‘Myths and Stories by Her’:
‘Active Imagination’ and ‘Focusing’ in movement based performance making
By
Dr. Jane Bacon
‘Myths and Stories by Her’ is a solo, interdisciplinary performance which draws on my training as a release-based contemporary choreographer and the tools of creation which sit outside the field of dance. These tools are more commonly experienced and understood within the field of analytical psychology. The approaches described in this paper are inherently creative and, I would suggest, can be used both for aesthetic and psychological development. Like the infamous Carl Gustav Jung who developed the field of analytical psychology, I am attempting to work with palpable experience as both method and outcome by which I discover performance work that needs to be made. This method is related to Jung’s ‘active imagination’. This was developed by Jung throughout his career but first discovered in the period 1913-1916 (Chodorow, 1997, p.1) but first named as ‘active imagination’ in 1935 (Chodorow, 1997, p.3). Joan Chodorow, a dance therapist and Jungian analyst, suggests that active imagination is a process which “involves turning attention and curiosity toward the inner world of the imagination and expressing it symbolically, all the while seeking a self-reflective, psychological point of view” (2006, p.215).
My performance work is not directly autobiographical although audiences often notice an autobiographical feel. I use a methodology developed over a number of years which draws upon the self-reflexive ethnographer but this paper is not an explication of the origins and influences of ‘self-ethnography’ (see Pocock,1994; Keallinohomoku, 1989) rather it is an analysis of the creative process and product of ‘Myths’. Most particularly, I will discuss these aspects of the work as they relate (for me) to Jung’s use of the imaginal in ‘active imagination’ (1935) and Eugene Gendlin’s application of ‘felt sense’ in his method of ‘Focusing’ (1978, 2003). These two methods are located within very different psychotherapeutic traditions. Gendlin was a philosopher who then worked with Carl Rogers, Jung was trained as a psychiatrist and worked closely with Freud before breaking to develop his own psychological theories and practices. However, there are similarities in the methods they suggest. It is these similarities which form the basis of this paper and the way in which I allow these processes to intersect, blur, overlap, merge when I am in the studio.
Perhaps, most importantly, in order to establish the relationship between Jung and Gendlin we need to establish that “Jung recognised that the word ‘image’ is not limited to visual impressions” (2006, p.218). Throughout his career he returned to the idea that active imagination as a personal process might operate differently according to the type of person. He said that there may be visual images for one type of person or voices for another and that “[a]nyone with a motor imagination could make a very beautiful dance out of that motif” (Chodorow, 2006,p.218; Jung 1928-30,p.474, seminar on dream interpretation). So this is not necessarily, although implicitly speaks to, the relationship between the imaginal and the sensate or the image and the movement. It is about how one individual navigates a dialectical relationship between conscious and unconscious that Chodorow suggests (in her reading of Jung) is essential in creativity and active imagination.
Gendlin’s ‘Focusing’ (1978,2003) is an approach to working with psychic material in what Damasio would call the ‘mind/body environment’ (1994). It is a simple process that operates on the premise that we experience our lives through and with our bodies therefore individuals have the potential for change and transformation through a psychological process that operates through and with the body. Unlike Jung, who did not lay out his method of active imagination in such terms, Gendlin offers a six step process to finding and working with the ‘felt sense’. 1) clearing a space – here we are invited to let go of daily stresses or anxieties, busy-ness and the rest, in a process that is very similar to many forms of meditation; 2)felt sense – we drop down into the body and wait to see what arises; 3)finding a handle- when something in the body stirs or draws our attention we begin to search for a label or an explication of this something (for example, we might say, there is a sort of stickyness, a blackness); 4)resonating – when we have found the right handle, which might be a word, a movement, a brushstroke on the page, etc. we begin to check back and forth between the felt sense (the something we have discovered in our bodies) and the handle we have ascribed to that something to check that it is precisely the right explication; 5)asking- this is the stage when we are trying to discover what this something wants or needs; 6) receiving – it is always important to thank what we have discovered in our focusing session, to accept whatever arises and to acknowledge that whatever we have discovered can be returned to for further personal work and development (Gendlin, 1978, p. 64).
