Imagination, Creativity and Spirituality in Psychotherapy

Welcome to Wonderland

Leanne Domash

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000190793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicoanálisis

The aim of this book is to awaken creative desire and expand the imagination of the psychotherapist and, in turn, her patient. Each chapter is meant to surprise the reader and help him see the world in a new way. Many varieties of imagination are explored -- the spiritual, the relational, the dreamworld, the aesthetic and the adaptive. The author offers space to reflect, to daydream, to remember; space to pursue goals, to make new connections; space to take risks and space to be wrong. The psychotherapist is encouraged to find her own voice, be poetic, dare to create, converse with other disciplines and, most especially, enter the world of dreams. This is all passed onto the patient as the dyad enters the intersubjective field.

Both scholarly and practical, this volume elegantly and persuasively synthesizes for the first time research in many fields, including spirituality and Kabbalah, neuroscience, the arts, biology and artificial intelligence, to give an in depth and original understanding of the current pressing problems in the rapidly changing field of psychotherapy: how do we work with unconscious processes and early memories to help our patients become more imaginative, creative, hopeful and resilient, and in so doing, heal. The relationship between the body and creative imagination is fully explored as well as the disruptive effect of trauma on the imagination and how to address this.

The emphasis on surprise, uncanny communication, interdisciplinary inquiry, use of dreamwork and the imagination of the body — how it spontaneously meets new challenges— all stimulate the creativity of the reader. Through numerous case studies, the author illustrates the practical implications of how this exploration allows for deeper understanding and more effective treatment. With the innovative synthesis and specific techniques the author provides, the clinician has tools to carry on the work of moving the field of psychotherapy forward as well as work ever more effectively with patients.

Chapter 1

Arrival in Wonderland

I am eight or nine years old, sitting in my living room, reading and rereading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I am entranced by the changing sizes and shapes, the absurd characters, the courage of Alice and the dreamy music of the writing. Alice proves a wonderful antidote to the overall conservatism of the small Pennsylvanian town in which I live and to my family’s practice of Orthodox Judaism, especially my literal understanding of the multiple rules I thought I had to follow.

I attended an orthodox Hebrew School beginning at age six. The class consisted mostly of boys, and they behaved like the Red Queen but on steroids. The boys were frequently yelling and screaming, racing around the room as well as running out of the room, while the dignified, modest Rabbi ran after them. I sat quietly (perhaps absurdly so, in retrospect) with hands folded, absorbing each and every dictum the Rabbi told us, whenever he had a chance to teach. When I asked my equally modest and scholarly father what I should do about the behavior in class, his only advice was to be “tolerant.” Shortly afterward, my secular teacher in school wrote on my report card that she was worried that I was too “serious” in school, meaning I was very rule observant and not playful. Pleased at my restraint, my father wrote back how happy he was to receive the news!

Alice helped me with this state of repression. She, like I, felt confused and bewildered. Yet she learned to challenge authority figures and find her own voice, and she passed some of her newfound knowledge onto me. I, too, gradually found my voice, including challenging my father. Essentially, Alice showed me how “make-believe” can help us see the world from a whole new point of view.

In his wildly imaginative way, Lewis Carroll drew me down into the unconscious, a dreamworld where reorganization and change can occur. I view my childhood reading of Wonderland as an interaction of unconscious imaginative processes between Alice and myself, just as Lawrence Zelnick (2014) writes about his reading of Biblical texts, how the readings are imaginative and interpersonal. Alice had begun to think “that very few things indeed were really impossible” (Carroll, 2015, p. 10), and I believed her that something interesting was bound to happen. I continued on from there, and while I took a more academic route than imaginative, I knew my creativity was somewhere inside. In these ways, Alice was my first psychoanalyst.

Another of my “psychoanalysts” is the Jungian analyst Robert Bosnak, creator of the dreamwork technique Embodied Imagination (EI). I heard him speak and sensed this technique, which facilitates the dreamer embodying the images in his dream, would help me expand creatively. I subsequently completed an intensive three-year training course with Bosnak to be an EI practitioner. Along the way, I participated in many experiences using EI, including two brief, in-depth therapies¹ using this technique. As a result, my imagination has expanded, and I have written plays, poems and academic articles. Similar to reading Wonderland, learning EI gave me space to imagine. Though still difficult and often a struggle, I have been achieving my goals.

To clarify my therapeutic point of view, I will be using the designation therapist/psychotherapist to mean psychodynamic psychotherapist, as I intend an overall psychodynamic or, in a very broad sense, psychoanalytic orientation. By this I mean a focus on unconscious processes, awareness of implicit meanings, use of dreamwork when applicable and emotionally understanding the origin of unconscious repetitive dysfunctional patterns and how to change them. Many of the references are from the psychoanalytic literature, and when I discuss these sources, I use the term “analyst” or “psychoanalyst,” as that is their reference point. However, for our purposes, these terms also refer to therapist/psychotherapist, as similar principles apply. Further, I expand the traditional meaning of psychodynamic psychotherapy to include acknowledgement of the value and importance of imagination, creativity and spirituality in psychotherapy. These factors, in particular, help the patient find hope and meaning and, if relevant, work through trauma. The healing power of the arts is emphasized.

The anxiety of creation

There has been anxiety about writing this book. Anxiety, in fact, may be a necessary component of creation. I struggled with doubt, fearful if I used my authentic voice, I would sound naïve, perhaps ridiculous, and if I chose my academic voice, I would be boring and uninteresting. Although I am a fairly even-tempered person, my experience of writing this book has been kind of “bi-polar-y.” There were days when I felt high and very confident about the ideas and the writing. Other days I felt the opposite – depressed, feeling that maybe I just can’t do it. With the help of Jill Salberg, one of my editors in the Psyche and Soul book series, I found Carole Maso, expert teacher and fiction writer, who gave me courage to experiment, try and retry, write and rewrite, until my voice began to take shape.

