Trails of Life
"Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house." --Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
THE SEARCH FOR ROOTS
& Experiential Realization of Kinship
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history.
Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors.
Intergenerational Metaphor Therapy
"Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening. My Samadhi is their Samadhi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one." --Frank Herbert, The God-Emperor of Dune, p. 260.
Epigenetics and depth psychology accept that ancestors can tangibly affect our behavior. Genealogy expands and extends our sense of depth experience. We go beyond childhood memories and the observer self. We go back generations to find the healing, to find the metaphor that is just right for the healing of primary and repeated traumas. The quality of the metaphor will be redemptive -- it redeems the experience. Every detail is worked in order to find a resolution.
Questions pull the client back - how do you know what you know?. The redemptive metaphor is like a magic arrow; it does all the healing work once discovered. It is invited to move through the traumatic history back through each of the generation's rendering of the original trauma. Remember, if a trauma has extensive roots the whole thing must be identified for a true healing to take place.
The quadrants are the four realms of the problem domain. They have distinct features. The four realms are useful for the processes of: identifying the true etiology of current symptomology; organizing the sometimes very complex and voluminous information; defining the linkage of true cause and effect; and, discovering a redemptive metaphor that will effectively be sweep through the generations for a healing.
In David Grove's metaphor therapy, Quadrant IV is genealogically based. Quadrant IV asks the question 'Are there ancestral, or pre-morbid expressions of the symptoms you carry?'. From whom does the symptomology originate? Often the symptomology is not biographical to the client's lifetime but rather originates from out of their lineage. A traumatic experience that took place generations and/or cultures before the life of the client can be passed on through the generations to manifest in the client's life, and then it continues to be passed on in one way or another by them.
We go back generations to find the healing, to find the emergent metaphor, how you know what you know and what it's like. The quality of the metaphor will be redemptive -- it redeems the experience. In Quadrants I, II, III, every detail is worked in order to find a resolution. Remember, if a trauma has extensive roots the whole thing must be identified for a true healing to take place.
When you are working in Quadrant IV you have grab the client and pull them back in time because it's not natural to go backwards, we want to go forwards. So feel that pull in your words: 'So what happens just before?' and 'Where did that come from?'. When you get stuck revert to developing. Pulling back considerably expands the information; like a concertina that is all jammed up. As you pull back you get more and more history as it unfolds.
In Quadrant IV we are looking for the healing down the ancestral line to heal the T-1 situation. In Quadrant II, childhood memory, in working with trauma, we are working with just the one experience. If it is only one event then it is possible to heal the one memory. But some memories have extensive roots and we have to get at the whole thing before it can heal.
So we need to look at what might be constellated around the one experience. If we don't, then quite often what we have is what seems to be a great piece of work but there won't be much change in the client's behavior. In Quadrant II we get one childhood memory and one event whereas in genealogical Quadrant IV we may get 10 or 20 events that lead to the current problematic experience. We need to clean up the whole lot.
The redemptive metaphor is discovered by pulling time back from Trauma-1 through T-6. This powerful healing metaphor exists prior to the history of the trauma that began in a particular problem domain.
With mapping, if you ask the question, which directs the client into the spaces, then you expect the spaces to do the work. The spaces will gradually unfold the information. In mapping you as the therapist are no longer alone, but you are responsible for creating the core conditions. This involves the use of clean language.
Let's take the phrase "I feel sad" for example. Now a Rogerian Therapist will be working mostly in Quadrant I where words are important, where the language keeps changing all the time, where self-absorption trance state is impossible. So, a Rogerian Therapist might respond 'let's explore your sadness'. This is not clean language. It introduces the notion of exploration, which is a construct that has to do with the therapist's view of the world, and it also changes the dance. Also, although it might be grammatically correct to talk abut sadness, it moves the locus and changes the sound and resonance of that word. Jungian amplification also derails the process.
Once discovered and developed the redemptive metaphor is invited to bring about a healing. The product of this interaction is a new metaphor which will then be 'washed through' all the T- experiences in the lineage to heal each one of them. This will cause the 'expression of the history' to change. In other words, the client will no longer 'carry the baggage' of that experience. An emergent healing has taken place.
http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/problemdomains.html
"Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house." --Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
THE SEARCH FOR ROOTS
& Experiential Realization of Kinship
Mythological History & Identity Formation
The term mythology can refer either to a collection of myths (a mythos) or to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology). A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind assumed their present form, although, in a very broad sense, a mythic character can refer to any traditional story.
Myth is an "ideology in narrative form". Myths may arise as either truthful depictions or overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
In genealogy, mythology connects with history and identity formation. Group identity can be active and conscious, or gradual and organic. It is a phenomenon closely linked to power, and is a key connection between perceptions of the past and understandings of the present.
