fragmented raving continued

This is a piece I begun to write a few months ago. Its a bit awkward and disconnected...but its trying to hit a nerve in our culture. The split between the scientific and the romantic/meaning-full view of life. So much more to say, s o little time at the moment. And you will notice that i a mthinking out as I go.


This story began as a way of leading into a discussion and review of a book by Richard tarnas: Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a new worldview. It’s a truly magnificent, extraordinary book. Life changing and I am convinced potentially epoch changing. If you are a top-notch intellectual then make sure you read his Passion of the Western Mind first as it lays the ground work. If you do nothing else in the next year read bot h books. Don’t trust me have a scan of the reviews There I've said it. I wanted t o put my rather feeble influence behind it, t o champion it and I will do that but as I wrote and reflected on the experience I had at the recent writers festival it dawned on that another agenda was pushing its way to the surface. This is the gift of writing and reflection isn’t it. Writing is exploring the unknown. I wanted to write out my frustration with the academy, with hard-nosed scientists, narrowly focused psychologists, tail chasing postmodernists. Create a straw man, a few decent enemies t o aim my pen and now its dawned on me that path is not my path I want to create something new.


I sat in the capacity-filled lecture room at the Brisbane State library recently as? /spoke about the writing of her recent novel?? She told a poignant story of how life seemed to imitate art as one of her close friends found out she was dying in a similar fashion to the central character of the yet to be completed novel. Then with slightly curious, slightly mystified tone in her voice she told how one morning she woke early and broke all her writing habits by going to the computer to write. She emphasised that she “never writes in the morning”. And yet he she was not only writing in the morning, but also writing in an inspired fashion and the novel was completed in that sitting. That magical flow or momentary opening that many a writer craves had just happened. Later she found out that her friend had died that morning whilst she was writing. The two events then felt meaningfully connected, another friend commented that the novels ending was the now deceased women’s final “gift”. That in other words the death of her friend in some mysterious fashion opened a door in her heart and mind perhaps that allowed the inspiration to flow and finish the novel. It was a genuinely moving story.
Then as a is often the fashion when people are genuinely reflecting on there experience she articulated the great split that runs through post-modernity. To put simply between the poet and the scientist, the head and the heart, the Romantic and the Rationalist. It was like the voice of science and reason spoke as it speaks to all of us. How could the two events be connected? Impossible! She doubted that the two events could be connected then chose to follow the poet if you like. She was after a writer all and a creative one at that and Romanticism is in our blood.
By now my mind was beginning t o buzz and I listened intently to the rest of the session whilst a number of thoughts and feelings and questions bumped and rattled about in the back of my mind. Why did she have to choose to believe that the two events were meaningfully connected? In effect putting it in the realm of faith. Like believing something that you secretly know is not really true. True in a sober scientific way that is. It was like a holographic moment, a hot spot, in which the history of the western world and its philosophy, psychology, cosmology and its pain had been unconsciously squeezed together into a few sentences that would be lost. I felt like I was in some form of public psychotherapy with no therapist, leader or facilitator. Those couple of sentences that were meant as an aside to the real business, had profound emotional and intellectual reverberations and they continued to echo within me and no doubt others in the room and yet there was no therapist to facilitate its unfolding. My frustration must have been palpable as this is not the first time I have found myself in a situation like this.
Now this is where it dawned on me as I wrote, that my frustration my passionate almost fury is only partially about what I perceived as …In fact the frustration has left me and has been replace d by a sense of optimism. Frustration grows when we feel like we cannot contribute t o a closed system. It’s intensely frustrating if the world is rolling towards an ecological disaster and your own unique abilities cannot be creatively utilised. Now I can see an opening. But I am jumping ahead of myself. Let me finished the story.
The rest of the session was fascinating and the other writers spoke eloquently and I wanted to read all there books and then it was question time. Hands went up. I wanted to ask a question, I wanted to make a statement I wanted to listen. The session finished and we all filed out.

I stumbled upon her hours later in the cafe courtyard. She was with the other author and I was conscious of just barging into a conversation. I approached and asked if I could talk. I mentioned the story and how in my mind that’s what could be called a synchronicity and that as a therapist these strange, bewildering and deeply meaningful connections between disparate events are par for the course when someone faces death. She looked at me patiently like the way you might like look at Grandmotherly Jehovah’s Witness clutching The Watchtower at your front door. I try and smile and think of my own Mum, as I will gently repeat “Thanks but no thanks” and close the door, not slam it. I suspect that in some fashion I had arrived at the front door, the boundary line marking her worldview and like most of us she wasn’t going to let any strange fleeting thought cross that threshold. Especially when delivered by a strangely intense man at a Writers conference.

Then came the academic version of the curt no thanks. She smiled slightly and said “yes but I am sceptical”. Conversation over. I wanted to object, and argue, maybe provoke but no I knew the conversation was over and in retrospect how could I have thought other wise?
My guess is that opportunities like this for potentially transforming conversation and dialogue occur all the time yet they are lost for lack of containment. What do I mean by “lack of containment?
For want of better words I consider my self a therapist. The word therapei means to care for the Gods, the larger the n human.
Some one once said therapy is two people sitting in a room talking or two people talking whilst a crowd of people listen in. In that sense therapy can and does happen in a multitude of places outside the therapy rooms with professional therapists and it doesn’t happen as well. What makes a conversation between two people therapeutic or healing or transformative is when the conversation is deepened and if you like the Gods are allowed to show there faces. A therapist, metaphorically speaking, is the person who understands that the gods are like animals that need to be tracked. They don’t stand still, they are full of surprises. They appeared for me most clearly in the ad hoc story before the real business. Now what if there was a public therapist/ facilitator in the room who had a nose for this and who was prepared to follow the unknown when it presents itself. Seasoned therapists secretly jump for joy when the client arrives saying I don’t know what t o talk about today? Or I was going to talk about this but something strange happened on the way here. Remember Freud said what he called the unconscious appears in dreams, slips of the tongue, jokes and accidents. Jung would most emphatically add synchronicities and we could also add throwaway comments and stories.
Now I need to be clear I am not suggesting a sort of public spectacle ala Dr Phil (Dill) –like characters violating all standards of privacy to reveal secrets.
No, that s American culture. We need t o find a form a container in which our powerful, even disturbing public emotions, ideas, hopes and dreams can be cared for and deepened. Let me give some other examples.



Remember the ubiquitous poster in Scully and Moulders office in the X-files. It showed a UFO with the words underneath I WANT TO BELIEVE. My guess is that many of us want to beleive that the there is some greater meaning to our lives. That life has poetry and magic and meaning despite the fact that science would tell us otherwise. Yes the discourse of science is powerful says the Romantic postmodernist and yes it can be critiqued. Psychology and Psychiatry our healing arts of the sick mind are firmly rooted in science not religion.
Like many of my guess is that she had come t o some sort of uneasy truce, like placing your bets bit h ways. Going t o the Naturopath for minor health issues with the conventional doctor as the fallback position. Many of want to live a more spiritually harmonious, creative, and meaning filled life and we are also o aware that science in a way is the final arbiter or judge of our
Simultaneously for perhaps 40 or more years The Western world has been edging towards a new worldview, a new epistemology and new paradigm whilst we have edged closer t ecological catastrophe. The two are intimately interwoven. We can point he finger at the ecologically destructiveness of developing Counties yet any thoughtful observer know that its our worldview and its incarnate in consumerist capitalism….(to be continued)