Before I contacted her, the book (which I had already been writing for six months) seemed like a mass of deadened chaos, like a patient who feels scattered and insecure, has flashes of insight but no cohesion, no consistent voice. I needed a mentor, like a patient needs a therapist – an adept presence, a container – to help me properly “form” my creation, or perhaps more accurately, to let my creation become what it wants to be.

Let’s look at it this way. Pretend a woman has just had a child. The child has inborn capabilities, but it takes time for various processes to “come online.” The child may feel very scattered internally and unable to self-regulate. He or she needs the interaction with the mother/caretaker to feel unified. The caretaker doesn’t reject parts of the infant but rather, empathically and authoritatively, tries to help the child integrate these parts. Most importantly, the caretaker helps the child become whom he or she is meant to be. The child’s self emerges out of this transitional space between caretaker and child.

This is a relational notion of development, which I translate to both psychotherapy and creativity. Relative chaos is an inherent part of the process in both human development and creativity. Yet, while it is important to tolerate chaos and formlessness, we can’t stay in this state too long or we drift into despair. The mentor helps guide us out. For example, a psychotherapist’s initial meetings with a patient may feel formless. He or she may have many feelings/thoughts about the patient that are not organized, that don’t even make sense. The patient, too, may feel bewildered. Form starts to take shape slowly as both therapist and patient cocreate a meaningful narrative and slowly integrate various self-states.

Just as clinicians serve as mentors to their patients, I hope I will serve as a mentor to you, my reader. This relational aspect of imagination and creativity is a powerfully interesting and necessary ingredient in the process, although the extent of the relational aspect will vary from person to person and project to project. Psychoanalyst and highly influential writer Donald Winnicott definitely subscribed to the relational model of creativity. The transformative effect that his wife and collaborator Clare had on his creativity and productivity has been well documented (Kahr, 1996; Rodman, 2003; Kanter, 2004a,b). Joel Kanter (2004b, p. 457) gives an example by quoting a 1946 letter Donald poignantly wrote to Clare:

my work is really quite a lot associated with you. Your effect on me is to make me keen and productive and this is all the more awful – because when I am cut off from you I feel paralyzed for all action and originality.

Winnicott saw his creativity as emerging out of the matrix of their relationship.

Hopes and goals

Inspired by Alice, I have several goals in writing this book. First, I aim to help the clinician find her creative voice. This includes claiming one’s own synthesis of theories and techniques in the field and letting this synthesis evolve. It also encompasses the clinician’s use of language, choosing words that are concise, elegant and lovingly jolting. Language carries with it the essence of the therapeutic relationship. Clinicians are not poets but can aspire to their power.

This will facilitate helping the patient find his or her genuine and most developed sense of self. I am not just referring to the “real” as opposed to the “false” self. By genuine and developed, I mean a refined true self that has verve, tact and novel ways of approaching the world. To paraphrase Alexis de Tocqueville, this is the real self rightly understood.²

I also hope to provide the clinician with tools to imagine her own projects into being: giving that presentation, tackling that paper, starting that book. With this in mind, I will catalog some of my anxieties as I write this book. I strive for a balance between reveal and conceal so the reader has enough information to sense my journey with the hope that this will move him toward actualizing his own vision with flair and resourcefulness. However, even with support, the struggle of the creative process is daunting and full of uncertainty and doubt. Even the best parent or therapist cannot (and should not) save his child or patient from trials and anxieties.

I have found the best antidote to doubt is to find faith and hope, that is, to enter transitional space so there is a free flow of ideas and sense of imaginative possibility, and, finally, to give oneself time. It takes so much time to let ideas/feelings/images percolate and then understand how these may be interconnected. Aspiring creators must be realistic about this factor and be willing to give projects generous amounts of time and devotion.

Bosnak (2018) speaks about inviting creative genius into one’s life. He stresses that one is “struck” by genius. Genius does not come from the individual but from the material. The individual works with this spark but is careful not to impose on the project or patient. This is especially interesting because it encourages listening to the “material” instead of trying to be in charge of creating. My anxiety, especially at the beginning of writing this book, was because I thought I had to be in charge. I didn’t realize the material would work with me and give me direction and guidance.

Second, I hope to awaken and expand creative desire so the clinician can do the same for her patient. Agency and creativity are fueled by desire. Patients need the driving force of desire to enliven their ability to tackle issues and gain momentum to achieve goals. They must want – and want intensely – to undertake the work of psychotherapy. Creative desire is to be distinguished from narcissistic desire, which can interfere with creativity and end in futility. Narcissistic desire is the craving for admiration and validation, frequently accompanied by grandiosity, which can be paralyzing. There can be such a strong need to be validated that the relationship to the work is lost.

Like the patient, the clinician also feels creative desire: to work with unconscious processes to make the implicit explicit, to help the patient identify and rework dysfunctional patterns and have the patient find his authentic self. Clinicians also desire that the patient know them. This leads to interesting countertransference experiences. Which patients have a good sense of the therapist? Which patients appear to have very little? One woman told me recently, “We have no relationship,” and pointed to the monetary exchange for services as proof. As she said this, I felt as if I were being punched by something very cold. She had no conscious desire to know me. Can I or should I create a w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Arrival in Wonderland
• 2 Spirituality and the imagination
• 3 Unconscious communication and the uncanny
• 4 The neuropsychology of “aha” moments
• 5 The biology of imagination
• 6 Transformative dreamwork: Embodied Imagination
• 7 Trauma: imagination interrupted
• 8 How art heals
• 9 Desire’s arousal
• Index