The link between active imagination and focusing are indicated by Gendlin when he says that the felt sense is similar to Jung’s idea of the transcendent function. I would add that the felt sense locates us in the territory between conscious and unconscious and it does this psycho-physically in time and space. The felt-sense is both like and not like Jung’s four functions – feeling, sensation, intuition and thought – in that there are similarities and or characteristics of all four functions in the felt-sense and yet it is none of them. For example, we experience the felt-sense bodily like sensation; it can manifest in a similar way to our experience of feelings; sometimes it can have an evaluative tenor; it can appear like intuition giving us with information we did not previously have access to and, finally, it usually contains something like cognition (Gendlin, 1996,p. 66). Therefore, Gendlin suggests that Jung’s notion of the transcendent function as the fifth function corresponds to his own definition of the felt sense (Gendlin, 1996, p.66).
For example, I see someone I think I have met before but cannot place her. There is a body sense of this as well as a rational part asking ‘who is this and how do I know her’? When we remember this information we often feel a bodily shift, an ‘aha’ moment that we experience in our bodies, something more than the visual recollection of the meeting with this woman, something more than a rational thought about this woman. All these aspects come together in the felt sense of the moment.
Making performance work using psychological tools such as focusing and active imagination allows me to operate in a Deleuzian ‘both/and’ state where I am more than a dancer with a heightened motor imagination and more than a director with a heightened visual imagination. In the creative process I am immersed in all kinds of imaginal territories and in a space where the non-visual of the imaginal is experienced bodily. To those who have done any Authentic Movement, you may recognise this process as part of that process. Chodorow states that Authentic Movement is active imagination in movement and that it “tends to develop a relationship to both sensory and imaginal realms” (Chodorow, 1997, p.260).
‘Myths and Stories’ was created and performed in 2004 with the support of Arts Council of England and The University of Northampton’s Choreographic Lab. It shifts from ‘Deep South’ to ‘Middle England’ and back again weaving together fragments of a personal history with fragmented and dream-like images of a solo woman performer. My intention, in the performance and it’s re-staging as a DVD, is to present the viewer with multiple and fragmented images that would create an elusive atmosphere. There is a sense of narrative but it is not singular, does not complete, takes no prisoners. As the piece opens a light appears and disappears on 25 hanging wedding dresses. A woman slowly emerges from the shadows, moving in, through and amongst the dresses. She approaches a microphone and begins a fragmented and unforgiving narrative of one woman’s ‘Once Upon a Time’. This is a fairy tale for the 21st Century woman. Here the woman screams in pain, decries the advice that smiling nicely will make it all alright and yearns for both relationship and enlightenment.
Now a little about the practicalities of making of the piece. It contains
ß one solo performer
ß 25 wedding dresses hung to fill a stage space and act as a video projection screen. This is an attempt to upset the primacy of the projected image when working live with video technology as well as an attempt to provide a sense of multiple selves.
ß 16ml home movies of my family between 1962 and 1968 projected onto the wedding dresses
ß personal stories about ‘becoming a woman’ that are fragmented, without context and usually incomplete
ß songs performed live and then fragmented in a pre-recorded sound track.
ß Vocal improvisation based on the ‘felt experience’ of singing and the memory of the song performed live and also recorded and fragmented and manipulated into a sound score.
ß Movement improvisations, both live and pre-recorded, based on the ‘felt experience’ and ‘imaginal’ of dreams and personal memory.
ß Video material created throughout the process using a feedback loop of projecting previous work whilst moving and re-filming. This creates a layering and multiplying of images.
It is important to understand that I do not make work for audience entertainment or for financial success. I make work to explore an issue or to deepen my understanding of something and to help facilitate issues or concepts that often seem to me to be difficult to articulate. The making of this piece came out of a frustration with ethnographic tools at my disposal. I wanted something that would allow me to focus on the psycho-physical in my ethnographic research on dance and identity in contemporary culture (Bacon, 2003, 2006a, 2006b). Many dancers had spoken about what I would call ‘numinous’ images or experiences that guided their dancing but these were not visible to the ethnographic eye. So I began exploring new tools (such as focusing) ethnographically. Latterly, I began to turn this process in on myself and to blend it with my own psychological development (Bacon, 2005). I began to draw on dreams and memories. Lingering in dream places and body states as well as working with this personal history, I began to discover a new and emerging methodology for my performance making as well as a shift in psychological development.