Identity is fundamentally linked to other people: Historical representation is built in to the formation and constant re-negotiation of identity. This never-ending process requires the location and embedding of the self or group within a matrix of other fluid identities. All are likewise partially framed by and constituted through temporally extended representations of themselves in relation to others. In genealogy, the frame is intergenerational.
One manner in which to accomplish distinction from the “other” is through the construction and interpretation of historical narratives. Distinct perceptions of the past denote distinct societies, cultures, nations, or other groups.
No historical narrative can ever relate the absolute truth of events as they actually happened.
“History’s epistemological claim is devalued in favor of memory’s meaningfulness.” Memories about most historical events do seem to have some continuous narrative core to them. Culture and memory are key characteristics of group identity. Stories a community tells about its past construct and shape its identity. Its collectivity is experiences of successive generations, the concepts of worldview, paradigm, and ideology.
Myth has a function in history as a mediating function, as a channel that allows communities to reinterpret their identity and perceptions of history. Myth mediates between past and present, between reality and the ideal. We don't need to uncover the ‘historical truth’ behind the myths. Stories reflect the historical setting in which the myth was created and the historical need that the myth fulfilled.
The connection between myth and identity remains strong. Memory is only experiential, while myth is always happening, but never "occurs". Memory is mythologized in the "mythscape", including our drawn genealogies. We cannot physically remember events we didn't participate in but we envision them through narratives that inspire imagination. Memory and myth meet in the mythscape.
Myths subsume all of the various events, personalities, traditions, artifacts, and social practices that (self) define our relation to the past, present, and future. There are orthodox governing myths and heterodox myths that generate their own traditions and stories. Particular types of story are about the community and its importance, a story that resonates with the people emotionally, that glorifies the community, and that is easily transmitted and absorbed.
Recurring themes or motifs in myth can be: 1) diffusion (someone borrowed the story) or 2) psychology (unconscious ideas or situations often recur among humans). For Joseph Campbell, hero myths are "a magnification" of an initiation scheme of separation, transition, and incorporation.
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day [separation] into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are then encountered and a decisive victory is won [initiation]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [return]" (Hero 30).
Campbell says that in his encounter with this region of wonder, the hero learns about his true inner nature and identity, and about the ultimate reality beyond the physical, i.e., "God." For Campbell, the hero's inner and outer journey symbolizes psychic and religious discoveries that all humans ought to make, and hero myths can function even today as guides for humans through various stages of life.
It's perfectly possible that repetitions of structure or motif point to some deep-seated human need or conflict. For example, imagine the psychological reality behind so many myths that tell of fathers trying to do away with their sons (Ouranos, Kronos) or sons who "accidentally" do away with their fathers or grandfathers (Oedipus, Theseus, Perseus)? In rejecting or ignoring our lines of descent, have we done the same?
Theories of myth interpretation are literal and symbolic. If we think of myths as true, if we believe in them , we are thinking in religious terms. But belief is also psychological. Some say we need to believe in some power greater than themselves. Joseph Campbell, see the origins of myth and religion in the psychological response of early man to the trauma of death. Thus, belief in a greater power arises when humans are faced with the mystery of what happens after death.
Literalists tend to seek factual or historical bases for a given mythological narrative while advocates of symbolic approaches prefer to regard the narrative as a code requiring some mode of decipherment. The literal and symbolic exegeses [interpretations] of myths are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Myths can also tell us truths about our own psychology.
Events fall somewhere onto the linear, mythical timeline of an imagined historical progression. Spatially, events are imagined to occur in an “idealized” and “bounded” territory. Genealogy helps us better understand the relationship between myth and history, and identity and history.
Myths constructed by all three groups simplify complex relationships and history by altering their depictions of time and space. The resulting creations turn complicated representations of the past into easily digestible and transmittable narratives and place the community in a valorized and privileged position in history.
Genealogy is one way of transforming experience and cultural identity. In periods of crisis, people tend to look to the past for reassurance and hope for the future. Especially in times of momentous and often catastrophic change, people reassess their identities and often reinterpret their history in order to define themselves. They seek stability in the past, though the manner in which the past is portrayed is not absolute.
The importance of “great individuals” or heroes for communal identity construction is a well-explored phenomenon. These figures and the stories told about them frame a community’s consciousness, worldview, and perception of the past. They are seen as exemplars of the community ideal and they attain (semi-) divine status in the worldviews of those who are imagined as their descendants.
Constructing myths around the stories of heroic figures is a straightforward means to streamline a complex history into a simple and instructive narrative. Heroic figures carry preconceived associations that can be easily attached to new narratives, and the form of the epic or other heroic narrative is an entertaining and easily memorable structure to transmit and perpetuate understandings of the community’s past. Every community has heroes that hold positions of special significance in their communal consciousness. These figures are often archetypal founder figures, ideal rulers, lawgivers, explorers, conquerors, kings, and/or warriors.
