.  But it has been too many years since I read anything of his, and to be honest, I was positively surprised by the timely and timeless nature of the texts, the stark realism, and also, the tenderness and humor, as well as the author’s deep knowledge of human nature. Each text was also a small anthropological study of the morals, customs and conditions of the time. I also found that listening to his stories made Papadiamanti’s language easier for me to understand,  and also, rendered its beauty more visible.

In a text of his, in N.D. Triantafyllopoulos’ book about Papadiamantis (1979), the poet Kostis Palamas wrote:

“I hide something inside me that makes me go back to some distant early years, that my ego turns to every now and then with longing, just because they are far away and seem foreign to me. Someone said: a person is always what he was as a child. I do not know. But I know that something from the child always remains inside even the most altered person, from the age, from the passions, from the thoughts. Its childish something, the luscious and the unexpressed, this poem of the past, the music of what has been lost, shows itself to me again and stands in front of me, somewhat less airy, somewhat more physical (somatised), in the Short Stories of Papadiamantis.”

I also found an article entitled, Today is not Women’s Day, by the writer Petros Tatsopoulos about Mary Beard’s book Women and Power, which I had written about in my post on 12/27/ 2021. So, the book has also been translated into Greek for those who are interested and you can read Tatsopoulos’ entire article in the online newspaper TA NEA (17/06/2024).

Petros Tatsopoulos says about the book: “Within a few dozen pages and with humor that ranges from light and wistful to biting and vitriolic, Beard covers the considerable distance from the Homeric epics and the Elizabethan period to misogynist Internet trolling and the austere clothing choices of Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton.” He writes: “Since the beginning of Western civilization, women’s public ‘silence’ has been regarded as the only ‘respectable’ position. “Mother, go to your room and take care of your work, the loom, the rocket… the many words are only suitable for men, and more than all for me because I rule this house.” The passage, a “slightly modified” translation by Kazantzakis – Kakridis,  is from the first rhapsody of Homer’s Odyssey. The one who speaks in a shadowy way is beardless (young) Telemachus, and the one who listens to him – and obeys him – is his mother Penelope.” And then he continues: “For two and a half thousand years, the “voice” of women, when it does not feed horror stories, is discredited and undermined. John Chrysostom, in the 2nd century after Christ, wonders what would happen if all males suddenly acquired a female voice: “Would it not be terrible, more unbearable than a plague?”

As I mentioned above I had written about Beard’s book in a post on 27/12/2021, with the title: Myths and her voice (continuation of the 18/12/2021 post), which focuses among other things on how women were silenced, how public speaking became the domain of men, and how myths provide us with ways of seeing and understanding the world, and that there are individual and more collective or universal understandings of myths, which are always embedded in specific cultures, traditions and times, and can be both destructive and limiting, especially for certain groups of people, and also liberating. Referring to Homer’s Odyssey, for example, Mary Beard writes that it would be a cultural crime if we read it only to investigate the well-springs of Western misogyny; it is a poem that explores, among much else, the nature of civilisation and ‘barbarity’, of homecoming, loyalty and belonging.

Some excerpts from this post:

“In her book, Women & Power, Beard explores the relationship between the classic Homeric moment of silencing a woman and some of the ways in which women’s voices are also silenced or repressed in our contemporary culture and politics. She suggests that we need to go beyond “the simple diagnosis of misogyny” because it is only one way of understanding or describing this reality.”

“There are many mechanisms and structures in place that facilitate the disempowerment, silencing and often severing of women from the centres of power. This has been achieved through many routes since antiquity. The silencing and oppression of women are interwoven with varying levels of trauma and violence, violations of human rights, culture and narratives. Mary Beard  writes: “When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice……This is one place where the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans can help to throw light on our own.”

“Beard mentions many examples throughout ancient literature on the authority of the deep male voice in contrast to the higher pitched female. She writes; “As one ancient scientific treatise explicitly put it, a low-pitched voice indicated manly courage, a high-pitched voice female cowardice. Other classical writers insisted that the tone and timbre of women’s speech always threatened to subvert not just the voice of the male orator but also the social and political stability, the health, of the whole state.” A more recent example of this is from Henry James’1886 novel, The Bostonians…”

“A lot of the violence and harassment that women and other groups of people have suffered lie in the structures of powers. Beard writes: “That means thinking about power differently. It means decoupling it from public prestige. It means thinking collaboratively, about the power of followers not just of leaders. It means, above all, thinking about power as an attribute or even a verb (‘to power’), not as a possession. What I have in mind is the ability to be effective, to make a difference in the world, and the right to be taken seriously, together as much as individually. It is power in that sense that many women feel they don’t have – and that they want.”

“Power does not have to be about domination and control over. Without power we cannot set healthy boundaries and our capacity to move through the world with safety and freedom are greatly compromised. So is our capacity to take part in life as equal and respected individuals, to create and actualize our dreams and fulfill our potential. “

You can read the whole text at: http://www.trauma-art-alexandritonya.com/?p=8593&lang=el