When Jung said that active imagination can create “a movement out of the suspension between two opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation” (Jung, 1916/58, par.189) he also said it was something that existed in all of us, the ‘transcendent function’, that part of us that works to put pieces of the jigsaw of our lives together to make meaning at particular points in our lives. I take this to relate to the multiplicity of the parts within us as well as the intersubjective nature of our existence in the collective.
Working with dream imagery
Dancing – I think I must dream of this a lot, not surprising as it has dominated my adult life – but they are such short sequences of movement, nothing touches the floor, not feet on the floor, no rolling or other floor sequences that I would do in real life. The sequences are incomplete, impossible and exist somehow in mid-air. More than this they are always unsatisfactory – not sure for whom – they never seem to be completable, never seem good enough, never very ‘danceable’.
This dancing is somehow trapped, encapsulated in some sort of bubble. When I look at it, it is shining and beautiful with fragments of light shining through a sort of translucent embryonic membrane.
(personal dream)
My first impression of this dream was of something difficult and painful, an example of ‘something’ that I could not achieve or was unattainable. But, as I began to work with my analyst on this dream, I wondered for whom is this dancing unsatisfactory. Perhaps the ego is hard at work, maintaining it’s claim to this particular territory.
The analyst’s account: “this was an example of the beginnings of a Self-Ego axis, or if you prefer, of dialogue between conscious/unconscious. It was an example of a dream that initiated that ongoing process and therefore had a profound effect. The analysand gave a fuller account of the dream during our work together in which she suggested that the dream ego seemed to be in a very dark place like a prison with a high up window. The thing about it which seemed numinous was the translucent dancing light”.
As I realized this ‘dancing light’ was as much a part of me as the part that wanted to see the dancing as unsatisfactory, I began to shift from a hyper-critical performance maker into one who could spend time in the dark places, in small places, in unknown territory without knowing how that would emerge in the work or in my personal life. I began to develop a relationship to this translucent, embryonic bubble.
The dream acted as a starting point for a series of improvisations based on active imagination and focusing. I imagined both the part of me that wanted to see the dancing as unsatisfactory and the part that was dancing in a high up place were going to try to work together but in this focusing process there seemed to be no way that they could co-exist without immense blackness descending. I began to visualise some sort of tunnel that would allow me to travel back and forth.
Later, when I began to reflect on the exercise, I realised that the images were all suspended together in my visualization. The next step was to try and create a physical space that contained this image. I needed something that would contain multiple images of dancing on multiple levels and a space that would contain the part of me that thought the dancing light was somehow unsatisfactory. I am unsure about the next step in the creative process but the result was that I hung 25 used wedding dresses in the theatre. They filled the space like a two dimensional video projection screen but also operated like a three dimensional sculpture. This was the beginning of my new performance piece in this fragmented space.
The next step was to find ways to inhabit the space. On reflection, I could now say that I was looking to deepen the experience of the ego-self axis dream, to deepen the relationship between the conscious and unconscious. The space became full of wedding dresses because they were cheap and white – that was the rational explanation during the process. I tried not to concern myself with the symbolic representation of a wedding dress. Believing all would come clear in the fullness of time. And so it did. As I improvised I began to inhabit this world of the feminine and stories emerged from my youth. Again, not clear what or how this was to be incorporated but knowing I was interested in ‘having it out’ with my past and reconstructing something for the future, I projected old home movies from 1961-64 onto the wedding dresses. In this process I am mindful of Jung’s comment that “as soon as one tries to abstract the ‘real essence’ of the picture, the whole thing becomes cloudy and indistinct” (p.156, 1949, 1985). Of course, he was referring to the problems of explaining an archetype and issuing a warning not to look at these symbols or figures out of their habitual context. I wanted to know if it was possible for me to create virtual images of my self and confront these symbols in much the way I might with dream imagery.
Why Myths?
‘Myths and Stories by Her’ is one attempt to work creatively with symbolic imagery. The intention is to let the images and sensations in dreams and remembered histories float to the surface of consciousness. I am not interested in working with predetermined symbols or archetypes. I tend to generate the material, work with ideas from depth and analytical psychology and, after the making, look back at what material is working symbolically and that might be read archetypically.