Continuous with irrational beliefs, delusions are belief states. Delusions can lead to action and they can be reported with conviction, and thus they behave as typical beliefs. The phenomenon of delusions involves the formation of normal or abnormal beliefs. Fixed ideas have an obsessional nature, that is persistently maintained. Overvalued ideas are false or exaggerated beliefs sustained beyond reason or logic but with less rigidity than a delusion, also often being less patently unbelievable. Unreasonable ideas or feelings persist despite evidence to the contrary.
The experiential and phenomenological character of delusions are not as mere representations of a person's experienced reality, but as attitudes towards representations. Delusional realities are modes of experience which involve shifts in familiarity and sense of reality and encompass cognition, bodily changes, affect, social and environmental factors.
Intergenerational Metaphor Therapy
"Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their awakening. My Samadhi is their Samadhi. Their experiences are mine! Their knowledge distilled is my inheritance. Those billions are my one." --Frank Herbert, The God-Emperor of Dune, p. 260.
Epigenetics and depth psychology accept that ancestors can tangibly affect our behavior. Genealogy expands and extends our sense of depth experience. We go beyond childhood memories and the observer self. We go back generations to find the healing, to find the metaphor that is just right for the healing of primary and repeated traumas. The quality of the metaphor will be redemptive -- it redeems the experience. Every detail is worked in order to find a resolution.
Questions pull the client back - how do you know what you know?. The redemptive metaphor is like a magic arrow; it does all the healing work once discovered. It is invited to move through the traumatic history back through each of the generation's rendering of the original trauma. Remember, if a trauma has extensive roots the whole thing must be identified for a true healing to take place.
The quadrants are the four realms of the problem domain. They have distinct features. The four realms are useful for the processes of: identifying the true etiology of current symptomology; organizing the sometimes very complex and voluminous information; defining the linkage of true cause and effect; and, discovering a redemptive metaphor that will effectively be sweep through the generations for a healing.
In David Grove's metaphor therapy, Quadrant IV is genealogically based. Quadrant IV asks the question 'Are there ancestral, or pre-morbid expressions of the symptoms you carry?'. From whom does the symptomology originate? Often the symptomology is not biographical to the client's lifetime but rather originates from out of their lineage. A traumatic experience that took place generations and/or cultures before the life of the client can be passed on through the generations to manifest in the client's life, and then it continues to be passed on in one way or another by them.
We go back generations to find the healing, to find the emergent metaphor, how you know what you know and what it's like. The quality of the metaphor will be redemptive -- it redeems the experience. In Quadrants I, II, III, every detail is worked in order to find a resolution. Remember, if a trauma has extensive roots the whole thing must be identified for a true healing to take place.
When you are working in Quadrant IV you have grab the client and pull them back in time because it's not natural to go backwards, we want to go forwards. So feel that pull in your words: 'So what happens just before?' and 'Where did that come from?'. When you get stuck revert to developing. Pulling back considerably expands the information; like a concertina that is all jammed up. As you pull back you get more and more history as it unfolds.
In Quadrant IV we are looking for the healing down the ancestral line to heal the T-1 situation. In Quadrant II, childhood memory, in working with trauma, we are working with just the one experience. If it is only one event then it is possible to heal the one memory. But some memories have extensive roots and we have to get at the whole thing before it can heal.
So we need to look at what might be constellated around the one experience. If we don't, then quite often what we have is what seems to be a great piece of work but there won't be much change in the client's behavior. In Quadrant II we get one childhood memory and one event whereas in genealogical Quadrant IV we may get 10 or 20 events that lead to the current problematic experience. We need to clean up the whole lot.
The redemptive metaphor is discovered by pulling time back from Trauma-1 through T-6. This powerful healing metaphor exists prior to the history of the trauma that began in a particular problem domain.
With mapping, if you ask the question, which directs the client into the spaces, then you expect the spaces to do the work. The spaces will gradually unfold the information. In mapping you as the therapist are no longer alone, but you are responsible for creating the core conditions. This involves the use of clean language.
Let's take the phrase "I feel sad" for example. Now a Rogerian Therapist will be working mostly in Quadrant I where words are important, where the language keeps changing all the time, where self-absorption trance state is impossible. So, a Rogerian Therapist might respond 'let's explore your sadness'. This is not clean language. It introduces the notion of exploration, which is a construct that has to do with the therapist's view of the world, and it also changes the dance. Also, although it might be grammatically correct to talk abut sadness, it moves the locus and changes the sound and resonance of that word. Jungian amplification also derails the process.
Once discovered and developed the redemptive metaphor is invited to bring about a healing. The product of this interaction is a new metaphor which will then be 'washed through' all the T- experiences in the lineage to heal each one of them. This will cause the 'expression of the history' to change. In other words, the client will no longer 'carry the baggage' of that experience. An emergent healing has taken place.
http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/problemdomains.html