What I saw were fleeting images of me, my brothers, my mother, her mother. I began to immerse myself in this world, a world that soon became one of the ‘feminine’, of becoming a woman. More latterly I have found that this piece is one of a number of works I have created that, to paraphrase von Franz, might help women to define their identity (von Franz, 1972,1993, p.1). Looking back I can see that this was the confrontation with my personal mythology. Myths are not only, as Barthes (Mythologies 1973, 1989) would have it, falsehoods created externally to the individual. They are models human beings use to code and organise their feelings, thought and actions in the world. Sometimes these models are pre-existing and, in contemporary urban societies, people are capable of constructing distinctively individual personal myths. Myths serve to inspire, generate conviction, galvanise action, and unify an individual or group by creating passionate participation on the level of the individual or collective myth (Feinstein and Krippner, 1989, p.4). An individual myth or mythology informs and governs, quite often unconsciously, an individual’s expectations and aspirations.
In keeping with Lévi-Strauss’s notion that it is impossible to separate history from myth, the Jungian analyst, Wickes says, “modern man is unaware of the myth that lives itself within him, of the image, often invisible, that dynamically impels him toward choice” (Wickes,1963, p. ix). Individuals use this personal mythology to construct their understanding of themselves and their place in the world. These “expectations are typically an amalgam of images and stereotypes derived from the mass media, one’s friends and acquaintances, in some cases popular books read on the subject plus, on occasion, distinct fantasy projections and wish-fulfilments” (Rees, 1999, p.18).
In addition to projecting the home movies, I also projected movement, text and song previously filmed. These provided the potential for interacting with the figures as if they were archetypal and therefore part of a personal myth structure. To better understand the relationship between these so called archetypal or virtual images and what was to become live performance and experiences of dancing, I wanted to find a frame of understanding that did not operate within a monotheism but, to use Hillman’s phrase, worked ‘in tandem’(Hillman, James, 1983, p. 166) or within an understanding of the archetype of the oppositional. According to Hillman, myths “take place in a polycentric field of persons” (Hillman, James, 1983, p.175) by which I understand him to mean that we cannot understand the mythical figure, icon or archetype in isolation but must begin to analyse the figure within the psychological relations or plot as it becomes meaningful for an individual. Hillman says “Not that structure is prior to figure, prior to content…(r)ather, figure and structure are coterminous” (Hillman, James, 1983, p.175). So I wanted to have the stage space (a metaphorical structure of my life) contain the figure or figures. Jung said “every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter. This participation and intermingling give rise that that peculiar uncertainty as regards time” (Jung, p.162, 1949,1985). I want the audience to look between, to hold the tension. I want an atmosphere that resists completion, full accounts, story endings, whole dances, whole songs. What seemed to emerge was a space where one performer, one individual becomes mother, daughter, cultural stereotype and archetype.
A post-Jungian, post-feminist analysis
Rowland says postmodernism has generated a shift from the feminist trajectory of allying difference rather than “a single body designed to represent one category of ‘women’” to a recognition of differences in “class, sexuality, race and ethnicity” and “the impact of poststructualism, deconstruction and psycholanalytic feminisms after Lacan” have had a profound effect on feminist thinkers (Rowland, 2002, p. 127). Feminist practice proposes, according to feminist and cultural theorist Coppock, “women should enjoy creating their own images and gain pleasure from experimenting with their appearance. This does not mean ‘selling out’ but can contribute to the reclamation of the positive aspects of adornment” (Coppock, 1995, p.29). But how does a media constructed image of ‘woman’ butt up against a women’s individual circumstance and how and where does the mythology of the collective and individual collide and collude. If the myth of ‘woman’ is largely a media invention (Rapping, 1994) where reclaiming one’s body and sexuality through adornment and other practices are current themes in the ‘post-feminist’ then this work is an attempt to provide an instance social and cultural significance for one woman. Perhaps Rowland is right when she says that when there is “no one set of rules, art and aesthetics take on a new significance” (Rowland, 2002, 128). In this post-modern, post-Jungian, post-feminist space where ‘woman’ can be re-imaged, re-written, re-made, then words and images of the feminine can take on potential, as I have attempted to do here, rather than assume a descriptive whole. The feminine, such as the archetypal images of woman and the fleshy dancing bodies created on these pages, become markers, floating symbols (not signifiers) without a secure or complete definition. In this way it is up to the culture, here the women who embrace the image and those who see and interpret that image, to create new meanings for the feminine.
What I hope is that I have allowed a space or a shift to a localised knowledge where the ‘master narratives’ are made more malleable in the hands and bodies of a real woman dancing and this provides the audience an opportunity to understand these images symbolically and relationally.
Bibliography
Bacon, J. ‘Unveiling the Dance: Arabic Dancing in an Urban English Landscape’, unpublished PhD, University of Surrey, 2003
Bacon, J. ‘It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it’‘ in The Practice of Performance Studies in the UK, Studies in Theatre and Performance , Bacon, J and F. Chamberlain (Eds.), vol.25, no.3, 2005, pp.215-227
Bacon, J. ‘The Feeling of the Experience: A methodology for Performance Ethnography’ in Ackroyd, Judith (Ed.) Research Methodologies for Drama Education, Stoke on Trent: Trentham, 2006a
Bacon, J ‘Myths of Woman: Arabic dancing in a non-Arabic world’ in Postfeminism – Debates and Definitions since 1980, an interdisciplinary handbook on the postfeminism debate, Birgit Haas (ed) Ed. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006b (forthcoming)
Barthes, R. Mythologies. Selected and translated from the French by Annette Lavers, St. Albans: Paladin, 1973, reprinted 1989.
Chodorow, Joan ‘Introduction’(ed.) in Chodorow, Joan (Ed.) C.G. Jung, Jung on Active Imagination, Key readings, London:Routledge, 1997, pp.1-20
_____________‘Active Imagination’ in Renos K. Papadopoulos (Ed.) The Handbook of Jungian Psychology, Theory, Practice and Applications, Hove, UK:Routledge, 2006, 215-243
Coppock, V., D. Haydon. and D. Richter The Illusions of Post-Feminism: New Women, Old Myths, London: Taylor and Francis, 1995
Damasio, A. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Harper Collins, New York, 1994
Feinstein and Krippner, Personal Mythology: The Psychology of Your Evolving Self , London:Unwin, 1989
Von Franz, Marie-Louise The Feminine in Fairy Tales, Boston: Shambhala, 1972,1993
Gendlin, Eugene T. Focusing, Bantam Press, 1978
______________Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy, A Manuel of the Experiential Method New York: The Guildford Press, 1996
_______________ ‘Beyond Postmodernism: from concepts through experiencing’ in Frie, R. (Ed), Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism, London: Routledge, 2003, pp 100-115
Hillman, James. The Bad Mother: An Archetypal Approach. Spring, 165-181,1983, p.175
Jung, C. G ‘The Psychological Aspects of the Kore’ in C. G. Jung and C. Kerenyi (1949, 1985) Science of Mythology, Essays on the Myth of the Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, London:Ark, pp.156-177
___________Dream Analysis – notes of the seminar, Ed. Wm. McGuire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) [Patient danced her mandala painting for Jung, p.304]
___________ ‘the Tavistock Lectures: On the theory and practice of analytical psychology’ Collected Works, vol. 18 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) [Active Imagination, par. 4 and pars. 390-415],1935
____________ ‘The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’, (CW8), pars., 1916 131-93
Keallinhomoku, Joann ‘Variables that affect Gender Actions and Reactions in Cootz, Y. (ed..), Dance Ethnology Fieldwork: A Praxis’ in UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology, Vol. 13, 1989, pp.48-53
Pocock, D. ‘The Idea of a Personal Anthropology’ in Journal for Anthropological Study of Human Movement, vol. 8, no.1, 1994, pp.11-28
Rapping, E. Media-tions: forays into the culture and gender wars. Boston: South End Press, 1994.
Rees, K. ‘The Tangled Skein: The Role of Myth in Paganism’ in Harvey, G. and C. Hardman (eds.) Paganism Today: Wiccans, Druids, the Goddess and Ancient Earth Traditions for the Twenty-First Century, London: Thorsons, 1995, pp.16-31
Rowland, Susan. Jung, A Feminist Revision, Cambridge: Polity, 2002
Wickes, F. G. The Inner World of Choice, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963
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